Second War of Kappel

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

The tensions between the two parties had not been resolved by the peace concluded after the First War of Kappel two years earlier, and provocations from both sides continued, fuelled in particular by the Augsburg Confession of 1530. Additionally, the Roman Catholic party accused Zürich of territorial ambitions.

As the Catholic cantons refused to help the Three Leagues (Drei Bünde) in the Grisons during the Musso war against the Duchy of Milan, Zürich promptly considered this a breach of contracts between the confederacy and the Three Leagues and declared an embargo against the five alpine Catholic cantons, in which Bern also participated.[1] While the Tagsatzung had successfully mediated in 1529, on this occasion the attempt failed, not least because Huldrych Zwingli, the Protestant leader, was eager for a military confrontation. Pressed by the food embargo, the Catholic cantons declared war on Zürich on 9 October 1531. Zwingli was killed in battle on 11 October 1531.

Heinrich Bullinger who had been a teacher at Kappel, and since 1523 an outspoken supporter of Zwingli's, at the time of the battle 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.

The peace that ended the war, the so-called Zweiter Landfrieden (Second Territorial Peace) forced the dissolution of the Protestant alliance. It gave Catholicism the priority in the common territories, but 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 Thurgau and Aargau, for example, Catholic and Protestant congregations began worshiping in the same churches, which led to further tensions and conflicts throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The treaty also confirmed each canton's right to practice either the Catholic or Reformed faith, thus defining the Swiss Confederation as a state with two religions,[1] a relative novelty in Western Europe. The outcome of the war also confirmed and cemented the Catholic majority among the thirteen full members of the Swiss Confederation: after later settlements in Glarus and Appenzell, seven full and two half cantons remained Catholic (Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, Solothurn, and half of Glarus and Appenzell), while four and two halves became firmly Swiss Reformed Protestant (Zurich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, and half of Glarus and Appenzell).

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.

• First War of Kappel (1529)
• First War of Villmergen (1656)
• Toggenburg War or Second War of Villmergen (1712)
• Sonderbund War (1847)

• W. Schaufelberger, Kappel – Die Hintergründe einer militärschen Katastrophe, in SAVk 51, 1955, 34–61.

• Reformation in Switzerland
• Johannes Salat