Swisstory (Part One)

Posted: April 13, 2024 | Author: helytimes | Filed under: Uncategorized |Leave a comment

We’ll be at the Annecy Animation Festival in June to present the world premiere of COMMON SIDE EFFECTS, hope to see you there! Although Annecy is of course in France, this trip will bring me for the first time to the nation of Switzerland, so I’ve been reading up on her history.

I took Tyler Cowen’s advice and bought a picture book:

The map in there is really good:

Here’s Google:

Here’s another map:

As you can see we have the Alps, some tough to traverse terrain, to the south, another gentler spine of mountains, the Jura, running along the northwest, and a juicy plateau in the middle, where you’ll find Geneva, Bern, and on up to Zurich.

Remember Otzi, the Ice Man? Here’s a reconstruction of the withered ice-mummy:

(source)

Otzi was found in the Italian Alps near Austria, and he lived around 3000 BC. Presumably there were wandering ice men and women all over what’s now Switzerland in wayback times. Now you can see Otzi in a special refrigerated chamber in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano. His murderer has yet to be identified. Boy, talk about a cold case!

A lucky or industrious iceman might’ve built himself and his family a pile-dwelling. The various alpine pile-dwellings are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A reach, in my opinion. There’s apparently one in Bourg I may get to check out. Do the people of Bourg live any better now?

In looking into that I found this cool picture of nearby Versoix, taken in 1925 by aviator Walter Mittelhozer.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Fast forward from the iceman and the pile houses a couple thousand years. Herbert Kubly, writing the Time Life text, does a great job:

Switzerland was brought into history by Julius Caesar.

Backing up a bit:

During the Iron Age several tribes of barbaric Celts overran the area and one of them, the Helvetii, stayed. By 500 B.C. these Helvetians seem to have shared the land with a wild tribe called the Raeti, from northern Italy. They were not destined to share the land in peace.

Soon restless and powerful Germanic tribes from north of the Rhine began to press relentlessly southward.

Driven westish by these invaders, the proto-Swiss met the Romans in what’s now France. There they scored a win at Agen, in what’s now France.

According to Caesar, the captured Roman soldiers were ordered to pass under a yoke set up by the triumphant Gauls, a dishonour that called for both public as well as private vengeance. Caesar is the only narrative source for this episode, as the corresponding books of Livy’s histories are preserved only in the Periochae, short summarising lists of contents, in which hostages given by the Romans, but no yoke, are mentioned.

This episode was painted by Swiss artist Charles Gleyre:

Gleyre also did a nice portrait of Sappho:

That’s now in the Musee Cantonal des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, I hope I have a chance to view it.

In any case the Helvitii victory was short lived. Caesar went after the bad boys of the plateau. Says Kubly:

In 58 B.C., a great column of men, women and children, with their cattle and provisions, started westward toward what is today southern France, their goal the mouth of the Garonne River and the Atlantic coast.

It was this attempted tribal relocation that ushered Switzerland onto the stage of world 25 history. Southern France was a Roman province and Caesar was understandably reluctant to have this disrupting human tide cross his territory. He rushed 700 miles from Rome to Geneva in eight days, marshaled six legions and defeated the Alpine tribesmen in a battle near the present-day French city of Autun. After the defeat, Caesar ordered the Helvetii to stay home.

Another version:

In 58 BC, Julius Caesar prevented the Helvetians from leaving the Swiss plateau when they wanted to avoid the Germanic incursion from the west by migrating to the south of France. They were stopped by Julius Caesar at Bibracte (Montmort near present-day Autun, Burgundy, F). He sent the Helvetians back and settled them as a “buffer people” under the control of the Roman army. After Caesar’s death, the Romans, now under Emperor Augustus, increased their influence over Swiss territory.

so says the Swiss tourist board, which has a great website. Here’s a nice Roman arena at Aventicum/Avenches:

(source: Ludovic Péron for Wiki)

There were some Roman outposts in Switzerland:

and it seems like it was mostly a good time:

The hundreds of villae found in Switzerland, some very luxurious, attest to the existence of a wealthy and cultured upper class of landowners. Many villae belonged not to Roman immigrants, but to members of the Celtic aristocracy who continued to hold their lands and their rank after the Roman conquest. Of the lower classes, much less is known, although there are inscriptions attesting to the existence of guilds (collegia) of boat skippers, doctors, teachers and traders, as well as to the existence of a trade in slaves.

A Roman era arch on Lake Geneva, thanks Hapax.

Says Kubly:

Over the succeeding centuries the troops and the Roman governors established Roman law and built towns with palaces, temples and amphitheaters. They introduced cherries and chickens to Helvetian agriculture and improved cattle breeds and the cultivation of vineyards.

Their most enduring enterprise was the construction of roads with which they crisscrossed the country, including a road over the Great St. Bernard Pass which assured permanent communication between Italy and the north.

Then it all went to hell. The “catastrophe of 260” led to the place being overrun by warlike German tribes, the Romans retreated, they were gone completely by 454 AD.

There’s a small little nook of Switzerland where people still speak Romansh, which is something like Vulgar Latin.

(source)

But mostly the Germanic / Frankish peoples would be running the show in what’s now Switzerland from now on.

Now we enter a period where like four or five hundred years goes by and very little is recorded, aside from the occasional mention of a monastery or something. What the hell was happening? “I’m in the dark here” as Al Pacino says in Scent of a Woman. It’s unfashionable to call it the Dark Ages, but… it was dark! Like literally, there was probably very little light. World Lit Only By Fire as William Manchester titled his fascinating and bizarre book. People livin, dyin, lovin. All vanished.

Says Kubly, deftly summarizing a few centuries of what must’ve been intense struggle times:

With the Romans gone, two Germanic tribes gradually took over Switzerland. The Burgundians moved in from the west. The Alemanni, invading from the north, gradually pushed the Burgundians to the Sarine River, which became the border between the two and established permanently the division which still exists today between Switzerland’s French- and German speaking peoples.

In the Sixth Century both tribes came under Frankish rule, and the country eventually became a part of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire. After Charlemagne died in 814, his descendants fell to bickering among themselves and Switzerland was once again divided, this time between two of Charlemagne’s grandsons who ruled upper Burgundy and Germany. In 888, a minor despot named Rudolf seized part of the old Burgundian territories and had himself crowned ruler.

When we come back: oaths, Eidgenossenschaft, and the Bern Book.

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