Switzerland

Switzerland is the Alpine federation of Central Europe, twenty-six cantons from Geneva to St Gallen, nine million people on the plateau with Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern, Lausanne and Lucerne. Three forest cantons swore the Federal Charter of 1291 against Habsburg bailiffs; pikemen beat dukes and emperors at Morgarten, Sempach and Nancy, hired out as Europe's soldiers, and turned passes and bridges into tolls. The Reformation split Zwingli's Zurich from the inner cantons, Napoleon redrew the map, and Vienna in 1815 declared the restored Confederacy perpetually neutral. The Sonderbund civil war of 1847 lasted twenty-six days and gave the constitution of 1848: a council of seven, referendums on demand, four languages in one parliament. German, French, Italian and Romansh make a nation of will rather than blood. Banks, watches, chocolate and tunnels paid for mountain railways, the Red Cross was born in Geneva, and armed neutrality carried the Confederacy untouched through 1945.