History, Myth, Imperial and Constitutional Law in the Early Modern Swiss Confederation

SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF J. G. A. Pocock’s masterpiece, Machiavelli has been the founding father of the Atlantic republican tradition. For obvious reasons, however, the Florentine chancellor barely mentioned the states bordering the Atlantic in his works. When he studied the actions of great men, his sources were “a continual study of ancient history” and “a long experience of modern affairs,” whose obvious focus was Italy and the neighboring powers waging war on the peninsula.1 In a world still centered on the Mediterranean, neither the British nations nor the Dutch belonged. On the other hand, when Machiavelli wanted to introduce a successful model for republican government, he not only used the admired but distant classical models of Sparta and Rome nor the somehow ambivalent Venetian case, but also the Swiss Confederation. The confederates were “armatissimi e liberissimi,” most free because most armed and ready to defend their liberty as masters of modern warfare (“maestri delle moderne guerre”) the way the Romans had done in antiquity: with an invincible militia army—and not, as Machiavelli’s fellow Italians did, with mercenary troops.2 The Swiss were strong, victorious, and fearless