Switzerland

SWITZERLANDPart I.— Geography and Statistics.

As the Swiss Confederation consists of a number of small districts, differing from each other in many points, but gathered round a common centre, originally for common defence against a common foe, it is not surprising that its political boundaries do not coincide with those of nature. So we find that Ticino is south of the main chain of the Alps, a large part of the Grisons is east of the Rhine and of the ranges separating it from Tyrol, while Schaffhausen is north of the Rhine, and Porrentruy is in the French plain far down the western slope of the Jura. Putting aside these exceptional cases (all of them outside the original limits of the Confederation), the physical geography of Switzerland may be thus roughly summed up :—

(1) To the south there is the main chain of the Alps, which is joined at Mont Dolent (12,566 feet) by the lower ranges running east from the east end of the Lake of Geneva, and which continues to be the boundary up to the Stelvio Pass.

(2) To the north of this main chain of the Alps there is another great range, only slightly inferior in height and extent, which starts from the hills known as the Mont Jorat above Lausanne, rises in the great peaks of the Bernese Oberland and in the Tödi, trends to the north near Chur, and, after rising once more to form the Santis, dies away on the south shore of the Lake of Constance.

(3) The main chain of the Alps and this great north outlier are parallel to each other from Mont Dolent to near Chur; joined for a short space near the Pizzo Rotondo (west of the St Gotthard), they again part near the Oberalp Pass (east of the St Gotthard). Between these two great ranges flow two of the mightiest European rivers, the Rhine towards the east and the Rhone towards the west, their head waters being separated only by the tangled mountain mass between the Pizzo Rotondo and the Oberalp Pass.

(4) To the north of the great north outlier of the main chain of the Alps there arc what may be called the plains of Switzerland, really the huge undulating valley of the Aar (and its affluents), to which must be added the Thur valley between the Aar basin and the Lake of Constance.

Thus, omitting the special cases named above, we may roughly describe Switzerland as consisting of two great trenches traversed by two great rivers, and enclosed by two huge mountain masses, together with the enormous valley of the Aar and the smaller one of the Thur, both these shut in by the great north outlier of the main chain of the Alps, the Rhine, and the Jura,—two deeply cut trenches, and two wide and undulating valleys.

The main chain of the Alps rises in Swiss territory to the height of 15,217 feet in Monte Rosa, and its north outlier to 14,026 feet in the Finsteraarhorn. The mean level of the Aar valley has been estimated at 1378 feet, its lowest point being the low-water mark of the Rhine at Basel (914 feet); the lowest level within the Confederation, however, is on the Lago Maggiore (646 feet).

According to the most recent calculations, the total area of the Confederation is 15,964·2 square miles, of which 71·7 per cent., or 11,443·3 square miles, are classed as “productive,” 3032 square miles being covered by forests, and 132·3 square miles by vines. Of the other 28·3 per cent., or 4520·9 square miles (classed as “unproductive ”),

709∙9 are occupied by glaciers, 520·3 by lakes, 90 by beds of rivers and streams, and 62·4 by towns, villages, and buildings. Of the whole area the three great cantons of the Grisons, Bern, and Valais take up 7439·9 square miles, or nearly one-half, while, if to them be added Vaud, Ticino, and St Gall, the extent is raised to 10,552 square miles, or about two-thirds of the entire Confederation.

The total area of Switzerland (15,964·2 square miles) is distributed over four great river basins (draining to three different seas) in the following proportions :—Rhine 11,166; Rhone, 2717; Po, 1358; and Inn, 721.

The Rhine basin is by far the largest in Switzerland, and drains of course to the North Sea. The Rhine itself is formed of two branches,—Vorder Rhine (valley of Dissentis) and Hinter Rhine (from the Splugen and St Bernardino),—which unite at Reichenau, near Chur. The joint stream receives several mountain torrents, expands into the Lake of Constance, and then turns west, receiving the Thur, and opposite Waldshut the great stream of the Aar, finally leaving Swiss territory at Basel, where it turns north. Its main affluent is the Aar, the basin of which covers no less than 6794 square miles. This stream rises in the glaciers of the Bernese Oberland, expands into the Lakes of Brienz and of Thun, receives from the left the Kander, the Saane, and the Zihl, and from the right the Emme, as well as (near Brugg, that great meeting-place of the waters) the Reuss flowing through the Lake of Lucerne and the united stream of the Linth and the Limmat flowing through the Lakes of Wallenstadt and Zurich. It is interesting historically to note the fact that the. thirteen cantons which till 1798 formed the Confederation are all comprised in the Rhine basin, the ten oldest (i.e., all before 1500) being within that of the Aar, and that it was only after 1798 that certain Romansch-, French-, and. Italian-speaking “allies” and subject lands—with their respective river basins—were tacked on. The Rhone rises in the glacier of the same name and flows west, receiving the mountain torrents of the Visp, the Lonza, and the Dranse, besides others, expands into the Lake of Geneva, and a little way from Geneva quits Swiss territory on its way to the Mediterranean. The main stream flowing from Switzerland to the Po basin is the Ticino (from the St Gotthard), which widens into the Lago Maggiore; another stream expands into the Lake of Lugano; and others run into the Lake of Como,—all finally joining the Po in the Lombard plains, thus draining to the Adriatic. The Ramm, flowing through the Münsterthal, joins the Adige and so drains into the Adriatic. The Inn basin is composed of the upper part of the river (above Martinsbruck) and drains into the Danube and so into the Black Sea.

Most of the great Swiss rivers, being in their origin mere mountain torrents, tend to overflow their banks, and hence much is required and has been done to prevent this by embanking them, and regaining arable land from them. So the Rhine (between Ragatz and the Lake of Constance), the Rhone, the Aar, the Reuss; and in particular we may mention the great work on the Linth (1807 to 1822) carried out by J. Konrad Escher, who earned by his success the surname of “Von der Linth,” and on the Zihl near the Lakes of Neuchâtel and Bienne, while the diversion of the Kander from its junction with the Aar at Uetendorf to a channel by which it flows into the Lake of Thun was effected as early as 1714.

There are very many lakes in Switzerland. The two largest (Geneva and Constance) balance each other at the soutli-west and north-east comers of the Confederation. The following list gives details regarding the fifteen over 4 square miles in extent. It will be noticed that of these twelve are in the Rhine basin (eleven of them being in that of the Aar), two in the Po basin, one in the Rhone basin, and none at all in the Inn basin. It has been estimated that in the Rhine basin there are no fewer than nineteen large and thirty-seven small lakes. Of the smaller Swiss lakes we may mention the Dauben See, and the Oeschinen See, as well as the Märjelen See close to the Gross Aletsch glacier. There are of course an infinite number of Alpine tarns. [table]

Mean Height of Surface above Sea

Level in Feet.

The lakes marked * are only partly in Swiss territory.

There are a great number of waterfalls in Switzerland, the loftiest being that of the Staubbach (1001 feet), in the valley of Lauterbrunnen, or “Clear Springs” (Bernese Oberland). In the Oberland, too, we find the Handeck (200-220 feet), near the source of the Aar, while the Reichenbach descends in seven falls and the Giessbach in thirteen. The falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen contain an enormous mass of water, though they are only 82 feet in height. In southern Switzerland the Pissevache fall (200 feet), in the Rhone valley, is the best known.

Dr A. Heim reckons up 471 glaciers in Switzerland and 462 in Austria, his figures for France and Italy being untrustworthy and incomplete; but Switzerland has 138 glaciers of the first rank (i.e., over 4¾ miles long) as against 71 in Austria, though Austria has 391 of the second rank (i.e., between 4¾ and 3 miles long) as against 333 in Switzerland. The distribution of the Swiss glaciers deserves notice, for in eleven cantons (that is, half of those in the Confederation) there are no glaciers at all, while in five others (Unterwalden, Vaud, St Gall, Schwyz, and Appenzell) they only cover about 13 square miles out of 709∙9 square miles of ice and snow in the Confederation, according to the official survey. Valais heads the list with 375∙1 square miles, then come the Grisons (138∙6), Bern (111∙3), Uri (44∙3), Glarus (13∙9), and Ticino (13∙1). The longest glacier in the Alps is the Gross Aletsch in the Bernese Oberland, 15 miles long; it has a basin of 49∙8 square miles and a maximum breadth of 1968 yards. In point of length the Unteraar glacier comes next (10∙4 miles), followed by the Gorner and Viescher glaciers (each 9∙4 miles). The lowest point to which a Swiss glacier is known to have descended is 3225 feet, attained by the Lower Grindelwald glacier in 1818. Dr Heim has ascertained that the maximum annual snowfall in the Alps takes place in the lower snow regions, a conclusion which the present writer can confirm from personal experience gained on the ascent of several of the highest Oberland peaks in January 1874 and 1879. Dr Heim states that in the central Alps of Switzerland the limit of perpetual snow varies from 9259 to 9023 feet. See Glacier.

In Switzerland, where the height above sea-level varies from 646 feet (Lago Maggiore) to 15,217 feet (Monte Rosa), we naturally find very many climates, from the regions of olives, vines, oaks and beeches, pines and firs, to those of high mountain pastures, rhododendrons, and of eternal snow (see Alps). As regards the duration of the seasons, there is a corresponding variety. It has been reckoned that, while in Italian Switzerland winter lasts only three months, at Glarus it lasts four, in the Engadine six, on the St Gotthard eight, on the Great St Bernard nine, and on the St Théodule always. A painstaking writer has calculated that, if Switzerland were flattened out into a plain, and reduced to the level of the sea, it would be comprised between the isotherms 51°∙8 and 55°∙4 F. As a matter of fact the mean temperature varies no less than 34½°, for at Bellinzona it is 54½° F., at Geneva 49¼°, at Basel 49 1 / 3 °, at Chur 48¾°, at Interlaken 48°, while on the Great St Bernard it sinks to 30°, and on the St Théodule to 20°. The Alps form the boundary between the region where the rainfall is greatest in summer and that where it is greatest in autumn, the winter and spring rainfall varying but slightly. These are the percentages of the annual rainfall in Switzerland at different seasons :—

Rhine Basin; winter, 18; spring, 25; summer, 33; autumn, 24.

Rhone Basin·. ,, 21; ,, 26; ,, 26; ,, 27.

Ticino Basin; ,, 12; ,, 26; ,, 27; ,, 35.

It has been shown by careful observations that the rain (or snow) fall is greatest as we approach the Alps, whether from the north or south, the flanks of the great ranges and the valleys opening out towards the plains receiving much more rain than the high Alpine valleys enclosed on all sides by lofty ridges. Thus the annual rainfall is 35 inches at Basel but 64½ at Beatenberg (above Interlaken) and 69 at Schwyz, rising to 88 on the Grimsel and 102 on the St Bernardino, and falling again at Lugano to 63. Dr Heim calculates that the percentage of snow in the total annual rainfall in Switzerland varies from 63 on the Great St Bernard to 6 at Geneva, the mean fall of 34 being at Platta in the Grisons. Thunderstorms generally vary in frequency with the amount of rainfall, being most common near the great ranges, and often very local. The floods caused by excessive rainfall are sometimes very destructive, as in 1839, 1852, and 1868, while the same cause leads to landslips, of which the most remarkable have been those on the Rossberg above Goldau (1806), at Evionnaz (1835), and at Elm (1881).

As regards the larger cyclones or storms of Europe, a south wind in the Alps indicates that the barometrical minimum is in the English Channel, a west wind that it is in the North Sea, a north wind that it is in the Eastern Alps, and an east wind that the depression is in the Mediterranean, about Corsica. When the barometrical minimum shifts from the Atlantic over Scandinavia to Russia, a soutli-west wind in the Alps is followed by west and then north winds. The “föhn” is the most remarkable of the local winds in Switzerland,—a strong soutli-west or south wind, very hot and very dry. It was formerly supposed to come from the Sahara, but is now held to be a south-west or south wind which, saturated with moisture, crosses the Alps, precipitating a copious rainfall in its course; commencing its descent in the northern valleys with a high temperature for these great heights, it necessarily increases in temperature and dryness as it passes into the high pressure of lower levels. Dr Hann concludes from observation that, assuming the air to cool at the rate of 1° C. in every 100 metres of ascent, and the ridge crossed by the fohn to be 2000 metres in height, the heat lost on the ascent is only 0°·5 C., so that when the föhn reaches the north side it will have a heat, not of 10°, but of 20°. The fohn occurs most frequently in spring. Other local winds in the Alps are those which blow up a valley in the morning and down it in. the evening, due to the heating of the air in the valleys by the sun during the day and its cooling by terrestrial radiation at night. The cloud streamers from great Alpine peaks are due to the condensing of the moisture in a layer of air, and, as the moisture is carried away by the wind, so the streamer is dissolved.

For all these reasons Switzerland has many varieties of climate; and, while, owing to the distribution of the rainfall, the Ticino and Aar valleys are very fertile, the two great trenches between the main chain and its north outlier, though warm, are less productive, as the water comes from the rivers and not from the skies.

Asphalt is the only raw mineral product the export of which exceeds the import; and it is obtained only in the canton of Neuchâtel, where the output of the Val de Travers deposit in 1883 reached 28,000 tons. Though iron ores are known (according to Weber and Brosi’s map) to exist in 13 localities, gold in 3, silver in 22, copper in 29, lead in 27, nickel and cobalt in 2, tin in 1, sulphur in 3, Switzerland is practically dependent for all its metals on foreign supply. While 35,161 tons of iron were obtained in 1870 (mostly from mines in the Jura), only 19,045 were obtained in 1881. True coal is wholly absent; lignites, however, occur both in the Tertiary and the Quaternary formations, the most important workings being those of Käpfnach, Utznach, Mörschwyl, Dümten, Lutry, Conversion, and Oron. In 1870 the output was 33,364 tons, in 1881 only 6184. Anthracite occurs in Valais. Peat is common in many parts. Salt (42,000 tons) is procured from wells in Aargau, Basel, and Vaud. The first salt-deposit was discovered in 1836 at Rothenhaus (Basel canton), that of Rheinfelden in 1844, of Ryburg in 1845, and of Kaiseraugst in 1865. The wells at Bex have been worked since 1554.

Game is not abundant in any part of Switzerland; and rigorous game laws and other devices have been adopted in order to increase the number of wild animals. In 1875 a law was passed in accordance with which a commission marked out certain reservations or “districts francs pour la chasse au gibier de montagne”; and in 1881 their limits were revised for another term of five years, including an area of 5268 square kilometres in 1885. There were then within this area 8487 chamois and about 106 roebuck. The· chamois were most abundant in the Grisons, Bern, Glarus, and Freiburg. In the Alpine regions the marmot and Alpine hare are still common, and their numbers have increased under the protective system. Grouse, partridge, wild duck, and snipe are the chief game birds. A close time protects birds not considered game, and the federal council in 1885 appointed a commission to draw up a catalogue of all birds found in Switzerland, and to establish stations for collecting facts of ornithological interest.

Attention has recently been directed to the diminution of the supply of freshwater fish, due in part to over-fishing and in part to pollution of the streams. It is estimated that the fish-bearing waters in the whole country cover an aggregate area of 1581 square kilometres (1348 belonging to lakes and 233 to rivers and streams), the cantons with the greatest areas being Vaud (443 square kilometres), Bern (161), Thurgau (139), aud Neuchâtel (98). Close seasons, and in certain places close years, have been established, and numerous fish-hatcheries are also in operation (57 in 1885), the species treated being mainly salmon, lake trout, river trout, grayling (ombre), red trout or Röthel, the Swiss Coregonus, American Coregonus (C. albus), Salmo fontinalis, and the “mäder.” No fewer than 5,709,432 fish were introduced into the lakes and rivers in 1885. By a law of 1884 the federal council is allowed to defray one-third of the expense of the construction of fish-ladders. In 1882 a Swiss fisheries society was founded. Conventions in regard to the fisheries have been signed with Italy, France, and Germany.

Great importance attaches to the domestic animals of Switzerland. In 1876 there were 284,478 owners of live-stock, in 1886 289,610. The following are the numbers for those two years :— horses, 100,935 and 98,333; cattle, 1,035,930, 1,211,713; sheep, 367,549, 341,632; goats, 396,055, 415,916; pigs, 334,515, 394,451; mules, 3145, 2741; asses, 2113, 2042; and beehives, 177,825, 207,180. See Z. f. schw. Statistik, 1886.

The following table gives a variety of details regarding the twenty-two Swiss cantons, arranged in the order of their extent. In the first column the languages principally spoken in the different cantons are indicated by letters, as described in the appended footnote, and the percentages of population speaking them in 1880 are given. In every case the official language is that of the majority, with the exception of Freiburg, where it is German. The same column also shows the various executive and legislative authorities. [table]

* Languages.— G, German; F, French; I, Italian; R, Romansch. Executive Authority.— A, Regierungsrath; B, Conseil d’état; C, Consiglio di stato; D, Staatsrath; E, Standeskoinmission; H, Rath u. Standeskommission; K, Kleiner Rath u. Standeskommission. Legislative Authority.— L, Grosser Rath; M, Grand conseil; N, Gran consiglio; 0, Kantonsrath; P, Landsgemeinde; Q, Landrath. For details regarding the Stände Rath, of 44 members, and the National Rath, of 145 (made up as shown in column 8 above), see p. 795; and for information regarding the referendum in the cantons, see p. 796.

The first federal census of which the results were published was neither quite synchronous (April 1836 to February 1838) nor quite systematic. That of 1850 took account only of the population with right of residence (population domiciliée), and not of the population actually present at the date of the census. In 1860 the census was declared decennial. The following are the numbers returned:— March, 18-23, 1850, 2,392,740; December, 10, 1860, 2,507,170; December 1, 1870, 2,669,147; December 1, 1880, 2,846,102.

As regards density of population, Switzerland, with 198·5 persons to the square mile, stands considerably above Scotland (125) and a long way below England and Wales (446). The Alpine region is the sparsest generally, though certain districts, like Appenzell Ausser-Rhoden, are very densely peopled; the Jura region has a much higher ratio; and the densest region of all is the Swiss plateau. If we draw an irregular line from the east end of the Lake of Geneva by Thun, Lucerne, and the south of the Lake of Zurich to Rheineck, we shall have nearly all the more densely populated portions of the country to the north, the only notable exception being what might be called the Swiss peninsula of Lugano. A large proportion of the country to the south has only from 1 to 19 inhabitants to the square kilometre. The districts where the density rises above 250 to the square kilometre are that to the south-east and south-west of Geneva, the vicinity of Lausanne, the districts of Chaux de Fonds, Neuchâtel, Biel, Bern, Soleure, Basel, a large tract along both sides of the Lake of Zurich, and the district between St Gall and Rheineck. The districts in which an increase of population had taken place between 1870 and 1880 are curiously distributed. An increase of 30 per cent. or over occurs only in the environs of Basel and in two large areas of which the chief centres are Altdorf and Airolo. Decrease was prevalent throughout a large part of the better populated regions of the north, while a certain increase had taken place throughout much of the south-western area.

In 1880 there were 960·8 males to every 1000 females, a rather smaller preponderance of females than in England and Wales. For every 1000 above the age of 50 there are 176 unmarried females to 154 unmarried males. The disproportion of the sexes in the country at large is mainly due to emigration; but in certain cantons it is partly due to excess of women in the immigrants from neighbouring countries. In Uri, Schwyz, and Valais only is there an excess of males. In every 1000 of the population there were, in 1860, 296 under 15 years of age, 620 between 15 and 60 years, and 84 upwards of 60; the corresponding figures in 1870 being 315, 595, and 90; and for 1880, 319, 593, and 88. The proportion of married persons to the total number of the adults (47·4 per cent. ) is less than in most other countries, though this proportion has been gradually raised both before and since 1880 by certain legislative changes, including the new marriage law in 1874. At the same time the average fertility of the marriages has decreased. Early marriages on the part of the males are slightly more frequent than in England. Divorce and separation are frequent. Thus in 1876·80 they formed nearly 5 per cent. of the marriages, while in Belgium and the Netherlands they do not reach 1 per cent. As regards the marriage relations of the different creeds, the five years 1877-81 showed that (excluding the canton of Geneva, where the creed is not registered) there were only 0·7 separations per 1000 existing marriages where both husband and wife were Catholics, 2·8 where both were Protestants, 3·2 where the husband was a Catholic and the wife a Protestant, and 4·5 where the husband was a Protestant and the wife a Catholic.

The percentage of illegitimate births during the years 1871—77 was 5·7, 5·2, 5·1, 4·8, 4·4, 5·0, and 4·9 respectively, a rate almost identical with that of England and Wales. Infant mortality has been decreasing. While 20·32 per cent. of the quick-born children of 1876 died in their first year, only 17·3 died in 1885. The following table shows the annual number of births, &c. :— [table]

64,479

64,671

61,082

61,548

At the census of 1880 there were in Switzerland 211,035 foreigners (112,311 males and 98,724 females), or one foreigner to every 13 or 14 of the population. The origin of this alien element was very various :—from Alsace-Lorraine, 2607 males, 2732 females; Germany, 43,923, 45,991; Austria-Hungary, 8389, 4929; Italy, 27,821, 13,709; Spain and Portugal, 175, 93; France, 26,264, 27,389; Holland and Belgium, 445, 493; Great Britain, 1027, 1785; Russia, 599, 685; Servia, Roumania, and Greece, 119, 35; Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, 194, 188; America, 563, 548.

Between 1868 and 1877 the average number of emigrants from Switzerland was 3516 per annum; between 1878 and 1882 it was 7196. In 1883, 1884, and 1885 the figures were respectively 13,502 (12,758 of them native-born Swiss), 9608, and 7583. By far the greater proportion of the emigrants found their way to America, and mainly to the United States, though some of the South American republics (as Chili) attract a considerable number. In the five years 1876-80 3172 persons on an average left for North America annually, 99 for Central America, 594 for South America, and 107 for Australia, while Asia and Africa together did not count more than 167.

The population is to a very great extent rural. Only three cities (Zurich, Geneva, and Basel) have a population exceeding 50,000, and at the census of 1880 only 59 other towns had each more than 4000 inhabitants. Of these Bern (see table above), Lausanne, Chaux de Fonds (22,456), St Gall, Lucerne, Neuchâtel, Winterthur (13,595), Schaffhausen, Biel (11,623), Freiburg, Herisau (11,082), and Locle (10,464) exceeded 10,000.

A religious census was taken in 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880; in the first case only three categories were recognized—Catholic, Protestant, and Jew; in 1860 and 1870 four—Catholic, Protestant, Christians of other denominations, and non-Christian. After much discussion the federal council, which had proposed to drop the religious census in 1880, was prevailed upon by the arguments of ten cantons to adopt a similar classification in 1880. The figures in 1870 were—1,566,347 Protestants, 1,084,369 Catholics, 11,435 members of other sects, and 6996 Jews; in 1880 the Protestants numbered 1,667,109, the Catholics 1,160,782, the Jews 7373, and miscellaneous 10,838. The Jews are most strongly represented in the cantons of Bern (1316 in 1880), Basel (1053), Aargau (1234), Zurich (806), Neuchâtel (689), and Geneva (662).

It has been estimated that, of the whole area of Switzerland, 1,642,471 acres are under arable cultivation and 1,917,632 acres in forest, while 2,866,113 acres are altogether unproductive. Agricultural statistics have never been systematically registered by the federal authorities, and only a few of the cantons have devoted serious attention to the matter. Herr C. Mühlemann (Z. f. Schweiz. Stat., 1886) gives the following estimate of the area cropped and the annual value (in thousands of francs) of the produce :— [table]

153,308

193,993

86,089

33,610

122,645

264,938

43,850

16,056

333,612

217,897

27,744

89,324

36,054

43,346

18,805

5,057

20,468

79,859

13,254

3,148

86,677

66,048

7,449

19,340

15,532 9,574 1,966

12,463

62

1,730

41,545

529,122

609,865

578,940

1,962,693

79,020

2,666

1,060

486

6,101

18

704

4,842

153,512

82,928

28,115

139,001

62,359

Hemp and flax

Chicorv

Vegetables

Meadows, good

,, medium

,, poor

Pastures and alps Vineyards

Mixed fodder

Clover

The value of the fruit produce is given as 127,418,391 francs (apples, 71,316,992; pears, 38,656,150).

The name “allmend” is given to land still held in common, whether arable, meadow, pasture, or forest. The main part of the “allmends” now existing consists of pasture and forest land. The pasture lands, “alps,” or high mountain pastures comprise “voralpen,” used in the spring, “mittelalpen,” or cow-pastures, and “hochalpen” (sometimes 9000 feet above the sea), for sheep and goats. They are most numerous in Neuchâtel, Bern, and Grisons. The capital value of the whole is estimated at 200,000,000 francs or more. Of the 3032 miles of forest land 127·3 belong to the state, 200·1 to “communes” or private associations, and 897 to private persons. The federal Government has done much to reafforest tracts, both by itself and by stimulating cantonal effort, and generally to promote the science of forestry.

The silk industry of Switzerland was already established at

Zurich and Basel in the latter half of the 13th century; but after a period of prosperity it died out. It was again introduced by the Protestants expelled from Locarno in 1555. Crape, velvet, and taffetas were the favourite products of the first stage; ribbonweaving came later with another band of Locarno refugees and the French Huguenots. In 1872 116 firms were engaged in the silk trade, in 1881 134. Between those dates the employees had increased from 39,940 to 49,816 (65,000 in 1883), and the wages from 15,382,186 to 19,815,453 francs. In 1881 2,153,100 kilos of raw silk and 1,067,700 of silk-waste were imparted; and the export of silk goods, ribbons, and ferret silk was 1,152,300, 1,965,400, and 819,000 kilos respectively. Cotton begun to be manufactured in Switzerland in the 15th century, and power-loom weaving was introduced in 1830. The industry has owed a good deal to the abundant water-power of the country. In 1881 there were about 23,000 cotton looms; and cotton-spinning employed about 60,000 spindles. The workers numbered 88,046 in 1883. Bleaching and cloth-dressing have attained a great development in the neighbourhood of St Gall, both in the cantons of St Gall and Appenzell. Printworks are especially numerous in Glarus. Aargau is the chief seat of the woollen manufacture, having 4 millions of the total production valued at 11½ million francs. Linen, the first of the Swiss textile fabrics to find its way to a foreign market, is no longer manufactured on a large scale. Embroidered goods are the great specialty of the export trade of eastern Switzerland,— the cantons of St Gall, Appenzell, Thurgau, and part of Zurich. In flat-stitch machine embroidery 15,256 workers were employed in 1872, and 27,801 in 1880 (43 and 47 per 1000 inhabitants). In the different departments of hand embroidery 33,359 persona were employed in 1881. The St Gall market is also supplied by a large number of workers in Vorarlberg. The value of the embroidered goods exported from the consular district of St Gall for America alone increased from 19 to nearly 30 million francs between 1879 and 1882. Straw-plaiting is an important industry in Aargau (centre at Wohlen), Ticino, and Freiburg. In 1867-68, when the trade was at its best, the total export was worth 10½ million francs. Watch and clock making is a specially Swiss industry, giving employment to 44,000 workers in 1883. In Geneva alone 296 establishments were at work in 1882 in some department or other of the manufacture. The valley of Joux (Vaud and Saint Croix), Chaux de Fonds, Locle, Les Brenets, Les Ponts, Fleuvier (Neuchâtel), Bienne, Porrentruy, Saint Imier (Bern), Granges (Soleure), Waldenberg (Basel), and Schaffhausen are all important seats of the craft. The condensed-milk industry of Switzerland is also well known. The exports in 1875 amounted to 4,261,800 kilos, and in 1883 to 12,086,900. A similar article is Nestlé’s infants’ food from Vevey. Swiss cheese (Emmenthal and Gruyère) has a widespread reputation; the export increased from 5,093,100 kilos in 1851 to 25,959,400 in 1883. The production of beer in

Switzerland was 6,160,000 gallons in 1867 and 20,240,000 in

1882; in the latter year 289,564 gallons were exported. The distilleries (1006) produce about 990,000 gallons of pure alcohol annually. Allusion can only be made here to the great chemical industries of the country, its potteries, paper-mills, engineering works, gun-factories, &c.

Wood-carving was one of the most ancient, as it is now one of the best known, of the minor arts of Switzerland. The great seat of the modern industry is the Bernese Oberland, where the peasants during the long evenings of winter for centuries devoted themselves to producing artistic articles in wood. It was regularly organized by Christian Fischer in Brienz (1825), and is now mainly in the hands of a company, founded in 1881, which associates capitalists and workmen in the profits. In 1870 1139 men and 56 women were employed throughout Switzerland in this department; in 1880 the numbers were 1202 and 105.

Owing to the original abundance of timber it was almost the only material employed in the building of houses. There are practically three styles: the so-called block-house, in which the logs are laid one upon the other; the post-built house, in which upright posts and a strong framework are filled in with planks; and the “riegelhaus,” in which a framework of wood is filled in with brick or stones. In the cantons of Zurich, Thurgau, and Schaffhausen the riegelhaus (the usual form in southern Germany) has—chiefly owing to the increased cost of timber—displaced the two other styles, which alone were in use there till the beginning of the 17th century.

In Gsell-Fels’s Bäder u. klimatische Kurorte der Schweiz (1880), 505 health stations are mentioned. In Aargau we have the hot springs of Baden and Schinznach (sulphur), the salt baths of Rheinfelden and Mumpf, the mineral waters of Wildegg and Birmensdorf. In Appenzell there are a number of places between 2000 and 3000 feet above the' sea famous as whey-cure stations (Heiden, Gais, Appenzell, &c.), and various chalybeate springs (Weissbad, Gonten, Heinrichsbad). Basel contains salt baths at Schweizerhalle, Bienenberg, and Schauenburg. Bern is particularly rich in baths and sanatoriums (Lenk, Weissenburg, Heustrich, Gurnigel, Engistein, Blumenstein). Schwarzseebad is the chief mineral spring in Freiburg; Pfäffers-Ragatz in St Gall is world-famous. The Stachelberger Schwefelbad in Glarus is much frequented. The Grisons have almost a superfluity of mineral waters, some of which (St Moritz, Fideris) are exported in large quantities. Weissenstein in Soleure is one of the oldest sanatoriums in Switzerland. Lavey and Bex in Vaud are respectively famous for their sulphur and salt baths. In Valais, Saxon and Leukerbad are famous. The importance of altitude in the attractiveness of a health resort is shown in a table by Guyer, ‘230 of the hotels for foreign visitors being upwards of 3900 feet above the sea. Dr F. Stöpel (Industrie u. Handelspolitik der Schweiz, 1876) reckoned the total receipts from foreign visitors at 120,000,000 francs.

The position taken by Switzerland in the trade and commerce of the world is remarkable when the various natural obstacles are considered—such as absence of raw material for her industries, costly and difficult means of transport, and restrictive customs established by neighbouring countries. The following table shows the value in thousands of francs of the imports and exports for 1885 (the first year for which we have official returns):— [table]

249,262

179,195

157,620

139,670

21,318

17,842

9,481

77,723

60,316

37,726

12,217

9,286

10,658

Austria-Hungary

Great Britain and

5,879

56,889

99,396

13,076

England is the great market for silver watches; Germany for gold watches and musical boxes; France for weaving machinery; Russia for mills; Italy for miscellaneous machinery; France for asphalt; France for butter; France, Italy, Germany, and the United States for cheese; Germany for silk; Germany for cattle; France for sheep and goats. Cotton manufactures find their way to France, Italy, Austria, Britain, Germany, Spain, India, &c.; leather to the United States and the Argentine Republic. The customs increased from 3,953,192 francs in 1850 to 21,342,403 in 1884.

By article 27 of the federal constitution of 1874, primary instruction, while left in the charge of the several cantons, is required to be sufficient, obligatory, gratuitous, unsectarian, and under public control of the state. The primary school age is up to twelve years, as far as this general law is concerned, but in some cantons this is raised to fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen years of age. The first school year also varies from five to seven in different cantons. Great variety indeed exists in the whole school organization of the several cantons; while the chief authority as regards the primary schools is in some cases vested in an educational department or educational council, or both, in others it is entrusted to an educational director with or without a council. Considering the difficulties caused in many regions by a sparse population and a rugged country, primary instruction is well carried out. Funds are provided by the state, the commune, and often by the private individual. Even in remote districts the school buildings are generally good. Bern has been especially active in building new schools. In 1882 218,191 boys and 215,889 girls attended the primary schools. Of these 311,271 had German as their mother tongue, 97,113 French, 19,864 Italian, and 5832 Romansch. The total number of male teachers was 5840, and of female teachers 2525; the average pay in money per male teacher was 1303 francs, for female teachers 822 francs. The primary school property was valued at 137,534,597 francs (86,647,507 in 1871). The expense was 14,781,610 francs (8,708,174 in 1871). The communes contributed 8,349,697 francs and the state 2,825,722. The expense per scholar was 34·1. For the school children who are too poor to obtain proper food and clothing both public and private assistance is freely rendered. Besides the ordinary public primary schools, there are a considerable number of secondary schools (attended in 1882 by 11,155 boys and 8976 girls), preparatory (or intermediate) schools (9556, 2133), infant schools (10,864, 11,242), schools for adults (12,758, 1110), and private schools (6057, 4834). In 1882 there were in all 272,039 males and 244,896 females in receipt of education. Among the preparatory schools are the “colleges” or “gymnasiums” and the industrial schools, one of which exists in almost all the cantonal capitals as well as at Winterthur, Burgdorf, Porrentruy, Einsiedeln, Murten, and Brieg. In Grisons and Neuchâtel normal schools for the education of teachers are attached to the cantonal schools. Separate establishments for this purpose exist in the cantons of Zurich, Bern, Lucerne, Schwyz, Freiburg, Soleure, St Gall, Aargau, Thurgau, Tessin, Vaud, and Valais. Among the more specialized institutions of the preparatory or middle class are the Technitium at Winterthur, the veterinary colleges at Zurich and Bern, the agricultural schools at Oberstrass and Rütli, and the school of dentistry at Geneva. In the four universities of Basel, Bern, Zurich, and Geneva, each with faculties of law, theology, medicine, and arts (philosophy), the average number of matriculated students per session of six months was, between 1876 (the first year of the Geneva university) and 1881, in theology 113, in law 188, in medicine 469, and in arts 288,—a total of 1058, to which must be added 334 non-matriculated. Basel has a preponderance in theology, Bern in law, Zurich in arts. The great federal polytechnicum at Zurich (opened in 1855) comprises schools of architecture, civil and industrial engineering, industrial chemistry, forestry, and agriculture.

The public libraries of Switzerland are briefly described in vol. xiv. p. 528, as they existed in 1868 (cf . p. 548); for the learned societies, see Societies.

The total revenue of the Confederation, which was only 22,049,353 francs in 1869, had increased to 44,308,000 on an average in 1879- 1883, and reached 48,392,000 in 1885; the expenditure, which was 21,744,459 at the first date, had correspondingly increased to 43,312,510 in 1879-1883, and 46,278,685 in 1885.

In Switzerland there is no standing army, but every male citizen between twenty-four and forty-four years of age is bound to military service and drill. The federal forces consist of the Auszug, Élite, or regular army (men from twenty to thirty-two years old), and the landwehr (men thirty-two to forty-four years). The whole army was reorganized in 1874, when extensive functions were assigned to the military physician in connexion with the recruiting and calling out of the soldiers. In the ten years 1875-84 there was one new recruit for 111 of the population (foreigners excepted); 49 per cent. of the total were declared fit for service, 19 per cent. remanded, and 32 per cent. declared unfit. In the long run, about 61·1 per cent. of the young men of the country passed the standard. In 1886 the regulars numbered 117,179 and the landwehr 84,046.

Railway construction, which began in 1844, proceeded in earnest after the new legislation of 1852, and by the close of 1862 718 miles had been constructed; by 1872 the ordinary lines reached a total of 1459 miles, with 5 miles of special lines; for 1882 the corresponding figures were 2667 and 81. The annual railway profits increased from 105,599,970 francs in 1870-74 to 179,151,112 in 1880-84. Tramways began to be laid down in 1862, and rope railways in 1877. The railways are mostly in the northern plateau and connect with the systems of Northern Europe. The only Swiss line which crosses to the south of the Alps is the St Gotthard (see Railways). The proposed Simplon railway has already been carried up the Rhone valley as far as Brieg. The mountainous character of the country and the special exigencies of. its traffic have successfully stimulated to some striking efforts of. railway engineering. Thus the Rigi railway rises from the Lake of Lucerne to a height of 5739 feet, with a maximum gradient of 250 per thousand; that of the Rorschach-Heiden line is 50 per thousand.

Switzerland is famous for its well-made and well-kept carriage-roads. Some of those that traverse the mountain-passes have been constructed at great expense. One of the most remarkable is the mule-path down an almost perpendicular rock from the Gemmi Pass to Leukerbad, made in 1737-40.

Bern has been the seat of the international Postal Union since 1874 (see Post-Office, vol. xix. p. 584). The federalization of the national post-office dates from 1848,—the different cantons having previously conducted their postal business according to very different methods. It is to be noted that this department charges itself with the conveyance of passengers as well as mails,—these numbering 831,839 in 1880 and 754,365 in 1885. For other details see the table given in vol. xix. p. 585.

The length of telegraph lines increased from 1920 kilometres in 1852 to 6874 in 1884 (wires from 1920 to 16,618 kilometres), and the number of despatches from 2876 in 1852 to 1,127,311 in 1884, the total receipts for the latter year being 2,555,687 francs.

In Switzerland there are thirty-three legalized banks of issue; their average circulation of notes in 1885 was to the value of 123,431,000 francs. There are 325 savings banks proper (deposits 246,359,735 francs in 1882) and 162 other institutions which receive deposits (267,298,548 francs in 1882). Most of these are in the hands of companies or private merchants.

Besides the older but valuable works of Faber (1756), Fäsi (1765-68), Füssli (1770-72), Normann (1795-98), Durand (1795-96), Meister (1796), see Hist . geοgr. statistische Gemälde der Schweiz (a series of monographs, published by Huber and Co. of St. Gall and Bern); Hottinger, Staatshaushalt der schweiz. Eidgen., 1847; Franscini. Stat, delta Svizzera, Lugano, 1827 and 1817-49; Wirth, Allgemeine Beschreibung der Schweiz·, Legoyt and Vogt, La Suisse; Prof. Egli’s most convenient Taschenbuch (1878, &c.) and Schweizerkundc ; Berlepsch, Schweizerkunde, 1875; and Furrer’s comprehensive Vοlkswirthshaft-Lexicοn. A statistical bureau was founded in 1860, a statistical society in 1864. Dr Kummer gives a history of Swiss statistics in Zeitschrift für Schweiz. Stat., 1885, and his successor, Herr Milliet, to whom we are indebted for much of the above information is engaged on a statistical handbook. (W. A. B. C.—H. A. W.) Part II.— History.

The Swiss Confederation is made up of twenty-two small states, differing from each other in nearly every point,— religious, political, social, industrial, physical, and linguistic; yet it forms a nation the patriotism of whose members is universally acknowledged. History alone can supply us with the key to this puzzle; but Swiss history, while thus essential if we would thoroughly grasp the nature of the Confederation, is very intricate and very local. A firm hold on a few guiding principles is therefore most desirable, and of these there are three which we must always bear in mind. (1) The first to be mentioned is the connexion of Swiss history with that of the empire. Swiss history is largely the history of the drawing together of bits of each of the imperial kingdoms (Germany, Italy, and Burgundy) for common defence against a common foe—the Hapsburgs; and, when this family have secured to themselves the permanent possession of the empire, the Swiss League little by little wins its independence of the empire, practically in 1499, formally in 1648. Originally a member of the empire, the Confederation becomes first an ally, then merely a friend. (2) The second is the German origin and nature of the Confederation. Round a German nucleus (the three Forest districts) there gradually gather other German districts; the Confederation is exclusively German; and it is not till 1803 and 1815 that its French-and Italian-speaking “subjects” are raised to political equality with their former masters, and that the Romansch-speaking Leagues of Rhaetia (Graubünden) pass from the status of an ally to that of a member of the Confederation. Even now, though by the constitution three languages (German, French, and Italian) are recognized as official, the overwhelming majority of the population of the Confederation is German-speaking (2,030,792 out of 2,846,102 in 1880), and the capital was fixed at Bern by a law of 1848, having previously shifted between various German-speaking towns, while in olden days the diet always met in some German-speaking place. (3) Swiss history is a study in federalism. Based on the defensive alliances of 1291 and 1315 made between the three Forest districts, the Confederation is enlarged by the admission of other districts and towns, all leagued with the original three members, but not necessarily with each other. Hence great difficulties are encountered in looking after common interests, in maintaining any real union; the diet was merely an assembly of ambassadors with powers very strictly limited by their instructions, and there was no central executive authority. The Confederation is a Staatenbund, or permanent alliance of several small states. After the break-up of the old system in 1798 we see the idea of a Bundesstaat, or an organized state with a central legislative, executive, and judiciary, work its way to the front, an idea which is gradually realized in the constitutions of 1848 and 1874. The whole constitutional history of the Confederation is summed up in this transition to a federal state, which, while a single state in its relations with all foreign powers, in home matters carefully maintains the more or less absolute independence of its several members.

Swiss history falls naturally into five great divisions: I. the origins of the Confederation—up to 1291; II. the shaking off dependence on the Hapsburgs—up to 1394 (1474); III. the shaking off dependence on the empire— up to 1499 (1648); IV. the period of religious divisions and French influence—up to 1814; V. the construction of an independent state as embodied in the constitutions of 1848 and 1874.

I. On August 1, 1291, the men of the valley ©f Uri (“homines vallis Uranie ”), the free community of the valley of Schwyz (“universitas vallis de Switz ”), and the association of the men of the lower valley or Nidwald (“communitas hominum intramontanorum vallis inferioris ”) formed an Everlasting League for the purpose of self-defence against all who should attack or trouble them, a league which is expressly stated to be a confirmation of a former one (“antiquam confederationis formam juramento vallatam presentibus innovando”). This League was the foundation of the Swiss Confederation.

What were these districts? and why at this particular moment was it necessary for them to form a defensive league? The legal and political conditions of all differed, (a ) In 853 Louis the German granted linter alia) all his lands (and the rights annexed to them) situated in the “pagellus Uroniae” to the convent of Sts Felix and Regula in Zurich (the present Fraumünster), of which his daughter Hildegard was the first abbess, and gave to this district the privilege of exemption from all jurisdiction save that of the king (Reichsfreiheit). The abbey thus became possessed of the greater part of the valley of the Reuss between the present Devil’s Bridge and the Lake of Lucerne, for the upper valley of Urseren belonged at that time to the abbey of Dissentis in the Rhine valley, and did not become permanently allied with Uri till 1410. The privileged position of the abbey tenants gradually led the other men of the valley to “commend” themselves to the abbey, whether they were tenants of other lords, or free men as in the Schächenthal. The meeting of all the inhabitants of the valley, for purposes connected with the customary cultivation of the soil according to fixed rules and methods, served to prepare them for the enjoyment of full political liberty in later days. The important post of “protector” (advocatus or vogt) of the abbey was given to one family after another by the emperor as a sign of trust; but, when, on the extinction of the house of Zäringen in 1218, the office was granted to the Hapsburgs, the protests of the abbey tenants, who feared the rapidly rising power of that family, and perhaps also the desire of the emperor to obtain command of the St Gotthard pass (of which the first authentic mention occurs about 1236, when of course it could only be traversed on foot), led to the recall of the grant in 1231, the valley being thus restored to its original privileged position, and depending immediately on the emperor. (b ) In Schwyz we must distinguish between the districts west and east of Steinen, In the former the land was in the hands of many nobles, amongst whom were the Hapsburgs; in the latter there was, at the foot of the Mythen, a free community of men governing themselves, and cultivating their land in common; both, however, were politically subject to the emperor’s delegates, the counts of the Zürichgau, who after 1173 were the ever-advancing Hapsburgs. But in 1240 the free community of Schwyz obtained from the emperor Frederick II. a charter which removed them from the jurisdiction of the counts, placing them in immediate dependence on the emperor, like the abbey men of Uri. In a few years, however, the Hapsburgs contrived to dispense with this charter in practice. (c ) In Unterwalden things were very different. The upper valley (Obwald or Sarnen, so called because of its position with regard to the Kernwald) formed part of the Aargau, the lower (Nidwald or Stanz) part of the Zürichgau, while in both the soil was owned by many ecclesiastical and lay lords, among them being the Hapsburgs and the Alsatian abbey of Murbach. Hence in this district there were no privileged tenants, no free community, no centre of unity, and this explains why Obwald and Nidwald won their way upward so much more slowly than their neighbours in Uri and Schwyz. Thus the early history and legal position of these three districts was very far from being the same. In Uri the Hapsburgs, save for a brief space, had absolutely no rights; while in Schwyz, Obwald, and Nidwald they were also, as counts of the Zürichgau and of the Aargau, the representatives of the emperor.

The Hapsburgs had been steadily rising for many years from the position of an unimportant family in the Aargau to that of a powerful clan of large landed proprietors in Swabia and Alsace, and had attained a certain political importance as counts of the Zürichgau and Aargau. In one or both qualities the cadet or Lauffenburg line, to which the family estates in the Forest districts round the Lake of Lucerne had fallen on the division of the inheritance in 1232, seem to have exercised their legal rights in a harsh manner. In 1240 the free men of Schwyz obtained protection from the emperor; in 1244 the Hapsburgs built the castle of New Hapsburg on a promontory jutting out into the lake not far from Lucerne, with the object of enforcing their real or pretended rights. It is therefore not a matter for surprise that, when, after the excommunication and deposition of Frederick If. by Innocent IV. at the council of Lyons in 1245, the head of the cadet line of Hapsburg sided with the pope, the men of the Forest districts should rally round the emperor. Schwyz joined Sarnen, Nidwald helped Lucerne; the castle of New Hapsburg was reduced to its present ruined state; and in 1248 the men of Schwyz, Sarnen, and Lucerne were threatened by the pope with excommunication if they persisted in upholding the emperor and defying their hereditary lords the counts of Hapsburg. The rapid decline of Frederick’s cause soon enabled the Hapsburgs to regain their authority in these districts. Yet these obscure risings have a double historical interest, for they are the foundation in fact (so far as they have any) of the legendary stories of Hapsburg oppression told of and by a later age, and these fleeting alliances are doubtless what is represented by the “antiqua confederatio” of 1291, Schwyz already taking the lead, while Uri, secure in its privileged position, contented itself with giving a moral support to its neighbours. After this temporary check the power of the Hapsburgs continued to increase rapidly. In 1273 the head of the cadet line sold all his lands and rights in the Forest districts to the head of the elder or Alsatian line, Rudolph, who a few months later was elected to the imperial throne, in virtue of which he acquired for his family in 1282 the duchy of Austria, which now for the first time became connected with the Hapsburgs. Rudolph recognized the privileges of Uri but not those of Schwyz; and, as he now united in his own person the characters of emperor, count of the Zürichgau and of the Aargau, and landowner in the Forest districts (a name occurring first in 1289), such a union of offices might be expected to result in a confusion of rights. On April 16, 1291, Rudolph bought from the abbey of Murbach in Alsace (of which he was “advocate ”) all its rights over the town of Lucerne and the abbey estates in Unterwalden. It thus seemed probable that the other Forest districts would be shut off from their natural means of communication with the outer world by way of the lake. Rudolph’s death, on July 15 of the same year, cleared the way, and a fortnight later (August 1) the Everlasting League was made between the men of Uri, Schwyz, and Nidwald (the words “et vallis superioris,” i.e ., Obwald, were inserted later on the original seal of Nidwald) for the purpose of self-defence against a common foe. We do not know the names of the delegates of each valley who concluded the treaty, nor the place where it was made, nor have we any account of the deliberations of which it was the result. The common seal —that great outward sign of the right of a corporate body to act in its own name without needing to ask the permission of any external authority—appears first in Uri in 1243, in Schwyz in 1281, in Nidwald not till this very document of 1291; yet, despite the great differences in their political status, they all joined in concluding this League, and confirmed it by their separate seals, thereby laying claim on behalf of their union to an independent existence. Besides promises of aid and assistance in the case of attack, they agree to punish great criminals by their own authority, but advise that, in minor cases and in all civil cases, each man should recognize the “judex” to whom he owes suit, engaging that the confederates will, in case of need, enforce the decisions of the “judex.” At the same time they unanimously refuse to recognize any “judex” who has bought his charge or is a stranger to the valleys. All disputes between the parties to the treaty are, as far as possible, to be settled by a reference to arbiters, a principle which remained in force for over six hundred years. “Judex” is a general term for any local official, especially the chief of the community, whether named by the lord or by the community; and, as earlier in the same year Rudolph had promised the men of Schwyz not to force upon them a “judex” belonging to the class of serfs, we may conjecture from this very decided protest that the chief source of disagreement was in the matter of the jurisdictions of the lord and the free community, and that some recent event in Schwyz led it to insist on the insertion of this provision. It is stipulated also that every man shall be bound to obey his own lord “convenienter,” or so far as is fitting and right.

II. In the struggle for the empire, which extended over the years following the conclusion of the League of 1291, we find that the Confederates support without exception the anti-Hapsburg candidate. On October 16, 1291, Uri and Schwyz ally themselves with Zurich, and join the general rising in Swabia against Albert, the new head of the house of Hapsburg. It soon failed, but hopes revived when in 1292 Adolf of Nassau was chosen emperor. In 1297 he confirmed to the free men of Schwyz their charter of 1240, and, strangely enough, confirmed the same charter to Uri, instead of their own of 1231. It is in his reign that we have the first recorded meeting of the “landsgemeinde” (or assembly) of Schwyz (1294), that of Uri being heard of as early as 1275. But in 1298 Albert of Hapsburg himself was elected to the empire. His rule was strict and severe, though not oppressive. He did not indeed confirm the charters of Uri or of Schwyz, but he did not attack the ancient rights of the former, and in the latter he exercised his rights as a landowner and did not abuse his political rights as emperor or as count. In Unterwalden we find that in 1304 the two valleys were joined together under a common administrator, a great step forwards to permanent union. The stories of Albert’s tyrannical actions in the Forest districts are not heard of till two centuries later, though no doubt the union of offices in his person was a permanent source of alarm to the Confederation. It was in his time too that the “terrier” (or list of manors and estates, with enumeration of all quit rents, dues, &c., payable by the tenants to their lords) of all the Hapsburg possessions in Upper Germany was begun, and it was on the point of being extended to Schwyz and Unterwalden when Albert was murdered (1308) and the election of Henry of Luxemburg roused the free men to resist the officials charged with the survey. Despite his promise to restore to the Hapsburgs all rights enjoyed by them under his three predecessors (or maintain them in possession), Henry confirmed, on June 3, 1309, to Uri and Schwyz their charters of 1297, and, for some unknown reason, confirmed to Unterwalden all the liberties granted by his predecessor, though as a matter of fact none had been granted. This charter, and the nomination of one imperial bailiff to administer the three districts, had the effect of placing them all (despite historical differences) in an identical political position, and that the most privileged yet given to any of them,—the freedom of the free community of Schwyz. A few days later the Confederates made a fresh treaty of alliance with Zurich; and in 1310 the emperor placed certain other inhabitants of Schwyz on the same privileged footing as the free community. The Hapsburgs were put off with promises; and, though their request (1311) for an inquiry into their precise rights in Alsace and in the Forest districts was granted, no steps were taken to carry out this investigation. Thus in Henry’s time the struggle was between the empire and the Hapsburgs as to the recognition of the rights of the latter, not between the Hapsburgs and those dependent on them as landlords or counts.

On Henry’s death in 1313 the electors hesitated long between Frederick the Handsome of Hapsburg and Louis of Bavaria. The men of Schwyz seized this opportunity for making a wanton attack on the great abbey of Einsiedeln, with which they had a long-standing quarrel as to rights of pasture. The abbot caused them to be excommunicated, and Frederick (the choice of the minority of the electors), who was the hereditary “advocate” of the abbey, placed them under the ban of the empire. Louis, to whom they appealed, removed the ban; on which Frederick issued a decree by which he restored to his family all their rights and possessions in the three valleys and Urseren, and charged his brother Leopold with the execution of this order. The Confederates hastily concluded alliances with Glarus, Urseren, Art, and Interlaken to protect themselves from attack on every side. Leopold collected a brilliant army at the Austrian town of Zug in order to attack Schwyz, while a body of troops was to take Unterwalden in the rear by way of the Brünig pass. On November 15, 1315, Leopold, with from 15,000 to 20,000 men, moved forward along the shore of the Lake of Egeri, intending to assail the village of Schwyz by climbing the steep hillside above the southern end of the lake, through the narrow pass of Morgarten between the mountain and the lake. At the summit of the pass waited the valiant band of the Confederates, from 1300 to 1500 strong. The march up the rugged and slippery slope threw the Austrian army into disarray, which became a rout and mad flight when huge boulders and trunks of trees were hurled from above by their foes, who charged down on them, and drove them into the lake. No fewer than 1500 Austrians fell; their brilliant cavalry had completely failed before the onset of the lightly armed Swiss footmen. Leopold fled in hot haste to Winterthur, and the attack by the Brünig was driven back by the men of Unterwalden. On December 9, 1315, representatives of the victorious highlanders met at Brunnen, on the Lake of Lucerne, not far from Schwyz, and renewed the Everlasting League of 1291. In their main lines the two documents are very similar, the later being chiefly an expansion of the earlier. That of 1315 is in German (in contrast to the 1291 League, which is in Latin), and has one or two striking clauses largely indebted to a decree issued by Zurich on July 24, 1291. None of the three districts or their dependents is to recognize a new lord without the consent and counsel of the rest (this is probably meant to provide for an interregnum in or disputed election to the empire, possibly for the chance of the election of a Hapsburg); strict obedience in all lawful matters is to be rendered to the rightful lord in each case, unless he attacks or wrongs any of the Confederates, in which case they are to be free from all obligations; no negotiations, so long as the “Länder” have no lord, are to be entered on with outside powers, save by common agreement of all. Louis solemnly recog nized and confirmed the new League in 1316, and in 1318 a truce was concluded between the Confederates and the Hapsburgs, who treat with them on equal terms. The lands and rights annexed belonging to the Hapsburgs in the Forest districts are fully recognized as they existed in the days of Henry of Luxemburg, and freedom of commerce is granted. But there is not one word about the political rights of the Hapsburgs as counts of the Zürichgau and Aargau. This distinction gives the key to the whole history of the relations between the Confederates and Hapsburgs; the rights of the latter as landowners are fully allowed, and till 1801 they possessed estates within the Confederation; it is their political rights which are always contested by the Swiss, who desire to rule themselves, free from the meddling of any external power.

As early as 1320 we find the name “Swiss” (derived from Schwyz, which had always been the leader in the struggle) applied to the Confederation as a whole, though it was not till after Sempach (1386) that it came into popular use, and it did not form the official name of the Confederation till 1803. This is in itself a proof of the great renown which the League won by its victory at Morgarten. Another is that as years go by we find other members admitted to the privileges of the original alliance of the three Forest districts. First to join the League (1332) was the neighbouring town of Lucerne, which had grown up round the monastery of St Leodegar (whence the place took its name), perhaps a colony, certainly a cell of the great house of Murbach in Alsace, under the rule of which the town remained till its sale in 1291 to the Hapsburgs. This act of Lucerne was opposed by the house of Austria, but, despite the decision of certain chosen arbitrators in favour of the Hapsburg claims, the town clung to the League with which it was connected by its natural position, and thus brought a new element into the pastoral association of the Forest districts, which now surrounded the entire Lake of Lucerne. Next, in 1351, came the ancient city of Zurich, which in 1218, on the extinction of the house of Zäringen, had become a free imperial city in which the abbess of the Fraumünster (the lady of Uri) had great influence, though from 1240 the citizens elected the council which she had previously named. In 1336 there had been a great civic revolution, headed by Rudolph Brun, which had raised the members of the craft guilds to a position in the municipal government of equal power with that of the patricians, who, however, did not cease intriguing to regain their lost privileges, so that Brun, after long hesitation, decided to throw in the lot of the city with the League rather than with Austria. In this way the League now advanced from the hilly country to the plains, though the terms of the treaty with Zurich did not bind it so closely to the Confederates as in the other cases (the right of making alliances apart from the League being reserved, though the League was to rank before these), and hence rendered it possible for Zurich now and again to incline towards Austria in a fashion which did great hurt to its allies. In 1352 the League was enlarged by the admission of Glarus and Zug. Glarus belonged to the monastery of Säckingen on the Rhine (founded by the Irish monk Fridolin), of which the Hapsburgs were “advocates,” claiming therefore many rights over the valley, which refused to admit them, and joyfully received the Confederates who came to its aid; but it was placed on a lower footing than the other members of the League, being bound to obey their orders. Three weeks later the town and district of Zug, attacked by the League and abandoned by their Hapsburg masters, joined the Confederation, forming a transition link between the civic and rural members of the League. The immediate occasion of the union of these two districts was the war begun by the Austrian duke against Zurich, which was ended by the Brandenburg peace of 1352, by which Glarus and Zug were to. be restored to the Hapsburgs, who also regained their rights over Lucerne; Zug was won for good by a bold stroke of the men of Schwyz in 1364, but it was not till the day of Näfels (1388) that Glarus recovered its lost freedom. These temporary losses and the treaty made by Brun of Zurich with Austria in 1356 were, however, far outweighed by the entrance into the League in 1353 of the famous town of Bern, which, founded in 1191 by Berthold V. of Zäringen, and endowed with great privileges, had become a free imperial city in 1218 on the extinction of the Zäringen dynasty. Founded for the purpose of bridling the turbulent feudal nobles around, many of whom had become citizens, Bern beat them back at Dornbühl (1298), and made a treaty with the Forest districts as early as 1323. In 1339, at the bloody fight of Laupen, she had broken the power of the nobles for ever, and in 1352 had been forced by a treaty with Austria to take part in the war against Zurich, but soon after the conclusion of peace entered the League as the ally of the three Forest districts, being thus only indirectly joined to Lucerne and Zurich. The special importance of the accession of Bern was that the League now began to spread to the west, and was thus brought into connexion for the first time with the French-speaking land of Savoy. The League thus numbered eight members, the fruits of Morgarten, and no further members were admitted till 1481, after the Burgundian war. But, in order to thoroughly understand the nature of the League, it must be remembered that, while each of the five new members was allied with the original nucleus,—the three Forest districts,—these five were not directly allied to one another: Lucerne was allied with Zurich and Zug; Zurich with Lucerne, Zug, and Glarus; Glarus with Zurich; Zug with Lucerne and Zurich; Bern with no one except the three original members. The circumstances under which each entered the League can alone explain the very intricate relations at this time of its eight members.

After a short interval of peace the quarrels with Austria broke out afresh; all the members of the League, save the three Forest districts and Glarus, joined the great union of the South German cities; but their attention was soon called to events nearer home. Lucerne fretted much under the Austrian rule, received many Austrian subjects among her citizens, and refused to pay custom duties to the Austrian bailiff at Rothenburg, on the ground that she had the right of free traffic. An attack on the custom-house at Rothenburg, and the gift of the privileges of burghership to the discontented inhabitants of the little town of Sempach a short way off, so irritated Leopold III. (who then held all the possessions of his house outside Austria) that, unmindful of the defeat of his uncle at Morgarten in 1315, he collected a great army, with the intention of crushing his rebellious town. Lucerne meanwhile had summoned the other members of the League to her aid, and, though Leopold’s feint of attacking Zurich caused the troops of the League to march at first in that direction, they discovered their mistake in time to turn back and check his advance on Lucerne. From 1500 to 1600 men of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Lucerne opposed the 6000 which made up the Austrian army. The decisive fight took place on July 9, 1386, near Sempach, on a bit of sloping meadow-land, cut up by streams and hedges, which forced the Austrian knights to dismount. The great heat of the day, which rendered it impossible to fight in armour, and the furious attacks of the Confederates, finally broke the Austrian line after more than one repulse and turned the day (see Winkelried). Leopold, with a large number of his followers, was slain, and the Hapsburg power within the borders of the Confederation finally broken. Glarus at once rose in arms against Austria, but it was not till the expiration of the truce made after Sempach that Leopold’s brother, Albert of Austria, brought an army against Glarus, and was signally defeated at Näfels (not far from Glarus) on April 9, 1388, by a handful of Glarus and Schwyz men, the troops of the other Confederates arriving too late.

In 1389 a peace for seven years was made, the Confederates being secured in all their conquests; an attempt made in 1393 by Austria by means of Schöno, the chief magistrate of Zurich and leader of the patrician party, to stir up a fresh attack failed owing to a rising of the burghers, who sympathized with the Confederates, and on July 16, 1394, the peace was prolonged for twenty years (and again in 1412 for fifty years), various stipulations being made by which the hundred years’ struggle of the League to throw off all political dependence on the Hapsburgs was finally crowned with success. Glarus was freed on payment of 200 pounds annually (in 1389-1395 it bought up all the rights of Säckingen); Zug too was released from Austrian rule. Schwyz was given the town of Einsiedeln (the “advocatia” of the great abbey following in 1397); Lucerne got the Entlibuch, Sempach, and Rothenburg, the last-named being mortgaged only; Bern and Solothurn were confirmed in their conquests. Above all, the Confederation as a whole was relieved from the overlordship of the Hapsburgs, to whom, however, all their rights and dues as landed proprietors were expressly reserved,—Bern, Zurich, and Solothurn guaranteeing the maintenance of these rights and dues, with power in case of need to call on the other Confederates to support them by arms. Thus the distinction always made by the Confederates between the Hapsburgs as rulers and as landowners was once more upheld; and, though that powerful family entertained hopes of recovering its former rights, so that technically the treaties of 1389, 1394, and 1412 were but truces, it finally and for ever renounced all its feudal rights and privileges within the Confederation by the “Everlasting Compact” of 1474.

It is probable that Bern did not take any active share in the Sempach war because she was bound by the treaty of peace made with the Austrians in 1368; and Solothurn, allied with Bern, was doubtless a party to the treaty of 1394 (though not yet in the League), because of its sufferings in 1382 at the hands of the Kyburg line of the Hapsburgs, whose possessions (Thun, Burgdorf, &c.) in 1384 fell into the hands of the two allies.

We may mention here the foray (known as the English or Gugler war) made in 1374-75 by Enguerrand de Coucy (husband of Isabella, daughter of Edward III. of England) and his freebooters (many of them Englishmen and Welshmen), called “Gugler” from their pointed steel caps, with the object of obtaining possession of certain towns in the Aargau (including Sempach), which he claimed as the dowry of his mother Catherine, daughter of the Leopold who was defeated at Morgarten. He was put to rout in the Entlibuch by the men of Bern, Freiburg, Schwyz, and Unterwalden in December 1375. This victory, which gave rise to the first great Swiss war song, was commemorated with great rejoicings as lately as 1875.

III. The great victory at Sempach not merely vastly increased the fame of the Everlasting League but also enabled it to extend both its influence and its territory. The 15th century is the period when both the League and its several members took the aggressive, and the expansion of their power and lands cannot be better seen than by comparing the state of things at the beginning and at the end of this century. The pastoral highlands of Appenzell (Abbatis Cella) and the town of St Gall had long been trying to throw off the rights exercised over them by the great abbey of St Gall, founded in the 7th century by the Irish monk of that name. The Appen-zellers in particular had offered a stubborn resistance, and the abbot’s troops had been beaten back by them in 1403 on the heights of Vögelinseck, and again in 1405 in the great fight on the pass of the Stoss (which led up into the highlands), in which the abbot was backed by the duke of Austria. Schwyz had given them some help, and in 1411 Appenzell was placed under the protection of the League (save Bern), with which in the next year the city of St Gall made a similar treaty to last ten years. So too in 1416-17 several of the “tithings” of the Upper Wallis or Valais (i.e., the upper stretch of the Rhone valley), which in 1388 had beaten the bishop and the nobles in a great fight at Visp, became closely associated with Lucerne, Uri, and Unterwalden. It required aid in its final struggle against the great house of Raron, the countbishop of Sitten (or Sion), and the house of Savoy, which held Lower Wallis,—the Forest districts, on the other hand, wishing to secure themselves against Raron and Savoy in their attempt to permanently conquer the Val d’Ossola on the south side of the Simplon pass. Bern, however, supported its burgher, the lord of Raron; but, by a peace made in 1420, the powers of the bishop and the lord of Raron were greatly diminished; the latter house soon after sold all its lands and rights, and migrated to the district of Toggenburg. Such were the first links which bound these lands with the League; but they did not become full members for a long time—Appenzell in 1513, St Gall in 1803, Wallis in 1815.

Space will not allow us to enumerate all the small conquests made in the first half of the 15th century by every member of the League; suffice it to say that each increased and rounded off its territory, but did not give the conquered lands any political rights, governing them as “subject lands,” often very harshly. The same phenomenon of lands which had won their own freedom playing the part of tyrant over other lands which joined them more or less by their voluntary action is seen on a larger scale in the case of the conquest of the Aargau, and in the first attempts to secure a footing south of the Alps.

In 1412 the treaty of 1394 between the League and the Hapsburgs had been renewed for fifty years; but when in 1415 Duke Frederick of Austria helped Pope John XXII. to escape from Constance, where the great council was then sitting, and the emperor Sigismund placed the duke under the ban of the empire, summoning all members of the empire to arm against him, the League hesitated, because of their treaty of 1412, till the emperor declared that all the rights and lands of Austria in the League were forfeited, and that their compact did not release them from their obligations to the empire. In the name, therefore, of the emperor, and by his special command, the different members of the League overran the extensive Hapsburg possessions in the Aargau. The chief share fell to Bern, but certain districts (known as the Freie Aemter) were joined together and governed as bailiwicks held in common by all the members of the League (save Uri, busied in the south, and Bern, who had already secured the lion’s share of the spoil for herself). This is the first case in which the League as a whole took up the position of rulers over districts which, though guaranteed in the enjoyment of their old rights, were nevertheless politically unfree. As an encouragement and a reward, Sigismund had granted in advance to the League the right of criminal jurisdiction (“haute justice” or “Blutbann ”), which points to the fact that they were soon to become independent of the empire, as they were of Austria. But all through the 15th century it must be carefully borne in mind that the members of the League were constantly recognized as and acknowledged themselves to be members of the empire.

As the natural policy of Bern was to seek to enlarge its borders at the expense of Austria, and later of Savoy, so we find that Uri, shut off by physical causes from extension in other directions, as steadily turned its eyes towards the south. In 1410 the valley of Urseren was finally joined to Uri; though communications were difficult, and carried on only by means of the “stiebende Brücke,” a wooden bridge suspended by chains over the Reuss, along the side of a great rocky buttress (pierced in 1707 by the tunnel known as the Urnerloch), yet this enlargement of the territory of Uri gave it complete command over the St Gotthard pass, long commercially important, and now to serve for purposes of war and conquest. Already in 1403 Uri and Obwald had taken advantage of a quarrel with the duke of Milan as to custom dues at the market of Varese to occupy the long narrow valley on the south of the pass called the Val Leventina; in 1410 the men of the same two lands, exasperated by the insults of the local lords, called on the other members of the League, and all jointly (except Bern) occupied the Val d’Ossola, on the south side of the Simplon pass. But in 1414 they lost this to Savoy, and, with the object of getting it back, obtained in 1416-17 the alliance of the men of Upper Wallis, then fighting for freedom, and thus regained the valley, despite the exertions of the great Milanese general Carmagnola. In 1419 Uri and Obwald bought from its lord the town and district of Bellinzona. This rapid advance, however, did not approve itself to the duke of Milan, and Carmagnola reoccupied both valleys; the Confederates were not at one with regard to these southern conquests; a small body pressed on in front of the rest, but was cut to pieces at Arbedo near Bellinzona in 1422. A bold attempt in 1425 by a Schwyzer, Peter Rissi by name, to recover the Val d’Ossola caused the Confederates to send a force to rescue these adventurers; but the duke of Milan intrigued with the divided Confederates, and finally in 1426, by a payment of a large sum of money and the grant of certain commercial privileges, the Val Leventina, the Val d’Ossola, and Bellinzona were restored to him. Thus the first attempt of Uri to acquire a footing south of the Alps had failed, but the wish to recover its lost conquests still continued, and a later attempt was more successful, leading to the inclusion in the Confederation of what has been called “Italian Switzerland.”

The original contrasts between the social condition of the different members of the League became more marked when the period of conquest began, and led to quarrels and ill-feeling in the matter of the Aargau and the Italian conquests which a few years later ripened into a civil war, brought about by the dispute as to the succession to the lands of Frederick, count of Toggenburg, the last male representative of his house. Count Frederick’s predecessors had greatly extended their domains, so that they took in not only the Toggenburg or upper valley of the Thur, but Uznach, Sargans, the Rhine valley between Feldkirch and Sargans, the Prättigau, and the Davos valley. He himself, the last great feudal lord on the left bank of the Rhine, had managed to secure his vast possessions by making treaties with several members of the League, particularly Zurich (1402) and Schwyz (1417),— from 1428 inclining more and more to Schwyz (then ruled by Ital Reding), being disgusted with the arrogant behaviour of Stüssi, the burgomaster of Zurich. His death (April 30, 1436) was the signal for the breaking out of strife. The Prättigau and Davos valley formed the League of the Ten Jurisdictions in Rhaetia (see below), while Frederick’s widow sided with Zurich against Schwyz for different portions of the great inheritance which had been promised them. After being twice defeated, Zurich was forced in 1440 to buy peace by certain cessions (the Upper March) to Schwyz, the general feeling of the Confederates being opposed to Zurich, several of them going so far as to send men and arms to Schwyz. Zurich, however, was bitterly disappointed at these defeats, and had recourse to that policy which she had adopted in 1356 and 1393—an alliance with Austria (concluded in 1442), which now held the imperial throne in the person of Frederick III. Though technically within her rights according to the terms on which she had joined the League in 1351, this act of Zurich caused the greatest irritation in the Confederation, and civil war at once broke out, especially when the Hapsburg emperor had been solemnly received and acknowledged in Zurich. In 1443 the Zurich troops were completely defeated at St Jakob on the Sihl, close under the walls of the city, Stüssi himself being slain. Next year the city itself was long besieged. Frederick, unable to get help elsewhere, procured from Charles VII. of France the despatch of a body of Armagnac free lances (the Écorcheurs), who came, 30,000 strong, under the dauphin Louis, plundering and harrying the land, till, at the very gates of the free imperial city of Basel (which had made a twenty years’ alliance with Bern), by the leper house of St Jakob on the Birs (August 26, 1444), the desperate resistance of a small body of Confederates (1200 to 1500) till cut to pieces, checked the advance of the freebooters, who sustained such tremendous losses that, though the victors, they hastily made peace, and returned whence they had come. Several small engagements ensued, Zurich long declining to make peace because the Confederates required, as the result of a solemn arbitration, the abandonment of the Austrian alliance. At length it was concluded in 1450, the Confederates restoring almost all the lands they had won from Zurich. Thus ended the third attempt of Austria to conquer the League By means of Zurich, which used its position as an imperial free city greatly to the harm of the League, and was the cause of the first civil war which distracted the League.

These fresh proofs of the valour of the Confederates, and of the growing importance of the League, did not fail to produce important results. In 1452 the “Confederates of the Old League of Upper Germany” (as they styled themselves) made their first treaty of alliance with France, a connexion which was destined to exercise so much influence on their history. Round the League there began to gather a new class of allies (known as “Zugewandte Orte,” or associated districts), more closely joined to it, or to certain members of it, than by a mere treaty of friendship, yet not being admitted to the rank of a full member of the League. Of these associates three, the abbot (1451) and town of St Gall (1454), and the town of Bienne (Biel), through its alliance (1352) with Bern, were given seats and votes in the diet, being called “socii”; while others, known as “confcederati,” were not so closely bound to the League, such as Wallis (1416-17), Schaffhausen (1454), Mühlhausen (1466), Rothweil (1463). Appenzell, too, in 1452, rose from the rank of a “protected district” into the class of associates, outside which were certain places “protected” by several members of the League, such as Gersau (1359), the abbeys of Engelberg (c. 1421) and Einsiedeln (1397-1434), and the town of

Rapperschwyl (1458). The relation of the “associates” to the League may be compared with the ancient practice of “commendation”: they were bound to obey orders in the matter of declaring war, making alliances, &c.

In 1439 Sigismund succeeded his father Frederick in the Hapsburg lands in Alsace, the Thurgau, and Tyrol, and, being much irritated by the constant encroachments of the Confederates, in particular by the loss of Rapperschwyl (1458), declared war against them, but fared very badly. In 1460 the Confederates overran the Thurgau, and occupied Sargans. Winterthur was only saved by an heroic defence. Hence in 1461 Sigismund had to give up his claims on those lands and renew the peace for fifteen years, while in 1467 he sold Winterthur to Zurich. Thus the whole line of the Rhine was lost to the Hapsburgs, who retained (till 1802) in the territories of the Confederates the Frickthal only. The Thurgovian bailiwicks were governed in common as “subject” lands by all the Confederates except Bern. The touchiness of the now rapidly advancing League was shown by the eagerness with which in 1468 its members took up arms against certain small feudal nobles who were carrying on a harassing guerilla warfare with their allies Schaffhausen and Mühlhausen. They laid siege to Waldshut, and to buy them off Sigismund in August 1468 engaged to pay 10,000 gulden as damages by June 24, 1469; in default of payment the Confederates were to keep for ever the Black Forest, Waldshut, and certain other Black Forest, towns on the Rhine. A short time before (1467) the League had made treaties of friendship with Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and with the duke of Milan. All was now prepared for the intricate series of intrigues which led up to the Burgundian War,—a great epoch in the history of the League, as it created a common national feeling, enormously raised its military reputation, and brought about the close connexion with certain parts of Savoy which finally (1803-15) were admitted into the League.

Sigismund did not know where to obtain the sum he had promised to pay. In this strait he turned to Charles the Bold (properly the Rash), duke of Burgundy, who was then beginning his wonderful career, and aiming at restoring the kingdom of Burgundy. For this purpose Charles wished to marry his daughter and heiress to Maximilian, son of the emperor, and first cousin of Sigismund, in order that the emperor might be induced to give him the Burgundian crown. Hence he was ready to meet Sigismund’s advances. On May 9, 1469, Charles promised to give Sigismund 50,000 florins, receiving as security for repayment Alsace, the Breisgau, the Sundgau, the Black Forest, and the four Forest towns on the Rhine (Rheinfelden, Säckingen, Lauffenburg, and Waldshut); in addition, Charles took Sigismund under his protection, specially against the Swiss, and agreed to give him aid in a war if he was attacked by them. It was not unnatural for Sigismund to think of attacking the League, but Charles’s engagement to him is quite inconsistent with the friendly agreement made between Burgundy and the League as late as 1467. The emperor then on his side annulled Sigismund’s treaty of 1468 with the Swiss, and placed them under the ban of the empire. Charles committed the mortgaged lands to Peter von Hagenbach, who proceeded to try to establish his master’s power there by such harsh and severe measures as to cause all the people to murmur, then rise against him.

The Swiss in these circumstances began to look towards Louis XI. of France, who had confirmed the treaty of friendship made with them by his father in 1452. Sigismund had applied to him early in 1469 to help him in his many troubles, and to give him aid against the Swiss, but Louis had point-blank refused. Anxious to secure their neutrality in case of his war with Charles, he made a treaty with them on August 13, 1470, to this effect. All the evidence goes to show that Sigismund was not a tool in the hands of Louis, and that Louis, at least at that time, had no definite intention of involving Charles and the Swiss in a war, but wished only to secure his own flank.

Sigismund in the next few years tried hard to get from Charles the promised aid against the Swiss (the money was paid punctually enough by Charles on his behalf), who put him off with various excuses. Charles on his side, in 1471-72, tried to make an alliance with the Swiss, his efforts being supported by a party in Bern headed by Adrian von Bubenberg. Probably Charles wished to use both Sigismund and the Swiss to further his own interests, but his shifty policy had the effect of alienating both from him. Sigismund, disgusted with Charles, now inclined towards Louis, whose ally he formally became in the summer of 1473,—a change which was the real cause of the emperor’s flight from Treves in November 1473, when he had come there expressly to crown Charles. The Confederates on their side were greatly moved by the oppression of their friends and allies in Alsace by Hagenbach, and tried in vain (January 1474) to obtain some redress from his master. Charles’s too astute policy had thus lost him both Sigismund and the Swiss. They now looked upon Louis, who, thoroughly aware of Charles’s ambition, and fearing that his disappointment at Treves would soon lead to open war, aimed at a master stroke—no less than the reconciliation of Sigismund and the Swiss. This on the face of it seemed impracticable, but common need and Louis’s dexterous management brought it to pass, so that on March 30, 1474, the Everlasting Compact was signed at Constance, by which Sigismund finally renounced all Austrian claims on the lands of the Confederates, and guaranteed them in quiet enjoyment of them; they, on the other hand, agreed to support him if Charles did not give up the mortgaged lands when the money was paid down. The next day the Swiss joined the league of the Alsatian and Rhine cities, as also did Sigismund. Charles was called on to receive the money contributed by the Alsatian cities, and to restore his lands to Sigismund. He, however, took no steps. Within a week the oppressive bailiff Hagenbach was captured, and a month later (May 9, 1474) he was put to death, Bern alone of the Confederates being represented. On October 9 the emperor, acting of course at the instance of Sigismund, ordered them to declare war against Charles, which took place on October 25, Bern acting in the name of the Confederates, and alleging that they made war solely by order of the emperor and not as principals. Next day Louis formally ratified his alliance with the Confederates, promising money and pensions, the latter to be increased if he did not send men. Throughout these negotiations and later, Bern directs Swiss policy, though all the Confederates are not quite agreed. She was specially exposed to attack from Charles and Charles’s ally (since 1468) Savoy, and her best chance of extending her territory lay towards the west and south. A forward policy was thus distinctly the best for Bern, and this was the line supported by the French party under Nicholas von Diesbach, Von Bubenberg opposing it, though not with any idea of handing over Bern to Charles. The Forest districts, however, were very suspicious of this movement to the west, by which Bern alone could profit, though the League as a whole might lose; then, too, Uri had in 1440 finally won the Val Leventina, and she and her neighbours favoured a southerly policy—a policy which was crowned with success after the gallant victory won at Giornico in 1478 by a handful of men from Zurich, Lucerne, Uri, and Schwyz over 12,000 Milanese troops, though the main body of the Confederates was already on its way home. Thus Uri gained for the first time a permanent footing south of the Alps, not long before Bern had won its first conquests from Savoy.

The war in the west was begun by Bern and her allies (Freiburg, Solothurn, &c.) by marauding expeditions across the Jura, in which Héricourt (November 1474) and Bla-mont (August 1475) were taken, both towns being held of Charles by the “sires” de Neuchâtel, a cadet line of the counts of Montbéliard. It is said that in the former expedition the white cross was borne (for the first time) as the ensign of the Confederates, but not in the other. Meanwhile Yolande, the duchess of Savoy, had, through fear of her brother Louis XI. and hatred of Bern, finally joined Charles and Milan (January 1475), the immediate result of which was the capture, by the Bernese and friends (on the way back from a foray on Pontarlier in the Free County of Burgundy or Franche Comté) of several places in Vaud, notably Granson and Échallens, both held of Savoy by a member of the house of Challon, princes of Orange (April 1475), as well as Orbe and Jougne, held by the same, but under Burgundy. In the summer Bern seized on the Savoyard district of Aigle. Soon after (October-November 1475) the same energetic policy won for her the Savoyard towns of Morat, Avenches, Estavayer, and Yverdun; while (September) the Upper Wallis, which had conquered all Lower or Savoyard Wallis, entered into alliance with Bern for the purpose of opposing Savoy by preventing the arrival of Milanese troops. Alarmed at their success, the emperor and Louis deserted (June-September) the Confederates, who thus, by the influence of Louis and Bernese ambition, saw themselves led on and then abandoned to the wrath of Charles, and very likely to lose their new conquests. They had entered on the war as “helpers” of the emperors, and now became principals in the war against Charles, who raised the siege of Neuss, made an alliance with Edward IV. of England, received the surrender of Lorraine, and hastened across the Jura (February 1476) to the aid of his ally Yolande. On February 21 Charles laid siege to Granson, and after a week’s siege the garrison of Bernese and Freiburgers had to surrender, and, by way of retaliation for the massacre of the garrison of Estavayer in 1475, of the 412 men two only were spared in order to act as executioners of their comrades. This hideous news met a large body of the Confederates gathered together in great haste to relieve the garrison, and going to their rendezvous at Neuchâtel, where both the count and town had become allies of Bern in 1406. An advance body of Bernese, Freiburgers, and Schwyzers, in order to avoid the castle of Vauxmarcus (seized by Charles), by the Lake of Neuchâtel, on the direct road from Neuchâtel to Granson, climbed over a wooded spur to the north, and attacked (March 2) the Burgundian outposts. Charles drew back his force in order to bring down the Swiss to the more level ground where his cavalry could act, but his rear misinterpreted the order, and when the main Swiss force appeared over the spur the Burgundian army was seized with a panic and fled in disorder. The Swiss had gained a glorious victory, and regained their conquest of Granson, besides capturing very rich spoil in Charles’s camp, parts of which are preserved to the present day in various Swiss armouries. Such was the famous battle of Granson. Charles at once retired to Lausanne, and set about reorganizing his army. He resolved to advance on Bern by way of Morat (or Murten), which was occupied by a Bernese garrison under Von Bubenberg, and laid siege to it on June 9. The Confederates had now put away all jealousy of Bern, and collected a large army. The decisive battle took place on the afternoon of June 22, after the arrival of the Zurich contingent under Hans Waldmann. English archers were in Charles’s army, while with the Swiss was René, the dispossessed duke of Lorraine. After facing each other many hours in the driving rain, a body of Swiss, by outflanking Charles’s van, stormed his palisaded camp, and the Burgundians were soon hopelessly beaten, the losses on both sides (a contrast to Granson) being exceedingly heavy. Vaud was reoccupied by the Swiss, Savoy having overrun it on Charles’s advance; but Louis now stepped in and procured the restoration of Vaud to Savoy, save Granson, Morat, Orbe, and Échallens, which were to be held by the Bernese jointly with the Freiburgers, Aigle by Bern alone,—Savoy at the same time renouncing all its claims over Freiburg. Thus French-speaking districts first became permanently connected with the Confederation, hitherto purely German, and the war had been one for the maintenance of recent conquests, rather than a purely defensive one against an encroaching neighbour desirous of crushing Swiss freedom. Charles tried in vain to raise a third army; René recovered Lorraine, and on January 5, 1477, under the walls of Nancy, Charles’s wide-reaching plans were ended by his defeat and death, many Swiss being with René’s troops. The wish of the Bernese to Overrun Franche Comté was opposed by the older members of the Confederation, and finally, in 1479, Louis, by very large payments, secured the abandonment of all claims on that province, which was annexed to the French crown.

These glorious victories really laid the foundation of Swiss nationality; but soon after them the long-standing jealousy between the civic and rural elements in the Confederation nearly broke it up. This had always hindered common action save in case of certain pressing questions. In 1370, by the “Parsons’ ordinance” (Pfaffenbrief), agreed on by all the Confederates except Bern and Glarus, all residents, whether clerics or laymen, in the Confederation who were bound by oath to the duke of Austria were to swear faith to the Confederation, and this oath was to rank before any other; no appeal was to lie to any court spiritual or lay (except in matrimonial and purely spiritual questions) outside the limits of the Confederation, and many regulations were laid down as to the suppression of private wars and keeping of the peace on the high roads. Further, in 1393, the “Sempach ordinance” was accepted by all the Confederates and Solothurn; this was an attempt to enforce police regulations and to lay down “articles of war” for the organization and discipline of the army of the Confederates, minute regulations being made against plundering, —women, monasteries, and churches being in particular protected and secured. But save these two documents common action was limited to the meeting of two envoys from each member of the Confederation and one from each of the “socii” in the diet, the powers of which were greatly limited by the instructions brought by each envoy, thus entailing frequent reference to his Government, and included foreign relations, war and peace, and common arrangements as to police, pestilence, customs duties, coinage, &c. The decisions of the majority did not bind the minority save in the case of the affairs of the bailiwicks ruled in common. Thus everything depended on common agreement and goodwill. But disputes as to the division of the lands conquered in the Burgundian war, and the proposal to admit into the League the towns of Freiburg and Solothurn, which had rendered such good help in the war, caused the two parties to form separate unions, for by the latter proposal the number of towns would have been made the same as that of the “Länder,” which these did not at all approve. Suspended a moment by the campaign in the Val Leventina, these quarrels broke out after the victory of Giornico; and at the diet of Stanz (December 1481), when it seemed probable that the failure of all attempts to come to an understanding would result in the disruption of the League, the mediation of Nicholas von der Flüe (or Bruder Klaus), a holy hermit of Sachseln in Obwald, though he did not appear at the diet in person, succeeded in bringing both sides to reason, and the third great ordinance of the League—the “compact of Stanz ”—was agreed on. By this the promise of mutual aid and assistance was renewed, especially when one member attacked another, and stress was laid on the duty of the several Governments to maintain the peace, and not to help the subjects of any other member in case of a rising. The treasure and movables captured in the war were to be equally divided amongst the combatants, the territories and towns amongst the members of the League. As a practical proof of the reconciliation, on the same day the towns of Freiburg and Solothurn were received as full members of the Confederation, united with all the other members, though on less favourable terms than usual, for they were forbidden to make alliances, save with the consent of all or of the greater part of the other members. Both towns had long been allied with Bern, whose influence was greatly increased by their admission. Freiburg, founded in 1178 by Berthold IV. of Zäringen, had on the extinction of that great dynasty (1218) become a free imperial city, but had bowed successively to Kyburg (1249), Austria, the sons of Rudolph (1277), and Savoy (1452); when Savoy gave up its claims in 1477 Freiburg once more became a free imperial city. She had become allied with Bern as early as 1243. The ancient Roman city of Solothurn (or Soleure) had been associated with Bern from 1351, but had in vain sought admission into the League in 1411. Both the new members had done much for Bern in the Burgundian war, and it was for their good service that she now procured them this splendid reward, in hopes perhaps of aid on other important and critical occasions.

The compact of Stanz strengthened the bonds which joined the members of the Confederation; and the same centralizing tendency is wall seen in the attempt (1483- 89) of Hans Waldmann, the burgomaster of Zurich, to assert the rule of his city over the neighbouring country districts, to place all power in the hands of the guilds (whereas by Bran’s constitution the patricians had an equal share), to suppress all minor jurisdictions, and to raise a uniform tax. But this idea of concentrating all powers in the hands of the Government aroused great resistance, and led to his overthrow and execution. Peter Kistler succeeded (1470) better at Bern in a reform on the same lines, but not of such a sweeping character.

The early history of each member of the Confederation, and of the Confederation itself, shows that they always professed to belong to the empire, trying to become immediately dependent on the emperor in order to. prevent the oppression of middle lords, and to enjoy practical liberty. The empire itself had now become very much of a shadow; cities and princes were gradually asserting their own independence, sometimes breaking away from it altogether. Now, by the time of the Burgundian war the Confederation stood in a position analogous to that of a powerful free imperial city. As long as the emperor’s nominal rights ware not enforced, all went well; but, when Maximilian, in his attempt to reorganize the empire, erected in 1495 at Worms an imperial chamber which had jurisdiction in all disputes between members of the empire, the Confederates were very unwilling to obey it, partly because they could maintain peace at home by their own authority, and partly because it interfered with their practical independence. Again, their refusal to join the “Swabian League,” formed in 1488 by the lords and cities of South Germany to keep the public peace, gave further offence, as well as their fresh alliances with France. Hence a struggle was inevitable, and the occasion by reason of which it broke out was the seizure by the Tyrolese authorities in 1499 of the Münsterthal, which belonged to the “Gotteshausbund,” one of the three leagues which had gradually arisen in Rhaetia. These were the “Gotteshausbund” in 1367 (taking in all the dependents of the cathedral church at Chur living in the Oberhalbstein and Engadine), the “Oberer or Grauer Bund” in 1395 and 1424 (taking in the abbey of Dissentis and many counts and lords in the Vorder Rhein valley, though its name is not derived, as often stated, from the “grey coats” of the first members, but from “grawen” or “grafen,” as so many counts formed part of it), and the “League of the Ten Jurisdictions” (Zehngerichtenbund), which arose in the Prättigau and Davos valley (1436) on the death of Count Frederick of Toggenburg, but which, owing to certain Austrian claims in it, was not quite so free as its neighbours. The first and third of these became allied in 1450, but the formal union of the three dates only from 1524, as documentary proof is wanting of the alleged meeting at Vazerol in 1471, though practically before 1524 they had very much in common. In 1497 the Oberer Bund, in 1498 the Gotteshausbund, made a treaty of alliance with the Everlasting League or Swiss Confederation, the Ten Jurisdictions being unable to do more than show sympathy, owing to Austrian influence, which was not bought up till 1649-52. Hence this attack on the Münsterthal was an attack on an “associate” member of the Swiss Confederation, Maximilian being supported by the Swabian League; but its real historical importance is the influence it had on the relations of the Swiss to the empire. The struggle lasted several months, the chief fight being that “an der Calven” or “auf der Malserheide” (May 22, 1499), in which Benedict Fontana, a leader of the Gotteshausbund men, performed many heroic deeds before his death. But, both sides being exhausted, peace was made at Basel on September 22, 1499. By this the matters in dispute were referred to arbitration, and the emperor annulled all the decisions of the imperial chamber against the Confederation; but nothing was laid down as to its future relations with the empire. No further real attempt, however, was made to enforce the rights of the emperor, and the Confederation became a state allied with the empire, enjoying practical independence, though not formally freed till 1648. Thus, 208 years after the origin of the Confederation, it had got rid of all Austrian claims (1394 and (1474), as well as all practical subjection to the emperor. But its further advance towards the position of an independent state was long checked by religious divisions within, and by the enormous influence of the French king on its foreign relations.

With the object of strengthening the northern border of the Confederation, two more full members were admitted in 1501—Basel and Schaffhausen—on the same terms as Freiburg and Solothurn. The city of Basel had originally been ruled by its bishop, but in the 14th century it became a free imperial city; before 1501 it had made no permanent alliance with the Confederation, though in continual relations with it. Schaffhausen had grown up round the Benedictine monastery of All Saints, and became in the 13th century a free imperial city, but was pledged to Austria from 1330 to 1415, in which last year the emperor Sigismund declared all Duke Frederick’s rights forfeited in consequence of his abetting the flight of Pope John XXII. It had become an “associate” of the Confederation in 1454.

A few years later, in 1513, Appenzell, which in 1411 had become a “protected” district, and in 1452 an “associate” member of the Confederation, was admitted as the thirteenth full member; and this remained the number till the fall of the old Confederation in 1798. Round the three original members had gathered first five others, united with the three, but not necessarily with each other; and then gradually there grew up an outer circle, consisting of five more, allied with all the eight old members, but tied down by certain stringent conditions. Constance, which seemed called by nature to enter the League, kept aloof, owing to a quarrel as to the criminal jurisdiction in the Thurgau, which had been pledged to it before the district was conquered by the Confederates. Neuchâtel in 1495-98 became permanently allied with several members of the Confederation.

In the first years of the 16th century the influence of the Confederates south of the Alps was largely extended. The system of giving pensions, in order to secure the right of enlisting men within the Confederation, and of capitulations, by which the different members supplied troops, was originated by Louis XI. in 1474, and later followed by many other princes. Though a tribute to Swiss valour and courage, this practice had very evil results, of which the first fruits were seen in the Milanese (1500-1516). Both Charles VIII. (1484) and Louis XII. (1499 for ten years) renewed Louis XI.’s treaty. The French attempts to gain Milan were largely carried on by the help of Swiss mercenaries, some of whom were on the opposite side; and, as brotherly feeling was still too strong to make it possible for them to fight against one another, Ludovico Sforza’s Swiss troops shamefully betrayed him to the French at Novara (1500). In 1500, too, the three Forest districts occupied Bellinzona at the request of its inhabitants, and in 1503 Louis XII. was forced to cede it to them. He, however, often held back the pay of his Swiss troops, and treated them as mere hirelings, so that when the ten years’ treaty came to an end Matthew Schinner, bishop of Sitten (or Sion), induced them to join (1510) the pope, Julius II., then engaged in forming the Holy League to expel the French from Italy. But when, after the battle of Ravenna, Louis XII. became all-powerful in Lombardy, 20,000 Swiss poured down into the Milanese and occupied it, Schmid, the burgomaster of Zurich, naming Maximilian (Ludovico’s son) duke of Milan, in return for which he ceded to the Confederates Locarno, Val Maggia, Mendrisio, and Lugano (1512), while the Rhaetian leagues received Chiavenna, Bormio, and the Valtelline. (The former districts, with Bellinzona and the Val Leventina, were in 1803 made into the canton of Ticino, the latter were held by Rhaetia till 1797.) In 1513 the Swiss completely defeated the French at Novara, and in 1514 Pace was sent by Henry VIII. of England to give pensions and get soldiers. Francis I. at once on his accession (1515) began to prepare to win back the Milanese, and, successfully evading the Swiss awaiting his descent from the Alps, beat them in a pitched battle at Marignano near Milan (September 13, 1515), which broke the Swiss power in North Italy, so that in 1516 a peace was made with France,—Wallis, the Rhaetian leagues, and St Gall being included on the side of the Confederates. Provisions were made for the neutrality of either party in case the other became involved in war, and large pensions were promised. This treaty was extended by another in 1521 (to which Zurich, then under Zwingli’s influence, would not agree, holding aloof from the French alliance till 1614), by which the French king might, with the consent of the Confederation, enlist any number of men between 6000 and 16,000, paying them fit wages, and the pensions were raised to 3000 francs annually to each member of the Confederation. These two treaties were the starting point and foundation of later French interference with Swiss affairs, which became more and more oppressive, and was not finally thrown off till 1814.

IV. In 1499 the Swiss had practically renounced their allegiance to the emperor, the temporal chief of the world according to mediaeval theory; and in the 16th century a great number of them did the same by the world’s spiritual chief, the pope. The scene of the revolt was Zurich, and the leader Ulrich Zwingli. But we cannot understand Zwingli’s career unless we remember that he was almost more a political reformer than a religious one. In his former character his policy was threefold. He bitterly opposed the French alliance and the pension and mercenary system, for he had seen its evils with his own eyes when serving as chaplain with the troops in the Milanese in 1512 and 1515. Hence in 1521 his influence kept Zurich back from joining in the treaty with Francis I. Then, too, at the time of the Peasant Revolt (1525), he did what he could to lighten the harsh rule of the city over the neighbouring rural districts, and succeeded in getting serfage abolished. Again he had it greatly at heart to secure for Zurich and Bern the chief power in the Confederation, because of their importance and size; he wished to give them extra votes in the diet, and would have given them two-thirds of the “common bailiwicks” when these were divided. In his character as a religious reformer we must remember that he was a humanist, and deeply read in classical literature, which accounts for his turning the canonries of the Grossmünster into professorships, reviving the old school of the Carolinum, and relying on the arm of the state to carry out religious changes. His theology sprang from a single ruling principle—the absolute and unlimited sovereignty of God. Hence his profound respect for the letter of the Bible led him to “legalism” and extreme Sabbatarianism. Hence his view of the incarnation bordered on Unitarianism, and sacraments were mere signs of that which is already given; hence too sprang his denial of man’s free will and his belief in absolute election and reprobation. Nay, God, being the absolute Author of all things, is the Author of evil, though He is not immoral, for He is above law, and what is morally wrong for man is not so for God. Zwingli began to preach the new views as early as 1516, long before and quite independently of Luther; but it was only when at the end of 1518 he was called to Zurich as parish priest that he began to make any noise, and in fact it was even later (1522), when his admirers allowed themselves to eat fish in Lent, that disturbances arose, and the diet forbade all preaching which would disturb the public peace. But, after succeeding at two public disputations, his views rapidly gained ground at Zurich, which long, however, stood quite alone, the other Confederates issuing an appeal to await the decision of the asked-for general council, and proposing to carry out by the arm of the state certain small reforms, while clinging to the old doctrines. Zwingli had to put down the extreme wing of the Reformers—the Anabaptists—by force. Quarrels too arose as to allowing the new views in the “common bailiwicks.” The disputation at Baden (1526) was in favour of the maintainers of the old faith; but that at Bern (1528) resulted in securing for the new views the support of that great town, and so matters began to take another aspect. In 1528 Bern joined the union formed in 1527 in favour of religious freedom by Zurich and Constance (Christliches Burgrecht), and her example was followed by Schaffhausen, St Gall, Basel, and Mühlhausen. This attempt to virtually break up the League was met in February 1529 by the offensive and defensive alliance made with King Ferdinand of Hungary (brother of the emperor) by the three Forest districts, with Lucerne and Zug, followed (April 1529) by the “Christliche Vereinigung,” or union between these five members of the League. Zurich was greatly moved by this, and, as Zwingli held that for the honour of God war was as necessary as iconoclasm, war seemed imminent; but Bern held back; and the first peace of Kappel was concluded (June 1529), by which the Hungarian alliance was annulled and the principle of “religious parity” (or freedom) was admitted in the case of each member of the League and in the “common bailiwicks.” This was at once a victory and a check for Zwingli. He tried to make an alliance with the Protestants in Germany, but failed at the meeting at Marburg (October 1529) to come to an agreement with Luther on the subject of the eucharist, and the division between the Swiss and the German Reformations was stereotyped. Zwingli now developed his views as to the greater weight which Zurich and Bern ought to have in the. League. Quarrels too went on in the “common bailiwicks,” for the members of the League who clung to the old faith had a majority of votes in matters relating to these districts. Zurich tried to cut off supplies of food from reaching the Catholic members (contrary to the wishes of Zwingli), and, on the death of the abbot of St Gall, disregarding the rights of Lucerne, Schwyz, and Glarus, who shared with her the office of protectors of the abbey, suppressed the monastery, giving the rule of the land and the people to her own officers. Bern in vain tried to moderate this aggressive policy, and the Catholic members of the League indignantly advanced towards Zurich. Near Kappel, on October 11, 1531, the Zurich vanguard under Göldli was (perhaps owing to his treachery) surprised, and despite reinforcements the men of Zurich were beaten, among the slain being Zwingli himself. Another defeat completed the discomfiture of Zurich, and by the second peace of Kappel (November 1531) the principle of “parity” was recognized, not merely in the case of each member of the League and the “common bailiwicks,” but also in that of each parish or “communes Thus everywhere the rights of a minority were protected from the encroachments of the majority. The “Christliches Burgrecht” was abolished, and Zurich condemned to pay heavy damages. Bullinger succeeded Zwingli, but this treaty meant that neither side could now try to convert the other wholesale. The League was permanently split into two religious camps: the Catholics, who met at Lucerne, numbered, besides the five already mentioned, Freiburg, Solothurn, Appenzell (Inner Rhoden), and St Gall (with Wallis), thus commanding seventeen votes (out of twenty-nine) in the diet; the Evangelicals were Zurich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, Appenzell (Ausser Rhoden) (with Graubünden), who met at Aarau; while Thurgau and Glarus were divided.

Bern had her eyes always fixed upon the Savoyard lands to the south-west, in which she had got a footing in 1475, and now made zeal for religious reforms the excuse for resuming her advance policy. In 1526 William Farel, a preacher from Dauphiné, had been sent to reform Aigle, Morat, and Neuchâtel. In 1532 he came to Geneva, an ancient city of which the rule had long been disputed by the prince-bishop, the burgesses, and the house of Savoy, the latter holding the neighbouring districts. She had become in 1519 the ally of Freiburg, in 1526 that of Bern also; and in 1530, by their influence, a peace was made between the contending parties. (In 1531 Bonivard, the prior of St Victor, for joining a rising in favour of political liberty, was imprisoned in the castle of Chillon, remaining there till 1536.) The religious changes introduced by Farel greatly displeased Freiburg, which abandoned the alliance (1534), and in 1535 the Reformation was firmly planted in the city. The duke of Savoy, however, took up arms against Bern (1536), who overran Gex, Vaud, and the independent bishopric of Lausanne, as well as the Chablais to the south of the lake. Geneva was only saved by the unwillingness of the citizens. Bern thus ruled north and south of the lake, and carried matters with a high hand. Shortly after this John Calvin, a refugee from Picardy, was, when passing through Geneva, detained by Farel to aid him, and, after an exile from 1538-1541, owing to opposition of the papal party, and of the burghers, who objected to Bernese rule, he set up his wonderful theocratic government in the city, pushing Zwingli’s principles to their ultimate conclusions (see Servetus) (1553), and in 1555 expelling many who upheld municipal liberty, replacing them by French, English, Italians, and Spaniards as new burghers, whose names are still frequent in Geneva (e.g., Candolle, Mallet, Diodati). His theological views led to disputes with the Zurich Reformers, which were partly settled by the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549, and more completely by the Helvetic Confession of 1566, which formed the basis of union between the two parties.

By the time of Calvin’s death (1564) the old faith had begun to take the offensive; the reforms made by the council of Trent urged on the Catholics to make an attempt to recover lost ground. Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, the hero of St Quentin (1557), and one of the greatest generals of the day, with the support of the Catholic members of the League, demanded the restoration of the districts seized by Bern in 1536, and on October 30, 1564, the treaty of Lausanne confirmed the decision of the other Confederates sitting as arbitrators (according to the old constitutional custom). By this treaty Gex, the Genevois, and the Chablais were to be given back, while Vevey, Chillon, Lausanne, Yverdun were to be kept by Bern, who engaged to maintain the old rights and liberties of Vaud, which in 1565 were further placed under the special protection of France. Thus Bern lost the lands south of the lake, in which St Francis of Sales, the exiled prince-bishop of Geneva, at once proceeded to carry out the restoration of the old faith. In 1555 Bern and Freiburg, as creditors of the debt-laden count, divided the county of Gruyères, thus getting fresh French-speaking subjects. In 1558 Geneva renewed her alliance with Bern, and in 1584 she made one with Zurich.

The decrees of the council of Trent had been accepted fully by the Catholic members of the League, so far as relates to dogma, but not as regards discipline or the relations of church and state, the sovereign rights and jurisdiction of each state being always carefully reserved. The Counter Reformation, however, or reaction in favour of the old faith, was making rapid progress in the Confederation, mainly through the indefatigable exertions of Charles Borromeo, from 1560 to 1584 archbishop of Milan (in which diocese the Italian bailiwicks were included), and nephew of Pius IV., supported at Lucerne by Ludwig Pfyffer, who, having been (1562-1570) the chief of the Swiss mercenaries in the French wars of religion, did so much till his death (1594) to further the religious reaction at home that he was popularly known as the “Swiss king.” In 1574 the Jesuits, the great order of the reaction, were established at Lucerne; in 1579 a papal nuncio came to Lucerne; Charles Borromeo founded the “Collegium Helveticum” at Milan for the education of forty-two young Swiss, and the Catholic members of the League made an alliance with the bishop of Basel; in 1581 the Capuchins were introduced to influence the more ignorant classes. Most important of all was the Golden or Borromean League, concluded (October 5, 1586) between the seven Catholic members of the Confederation (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Freiburg, and Solo thurn) for the maintenance of the true faith in their territories, each engaging to punish backsliding members and to help each other if attacked by external enemies, notwithstanding any other leagues, old or new. This league marks the final breaking up of the Confederation into two great parties, which greatly hindered its progress. The Catholic members had a majority in the diet, and were therefore able to refuse admittance to Geneva, Strasburg, and Mühlhausen. Another result of these religious differences was the breaking up of Appenzell into two bits (1597), each sending one representative to the diet—“Inner Rhoden” remaining Catholic, “Ausser Rhoden” adopting the new views. We may compare with this the action of Zurich in 1555, when she received the Protestant exiles from Locarno and the Italian bailiwicks into her burghership, and Italian names are found there to this day (e.g., Orelli, Muralt). The duke of Savoy made several vain attempts to get hold of Geneva, the last (in 1602) being known as the “Escalade.”

In the Thirty Years’ War the Confederation remained neutral, being bound both to Austria (1474) and to France (1516), and neither religious party wishing to give the other an excuse for calling in foreign armies, But the troubles in Rhaetia threatened entanglements. Austria wished to secure the Münsterthal (belonging to the League of the Ten Jurisdictions), and Spain wanted the command of the passes leading from the Valtelline (conquered by the leagues of Rhaetia in 1512), the object being to connect the Hapsburg lands of Tyrol and Milan. In the Valtelline the rule of the Three Leagues was very harsh, and Spanish intrigues easily brought about the massacre of 1620, by which the valley was won, the Catholic members of the Confederation stopping the troops of Zurich and Bern. In 1622 the Austrians conquered the Prättigau, over which they still had certain feudal rights. French troops regained the Valtelline in 1624, but it was lost once more in 1629 to the imperial troops, and it was not till 1635 that the French, under Rohan, finally succeeded in holding it. The French, however, wished to keep it permanently; hence new troubles arose, and in 1637 the natives, under George Jenatsch, with Spanish aid drove them out, the Spaniards themselves being forced to resign it in 1639. It was only in 1649-52 that the Austrian rights in the Prättigau were finally bought up by the League of the Ten Jurisdictions, which thus gained its freedom.

In consequence of Ferdinand II.’s edict of restitution (1629), by which the status quo of 1552 was re-established —the high-water mark of the Counter Reformation—the abbot of St Gall tried to make some religious changes in his territories, but the protest of Zurich led to the Baden compromise of 1632, by which, in the case of disputes on religious matters arising in the “common bailiwicks,” the decision was to be, not by a majority, but by means of friendly discussion—a logical application of the doctrine of religious parity—or by arbitration.

But by far the most important event in Swiss history in this age is the formal freeing of the Confederation from the empire. Basel had been admitted a member of the League in 1501, two years after the Confederation had been practically freed from the jurisdiction of the imperial chamber, though the city was included in the new division of the empire into “circles” (1521), which did not take in the older members of the Confederation. Basel, however, refused to admit this jurisdiction; the question was taken up by France and Sweden at the congress of Münster, and formed the subject of a special clause in the treaties of Westphalia, by which the city of Basel and the other “Helvetiorum cantones” were declared to be “in the possession of almost entire liberty and exemption from the empire, and nullatenus subject to the imperial tribunals.” This was intended to mean exemption from all obligations to the empire (with which the Confederation was connected hereafter simply as a friend), and to be a definitive settlement of the question. Thus by the events of 1499 and 1648 the Confederation had become an independent European state, which, by the treaty of 1516, stood as regards France in a relation of neutrality.

In 1668, in consequence of Louis XIV.’s temporary occupation of the Franche Comté, an old scheme for settling the number of men to be sent by each member of the Confederation to the joint army, and the appointment of a council of war in war time, that is, an attempt to create a common military organization, was accepted by the diet, which was to send two deputies to the council, armed with full political powers. This agreement, known as the Defensionale, is the only instance of joint and unanimous action in this miserable period of Swiss history, when religious divisions crippled the energy of the Confederation.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the Confederation was practically a dependency of France. In 1614 Zurich for the first time joined in the treaty, which was renewed in 1663 with special provisions as regards the Protestant Swiss mercenaries in the king’s pay and a promise of French neutrality in case of civil war in the League. The Swiss had to stand by while Louis XIV. won Alsace (1648-), Franche Comté (1678), and Strasburg (1681). But, as Louis inclined more and more to an anti-Protestant policy, the Protestant members of the League favoured the Dutch military service; and it was through their influence that in 1707 the “states” of the principality of Neuchâtel, on the extinction of the Longueville line of these princes, decided in favour of the king of Prussia (representing the overlords—the house of Challon-Orange) as against the various French pretenders claiming from the Longueville dynasty by descent or by will. In 1715 the Catholic members of the League, in hopes of retrieving their defeat of 1712 (see below), agreed, while renewing the treaty and capitulations, to put France in the position of the guarantor of the League, with rights of interfering, in case of attack from within or from without, whether by counsel or arms. This last clause was simply the surrender of Swiss independence, and was strongly objected to by the Protestant members of the Confederation, so that in 1777 it was dropped, when all the Confederates made a fresh defensive alliance, wherein their sovereignty and independence were expressly set forth. Thus France had succeeded to the position of the empire with regard to the Confederation, save that her claims were practically asserted and voluntarily admitted.

Between 1648 and 1798 the Confederation was distracted by religious divisions, and feelings ran very high. A scheme to set up a central administration fell through in 1655, through jealousy of Bern and Zurich, the proposers. In 1656 a question as to certain religious refugees, who were driven from Schwyz and took refuge at Zurich, brought about the first Villmergen war, in which the Catholics were successful, and procured a clause in the treaty asserting very strongly the absolute sovereignty in religious as well as in political matters of each member of the League within its own territories. Later, the attempt of the abbot of St Gall to enforce his rights in the Toggenburg swelled into the second Villmergen war (1712), which turned out very ill for the defeated Catholics. Zurich and Bern were henceforth to hold in severalty Baden, Rapperschwyl, and part of the “common bailiwicks” of the Aargau, both towns being given a share in the government of the rest, and Bern in that of Thurgau and Rheinthal, from which as well as from that part of Aargau she had been carefully excluded in 1415 and 1460.

The only thing that prospered was the principle of “religious parity,” which was established by every treaty.

The diet had few powers; the Catholics had the majority there; the sovereign rights of each member of the League and the limited mandate of the envoys effectually checked all progress. Zurich, as the leader of the League, managed matters when the diet was not sitting, but could not enforce her orders. The Confederation was little more than a collection of separate atoms, and it is really marvellous that it did not break up through its own weakness.

In these same two centuries, the chief feature in domestic Swiss politics is the growth of an aristocracy: the power of voting and the power of ruling are placed in the hands of a small class. This is chiefly seen in Bern, Lucerne, Freiburg, and Solothurn, where there were not the primitive democracies of the Forest districts nor the government by guilds as at Zurich, Basel, and Schaffhausen. It was effected by refusing to admit any new burghers, a practice which dates from the middle of the 16th century, and is connected (like the similar movement in the smaller local units of the “communes” in the rural districts) with the question of poor relief after the suppression of the monasteries. Outsiders (Hintersässen or Niedgelassene) had no political rights, however long they might have resided, while the privileges of burghership were strictly hereditary. Further, within the burghers, a small class succeeded in securing the monopoly of all public offices, which was kept up by the practice of co-opting, and was known as the “patriciate.” So in Bern, out of 360 burgher families, 80 (in 1776 18 only} formed the ruling oligarchy; and, though to foreigners the government seemed admirably managed, yet the last thing that could be said of it was that it was democratic. In 1749 Henzi made a fruitless attempt to overthrow this oligarchy, like Fario at Geneva in 1707. The harsh character of Bernese rule (and the same holds good with reference to Uri and the Val Leventina) was shown in the great strictness with which Vaud was kept in hand: it was ruled as a conquered land by a benevolent despot, and we can feel no surprise that Davel in 1723 tried to free his native land, or that it was in Vaud that the principles of the French Revolution were most eagerly welcomed. Another result of this aristocratic tendency was the way in which the cities despised the neighbouring country districts, and managed gradually to deprive them of their equal political rights and to levy heavy taxes upon them. These and other grievances (the fall in the price of food after the close of the Thirty Years’ War, the lowering of the value of the coin, &c.), combined with the presence of many soldiers discharged after the great war, led to the great Peasant Revolt (1653) in the territories of Bern, Solothurn, Lucerne, and Basel, interesting historically as being the first popular rising since the old days of the 13th and 14th centuries, and because reminiscences of legends connected with those times led to the appearance of the “three Tells,” who greatly stirred up the people. The rising was put down at the cost of much bloodshed, but the demands of the peasants were not granted. Yet during this period of political powerlessness a Swiss literature first arises: Gessner and Tschudi in the 16th century are succeeded by Scheuchzer, Haller, Lavater, Bodmer, De Saussure, Rousseau, J. von Müller; the taste for Swiss travel is stimulated by the publication of Ebel’s guide-book, based on the old Deliciae ; industry throve greatly. The residence of such brilliant foreign writers as Voltaire and Gibbon within or close to the territories of the Confederation helped on this remarkable intellectual revival. Political aspirations were not, however, wholly crushed, and found their centre in the Helvetic Society, founded in 1762 by Balthasar and others. The Confederation and France had been closely connected for so long that the outbreak of the French Revolution could not fail to affect the Swiss. The Helvetian Club, founded at Paris in 1790 by several exiled Vaudois and Freiburgers, was the centre from which the new ideas were spread in the western part of the Confederation, and risings directed or stirred up. In 1790 Lower Wallis rose against the oppressive rule of the upper districts; in 1792 Porrentruy defied the prince-bishop of Basel, despite the imperial troops he summoned, declared the “Rauracian” republic, and three months later became the French department of the Mont Terrible; Geneva was only saved (1792) from France by a force sent from Zurich and Bern; and the massacre of the Swiss guard at the Tuileries on August 10, 1792, aroused intense indignation. The rulers, however, unable to enter into the new ideas, contented themselves with suppressing them by force, e.g., Zurich in the case of Stäfa (1795). St Gall managed to free itself from its abbot (1795-97), but the Leagues of Rhaetia so oppressed their subjects in the Valtelline that in 1797 Bonaparte (after conquering the Milanese from the Austrians) joined them to the Cisalpine republic. The diet was distracted by party struggles, and the fall of the old Confederation was not far distant. The rumours of the vast treasures stored up at Bern, and the desire of securing a bulwark against Austrian attack, specially turned the attention of the Directory towards the Confederation; and this was utilized by the heads of the reform party in the Confederation,—Ochs, the burgomaster of Basel, and La Harpe, who had left his home in Vaud through disgust at Bernese oppression, both now wishing for aid from outside in order to free their land from the rule of the oligarchy. Hence, when La Harpe, at the head of twenty-two exiles from Vaud and Freiburg, called (November 20, 1797) on the Directory to protect the liberties of Vaud, which France by the treaty of 1565 was bound to guarantee, his appeal found a ready answer. In 1798 French troops occupied Mühlhausen and Bienne (Biel), as well as those parts of the lands of the princebishop of Basel (St Imier and the Münsterthal) as regards which he had been since 1579 the ally of the Catholic members of the Confederation. Another army entered Vaud (February 1798), when the “Lemanic republic” was proclaimed, and the diet broke up in dismay without taking any steps to avert the coming storm. Brune and his army occupied Freiburg and Solothurn, and, after fierce fighting at Neueneck, entered (March 5) Bern, deserted by her allies, and distracted by quarrels within. With Bern, the stronghold of the aristocratic party, fell the old Confederation. The Revolution triumphed throughout the Confederation. Brune, on March 19, put forth a wonderful scheme by which the Confederation with its “associates” and “subjects” was to be split into three republics —the Tellgau (i.e., the Forest districts), the Rhodanic (i.e., Vaud, Wallis, the Bernese Oberland, and the Italian bailiwicks), and the Helvetic (i.e ., the north and east portions); but the Directory disapproved of this (March 23) and on March 29 the Helvetic republic, one and indivisible, was proclaimed. This was accepted by ten out of the thirteen members of the old Confederation, as well as the constitution drafted by Ochs. By the new scheme the territories of the Everlasting League were split up into twenty-three (later nineteen, Rhaetia only coming in in 1799) administrative districts, called “cantons,” a name now officially used in Switzerland for the first time, though it may be found employed by foreigners in the French treaty of 1452, in Comines and Machiavelli, and in the treaties of Westphalia (1648). A central Government was set up, with its seat at Lucerne, comprising a senate and a great council, together forming the legislature, with an executive of five directors chosen by the legislature, and having four ministers as subordinates or “chief secretaries.” A supreme court of justice was set up; a status of Swiss citizenship was recognized; and absolute freedom to settle in any canton was given, the political “communes” being now composed of all residents, and not merely of the burghers. For the first time an attempt was made to organize the Confederation as a single state, but the change was too sweeping to last, for it largely ignored the local patriotism which had done so much to create the Confederation, though more recently it had made it politically powerless. The three Forest districts rose in rebellion against the invaders and the new constitutions which destroyed their ancient prerogatives; but the valiant resistance of the Schwyzers, under Alois Reding, on the heights of Morgarten (April and May), and that of the Unterwaldners (September), were put down by French armies. The proceedings of the French, however, soon turned into disgust and hatred the joyful feelings with which they had been hailed as liberators. Geneva was annexed to France (1798); Gersau, after an independent existence of over 400 years, was made a mere district of Schwyz; immense fines were levied and the treasury at Bern pillaged; the land was treated as if it had been conquered. The new republic was compelled to make a very close offensive and defensive alliance with France, and its directors were practically nominated from Paris. In 1799 Zurich, the Forest cantons, and Rhaetia became the scene of the struggles of the Austrians (welcomed with joy) against the French and Russians. The manner too in which the reforms were carried out alienated many, and, soon after the Directory gave way to the Consulate in Paris (18 Brumaire or November 10, 1799), the Helvetic directory (January 1800) was replaced by an executive committee.

The scheme of the Helvetic republic had gone too far in the direction of centralization; but it was not easy to find the happy mean, and violent discussions went on between the “unitary” (headed by Ochs and La Harpe) and “federalist” parties. Many drafts were put forward, and one actually submitted to but rejected by a popular vote (May 20, 1802). In July 1802 the French troops were withdrawn from Switzerland by Bonaparte, ostensibly to comply with the treaty of Amiens, really to show the Swiss that their best hopes lay in appealing to him. The Helvetic Government was gradually driven back by armed force, and the federalists seemed getting the best of it, when (October 4) Bonaparte offered himself as mediator, and summoned many of the chief Swiss statesmen to Paris to discuss matters with him (the “Consulta”—December 1802). He had long taken a very special interest in Swiss matters, and in 1802 had given to the Helvetic republic the Frickthal (ceded to France in 1801 by Austria), the last Austrian possession within the borders of the Confederation. On the other hand, he had made (November 1802) Wallis into an independent republic. In the discussions he pointed out that Swiss needs required a federal constitution and a neutral position guaranteed by France. Finally (February 19, 1803) he laid before the Consulta the Act of Mediation which he had elaborated, and which they had perforce to accept—a document which formed a new departure in Swiss history, and the influence of which is visible in the present constitution.

Throughout, “Switzerland” is used for the first time as the official name of the Confederation. The thirteen members of the old Confederation before 1798 are set up again, and to them are added six new cantons,—two (St Gall and Graubünden or Grisons) having been formerly “associates,” and the four others being made up of the subject lands conquered at different times,—Aargau (1415), Thurgau (1460), Ticino or Tessin (1440, 1500, 1512), and Vaud (1536). In the diet, six cantons which had a population of more than 100,000 (viz., Bern, Zurich, Vaud, St Gall, Graubünden, and Aargau) were given two votes, the others having but one apiece, and the deputies were to vote freely within limits, though not against their instructions. Meetings of the diet were to be held alternately at Freiburg, Bern, Solothurn, Basel, Zurich, and Lucerne,—the Government of each of these cantons becoming, by virtue of the presence of the diet, the executive of the Confederation, its chief magistrate being named the “landamman of Switzerland.” The “lands-gemeinden,” or popular assemblies, were restored in the democratic cantons, the cantonal governments in other cases being in the hands of a “great council” (legislative) and the “small council” (executive),—a property qualification being required both for voters and candidates. No canton was to form any political alliances abroad or at home. The “communes” were given larger political rights, the burghers who owned and used the common lands becoming more and more private associations. There was no Swiss burghership, as in 1798, but perfect liberty of settlement in any canton. There were to be no privileged classes or subject lands. A very close alliance with France (on the basis of that of 1516) was concluded. The whole constitution and organization were far better suited for the Swiss than the more symmetrical system of the Helvetic republic; but, as it was guaranteed by Bonaparte, and his influence was predominant, the whole fabric was closely bound up with him, and fell with him. Excellent in itself, the constitution set forth in the Act of Mediation failed by reason of its setting.

For ten years Switzerland enjoyed peace and prosperity under the new constitution. Pestalozzi and Fellenberg worked out their educational theories; K. Escher of Zurich embanked the Linth, and was thence called “von der Linth”; the central Government prepared many schemes for the common welfare. On the other hand, the mediator (who became emperor in 1804) lavishly expended his Swiss troops, the number of which could only be kept up by a regular blood tax, while the “Berlin decrees” raised the price of many articles. In 1806 the principality of Neuchâtel was given to Marshal Berthier; Tessin was occupied by French troops from 1810 to 1813, and in 1810 Wallis was made into the department of the Simplon, so as to secure that pass. At home, the liberty of moving from one canton to another (though given by the constitution) was, by the diet in 1805, restricted by requiring ten years’ residence, and then not granting political rights in the canton or a right of profiting by the communal property. As soon as Napoleon’s power began to wane (1812—13), the position of Switzerland became endangered. Despite the personal wishes of the czar (a pupil of La Harpe’s), the Austrians, supported by the reactionary party in Switzerland, and without any real resistance on the part of the diet, as well as the Russian troops, crossed the frontier on December 21, 1813, and a few days later the diet was induced to declare the abolition of the 1803 constitution, guaranteed, like Swiss neutrality, by Napoleon. Bern headed the party which wished to restore the old state of things, but Zurich and the majority stood out for the nineteen cantons. The powers exercised great pressure to bring about a meeting of deputies from all the nineteen cantons at Zurich (April 6, 1814, “the long diet”), but party strife was so bitter that many questions had to be referred to the congress sitting at Vienna. The congress decided (March 20, 1815) that Wallis, Neuchâtel, and Geneva should be raised from the rank of “associates” to that of full members of the confederation (thus making up the familiar twenty-two), and as compensation gave Bern the town of Bienne (Biel) and all (save a small bit which went to Basel) of the territories of the prince-bishop of Basel (“the Bernese Jura”); but the Valtelline was granted to Austria, and Mühlhausen was not freed from France.

The diet accepted this decision, and on August 7, 1815, the new constitution was sworn to by all the cantons save Nidwald, the consent of which was only obtained by armed force, a delay for which she paid by seeing Engelberg and the valley above (acquired by Nidwald in 1798) given to Obwald. By the new constitution the sovereign rights of each canton were fully recognized, and a return made to the lines of the old constitution, though there were to be no subject lands, and political rights were not to be the exclusive privilege of any class of citizens. Each canton had one vote in the diet, where an absolute majority was to decide all matters save foreign affairs, when a majority of three-fourths was required. The management of current business, &c., shifted every two years between the Governments of Zurich, Bern, and Lucerne (the three “Vororte”). The monasteries were guaranteed in their rights and privileges; and no canton was to make any alliance contrary to the rights of the Confederation or of any other canton. Provision was made for a federal army. Finally the congress, on November 20, 1815, placed Switzerland and parts of North Savoy (Chablais, Faucigny, and part of the Genevois) under the guarantee of the great powers, who engaged to maintain their neutrality, thus freeing Switzerland from her 300 years’ subservience to France, and compensating in some degree for the reactionary nature· of the new Swiss constitution when compared with that of 1803.

V. The cities at once secured for themselves in the cantonal great councils an overwhelming representation over the neighbouring country districts, and the agreement of 1805 as to migration from one canton to another was renewed by twelve cantons. For some time there was little talk of reforms, but in 1819 the Helvetic Society definitely became a political society, and the foundation in 1824 of the Marksmen’s Association enabled men from all cantons to meet together. A few cantons (notably Tessin) were beginning to make reforms, when the influence of the July revolution (1830) in Paris and the sweeping changes in Zurich led the diet to declare (December 27) that it would not interfere with any reforms of cantonal constitutions provided they were in agreement with the pact of 1815. Hence for the next few years great activity in this direction was displayed, and most of the cantons reformed themselves, save the most conservative (e.g., Uri, Glarus) and the advanced who needed no changes (e.g., Geneva, Graubünden). Provision was always made for revising these constitutions at fixed intervals, for the changes were not felt to be final, and seven cantons— Zurich, Bern, Lucerne, Solothurn, St Gall, Aargau, and Thurgau—joined together to guarantee their new free constitutions (Siebener Concordat of March 17, 1832). Soon after, the question of revising the federal pact was brought forward by a large majority of cantons in the diet (July 17), whereon, by the league of Sarnen (November 14), the three Forest cantons, with Neuchâtel, the city of Basel, and Wallis, agreed to maintain the pact of 1815 and to protest against the separation of Basel in two halves (for in the reform struggle Schwyz and Basel had been split up, though the split was permanent only in the latter case). A draft constitution providing for a federal administration distinct from the cantons could not secure a majority in its favour; a reaction against reform set in, and the diet was forced to sanction (1833) the division of Basel into the “city” aud “country” divisions (each with half a vote in the diet), though fortunately in Schwyz the quarrel was healed. Religious quarrels further stirred up strife in connexion with Aargau, which was a canton where religious parity prevailed, later in others. In Zurich the extreme pretensions of the radicals and freethinkers (illustrated by offering a chair of theology in the university to Strauss because of his recent Life of Jesus) brought about a great reaction in 1839, when Zurich was the “Vorort.” In Aargau the parties were very evenly balanced, and, when in 1840, on occasion of the revision of the constitution, the radicals had a popular majority, the aggrieved clerics stirred up a revolt (1840), which was put down, but which gave their opponents (headed by A. Keller) the excuse for carrying a vote in the great council to suppress the eight monasteries in the canton. This was flatly opposed to the pact of 1815, which the diet by a small majority decided must be upheld, though after many discussions it determined (August 31, 1843) to accept the compromise by which four only were to be suppressed, and declared that the matter was now settled. On this the seven Catholic cantons—Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Freiburg, and Wallis—formed (September 7, 1843) a “Sonderbund” or separate league, which (February 1844) issued a manifesto demanding the reopening of the question and the restoration of all the monasteries. Like the radicals in former years the Catholics went too far and too fast, for in October 1844 the clerical party in Lucerne (in the majority since 1841, and favouring the reaction in Wallis) officially invited in the Jesuits and gave them high posts, an act which created all the more sensation because Lucerne was the “Vorort.” Twice (December 1844 and March 1845) parties of Free Lances tried to capture the city. In December 1845 the Sonderbund turned itself into an armed confederation, ready to appeal to war in defence of the rights of each canton. The radicals carried Zurich in 1845 and Bern in 1846, but a majority could not be secured in the diet till Geneva (October 1846) and St Gall (May 1847) were won by the same party. On July 20, 1847, the diet, by a small majority, declared that the Sonderbund was contrary to the federal pact, which on August 16 it was resolved to revise, while on September 3 it was decided to invite each canton to expel the Jesuits. Most of the great powers favoured the Sonderbund, but England took the contrary view. On October 29 the deputies of the unyielding cantons left the diet, which ordered on November 4 that its decree should be enforced by arms. The war was short (November 11—29), mainly owing to the ability of Dufour, and the loss of life trifling. One after another the rebellious cantons were forced to surrender, and, as the Paris revolution of February 1848 occupied all the attention of the great powers (who by the constitution of 1815 should have been consulted in the revision of the pact), the Swiss were enabled to settle their own affairs quietly. Schwyz and Zug abolished their “landsgemeinden,” and the seven were condemned to pay the costs of the war (ultimately defrayed by subscription), which had been waged rather on religious than on strict particularist or states-rights grounds. The diet meanwhile debated the draft constitution drawn up by Kern of Thurgau and Druey of Vaud, which in the summer of 1848 was accepted by fifteen and a half cantons, the minority consisting of the three Forest cantons, Wallis, Zug, Tessin, and Appenzell (Inner Rhoden), and it was proclaimed on September 12.

The new constitution inclined rather to the Act of Mediation than to the system which prevailed before 1798. A status of “Swiss citizenship” was set up, closely joined to cantonal citizenship: a man settling in a canton not being his birthplace got cantonal citizenship after two years, but was excluded from all local rights in the “commune” where he might reside. A federal or central Government was set up, to which the cantons gave up a certain part of their sovereign rights, retaining the rest. The federal legislature (or assembly) was made up of two houses—the council of states (Stände Rath), composed of two deputies from each canton, whether small or great (44 in all), and the national couneil (National Rath), made up of deputies (now 145 in number) elected for three years, in the proportion of one for every 20,000 souls or fraction over 10,000, the electors being all Swiss citizens. The federal council or executive (Bundesrath) consisted of seven members elected by the federal assembly; they are jointly responsible for all business, though for sake of convenience there are various departments, and their chairman is called the president of the Confederation. The federal judiciary (Bundesgericht) is made up of eleven members elected by the federal assembly for three years; its jurisdiction is chiefly confined to civil cases, in which the Confederation is a party (if a canton, the federal council may refer the case to the federal tribunal), but takes in also great political crimes,—all constitutional questions, however, being reserved for the federal assembly. A federal university and a polytechnic school were to be founded; the latter only has as yet been set up, and is fixed at Zurich. All military capitulations were forbidden in the future. Every canton must treat Swiss citizens who belong to one of the Christian confessions like their own citizens, for the right of free settlement is given to all such, though they acquired no rights in the “commune.” All Christians were guaranteed the exercise of their religion, but the Jesuits and similar religious orders were not to be received in any canton. German, French, and Italian were recognized as national languages.

The constitution as a whole marked a great step forwards; though very many rights were still reserved to the cantons, yet there was a fully organized central government. Almost the first act of the federal assembly was to exercise the power given them of determining the home of the federal authorities, and on November 28, 1848, Bern was chosen, though Zurich still ranks as the first canton in the Confederation.

By this early settlement of disputes Switzerland was protected from the general revolutionary movement of 1848, and in later years her political history has been uneventful, though she has felt the weight of the great European crisis in industrial and social matters.

The position of Neuchâtel, as a member of the Confederation (as regards its government only) and as a principality ruled by the king of Prussia, whose rights had been expressly recognized by the congress of Vienna, was uncertain. She had not sent troops in 1847, and, though in 1848 there was a revolution there, the prince did not recognize the changes. Finally, a royalist conspiracy in September 1856 to undo the work of 1848 caused great excitement and anger in Switzerland, and it was only by the mediation of Napoleon III. and the other powers that the prince renounced (1857) all his rights, save his title, which his successor (the German emperor) has also dropped. Since that time Neuchâtel has been an ordinary member of the Confederation. In 1859-60 the cession of Savoy (part of it neutralized in 1815) to France aroused considerable indignation, and in 1862 the long-standing question of frontiers in the Vallee de Dappes was finally arranged with France. In 1871 many French refugees, especially Bourbaki’s army, were most hospitably received and sheltered. The growth of the Old Catholics after the Vatican council (1870) caused many disturbances in western Switzerland, especially in the Bernese Jura. The attack was led by Bishop Lachat of Basel, whose see was suppressed by several cantons in 1873. The Old Catholics have been recognized by nine cantons and the see of Basel set up again, though Bern does not recognize it. The appointment by the pope of the abbé Mermillod as “apostolic vicar” of Geneva, which was separated from the diocese of Freiburg, led to Monseigneur Mermillod’s banishment from Switzerland (1872), but in 1883 he was raised to the vacant see of Freiburg and allowed by the federal authorities to return, though Geneva still refuses to recognize him. Perhaps the latest event of importance to Switzerland was the opening of the St Gotthard tunnel, which was begun in 1871 and ended in 1880; by it the Forest cantons seem likely to regain the importance which was theirs in the early days of the Confederation.

From 1848 onwards the cantons continually revised their constitutions, always in a democratic sense, though after the Sonderbund War Schwyz and Zug abolished their “landsgemeinde.” The chief point was the introduction of the referendum, by which laws made by the cantonal legislature may (facultative referendum) or must (obligatory referendum) be submitted to the people for their approval, and this has obtained such general acceptance that Freiburg alone does not possess the referendum in either of its two forms, Tessin having accepted it in its optional form in 1883. It was therefore only natural that attempts should be made to revise the federal constitution of 1848 in a democratic and centralizing sense, for it had been provided that the federal assembly, on its own initiative or on the written request of 50,000 Swiss electors, could submit the question of revision to a popular vote. In 1866 the restriction of certain rights (mentioned above) to Christians only was swept away; but the attempt at final revision in 1872 was defeated by a small majority, owing to the efforts of the anti-centralizing party. Finally, however, another draft was better liked, and on April 19, 1874, the new constitution was accepted by the people—14½ cantons against 7½ (those of 1848 without Tessin, but with Freiburg and Lucerne) and 340,199 votes as against 198,013. This constitution is that now in force, and is simply an improved edition of that of 1848. The federal tribunal (now of nine members only) was fixed (by federal law) at Lausanne, and its jurisdiction enlarged, especially in constitutional disputes between cantons and the federal authorities, though jurisdiction in administrative matters (e.g., educational, religious, election, commercial) is given to the federal council, a division of functions which is very anomalous, and does not work well. A system of free elementary education was set up, and many regulations made on ecclesiastical matters. A man settling in another canton was, after a residence of three months only, given all cantonal and communal rights, save a share in the common property (an arrangement which as far as possible kept up the old principle that the “commune” is the true unit out of which cantons and the Confederation are built), and the membership of the “commune” carries with it cantonal and federal rights. The referendum was introduced in its “facultative” form; i.e., all federal laws must be submitted to popular vote on the demand of 30,000 Swiss electors or of eight cantons. If the revision of the federal constitution is demanded by one of the two houses of the federal assembly or by 50,000 Swiss citizens, the question of revision must be submitted to a popular vote, as also the draft of the revised constitution,—these provisions, contained already in the constitution of 1848, forming a species of “obligatory referendum.” It was supposed that this plan would lead to radical and sweeping changes; but as a matter of fact there have been (1874-86) about one hundred and seven federal laws and resolutions passed by the assembly, of which nineteen were by the referendum submitted to popular vote, thirteen being rejected, while six only were accepted,—the rest becoming law as no referendum was demanded. There has been a very steady opposition to all schemes aiming at increased centralization. By the constitutions of 1848 and 1874 Switzerland has ceased to be a mere union of independent states joined by a treaty, and has become a single state with a well-organized central Government, to which have been given certain of the rights of the independent cantons, but increased centralization would destroy the whole character of the Confederation, in which the cantons are not administrative divisions but living political communities. Swiss history teaches us, all the way through, that Swiss liberty has been won by a close union of many small states, and we cannot doubt that it will be best preserved by the same means, and not by obliterating all local peculiarities, nowhere so striking and nowhere so historically important as in Switzerland.

Chronological Table of Chief Events.

1291. First League of the Three Lands.

1315. Morgarten.

1353. The Eight Orte complete. 1386. Sempach.

1388. Näfels.

1394. Hapsburgs give up rights 1444. St Jakob an der Birs. 1474. Everlasting Compact. 1476. Granson and Morat.

1481. Compact of Stanz.

1499. Practical Freedom from the Empire.

1513. The Thirteen complete. 1516. Alliance with France.

1531. Kappel.

1586. Golden League.

1648. Formal Freedom from the

Empire.

1798. The Helvetic Republic. 1803. Act of Mediation—19

Cantons.

1815. Federal Pact—22 Cantons.

1847. Sonderbund War.

1848. Federal Constitution. 1874. Revised Constitution.

General Authorities.— For the early history, the works of Huber, Rilliet, and Von Wyss (see Tell) may be consulted; for general political history those of Daguet, Dändliker (large and small versions), Henne am Rhyn, Oechsli, Strickler, Vulliemin; and, for constitutional history, those of Blumer, Bluntschli, Dubs, Meyer, and Orelli. Of those named, the works of Rilliet, 'Dändliker (the small version), Strickler, Dubs, and Orelli are best suited for foreign readers. Books on local history and on special periods abound, and many very valuable essays are hidden in the publications of the numerous cantonal historical societies. Of modem English works relating to Switzerland the most noteworthy are G. Grote, Seven Letters concerning the Politics of Switzerland [the Sonderbund War of 1847] (originally published 1847, reprinted 1876), and E. A. Freeman, “Review of Kirk’s ‘ Charles the Bold,”’ in Historical Essays, first series, 1872, pp. 335-370, and Historical Geography of Europe, 1881. The great Historisch-Geographischer Atlas der Schweiz, by Vögelin, Meyer von Knonau, and Von Wyss (Zurich, 1870), is almost indispensable to any serious student of Swiss history. Gerster’s small maps are appended to Oechsli's history, and also published separately. (W. A. B. C.)

Part III.— Literature.

It can hardly be said of Switzerland that she possesses a truly national literature. She has a literature in French and a literature in German, but these literatures are not the expression of a common intellectual life, for the German and French cantons have always been to some extent dominated by different ideas and sympathies. Political union has been only in part associated with the deeper union which relates to purely ideal interests. Even the difference between the French and the German literatures of Switzerland does not give a complete conception of the diversity of thought and sentiment which exists in the country. Switzerland has also produced Italian writers and writers who use the Romansch dialect of the Grisons. The Romansch and Italian branches of her literature are not, however, sufficiently important to deserve more than passing notice.

During the struggles against the Hapsburgs the members of the Confederation were too seriously occupied in defending their political rights and in adding to their territory to be very eager for the satisfaction of intellectual needs. They produced some vigorous war songs, but in other respects they were content with such literature as might happen to reach them from neighbouring countries. At the time of the Reformation there was much intellectual activity in Switzerland, but it related chiefly to the controversy of the Protestants with the Church of Rome; and Zwingli, Bullinger, and the other Reformers of the German cantons were not, like Luther, wise enough to write important treatises in the language of the people. They wrote chiefly in Latin, reserving the use of German for sermons and hymns. One good writer of this period whose interest was not confined to theology was Francois Bonnivard, who, although a native of Savoy, had, as prior of the monastery of St Victor, been associated with Geneva before the Reformation. He was one of the most resolute of those who opposed the ambition of Charles III., duke of Savoy; and it is he whose sufferings in the service of his adopted country have been immortalized by Byron in “The Prisoner of Chillon.” After his release from imprisonment he became a Protestant, and wrote in French several important books, the chief of which is his Chroniques de Genève. This work is written in a bright and animated style, and is especially valuable for its account of events with which the author himself was connected. Another vigorous writer of the 16th century was Aegidius Tschudi, who remained loyal to the Roman Church. He devoted himself with enthusiasm to the study of history. The only result of his labours given to the world in his lifetime was Die uralt wahrhafftig alpisch Phatia, but several other works have since been published, the most important being his Chronicon Helveticum and his Hauptschlüssel zu verschiedenen Alterthümern.

After the Reformation a respect for learning was maintained by the university of Basel, the Carolinum of Zurich, and various other educational institutions in the leading towns of the Confederation; but for a long time Switzerland took little part in the literary movement of Europe. Theology was still generally thought to be the only subject worthy of study by serious minds, and theologians continued to write their books in Latin (as, for example, C. Gessner of Zurich). In this respect their example was followed by men of science. In the few instances in which scholars belonging to German cantons wished to appeal to readers who were not specialists, they wrote in French, for Switzerland was so intimately associated in politics with France that the French language was spoken by the educated classes in all parts of the country. French literature was the only modern literature of which they had any real knowledge.

Early in the 18th century there were many signs of an intellectual awakening both in the German and in the French districts. The literary activity manifested in the German cantons was indirectly connected with the fact that they had been gradually acquiring a stronger sense of political independence. They had been alienated from France by the arrogance of the French Government, and had been forced to consider whether it might not be possible for Switzerland to defend her own interests without foreign patronage. Here and there scholars began to interest themselves in Swiss history, and to take pride in the achievements of the forefathers of the republic; and, in proportion as patriotic sentiment increased, thoughtful men became less inclined to take all their ideas from the country to which alone they had hitherto looked for intellectual guidance. They studied with greater earnestness the literatures of Greece and Rome, and some of them turned to English literature, with which they had not up to this time had the slightest acquaintance. These influences gave a powerful impetus to the best aspirations of the German population of Switzerland, and it was not in literature only that important results were achieved. Members of the family of Bernoulli at the university of

Basel had already been doing great work in mathematics; and now the fame of Switzerland as a country favourable to the development of science was extended by many investigators, the best known of whom were Euler, Haller, Scheuchzer, and Muralt.

The writer who first gave expression to the most characteristic literary conceptions of his time in Switzerland was J. J. Bodmer, a native of Zurich. He was a good classical scholar, and in youth had made himself familiar with some of the masterpieces of English, French, and Italian literature. In 1721, in association with his friend Breitinger, a learned Protestant clergyman in Zurich, he began to issue the Discurse der Maler, written in imitation of the style of the English essayists. In this periodical the two friends criticized freely the works of some popular German versifiers, and they wrote with so much force and confidence that they soon exercised considerable influence not only in Switzerland but in Germany. When the value of their work was beginning to be recognized, a high place was taken among German men of letters by Gottsched, a professor at Leipsic. He was an ardent admirer of the classic drama of France, and gathered around him a number of enthusiastic disciples, known as the Saxon school. For some time he was on friendly terms with the Swiss critics, with whom he agreed in condemning the wild extravagance of Lohenstein and his imitators. But when Bodmer and Breitinger went on to praise English literature, and to call attention especially to the splendid qualities of Milton, Gottsched denounced their opinions as utterly false and misleading. The result was that a bitter controversy broke out between the Saxon and Swiss schools, Bodmer and Breitinger presenting an elaborate statement of critical doctrine, the former in Vom Wunderbaren in der Poesie (1740), the latter in Kritische Dichtkunst (1740). The controversy was followed with great interest by many readers, and, although it was by and by almost forgotten, it helped to prepare the way for the outburst of German literature begun by Klopstock, Wieland, and Lessing. The theories of all the combatants were to some extent crude and even grotesque, but Bodmer and Breitinger did excellent service by the vigour with which they protested against the notion that poetry is merely the work of the understanding acting in subjection to rigid rules, and by their enthusiastic appreciation of great English writers. Bodmer also opened fresh sources of inspiration by editing a part of the Nibelungenlied and some poems of the Minnesinger,—undertakings in which he anticipated the labours of the Romantic school. He wrote an epic, the Noachide, and several dramas, but his work as a poet is feeble and unimportant in comparison with his achievements as an editor and critic.

A. von Haller, who made his fame chiefly as a man of science (see vol. xi. p. 396), ranked in literature also among the foremost men of his day. His poems are too directly didactic to give much pleasure to modern readers, but in some of them—especially Die Alpen— there are passages of striking force and beauty. Haller knew the Alps not merely from books but by having visited them, and to him belongs the credit of having revealed that they appeal powerfully to the imagination, and of having associated them with great thoughts and aspirations. He wrote several prose romances, but outside of Switzerland these works, which had many readers at the time of their publication, are now practically forgotten.

A Swiss writer of the 18th century who, as a poet, became more famous even than Haller was Solomon Gessner. At Berlin and Hamburg he came under the influence of Rarnler and Hagedorn, and after his return to his native town Zurich, where he lived as an artist, he published a series of idyllic poems which excited universal admiration. The most popular of his writings was his prose idyl, Der Tod Abel’s (1758). This work was translated into many languages, and was received with not less favour in Germany, France, and England than in Switzerland. There is not much serious thought in Gessner’s works, and his sentiment sometimes degenerates into sentimentalism, but a permanent place is secured for him in literature by his simple, lucid style and by the delicate grace of his sketches of ideal scenery. These qualities were warmly appreciated by Lessing and afterwards by Goethe.

Of the German Swiss poets who were born after Gessner had become famous the best were J. G. Salis-Seewis and J. M. Usteri. Salis-Seewis was acquainted with Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland, but he was not so much influenced by them as by a greatly inferior poet, Matthison, whose ideas and methods closely resembled his own. There is little variety of sentiment in the poems of Salis-Seewis, but their uniformity of tone is prevented from being tiresome by his perfect sincerity and by the vividness of his diction. Usteri wrote at least one song—“Freut euch des Lebens ”—which became popular among Germans of all classes, but his most important writings were some clever stories in the German dialect of Zurich.

Philosophy, in the strict sense of the term, was not profoundly studied in the German cantons in the 18th century, but philosophical problems, especially those relating to ethics, were discussed in a popular style by a good many more or less able writers. Of these writers one of the most renowned was J. G. Zimmermann. His chief writings are Ueber die Einsamkeit (1755) and Vom Nationalstolze (1758). These works present a strange combination of cynicism and sentimentalism, but they profoundly impressed Zimmermann’s contemporaries, and were translated into most European languages. J. G. Sulzer spent the greater part of his life in Berlin, where he was held in much esteem at the time when Lessing was beginning to make a name as a critic and dramatist. His principal work is his Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Künste, in which he tried to present a complete exposition of the laws of art, starting with the philosophical principles of Wolf, and combining them with critical doctrines derived from English and French writers. His style is somewhat cold and formal, and to later generations his governing thoughts have seemed meagre and unfruitful. H. K. Hirzel wrote Das Bild eines wahren Patrioten (1767) and various other works, in which he displayed a considerable power of expounding and illustrating great moral principles. He is remembered chiefly, however, by a charming description which he wrote of a day spent by Klopstock and himself with some friends on the Lake of Zurich,—a day celebrated by Klopstock in one of the finest of his early odes. J. K. Lavater made some reputation as a poet, but he owed his fame chiefly to his Physioqnomische Fragmente (1775-78), in which he sought to develop the idea that the face presents a perfect indication of character, and that physiognomy may therefore be treated as a science. His notions are arbitrary and rather mystical, but he expressed them with so much vigour and enthusiasm that he found many admirers and disciples. J. H. Pestalozzi was a less pretentious but infinitely more useful writer than Lavater. Early in life, mainly through the influence of Rousseau, he became impressed by the necessity of a radical change in the methods of popular education; and with splendid selfsacrifice he devoted his energies to the task of realizing his ideas and of inspiring others with a sense of their importance. His writings—of which Lienhard und Gertrud is the best—are not distinguished by any remarkable literary qualities, but his theories made his name famous all over the civilized world, and children in every good school may still be said to profit indirectly by his labours.

In the 18th century the German cantons produced many writers on historical subjects. One of the most distinguished of them was I. Iselin, who, in his Geschichte der Menschheit (1768), offered suggestions akin to those which were afterwards set forth with wider knowledge and deeper insight by Herder. J. H. Tschudi and J. J. Tschudi, descendants of Aegidius Tschudi, also did much good work as historians. Greater than any of these—the foremost historical writer of Switzerland—was J. von Müller, whose writings marked an era in German literature. His masterpiece is his Geschichte der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (1780). Müller had not an adequate appreciation of the laws of evidence in historical inquiry, but he was indefatigable in research, and no German historian of his time had so great a power of bringing out the significance of facts by his method of grouping them. His style, although sometimes obscure and rhetorical, was often made warm and glowing by his eager love of freedom and justice.

The literary movement of the French districts in the 18th century had little direct relation with that of the German cantons. It sprang chiefly from the influence of French refugees, who flocked in great numbers to western Switzerland after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The most energetic of the French writers of Switzerland in the first half of the 18th century was Bourguet, the son of a refugee. He travelled in Italy and Holland, and on his return to Geneva founded the Bibliothèque Italique, which appeared from 1729 to 1734. In carrying on this periodica], which extended to eighteen volumes, Bourguet was aided by a good many Swiss writers—among others by Abraham Ruchat and Loys de Bochat of Lausanne. Bourguet’s colleagues also contributed articles to French periodicals of a similar kind in Holland, three of which— the Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique, the Bibliothèque Choisie, and the Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne— were conducted by Jean le Clerc, a native of Geneva. In 1732 Bourguet started at Neuchâtel the Mercure Suisse, which went on until 1784 and did much to stimulate the interest of its readers in science, literature, history, and archaeology. The indefatigable editor and his colleagues did not confine themselves to journalistic work. One of his books— Traité des Petrifactions— was an important contribution to geology; and Loys de Bochat wrote a careful book entitled Mémoires Critiques sur l’Histoire Ancienne de la Suisse. Ruchat was the author of Histoire de la Reformation de la Suisse and of Délices de la Suisse. The writings of J. P. de Crousaz, a friend of Bourguet, display no remarkable qualities, but two of them, his Examen of Pope’s Essay on Man and his Commentaire on the same poem, have some interest for English readers. An English translation of the Examen by Mrs Elizabeth Carter was published in 1739, and led to the intervention of Warburton, who considered it necessary to prove that the Essay was not in any way hostile to religion.

During the second half of the 18th century all Europe was reading the works of a Swiss writer, by far the most illustrious man of letters whom Switzerland has produced —J. J. Rousseau. He moved civilized mankind by many a doctrine which no one now holds to be true, but he owed his astonishing influence not so much to his fallacies as to his passionate zeal for the rights of the poor, to his enthusiasm for the free development of individual character, and to the power with which he reflected in his writings the beauty and the splendour of the external world. Of his own happiness he made shipwreck; but, if we judge his work simply by the practical results which sprang from it, he was perhaps the greatest literary force of modern times. His family was of French origin, but it had been so long settled at Geneva that it had become thoroughly Swiss, and to this fact were due some of the most striking characteristics of his genius. Free and republican Switzerland was the only Continental country whose institutions were favourable to the growth of the ideas with which Rousseau shook to its centre the political and social system of the 18th century.

Of the other French writers of Switzerland in this age the most eminent was perhaps H. B. de Saussure, who, in his Voyages dans les Alpes (1776-79), presented in a lucid and attractive style the results of much careful observation. He was one of the founders of geology, and made important contributions to several other sciences. Another distinguished scientific writer of this time was Charles Bonnet, the author of several valuable works on natural history and psychology. His general conception of the order of the world he developed systematically in his Contemplation de la Nature (1764). Much good work was also done by the brothers De Luc, one of whom, Jean-André de Luc, gave in Lettres sur Quelques Parties de la Suisse (1787) a very vivid picture of the physical, social, and political peculiarities of a portion of Switzerland.

Some clever books were written by Madame de Charrière, a native of Utrecht, who settled with her husband in the principality of Neuchâtel in 1771. Much interest was excited by her lively Lettres Écrites de Lausanne and by her Lettres Neuchäteloises, and both in Switzerland and in France there were many admirers of her Mari Sentimental and of the corresponding work Lettres de Mistress Henley. Samuel Constant, the father of Benjamin Constant, wrote Camille and some other romances in the form of letters; and Cantes Moraux, in the style of Marmontel, were written by J. Senebier, who did better work as an investigator in physics and physiolog.

In the second half of the 18th century there were in French Switzerland many ardent students of history. One of the ablest of them was P. H. Mallet, who took as his special subject the antiquities of northern Europe, but wrote also works on the general history of Denmark, Brunswick, and Hesse. Béranger was the author of a Histoire de Genève; and Lamberty, who had served as secretary of several legations in Holland and Germany, brought together in his Mémoires many interesting details about events of which he had personal knowledge. A good history of Switzerland to the 17th century was written by De Watteville, and Philibert dealt with the same subject in a work entitled Les Révolutions de la Haute-Allemagne, in which he brought the story down to 1468. G. E. von Haller wrote several excellent historical works, the most important of which was his Bibliothek der Schweizergeschichte.

From the latter part of the 18th century onwards French Switzerland has produced many influential writers, but they have been so intimately connected with France that their works properly belong to French literature. Necker, who played so great a part in France before the Revolution, was one of the greatest writers of his age on politics and finance; and his daughter Madame de Stael, whom, although she was born in Paris, Switzerland may also claim, stands in the front rank of women who have devoted themselves to literature. Her most brilliant work, Corinne, was perhaps of less real importance than De l'Allemagne, from which Frenchmen obtained for the first time authentic information as to the intellectual development of Germany. Benjamin Constant wrote a work oh the source, forms, and history of religion; he was also the author of Adolphe, a romance, and adapted Schiller’s Wallenstein for the French stage. But his principal work is the collection of his Discours Prononcés à la Chambre des Députés, in which he eloquently defends, from many points of view, the principles of constitutional government. De Sismondi dis played astonishing energy as a writer on history, literature, and political economy, and it is still necessary for students of the subjects on which he wrote to consult his works. His Histoire des Français, although planned on too vast a scale, is a wonderful monument of industry, learning, and literary skill, and not less valuable in their own way are his Histoire de la Renaissance de la Liberté en Italie and his De la Littérature du Midi de l'Europe. A. Vinet, an eminent Protestant theologian, produced a great impression by his Discours sur Quelques Sujets Religieux and various other theological works, which are full of vigorous thought expressed in a clear, direct, and manly style. Among Swiss novelists R. Töpffer, author of L ’ Heritage, Traversée, and many other works, takes a distinguished place. His early writings attracted the attention of Goethe, who read them with pleasure; and Sainte-Beuve, in praising Töpffer’s methods, gave utterance to the general opinion of educated Frenchmen. The three brothers André, Antoine Elisée, and Joel Cherbuliez, and their sisters Adrienne and Madame Tourte-Cherbuliez, were all well known writers; and Victor Cherbuliez, the son of André, is one of the brightest and most fertile novelists of the present day in France. He commands respect also as a writer on politics.

In the later literature of the German cantons there are not so many famous names as in the later literature of the French cantons. Of a group of writers who connected the influences of the 18th century with those of the 19th, J. B. Albertini was the most original; but he appealed to a comparatively small class. He was a bishop in the church of the Moravian Brethren, and his poems give powerful expression to the deeply religious sentiment of his sect. A romance by J. C. Appenzeller— Gertrud von Wart (1813)—was so popular that it was translated into French, Dutch, and English; but it has not maintained the high place which was for some time attributed to it. J. R. Wyss edited the Alpenrosen from 1811 for about twenty years, and for this periodical he wrote many poems, taking his subjects chiefly from Swiss history and legends. He completed and published a story begun by his father, Der Schweizerische Robinson, translations of which have been widely circulated in France, Spain, England, and America. He also wrote “Rufst du, mein Vaterland,” the great national song of Switzerland. A. E. Fröhlich was a good writer of fables, and J. A. Henne made a considerable reputation, not only as a poet but as the writer of a work entitled Manethos, die Origines unserer Geschichte und Chranologie, in which he sought to prove the European origin of the Aryan race. T. Meyer-Merian, author of the well-known song, “Ich ging so ganz alleine,” was also a vigorous dramatist. Dramatic and lyrical poems of some power were written by T. Bornhauser, but they were too plainly intended to serve a political party to have permanent significance. A more poetical writer was B. Reber, whose Bilder aus den Burgunder-Kriegen present a series of glowing pictures from one of the most splendid periods of Swiss history.

All these writers were surpassed by Albert Bitzius, known as Jeremias Gotthelf from the title of his first book. He was the vicar of Lützelflüh, and for many years found ample scope for his energies in quiet works of benevolence. Der Bauerspiegel, oder Lebensgeschichte des Jeremias Gotthelf, published in 1836, when he was nearly forty years of age, at once made his name famous, and it was followed by Uli der Knecht, Uli der Pachter, Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters, and other powerful tales. The charm of his writings springs from the fact that they are an accurate representation of the thoughts, feelings, and habits of the people among whom he laboured. Bitzius was a man of an ardent and impulsive temper, but a close observer, capable of penetrating far below the surface of life, and endowed with a remarkable faculty of reproducing his impressions in striking imaginative pictures. His style is often rough and careless, but his artistic defects are never serious enough to interrupt the free development of his fresh and vivid conceptions.

Another German writer of Switzerland whose name is well known beyond the limits of his own country is Gottfried Keller. He established his reputation by his romance Der Grüne Heinrich (1854), and afterwards he published Die Leute von Seldwyla, a series of tales of village life, and Sieben Legenden. He is also the author of some volumes of poems.

See E. H. Gaullieur, Études sur l'Histoire Littéraire de la Suisse Française (1856); J. C. Mörikofer, Die schweizerische Literatur des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (1861); and E. Weber, Die poetische Nationalliteratur der deutschen Schweiz (1866-67). (J. SI. )