First War of Villmergen

First War of Villmergen
The First Battle of Villmergen (24 January 1656), to which the war owns its name.
Date 5 January – 7 March 1656 Location Old Swiss Confederacy Result Catholic victory Third Landfrieden
Belligerents
Canton of Zürich Canton of Bern Canton of Schaffhausen	Canton of Lucerne Canton of Uri Canton of Schwyz Unterwalden Canton of Zug Freie Ämter Rapperswil

The First War of Villmergen was a Swiss religious war which lasted from 5 January until 7 March 1656, at the time of the Old Swiss Confederacy. On the one hand were the Protestant cities of Zürich and Bern, on the other the Catholic places in Central Switzerland. The Protestants tried to break the political hegemony of the Catholics, that had been in existence ever since the Second Kappel Landfrieden of 1531. The casus belli was the expulsion and execution of Protestants from the Schwyz commune of Arth. The Zürcher unsuccessfully besieged the Central Swiss-allied city of Rapperswil and thereby drove their forces together. The Bernese were defeated and repelled in the First Battle of Villmergen. The Third Landfrieden ended the conflict and restored the pre-war balance of power.

During the Swiss peasant war of 1653, when the governments of the Protestant and Catholic cantons jointly moved against the insurgent peasants, the confessional differences that had existed for over a century were merely temporarily pushed towards the background. In 1654, the Zürcher mayor Johann Heinrich Waser received the task of working out a plan to reorganise the Confederacy. However, the Federal Project of 1655 was rejected by the Catholics, because they saw a threat to their dominance in it. The difference between the religions surfaced once again.

In September 1655, the enmities escalated when Protestants living in the Schwyz village Arth fled to Zürich, after which the authorities confiscated their properties. Four of these "Nicodemite" were executed by the Schwyzers, three others were delivered to the Inquisition in Milan. On an extraordinary Tagsatzung in December, Zürich demanded that those responsible be punished, that formal apologies be made and the dissolution of the Catholic Golden League founded in 1586. When these demands were ignored, Zürich declared war on 6 January 1656.

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Wikipedia