The Swiss Republic
9781465676351
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The first inhabitants of Switzerland, according to tradition, were fugitives from Italy, who had been driven by the Gauls from the country where now flourish the cities of Genoa and Florence, and who, 600 B.C., found an asylum in the recesses and wilderness of the valleys above which the Rhine has its source. They were known as the Rhetians, from the name of their hero Rhetus; hence the country about the source of the Rhine, embracing the Grisons, is even now called by some, Rhetia. The Canton of Schwyz claims to have been peopled by the Cimbrians, who, leaving their original habitations in Sweden, Norway, and Friesland, conquered their way over the Rhine to the cities of the Gauls, in the country which is now France. The people of Gaul implored help from Rome; a strong army was sent against them, defeating and driving them into the Helvetian mountains. Another tradition says that they were a race of Gaulic Celts, whom some unknown accident had guided from the borders of the Rhine and Main to those of the Lake of Geneva, their collective name being Helvetians, after whom the country was named in Roman times. The first authentic mention we find of these people, as a nation, is by Julius Cæsar, who, in the first book of his “Commentaries,” related the war he waged with the Helvetians, who had made an irruption into Burgundy during his government in Gaul. He defeated them, and reduced the country to the obedience of the Romans, annexing it to that part of his government which was called Gallia Celtica. They lived in subjection to the Roman government till that empire fell. Among the new kingdoms and principalities that were raised out of the ruins was the kingdom of Burgundy, composed of a Vandal race from the Oder and the Vistula. Helvetia was overrun and made a part of this kingdom in the beginning of the fifth century (409 A.D.). Then followed irruptions of Alemanni, Ostrogoths, and Franks. The division of Switzerland into German- and French-speaking races is doubtless to be ascribed to these early settlements of different tribes from Germany and Gaul. In the sixth century (550 A.D.), the Franks having subjected the other two, all Helvetia was united to the crown of France. It was lost to the kings of France during the ninth century, under the weak reign of Charles the Fat. About the year 870 there sprang up again two new kingdoms of Burgundy, one called Cis-Jurana and the other Trans-Jurana; the first, at the end of fifty years, was merged in the latter. In this kingdom was comprehended the country of Helvetia, and continued part of it till about 1032, when Rudolph, the third and last king of Burgundy, dying without children, left all his kingdom to the Emperor Conrad II., whose successors enjoyed it for two centuries, when it was broken into several petty sovereignties. Feudalism had been rapidly growing up, and, like other parts of Europe, Helvetia fell under the rule of military chiefs and of powerful bishops and abbots. A numerous and ancient nobility divided the possession with ecclesiastical lords; of the former, conspicuous were the Dukes of Zähringen and Counts of Kyburg, Rapperswyl, and Hapsburg; and of the latter, the Bishop of Coire, the Abbot of St. Gallen, and the Abbess of Seckingen. There is no country whose history better illustrates the ambiguous relation, half property and half dominion, in which territorial aristocracy under the feudal system stood with respect to their dependants. The power under these princes, to which the country was subjected, was so limited that it might properly be said to be under their protection rather than their dominion. In the thirteenth century the race of the Dukes of Zähringen became extinct, which made way for the Counts of Hapsburg to enlarge their authority, being raised afterwards to the Austrian Duchy, and invested with the imperial dignity in Germany. The Helvetic people placed themselves under the protection of Rudolph of Hapsburg, with permission to send governors or bailiffs among them. They were governed with mildness while he lived. He died, and his son Albert did not tread in his father’s footsteps. This was the beginning of the fourteenth century, the memorable period of Rütli and William Tell. A resolution was taken to form a general insurrection in each Canton, in order to surprise and demolish all the castles and drive the governors and adherents out of the country. “They judged that a sovereign unjust towards a vassal, ceased to be himself protected by justice, and that it was lawful to employ force against him.”
