Early modern Switzerland

The early modern period was characterized by an increasingly aristocratic and oligarchic ruling class as well as frequent economic or religious revolts.

The loosely organized Confederation remained generally disorganized and crippled by the religious divisions created by the Swiss Reformation.

The early modern period also saw the growth of French-Swiss literature, and notable authors of the Age of Enlightenment such as the mathematicians of the Bernoulli family and Leonhard Euler of Basel.

[3] The order of precedence, similar but not identical to the modern order (which lists Zug after Glarus, and Basel after Solothurn), was as follows: Symbolic depictions of the Confederacy consisted of arrangements of the thirteen cantonal coats of arms, sometimes with an additional symbol of unity, such as two clasping hands, or the "Swiss Bull" or (from the later 17th century), the Three Confederates or the Helvetia allegory.

With the support of the Duke of Orléans, who was also prince of Neuchâtel and the head of the French delegation, Johann Rudolf Wettstein,[6] the mayor of Basel, succeeded in getting a formal exemption from the empire for all cantons and associates of the confederacy.

During the Thirty Years' War, the Drei Bünde (Graubünden, an associate state of the Swiss Confederation) had been caught in the middle of internal and external conflict.

In a victory for the Protestant half of the Confederation, Frederick I, who claimed his entitlement in a rather complicated fashion through the Houses of Orange and Nassau, was selected.

In 1715, the Catholic cantons, to regain prestige following their defeat during the Second Battle of Villmergen, renewed the Confederation's treaty with France with several major and unpopular changes.

Political power congealed around the 13 cantons (Bern, Zürich, Zug, Glarus, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Fribourg, Solothurn, Basel, Luzern, Schaffhausen, Appenzell) of the old confederation.

During the early modern era, growing scientific knowledge and relative peace reduced the number of open seats in the cities.

The population began hoarding the silver coins, and the cheap copper money that remained in circulation continually lost its purchasing power.

[12] In 1653, the largest uprising occurred as peasants of territories subject to Lucerne, Bern, Solothurn and Basel revolted because of currency devaluation.

The Catholics were victorious and able to maintain their political dominance, and a treaty agreement that each canton would be totally independent with respect to religious matters.

Attempts by the Abbot to suppress the valley led to the Second Battle of Villmergen in 1712 and the sacking of the Abbey of St. Gall by Bernese and Zürich troops.

In Basel the Bernoulli family and Leonhard Euler worked on mathematics and physics, coming up with some fundamental concepts in these fields.

Basel was distinguished for its mathematicians, such as Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), and three members of the Bernoulli family, the brothers Jakob (1654–1705) and Johann (1667–1748), and the latter's son Daniel (1700–1782).

Samuel Wyttenbach (1748–1830), Gottlieb Sigmund Gruner and Johann Georg Altmann (1697–1758) all wrote descriptions of the countryside in a combination of literary and scientific styles.

In Zürich JJ Scheuchzer wrote in Latin of his travels around the country, and shared them with the London Royal Society of which he was a Fellow.

Another famous Zürich writer was Solomon Gesner, the pastoral poet, and yet another was JK Lavater, now best remembered as a supporter of the view that the face presents a perfect indication of character and that physiognomy may therefore he treated as a science.

Other well-known Zürich names are those of JH Pestalozzi (1746–1827), the educationalist, of Hans Caspar Hirzel (1725–1803), another of the founders of the Helvetic Society, and of Johann Georg Sulzer (1720–1779), whose chief work is one on the laws of art or aesthetics.

Johannes von Müller of Schaffhausen, was the first who attempted to write (1780) a detailed history of Switzerland, which, though inspired more by his love of freedom than by any deep research, was very characteristic of his times.

JG Ebel was a Swiss by adoption only, but deserves mention as the author of the first detailed guidebook to the country (1793), which held its ground until the days of Murray and Baedeker.

A later writer, Heinrich Zschokke (1771–1848), also a Swiss by adoption only, produced (1822) a history of Switzerland written for the people, which had a great vogue.

A French refugee at Lausanne, Jean Barbeyrac (1674–1744), published in 1712 a translation of Samuel von Pufendorf's works on natural law.

In 1754, the famed philosopher Rousseau came back for good to Geneva, and Voltaire established himself at Ferney, while in 1753 the historian Edward Gibbon moved to Lausanne.

Paul Henri Mallet, a Genevese, who held a chair at Copenhagen, devoted himself to making known to the educated world the history and antiquities of Scandinavia.

Jean-André Deluc devoted himself mainly to questions of physics in the Alps, while Jean Sénebier, the biographer of Saussure, was more known as a physiologist than as a physicist, though he wrote on many branches of natural science, which in those days was not yet highly specialised.

On the other hand, Marc Théodore Bourrit, the contemporary of these three men, was rather a curious and inquisitive traveller than a scientific investigator, and charms us even now by his genial simplicity as contrasted with the austerity and gravity of the three writers we have mentioned.