Thirteen Cantons

The early modern history of the Old Swiss Confederacy (Eidgenossenschaft, also known as the "Swiss Republic" or Republica Helvetiorum) and its constituent Thirteen Cantons encompasses the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) until the French invasion of 1798.

The early modern period was characterized by an increasingly and oligarchic ruling class as well as frequent economic or religious revolts. This period came to be referred to as the Ancien Régime retrospectively, in post-Napoleonic Switzerland.

The loosely organized Confederation remained generally disorganized and crippled by the religious divisions created by the Swiss Reformation. During this period the Confederation gained formal independence from the Holy Roman Empire with support from France, and had very close relations with France.

The early modern period also saw the growth of French-Swiss literature, and notable authors of the Age of Enlightenment such as the mathematicians of the Bernoulli family and Leonhard Euler of Basel.

The Old Swiss Confederacy between phases of expansion consisted of Eight Cantons (Acht Orte) during 1352–1481, and of Thirteen Cantons from 1513 until its collapse in 1798.

The Thirteen Cantons thus correspond to the sovereign territories of Early Modern Switzerland. They were listed in a fixed order of precedence, first the Eight Cantons of the 14th century Confederacy, then the five cantons which joined after the Burgundian Wars, and within these two groups, the more powerful urban cantons were listed first, with Zürich heading the list as the de facto Vorort of the Eight Cantons prior to the Swiss Reformation. The order of precedence, similar but not identical to the modern order (which lists Zug after Glarus, and Basel after Solothurn), was as follows:

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