The system was a bad one for both sides.

Swiss politics were corrupted and the land drained of its strongest men; whereas the princes who hired the mercenaries often found to their cost that such soldiers were not only the most formidable to their enemies but also the most troublesome to themselves, always on the point of mutiny for more pay and plunder.
The Swiss were beginning to see the evils of the system, and prohibited the taking of pensions in 1503, though this law remained largely a dead letter.

[Sidenote: September 13-14, 1515] The reputation of the mountaineers suffered a blow in their defeat by the French at Marignano, followed by a treaty with France, intended by that power to make Switzerland a permanent dependency in return for a large annual subsidy payable to each of the thirteen cantons and to the Grisons and Valais as well.

The country suffered from faction.

The rural or "Forest" cantons were jealous of the cities, and the latter, especially Berne, the strongest, pursued selfish policies of individual aggrandizement at the expense of their confederates.
As everywhere else, the cities were the centers of culture and of social movements.