**The Lugano volunteer corps, circa 1798. Pen-and-ink drawing by Rocco Torricelli.** Collezione Città di Lugano

Why is Ticino part of Switzerland?

Nowadays, the canton of Ticino is considered as Swiss as anywhere else in Switzerland. However, it wasn’t always like that: putsches, revolutions and independence movements once posed serious challenges to the status of the south-lying canton as part of Switzerland. So, how is it that Switzerland’s borders ended up south of the Alps?

Noah Businger

Noah Businger is a historian and a PhD student in Early Modern Swiss History at the University of Bern.

On the morning of 15 February 1798, a group of armed men stormed Lugano town hall. They deposed the feudal overlords of Lugano, took the bailiff Jost Remigi Traxler from Nidwalden hostage and demanded the incorporation of Lugano into the Cisalpine Republic. Why did this happen? Who was this bailiff and why did he have to make way for this republic?

In 1798, what is now Ticino was composed exclusively of federal subject territories. By 1521, the Confederacy had gained control of the area from the Gotthard pass to Chiasso from the Duchy of Milan. But a canton of Ticino was still a distant prospect. Uri ruled the Leventina District alone and established the bailiwicks of Blenio, Riviera and Bellinzona in cooperation with Schwyz and Nidwalden. The other bailiwicks of Locarno, Vallemaggia, Lugano and Mendrisio were governed by the twelve cantons. Each bailiwick had its own federal bailiff. The subject territories had to do military service and pay taxes, tithes for example, to their confederate overlords.

**Lugano and Bellinzona in a wood engraving by Matthäus Merian, circa 1654.** ETH Bibliothek Zürich

The federal feudal system was destabilised when Napoleon Bonaparte established the Cisalpine Republic in the summer of 1797 following his successful military campaign in northern Italy. The Cisalpine Republic reflected the French model based on the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Napoleon freed the subject territories in his republic and began to spread the concepts of liberty and equality to the surrounding subject territories. He also integrated Veltlin from Grisons into the Cisalpine Republic. Inspired by these events, Ticino also began to rise against its non-Ticinese bailiffs. On 15 February 1798, supporters of the Cisalpine Republic in Lugano seized the moment and overthrew their confederate rulers. It appeared that nothing stood in the way of their joining the Cisalpine Republic.

**The Cisalpine Republic (in green) in 1799.** Wikimedia

But it was not to be. A volunteer corps of Lugano locals chased the putsch leaders out of town on the very same day. The volunteers did not want to join Napoleon’s revolutionary republic. At the same time, they were also against reinstating their deposed overlords. The bailiff Traxler was set free but was ordered to leave the city so the people of Lugano could govern themselves. That same evening, the locals erected a liberty tree on the Piazza Grande mirroring the symbol of the French Revolution. But instead of a Phrygian cap, they crowned the tree with a characteristic Swiss hat and feather known as a Tellenhut as the message “liberi e svizzeri” spread through the town: we want to be free Swiss!

**The 15 February 1798 uprising in a watercolour by Rocco Torricelli.** Collezione Città di Lugano

Within a short time, the other bailiwicks followed Lugano’s lead. The subject territories gained their freedom and immediately declared their allegiance to the Confederacy. So, why didn’t the former subjects move against their rulers sooner? What made the Old Confederacy so attractive compared to the revolutionary Cisalpine Republic?

What the former subjects really wanted was to preserve their local autonomy. When ruled by the Confederacy, each commune had been self-governing to a large extent. The vicinanza, which translates loosely as neighbourhood, controlled public assets such as the forests and common land. The vicini (neighbours) governed them together and independently. Autonomous political, legal and economic systems arose from the organisational requirements for using the collective goods and due to the abstention of the confederate rulers.

In 1798, the vicinanze wanted to keep their structures and newly won autonomy. Their form of local self-government resembled that of the corporations and cooperatives in the cantons of the Confederacy. In the Cisalpine Republic, on the other hand, individual communes were converted into pure administrative entities with no political autonomy. The former subject territories thus saw tangible benefits in retaining the confederate structures, so they opted to keep the material, political and cultural status quo.

**View of the east above Campo in Blenio valley, drawing circa 1819.** Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Ticino was founded in the 19th century …

There still was no such thing as a canton of Ticino in 1798. Each bailiwick had declared its own independence. The new microstates had little in common. They were politically, culturally and economically diverse. Regional disparities were also a feature of the Helvetic Republic. French military intervention turned the Old Confederacy into a centralised state in the summer of 1798 similar to France itself. The French generals wanted to convert the former sub-Alpine subject territories into one canton. They were unsuccessful. The major local disparities and emphasis on autonomy obliged them to found two cantons: Lugano and Bellinzona.

**Map of the Helvetic Republic and its cantons in 1799. What is now the canton of Ticino comprised the two former cantons of Bellinzona (yellow) and Lugano (blue).** Zentralbibliothek Zürich

The Helvetic Republic disappeared almost as quickly as it had arisen. Napoleon dissolved the Republic with the Act of Mediation in 1803 and the Confederation returned, this time as a federal state. The canton of Ticino came into being as part of this new order as a sovereign microstate encompassing all eight former bailiwicks.

However, the unified canton of Ticino found itself under threat of dissolution shortly afterwards. In 1815, there was an attack on the territorial integrity of Ticino and it originated in Switzerland of all places. After the fall of Napoleon and the establishing of a new European order at the Congress of Vienna, some cantons began to covet their old subject territories. Uri also wanted to reannex the Leventina District. The Ticino government had its back to the wall but ultimately succeeded in refuting the calls to reestablish the pre-1798 subject territory regime. The canton remained intact and was finally incorporated into the Swiss Confederation in 1848.

**The coats of arms of the eight districts of the canton of Ticino founded in 1803.** Swiss National Museum

… and found itself embroiled in the chaos of Italian unification

However, that was far from the end of Ticino’s trials and tribulations. From 1848, the Italian movement for unification led by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and Giuseppe Garibaldi showed strong interest in Ticino. The legitimacy of Ticino’s allegiance to Switzerland was questioned from different quarters.

During the Italian wars of independence in 1848 and 1859, several thousand soldiers fighting to liberate Lombardy from the clutches of Austria found refuge in Ticino. Many Ticinese also fought in these conflicts. When Milan gained independence from Austrian rule after the battle of Solferino in 1859, there was a call for national unification in the north of Italy. Unification was also to include Italian-speaking Ticino. Unsettled by these demands and the sympathy among the Ticinese for the cause of Italian unification, which was strong in some parts of the canton, the Federal Council asked Ticino outright: do you really want to stay Swiss?

The Ticino government was indignant and vehemently refuted all concerns emanating from Bern as to its loyalty to the Swiss Confederation in a sharply worded letter. To demonstrate its allegiance to Switzerland, the Ticino government reminded the Federal Council of an historic event: 15 February 1798. The government councillors in the canton declared this date as when the canton’s fate was decided. With the Tellenhut on the tree of liberty, the words “liberi e svizzeri” (free and Swiss) and the rejection of the Cisalpine Republic, the canton’s loyalty to the Swiss Confederation had been proved beyond question.

**The tree of liberty with Tellenhut on Lugano’s Piazza Grande, 1799. Pen-and-ink drawing by Rocco Torricelli.** Collezione Città di Lugano

By doing so, it constructed a narrative that does not tally with the historical facts. The actual evolution of Ticino from subject territory to canton was in no way by design or inevitable. Nonetheless, by referring to 15 February 1798 as Ticino’s day of destiny, those parts of the story that do not fit the narrative were summarily dismissed.