The Dog Did Nothing in the Moonlight (Surplus Men Dept.)

I've been reading Jonathan Steinberg's Why Switzerland? in the hope of finding out something about how this mountain fastness became a banking power. On that point I think I may come away unenlightened, but I'm picking up some fascinating stuff along the way. For example, about the Peace of Aarau.

You remember? Course you do. That's the one that ended the Second Villmergen War (with me now?) in 1712. By Steinbserg's account, it was a bloody and bitter conflict, essentially a religious war, a fit successor to the dreadful Thirty Years' War that tore Europe asunder between 1618 and 1648. Yet it ended with in a settlement, shaky at first but enduring. More: it was a treaty in which (as Steinberg says) "[t]he Catholic party lost its commanding position ... and was forced to accept parity of faiths ..." He marvels:

Here was a group of defeated states, profoundly convinced of the God-given rightness of their cause, accustomed to think of themselves, and rightly, as the founders of the Confederation, and absolutely sure that the heretical beliefs preached by the Reformed pastors brought death and damnation. In the wings, a powerful Catholic ally [sc. France] with inexhaustible funds stood ready to finance their crusade. A war of revenge seemed natural, inevitable and right.

No war took place. The Confederation survived. Another turning point pased at which nothing turned.

Why not? Exhaustion may have been a factor--Protestants had been fighting Catholics here for 200 years. Realpolitik certainly played a part, but that only begs the question. But Steinberg offers another reason, bound to suit the prejudices of staff and management here at Underbelly--something about surplus men:

A very shrewd Englishman travelling in Switzerland at jsut this period put it well: "If they did not continually drain their Country, by keeping troops in foreign service, they would soon be so much overstocked in proportion to the extent and fertility of it that in al probability they would break in on their neighbors in swarms or go further to seek out new seats." Obviously the service of the Bourbon King of Naples was a better place to see a turbulent young Obwaldner than at the gates of Basel, and no doubt the acceptance of compromise owes much to the export of the uncompromising.

--Jonathan Steinberg, Why Switzerland? 35-37 (Second ed. 1996)

But I'm still looking for the bankers. I have a vague sense that I've heard somewhere about banking families from Lucca coming up to settle when things got too hot for them at home during thee counter-reformation. But I haven't yet been able to put any flesh on those bones.

Update: That stuff about Lucca--apparently I said it before.