Old Swiss Confederacy

The Old Swiss Confederacy was the free Switzerland from 1291 to 1798, a league of peasant valleys and proud cities that humbled knights and kings. Legend says three men swore on the Ruetli meadow in August 1291 to stand together against the Habsburg bailiffs; the apples and arrows of William Tell belong to story, but the charters are real. Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden beat Leopold of Austria's knights at Morgarten in 1315, marching down through mud onto glittering horsemen, and Lucerne, Zurich and Bern joined the league. At Sempach in 1386 and in the Burgundian wars of Grandson and Morat, pikemen in hedgehog squares destroyed the finest cavalry of Europe, and all of Europe hired Swiss guards and Reislaufer mercenaries. Zurich and Bern took the Reformation from Zwingli while the forest cantons kept the old faith, fighting two short wars of religion and then agreeing to disagree. Marignano in 1515, lost beside the French against Milan, taught the Confederates the price of foreign wars: they kept their mountains, sold their soldiers, and stayed out. The 1648 peace of Westphalia recognised what the pikes had won, independence from the Empire. In 1798 French revolutionary armies marched over the passes, proclaimed the Helvetic Republic, and the old Confederation of cantons ended.