a safer place for a capital, between his Burgundian and Austrian lands, although he was rarely in any place for very long, being acutely aware of how his father had been repeatedly besieged in Vienna. Maximilian raised the art of dynastic alliance to a new height and set about systematically creating a dynastic tradition, albeit through considerable revisionism. His wife Mary, was to die in 1482, only five years after they were married. He then married Anne, Duchess of Brittany (by proxy) in 1490, a move that would have brought Brittany, at that time independent, into the Habsburg fold, which was considered provocative to the French monarchy. Charles VIII of France had other ideas and annexed Brittany and married Anne, a situation complicated further by the fact that he was already betrothed to Maximilian's daughter Margaret, Duchess of Savoy. Maximilian's son, Philip the Fair (1478–1506) married Joanna, heiress of Castile and Aragon in 1496, and thus acquired Spain and its Italian (Naples, Kingdom of Sicily and Sardinia), African, and New World appendages for the Habsburgs. However Tu felix Austria nube was perhaps more romantic than strictly realistic, since Maximilian was not slow to wage war when it suited his purpose. Having settled matters with France in 1493, he was soon involved in the long Italian Wars against France (1494–1559). In addition to the wars against the French, there were the wars for Swiss independence. The Swabian War of 1499 marked the last phase of this struggle against the Habsburgs. Following defeat at the Battle of Dornach in 1499, Austria was forced to recognise Swiss independence at the Treaty of Basel in 1499, a process that was finally formalised by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This was significant as the Habsburgs had originated in Switzerland, their ancestral home being Habsburg Castle. In domestic policy, Maximilian launched a series of reforms at the 1495 Diet of Worms, at which the Imperial Chamber Court (Reichskammergericht) was launched as the highest court. Another new institution of 1495 was the Reichsregiment or Imperial government, meeting at Nuremberg. This preliminary exercise in democracy failed and was dissolved in 1502. Attempts at creating a unified state were not very successful, but rather re-emerged the idea of the three divisions of Austria that existed prior to the unification of Frederick and Maximilian. Short of funds for his various schemes he relied heavily on banking families such as