Battle of Kappel (1531): Zwingli Killed in Swiss Religious War

The Battle of Kappel was fought on 11 October 1531 near Kappel am Albis, on the border between the Swiss cantons of Zurich and Zug. The army of the five Catholic central cantons defeated the forces of Protestant Zurich, and the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli was killed. The peace that followed stopped the expansion of the Reformation in the Swiss Confederation and fixed religious boundaries that lasted for centuries.

Background

By the late 1520s the Reformation had split the Swiss Confederation. Zurich, under Zwingli’s leadership, had abolished the Mass in 1525, as described in the article on Zwingli and the Zurich Reformation. Bern followed in 1528 and Basel in 1529. The five inner cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Zug remained firmly Catholic.

The conflict centred on the common lordships, territories ruled jointly by several cantons. Zurich insisted that their communities be free to adopt Protestant preaching, while the Catholic cantons defended the old faith. Both sides formed alliances: the Protestant cities in the Christian Civic Union, and the Catholic cantons in a Christian Union with King Ferdinand of Austria in 1529.

The First Kappel War

In May 1529 the Catholic canton of Schwyz burned the Protestant pastor Jakob Kaiser as a heretic. Zurich declared war in June, and the armies met near Kappel. Mediators from other cantons prevented a battle, and the First Peace of Kappel was signed on 26 June 1529. The Catholic cantons gave up their Austrian alliance and agreed that communities in the common lordships could choose their faith by majority vote.

A popular tradition says that while the leaders negotiated, soldiers from both camps shared a large pot of milk soup at the border. The “Kappel milk soup” became a lasting Swiss symbol of reconciliation, although its details come from later retellings.

The road to war in 1531

The peace did not settle the deeper disputes. Zwingli wanted firm action to secure freedom of preaching across the Confederation, and his diplomacy after the failed Marburg Colloquy sought allies among Protestant powers abroad. Bern preferred economic pressure to war.

In May 1531 Zurich and Bern imposed a food blockade on the inner cantons, cutting off grain and salt. The blockade caused hardship and anger without forcing a settlement. On 9 October 1531 the five Catholic cantons declared war and advanced on Zurich territory.

The battle

Zurich was badly prepared. Its first troops moved to Kappel while the main force was still being raised, and Bern’s army was slow to arrive. On 11 October the Catholic army, estimated at around 7,000–8,000 men, attacked a Zurich force of perhaps 2,000–3,500 under the command of Hans Rudolf Lavater.

Late in the afternoon the Catholic troops advanced through woods on the Zurich flank and launched a sudden attack. The Zurich line broke within a short time. Around 500 Zurich men were killed, including numerous councillors and some two dozen clergy, while Catholic losses were much lighter.

Zwingli had marched with the army as its chaplain. He was wounded during the fighting and later found by Catholic soldiers, who killed him. His body was quartered and burned, and the ashes were scattered, the punishment for a heretic.

Aftermath and peace

Zurich and Bern raised new forces, but on the night of 23–24 October 1531 the Catholic troops surprised and defeated a Protestant army at the Gubel, near Menzingen in Zug. The Protestant side then sought peace. The Second Peace of Kappel was concluded with Zurich on 20 November 1531 and with Bern a few days later.

The treaty allowed each canton to keep its own religion, but in the common lordships Catholics were protected and communities could return to the old faith. Zurich had to give up its alliances and pay war costs. In practice the spread of Protestantism in the Confederation stopped, and several districts returned to Catholicism.

Timeline

• 1529, May: Schwyz executes the Protestant pastor Jakob Kaiser.
• 1529, 26 June: First Peace of Kappel ends the first war without a battle.
• 1531, May: Zurich and Bern begin a food blockade of the inner cantons.
• 1531, 9 October: The five Catholic cantons declare war.
• 1531, 11 October: Battle of Kappel; Zwingli is killed.
• 1531, 24 October: Catholic victory at the Gubel.
• 1531, 20 November: Second Peace of Kappel with Zurich.
• 1531, 9 December: Heinrich Bullinger is chosen as Zwingli’s successor.

Legacy

Zwingli’s death removed the most forceful leader of the Swiss Reformation, and his successor Heinrich Bullinger guided the Zurich church more cautiously for over forty years. The centre of Reformed Protestantism gradually shifted to Geneva under John Calvin, whose work is described in Calvin and the Geneva Reformation.

A memorial stone was erected near the battlefield in 1838. The religious division confirmed at Kappel shaped Swiss politics until the nineteenth century, when tensions flared again in the short Sonderbund War of 1847.

Why it matters

The Battle of Kappel ended the life of one of the founders of Protestantism and halted the Reformation’s advance in Switzerland. The settlement it produced, allowing each canton its own faith, was an early example of the territorial religious compromises that later became common across Europe.