SWITZERLAND
The best general history of Switzerland available in English is Mr.
E. Salisbury's translation (1899) of the _Short History_ of Prof.
Daendliker. It has little merit as literature, but is abreast of
critical research at all points. For the Reformation period, the
older history of Vieusseux (Library of Useful Knowledge, 1840) is
fuller and better, though now superseded as to early times. The
work of Sir F.O. Adams and C.D. Cunningham on _The Swiss
Confederation_, 1880 (translated and added to in French by M.
Loumyer, 1890), is an excellent conspectus, especially for
contemporary Swiss institutions. As regards the first half of the
last century, Grote's _Seven Letters concerning the Politics of
Switzerland_ (1847, rep. 1876) are most illuminating.
Of fuller histories there are several in French and German. The
longer _Geschichte der Schweiz_ of Prof. Daendliker (1884-87) is
good and instructive, though somewhat commonplace in its thinking.
Dierauer's _Geschichte der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_
(1887), which stops before the Reformation period, is excellent so
far as it goes, and gives abundant references, which Daendliker's
does not; though his _Short History_ gives good bibliographies.
Zschokke's compendious _Des Schweizerlands Geschichte_ (9te
Aufgabe, 1853) is lucid and very readable, but is quite uncritical
as to the medieval period. That is critically and decisively dealt
with in Rilliet's _Les Origines de la Confederation Suisse_, 1868,
and in Dierauer.
In more than one respect, the political evolution of Switzerland is the
most interesting in the whole historic field. The physical basis, the
determinations set up by it, the reactions, the gradual control of bias,
the creation of stability out of centrifugal forces--all go to form the
completest of all political cases.[871] Happier than those of Greece, if
less renowned, the little clans of Switzerland have passed through the
storms of outer and inner strife to a state of something like assured
republican federation. And where old Greece and Renaissance Italy and
Scandinavia have failed to attain to this even on the basis of a common
language and "race," the Swiss Cantons have attained it in despite of a
maximum diversity of speech and stock. As does Japan for Asia, they
disprove for Europe a whole code of false generalisations.
The primary fact in the case, as in that of Greece, is the physical
basis. Like Hellas, the Swiss land is "born divided"; and the first
question that forces itself is as to how the Cantons, while retaining
their home rule, have contrived to escape utterly ruinous inter-tribal
strife, and to attain federal union. The answer, it speedily appears,
begins with noting the fact that Swiss federation is a growth or
aggregation, as it were, from a primary "cell-form." From the early
confederation of the three Forest Cantons of Schwytz, Uri, and
Unterwalden, a set of specially congruous units, led to alliance by
their original isolation from the rest of Helvetia and their common
intercourse through the Lake of Lucerne, came the example and norm for
the whole. The primary influence of mere land-division is proved by the
persistence of the cantonal spirit and methods to this day;[872] but the
history of Switzerland is the history of the social union gradually
forced on the Cantons by varying pressures from outside. That it is due
to no quality of "race" is sufficiently proved by the fact that three or
four languages, and more stocks, are represented in the Republic at this
moment.
Sec. 1. _The Beginnings of Union_
In the union of the Forest Cantons, as in the rooting of several Swiss
cities and the cultivation of remote valleys, the Church has been held
to have played a constructive part. At the outset, according to some
historians,[873] Schwytz and Uri and Unterwalden had but one church
among them; hence a habit of congregation. But the actual records yield
no evidence for this view, any more than for the other early dicta as to
the racial distinctness of the people of the Forest Cantons, and their
immemorial freedom. Broadly speaking, the early Swiss were for the most
part serfs with customary rights. The first documentary trace of them is
in the grant by Louis of Germany to the convent at Zurich, in the year
853, of his _pagellus Uroniae_, with its churches, houses, serfs, lands,
and revenues.[874] This did not constitute the whole of the Canton; but
it seems clear that the bulk of the population were in status serfs,
though when attached to a royal convent they would have such privileges
as would induce even freemen to accept the same state of
dependence.[875] In the Canton of Schwytz, again, the people--there in
larger part freemen--seem to have been always more or less at strife
with the great monastery of Einsiedeln, founded about 946 by Kaiser
Otto, and largely filled by men of aristocratic birth seeking a quiet
life,[876] who held by the usual interests of their class as well as
their corporation.[877] It was a question of ownership of pastures, the
main economic basis in that region; and the descendants of the early
settlers were fighting for their subsistence. Unterwalden, finally (then
known only as the higher and lower valleys, _Stanz_ or _Stannes_ and
_Sarnen_ or _Sarnon_), was led in its development by Uri and Schwytz,
each of which possessed some communal property, the former in respect of
its beginnings as a royal domain, the latter in respect of the
association of its freemen.
Whatever earlier combinations there may have been,[878] it is in the
year 1291[879] that the first recorded pact was made between the three
Cantons; and it arose out of their making a stand for their customary
local rights as against the House of Hapsburg.[880] Uri had in 1231 been
granted by King Henry VII of Germany, son of the emperor Frederick II,
the cherished privilege of enrolment as an imperial fief, an act which
in theory withdrew it from its former feudal subordination to the Count
of Hapsburg; and in 1240 Frederick himself gave the same privilege to
Schwytz.[881] On the unhinging of the imperial system after Frederick's
death, the Hapsburgs, who even in his life had treated the Cantons as
contumacious vassals, fought for their own claims; whereupon in due
course was formed the Pact of 1291. Thus the Swiss Confederation broadly
began in the special strife which arose between the new order of higher
feudal princes and the civic or rural communes on the disintegration of
the Germanic empire in the thirteenth century.[882] The familiar story
of William Tell and the oath-taking at Ruetli or Gruetli in 1308 appears
to be pure myth. There is no historic mention till over a hundred years
later of any such acts by the Austrian bailiff as that story turns upon,
or of any strife whatever in 1308. A pact of confederation had actually
been made seventeen years earlier than that date; and a new and rather
more definite pact was made on the same general grounds in 1315; but the
romance of 1308 remains entirely unattested, and it bears the plainest
marks of myth.
The histories of J. von Mueller, Zschokke, Vieusseux, and others of
the first half of the nineteenth century, are vitiated as regards
the early period by acceptance of the traditions; though the
untrustworthiness of the Tell story had been pointed out as early
as the year 1600 by Franz Guillimann of Fribourg, and again in the
eighteenth century by Iselin, and by Freudenberger in his
_Guillaume Tell: Fable danoise_, 1760. (See Daendliker's _Short
History of Switzerland_, Eng. tr. 1899, pp. 53, 54.) A full and
decisive examination of it will be found in Rilliet's _Les origines
de la Confederation Suisse_, 1868. Compare Dierauer, _Geschichte
der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_, 1887, Buch ii, Kap. i, Sec.
iii; Cox, _Mythology of the Aryan Nations_, ed. 1882, pp. 337-41,
and the essay _William Tell_ in Baring-Gould's _Curious Myths of
the Middle Ages_, 1888. Some very judicial attempts have been made
to show that there is reason to think _some_ fighting occurred in
1308. See, for instance, the pamphlets _Le Gruetli_ and _La querelle
sur les traditions concernant l'origine de la Confederation
Suisse_, by Prof. H. Bordier, in reply to Prof. Rilliet, 1869.
Dierauer, again, declines to go the whole way in negation, and
stands for the view "not fable, but legend--on some basis of fact"
(as cited, i, 150). But even M. Bordier reduces Tell to a mere
"somebody"; and every student surrenders the apple story, which is
at least as old as the twelfth-century Danish version of it in Saxo
Grammaticus.
M. Rilliet holds that the Swiss reproduction was not a local
survival of the Teutonic myth, but a deliberate adaptation made in
Lucerne from the abridgment of Saxo Grammaticus produced by a
German monk, Gheysmer, about 1430 (_Les origines_, pp. 214-16, 327,
328). At Lucerne there was a local school of poetry of the kind
then common in Holland; and the old ballad, which closely follows
Saxo's tale, and which is the probable basis of the story as given
in the later chronicles, seems to have been composed by way of
securing for the Canton of Uri the main honours of the founding of
the Confederation, which were being claimed by the sister Cantons.
Whatever be the basis, the Tell legend is finally untenable, and
the tradition of an immemorial state of freedom in the Forest
Cantons is abandoned even by the conservative critics. See Bordier,
_La querelle_, p. 7. The only point on which a case against the
criticism of M. Rilliet seems to be made out is as regards his view
that the Forest Cantons were not colonised before the eighth
century. As M. Bordier contends, the grant of Louis of Germany
seems to describe a long-settled district. M. Rilliet also goes
somewhat beyond the evidence in assuming that Uri was mainly
colonised under royal influence, Unterwalden by lay and
ecclesiastical proprietors, and Schwytz by freemen (_Les origines_,
pp. 20, 21).
The rise of a durable federation in the central Swiss group is thus a
product of three main factors; the first being their primary physical
union through the Lake of Lucerne, their common highway. But for this
they would probably have been as hostile as were Uri and Glarus, which
had fought from time immemorial.[883] Next was needed the chronic
hostile pressure of an outside force, creating a common political
interest. The septs of pre-Norman Ireland and England, and of the
Scottish Highlands down till modern times, remained at strife long after
Christianisation, because within their own country they were so free to
struggle, and because the examples of forcible centralisation elsewhere
were so remote and so hard to assimilate. But when the Forest Cantons
emerge as such in history in the thirteenth century they are already
menaced by a power which, without undertaking or compassing the toil of
conquering them, habitually drives them to formal combination by its
interference. Its continued pressure evolves the definite political
agreement of 1315, after the victory of Morgarten, in which was made
clear the special difficulty of conquering a race of mountaineers with
the normal cavalry forces and armour-clad or servile infantry of
medieval feudalism[884]--a difficulty which must rank as the third
factor in the beginnings of Swiss independence.
Thus far the half-feudal, half-commercial city of Lucerne, though in
touch with the Forest Cantons through the uniting lake, was their enemy,
as being feudatory of the Hapsburgs; but as the chronic state of war was
ruinous to its trade with Italy, and peculiarly harassing to all
industry, the commercial element forced a coalition, and in 1332 Lucerne
joined the Confederation as Fourth Canton. Now emerges in the affairs
of the Confederation the element of civic class strife, so familiar in
the republics of Italy; for the accession of Lucerne is promptly
followed in that city by a conspiracy of nobles, which is put down by
the help of the allied Cantons; whereupon the nobles are exiled and a
civic council set up, the Duke of Austria being unable to hinder. The
same trouble arises in the case of Zurich, the next accession to the
union. In the ordinary medieval course there had there arisen an
oligarchic government of aristocratic citizens in place of the early
dominion of the Abbess; and the city was made an imperial fief by
Frederick II. On this basis it made commercial treaties in the manner
then common among the cities of Germany, joining the Swabian, Rhenish,
and South-German Leagues, and developing a large trade with Italy and
Germany, and even a silk manufacture. At length the large craftsman
class revolted (1336) under the leadership of a dissentient patrician,
Brun or Braun, who established a constitution in which he as burgomaster
held office for life, with a council of thirteen gildmasters and
thirteen aristocrats, six of the latter being named by Brun. For the
firm support of the gilds he duly paid them by laws checking foreign
competition in manufactured goods, and denying even to the rural
population the right to manufacture. The dispossessed oligarchs kept up
a raiding strife on the frontiers, till at length some who were
permitted to return formed a conspiracy against the burgomaster, which
he suppressed with slaughter. This leading to a league against the city
among the Hapsburgs and the surrounding nobles and the Cantons in treaty
with them, Zurich petitioned to join the Forest Confederation, and was
readily accepted (1351), finally triumphing by their help.
Zurich on its part enabled the Forest Cantons to protect themselves
against Austria by conquering Glarus (1351), which offered little
resistance, and was ranked as a protected territory under the
Confederation. This now formed a compact territorial group save for the
Canton of Zug, intervening between Lucerne and Zurich. As that could not
defend itself against its neighbours, it joined their Confederation
perforce (1352), being received as a full member. The same status was
readily granted to the city of Berne, which, imperially enfranchised in
1218, had carried on a remarkable independent policy on Italian lines,
acquiring territory from the decaying nobles around by mortgage,
purchase, and conquest, till in 1339 they combined against her. Succour
was then given by the Forest Cantons, securing for Berne the victory of
Laupen; and when in 1352 they invited her to join their union, her
rulers accepted. So tepid, however, was still the spirit of union that
at the Peace of Brandenburg in 1352, confirmed by that of Regensburg in
1355, Glarus and Zug consented to withdraw, returning for a time to the
Austrian allegiance;[885] and the confederation of the remaining six
Cantons was still one of the loosest cohesion, differing only in the
fact of its territorial continuity and its organic growth from the many
city-unions which flourished in Germany in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.[886] Only the three original Cantons were pledged to make no
separate treaties; Zurich was specifically permitted to do so; in 1352
Berne was in alliance with the towns of Fribourg and Soleure; in the
next generation Lucerne made a compact with the towns of Sempach and
Richensee; and in 1393 a burgomaster of Zurich carried through a treaty
of alliance with the common enemy, the Duke of Austria.
In this case the mass of the citizens were induced to reverse the policy
and banish those who had planned it; but the right of the city to make
such an alliance was not technically challenged by the Confederation;
and even in Schwytz a few loyalists paid old feudal dues to Austria up
till 1394. A more serious ground of division was the jealousy duly
arising between the rural and the city Cantons, from which came about
the forcible intervention of Schwytz in a dispute between the town and
country sections of Zug. The remaining Cantons insisted on subjecting
the action of both Zug and Schwytz to the verdict of the union, thus
effectually establishing a precedent of federal practice; but in the
first decade of the fifteenth century the Cantons of Schwytz and Glarus
are found on their own account helping the men of Appenzell to win their
independence; and when the successful Appenzellers, who had developed a
turn for aggression and confiscation, sought to join the union, they
were accepted only as allies by the Cantons individually, Berne holding
aloof. Yet again, when the house of Austria (which had abandoned its
claims on the Cantons in 1412) was under the ban of the Empire in 1415,
and the city Cantons led a movement of attack upon its territories, Uri
and the Appenzellers took no part; while in 1422 Uri and Unterwalden
acted alone in their unsuccessful war with the Duke of Milan.
Thus far the Confederation, in its different degrees of union, had
included only German-speaking Cantons; but in 1420 the French-speaking
Valais (Ger. Wallis, from the Latin _Vallis Poenina?_ or foreigners),
in 1424 Upper Rhaetia, and in the same year the Romance-speaking Engadin,
also in Rhaetia, won their virtual independence. In all, three leagues
were formed in Rhaetia, forming their own confederation, known as the
Grisons (="the Greys," the _Graubuenden_ or Grey Leagues, from the colour
of the peasants' smocks).
As the sphere of self-government widened, new risks of strife arose. All
the while the older Cantons, in particular the cities, had been
acquiring lands in the feudal fashion; and in 1440 a general scramble
for an inheritance in Rhaetia evolved first a war between Zurich on the
one hand and Schwytz and Glarus on the other, and next a joint coercion
of Zurich by all the other Cantons. This led to a fresh alliance between
Zurich and Austria, and a new and exceptionally ferocious war, lasting
for four years. Meantime Basle, assailed by the Armagnacs under the
dauphin of France, was succoured by the union and received into
alliance. Next came the Burgundian wars, whereafter, not without much
friction and quarrelling over booty, Soleure (Solothurn) and Fribourg
were taken into the union, and a new pact framed (1481), defining afresh
the general law of the Confederation. Lastly, after the Swabian war, the
last in which the Swiss had to defend themselves against German
aggression, the cities of Basle and Schaffhausen, become self-governing,
were received into the League; and in 1513 Appenzell followed. Thus was
rounded the number of thirteen Cantons, which constituted the Swiss
Confederation till the end of the eighteenth century. They were: Schwytz
(which gradually gave its name to the whole people), Uri, Unterwalden,
Zurich (the "Forest" group), Lucerne, Glarus, Zug, Berne, Fribourg,
Soleure, Basle, Schaffhausen, and Appenzell. Aargau and Thurgau,
conquered in the wars with Austria in 1415 and 1460, remained subject
lands, the property of the allied Cantons; and the Valais and the
Grisons remained outside the union as connections or _Zugewandte_, the
League proper being restricted to German-speaking Cantons. It will be
seen too that the territory of the Confederation remained a compact and
connected mass; the Vaud, the Valais, Ticino, and the Grisons forming a
long band of territory outside.
Sec. 2. _The Socio-Political Evolution_
The outstanding feature of the Swiss social evolution up to the end of
the fifteenth century is the acquisition of municipal estates by the
chief cities, after the manner of those of Italy. The lead given by
Berne was zealously followed by Zurich[887] and Lucerne, till nearly all
the old feudal lordships around them had fallen into their hands by
purchase, mortgage, or conquest; and by 1477 the Hapsburgs had not a
rood of land left in all Helvetia, even the family castle being lost. It
was impossible that the revenues thus acquired by the cities should fail
in that age to enrich the patrician or ruling class, no matter how
revolutions might alter its membership. Herein lay one of the effective
checks to the growth of the Confederation from 1513 onwards. The rural
Cantons and the aristocratic governments of the cities were alike
disinclined to enfranchise the rural populations they held in feudal
subjection; and the status of the mass of the townspeople and subject
peasantry, though probably better than in France and Germany, was that
of men without political rights,[888] save those secured by feudal or
civic custom.
Nor can it be said that in the pre-Reformation period the flourishing
Swiss cities did much for culture; a main part of the explanation
doubtless being (1) the chronic stress of war, which in such communities
tended to be borne by all classes alike.[889] When the Italian cities
had produced Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio; when England had produced
Chaucer; and France the _Roman de la Rose_, Villon, Joinville,
Froissart, and Comines, Switzerland had a literature only of average
German lyrics and a few average medieval chronicles. But the comparison
will be quite misleading if it be not kept in mind (2) that the whole
Swiss population up till 1500 never amounted to a million, and that the
surplus males were being constantly drained off in the fifteenth century
in military service outside of Switzerland. The conditions which made
for military strength and independence were entirely unfavourable to
culture. There remains, however, to be noted in the case of German
Switzerland (3) the fundamental drawback of relative homogeneity of
race. The one important aspect of "race" in sociology is as a statement
of relative lack of intellectual variability; and this condition in
modern Europe can be seen to exist only at certain periods, in the case
of one or two peoples, chiefly the Germanic.
If the whole process of the renascence of civilisation be considered
_seriatim_, it will be found that the growth took place primarily in
virtue of degree of access to (_a_) the remains of Graeco-Roman culture
and (_b_) to Saracen lore; and, secondarily, in virtue of degree of
admixture of physical type in the different communities. Thus (1) the
first great new-birth (before the age of the Renaissance so-called) took
place in Italy, in a population already highly mixed at the end of the
Roman period and repeatedly invaded thereafter by northern stocks, from
Odoaker down to the Normans. The reviving Italian culture, being
communicated northwards through the Church and otherwise, is next
developed by (2) the highly-mixed population of France and (3) that of
England after the Norman Conquest--the Welsh element being here
prominent. At the same time the literary germination set up in (4)
ancient Ireland, under stormy conditions, by the early missionaries of
the Graeco-Roman Church, reaches after some centuries the Scandinavian
peoples by way of the Hebrides and (5) Iceland, where, however, after a
brilliant start, the evolution is arrested by the restrictive
environment, the main body of Scandinavian life being too homogeneous
(though constantly at strife) for any complex evolution. In the south,
again, the populations of (6) Spain and Portugal, mixed to begin with in
the Roman period and later crossed by Teutonic invasion, became
specially capable of variation after the subdual of the Moors, whose
reaction on their conquerors was extensive and important.
All this while the Teutonic stocks in their old homes are noticeably
backward, save where, as in (7) the Netherlands, they are in constant
contact with other peoples on land and by sea. Culture begins to be at
once original and brilliant in the Netherlands only in the period after
(_a_) special contact with Spain and (_b_) the large immigration of
Protestant refugees from other countries. At first strongly influenced
by classical scholarship, it is later affected by the influence of
France and England. All the more strictly Teutonic cultures were either
unprogressive or similarly vitalised from without; and Germany, after
the Thirty Years' War, begins almost afresh with an academic literature
in Latin, to be followed by new native developments only on French and
English stimuli.[890] But it is specially significant that (8) the
German renascence of the eighteenth century takes place after (_a_) the
large influx of French Protestant refugees at the end of the
seventeenth, and after (_b_) a fresh influx of French taste, French
teachers, and French literature under Frederick the Great, in whose
armies, it should be remembered, there fought no fewer than nine
generals of French Protestant descent, as well as others of alien
heredity.
The case of Switzerland is thus on this side tolerably clear. Swiss
intellectual life, long primitively Teutonic, begins to become notable
only at the period of the Reformation, when for the merely diplomatic
and military and commercial contacts of the past there is substituted a
fresh differentiation and interaction from Italian, French, and German
Protestantism--a new intellectual impulse--and from the influx of
refugees, as in Holland. And the French-speaking city of Geneva, not yet
a member of the Confederation, at once takes the lead. The Teutonic
population, from the fifteenth century onwards, had in large numbers
sought subsistence in mercenary soldiership. It was the medieval
analogue to the emigration of to-day, the opening even serving to
curtail the agricultural and pastoral life;[891] but the result, by the
common consent of historians,[892] was disastrous to the higher life at
home, the returning mercenaries being in many cases spoilt for steady
industry, rural or civic. Their military success and prestige in fact
tended to demoralise the Swiss as the success of Hellas against Persia
tended to demoralise Athens, making them, in the words of Aristotle,
unfitted to rest. Dwelling on past patriotic glories is never the way to
discipline the mental life; and the Swiss militia of the end of the
fifteenth century, wont to sell their services as fighters to French and
Italians, often thus opposing each other, and otherwise wont to
interpose arrogantly in other people's concerns,[893] were not on the
line of social or intellectual progress. Pensions to leading men from
the French and Italian courts wrought a further and even more sinister
corruption. But after their defeat by Francis I in 1516 at the desperate
battle of Marignano, becoming allies of France, the Swiss ceased to play
the part of holders of the balances between contending neighbours; and
after their heavy share in the loss of Francis at the battle of Pavia
they grew for a time loth even to play the part of auxiliaries on a
national footing, though individual enlistment continued. It is at this
stage that the Reformation supervenes, creating a new source of strife
between Canton and Canton, and so paralysing the Confederation for
centuries.
Nowhere is the study of the process of the Reformation more instructive,
more subversive of the conventional Protestant view, than in the case of
Switzerland. In the first place, it is not the old Forest Cantons, with
their ingrained independence and "Teutonic conscience," that do the
work. They remained obstinately Catholic. Swiss Protestantism, under the
independent lead of Zwingli, began indeed in Glarus and Schwytz, but
became an effective movement only in the city of Zurich, and it is
notable that in the primitive and poor Canton of Uri[894] there was as
little buying of indulgences as there was heresy. The two phenomena went
together in the richer Cantons, where the common desire to buy pardons
evoked the protest against them. Indeed, the special traffic in
indulgences in Germany and Switzerland, and the special laxity of life
of their priesthoods, were concomitants of the special grossness of
German life;[895] for in no other country did the Reformation proceed
nakedly on the basis of protest against indulgence-selling. There the
pardoners shamefully overrode all the official and accepted teaching of
the Church as to indulgences; and the protests of Luther and Zwingli
were properly demands for a reform on strictly orthodox grounds, as
against an abuse which was locally excessive. But it lay in the economic
and political conditions that when a movement of protest began it should
succeed in view rather of the economic and social impulses to break with
Rome than of the spontaneous desire for reform. In Germany in particular
the movement among the upper and educated classes was nakedly financial
as regarded the nobles, and to a large extent the reverse of ascetic
among the scholars, many of whom, however, were much more spontaneously
alive to the doctrinal crudities of the orthodox system than was Luther
himself. It was the facile combination, on socio-political grounds, of
the five forces of (1) moral indignation among the more conscientious
leaders, (2) gain-seeking on the part of nobles and ruling burghers, (3)
racial aversion to Italian priests and Italian revenue-drawing among the
people in general, (4) critical revolt against primitive superstitions
among the more learned, and (5) anti-clerical freethinking and licence
among many who had served in the Italian wars,[896] that made the revolt
proceed so rapidly in Germany and Switzerland. If the mass of the
people, in all save the most primitive Swiss Cantons, were grossly eager
to buy the indulgences so grossly offered by Samson and Tetzel, the
people clearly were not zealous reformers to start with. Of those who
most resented the traffic, many remained steady Catholics.
When, however, it became known that Samson carried away with him from
Switzerland to Italy 800,000 crowns, besides other bullion and jewels,
even the buyers of indulgences could share the general inclination to
stop the enrichment of Italy at Swiss expense. The intellectual revolt
of the educated supplied the basis of the revolution in church
management; but without the accruing financial gains the former could
have availed little; and while there was the usual violence on the part
of the mob, the city authorities were judicious in their procedure. To
the clergy they offered on the one hand freedom to marry, and on the
other hand a provision for life. Thus in Zurich, under the skilful
guidance of Zwingli, the whole chapter of twenty-four canons gave up
their rights and property to the State, becoming preachers, teachers, or
professors with life-allowances: a plan generally followed elsewhere,
save where the parties fell to blows.[897] In Zurich the further steps
were: 1523, ecclesiastical marriages; 1524, pictures abolished and
monasteries dissolved; 1525, mass discontinued.
In French-speaking Geneva, destined to become the leading Swiss city,
the process was more stormy. Having grown to importance under its
bishops, it had been made an imperial city in 1420, thereby finding a
foothold in its resistance to the constant claims of the House of Savoy,
which in 1519 forced it into a defensive alliance with Fribourg. There
were now two Genevan parties, the Savoyards and the republicans, which
latter, imitating Swiss usage, called themselves Eidgenossen, whence the
French corruption _Huguenots_, ultimately applied to the Calvinistic
Protestants of France. Out of the faction strife came the religious,
under the fanning of Farel; and in this case the anti-democratic leaning
of the Savoyards kept the rich pro-Catholic, while the common people
declared for Protestantism. In the end the latter took violent
possession of the churches, destroying the altars and images, whereupon
most of the Catholics fled, the city retaining the clerical lands; and
there immigrated many French, Italian, and Savoyard Protestants. To the
community thus made for him came Calvin in 1537.
Meanwhile, Berne, conquering the Pays de Vaud from the Duke of Savoy,
made it Protestant. Elsewhere, some communes and districts passed and
repassed between Catholicism and Protestantism as neighbouring
influences prevailed; in some districts the peasants, hoping for release
from tithes and taxes, welcomed the revolution, but renounced it when
they found it made no difference to their lot.[898] The magistrates of
Berne were prompt to make it clear that their Protestantism made no
difference as to their tithe-drawing from their rural subjects.[899]
When the period of transformation was over--with its bitter wars, which
cost the life of Zwingli, its manifold exasperations, its Anabaptist
convulsions, its forlorn and foredoomed peasant risings, its severance
of old ties, and its profound impairment of the half-grown spirit of
confederation--it was found that the old Cantons of Lucerne, Uri,
Unterwalden, Schwytz, and Zug stood fast for Catholicism; that Soleure,
after being for a time predominantly Protestant, had joined them, with
Fribourg, making seven Catholic States; that the city Cantons of Berne,
Zurich, Basle, and Schaffhausen were Protestant, as were Geneva and the
Vaud, not yet in the union; and that Glarus and Appenzell were mixed.
The achievement of the landamman OEbly of Glarus, in securing a
peaceful and lasting compromise in his own Canton--the two bodies in
some parishes actually agreeing to use the same church--was beyond the
moral capacity of the mass of the Swiss people, for Appenzell bitterly
divided into two parts, on religious lines. Each of the other Cantons
imposed its ruling men's creed on its subjects. They were still as far
from toleration in religion as from real democracy in politics.
While Protestantism, by dividing the realm of religion, doubtless
wrought indirectly and ultimately for the intellectual freedom of
Europe, it is clear that it had no such result for many generations in
Switzerland. Calvin's rule in Geneva, while associated with a new
activity in printing, chiefly of theological works,[900] became a byword
for moral tyranny and cruelty. To say nothing of the executions of
Servetus and Gruet for heresy, and the expulsions of other men, the
records show that in that small population there were between 800 and
900 persons imprisoned between the years 1542 and 1546, and 58 put to
death; no fewer than 34 being beheaded, hanged, or burned on charges of
sedition in three months of 1545. Torture was freely applied, and any
personal criticism of Calvin was more or less fiercely punished.[901]
The conditions were much the same in Zurich and Berne, where a press
censorship was set up (in Zurich as early as 1523), and zealously
maintained for centuries. It prohibited, under heavy penalties, the sale
of the works of Descartes, and in both places Cartesians were
prosecuted;[902] while in Protestant Switzerland generally the
Copernican theory was denounced as heresy, and the reformed Calendar, as
a work of the Pope, was furiously rejected. So high did passion run that
in Berne and Zurich any who married Catholics were severely
punished.[903] The Zurich criminal calendar of the sixteenth century
gives a sample of the Protestant city life of the period. There were 572
executions in all, 347 persons being beheaded, 61 burned, 55 hanged, 53
drowned. Only 33 were cases of murder; 2 were executed for abuse of
Zwingli, who thus appears to have given a lead to Calvin; 73 for
blasphemy, 56 for bestiality, and 338 for theft[904]--a clear economic
clue.
Broadly speaking, the settled Protestant period was one of relapse alike
from freedom and from union. Class division deepened and worsened
throughout the seventeenth century;[905] the people of the subject lands
were less than ever recognised as having rights,[906] Puritanism taking
to oppression as spontaneously in Switzerland as in England; the
stimulus given to culture and art in the controversial period died away,
leaving retrogression;[907] and in the personal and the intellectual
life alike clerical tyranny was universal.[908] The municipalities
became more and more close corporations, as the gilds had become long
before;[909] and at Berne in 1640 the city treasurer was put to death
for exposing abuses.[910] After the Peasants' War of 1653 the
aristocratic development was still further strengthened, till in Berne,
Soleure, and Fribourg--Catholic and Protestant cities alike--the roll of
burghers was closed (1680-90), Soleure stipulating that it should remain
so till the number of reigning families was reduced to twenty-five.[911]
The practice of taking pensions from France revived, for the old service
of supplying mercenary troops; so that "the Swiss were never more
shamelessly sold to the highest bidder" than in the seventeenth
century.[912] As of old, the municipalities amassed and invested
capital, Catholic Soleure lending great sums to France, while the still
wealthier city of Berne lent money in all directions;[913] but though
they raised handsome public buildings, it was the small ruling class and
not the workers that were enriched. In the rural Cantons even the small
economic advance made at the outset of the Reformation was lost.[914] It
seems difficult to dispute that as a force for social progress the
Reformation was naught.
One factor there was to its credit: the establishment of secondary
schools, which had not previously existed in Switzerland, and the
provision of better common schools;[915] and though the ecclesiastical
and religious forces, as in Scotland, prevented the common schools being
turned to any higher account at home than that of qualifying to read and
write and learn catechisms, even that small tuition gave the Swiss some
advantages in the neighbouring countries. All the while the higher
political evolution went backwards. In 1586 the Catholic Cantons of
Schwytz, Uri, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Fribourg, and Soleure ejected
from the League the Protestant State of Muelhausen; and, ignoring the
laws of the Confederation, proceeded to make a separate offensive and
defensive alliance among themselves, and with Spain and the Pope. As
late as 1656 war broke out between Berne and Schwytz, Lucerne
intervening, over a dispute about Protestant refugees; whereafter the
principle of cantonal sovereignty reigned supreme for a hundred and
forty years. It would seem difficult to maintain, in the face of all the
facts, that Protestantism had made for peace, freedom, or civilisation.
On the other hand, the distribution of Protestantism in the Swiss
Cantons disposes once for all of the theory that the "Teutonic
conscience" or anything else of an ethnic order was the determining
force at the Reformation. A rough conspectus of the language and
religion of the Cantons as at the year 1900 will present the proof to
the contrary:--
-------------------+----------------------------+------------------------
NAME. | LANGUAGE. | RELIGION.
-------------------+----------------------------+------------------------
Berne |Five-sixths German-speaking |Seven-eighths Protestant
Zurich |Nearly all German | " "
Lucerne | " " " |Nearly all Catholic
Vaud |Mostly French dialects |Nine-tenths Protestant
Aargau |Mostly German |Four C. to five P.
St. Gall | " " |Three-fifths Catholic
Ticino |Italian dialects |Nearly all Catholic
Fribourg |Half French, half German |Four-fifths Catholic
Grisons |Half Romansch, three-eighths|Five-ninths Protestant
| German, one-eighth Italian|
Valais |(?) Half German, half French|Nearly all Catholic
Thurgau |Nearly all German |Two-sevenths Catholic
Basle | " " " |One-third Catholic
Soleure |Nearly all German |Three-fourths Catholic
Geneva |Predominantly French |Half-and-half
Neuchatel | " " |Seven-eighths Protestant
Schaffhausen | " German | " "
Appenzell (Rh. Ext)| " " |Nine-tenths Protestant
" (Rh. Int)| " " |Nearly all Catholic
Glarus |Nearly all German |One-fourth Catholic
Zug | " " " |Nearly all Catholic
Schwytz | " " " | " " "
Unterwalden | " " " | " " "
Uri | " " " | " " "
-------------------+----------------------------+------------------------
Here we have nearly every species of variation in terms of speech and
creed. The one generalisation which appears to hold good to any extent
in the matter is that Catholicism usually goes with an agricultural
economy and Protestantism with manufactures; but here, too, there are
exceptions, as Vaud, which, though Protestant, is predominantly
agricultural or vine-rearing; Glarus, which is mainly pastoral and
Protestant; the Grisons, agricultural and more than half Protestant; and
Geneva, where there is a large minority of Catholics in industrial
conditions. On the whole, we are warranted in assuming that in
Switzerland, as in most other countries, the town workers were the
readiest to innovate in religion; while race, so far as inferrible from
language, had nothing to do with the choice made. What differences of
life accrue to the creeds, as we shall see, depend on their one
important social divergence, that of bias for and against illiteracy.
Sec. 3. _The Modern Renaissance_
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century the Swiss Confederation
figured as "a weather-beaten ruin, ready to fall."[916] It would be hard
to point out, in the domestic conditions, any that made for beneficent
change, and there were many that rigidly precluded it; but some elements
of variability there were, and from other countries there came the
principle of fertilisation. Theological hatreds and disputations had in
a manner destroyed their own standing-ground by the very stress of their
barren activity; and even while press laws were banning new works of
thought and science, the better minds were secretly yearning towards
them. In cities like Geneva and Basle (the latter then the seat of the
only Swiss university), reason must to some extent have played beneath
the surface while all its open manifestations were struck at. At Basle,
in the old days, Erasmus spent the main part of his life; and he must
have had some congenial intercourse. But it is on the side of the
physical sciences that new intellectual life is first seen to germinate
in post-Reformation Switzerland. There, as elsewhere, inquiring men felt
that nature was kindlier to question than the self-appointed oracles of
Deity, and that the unending search for real knowledge brought more
peace than ever came of the insistence that the ultimate truth was
known. Refugee immigrants, chiefly French, seem to have begun the
ferment; and it is at the hands of their descendants that Swiss science
has grown.[917] Having reason to avoid alike politics and theology in
their new home, and living in many cases on incomes from investments,
they turned to the sciences as occupation and solace.
With this inner movement concurred the new influences from French and
English science and literature, and from the reviving culture of
Germany.[918] With the rest of Europe, too, Switzerland turned in an
increasing degree to industry, and in the latter half of the eighteenth
century had developed many new trades, involving considerable use of
machinery.[919] Agriculture, too, improved,[920] and mercenary
soldiering began to fall into disrepute[921] under the influence of the
new pacific thought. Still the rural economic conditions were bad, and
the country seemed to grow poorer while the towns grew richer.[922] The
population, in fact, constantly tended to exceed the not easily widened
limits of rural subsistence; and in place of foreign soldiering, the old
remedy, there began a peaceful industrial emigration into the
neighbouring countries, Swiss beginning to figure there in increasing
numbers as waiters and servants.[923] All the while the tyranny of the
city aristocracies was unmitigated, and the subject lands were steadily
ill-treated.[924] In Berne, in 1776, only eighteen families were
represented in the Council of Two Hundred; and there and in Zurich and
Lucerne the civic regulations were as flagrantly partial to the ruling
class as in France itself.[925] The new industrial conditions, however,
were gradually preparing a political change; and the intellectual
climate steadily altered. Voltaire tells in many amusing letters of the
spread of Socinian heresy in the city of Calvin. In Geneva arose the
abnormal figure of Jean Jacques Rousseau, descendant of a French refugee
immigrant of Calvin's day; and though his city in 1762 formally burned
his epoch-marking book on the _Contrat Social_, a popular reaction
followed six years later. Democratic disturbances had repeatedly
occurred before; but this time there was a growing force at work. An
insurrection in 1770 was suppressed; another, in 1782, though at first
successful, ended in the overthrow of the popular party by means of
troops from France, Berne, and Zurich; but in the fateful year of 1789
yet another broke out, and this time the tide turned.
With the interference of the French Republic in Switzerland in 1797 on
behalf of the Pays de Vaud, then subject to Berne, began the long
convulsion which broke up the old Confederation and framed a new. In
1798 began the wildly premature attempt of the more visionary
republicans to create a unitary republic out of Cantons which had
retrograded even from the measure of union attained before the
Reformation. It could not succeed; and the rapine inseparable from the
French revolutionary methods could not but arouse an intense resistance,
paralysing the aims of the progressive party. Out of years of miserable
ferocious warfare, ended by Napoleon's withdrawal of the French troops
in 1801, came the new Confederation of 1803, which, however, it needed
the friendly but authoritative mediation of the First Consul to get the
conservative Cantons to accept. For once the despot had secured, in a
really disinterested fashion,[926] what the Revolution ought to have
brought about. The old aristocratic tyrannies were subverted; the
subject lands were freed; to the thirteen Cantons of the old union were
added Aargau, Thurgau, St. Gall, Vaud, and Ticino; through all was set
up a representative system, modified in the towns by a measure of the
old aristocratic element; and the whole possessed what Switzerland never
had before, and could hardly otherwise have attained--a central
parliamentary system. In 1814 Berne would fain have resumed its tyranny
over the Vaud and Aargau, a step which would have initiated a general
return to the old _regime_. The Allies, however, brought about the
completion of the Confederation on the new principles; and by the
addition to its roll of Geneva, Neuchatel, and the Valais, and the
cession to Berne of the Basle territory formerly annexed by France,
created a compact and complete Switzerland, bounded in natural fashion
by the Alps, the Jura, and the Rhine. And at this period, after so many
vicissitudes, the culture life of Switzerland is found fully abreast of
that of Europe in general. Sismondi, standing apart from France and
Italy, and writing impartially the history of both, is the greatest
historian of his day.
The later history of the Confederation, however, is one of the great
illustrations of the perpetual possibility of strife and sunderance in
communities. Sismondi lived to ban the democracy which would not be
content to be ruled by the middle class. At 1820 the old spirit of class
subsisted under the new institutions; the press was nearly everywhere
under strict censorship; and the ideals which ruled elsewhere on the
Continent seemed even more potent in Switzerland than elsewhere. There,
as elsewhere, the system inevitably bred discontent; and in 1830, on the
revolutionary initiative of Ticino, the most corruptly governed of all
the Cantons, there ensued almost bloodless revolutions in the local
governments, Radicals taking the place of Conservatives, and proceeding
to reform alike administration and education. Then came the due
reaction, the Catholic Cantons forming the League of Sarnen, while the
extremists again pressed the ideal of a military State. Though morally
strong enough to enforce peace in more than one embroilment of Cantons
and parties, the Federal Diet was dangerously weak in the face of the
new forces of religio-political reaction typified by the activity of the
Jesuits, as well as the old trouble of cantonal selfishness, which
affected even the tolls.[927] The resistance to Radicalism became a
movement of clerical fanaticism, led by the cry of "religion in danger";
Catholics using it to foment local insurrections; Protestants,
ecclesiastically led, using it to make a municipal revolution by
violence at Zurich on the occasion of the proposal to give Strauss a
university chair in 1839.[928] But the Jesuits--expelled from nearly
every Catholic State in the eighteenth century, yet latterly cherished
by the Swiss Catholics for their anti-Protestant services--were the
chief mischief-makers; and at length the violences promoted from the
headquarters at Lucerne led to Protestant reprisals which took the shape
of a beginning of civil war. The collapse, however, of the Catholic
"Sonderbund" or Secession-League in 1847, before the resolute military
action of the Diet, marked the turning-point in modern Swiss politics.
In 1848 was framed a new constitution, wholly Swiss-made, creating an
effective Federal government, on a new basis of a Parliament of two
Chambers. Now were definitely nationalised the systems of coinage,
weights and measures, posts and telegraphs; and the Customs system was
made one of complete internal free trade.
On this footing followed "long years of happiness, and a prosperity
without precedent."[929] Yet even this constitution has had to be
revised, to the end of guarding afresh against religious strifes and
conflict of cantonal jurisdictions. In 1872 the centralising reformers
carried in the Chambers a revision of the constitution; but under the
referendum (a specialty of Swiss democracy, instituted in or after 1831
by the Catholic Conservative party in St. Gall, the Valais and Lucerne)
it was rejected by a popular vote of 261,072 citizens to 255,609, and of
thirteen cantons to nine. With a few modifications, however, it was
carried in 1874 by a vote of 340,199 to 198,013, and of 14-1/2 Cantons
to 7-1/2. The whole process is a great lesson as to the superiority of
the methods of peace and persuasion to those of revolution and force.
The referendum itself, first set up locally with the most reactionary
intentions,[930] has come to be valued--whether wisely or unwisely--by
Radicals and Conservatives alike; and while it seems to offer a
possibility of appeals to demotic ignorance and passion[931] while these
subsist, and to be unnecessary where they do not, it is at least a
guarantee of the decisiveness of any great constitutional step taken
under it. Historically speaking, the consummation thus far is a great
democratic achievement, and the whole drift of Federal legislation is
towards an increased stability of union. On the other hand, despite a
characteristic menace from Bismarck,[932] the international position of
Switzerland appears to be as safe as that of any other European State,
great or small. Any attempt on its independence by any one Power would
infallibly be resisted by others.
As regards the true political problems, those of domestic life, the
Swiss case presents the usual elements. From dangerous religious strife
(the Jesuits being excluded) it seems likely to be preserved in future
by the rationalising force of the Socialist movement; but that movement
in turn tells of the social problem. A country of not readily extensible
resources, Switzerland exhibits nearly as clearly as does Holland the
dangers of over-population. The old resource of foreign enlistment being
done with,[933] surplus population forces a continual emigration,
largely from the rural districts, where the lands are for the most part
heavily mortgaged.[934] The active industrialism of the towns--with
their large manufacture of clocks and watches, cottons and
silks--involves a large importation of foreign food, with which native
agriculture cannot advantageously compete. Thus, as in the eighteenth
century, the pinch falls on the country, while the towns are in
comparison thriving. The relatively high death-rate of recent years
raises an old issue. Malthus has told[935] how in the eighteenth century
a panic arose concerning the prudential habits of the population in the
way of late marriages and small families, and how thereafter
encouragements to early marriage had led to much worsening of the lot of
many of the people. With a small birth-rate there had been a small
death-rate; whereas the rising birth-rate went with rising misery.[936]
Perhaps through the influence of his treatise, the movement of demand
for increase of population seems to have died out, and the practice of
prudence to have regained economic credit. It would appear, however,
that within the past half-century the conditions as to population have
again somewhat worsened. At 1850, when nearly half of all the men
married per year in England were under twenty years of age, the normal
marrying age in the Vaud was thirty or thirty-one; and there had existed
in a number of the old Catholic Cantons laws inflicting heavy fines on
young people who married without proving their ability to support a
family.[937] The modern tendency is to abandon such paternal modes of
interference; and it does not appear that personal prudence thus far
replaces them, though on the other hand there was in the first half of
last century a marked recognition by Swiss publicists of the
sociological law of the matter.
Thus M. Edward Mallet of Geneva pointed out before 1850 that the chances
of life had steadily gone on increasing with the lessening of the
birth-rate for centuries back.[938] His tables run:--
----------------------------+--------+---------+-------
LIFE CHANCES. | YEARS. | MONTHS. | DAYS.
----------------------------+--------+---------+-------
| | |
Towards end of 16th century | 8 | 7 | 26
In 17th century | 13 | 3 | 16
In the years 1701-1750 | 27 | 9 | 13
" " 1751-1800 | 31 | 3 | 5
" " 1801-1813 | 40 | 8 | 0
" " 1814-1833 | 45 | 0 | 29
----------------------------+--------+---------+-------
The statistician's summary of the case is worth citing:--
"As prosperity advanced, marriages became fewer and later; the
proportion of births was reduced, but greater numbers of the
infants born were preserved. In the early and barbarous periods the
excessive mortality was accompanied by a prodigious fecundity. In
the last few years of the seventeenth century a marriage still
produced five children and more; the probable duration of life was
not twenty years, and Geneva had scarcely 17,000 inhabitants.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century there were scarcely three
children to a marriage; and the probability of life exceeded
thirty-two years. At the present time a marriage produces only two
and three-quarter children; the probability of life is forty-five
years; and Geneva, which exceeds 27,000 in population, has arrived
at a high degree of civilisation and material prosperity. In 1836
the population appeared to have attained its summit: the births
barely replaced the deaths."
But in 1910 the population of Geneva (Canton) was 154,159;[939] and the
figures of Swiss emigration--averaging about 5,000 per annum--tell their
own tale. Increasing industrialism, as usual, has meant conjugal
improvidence. Once more the trouble is not smallness of population, but
undue increase.
As Protestantism appears to increase slightly more than Catholicism, no
blame can in this case be laid on the Catholic Church. But in
Switzerland, as elsewhere, Catholicism tends to illiteracy. In the
Protestant cantons the proportion of school-attending children is as one
to five; in the half-and-half Cantons it is as one to seven; and in the
Catholic it is as one to nine. This, and no tendency of race or _direct_
tendency of creed, is the explanation of the relative superiority of
Protestant to Catholic Cantons in point of comfort and freedom from
mendicancy; for the Cantons remarked by travellers for their prosperity
are indifferently French-and German-speaking, while the less prosperous
are either German or mixed.[940] The fact that the three oldest Forest
Cantons are among the more backward is a reminder that past-worship,
there at its height, is always a snare to civilisation. Describing these
cantons over half-a-century ago, Grote spoke severely of "their dull and
stationary intelligence, their bigotry, and their pride in bygone power
and exploits."[941] The reproach is in some measure applicable to other
parts of Switzerland, as to other nations in general; and it must cease
to be deserved before the Republic, cultured and well administered as it
is, can realise republican ideals. But the existing Federation of the
Helvetic Cantons, locally patriotic and self-seeking as they still are,
is a hopeful spectacle--for this among other reasons, that it is a
perpetual reminder of the possibility of federations of States, even at
a stage of civilisation far short of any Utopia of altruism.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 871: "To one whose studies lie in the contemplation of
historical phenomena [the Swiss Cantons] comprise between the Rhine and
the Alps a miniature of all Europe.... To myself in particular they
present an additional ... interest from a certain political analogy
(nowhere else to be found in Europe) with ... the ancient Greeks"
(Grote, _Seven Letters concerning the Politics of Switzerland_ [1847],
ed. 1876, pref.).]
[Footnote 872: "What the Cantons mostly stand chargeable with, is the
feeling of cantonal selfishness" (Grote, as cited, p. 20). Compare, in
the work of Sir F.O. Adams and C.D. Cunningham on _The Swiss
Confederation_ (ed. francaise par Loumyer, 1890, p. 29), the account of
how, after the most fraternal meetings in common of the citizens of the
different Cantons, "each confederate, on returning home, begins to yield
to his old jealousy, and thinks of hardly anything but the particular
interests of his Canton."]
[Footnote 873: Vieusseux, _History of Switzerland_, 1840, p. 39.]
[Footnote 874: Rilliet, _Les origines de la Confederation Suisse_, 1868,
pp. 26-28; Dierauer, _Geschichte der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_,
1887, i, 84.]
[Footnote 875: Rilliet, pp. 21, 27, 28.]
[Footnote 876: J. von Mueller, _Geschichte der schweizerischen
Eidgenossenschaft_, ed. 1824, i, 287.]
[Footnote 877: Mueller, i, 288; Rilliet, pp. 39-42. The men of Schwytz
were associated as concurrers with the powerful Counts of Lenzburg in
disputes with the monastery.]
[Footnote 878: It seems just possible that a confederation of tribes
existed in the Alps at the beginning of the fifth century--on the
theory, that is, that the _Bagaudae_ of that period were so called from a
Celtic word _Bagard_, meaning a cluster. See the editorial note in Bohn
ed. of Gibbon, iii, 379.]
[Footnote 879: Rilliet, pp. 88 _ff._; Dierauer, i, 78.]
[Footnote 880: Having sworn an oath to stand by each other, they called
themselves _Eidgenossen_=Oathfellows, Confederates. The old spellings,
_Eitgnozzen_ and _Eidgnosschaft_ (Dierauer, i, 265, _n._; Daendliker,
_Geschichte der Schweiz_, i, 636--in the old Tell song), show how easily
could arise the later French form "Huguenots."]
[Footnote 881: Dierauer, pp. 85, 90; Rilliet, pp. 50, 67, 68.]
[Footnote 882: Cp. Rilliet, p. 53.]
[Footnote 883: Rilliet, _Origines_, p. 33.]
[Footnote 884: At Morgarten the infantry of the Austrian force was in
large part furnished by the other Germanic towns and Cantons of Zurich,
Winterthur, Zug, Lucerne, Sempach, and Aargau. When the cavalry were
discomfited, the foot would not be very energetic.]
[Footnote 885: This fact, as well as the unequal status of Glarus, was
till recently slurred over in the patriotic tradition. See, for
instance, the account of Vieusseux, _History of Switzerland_, pp. 58-60.
Cp. the results of exact research in Dierauer, i, 217; Daendliker,
_Geschichte der Schweiz_, 1884, i, 480, and _Short History_, Eng. tr.
pp. 62, 63, 68, 69. Zug returned to the Confederation in 1368; Glarus,
as a connection only, in 1387, and as a full member in 1394.]
[Footnote 886: Cp. Dierauer, i, 265, and Freeman, _History of Federal
Government_, ed. 1893, pp. 5, 6.]
[Footnote 887: Zurich alone is said to have spent two million francs in
buying land between 1358 and 1408.]
[Footnote 888: Cp. Zschokke, _Des Schweizerlands Geschichte_, Kap. 30,
9te Aufl., p. 147.]
[Footnote 889: Prof. Daendliker, in his _Short History_ (Eng. tr. p. 41),
has the odd expression that "in those times of the surging of party
strife the towns formed a quiet refuge for the cultivation of the
intellectual life." The whole of his own history goes to show that no
such quiet cultivation took place, or could take place.]
[Footnote 890: Cp. the author's _Buckle and his Critics_, pp. 160-74.]
[Footnote 891: Zschokke, _Des Schweizerlands Geschichte_, 9te Aufl.
1853, p. 149.]
[Footnote 892: Cp. Daendliker, ii, 620, 722; _Short History_, pp. 124,
125, 131; Dierauer, ii, 473; Vieusseux, pp. 119, 124, 211; Zschokke, as
above cited.]
[Footnote 893: Cp. Freeman, _History of Federal Government_, 2nd ed. pp.
272, 273.]
[Footnote 894: Vieusseux, p. 193.]
[Footnote 895: Cp. Menzel, _Geschichte der Deutschen_, Kap. 417;
Daendliker, _Geschichte der Schweiz_, ii, 623-26; Zschokke, _Des
Schweizerlands Geschichte_, Kap. 30, p. 148; Vieusseux, p. 118.]
[Footnote 896: On this see Vieusseux, p. 130.]
[Footnote 897: Vieusseux, pp. 128-32, 142.]
[Footnote 898: Zschokke, Kap. 32.]
[Footnote 899: Vieusseux, p. 140. Zurich, however, on Zwingli's urging,
restricted villenage and lessened tithes (Daendliker, _Short History_, p.
135).]
[Footnote 900: The number printed rose speedily to thirty-eight in a
year, then again to sixty. Two thousand men were employed in the
printing industry (Daendliker, ii, 560).]
[Footnote 901: Daendliker, ii, 558, 559; _Short History_, p. 157.]
[Footnote 902: Daendliker, _Geschichte_, ii, 743.]
[Footnote 903: _Id._ _Short History_, p. 192.]
[Footnote 904: _Id._ _Geschichte_, ii, 626.]
[Footnote 905: _Id._ _ib._ ii, 722.]
[Footnote 906: _Id._ _ib._ ii, 609-12; _Short History_, pp. 172, 203.]
[Footnote 907: _Id._ _Geschichte_, ii, 731, 742-45.]
[Footnote 908: _Id._ _ib._ ii, 556 _ff._, 622 _ff._, 728, 729.]
[Footnote 909: _Id._ _ib._ i, 569-71. Only masters were admitted to
membership.]
[Footnote 910: _Id._ _Short History_, pp. 169, 170, 179.]
[Footnote 911: _Id._ _ib._ p. 179.]
[Footnote 912: _Id._ _ib._ p. 192 The abuse was at its height in the
Catholic Cantons, but the Protestant participated, even soon after the
Reformation (_id._ p. 157; _Geschichte_, ii, 626).]
[Footnote 913: _Id._ _Short History_, p. 182.]
[Footnote 914: _Id._ _Geschichte_, i, 572; ii, 722; _Short History_, p.
169.]
[Footnote 915: Zschokke, as cited, p. 148; Daendliker, _Short History_,
p. 153.]
[Footnote 916: Daendliker, _Short History_, p. 193.]
[Footnote 917: See the extremely interesting investigation of M. de
Candolle in his _Histoire des sciences et des savants depuis deux
siecles_, 1873, p. 131 _ff._ Cp. Ph. Godet, _Histoire litteraire de la
Suisse francaise_, 1890, p. 170, as to the general influence.]
[Footnote 918: Cp. Daendliker, _Geschichte_, iii, 43-103; _Short
History_, pp. 194-99.]
[Footnote 919: _Id._ _Geschichte_, iii, 174-78.]
[Footnote 920: _Id._ _ib._ iii, 170-74. England is found learning from
Switzerland on this side. In the volume of translations entitled
_Foreign Essays on Agriculture and the Arts_, published in 1766, the
majority of the papers are by Swiss writers. Hume ("Of the Populousness
of Ancient Nations," _Essays_, ed. 1825, i, 410) writes that in
Switzerland in his day "we find at once the most skilful husbandmen and
the most bungling tradesmen that are to be met with in Europe."]
[Footnote 921: Daendliker, _Short History_, p. 199. Under Louis XIV there
had been 28,000 Swiss troops in the French service. In 1790 there were
only 15,000. But there were six Swiss regiments in the Dutch army, four
at Naples, and four in Spain (Vieusseux, p. 210).]
[Footnote 922: Daendliker, _Geschichte_, iii, 183,184.]
[Footnote 923: _Id._ _ib._ iii, 184.]
[Footnote 924: _Id._ _Short History_, p. 203.]
[Footnote 925: Daendliker, _Short History_, p. 204. In 1798 the French
found in the Bernese treasury thirty millions of francs in gold and
silver.]
[Footnote 926: Napoleon's sayings on Swiss politics, declaring in favour
of cantonal home rule and federation, are among his most statesmanlike
utterances; see them in Vieusseux, pp. 250-53. The originals are given
in Thibaudeau's _Memoires sur le Consulat_, 1827.]
[Footnote 927: Cp. Grote's _Seven Letters_, 2nd ed. p. 21.]
[Footnote 928: See Grote's account, pp. 34, 35.]
[Footnote 929: Adams and Cunningham, _La Confederation Suisse_, ed.
Loumyer, 1890, p. 23.]
[Footnote 930: Thus the Catholic clergy between 1840 and 1850 used it to
reject measures of educational reform (Grote, p. 66; cp. p. 38). Adams
and Cunningham do not appear to recognise this conservative origin,
pointing rather (p. 87) to the fact that the Conservatives at first
opposed the application of the referendum to Federal affairs, and
attributing the first conception (p. 88) to the Radicals. There appears
to be a conflict of evidence. In any case the system is now accepted all
round.]
[Footnote 931: See the opinion of M. Droz concerning the drawbacks of
the facultative referendum--that is, the permissible demand for it by
30,000 votes in cases where it is not obligatory as affecting the
constitution--as cited by Adams and Cunningham, ed. Loumyer, p. 80.]
[Footnote 932: See M. Loumyer's note to his translation of Adams and
Cunningham's work, p. 269.]
[Footnote 933: In 1830 there were still Swiss regiments in the French
service, and a Swiss legion was enrolled by England for the Crimean War.
This seems to be the last instance of the old practice.]
[Footnote 934: Adams and Cunningham, as cited, p. 303.]
[Footnote 935: _Essay_, bk. ii, ch. v.]
[Footnote 936: _Id._ 7th ed. pp. 173-75.]
[Footnote 937: Kay, _The Social Condition and Education of the People in
England and Europe_, 1850, i, 67, 68, 74, 76. Kay unfortunately does not
go into history, and we are left to conjecture as to the course of
opinion between the issue of Malthus's _Essay_ and 1850.]
[Footnote 938: See Kay, as cited. Compare the earlier calculations to
similar effect cited by Malthus.]
[Footnote 939: An increase of nearly 63,000 in eleven years.]
[Footnote 940: Cp. Kay, as cited, i, 9-11.]
[Footnote 941: _Seven Letters_, p. 31.]