defeat on a coalition force of Habsburg, Savoy and Basel in the battle of Laupen in 1339. At the same time, Habsburg attempted to gain influence over the cities of Lucerne and Zürich, with riots or attempted coups reported for the years 1343 and 1350 respectively. This situation led the cities of Lucerne, Zürich and Berne to attach themselves to the Swiss Confederacy in 1332, 1351, and 1353 respectively. As elsewhere in Europe, Switzerland suffered a crisis in the middle of the century, triggered by the Black Death followed by social upheaval and moral panics, often directed against the Jews as in the Basel massacre of 1349. To this was added the catastrophic 1356 Basel earthquake which devastated a wide region, and the city of Basel was destroyed almost completely in the ensuing fire. The balance of power remained precarious during the 1350s to 1380s, with Habsburg trying to regain lost influence; Albrecht II besieged Zürich unsuccessfully, but imposed an unfavourable peace on the city in the treaty of Regensburg. In 1375, Habsburg tried to regain control over the Aargau with the help of Gugler mercenaries. After a number of minor clashes (Sörenberg, Näfels), it was with the decisive Swiss victory at the battle of Sempach 1386 that this situation was resolved. Habsburg moved its focus eastward and while it continued to grow in influence (ultimately rising to the most powerful dynasty of Early Modern Europe), it lost all possessions in its ancestral territory with the Swiss annexation of the Aargau in 1416, from which time the Swiss Confederacy stood for the first time as a political entity controlling a contiguous territory. Meanwhile, in Basel, the citizenry was also divided into a pro-Habsburg and an anti-Habsburg faction, known as Sterner and Psitticher, respectively. The citizens of greater Basel bought most of the privileges from the bishop in 1392, and from this time on, though Basel nominally remained the domain of the prince-bishops until the Reformation, it was de facto governed by its city council, which since 1382 had been dominated by the city's guilds. Similarly, the bishop of Geneva granted the citizenry substantial political rights in 1387. Other parts of western Switzerland remained under the control of Burgundy and Savoy throughout the 14th century; the Barony of Vaud was incorporated into Savoy in 1359 and was annexed by Berne only in the context of the Swiss Reformation, in 1536. In