Early Years of Swiss Independence

Today’s installment concludes Switzerland Independence Established,
our selection from History of Switzerland for the Swiss People by Heinrich Zschokke published in 1855.

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Previously in Switzerland Independence Established.

Time: 1499
Place: The Swiss Cantons

In spite of the positive prohibition of the magistrates, thousands of young men often enlisted in foreign service, where most of them perished miserably, because no one cared for them. Therefore the governments judged it best to make treaties with the kings for the raising of Swiss regiments, commanded by national officers, subject to their own laws and regularly paid, so that each government could take care of its subjects when abroad. “Confederates! you require a vent for your energies,” had Rudolf Reding of Schwyz already said, when, years before, he saw the free life of the young men after the Burgundian war.

Now began the letting out of Swiss, Grisons, and Valaisians to foreign military service, by their governments. The first treaty of this nature was made by the King of France, 1479 — 1480, with the Confederates in Lucerne. Next the house of Austria hired mercenaries, 1499; the princes of Italy did the same, as did others afterward. Even the popes themselves wanted a lifeguard of Swiss; the first, 1503, was Pope Julius II, who was often engaged in war.

Switzerland suffered much from this course. Many a field remained untilled, many a plough stood still, because the husbandman had taken mercenary arms. And, if he returned alive, he brought back foreign diseases and vices, and corrupted the innocent by evil example, for he had acquired but little virtue in the wars. Only the sons of the patricians and council lords obtained captaincies, commands, and riches, by which they increased their influence and consideration in the land and could oppress others. They prided themselves on the titles of nobility and decorations conferred by kings, and imagined these to be of value, and that they themselves were more than other Swiss.

When the kings perceived the cupidity and folly of the Swiss, they took advantage of them for their own profit, sent ambassadors into Switzerland, distributed presents, granted gratifications and pensions to their partisans in the councils, and for these the council lords became willing servants of foreign princes. Then one canton was French, another Milanese; one Venetian, another Spanish; but rarely was one Swiss. This redounded greatly to the shame of the Swiss. When the German Emperor and the King of France were, at the same time, canvassing the favor of the cantons and bargaining in competition for troops, so great was the contempt or insolence of the French ambassador at Bern, 1516, that he distributed the royal pensions to the lords by sound of trumpet. At Freiburg he poured out silver crowns upon the ground, and, while he heaped them up with a shovel, said to the bystanders, “Does not this silver jingle better than the Emperor’s empty words?” So much had love of money debased the Swiss.

The twelve cantons, Appenzell being the only exception, were at one moment allied with Milan against France, at the next with France against Milan. Milan was rightly called the Schwyzer’s grave. It was not unusual for Confederates to fight against Confederates on foreign soil, and to kill each other for hire. The ecclesiastical lord, Matthew Schinner, Bishop of Sion in Valais, a very deceitful man, helped greatly to occasion this. According as he was hired, he intrigued in Switzerland, sometimes for the King of France, sometimes against France for the Pope, who, in payment, even made him cardinal and ambassador to the Confederacy.

The mercenary wars of the Swiss upon foreign battlefields were not wars for liberty or for honor; but these hirelings of princes maintained their reputation for valor even there. With the aid of several thousand Confederates, the King of France subjected the whole of Lombardy in the space of twenty days. But the expelled Duke of the country soon returned with five thousand Swiss, whom he had enlisted contrary to the will of the magistracy, to drive out the French. Then the King of France received twenty thousand men from the cantons with whom he was allied; maintained himself in Italy, and gave to the three cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, 1502-1503, the districts of Palenza, Riviera, and Bellenz. But, as soon as the King thought he could do without the Swiss, he paid them badly and irregularly. Cardinal Schinner, pleased at this, immediately shook a bag of gold, with fifty — three thousand guilders, in favor of the Pope and of Venice. At once, 1512, twenty thousand Swiss and Grisons crossed the high Alps and joined the Venetians against the French. The Grisons took possession of Valtelina, Chiavenna, and Bormio. They asserted that, a century before, an ejected duke of Milan had ceded these valleys to the bishopric of Coire. The Confederates of the twelve cantons subjected Lugano, Locarno, and Valmaggia. The French were driven out of Lombardy, and the young duke Maximilian Sforza, son of him who had been dispossessed by them, was reinstated in his father’s inheritance at Milan. Victorious for him, the Confederates beat the French near Novara, June 6, 1513; two thousand Swiss fell, it is true, but ten thousand of the enemy. Still more murderous was the two days’ battle of Melegnano, September 14, 1515, in which barely ten thousand Swiss fought against fifty thousand French. They lost the battlefield, indeed, but not their honor. They sadly retreated to Milan, with their field — pieces on their backs, their wounded in the center of their army. The enemy lost the flower of their troops and called this action the “Battle of the Giants.”

Then the King of France, Francis I, terrified by a victory which resembled a defeat, made, in the next year, a perpetual peace with the Confederates, and, by money and promises, persuaded some to furnish him with troops; the others, that they would allow no enrolling by his enemies. Thus the Confederates once more helped him against the Emperor and Pope and against Milan, and the King concluded a friendly alliance with them in 1521. During many years they shed their blood for him on the battle — fields of Italy, without good result, without advantage, except that the Confederacy stood godmother to his new — born son. Each canton sent to Paris, for the fête, a deputy with a baptismal present of fifty ducats. More agreeable to the King than this present was the promptitude with which the Swiss sent sixteen thousand of their troops to his assistance in Italy. However, as they had lost, April 20, 1522, three thousand men near Bicocca; as of nearly fifteen thousand who entered Lombardy, 1524, hardly four thousand came back; as, finally, in the battle near Pavia, February 24, 1525, in which the King himself became prisoner to the Emperor, the Swiss experienced a fresh loss of seven thousand men, they by degrees lost all taste for Italian wars.

This ends our series of passages on Switzerland Independence Established by Heinrich Zschokke from his book History of Switzerland for the Swiss People published in 1855. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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