166 THE SWISS REFORMATION.
began bloody persecution. Jacob Kaiser (or Schlosser), a Ziirich minister, was seized on a preaching expedition, and publicly burnt at the stake in the town of Schwyz (May, 1529) .1 His martyrdom was the signal of war. The Protestants feared, not without good reason, that this case was the beginning of a general persecution.
With the religious question was closely connected the political and social question of the foreign military service,^ which Zwingli consistently opposed in the interest of patriotism, and which the Roman Catholics defended in the interest of wealth and fame. This was a very serious matter, as may be estimated from the fact that, according to a statement of the French ambassador, his king had sent, from 1512 to 1581, no less than 1,133,547 gold crowns to Switzerland, a sum equal to four times the amount at present valuation. The pensions were the Judas price paid by foreign sovereigns to influential Swiss for treason to their country. In his opposition to this abuse, Zwingli was undoubtedly right, and his view ultimately succeeded, though long after his death.^
Both parties organized for war, which broke out in 1529, and ended in a disastrous defeat of the Protestants in 1581. Sixteen years later, the Lutheran princes suffered a similar defeat in the Smalcaldian War against the Emperor (1547). The five Forest Cantons — Uri, Schwyz, Unterw^alden, Luzern, and Zug — formed a defensive and offensive league (November, 1528 ; the preparations began in 1527), and even entered, first secretly, then openly, into an alliance with Ferdinand Duke of Austria and King of Bohemia and Hungary (April, 1529). This alliance with the old hereditary enemy of Switzerland, whom their ancestors had defeated in glorious
1 For the particulars of this case see Morikofer, II. 146 sqq., and Christoffel, I. 376 sq.
- The Beislaufen, or running to war; reisig, in old German, means ready for war (kriegsrustig) .
3 Cliristoffel, I. 382. Comp. § 7, p. 24.
§ 42. THE FIEST AVAR OF CAPPEL. 167
battles, was treasonable and a step towards the split of the confederacy in two hostile camps (which was repeated in 1846). King Ferdinand had a political and religious interest in the division of Switzerland and fostered it. Freibnro-, Wallis, and Solothurn sided with the Catholic Cantons, and promised aid in case of war. The Protestant Cantons, led by Ziirich (which made the first step in this direction) formed a Protestant league under the name of the Christian co-burp-hery {BurgrecM) with the cities of Constance (Dec. 25, 1527), Biel and Miihlhausen (1529), and Strassburg (Jan. 9, 1530).!
Zwingli, provoked by the burning of Kaiser, and seeing the war clouds gathering all around, favored prompt action, which usually secures a great advantage in critical moments. He believed in the necessity of war ; while Luther put his sole trust in the Word of God, although he stirred up the passions of war by his writings, and had himself the martyr's courage to go to the stake. Zwingli was a free republican ; while Luther was a loyal monarchist. He belonged to the Cromwellian type of men who " trust in God and keep their powder dry." In him the reformer, the statesman, and the patriot were one. He appealed to the examples of Joshua and Gideon, forgetting the difference between the Old and the New dispensation. " Let us be firm," he wrote to his peace-loving friends in Bern (May 30, 1529), "and fear not to take up arms. This peace, which some desire so much, is not peace, but war ; while the war that we call for, is not war, but peace. We thirst for no man's blood, but we will cut the nerves of the oligarchy. If we shun it, the truth of the gospel and the ministers' lives will never be secure among us." ^
' The documents of these leagues are given by Bullinger, Hettinger, and by Bluntschli, I.e. I. 303-305, 318 sq. ; II. 238-255.
'^ " Quod hactenus ad vos scrips), iteriim atque iterum facio, ut constantes sitis, neqite helium metuatis. Nam ista pax, qnam quidam tantopere urgent, helium est, non pax; et helium, cui nos instainus, pax est, non helium. Non enim sitimus