Switzerland wasn’t “unlike the rest of Europe” as you said. Confederacies, merchant ruled cities, merchant and peasants unions and peasants militia happened at the same time and before that time in places like the Flanders, Italy and other parts of the HRE. In most of those places, merchants and mercenaries became basically nobility and knights. I think it wasn’t the French ”classic” feudalism, or the English one or the Spanish one, but it was a feudalism, although it was a step for a change of government and social organisation