During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the patriciate and council of Zurich adopt an increasingly aristocratic and isolationist attitude.
A sign of this is the second ring of impressive city ramparts was built in 1642 under the impression of the Thirty Years' War.The funds required for this ambitious project are imposed on the subject territories without consultation, resulting in revolts that are crushed by force.
From 1648, the city changes its official status from Reichsstadt to Republik, thus likening itself to city republics like Venice and Genova.In the seventeenth and eighteeth centuries, a distinct tendency becomes observable in the town government to limit power to the actual holders.
Thus the country districts are consulted for the last time in 1620 and 1640; and a similar breach of the charters of 1489 and 1531 (by which the consent of these districts is required for the conclusion of important alliances, war and peace, and might be asked for as to other matters) occasioned disturbances in 1777.The council of 200 comes to be largely chosen by a small committee of the members of the guilds actually sitting in the council by the constitution of 1713.
It consists of fifty members of the Little Council (named for a fixed term by the Great Council), eighteen members named by the Constafel, and one hundred and forty-four selected by the twelve gilds, these one hundred and sixty-two (forming the majority) being co-opted for life by those members of the two councils who belonged to the guild to which the deceased member himself had belonged.Early in the eighteenth century a determined effort is made to crush by means of heavy duties the flourishing rival silk trade in Winterthur.
It is reckoned that about 1650 the number of privileged burghers was nine thousand, while their rule extended over one hundred and seventy thousand persons.
The first symptoms of active discontent appear later among the dwellers by the lake, who extablish in 1794 a club at Stäfa and claim the restoration of the liberties of 1489 and 1531, a movement which is put down by force of arms in 1795.
The old system of government perishes in Zurich, as elsewhere in Switzerland, with the French invasion in the spring of 1798, and under the Helvetic constitution the country districts obtain political liberty.
