AHC: Swiss Great Power

It's not going to happen if you want something recognisably Swiss.

The Old Swiss Confederacy was, in essence, a series of independent states bound through permanent and eternal treaties so as to operate in concordance with a unified foreign policy, including several states who operated as part of this foreign policy but didn't have an explicit vote in it, and several regions that were ruled as joint condominiums by 2 or more of the Cantons. This goes right back to the original alliance between the Urkantone of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden in 1291 which was an agreement of common defence against the Habsburgs who wanted to enforce their control in the area to a greater extent than they had been doing so.

Up until the reformation, this worked very well, albeit on the scale of a small region rather than anything bigger. Wars were won against Burgundy, Milan, Savoy and the Habsburgs and territory gained through both this and the addition of more associates and cantons. The reformation then created a relatively equal split between Protestant and Catholic Cantons (the two largest, Zurich and Bern went Protestant while most of the smaller Waldstatten stayed Catholic). This led to a complete paralysis of the Swiss Federal Model. There were a couple of intercantonal wars over which way the condominiums should go, alignment in international wars was effectively frozen (leading, essentially, to the basis for Swiss Neutrality) and during the Thirty Years War, the Three Leagues were essentially abandoned to the general toing and froing between Austria and France despite being an associate member for over a century.

Now, there are things you can change. A more religiously uniform Switzerland (such as a reformation that leads to Catholic reform rather than lots of large protestant churches), is likely to be more active in the 16th-18th Centuries. A further war against Savoy to (re)gain the Chablais, pays de Gex and Ternier is a very real possibility, as are small wars against Milan to sort out the border disputes in the Alps to Swiss favour. The Habsburgs are likely to be the target of more campaigns if the oppurtunity presents itself, either in the Vinschgau or in Further Austria. Swabia provides a lot of oppurtunities also, building on the associate status of Rottweil to gain further of the free cities (something particular likely if Further Austria is largely being eaten). However, you'll still only be looking at a more active regional power- somewhere between Wurttemberg and Bavaria in terms of strength.

Probably the only way you could get a 'Swiss' Great Power would be some sort of Habsburg-Kyburg-Zahringen union early on which uses the Swiss Lowlands as their ancestral power base to expand from, but that's going right the way back to the 13th/14th Centuries and it's not really what could be recognised as Switzerland in the sense you mean.
 
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