Switzerland

From a forest-valley oath against the Habsburgs to the armed neutrality at the heart of Europe.

Switzerland's history is the story of how a defensive league of Alpine valleys became one of Europe's most durable states without ever becoming a centralised monarchy. By convention the Confederation is dated to the Federal Charter of 1291, when the three forest communities of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden swore mutual aid against outside lords; legend gave the moment its hero in William Tell. Peasant pikemen who broke Habsburg knights at Morgarten and Sempach and humbled Burgundy turned the Confederacy into the feared infantry power of late-medieval Europe, until defeat at Marignano in 1515 ended its expansion and turned it toward neutrality. The Reformation split the cantons along confessional lines, yet the loose Confederacy held together; the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 formally severed it from the Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon's Helvetic Republic briefly imposed a unitary state, but the Congress of Vienna in 1815 restored the cantons and recognised Switzerland's permanent armed neutrality. After the brief Sonderbund War of 1847, the federal constitution of 1848 created the modern federal state, and Geneva became the cradle of the Red Cross and of international humanitarian law. Neutral through both world wars, Switzerland kept apart from the European Union, granted women the federal vote only in 1971, and joined the United Nations as late as 2002.