➔ Creating the Swiss Confederacy: From Forest Cantons to European Power
| 5 minute read
Retelling of Chapter 2 from A Concise History of Switzerland by Clive H. Church and Randolph C. Head (Cambridge University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-521-14382-0). If you find this interesting, grab the book. Well worth reading.
The setup
Around 1400, the Swiss Confederacy was still a loose collection of rural and urban communes. Some mutual defense pacts. A few battle victories. Nobody in Europe took them seriously as a political force.