CHAP. Occasions of discord between the two parties. Demands of the reformed. Another subject of dissatisfaction was, that no compensation had been awarded to the Bernese for the offence committed by UnderWalden, in assisting their rebellious subjects of the vale of Hasli. On this account Berne now refused to own Underwalden as an ally, or to admit its deputies into the general diet. Zuric felt itself bound to take part with the people of Berne in their resentment; while the Roman-catholic cantons, with manifest partiality and injustice, countenanced Underwalden. Basle, Schaffhausen, and Appenzel laboured to appease the quarrel, and, with the assistance of the deputies of Glaris, Friburg, and Soleure, would have succeeded, but for the opposition of Zuric. The six cantons last mentioned also joined with Zuric in a deputation to the five Romancatholic cantons, desiring them to renounce their alliance with Ferdinand, as being contrary to their engagements to the general body of the Swiss nation, and incompatible with the interests of the country at large. The deputation, however was disrespectfully treated; and Underwalden, in particular, like one that is conscious of having done his neighbour wrong, and is determined to cover his wrong by assuming the port of an injured party, added insult of the grossest kind, especially towards Zuric. Thus all things seemed again to tend to an open and immediate rupture. The six cantons, however, still laboured to effect an accommodation but Zuric would hear of none, of which it should not be made an essential condition, that the preaching and profession of the reformed faith should be freely allowed within the popish cantons.1 Zuric was now evidently Ru. ii. 409, 418. taking too high a tone; unduly confident, it is probable, in the great accession of strength which the reformed party had lately acquired. In the present demand the people of that city seem to have gone beyond what one independent state is intitled to require of another, as the term of living at peace with it. Every government is unquestionably responsible to God for its treatment of its subjects, and is bound to him to allow them the free exercise of religion: its refusal to do this may also furnish just ground of representation and expostulation to the neighbouring states: but it must be no ordinary condition of things which can justify their enforcing demands of this kind by having recourse to arms: and, though the conduct of the Roman-catholic cantons at this time, for the exclusion of the reformation among their subjects, was no doubt tyrannical and oppressive, yet it did not in general go beyond what has been usually thought allowable, and even a duty, among people professing their religion. A D. 1529. Schweitz. The canton of Schweitz however, while this Atrocious irritation prevailed, was guilty of one most atrocious act, against which all the feelings of humanity must be roused, and which the people of Zuric might justly regard as a designed and outrageous affront to them. James Keyser, or Schlosser, a minister of the canton of Zuric, had been called to supply the place of one who had been expelled from Oberkirch in the country of Gaster-which it has already been said was subject to Schweitz and Glaris. He accepted the invitation: but, not being able immediately to remove, he for for a time went over to perform the duty on the Sunday. On one of these occasions, he CHAP. was seized in a wood by four men, who conveyed him to Schweitz, where proceedings were instituted against him, and he was condemned to the flames. The protest of Glaris, the co-sovereign of the Gaster, was disregarded, and the remonstrance of Zuric, to whose territory Schlosser yet belonged, was treated with derision; and the barbarous sentence was Martyrdom carried into execution. The pious sufferer when of Schlosser. first thrown into prison was much dejected: but before the time of his martyrdom arrived the grace of God had revived his courage, and he met his death with composure, invoking the name of his Saviour with constancy, even amid the flames.-Some further acts of defiance and insult determined Zuric immediately to have recourse to arms, though Berne was still disposed to peaceable counsels. Accordingly parties take the former state declared war against the five The two the field. cantons, and took the field; and Berne, not as a principal but as an ally of Zuric, furnished ten thousand men, in two successive detachments. Other allies also contributed their quotas. Through the zealous exertions of the neutral cantons and other friends of peace, the effusion of blood was however still prevented; a suspension of arms was obtained, even when the armies were ready for battle; and articles of peace, of a very important kind, had they only been adhered to, were agreed upon.-It was a gratifying sight to behold the officers and soldiers of the two opposite parties, as soon as the suspension of arms was made known, associating together with the greatest cordiality: though lamentable to think that such apparently good friends had been led out for the purpose of mutual destruction. This spectacle made James Sturmius, the celebrated mayor of Strasburg, who was one of those that had been deputed to conciliate, if possible, the contending parties, remark, "You Swiss are an extraordinary people: when you are most divided, you are still united, and cannot forget your ancient amity."2 A. D. 1529. Arau, But little as might be the animosity which Treaty of appeared to exist between the subordinate June 26. parties in the contest, it took fifteen days to arrange the terms of peace between the principals. The chief points of difficulty were two conditions for which the reformed contended with eagerness, and which their opponents as pertinaciously rejected. These were the liberty of preaching and professing the reformed doctrines in the Roman-catholic cantons, and the renunciation, on the part of those cantons, of all foreign pensions, to be enforced by penalties denounced against any of their subjects who should in future accept such payments. The latter, as well as the former, of these stipulations seems to have been more than one state had a right to exact of another as the condition of peace: and accordingly the reformed could not succeed in either of these demands, to the extent they had proposed. A treaty was at length concluded, and signed on the twenty-sixth of June, at Arau-the 1 Vol. ii. 135-6. 2 Ru. ii. 403–417. Gerd. ii. 395-6.-" An eye-witness wrote from the camp, It is admirable to behold what order and subordination prevail among the multitude: the word of God is preached daily by Ulric Zwingle, the abbot of Cappel, the priest of Kusnacht, and many other learned divines: not an oath is pronounced, nor a quarrel heard of: we pray before and after each meal: no cards or dice are seen; nor is a prostitute tolerated: we sing, dance, and practise manly sports, and are eager to encounter the pensioners."" Planta's Helv. Confed. ii. 145. CHAP. same place at which the latest treaty between the reformed and the Roman catholics of Switzerland was also made, in the year 1712. The treaty now formed was styled the Peace of Religion, and was made "the basis and model" Ruchat says, of all subsequent treaties of the same kind among the Swiss; though I confess I find it not easy to trace this fundamental agreement between it, and that concluded subsequently to the defeat of the reformed two years afterwards.1 Articles. It consisted of seventeen articles. The first related to liberty of conscience, and provided that, "whereas faith was not a matter of constraint," the five cantons and their subjects should be left free upon that point; and that among the states in alliance with the cantons, and in the districts under their joint government, where the mass and other popish usages had been abolished, no person should suffer for the part he had taken in introducing the change: but that, where these usages were still retained, they should be allowed to subsist; nor should any minister be sent among the people to teach them other doctrine, unless he were called for by a plurality of voices-which plurality, as long as it continued, should determine the reception or rejection of the reformation. By the second article the five cantons renounced their alliance with Ferdinand, (who had been himself too much occupied in Hungary to afford them any assistance,) and engaged to deliver up the original treaty with him into the hands of the mediating cantons, to be destroyed, before the armies dispersed. A separate treaty 1 Ru. ii. 418. It would appear that the fourth article of the peace of Cappel expressly rescinded the treaty of Arau. "The late treaty of peace shall be annulled, cancelled, and given up to the five cantons." Ib. iii. 460. |