Wars

The Conquest of Vaud.

Berne had an eminently political interest in upholding the Evangelical creed regarding her policy towards Savoy. Since the wars of Burgundy, Berne had got a foot ing in the French-speaking districts round the lakes of Neuchatel and Morat and south of them, and she wished to develop her posi tion further south round the lake of Geneva. The city of Geneva was the natural centre of the northern Savoyard district and the key to Vaud as well. The conflict of her burghers with the duke of Savoy, into whose hands the see of Geneva had passed, and the strong effort of the burghers to free themselves from any feudal power, made the alliance of Geneva with the neighbouring Swiss cities a political necessity (alliance with Fribourg 1519, with Berne 1526). 1536, the date which marks the definite victory of Prot estantism in Geneva, is also the year of the expulsion of the Savoyard forces from Vaud, and the establishment by Berne of her rule over the district of the Leman, where the new creed was in troduced and serfdom was abolished in the country districts. This success compensated for the losses sustained by the Evangelical cause in German Switzerland. It was in two ways a gain to the country ; it enabled Calvin to develop his theocracy in Geneva and to make Geneva the centre of Swiss Protestantism, on the basis of a union between the Geneva and Zurich reformers. A further consolidation of the territorial position of Geneva to the west and south of the lake was made impossible by the interference of the Catholic members of the League, who contracted different alli ances with the duke of Savoy. Finally Geneva turned to France.

The Counter-Reformation.

The Catholic members of the League developed a policy of their own. The first impulse had in fact come from the other side, Zwingli taking the lead in contract ing an alliance founded on religious principles (Christliches Burg recht between Zurich, Constance and Berne, etc. 1527-28). Yet the Romanists departed even more from former principles by di recting their own efforts against the very tradition of national pol icy. This was all the more important as—since the second Peace of Kappel—the Catholics had secured the stronger position in the country. The Counter-Reformation had inspired them just as the Reformation had inspired the Protestants. They felt the influence of a great leader, Carlo Borromeo, the archbishop of Milan, whose diocese included the Italian bailiwicks, and who founded the "Collegium Helveticum" at Milan for the training of the Swiss clergy. The arrival of the Jesuits at Lucerne and Fribourg as well as the delegation of a permanent nuncio to the cantons marks the beginning of the regeneration of Roman Catholicism. The Capuchins—a Minorite order—extended their activity more to the, country districts. Results were soon apparent : not only were border districts such as the Valais and the Chablais, and on the opposite side Constance, lost for Protestantism, but among the League itself, in Appenzell and in Glarus, the Catholic movement became so strong, that in the case of Appenzell, it ended with a rupture, the canton being henceforward divided into two half can tons. Lucerne became the centre, almost the capital, of Catholic

Switzerland. The papal nuncio had his residence at Lucerne. The diet of the Catholic members met there (the Evangelicals sat at Aarau), supported by the invaluable activities of Ludwig Pfyffer, the great religious reactionary, formerly chief of the Swiss soldiers in the service of France, and commonly known in his time as the "Swiss king." A visible symbol of the new spirit amongst the Catholics was the Golden or Borromean League, founded in 1586. This League brought the old League near to disintegration as it formally stated that its members must prefer the new League to all former contracts; and it showed in fact by its alliances with the House of Habsburg (with the emperor 1529, with Spain 1557, 1587, etc.), that its members were strongly confirmed in their resolution to forget the past.

Thirty Years' War.

With the beginning of the i7th century the waves of religious passion in the League were calming down, though nothing in the attitude of the parties was changed. The religious conflicts, originally internal disputes, became mixed up with the great political international problems of Europe. But the division of the parties did not coincide with the religious divisions. In the Thirty Years' War France took the side of the Protestants against the Habsburgs, and Swiss mercenaries from the Catholic Cantons fought on the side of Catholic France in helping the Protestant Powers to destroy the Habsburgs. Switzerland was lucky to escape the terrible lot of the German lands. The Raetian Leagues, however, were drawn into the war in consequence of the great strategical value of the Valtellina for the Habsburgs, as one of the main connections between Milan and the Tirol. For over 3o years the Grisons were the scene of the most atrocious party warfare ; a Protestant party worked for the French, a Catholic party for the Spaniards, until George Jenatsch, originally a Protestant parson, with Spanish aid threw out the French, his own former allies,—thus liberating his country at last from foreign occupation.

The Treaty of Westphalia gave Switzerland that formal recog nition of its independence from the empire, which it had possessed in fact since 1499. The position of the League was thus apparently strengthened, but the separation from the empire brought her more within the compass of France's influence. This less favour able result was partly compensated by the Defensionale of Wil (1647, finally adopted 1668) which marks the beginnings of the organization of a home army for the common defence of the Swiss territory, and shows for the first time since the Reformation a kind of national spirit within the League.