The League of God’s House (Swiss History Part Four)

The Grey League.

The Three Leagues.

The history of Switzerland is combinations of alliances. (Is that all history?) Places (cantons) form groups to fight invasions and encroachments. From the Habsburgs, from the Burgundians, from each other. If you watched a timelapse political map of Switzerland it grows… like a cancer? Like a growth. Cells combining. Watch the flags pass by as you scroll through this one.

One answer to Steinberg’s titular question, Why Switzerland? is The Congress of Vienna. French Revolutionary armies rolled all over Switzerland, Napoleon used it as he saw fit (he seemed to find it kind of amusing and sort of admirable, and thought a federation was the natural state for the Swiss). It was not peaceful during this time. There were 21,000 Russians at the battle of Gothard Pass.

After Waterloo, when the still standing powers sorted out the future of Europe, Swiss neutrality was guaranteed.

Staying neutral, that was the hard part. In the Concise History Church and Head mention that during WWI the average Swiss guy spent 605 days deployed patrolling the border, which was tough and boring. Active duty to keep Switzerland neutral. Active neutrality. That’s another answer to Steinberg’s question Why Switzerland?: the army/national service keeps the diverse cantons bonded together.

Contemplate the following alt outcome for Europe, past or future: instead of an EU, Switzerland expands, absorbing the states around it and then the whole continent into its federal system.

*Amarco90 took that photo of Chur.