I. Introduction

"The country seemed so foreign to me in comparison to other German lands, as if I were in Brazil or China; there, I saw the populace trading and strolling peaceably, the stables were full of livestock, the farms were full of chickens, geese, and ducks, the streets were used safely by travellers, and the pubs were full of people enjoying themselves, there was absolutely no fear of the enemy [...]. That led to me gaping all around the entire way while Herzbruder was praying his rosary, which only served to dampen my spirits [...]." [1] Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus enviously presented the conditions in Switzerland during the Thirty Year's War as arcadian. The thirteen region confederation with its dependent subordinate territories, Untertanengebiete, (for example, Thurgau) and the majority of its so-called Associated Members (among others Valais, the principality and city of St. Gallen, Biel, and the earldom of Neuenburg), which lay within the borders of present-day Switzerland, actually remained largely spared from the warfare. [2]

Only the Grisons (or the Grey Leagues) in the country's east and southeast and to a certain degree, the Prince-Bishop of Basel's Untertanengebiet in Jura constituted exceptions to this phenomenon inside the geographic framework. Like the city of Geneva, the Imperial prince of Basel was allied only with individual members of the confederation. The confederation was a complex alliance network with a single - even if weakened by confessional differences - diet, Tagsatzung, which assembled in Baden when necessary and whose decisions were based on the agreement of directive-bound envoys. [3]

Primarily political as well as geographical reasons contributed to the extensive sparing of Switzerland because the confederation had gradually separated itself, if not yet legally, at least factually from the Empire and its institutions following the Swabian War in 1499.



II. Social and Economic Aspects

The Swiss population around 1600 is estimated to have encompassed about 940,000 residents. Before the turn of the eighteenth century, it rose, rather restrainedly in comparison to the growth of the sixteenth century, to approximately 1,200,000 inhabitants. [4] Repeated demographic growth crises were caused by various plagues during the 1600s until the last Swiss plague of 1666-70. They had, however, no lasting consequences. [5] The general recession of birth rates observable beginning around 1640 shows, though, that the scope of the extensively agrarian economy limited population expansion. [6] Intensified by a series of bad harvest years in the last decades of the seventeenth century, this shortage of resources led to the appearance of mass poverty: It is estimated that up to three quarters of the entire population in the territory controlled by Zurich was poor at the turn of the eighteenth century. [7] The socio-economic decline beginning in 1640 after decades of war-induced prosperity had far-reaching effects.

On the one hand, Switzerland remained dependent on salt shipments from Burgundy, Tirol, and Bavaria during the war, while on the other hand, it was, with regard to the export of livestock, cheese, and feed products, "virtually overrun with buyers from the German princes and commanders." [8] The continuous demand resulted in a price increase. Demand then began to recede towards the end of the war, triggering a violent price drop. Between 1642 and 1650, agricultural prices fell on the average to at least half their former value. [9]

This development, coupled with a noticeable currency shortage caused by the rise in wages and in the prices of commercial products, brought social and political division with it, which the cities' fiscal policies aggravated in rural areas in the 1640s. When the Berne government decided to burden the rural population with a new defense tax at the beginning of 1641, open resistance broke out in the Bernese Oberland. [10] After many negotiation attempts by other Evangelical regions of the confederation, an agreement was reached between the subjects, Untertanen, and the authorities, Obrigkeiten, in June of the same year. The tax remained, but the Berne Council had to be willing to grant an amnesty. In the Fribourg province of Bellegarde, unrest had broken out six years earlier when the government prepared to burden its Untertanen with an increase in the governor's income. The opposition was put down with a heavy hand. [11]

In contrast to Berne [12], resistance did not flare up again either here or in the Zurich area during the Peasant War of 1653. In the Zurich area, the uprising of 1646 against the war tax that had been introduced in the regions of Wädenswil and Knonauer Amt in 1628, which led to executions, appreciable damages, and the loss of political freedoms of the Wädenswil Untertanen, was preceeded by an inconsequential act of resistance (1644/45) in the county of Kyburg. [13] Similarly in Basel's territory, the war tax introduced in 1627 generated resentment among the rural population. [14]

This widespread resentment manifested itself in unrest and finally in open revolt as well as in the "Peasant War" when the Obrigkeiten in Berne and, following their example, those in Lucerne carried out a devaluation of the currency, the costs of which they (especially in Lucerne) passed off onto their rural Untertanen to a large extent. [15] The open revolt erupted in the beginning of February 1653 in Lucerne's Entlebuch. In a remarkable Zurich text from 19 April 1653, it was emphasized "that during this time, an almost continuous revolution of a majority of the confederation's Untertanen was evident..." [16] Actually, the revolt widened into a movement that was finally able to attract the Untertanen from Berne, Solothurn and Basel. On 14 May, the insurgents swore an oath to an alliance in Huttwil, which constituted an alternative organization with revolutionary objectives, openly opposed to the confederation of lords. [17] The affected municipal Obrigkeiten responded with a successful military counterattack, whose decisive operations ensued at the beginning of June 1653, as well as with hard criminal justice and repressive measures. The drastic event caused a directional change on the part of the city Obrigkeiten, as they, particularly the Lucerne Council, henceforth began to adopt a more paternal policy regarding their Untertanen. [18] Unrest and open collective protest remained, however, common means of expressing political conflict until the end of the Swiss Ancien Régime (1798). [19] The strong oligarchical tendencies of the political system not only of the cities, but also of the rural cantons (particularly evident in Schwyz and Appenzell-Ausser Rhoden) were not lastly causally involved in this. In turn, the causes of these tendencies should be sought primarilyl in the pressure resulting from a growing population and the directly related shortage of socio-political resources [20], while at the same time, the rising demands for the education, experience, and availability of individuals involved in the government, which was connected to the expansion of early modern states, also played a role here. Within the ruling classes of Geneva and Zurich, this situation had already led to the practice of birth control in the course of the seventeenth century. [21]



III. Confessional and Mercenary Alliance Policies

The confessional factor played a surprisingly minor role in the Peasant War of 1653. In any case, it did not hinder groups of peasants and other Untertanen of different denominations from joining forces. In the alliance and, to a great extent, in the mercenary policies of the confederation, the Grisons, and Valais, however, the confessional factor acquired fundamental importance in the first half of the seventeenth century, not lastly as one of the primary crisis factors. According to William E. Rappard, the threatening situation was two-fold: "militaire et stratégique d'une part, confessionelle et politique de l'autre." [22]

With the military defeat of the Evangelical cities in 1531, the Reformation already passed into its confessional phase within the confederation. Only on the periphery of the Helvetian alliance system (Vaud, Neuenburg, Geneva, Pruntrut/Porrentruy, Valais, and the Grisons) was it able to spread. After the Counter-Reformation had also gained ground in Switzerland by means of ecclesiastical visitations, the founding of colleges and monasteries of the Jesuit and Capucin orders, and a permanent nuncio residence in Lucerne (1586) beginning in the 1570s/1580s, though, the suppression of Protestantism in Valais and the Prince-Bishopric of Basel was undertaken. [23] In the Grisons, the expansion of the Reformed faith reached a standstill at the turn of the seventeenth century. [24]

In the Mandated Territories [25], especially in Thurgau, dual-confessionalism became a virtually permanent source of friction between the Reformed and Catholic regions of the confederation. The success of the church and state's endeavors to achieve confessional uniformity on an everyday level should not be overestimated though. [26] Still, Eduard Bloesch, reflecting on the period after the middle of the seventeenth century, pointed out with good reason during his time that the "folk character of the [Reformed] church and its lasting effect on souls" was "seriously damaged" by the closed partisanship of rural parish priests in regard to their superiors in the Peasant War of 1653. [27] The aforementioned frictional tendencies at the political level in Switzerland were even more dangerous, however, because the Mandated Territories more or less "[constituted the] actual cement, which held the old confederation together after the confessional division." [28] The increasing confessional alignment of the alliance policies of both denominational parties became an additional risk factor beginning in the 1570s.

Against the backdrop of the religious wars in France, the confessionalization of alliance policy revealed itself first of all in a military defense alliance between the Catholic regions of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and Fribourg and the Duchy of Savoy in 1577. In this alliance, they indirectly committed themselves not only to the subjugation of Geneva, which Savoy had pursued for some time, but also against the western policy of Berne. [29] In response to this, France, Berne, and Solothurn formed a pact two years later supporting Geneva, which a more enduring alliance of the cities of Berne and Zurich with Geneva replaced in 1584. The Catholic city of Solothurn's temporary break from confessional solidarity was connected primarily to the French influence on the city's foreign policy because the French ambassador had resided there since 1530, and secondly to its necessarily cautious policy as an adjacent neighbor of the powerful Reformed city of Berne. [30]

Additionally, the Catholic regions sealed a pact in 1579 with the Prince-Bishop Jakob Christoph Blarer of Wartensee, who had vigorously carried out the reconstruction of his dilapidated bishopric following his election in 1575. [31] These efforts directed themselves against Berne's confessional influence in southern Jura and, in particular, against the Reformed city of Basel's attempts to gain confessional and territorial influence in the northeast of the bishopric. In this conflict, ended by a treaty between the city and the bishop in 1585, the latter recieved important support and backing from the Catholic regions. [32]

The further development of the war in France caused the confederation's Catholic regions to distance themselves from the policies of the French crown and increasingly to support the decidedly Catholic policies of Philip II of Spain in the early 1580s. Against this backdrop, the Golden Alliance, later called the Borromäischer Bund, was founded in early October 1586 as a special pact between the seven Catholic regions for the retention of the Catholic faith. On 12 May 1587, an alliance of five, later six, Catholic regions (including Fribourg, but not Solothurn) was formed with Spain, which included among other stipulations reciprocal military assistance, the right to march Spanish troops through allied lands, and the recruitment of mercenary soldiers inside the confederation. [33] If one looks at this Spanish alliance (expanded in 1604), which should have existed well into the Thirty Year's War, in relation to the old Swiss mercenary pact with France [34], which was renewed in 1602, it becomes clear the extent to which Switzerland influenced the epochal conflict between France and the Habsburgs at the turn of the seventeenth century. The fact that ultimately, Louis XIII's France exercised a more flexible policy in regard to confessionalism than Spain, can upon reflection be described as a stroke of luck for Switzerland because owing to this, a unified confessional and mercenary alliance policy could not be achieved in the foreign policy of the confederate regions and their associates over the long term. Nevertheless, the question certainly remains as to whether such unity with respect to the important economic aspects of mercenary enterprises could have been realized at all. [35] Its subversive effect would not have failed to materialize, as in the case of Appenzell, where in 1597, the canton was divided for confessional reasons because of the entry of the canton's Catholic portion into the Spanish alliance. [36]

Reacting to the uncertainty caused by the temporary rapprochement between the French court and Spain following Henry IV's assassination, Berne and Zurich formed a defensive alliance with the margrave of Baden in 1612 and a similar pact with the Republic of Venice in 1615. The duration of the alliance with the margrave was fortunately limited, preventing both cities and with them, the rest of Switzerland, from being drawn into the warfare in southern Germany in the following decade. The Protestant Union's advances towards the Reformed cities of the confederation regarding a defensive alliance were resisted by the latter, however, with the explanation that joining the Protestant Union would conflict with their alliance obligations to the confederation's Catholic regions. [37] In doing so, they exercised a policy of "sitting still," or neutrality, in this situation.

The Swiss neutrality policy, which gradually developed over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, did not have any common roots. On several occasions, historians have wanted to see the origin of this development in the confederation's withdrawal from power politics during the 1510s and 1520s. [38] The objection has been raised with reason, however, that the members of the confederation could not then in any way have judged the duration and thereby, the long-term consequences of the 'perpetual peace' from 1516 and the mercenary alliance with France from 1521. [39] Nevertheless, it seems to me without a doubt that the formation of confessional fronts, as confirmed and reinforced by the second treaty of Kappel from 1531, considerably increased the value of the principle of "sittting still" in the interest of maintaining the confederate alliance network's solidarity on both sides of the confessional dividing line. [40]

The relativization of the neutrality principle was equally dangerous, as can be seen in the endeavors of a circle of Reformed politicians in the early 1630s. In a dialog-structured pamphlet by the Palatine writer, Johann Philip Spieß, one of two characters chastises the principle of neutrality as irreconcilable with the Bible, exclaiming: "In regard to loathsome neutrality, certainly no man in posession of his five senses would advise us that we should remain neutral or in no way take part and thus be only idle spectators in such a general religious conflict." [41]

The background to this radical questioning of the principle of "sitting still" was the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus' formal alliance offer to the confederate diet, which the Catholic regions rejected as expected, but which the four Evangelical cities of Zurich, Berne, Basel, and Schaffhausen dismissed, however, only after lengthy consideration and secret negotiations. [42] Not only the Swedish special envoy, Sir Kristoffer Ludwig Rasche, spared no effort in seeking support for the Swedish offer; England's envoy, Oliver Fleming, also aided him in this by soliciting the Reformed regions, in the end, though, to no avail. [43] These two diplomats found the greatest audience in the circles around the influential Zurich church councillor, Johann Jakob Breitinger, and its mayor, Heinrich Bräm. This circle actually consisted of warmongers who believed that with Gustavus Adolphus' appearance in Germany and Swedish troops on Switzerland's northern border, the day had come for the final reckoning with the Catholics both in- and outside Switzerland. The Palatinate pamphleteer, Johann Phillip Spieß, with his vehement criticism of the policy of neutrality should also be included in this group.

The inability of this group to assert itself during the critical years from 1631 to 1634 lay not lastly in the reservation of leading politicians of the other Evangelical cities, most notably Basel. It was no accident that the mayor of Basel, Johann Rudolf Wettstein, had to edit the diet's official response when the Swedish special envoy, Rasche, tried to force the end of Spanish troop movement through the confederation's territory with an ultimatum. The diet's reply amounted to a "formal declaration of neutrality." [44] The unified policy of Basel and Schaffhausen had a similar effect in the most critical phase of Swiss history during this period when the Swedes violated the Thurgau border in conjunction with the seige of Constance in 1633. This event resulted in considerable tension between the Catholic regions of Inner Switzerland and the Reformed regions, particularly Zurich, and temporarily led to the acute danger of not only a confessional civil war, but also of the German war's encroachment into Switzerland. [45] The confessional climate of those years was additionally poisoned by the effects of the Edict of Restitution from 1629 in the Mandated Territory of Thurgau. [46] At that time, the Reformed cities as well as the Catholic regions prepared themselves for war against their confessional opponents. [47]

Basel and Schaffhausen took on a cautious stance regarding their alliance and war policies not only because of their border location. The mediatory role they played in the 1630s also corresponded to their role as mediators, which the alliance treaties from 1501 specifically mentioned. Therefore, it was no accident that towards the end of the Thirty Year's War, the diplomatic initiative for the confederation's inclusion in the Westphalian peace treaty and for the confirmation of the confederate regions' immunity from Imperial institutions began in Basel. The immediate cause of this was the Imperial Supreme Court's detention of goods from Basel inside the Empire in two cases because the parties representing Basel had disregarded a summons. [48] Legally the matter was unclear, since Basel (along with Schaffhausen and Appenzell) had first been accepted into the confederation following the Peace of Basel, which confirmed the confederate states' immunity from the Imperial Supreme Court in 1499. Despite the Catholic regions' lack of interest, the Evangelical regions, including the four Reformed cities as well as Appenzell-Ausser Rhoden and the Reformed portion of the canton Glarus, remained firm on sending a diplomatic mission to Münster and Osnabrück, with which they charged the city of Basel. It, in turn, placed this responsibility-laden task in the hands of its mayor, Johann Rudolf Wettstein. His mission there is the subject of another essay in this volume. [49] It ended extremely successfully with the international confirmation of the independence of Basel and the other cantons of the confederation from the Empire and its institutions. [50]



IV. Effects and Repercussions of the War

In contrast to the rest of Switzerland, the Grisons was drawn directly into the war for two decades. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a state structure based on strong communal autonomy developed here out of the League of the House of God, the League of the Ten Courts, and the Upper League. Since 1512, the Grisons had possessed a profitable territory, namely the Valtelline, which the confessional conflict admittedly disturbed greatly. [51]

In the second half of the sixteenth century, increasing tension existed between the political claims to power of the canton's leading families and those of its individual communities. [52] In order to avoid the Grisons' normal institutions, both individual as well as groups of communities increasingly opted for direct armed action in the form of Fähnlilupf and for the use of criminal courts. [53]

Foreign policy orientation also contributed its share to the political destabilization of the interior. In 1602, the Grisons joined the renewed French mercenary alliance with the confederation, thereby securing France's (in addition to Spain's) right to march troops through the area, an especially important right after 1620. One year later, they further decided to enter into an alliance with Venice despite French and Spanish opposition. As a result, the Spanish governor of Milan erected a large fortress at the head of the Valtelline on the road to Chiavenna as a countermeasure, which not only interrupted the Venetian commerce routes, but also directly threatened the Grisons' authority over the Valtelline. [54]

The leading families increasingly acted, in both ideological and material senses, as brokers for France, Venice, and the Habsburgs. These powers all openly expressed a vital interest in controlling the passes belonging to the Grisons.

The political struggle between the leading families connected with the question of the Grisons' foreign policy orientation mixed itself in an almost impossibly complex way both with conflicts among individual communities as well as with the communal opposition against the "grossen Hansen" in 1607. Because of the latter, the Grisons was rent by unprecedented internal unrest. [55] In this situation, the Reformed curates became opinion-makers and leaders, particularly Georg Jenatsch who played a prominent role among them in the coming decades. When the Venetian alliance was not renewed in 1613, the Spanish party saw its chance and the opposition against Venice armed itself. The decision of criminal court of Thusis in 1618/19, which ruled in favor of the latter over its "hispanic" opposition, in a way mapped out the future course of events. [56] The Grisons became the pawn of power politics for the duration of two decades; the individual details of the conflict's different phases cannot, however, be examined here due to space constraints. [57]

In July 1620, the massacre in the Valtelline, triggered primarily by the criminal court of Thusis' ruling, marked the beginning of the so-called Grisons' turbulence, der sog. Bündner Wirren, a rebellion against the rule of the Grisons which victimized the greater portion of the Reformed minority in the Valtelline. The direct profiteer from this event was Spanish Milan, which occupied the area with troops. [58] Habsburg troops overran the Grisons three times between 1620 and 1631, followed by the Capucin Order, which worked to restore Catholicism in the Refomed areas, and the plague, which the soldiers brought with them. Nevertheless, the canton was able to reacquire the region with French assistance in 1625.

Only after 1631, though, was France's military engagement under the leadership of the Huguenot Duke of Rohan more enduring. He successfully reconquered the Valtelline in 1635. In light of the new political situation following the Swedish defeat at the battle of Nördlingen in 1634, Richelieu had no overriding interest, however, in returning the control of the Valtelline and its passes to the magnate families of the Grisons, whose highest priority had been the recovery of their profitable territory since 1620. Thus in 1637, a successful rebellion orchestrated by Jenatsch and others with the knowlege of the Habsburgs took place against the French occupation troops, which had to withdraw from the territory in the same year.

Georg Jenatsch, who had in the meantime converted to Catholicism and risen to dominate the political situation in the Grisons as a result of this new turn of events, was murdered by his opponents at the end of January 1639. In the fall of the same year, a perpetual peace materialized between Milan and Spain. With the ensuing capitulation of Milan, the Grisons regained control of the Valtelline, but only on the condition that the Reformed faith would not be allowed to reestablish itself there and that the Spanish would retain a certain supervisory right over the administration of this Untertanengebiet. An understanding with the House of Austria was reached two years later. This made the removal of the remaining high court rights of the Habsburgs in eight courts and Lower Engadine possible between the years of 1647 and 1652. [59] With this, the independence of the Grisons was finally secured.

The years of 1633 and 1638 witnessed serious border violations outside the Grisons. The first in September 1633 has already been mentioned: Swedish troops crossed the Rhine at Gottlieben and Stein am Rhein and then futilely laid siege to the city of Constance from the Thurgau side for several weeks. This event and its consequences brought the confederation to the brink of war. When Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar advanced from the Bishopric of Basel through the Basel-Stadt territory and the upper Austrian Fricktal and conquered the four forest cantons, this act was described "as an almost equally grave violation of neutrality as when the Swedish General Horn marched through Thurgau towards Constance five years earlier." [60] For the first time, the diet reacted with a unanimous resolution to impede similar trespasses with force in the future. The idea of armed neutrality began to gain acceptance. In 1647, the first signs of a military border protection organization supported by the entire confederation were evident in the so-called Defensionale von Wil, which came about in the face of a last Swedish advance as far as the Bodensee.

Seen on the whole, the Swiss agricultural economy did indeed profit from the Thirty Year's War, but, when the repercussions of the war in Switzerland are considered, it also cannot be overlooked that the supply policy adopted because of the war, particularly regarding grain and salt supplies, caused great distress, most notably in the border cities of Basel and Schaffhausen. [61] At the same time, the population, especially in the cities, had to deal with repeated influxes of refugees from war-torn areas. Well-situated religious refugees from Colmar and Markirch (Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines) as well as refugees from the Palatinate were accepted in Basel, as were fugitive peasants from the neighboring regions of the margravate and the Sundgau, primarily in the 1630s. [62] A number of exiled Alsatian and Palatinate priests found a new area of activity in the Reformed cantons. [63] In addition to exiles from the Palatinate and southern Germany, dozens of refugees from the Valtelline and the Grisons also arrived in Zurich reguarly, beginning in the 1620s. Following the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, there were temporarily 700-800 refugees in the city, a number representing about a tenth of Zurich's entire population. [64]

One cannot claim, therefore, that the Swiss had, as idle observers of the German tragedy, only accumulated wealth from there, as a contemporary claimed in 1648. [65] But, when we overlook the Grisons' terrible fate in the war, then the war years really caused little trouble for the majority of the Swiss population and for some, even brought professional or business profit. The ideal increase of confessional tolerance, which could have been forced onto the Swiss spectatores tragoedieae Germaniae, admittedly remained largely unrealized: In contrast to the Empire, the last confessional war in Switzerland occurred in 1712.

FOOTNOTES