| Second War of Kappel | |||||||
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| Part of European wars of religion | |||||||
 Battle of Kappel, 11 October 1531, by Hans Asper | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
Catholics | Protestants | ||||||
The Second War of Kappel (German : Zweiter Kappelerkrieg) was an armed conflict in 1531 between the Catholic and the Protestant cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy during the Reformation in Switzerland.
The peace concluded after the First War of Kappel two years earlier had prevented an armed confrontation, but the tensions between the two parties had not been resolved, and provocations from both sides continued, fuelled in particular by the Augsburg Confession of 1530. The Protestant canton of Zürich and Huldrych Zwingli, leader of the Swiss Reformation, feared a military action by Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria and his brother Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor against Swiss Protestants, and saw the five Catholic cantons of Central Switzerland (Lucerne, Schwyz, Uri, Zug and Unterwalden) as potential allies of the two Habsburg sovereigns. [1] Additionally, the Catholic party accused Zürich of territorial ambitions. While the Federal Diet ( Tagsatzung ) had successfully mediated in 1529, on this occasion the attempt failed, not least because Zwingli was eager to implement the Reformation throughout the Confederacy. [1]
Since the beginning of 1531, Zürich had called on the five Catholic cantons to allow Protestant worship on their territory, but this was perceived by the Catholics as an attack on their independence and rejected. [1] Meanwhile, as the Catholic cantons refused to help the Three Leagues in the Grisons against the Duchy of Milan during the Musso War of March–April 1531, Zürich promptly considered this a breach of contracts between the Confederacy and the Three Leagues and declared an embargo against the five cantons. Zürich urged its ally Bern to launch a joint military intervention, which it refused. [1] Nevertheless, in May 1531 the two cantons enacted a food embargo against the five cantons, preventing the supply of grain and salt. [1] [2] After the measure failed to pressure the Catholics into concessions, in September Bern suggested lifting the embargo, which caused tensions with Zürich. [1]
Pressed by the food embargo, on 9 October 1531 the five Catholic cantons declared war on Zürich and deployed their main army on Zug's border with Zürich, near Kappel am Albis. [1] Zürich's troops were mobilized far too late, and at noon on 11 October, an army of around 2000 men found itself alone against some 7000 soldiers from the five cantons. [1] The bulk of the troops from Zürich arrived only in the course of the afternoon, incomplete, in isolated groups and exhausted from the march. At 4 p.m., the Catholic troops launched an attack and routed the enemy after a brief resistance. [1] Zürich suffered around 500 killed, among them Zwingli, who had accompanied the main army as a military chaplain and whose body was burned as a heretic. [1]
After the Battle of Kappel, Bern and other Protestant cantons came to the aid of Zürich. Between 15 and 21 October, a Protestant army, vastly outnumbering the enemy force, marched through the Reuss valley up to the entrance of Baar, and the Catholic troops withdrew to the Zugerberg. [1] The Bernese and the Zürcher command then attempted to advance through Sihlbrugg and Menzingen in order to surround the enemy. [1] The maneuver, which involved around 5,000 men, was delayed by looting and the indiscipline of the soldiers. [1] By the evening of 23 October, the expeditionary force had reached only Gubel Hill, near Menzingen, where it was attacked during the night by a small force from the five cantons and forced to flee after it had sustained heavy casualties. [1] [3]
The renewed defeat led to increasing desertions among the Protestant army, which retreated down the Reuss valley to Bremgarten on 3 November. [1] The withdrawal left Zürich's territories on the left bank of Lake Zürich unprotected and allowed Catholic troops to pillage the area from 6 to 8 November. [1] The canton's military incapability compelled leading figures in both the city of Zürich and the countryside to push for a immediate peace agreement. [1] From the beginning of November, representatives of the cantons that remained neutral: (Solothurn, Freiburg, Glarus and Appenzell), as well as French diplomats, had been trying to mediate a peace settlement. [1] In accordance with the military circumstances, the Second Peace in Kappel or Zweiter Landfrieden (Second Territorial Peace), which was concluded on 20 November in the hamlet of Deinikon, near Baar, turned out to be favourable for the Catholics. [1]
Heinrich Bullinger, who had been a teacher at Kappel and since 1523 an outspoken supporter of Zwingli's, at the time of the war was pastor at Bremgarten. Following the Battle of Kappel, Bremgarten was re-catholicized. On 21 October, Bullinger fled to Zürich with his father, and on 9 December was declared Zwingli's successor as leader of the Reformed movement. [4]
In anticipation of the Cuius regio eius religio principle of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, the Second Peace of Kappel confirmed each canton's right to determine the denomination of its own citizens and subjects, but favored Catholicism in the Confederacy's common territories. [1] With the restoration of the Princely Abbey of Saint Gall, Zürich's territorial ambitions in eastern Switzerland came to an end. [1] The peace treaty determined the dissolution of the Protestant alliance. [1] It also allowed communes or parishes that had already converted to remain Protestant. Only strategically important places such as the Freiamt or those along the route from Schwyz to the Rhine valley at Sargans (and thus to the alpine passes in the Grisons) were forcibly re-Catholicised.
One result of the treaty—probably not anticipated by its signatories—was the long-term establishment of religious coexistence in several Swiss subject territories. In both the territories of Thurgau and Aargau, for example, Catholic and Protestant congregations began worshiping in the same churches, which led to further tensions and conflicts throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The treaty also confirmed each canton's right to practice either the Catholic or Reformed faith, thus defining the Swiss Confederation as a state with two religions, [2] a relative exception in Western Europe. The outcome of the war also cemented the main denominations in each of the thirteen cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy: after later settlements in Glarus and Appenzell, seven full and two half cantons remained Catholic (Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, Solothurn, and half of Glarus and Appenzell), while four and two halves became firmly Swiss Reformed Protestant (Zürich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, and half of Glarus and Appenzell). With the exception of Western Switzerland, the religious geography of the country has remained largely unchanged since the Second Peace of Kappel. [1]
An unsuccessful effort by the Protestant cantons, especially Zürich, to change the terms of confessional coexistence in 1656, the First War of Villmergen, led to a reaffirmation of the status quo in the Dritter Landfrieden (Third Territorial Peace). A second religious civil war in 1712, the Second War of Vilmergen, ended in a decisive Protestant victory and major revisions in the fourth Landfrieden of 1712.
Since 1848 the Swiss Confederation has been a federal republic of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of federation that goes back more than 700 years, putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics.
Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
The canton of Schwyz is a canton in central Switzerland between the Alps in the south, Lake Lucerne to the west and Lake Zürich in the north, centred on and named after the town of Schwyz.
The Federal Charter or Letter of Alliance is one of the earliest constitutional documents of Switzerland. A treaty of alliance from 1291 between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, the Charter is one of a series of alliances from which the Old Swiss Confederacy emerged. In the 19th and 20th century, after the establishment of the Swiss federal state, the Charter became the central founding document of Switzerland in the popular imagination.
Thurgau, anglicized as Thurgovia, and formally as the Canton of Thurgau, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of five districts. Its capital is Frauenfeld.
Each of the 26 modern cantons of Switzerland has an official flag and a coat of arms. The history of development of these designs spans the 13th to the 20th centuries.
The Sonderbund War of November 1847 was a civil war in Switzerland, then still a relatively loose confederacy of cantons. It ensued after seven Catholic cantons formed the Sonderbund in 1845 to protect their interests against a centralization of power. The war concluded with the defeat of the Sonderbund. It resulted in the emergence of Switzerland as a federal state, concluding the period of political "restoration and regeneration" in Switzerland.
The Protestant Reformation in Switzerland was promoted initially by Huldrych Zwingli, who gained the support of the magistrate, Mark Reust, and the population of Zürich in the 1520s. It led to significant changes in civil life and state matters in Zürich and spread to several other cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Seven cantons remained Catholic, however, which led to intercantonal wars known as the Wars of Kappel. After the victory of the Catholic cantons in 1531, they proceeded to institute Counter-Reformation policies in some regions. The schism and distrust between the Catholic and the Protestant cantons defined their interior politics and paralysed any common foreign policy until well into the 18th century.
The early modern history of the Old Swiss Confederacy and its constituent Thirteen Cantons encompasses the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) until the French invasion of 1798.
The wars of Kappel (Kappelerkriege) is a collective term for two armed conflicts fought near Kappel am Albis between the Catholic and the Protestant cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy during the Reformation in Switzerland.
The First War of Kappel was an armed conflict in 1529 between the Protestant and the Catholic cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy during the Reformation in Switzerland. It ended, without any single battle having been fought, with the first peace of Kappel.
The Old Swiss Confederacy, also known as Switzerland or the Swiss Confederacy, was a loose confederation of independent small states, initially within the Holy Roman Empire. It is the precursor of the modern state of Switzerland.
The County of Sargans was a state of the Holy Roman Empire. From 1458 until the French Revolutionary War in 1798, Sargans became a condominium of the Old Swiss Confederacy, administered jointly by the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zürich, Glarus and Zug.
The Freiamt or Freie Ämter is a region in Switzerland and is located in the southeast of Canton of Aargau. It comprises the area between the Lindenberg and Heitersberg and from the terminal moraine at Othmarsingen to Reuss river in Dietwil. Today the area of the Bremgarten and Muri Districts are called the Freiamt. Previously, the area around Affoltern District in the canton of Zurich was called the (Zurich) Freiamt.
Vogtei Rheintal was a condominium of the Old Swiss Confederacy from the 15th century until 1798. Its territory corresponded to the left banks of the Alpine Rhine between Hoher Kasten and Lake Constance, including the towns of Altstätten and Rheineck.
Kappel Abbey is a former Cistercian monks monastery located in Kappel am Albis in the Swiss canton of Zurich.
The First War of Villmergen was a Swiss religious war which lasted from 5 January until 7 March 1656, at the time of the Old Swiss Confederacy. On one side were the Protestant cantons of Zürich and Bern, on the other the Catholic cantons of Central Switzerland. The Protestants tried to break the political hegemony of the Catholics, that had been in existence ever since the Second Kappel Landfrieden of 1531. The casus belli was the expulsion and execution of Protestants from the Schwyz commune of Arth. The Zürcher unsuccessfully besieged the Central Swiss-allied city of Rapperswil and thereby drove their forces together. The Bernese were defeated and repelled in the First Battle of Villmergen. The Third Landfrieden ended the conflict and restored the pre-war balance of power.
The Toggenburg War, also known as the Second War of Villmergen or the Swiss Civil War of 1712, was a Swiss civil war during the Old Swiss Confederacy from 12 April to 11 August 1712. The Catholic "inner cantons" and the Imperial Abbey of Saint Gall fought the Protestant cantons of Bern and Zürich as well as the abbatial subjects of Toggenburg. The conflict was a religious war, a war for hegemony in the Confederacy and an uprising of subjects. The war ended in a Protestant victory and upset the balance of political power within the Confederacy.
Uri is a Swiss Talschaft and canton in the upper Reuss valley.
The Thurgau was a pagus of the Duchy of Alamannia in the early medieval period. A County of Thurgau existed from the 13th century until 1798. Parts of Thurgau were acquired by the Old Swiss Confederacy during the early 15th century, and the entire county passed to the Confederacy as a condominium in 1460.
