iron from passing through their territories to the Forest cantons. The
result was that the Forest cantons declared war, invaded Zurich while
that canton was unprepared, fought and won the battle of Kappel, at
which Zwingli was slain. He had accompanied the little army of Zurich as
its chaplain. The victory of the Romanists produced a Second Peace of
Kappel which reversed the conditions of the first. War indemnities were
exacted from most of the Protestant cantons. It was settled that each
canton was to be left free to manage its own religious affairs; that the
_Christian Civic League_ was to be dissolved; and a number of particular
provisions were made which practically secured the rights of Romanist
without corresponding advantages to Protestant minorities. The
territories of Zurich were left untouched, but the city was compelled by
the charter of Kappel to grant rights to her rural districts. She bound
herself to consult them in all important matters, and particularly not
to make war or peace without their consent.
As a result of this ruinous defeat, and of the death of Zwingli which
accompanied it, Zurich lost her place as the leading Protestant canton,
and the guidance of the Reformation movement fell more and more into the
hands of Geneva, which was an ally but not a member of the
Confederation. Another and more important permanent result of this
Second Peace of Kappel was that it was seen in Switzerland as in
Germany that while the Reformation could not be destroyed, it could not
win for itself the whole country, and that Roman Catholics and
Protestants must divide the cantons and endeavour to live peaceably side
by side.
The history of the Reformation in Switzerland after the death of Zwingli
is so linked with the wider history of the movement in Germany and in
Geneva, that it can scarcely be spoken about separately. It is also
intimately related to the differences which separated Zwingli from
Luther in the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
§ 7. _The Sacramental Controversy._[37]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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