USA > Vermont > Washington County > Montpelier > Addresses delivered before the Vermont Historical Society and the Vermont Historical and Antiquarian Society > Part 11
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Unwilling or incapable of profiting by the experience of the astute Louis XI, his opponent, CHARLES the RASH of BURGUNDY, determined to try his hand at oppressing Switzerland. Burgundy, although a feudal duchy, was, yet, at that time, a kingdom in power and influence, al- though its sovereign wore only a ducal coronet. More- over, the army with its train of artillery and equipages, which, twice renewed and twice entirely ruined, CHARLES poured over the Jura into what was then the Canton of BERNE, would be termed magnificent even at the present day. Two defeats, so marvellous and overwhelming, that nothing but the more recent routs of ROSBACH, LEUTHEN, JENA, the annihilation of the whole French expedition to Moscow, WATERLOO and NOVARA, could justify belief in the disasters which shipwrecked the
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fame, the power and the armies of Burgundy. A third victory, NANCY, in 1477, cost the magnificent CHARLES his life.
At this period of triumph, in 1481, SOLEURE and FREY- BURG, contrasts in their after political conduct, were ad- mitted into the Confederation as the ninth and tenth Cantons.
Despots and kings, and, in fact, political administrations of every texture, never appear to learn wisdom from the past. Toimpose the Austrian yoke, upon the TEN Cantons, which his ancestors could not impose upon THREE, or upon FOUR, or upon EIGHT, the German Emperor took the field in person.
Defeated by the Swiss in not less than cight battles in the course of as many months, MAXIMILIAN resolved upon peace. He had lost over twenty thousand men and seen nearly two thousand towns, villages and castles laid in ashes to satisfy his ambitious attempts upon liberty .- Peace accordingly was concluded at BASLE, September 22d, 1499. Thus ended the Suabian, the last war of Swiss independence. These wars had dragged out through two hundred and one years. The American Wars of Independence, if we consider, as many do, the War of the Revolution as the First or Inceptive, and the War of 1812 as the Second or Decisive, forty-five years. The first blood shed in the American Revolution, was not in King's Street, Boston, March 5th, 1770, nor at Lexington, April 19th 1775, but on GOLDEN HILL, in John Street, in New York City, January 18th 1770, preceding by two months, the first New England martyr- dom for liberty. The last conflict to establish our complete independence of Great Britain was at NEW ORLEANS, January 8th, 1815.
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The first struggle of the Swiss Revolution was on the DONNERBULL (Thunder Hill) and in the Jammerthal (Vale of Tears), appropriate names, in 1298; the last victory at. DORNACH in 1499. It must be conceded the Swiss had a harder fight, against greater odds, for their Freedom, than we, Americans, for ours. What is acquired with great diffi- culty is highly esteemed. The Swiss have maintained their freedom and consolidated their unity. Will we emulate their example ?
From that Treaty of BASLE dates, properly speaking, the complete independence of Switzerland, which then ceased to be subjected to the sovereignty of the empire-a state of things which was sanctioned by the PEACE OF WEST- PHALIA, in 1648.
The French War, of 1444, had been a mere August thunder shower, fierce enough, however, while it lasted ; the Burgundian War, of 1475-'6-'7, a succession of torna- does ; the Suabian War, 1499, was a regular, furious storm, but the Cantons sustained the violence of all three as the Alps meet the Fahn and the Bise, two furious winds peculiar to Switzerland, whose blasts accomplish nothing but to purify the air.
In 1501, BASLE and SCHAFFHAUSEN were admitted as the eleventh and twelfth, and in 1515, APPENZELL as the last Canton necessary to complete the list of the first Thirteen, exactly the number of the British Provinces which transmuted themselves into the original THIRTEEN United States.
Of these Thirteen three were Aristo- Democratic. The first of these was ZURICH, afterwards the home of liberal ideas and the cradle of the Reformation. In considera- tion of the wealth and importance of the City of Zurich, the others violded to it the first place in order of rank,
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and it has ever since borne the title, although it long since lost the prerogative, of the first Canton of the Helvetic body. This privilege, however, gave Zurich no supe- riority over the rest, but merely constituted it as a central point, where all the affairs, which concerned the whole confederation, were transacted ; its deputies had also for a time the precedency in the general diets.
Of the other two, the most important, BASLE, was then what it proved in the last Swiss Secession War, neither cold nor hot, as we shall see hereafter, looking only, like all commercial emporiums, to its own selfish interests.
Of the four Aristocratic Cantons, BERNE was subse- quently, 1798-1803, divided into four, and afterwards became one of the most Liberal or Democratic, perhaps, for the same reason, that SAMSON became weak. Her extensive dependencies, like his long locks, the sources of her strength, having been shorn off by the very reactionary power, whose influences adverse to Liberty, had laid her to sleep.
Two others, LUCERNE and FREYBURG, have always been the enemies of progress, and completely in the hands of those whose interests it was to keep the people bigoted and ignorant. In 1782, Freyburg was the closest aristoc- racy or rather oligarchy in all Switzerland, and one of the most bigoted. Latterly, it scarcely ceded to Lucerne in that regard.
The fourth, SOLEURE, situated in the valley of the Aar, has been liberalized in a measure by the commerce and travel, foreign especially, flowing through it.
The six Democratic Cantons hardly exceeded in area or population either of the Aristocratic ; in wealth there was no comparison. Jealous of their own liberties, they had little respect for the liberties of others where those
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liberties conflicted with their own political prejudices and religious bigotry. This always led them to become members of each successive Secession League-(for every secession League was formed to arrest Liberality in Senti- ment and Politics,)-and become the Associates of Coalitions with Despotic tendencies. It is singular that the rule which governs unions between parties, the most dissimilar in their habits and feelings, but identical in apparent interests, holds good not only in private life, in marriages, but in public life, in na- tional alliances. Witness our own predilections for the Russian government, the most despotic in Europe, while yet we were on the closest terms of amity with England, and in numerous other instances. Even auto- cratic Romanist France was preferred to constitutional Protestant Great Britain.
Besides these, there were subject Bailiwicks, and Confederate States, known as Socii, Associates or Allies, subsequently, from time to time, embraced within the limits of the present twenty two Cantons. Three Aristo- Democratic, four Aristocratic and six Democratic Cantons constituted this Alliance, rather than actual Confederation of Thirteen States, which bound together by a general alliance, were still not, in all cases, allied to each other. Incongruous as it was in many respects, it lasted never- theless, with modifications, but no essential changes down to the end of the XVIIIth Century. From 1516 to 1718, from the time when ZWINGLI commenced to preach the gospel, when as yet the name of LUTHER had never been heard of in Alpine districts,-that is from the inception of the Reformation in Switzerland, down to the religious Peace of AARAU,-was a period of continual intestine strug- gles, excited and instigated by the same religious jealousies, oppressions and antipathies ; demons which have only
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been laid by the magic of the sword within six years.
From the PEACE OF AARAU, in 1712, (which is generally credited to 1718, since the Abbot of St. Gall did not accede to it until six years after its agreement.) down to 1798, the Cantons enjoyed the blessings of seventy nine years of comparative repose. In the winter of 1797-'S, the French troops invaded the Cantons. This year, 1798, Lavater styled the first year of Swiss Slavery, which may be said to have lasted fifteen to seventeen years. In 1798, the old confederate bond was loosed by the French. It had stood the strain of four hundred and ninety years ; in seventy four days it was now dissolved.
The cantons which composed the first Association of the XIIIth Century contained the germs of future diffi- culties, similar to those which existed in a dormant state within our own confederation from its inception. These seeds of discord were sufficiently apparent in the country to occasion more prophecies of our present contest than those emitted by LORD COLERAINE and by BURKE, within a few years after the adoption of the Federal Constitu- tion. In Switzerland the remnant of abuses, privileges oppressions, as old as the organization of its primitivo government, had a great deal to do with Secession, but in both countries, which it has cursed, the object was the same-the aggrandizement of a governing caste of aristo- cratic and spiritual oligarchs at the expense of their fellow men. In Switzerland, as in America, a dominant class sought to impose their yoke not only upon matter but upon mind.
Although SECESSION, visibly, dates back only to CAL- HOUN, in 1832, when it bore the title of NULLIFICATION. it nevertheless existed, as a latent idea, in the shape of STATE RIGHTS in the minds of many of those who signed the first Act of our Confederation. Just so in Switzer-
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iand. The Reformation was Anti-Slavery in intent ; the dominant church then Pro-Slavery in effect. The result was a SONDERBUND or Secession spirit, which like some chronic diseases, assumed more or less violent phases under mitigating or aggravating circumstances. The exciting cause in the Sonderbund cantons, the seat of the difficulty or the organ affected, was never radically cured, although the remedies applied were sufficiently active or effectual to restrain the disease within certain limits. Finally foreign influence, like malarious air, against which ZWINGLI boldly sounded the alarm, developed the latent sentiment into contagious virulence.
Meanwhile, neglect on the part of the family physician the FEDERAL DIET, permitted the difficulty to gain such & head that the cure required a medicine, (artillery pills, and bayonet lancets,) so violent in itself, that had the applications failed to effect a prompt cure, the practice would have destroyed the life of the patient, the Swiss Confederation.
Still another brief recapitulation of some events ap- pears necessary at this time to make this question or anal- ogy more intelligible. SECESSION, in Switzerland, was no more a new idea in 1846-'47 than it was in the United States, in 1860-'61. In 1525, the Legislature of Berne issued an Edict of Religious Reformation, in Thirteen Articles, founded on a truly Evangelical basis. This spiritual reform had just the same effect then, as the politico-spiritual ameliorations of the present century, particularly those called for between 1840 and 1847 .-- The Bernese regulations, conceived in a spirit of justice, charity and liberality, gave rise, in the November of the same year, to the LEAGUE OF THE VALAIS, or SONDERBUND of the five Romanist Cantons and. the confederate State of the VALAIS for the defence of the
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Romanist faith. FREYBURG joined the league afterwards. In this SEPARATE LEAGUE we have the identical Sonder- bund of 1847, excited by the very same causes, and influenced by the same objects. What renders the re- semblance more striking is, that just as the hereditary enemy of Switzerland, FERDINAND of Austria, was ad- mitted as a member of the Alliance of 1528, just so Austria was the power and Austrian princes the agents on which the treasonable alliance of 1846-'7 especially relied for material support. "This alliance startled the other Cantons. Alarm filled men's minds. They sung the personal complaint everywhere :---
"Wail Helvetians, Wail, For the Peacock's plume of Pride To the Forest Canton's savage Bull In Friendship is allied."
To parry the effects of this Separate League, ZURICH and BERNE and other Reformed districts entered into what they called a CHRISTIAN CO-BURGHERSHIP, in 1529, to which Schaffhausen and Basle virtually acceded, in the follow- ing year, 1530. Three Cantons, divided within themselves, remained more or less neutral. In the array of parties, and in the condition of affairs in the XVIth Century, we have a perfect type of what occurred in the XIXth. The same antagonism has occurred with a greater or less re- semblance more than once since between those eras, but in 1530, Switzerland presented a perfect picture of the Status of Romanism and Retrograde Tendencies, of Protes- tantism and Liberal Progression, and of selfish Neutrality, in exactly the same proportions, as occurred three hundred and seventeen years later.
The first great French revolution which did so much harm, accomplished, nevertheless, an immense deal of good. The decree of the French Directory declaring that the Swiss Confederation had ceased to exist, and organ-
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izing Switzerland into a single republic with a central government, was not without its beneficial effects. The French revolution commenced that process of amalga- mation, which the triumph over Secession in 1847 carried another step forward. It crushed Switzerland into some- thing like a nationality which was a comparative blessing. It swept away castes and privileges, and substituted its own great despotism for the petty tyrannies previously existing. It failed because it lacked the true religious element, that is the religious element of the Bible, as many who watched its operations predicted, on account of that very omission, that it would fail.
"You may call a Republic of Unbelievers free, but that republican form confers no Liberty ; it may give scope to Licentiousness, but it can confer no Liberty. The land in which the mass rules is not a free land ; that is the Home of Freedom where Truth rules. That is no true Democracy in which all are on a level merely ; the true democracy is that in which all are Brothers-some elder, some younger, but all helping one another. A democracy is impossible on any other than Christian principles."
Can any one deny that the masses in Europe are not better off to-day than they were before the French Revo- lution ? No sensible unprejudiced men would dare to do so. The outrages upon humanity then daily practiced by a dominant aristocracy and spiritual hierarchy are heard of no more. There are no more public or legalized tortures, there are no more dragonades, there are no more judicial murders like that of CALAS, at Toulouse, except in districts where the mind is still subjected to that yoke and frenzied by that goad, which brought about Swiss Secession, a spirit twin to that which occasioned our own Rebellion. We shudder at the wrongs inflicted upon our slaves. But if we are to believe VULLIEMIE and other
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authentic historians of Switzerland, the yoke of the negro was in the majority of cases lighter than that impose l'by a dominant clergy and aristocracy upon their fellow whites. They speak of executions preceded by tortures which terrified the imagination, of mantilations and in- justice worthy of the annals of Naples and of the Inquisi- tion. A reader is tempted to throw down the book shocked at the recital of man's inhumanity to man. If any one questions these charges let him examine the Countess DORA D'ISTRIA'S "Switzerland, the Pioneer of the Reformation," and her authorities.
All that was good in the French Revolution, its liberal elevating and regenerating influences can be traced to the operation of that Spirit which proclaimed release to the captive, quickenel the Reformation, and declared that " where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Liberty,"- that Spirit whose purest modern exponent was ZWINGLI, the Swiss Reformer of ZURICH.
The horrors of the French Revolution were not its necessary or inevitable results. " Insensate resistance," DORA D'ISTRIA remarks in her German Switzerland, " compels Revolutionists to pass beyond the goal they would have been satisfied to reach. Were not the un- ceasing conspiracies of the clergy and of the aristocracy, and their dishonorable alliance with foreigners. the chief causes of the excesses of the French Revolution ?'
But to resume the regular narrative of events in Switz- erland since 1795, which were interrupted by the preced- ing remarks.
In 1801, a Diet, assembled at Berne, prochained : Confederation of XVII Cantons with a central Federal government, in that city.
In: 1803. BONAPARTE promulgated his Act of Mediation,
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constituting Switzerland into a Confederation of XIX Cantons, with separate local governments and a Federal Diet for the whole.
In 1814, the Deputies of the majority of the Cantons, assembled at Zurich, proclaimed the Independence of the XIX Cantons as then existing. In this year the VALAIS, NEUFCHATEL, and GENEVA, Were admitted as three new Cantons making the total, as at present, XXII.
In 1815 the Allied Powers, at the Congress of Vienna, acknowledged the Independence and Perpetual Neutral- ity of Switzerland, and a new Federal Compact of the XXII Cantons was sworn to in the Diet, at Zurich, in the August of that year.
The French Convention, and its successor the Directory, which transmuted the Seven United Provinces of Holland into the Batavian Republic (in 1795), the states of North- ern and Central Italy into the Chalpine Republic (in 1797,) and Southern Italy into the Parthenopein Repub- lic, (in 1798,) about the same time ernshed together the Thirteen Swiss Cantons into the Helvetian Republic, (1797). Upon the final fall of Napoleon, Switzerland existed in a Bond of XXII Cantons, and, as such, it was recognized by the Congress of Vienna, which guaranteed its independence and perpetual Neutrality.
With the restoration of Switzerland's independence, recommenced the machinations of all those who were opposed to Liberal Institutions. Immediately again the disciples of Metternich and Talleyrand, sought to reunite the severed and tangled skein of intrigues, fomented by their predecessors, guiding spirits of the surrounding monarchical and despotic powers. Jealous of the existence of a successful Free State in their midst, Austria, France, and, in a much less degree, Prussia, had no sooner signed the guarantees of Swiss Independence, than they set to
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work to undermine it, and to divide the people, in the hope of annexing or appropriating any seceding or dissatisfied district, as they nearly succeeded in doing in 1846-'7.
It is greatly to be regretted that the limits of an Address precluded a more detailed examination of that Struggle, between Imperial and Papal Despotism, and comparative Freedom, which lasted from the first years of the XVI Century, to the Peace of Aarau (Argovia,) 1718; that struggle between spiritual darkness, and evangelical light which characterized the era of Zwingli, Lather and Cal- vin. That conflict between Lay and Ecclesiastical Aris- tocracy and Oligarchy and Democracy, which began with the beginnings of the Confederation, endured from the 15th Century, down to the Congress of Vienna, and was renewed, with almost equal bitterness, after Switzer- land had recovered, at it were, her equilibrium, until, at length, enflamed by spiritual avidity for power, it blazed up into the Sonderbund troubles of 1840, and ended with the triumph of Republicanism, and the short, sharp, deci- sive, shattering triumph of the Liberals, Loyalists or Federalists, over Secession, in 1847.
Suffice it to say, that after the Recognition of the XXII Cantons, 20th March, 1815,-the renewed struggle of thirty years, between Swiss retrogradists, and progres- sionists, was characterized by a bitterness, which, in all likelihood, would have deterred many of our politicians from taking the stump, and embroiling public affairs .-- They would have restricted their enthusiasm to safer occupations than statescraft, had they seen in the near future the Axe of the Headsman, and the Gyves of the Felon, as the almost certain rewards, in case of failure, of their interested endeavors. If the mountain begets fervor and fearless energy, it also begets ferocity and fierce
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zeal, even to the shedding of blood. Let us thank God, that hitherto we have been spared the sights of scaffolds, erected for those who have outraged the majesty of the constitution, instead of witnessing, as in Switzerland, the bloody block, and the grim headsman holding up the dripping head of the executed rebel.
The efforts at Nullification, in every regard, which began to show themselves in Switzerland, immediately upon the fall of Napoleon, were the origin of the Swiss Separate, or Secession League, (Sonderbund.) "The Separate League," said M. Druey, Deputy of Vaud, "is a continuation of the Reactionary Movement, of 1802 : of the Anti-national Intrigues of the Waldshut Committee (in 1812-'13); of the Aristocratic Enterprises of 1813-'14-'15; of the Conspiracy of 1832; of the Sarnen League in 1833 ; and of the Reaction effected in some Cantons since 1839, and attempted in others. That League would fain invade all the States of the Confederation."
Just as this REACTION in religious and political matters, permitted in certain Cantons, sought to invade and rule in more Liberal Cantons, just so Slavery endeavored to invade the Free States and impose and continue a suc- cession of corrupt administrations upon our free North.
For thirty two years, Switzerland presented two hostile camps, which rested their extremities on foreign lands, and which attempted reciprocally to weaken each other, by the withdrawal of adherents. An attitude gradually more resolute and bolder was the result of these separate alliances.
According to the opinion of a writer, whose Christian sympathies and learning entitle her to reliance, the origin of the quarrel which brought these two camps into col- lision was the Suppression of the Convents of Argovia or
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Aargau for taking part in political disturbances, in 1841, on the motion of a Member of the Diet of their own (Roman Catholic) persnasion .* Austria, which permits no opportunity of exercising its reactionary influence in the Swiss Confederation, interfered on the most frivolous grounds. To avenge the Suppression of the Argovian Convents, the Austro-Romanists or ULTRAMONTANISTS, by which term we shall distinguish the REBELS or SECESSION party in the Cantons, determined to invite the Jesuits to return. The Ultramontanists held the balance of power in Switzerland just, as it is to be feared, they do in this country. To re-establish their influence this party re- called the Jesuits, whose Institution or Society, as carly as in 1818, had been energetically protested against, even in bigoted Freyburg, as incompatible with a Free State. The project of inviting this unpopular Society to Lucerne, against the decided will of the majority of the Swiss people, and the suggestion, at Lucerne, of the formation of a SEPARATE LEAGUE or Sonderbund, for the armed main- tenance of the peculiar views of the ULTRA-RETROGRADE party, produced a formidable agitation throughout the whole of Switzerland. This excitement engendered the FREE CORPS, which bear the same relation to Swiss Se- cession that our armed Emigration to KANSAS bore to the aggressions of Slavery. But just as the usurpations and violences of Slavery produced such terrible results in Kansas, just so the Ultra-party, in Switzerland, must be held responsible for all that subsequently occurred there. The discovery of the Minutes of the Separate-League conspirators, of the 13th and 14th September, 1843, at the Baths of ROTHEN, near LUCERNE, was a real triumph
* Compare MENZEL's History of Germany [in Mrs. Horrocks' Eng. Trans. (Bohn's Edition), 1854], Chapter CCLXVIII, Pages 395-400 (particularly last ", Page 400), . Vol. III, with Countess DORA D'ISTRIA's Switzerland, the Pioneer of the Reforma- tion. H. G.'s Trans , London, 1858, § XXIII, Pages 4-39, particularly 28-30, Vol. 2.
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for the partisans of the Free Corps. It proved that the adversaries of the Volunteers, NOT they, had inaugurated the struggle. These Free Corps, however justifiable in principles and intention, were censurable in action .-- Their invasion of Lucerne and the Valais was a parallel of JOHN BROWN's foray into Virginia without the lofty enthusiasm and purity of purpose of the " hero of the Osawatomie." Moreover the expeditions of these Free Corps experienced the fate of John Brown's rash attempt. And just as his party were shot down at HARPER'S FERRY in the name of SLAVERY, the Free Corps were shot down at the bridges across the TRIENT, the REuss and the EMME, in the name of another, no less dangerous, slavery. These and similar successes over the Free Corps, particu- larly the bloody victory of the Ultramontanists at Lucerne, incited the conquerors to outrage all liberal sentiment and. complete their preparations for the great struggle which they had determined to bring on, for, unless blind and stolid, they must have seen the terrible consequences which would ensue.
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