The statements above, with their unapologetic use of the expressions “democratic” and “common man,” appeared in a factional manifesto written in the “Freestate of the Three Leagues in Old Upper Rhaetia” – now the modern Swiss canton known in its three native languages as Graubünden, Grischun, or Grigioni. Effectively separated from the Holy Roman Empire in 1499, the Rhaetian Freestate developed into a polity unique in early modern Europe. Multi-lingual, and after the 1520s multi-religious, the Freestate spent the stormy years of the sixteenth century governed by communal democracy according to majoritarian principles. In an age that celebrated hierarchy and divinely ordained authority, its inhabitants celebrated their “liberty of self-government”, maintaining that they had no lord but God himself.