The political history of Valtellina is made up of the histories of three districts,—(1) the “free community” of Poschiavo (first mentioned as such in 1200-01); (2) the county of Bormio (first mentioned as a county in 1347); and (3) Valtellina proper, extending from the defile of the Serra di Morignone on the east to the Lake of Como on the west. After the defeat of the Lombards (774) these three districts were given by Charlemagne to the abbey of St Denis near Paris, which never seems to have exercised its rights. In 824 Lothair I., confirming an earlier donation made by Charlemagne, gave the churches of Poschiavo and Bormio to the bishop of Como. Bormio was in 1205 won by the men of Como, who in 1006 had received one-half of Valtellina from the emperor, and by 1114 they were masters of the entire valley. They retained Bormio till 1300, when it freed itself; but in 1336 it belonged to the bishop of Chur. In 1335 the Visconti, lords (later dukes) of Milan, became lords of Como, and therefore of Valtellina. In 1350 they seized on Bormio and Poschiavo, the latter being won back by the bishop of Chur in 1394, and again lost to the Visconti in 1435. As early as 1360 the men of Rhaetia made incursions into Valtellina under the pretext that it had formed part of ancient Rhaetia. This idea was confirmed in 1404, when, in return for kind treatment received during his exile, Mastino Visconti (son of Barnabo) gave to the bishop of Chur his share of the Milanese, including Poschiavo, Bormio, and Valtellina. Relying on this donation, the men of the Three Leagues of Rhaetia (best known by the name of one, Graubünden) invaded the valley in 1486-87, Poschiavo becoming in 1486 permanently a member (not a subject land) of the Gotteshausbund. This donation served too as the excuse for seizing, in 1512, on Bormio and Valtellina, which were harshly ruled as “subject bailiwicks.” Under the governor at Sondrio there were four “podestas” for the three divisions of Valtellina (Morbegno and Traona, Sondrio, and Tirano), besides one at Teglio and one at Bormio. Mastino Visconti’s donation was solemnly confirmed in 1516 by the emperor Maximilian I. In 1530 the bishop of Chur was forced to sell to the Three Leagues for a small sum his title to these two districts. At the time of the Reformation Poschiavo became Protestant. The other two districts clung to the old faith and came under the influence of Carlo Borromeo, who, when founding in 1579 his “Collegium Helveticum” at Milan for Swiss students for the priesthood, reserved for Valtellina six out of the forty-two places. Valtellina was extremely important to the Hapsburgs as affording the direct route between their possessions of the Milanese and Tyrol. Hence a great struggle, into which religious questions and bribery largely entered, took place between Austria and Spain on one side and France and Venice on the other. In 1603 Fuentes, the Spanish governor of the Milanese, built a fortress (of which traces still remain) close to the Lake of Como and at the entrance to the valley, in order to overawe it. The religious conflicts in Graubünden led to reprisals in the “subject land” of Valtellina. In 1620 (19th July-4th August) the Spanish and Romanist faction (headed by the Planta family) massacred a great number of Protestants in the valley, 350 to 600 according to different accounts (Veltliner Mord). For the next twenty years the valley was the scene of great strife, being held by the Spaniards (1620, 1621-23, 1629-31, 1637-39), by the French (1624-26, 1635-37), and by the pope (1623, 1627). At length George Jenatsch, a former pastor, who had been the active and unscrupulous leader of the Protestant party, became a Romanist (1635) in order to free the land from the French by aid of the Spaniards (1637), who finally (1639) gave it back to its old masters on condition that the Protestants were excluded from the valley. In this way the local struggles of Valtellina came to be mixed up with the Thirty Years’ War. In 1797 Bormio and Valtellina were annexed to the Cisalpine republic, in 1805 to the kingdom of Italy (of which Napoleon was king), and in 1815 (despite the remonstrances of the Rhaetian leagues) to the kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia, held by the emperor of Austria. In 1859 they became, like the rest of Lombardy, part of the kingdom of united Italy. Poschiavo followed the fortunes of the “Gotteshausbund.” It became (after 1798) part of the canton Rhaetia of the Helvetic republic, and in 1803 of the canton of the Graubünden or Grisons, which was then first received a full member of the Swiss Confederation.

See G. Leonhardi, Das Veltlin and Das Poschiavinothal (1859); Romegialli, Storia della Valtellina (1834-39, 5 vols.); C. von Moor, Geschichte von Currätien (1870-74); P. C. von Planta, Die currätischen Herrschaften in der Feudalzeit (1881); Coxe, Travels in Switzerland, &c. (4th ed., 1801; Letters 74-78); Henne-Am Rhyn, Geschichte des Schweizervolkes (1865); L. von Ranke, History of the Popes, bk. vii.; and H. Reinhardt, “Das Veltliner Mord,” in Geschichtsfreund (vol. xl., 1885).