Background
The Old Swiss Confederacy in the 17th century was a federation of thirteen largely independent cantons. The federation comprised rural cantons as well as city states that had expanded their territories into the countryside by political and military means at the cost of the previously ruling liege lords. The cities just took over the preexisting administrative structures. In these city cantons, the city councils ruled the countryside; they held the judicial rights and also appointed the district sheriffs (Landvögte).
Rural and urban cantons had the same standing in the federation. Each canton was sovereign within its territory, pursuing its own foreign policy and also minting its own money. The diet and central council of the federation, the Tagsatzung, held no real power and served more as an instrument of coordination. The reformation in the early 16th century had led to a confessional division amongst the cantons: the central Swiss cantons including Lucerne had remained Catholic, while Zürich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhausen, and also the city of St. Gallen had become Protestant. The Tagsatzung was often paralysed by disagreements between the equally strong factions of the Catholic and Protestant sides.
Territories that had been conquered since the early 15th century were governed as condominiums by the cantons. Reeves for these territories were assigned by the Tagsatzung for a period of two years; the posts changed bi-annually between the cantons. The Aargau had been annexed in 1415. The western part belonged to Bern, while the eastern part comprised the two condominiums of the former County of Baden in the north and the Freie Ämter ("Free Districts") in the south. The Free Districts had been forcibly recatholized after the Reformation in Switzerland, and the Catholic cantons, especially Lucerne, Zug, and Uri considered these districts part of their sphere of influence and the reeves typically came from these cantons. The Thurgau, which had been annexed in 1460, was also a condominium of the Confederacy.
Read more about this topic: Swiss Peasant War Of 1653
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