
Switzerland History – From the Reformation to the Collapse of the Ancient States (1519 – 1798)
If conflicts of interest between the western cantons and the central and eastern cantons had caused the failure of a policy, for which the confederation was not sufficiently firm inside, an independent policy in European conflicts became decidedly impossible only with the Reform, which a few years after the defeat of Marignano violently disunited the Confederation. The Reformation, which originated in Switzerland from that capital of the Confederation which was then Zurich, succeeded indeed in conquering the city-states of Bern and Basel, in part also Schaffhausen, Appenzell and Glarus and several regions or allied subjects. But the most historically important regions: inner, rural-conservative Switzerland with Lucerne and Zug resolutely opposed innovation. The Confederation thus shared the fate of the Empire, where an internal split was likewise provoked, so that the…