Second War of Kappel

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Second War of Kappel
Part of European wars of religion

Battle of Kappel, 11 October 1531, by Johannes Stumpf (1548)
Date9 October – 20 November 1531
Location
Old Swiss Confederacy
Result Catholic victory
Belligerents

Catholics

Protestants

The Second War of Kappel (German: Zweiter Kappelerkrieg) was an armed conflict in 1531 between the Catholic and the Protestant cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy during the Reformation in Switzerland.

Background

The Tagsatzung of 1531 in Baden failed to mediate between the parties (1790s drawing)

The peace concluded after the

Habsburg sovereigns.[1] Additionally, the Catholic party accused Zürich of territorial ambitions. While the Federal Diet (Tagsatzung) had successfully mediated in 1529, on this occasion the attempt failed, not least because Zwingli was eager to implement the Reformation throughout the Confederacy.[1]

Since the beginning of 1531, Zürich had called on the five Catholic cantons to allow Protestant worship on their territory, but this was perceived by the Catholics as an attack on their independence and rejected.

embargo against the five cantons, preventing the supply of grain and salt.[1][2] After the measure failed to pressure the Catholics into concessions, in September Bern suggested lifting the embargo, which caused tensions with Zürich.[1]

Course of war

Pressed by the food embargo, on 9 October 1531 the five Catholic cantons declared war on Zürich and deployed their main army on Zug's border with Zürich, near

heretic.[1]

Zwingli's Death on the Battlefield at Kappel, by August Weckesser

After the Battle of Kappel, Bern and other Protestant cantons came to the aid of Zürich. Between 15 and 21 October, a Protestant army, vastly outnumbering the enemy force, marched through the Reuss valley up to the entrance of Baar, and the Catholic troops withdrew to the Zugerberg.[1] The Bernese and the Zürcher command then attempted to advance through Sihlbrugg and Menzingen in order to surround the enemy.[1] The maneuver, which involved around 5,000 men, was delayed by looting and the indiscipline of the soldiers.[1] By the evening of 23 October, the expeditionary force had reached only Gubel Hill, near Menzingen, where it was attacked during the night by a small force from the five cantons and forced to flee after it had sustained heavy casualties.[1][3]

The renewed defeat led to increasing desertions among the Protestant army, which retreated down the Reuss valley to

Freiburg, Glarus and Appenzell), as well as French diplomats, had been trying to mediate a peace settlement.[1] In accordance with the military circumstances, the Second Peace in Kappel or Zweiter Landfrieden (Second Territorial Peace), which was concluded on 20 November in the hamlet of Deinikon, near Baar, turned out to be favourable for the Catholics.[1]

Aftermath

Heinrich Bullinger, who had been a teacher at Kappel and since 1523 an outspoken supporter of Zwingli's, at the time of the war was pastor at Bremgarten. Following the Battle of Kappel, Bremgarten was re-catholicized. On 21 October, Bullinger fled to Zürich with his father, and on 9 December was declared Zwingli's successor as leader of the Reformed movement.[4]

In anticipation of the

Princely Abbey of Saint Gall, Zürich's territorial ambitions in eastern Switzerland came to an end.[1] The peace treaty determined the dissolution of the Protestant alliance.[1] It also allowed communes or parishes that had already converted to remain Protestant. Only strategically important places such as the Freiamt or those along the route from Schwyz to the Rhine valley at Sargans
(and thus to the alpine passes in the Grisons) were forcibly re-Catholicised.

One result of the treaty—probably not anticipated by its signatories—was the long-term establishment of religious coexistence in several Swiss subject territories. In both the territories of

Western Switzerland, the religious geography of the country has remained largely unchanged since the Second Peace of Kappel.[1]

An unsuccessful effort by the Protestant cantons, especially Zürich, to change the terms of confessional coexistence in 1656, the First War of Villmergen, led to a reaffirmation of the status quo in the Dritter Landfrieden (Third Territorial Peace). A second religious civil war in 1712, the Second War of Vilmergen, ended in a decisive Protestant victory and major revisions in the fourth Landfrieden of 1712.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Helmut Meyer: Wars of Kappel in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-07814-6
    . Retrieved 12 January 2012.
  3. ^ Peter Hoppe: Zug in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
  4. ^ Hans Ulrich Bächtold: Heinrich Bullinger in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
  • W. Schaufelberger, Kappel – Die Hintergründe einer militärschen Katastrophe, in SAVk 51, 1955, 34–61.
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