AHC: Partition of Switzerland!
- Thread starter Alternate History Geek
- Start date
Napoleon divides it, French part goes to France, Italian part goes to Italy, the rest goes to the Confederation on the Rhine.
the cantons never unite and stay a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Eventually some are taken by France, some by the northern Italian, and the rest stay in the Empire and become a part of Germany.
HOw likely would it be to have intervention and partition during the Sonderbund War?
Hello Gaddaffi. I thought you were supposed to be dead?
Seriously though, Styrofoam probably has the best option. You could even not give away parts, and just keep the Republic of Valais and the other two or three parts Napoleon partitioned as separate entities with a radical Republical France around for a couple of decades to allow any serious intentions of reunification to die of old age.
Alternatively, was there ever any threat of Switzerland dissolving along religious lines during the Civil War in the 1850s?
Seriously though, Styrofoam probably has the best option. You could even not give away parts, and just keep the Republic of Valais and the other two or three parts Napoleon partitioned as separate entities with a radical Republical France around for a couple of decades to allow any serious intentions of reunification to die of old age.
Alternatively, was there ever any threat of Switzerland dissolving along religious lines during the Civil War in the 1850s?
altamiro
Banned
Religious tradition was serving as one identifier in the civil war but it was not "catholic cantons vs. protestant cantons", it was purely political based on the acceptance/rejection of the new (liberal) constitution. It would be as difficult for the liberal side to lose as it would be difficult to lose for the North in the ACW, but a more protracted and bloody civil war would surely leave much more wounds which might prove politically dangerous later on (e.g. around 1900-1920)
Otherwise, I agree - a Republican/Napoleonic France would be the best chance to win the challenge. Or you need to go much, much further back, at least to the Peasants' Wars
wolf_brother
Banned
More likely the Swiss just fall apart amongst themselves without any outside influence.
Exactly this is the biggest danger for the Swiss Confederation all the time.
As a matter of fact, the structure was at the verge of dissolution almost all the time from the (de-facto) independence from the HRE at the end of the 15th century until the Peace of Westphalia one and a half century later. I consider it almost as a miracle that it survived:
Reformation which some of the confederates followed, while others even were episcopal states, threatened to split the union. As in Germany, things became more complicated when Calvinism spread. However, the Swiss states clung together because they saw more advantage in their solidarity than in preventing regimes of the other creed.
The Thirty Years War revived this menace: The Swiss states of each creed had to consider the alternatives, either join the war on one side and violate their obligations towards their confederates, or balking at taking sides and running the risk of being overrun and marauded by any of the parties.
The Swiss states stood by each other, maintained their union keeping out of the war and thus preventing the misery that fell on the contested territories. However, this came at the price of selling their young men as mercenaries to both parties.
Again, that the Confederation survived until mid-17th century still seems a lot less likely than the opposite from a 1550 perspective!
Have some kind of 19th century war involving France, Germany, and Italy. For example, the Italians back the French in the Franco-Prussian War. Germany Ignores Swiss neutrality and invades. The French, pushing back, and the Italians pushing north also cross into Switzerland, and after the war, The Germans, French, and Italians, all of whom have nationalistic claims to the country, devide it amongst themselves.
If it were to fall apart that early, wouldn't the Hapsburgs then stand a good chance of picking up the pieces that they lost earlier.....
To invade through Switzerland means crossing the Alps, though. I'm not sure if that's a useful strategy like invading through Belgium.
Not really. Still too long ago.Also, the Habsburgs were, well, busy otherwise in the respective times.
Once the confederated states lose their uniting band, some might be absorbed by neighboring entities, which includes Further Austia and Spanish Milan.
But some states may either stay tiny but independent, or tacitly fall back into the HRE though as independent states. Especially the clerical states will be either independent or secularized, there is hardly a third choice.
altamiro
Banned
The plateau is locked by two big lakes (Lake Constance and Lake Geneva) on both sides.
Alex Richards
Donor
Indeed, the Confederation was pretty divided on whether to intervene in the Bunden Wirren, and that was when one of her own associates was turned into, alternately, an Austrian or French puppet state!
It was actually Further Austria that I was thinking of... reuniting it into some kind of Swabian Duchy. With the Romance parts absorbed into Spanish Milan, Franche Comte and Savoy. Bern though might remain an independent entity.