Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the original, some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries in the reference-lists, and vice versa.

THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

HUME

THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of
all ages: edited, with the assistance of a distinguished
board of advisers and contributors,
by
HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME XVII—SWITZERLAND (Concluded)
RUSSIA AND POLAND

T^he Outlook Company
New York

T^he History Association
London

1905

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
New York, U. S. A.

Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

• Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
• Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
• Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
• Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
• Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
• Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.
• Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.
• Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
• Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
• Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
• Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
• Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
• Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.
• Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
• Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.
• Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
• Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
• Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
• Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.
• Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
• Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
• Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
• Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.
• Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
• Dr. John P. Peters, New York.
• Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin.
• Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
• Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
• Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
• Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
• Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
• Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.

CONTENTS

SWITZERLAND (Concluded)

CHAPTER V. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

There is an evil worse than war and that is the debasement of peoples. The wounds of war may be healed, but moral degradation leads nations to the tomb. During the peace that followed the battle of Villmergen up to the time of the French revolution Switzerland suffered more calamities than in all the wars against Burgundy and Austria. For during the eighty years of repose during which the swords of the Winckelrieds, the Fontanas, the Halhwyls, and the Erlachs were tarnishing, the rust of egoism and of pride succeeded in eating away the tablets on which was engraven the loyal union of the ancient Swiss; and like a corpse the old confederation was rotting away. In vain degenerate sons decorated pompously the corpse of the achievements of their ancestors, that they might conceal the fact that the spirit which animated it aforetime had left it.—Zschokke.[b]

THE CONSPIRACY OF HENTZI; THE INSURRECTION AT FRIBOURG

The outward peace enjoyed by the confederacy during the eighteenth century (the last of its existence in its primitive form) was contrasted by incessant inward disturbances. The first of these which claims our attention is the conspiracy of Hentzi at Bern. Here, as in most towns of the confederacy, a more and more formal and regular aristocracy had grown up by degrees in the course of centuries. From time immemorial the powers of government had been held by the avoyer and council. For the protection of the burghers against the encroachments of the council, and of that body against the influence of the multitude, an assembly of two hundred of the most respectable burghers was formed, the members of which were annually elected.

The most important acts, which imposed duties on every burgher, not only for himself but for his posterity, were often brought before the whole body of citizens, and even country people; the more so as at that time a few villages constituted the whole domain of Bern. The continual aggrandisement of the state rendered obsolete the fundamental laws of its constitution, which became imperceptibly modified in proportion as political emergencies appeared to require alterations. When the power of Bern was doubled by the conquest of the Vaud, the assembly of the burghers ceased to be thought of. The dignities of the state became hereditary in those families which had once obtained a seat in the great council. It is true that the other burghers remained eligible to public functions; but it was rarely indeed, and generally by means of intermarriages, that a new family raised itself to the rank of the rulers de facto.

[1743-1749 A.D.]

The administration of these ruling families was, in general, not devoid of wisdom and equity; and, in fact, the principal subject of complaint was that participation in state affairs had ceased to be open to all. It was, however, precisely this system of aristocratic exclusion which was felt so insupportably by many of those who were subjected to it, that so early as 1710 attempts were made to break it up. These were renewed with increased vigour, in 1743, by six and twenty burghers, who combined to petition the council for the revival of a greater equality of rights in favour of the general body of citizens. These adventurous men incurred the censure of the authorities, and were placed under arrest in their houses or banished.

Amongst the exiles was Samuel Hentzi, a man of no ordinary talent and spirit. He had fixed on Neuchâtel as the place of his banishment; the term of which was shortened by the favour of the authorities. On his return, the embarrassed state in which he found his domestic economy, and the ill success of his efforts to obtain a lucrative office, may have mingled with other motives in inducing him to take the lead in a desperate undertaking of a little band of malcontents, who, without money, arms, or even unity of purpose, dreamed of overturning a government strong in its own resources, and sure of support from the whole Helvetic body, and of instituting equality of rights among all burghers, and appointment to all offices by lot. Yet, with all their root and branch work, the conspirators had no idea of remedying the real defects of the state, of satisfying the prevalent and increasing discontents of the Vaud, or of procuring an extension of political rights to the whole people: for, in the plan of a constitution annexed to their mediated manifesto, exclusive regard was paid to the burghers at Bern; and the rest of the people would hardly have been bettered by their accession to the dignities which had hitherto been engrossed by the ruling families. The 13th of July, 1749, was fixed for the execution of the plans of the conspirators; but many of their own number had opened their eyes by this time to the utter impossibility of success, produced by the disunion and imprudence of their colleagues—to the passion and cupidity of some, and the atrocious hopes of murder and plunder entertained by others.

No man felt more sensibly the criminal views of his party than the only man of ability and public spirit among them, Hentzi. He would not betray those with whom he had long pursued the same object; but he made an attempt to save himself by flight from further participation in their plans and foreseen destiny. It was too late: a betrayer had already done his work. Hentzi and other leaders of the party were taken and beheaded during the first exasperation of the government. Sentence of death was also pronounced upon some who had made their escape; others were imprisoned or banished, but soon afterwards pardoned. On embarking with her two sons to quit the Helvetic territory, the wife of Hentzi exclaimed, “I would rather see these children sink in the Rhine-stream than they should not one day learn to avenge the murder of their father.” However, when the sons came to manhood, they displayed more magnanimity than their mother; and one of them, who rose to distinction in the service of the Netherlands, requited with good offices to the burghers of his native town the unmerited misfortunes which they had brought upon his family.

In Fribourg—where, in olden times, equality of rights for all burghers had been settled as a principle—a no less close aristocracy had formed itself than in Bern, since the middle of the seventeenth century. A few houses, under the denomination of secret families, had contrived to exclude, not only the country people, but a large proportion likewise of the town burghers, from all participation in public affairs; and, in 1684, admission into the number of these secret families was rendered wholly impossible. From thenceforwards, constantly increasing discontent displayed itself both in town and country. Several very moderate proposals for alleviating the pressure of this oligarchy were rejected with such haughtiness by the government, that disaffection swelled into revolt.

[1781 A.D.]

In 1781 Peter Nicholas Chenaux of la Tour de Trême, John Peter Raccaud, and an advocate of Gruyères of the name of Castellaz, formed a league for the achievement of a higher degree of freedom. First they endeavoured to work upon the people by fair promises. Then Chenaux, at the head of a select band of fifty or sixty, undertook to terrify the government into a compromise. But the gates being closed on the party, and the walls manned with armed burghers, this undertaking ended in open revolt. The toll of alarm-bells summoned up the country people from every hill and valley in the canton to assist in the coercion of the domineering capital. A body of nearly three thousand men encamped before the walls of Fribourg, and further aid was hourly expected. The terrified burghers instantly called for the armed intervention of Bern, and the latter town detached a part of its guard without delay. Three hundred dragoons marched upon Fribourg, and were to be followed by fourteen hundred foot. The burghers of Fribourg now thought themselves strong enough to meet force with force. The garrison made a sally from the town, and on the first sight of the Bernese flag, not to mention the heavy artillery, the malcontents solicited an armistice. The surrender of their arms and of the ringleaders was demanded as preliminary to all negotiation. The people refused the latter of these conditions, but fled panic-struck on the first attack, without making any resistance.

The whole affair would have ended without bloodshed, had not the leader Chenaux been murdered in his flight by Henry Rosier, himself one of the popular party. The two remaining heads of the insurgents got clear off: Chenaux’s corpse was delivered to the public executioner, and his head fixed on a spear above the Romont gate. Sentence of death was passed on Castellaz and Raccaud, the two fugitives. Several others were visited with less degrees of punishment: new reinforcements from Bern, Solothurn, and Lucerne secured the town from any recurrence of tumult, and their ambassadors strove to promote the restoration of tranquillity. It was ordered to be proclaimed, from all the pulpits, that the council was well disposed to protect the old and well attested rights of its loving subjects, as well as to hear, with its never-failing graciousness, every suitable and respectful representation. Three days were allotted to each commune to lay their complaints and wishes before the government, through delegates. But when months elapsed without the popular grievances having obtained a hearing, the loss of Chenaux began to be appreciated. Multitudes assembled round his tomb weeping and praying: pilgrimages, as if to the tomb of a saint, were made thither with banners, and with crucifixes. Vainly were these demonstrations of feeling stigmatised, by the government as crime against the state, by the bishop as impious profanations. They were neither to be checked by posting sentinels, nor fulminating excommunications. They were the last sad consolation of the people—the last substitute for hopes that were already given up.

DISORDERS AT GENEVA (1707-1782 A.D.)

[1707-1714 A.D.]

Shortly after the establishment of Genevan independence, it had been decreed by the general assembly, for the better suppression of hostile attempts against their hard-won freedom, that whoever should propose a change in the government of Geneva should be considered to deserve capital punishment. This did not, however, hinder alterations being made, at different times, in various parts of the constitution. So early as the middle of the sixteenth century, the laws were revised and improved. The advantageous situation of the town and the long duration of peace promoted the increase of wealth in Geneva, and the rise of many families to opulence. These families aimed at separating themselves from their fellow citizens, even in their places of habitation, by settling in the upper part of the town, near the council-house, while the other burghers inhabited the lower town. The principal families already regarded themselves as a standing patriciate; and even the name of patrician came into use in the acts of council.

The year 1707 witnessed an effort of the inferior burghers to wrest from the principal families a part of their usurped power, and to introduce amendments in the constitution. In this emergency, the council invoked the mediation of Bern and Zurich, received a confederate garrison, and maintained itself by force of arms and by execution of its principal antagonists. A renewal of the disturbances which had been quelled by such violent measures, was produced, in 1714, by the imposition of an arbitrary tax by the council for the enlargement and completion of the fortifications of the town. This stretch of power occasioned great discontent among the burghers; bitter attacks and censures on the government appeared in print; and the more strictly these were prohibited, they obtained the more eager perusal and credence.

One of the arch-promoters of the rising storm was Michael Ducrest, a Genevan burgher and noble, an officer in the army, and a member of the great council. This man opposed himself with extraordinary vehemence to the building of the new fortifications, and heaped offensive charges on the partisans of the measure. The government condemned him to recant, and, on his evading compliance by flight, a penal sentence was pronounced against him. New attempts which he made to excite disturbance were followed by a sentence of perpetual imprisonment. This sentence could not be put in execution, as Ducrest had taken refuge under a foreign jurisdiction, where he set at defiance the council of Geneva, and provoked that body to such a degree by his writings and intrigues against them, that sentences more and more severe were heaped upon his head, until at length the most offensive of his writings was torn by the hangman, and his effigy was suspended from the gallows. His person, however, enjoyed impunity till 1744, when he was taken into custody in the territory of Bern. The government of Geneva did not thirst for his blood, and was content with his perpetual imprisonment. Even in this situation he contrived to mix in Hentzi’s conspiracy, was confined in the castle of Aarburg, and closed, in extreme old age, as a state prisoner, a life which he had spent in incessant labours in the cause of democracy.

[1734-1738 A.D.]

Meanwhile Geneva continued to be agitated by party manœuvres and popular discontents. In the year 1734 a body of eight hundred burghers addressed themselves to the heads of the government, desiring the curtailment of the projected fortifications, and the repeal of the tax levied for that object. The council only replied by preparations for defence: firearms were transported to the council hall; barricades erected in the approaches thither as well as in those to the upper town, where the principal class of burghers lived, and the garrison kept in readiness to act on the first signal. All this apparatus was regarded with mistrust by the burghers, who were still farther provoked by reports of the approach of Bernese troops, and by the removal of a part of the town artillery to the upper regions, while two and twenty other pieces were spiked. The multitude made themselves masters of the city guard, pointed field-pieces on the road by which the troops from Bern were expected, and tumultuously demanded the convocation of the burgher assembly, the sovereign authority of Geneva. The council contrived to win over the members of this body so far that they voted unanimously the completion of the fortifications and the continuance of the tax for ten years. The declaration of an amnesty and improvement of the criminal and judicial administration formed the rest of their business. The burghers laid down their arms and returned to their ordinary vocations; so that an embassy which arrived from Zurich and Bern found Geneva in a state of apparent tranquillity.

Permanent ill will was fostered only against the syndic Trembley, commander of the garrison and conductor of the defensive preparations of the council. Whatever this person had done by the instructions of the council was laid to his individual account, and added to the mass of dark imputations which were heaped on him, as the head of an already obnoxious family. He plumed himself on the favour of the confederate ambassadors, and forfeited thus the last chance of retrieving himself in the public opinion. The remembrance of the armed intervention of Zurich and Bern, in 1707, was too recent to admit of their ambassadors doing any good to Trembley’s cause through the medium of pacific intercession. The departure of these embassies removed the only screen of the syndic: he demanded his dismission, which was refused him, in order to deprive him of his functions more ignominiously. No resistance or artifice of a powerful connection could save him: the tumults were renewed with increased fury; and the question soon ceased to regard the person or party of Trembley, and became that of the triumph of the aristocratic or democratic principle at Geneva. In 1737, the council ventured several arrests, and the consequence was that the whole body of burghers rushed to arms, and the council was defeated, not without bloodshed. A garrison from Bern and Zurich was thrown into the town: the ambassadors of these cantons, in concert with the French ambassadors, undertook the office of mediators, and in 1738 framed a constitution which set limits to the assumptions of the council and the principal families, and was gratefully and all but unanimously accepted as a fundamental law by the burghers.

[1762-1768 A.D.]

After four and twenty years of repose and prosperity, occasion was given to new political movements at Geneva by a subject of a nature purely speculative. It pleased more than one government about this time to apply the doom of fire, which had been visited by inquisitors on the ill fated victims of their zealotry, to certain of the more remarkable works of the human intellect—a proceeding highly calculated to draw the eyes of the reading public on productions which seemed worthy of such signal condemnation. On the first appearance of that work of Rousseau which opened views so novel and so striking on the moral and still more on the physical education of man, the parliament of Paris had the work burned by the hangman, and sentenced Rousseau to imprisonment, which he only escaped by flight. Both of these decisions were immediately repeated by the council of Geneva [1762], which improved on them by launching a like condemnatory sentence against the Contrat Social of the same author. It was in vain that Rousseau’s connections demanded a copy of the sentence against him: their reiterated demands, though supported by a large body of burghers, were rejected by the council. The popular party, which vindicated the right of the burgher assembly to bring up representations or remonstrances against the council on any subject under discussion, distinguished themselves by the name of representatives. Their claims were met by asserting a droit négatif, or right of rejection, on the strength of which the council pretended that nothing that should not have been previously consented to by themselves could come before the general assembly. The partisans of the council were called negatives.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

(1712-1778)

The tranquillity of Geneva was once more disturbed to such a degree by passionate discourses, party writings, and manœuvres that the ambassadors of Zurich, Bern, and France again interfered, and pronounced themselves in favour of the council. The representatives rejected their decision, the ambassadors left Geneva, French troops advanced on the town, and all trade and intercourse were suspended. But the French ministry speedily became lukewarm in the cause of the negatives. The latter, when they found themselves abandoned by all foreign aid, apprehending what might ensue, patched up a peace with the representatives. By a compact closed in March, 1768, the burghers acquired valuable rights, and even a third party, that of the so-called natifs or habitans (old inhabitants, excluded by birth from taking part in public affairs), obtained extended franchises, and was flattered with a prospect of participation in all the rights of citizenship.

But on recovery from the first panic, reciprocal hatred soon revived. The negatives were vexed at having made such important sacrifices, and aimed at resuming all their former ascendency. Moreover they found a favourable hearing in the French court, which had long viewed with an evil eye the trade and wealth of Geneva, desired to raise the neighbouring Versoix to a commercial town, and hoped, by encouraging tumult and disorder at Geneva, either to annihilate its industry and opulence, or ultimately to bring it under the sovereignty of France. French emissaries therefore aided the negatives in spiriting the natifs up against the representatives, by promising to confer on them the franchises withheld by the latter. But the representatives flew to arms, took possession of the gates, and speedily succeeded in disarming the unpractised and undisciplined mob of natifs. Well aware by what manœuvres the natifs had been led to revolt, they prudently abstained from taking any vindictive measures against them; but, on the contrary, imparted to them, in 1781, that equality of rights which had been promised by the negatives, and endeavoured thus to win them over permanently to the common cause.

[1782 A.D.]

The council, on the other hand, impelled by French influence, declared the newly conferred rights illegally extorted, and invoked the mediation of Bern and Zurich. But, betwixt representative stubbornness and negative assumption, the ambassadors of these towns could exert but limited influence. They essayed to put an end to disputes by amicable arrangements, but were baffled by the intrigues of the French court, which was resolved to recognise no democratical system on its frontiers, and soon proceeded to open force in support of its secret policy. The first act of aggression was to garrison Versoix; a measure which gave just offence to Zurich and Bern, who thereupon renounced all adhesion to the mediation of 1738, and left the Genevans to their own discretion. France also declared she would mix no more in the affairs of Geneva; the government was overthrown and a new constitution established.

Zurich and Bern now declared formally and coldly that they could not acknowledge a government erected by revolt. Still more indignation was exhibited by France and Savoy, who entered into a league for the coercion of the town. Bern, too, joined this league in 1782, that the destiny of Geneva, that point d’appui of her own dominion, might not be trusted altogether to the caprices of foreign powers. On the appearance of the allied troops before the gates of Geneva, the burghers, unaware of the bad state of their defences, swore to bury themselves in the ruins of their native town rather than yield. But when the cannon of the besiegers was advanced up to their walls, and the alternative of desperate resistance or surrender was offered, the disunited city opened her gates without stroke of sword, after the principal heads of the representative party had taken to flight.

Mortal dread accompanied the victorious troops as they entered Geneva. Many had reason to tremble for their lives, their liberty, and possessions. No punishments, however, were inflicted, excepting only the banishment of the principal popular leaders; but the rights of the burghers were almost entirely annihilated by the arbitrary arrangements of the victors; the government was invested by them with almost unlimited power, and proceeded under their auspices to prohibit all secret societies, military exercises, books and pamphlets on recent events, and to reinforce the garrison by twelve hundred men under foreign leaders. Thus the town was reduced to utter subjection, and depopulated by exile and emigration. From thenceforwards commerce and enterprise fell into decay; and for seven long years a forced, unnatural calm dwelt in Geneva.

During these years the government was conducted with much mildness, the administration of justice was impartial, that of the public revenues incorrupt, art and industry were encouraged to the utmost. But nothing could win the lost hearts of the people back to the government. The iniquity of the so-called règlement of 1782, the destruction of their franchises, and the disarming of their persons, had wounded irrecoverably the feelings of the burghers. The malcontents increased daily in number; and even many former negatives now disowned their party, which had gone greater lengths than they had ever wished or expected. At length, on the death of Vergennes, the French minister, and arch enemy of Genevan independence, the spirit of freedom awoke with all its ancient strength in Geneva, and the burghers arose to break their slavish fetters. But the recital of the subsequent occurrences must be postponed until we come to notice the train of events fired by the French Revolution.

TUMULTS IN NEUCHÂTEL

[1748-1767 A.D.]

The little principality of Neuchâtel, the succession of which had descended in the same line since the era of the second Burgundian monarchy, came, in 1707, into the hands of the king of Prussia, as next heir to the ancient house of Châlons. In 1748, Frederick II displayed that love of economy which distinguished all his measures, by farming out certain parts of the public revenue arising from tithes, ground rents, and the crown lands; from the former administration of which many of the inhabitants had enjoyed considerable profits. The loss of these, of course, was felt as a grievance by the losers; but what was viewed with more concern by the mass of the inhabitants was the prospect of still further innovations. Accordingly five communes of the Val de Travers transmitted their remonstrances through a delegate to Berlin; and their example was soon afterwards followed throughout the principality.

The arrival of two commissaries, despatched by the king to Neuchâtel, was viewed with discontent as an encroachment on its immunities. Shortly after their coming, an attempt was made to put in execution the proposed financial system, of which the only result was to provoke a tumultuous popular movement. On the 7th of January, 1767, the burgher assembly of Neuchâtel passed a resolution of exclusion from the rights of citizenship, against all who should farm or guarantee the farming of the revenues. On this the royal commissary, Von Derschau, brought a suit before the council of Bern, against the town of Neuchâtel; and the advocate-general, Gaudot, who had formerly been a popular favourite, much to the surprise of his fellow-citizens, seceded to the royal side, and thenceforwards gave his active assistance to the commissary.

The cause was decided at Bern (with some limitations) in the royal favour. With regard to the resolutions of the Neuchâtel burghers, already referred to, it was decreed that they should be cancelled in the presence of the burgher assembly, and a public apology made to the vice-governor. The costs of the whole process to be paid by the town. Gaudot, who had attacked the civic immunities both by word and writing, naturally became an object of popular indignation. By way of compensation, however, he received a lucrative government office, along with the functions of procurator-general, from which another man had been removed who possessed the popular favour. He returned to Neuchâtel from Bern with the royal plenipotentiaries. These and the vice-governor advised him to take up his residence in the castle; but, in spite of their recommendations, Gaudot thought fit to repair to his own residence. The same evening, clamour and disturbance took place around the house, which the magistrates were forced to protect by military force.

The next morning the mob returned in increased numbers, and was still further exasperated by missiles being thrown down upon them. A carriage, escorted by servants in the royal livery, which had been sent by the king’s commissary for Gaudot, was knocked to pieces by the infuriated multitude. Gaudot and his nephew now imprudently fired from the windows, and their shots took effect, fatally for themselves. The exasperated populace forced its way into the house; Gaudot was killed by three shots, and the mob dispersed after the deed, with cries of “Long live the king.” The chief actors in this tragedy escaped, and could be executed only in effigy. The whole affair was ultimately compromised by the benevolent moderation of the great Frederick; and terms of pacification were accepted by the communes, which provided alike against arbitrary government and popular turbulence.

On this occasion, Frederick displayed more generosity than would have been shown by any cantonal government; and his conduct seemed to justify the general reflection, which must often occur to the student of Swiss history that when administrative abuses are introduced into a monarchy, it only requires a well-disposed and enlightened prince to crush the gang of official oppressors and extortioners; because such a prince is powerfully backed in such measures by the public opinion. Whereas, when the majority of the ruling class in misnamed republics is corrupted so far as to speculate on the profits of malversation, it generally takes care to recruit its ranks with new accomplices; or, at all events, only to promote to public offices such men as will at least shut their eyes to public abuses. The magnanimity of Frederick was but ill repaid to his successor by the tumults which ensued in Neuchâtel on the commencement of the French Revolution; and we have lately seen the same misunderstandings, as in the last century, arise between the now canton of Neuchâtel and its Prussian sovereign.

ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY

The democratical cantons, where the assembled population exercised the supreme power in their landsgemeinde, held the lowest station, in almost every respect, amongst the confederates. Narrowness of mind and ignorant hatred of all innovation withstood every proposal of improvement; while passion and prejudice, aided by the artifices of demagogues, often occasioned acts of crying injustice. Judicial proceedings were in the highest degree arbitrary; confession of crimes was extracted by torture, which, indeed, was often employed when nothing more remained to confess. Capital punishment, even for minor offences, was by no means rare. Public offices, particularly that of bailiff or land-vogt, were commonly conferred not on the worthiest but on the highest bidder; and the proceeds of this ignominious traffic went to the public treasury. Was it to be wondered at if these functionaries in their turn set justice up to auction in their bailiwicks, and endeavoured to recover their advances to the government by every sort of oppression of its subjects?

[1780 A.D.]

Mental cultivation was extremely neglected in these cantons, scientific establishments were rare, and those for education were, for the most part, in the hands of the capuchins; whose esprit de corps was at least on one occasion beneficial, by preventing the admission of the jesuits into the canton of Schwytz in 1758. Elsewhere, however, similar influences produced worse effects. In Glarus, so late as 1780, an unfortunate servant girl was executed as a witch, on the charge of having lamed the leg of a child by magic, and having caused it to vomit pins. Credulous souls were even found to believe the affirmation that the girl had administered pin-seed through the medium of a magical cake, which had afterwards borne its fruit within the body of the child. The political relations of these cantons, in the period now before us, were of little importance.

The constitutions of the aristocratical cantons had all of them this circumstance in common, that not only the capital towns assumed the rule of the whole canton, but the burghers of those towns themselves were divided into ruling and non-ruling families, of which the former monopolised admission to all places of honour. But the governments of these cantons deserve to be treated of more at length.

Bern, which, in the first period after its foundation, had no domains of any importance outside its walls, possessed in that immediately preceding the French revolution a territory containing more than 400,000, inhabitants. This considerable tract of land was administered by 250 ruling families, of which, however, only about sixty were in actual possession of the government; and these again were divided into so-called great and small families, and did not easily suffer others to rise to an equality with them. The sovereign power resided in 299 persons, of whom the great council was composed. A little council or senate of five-and-twenty formed the executive. The rural districts and the Pays de Vaud were governed by land-vogts or bailiffs. It was chiefly there that discontent prevailed against the Bernese government. The nobles of the Pays de Vaud were rendered wholly insensible to the real and solid advantages secured to them by that government, by resentment of their exclusion from all public employments. The peasants of that district, for the most part subjects or bondsmen of the nobles, sighed under the weight of feudal oppression and its accustomed offspring, poverty, neglected culture, mental and moral abortion.

Davel

A singular attempt at revolt was made in 1723 by Major Daniel Abraham Davel, a well-intentioned man, of excellent character, but a decided political and religious enthusiast, possessed with the idea that he was called by inspiration to emancipate the Vaud from Bern. He assembled the regiment of militia which he commanded, under the pretext of a review, and with these troops, who were altogether ignorant of his real design, and unprovided with stores or ammunition, he surprised the town of Lausanne at a point of time when all the Bernese land-vogts had gone to Bern for the annual installation. Davel offered his aid for the restoration of independence to the hastily assembled town council. He found, however, no kindred spirit in that body; and the cautious citizens put him off with fair words till a force was under arms sufficient to crush him. Meanwhile his troops had discovered the real object of their commander, and shrank from him in surprise and consternation. He himself was arrested, cruelly tortured for the discovery of accomplices, of whom he had none, and lastly beheaded.

A certain contempt of scholastic acquirements seemed the prevailing tone at Bern; and school education naturally came to deserve the low esteem which it met with. Accordingly those patrician youths who did not serve in the army remained for the most part unemployed until they obtained places under government. The establishment of what was called the “exterior state” afforded but a superficial substitute for more solid attainments, and initiated youth only too early in the petty intrigues and jealousies of faction. This institution, which was also known by the name of the “shadow state,” was intended to give the youth of the ruling families opportunities for acquainting themselves with the forms at least of public business, and of acquiring an unembarrassed address, so important for republicans. It parodised the dignities and offices of the state, the election of avoyers, councillors, and senators, had its secretaries and functionaries of all ranks, and distributed by lot 120 vogtships, which for the most part took their names from ruined castles.

Without any sufficient evidence, some would refer to the era of the Burgundian war the origin of this institution, which received the sanction of government in 1687, and for which a council-house, far more splendid than that which belonged to the actual government, was built in 1729. The seal of this “exterior state” bore an ape astride on a lobster, and looking at himself in a mirror. These and similar traits of humour seem to owe their descent to an era exceedingly remote from the measured formality of later times.

The government of Lucerne, which with Solothurn and Fribourg formed the remaining pure Swiss aristocracies, consisted of a little council of six-and-thirty members, which, reinforced by sixty-four others, held the sovereign authority. With regard to intellectual cultivation, the most contradictory features were observable at Lucerne. On the one hand, learning, enlightenment, and patriotism were hereditary distinctions of some families; while, on the other hand, the mass was imbued with ignorant fanaticism. On the one hand, the encroachments of the papacy were resisted with inflexible firmness; while, on the other hand, the clergy kept possession of a highly mischievous influence in the state. On the one hand, a series of saints’ days and holidays was abolished, as being dedicated to dissoluteness more than devotion; while, on the other hand, we are horror-struck by the burning of a so-called heretic. In 1747, a court, consisting of four clergymen, sentenced Jacob Schmidli, a man of blameless life, to be strangled, and then burned with his books and writings, because he had not only read the Bible for his private edification, but had explained and recommended it to others as the sole true basis of religion. His wife, his six children, and seventy-one other persons were banished, his house was burned to the ground by the hands of the public executioner, and a monument raised on its former site, to perpetuate the ignomy (query: of the victim or of his judges?).

The appearance of two pamphlets in 1769, on the question “whether removal or restriction of the monastic orders might not be found beneficial to the Catholic cantons?” excited terrible uproar at Lucerne, where certain classes were constantly scenting danger to church or state from some quarter. The town and county clergy, and the bigots in the council, were rejoiced to get so good an opportunity to persecute the holders of free principles, and raised a deplorable howl, as if the canton were on the verge of destruction. The whole population was plunged in consternation and astonishment, by thundering sermons and rigorous prohibitions of the obnoxious work. Free-thinkers were fulminated against by name from the pulpits; and Schinznach, which had witnessed the formation of the Helvetic society, was denounced as the focus and headquarters of heresy.

This society, which aimed at the diffusion of useful knowledge, public spirit, and union throughout the Helvetic body, without reference to varieties of religion, rank, or political system, was founded by a knot of patriotic and instructed men, in the pious hope of arresting the decline of the confederation. At its commencement it consisted of no more than nine members, but added to its numbers with astonishing rapidity. The society was soon viewed with an evil eye by the cantonal governments, which dreaded all independence of feeling and action in the people. At Bern, political dangers were anticipated from it, as symptoms of refractoriness were exhibited shortly after its formation by the nobles in the Vaud; while at Lucerne it was regarded as a conspiracy for shaking off the Catholic religion, and assisting the supposed ambition of Bern to gain ascendency over the whole confederation.

The aristo-democratical governments next come under our notice, and in these, as in most of the purely aristocratical, the metropolis had obtained unlimited power over the whole canton. In these, however, particular families did not engross the sovereign power; the collective body of citizens had maintained themselves by means of the regulations of their guilds in the possession of considerable influence over the public affairs. Accordingly the magistracy favoured the monopolies which enriched the metropolitan traders, and imposed restraints on the industry and invention of the surrounding country. Thence the subjects of these towns were much more harshly administered than those of the aristocratical cantons. Their ancient charters fell into oblivion, and were withdrawn as far as possible from public inspection; they were not only excluded from civil and military, but even from ecclesiastical functions; and the exercise of many branches of industry, and the sale of their productions in the towns, was wholly cut off by corporation privileges. Moreover, since the commencement of the century of which we are treating, no mode of acquiring the rights of burghers remained open; they were only conferred on extremely rare occasions to reward eminent merit; or when the times became troublesome to conciliate influential burghers. Hence that discontent and disaffection which broke out at the close of the century found a principal focus in the heart of the mixed aristocracies.

In the larger cantons the public administration was for the most part incorrupt; and that of justice was liable on the whole to fewer complaints than in many other European countries. The pay of public servants, with few exceptions, was extremely moderate. Men who had devoted their whole lives to public affairs, and who had filled the highest offices in the state, lost more than they gained by the bounty of their country. At Zurich, the expenses of the government were wholly defrayed without the imposition of taxes, properly so called, from the revenues and interests of the national lands and capital, from ground-rents, tithes, the salt monopoly, and the produce of the premium paid by the several guilds of traders in return for their exclusive privileges. The same description is applicable to the government of Bern, excepting that here the course of justice was tedious and expensive. The superior financial resources of the latter canton enabled her to execute more for public ends than Zurich. Bern invested considerable sums in foreign securities, particularly in the English funds; and, besides, amassed a treasure amounting to some millions of dollars, which became, as we shall presently see, and as Mably had predicted, the booty of rapacious and powerful neighbours.

Very different was the condition of the free or common bailiwicks, particularly those of the democratical cantons; here most of the land-vogts sought by every species of extortion to indemnify themselves for the sums for which they had in fact bought their places from the general assemblies of their respective cantons. Many made an open traffic of justice; took presents from both parties; helped delinquents to evade deserved punishment who could pay for exemption, and exacted contributions from the wealthier class whenever and wherever they could. Even farther than in the German domains of Switzerland were abuses of this kind carried in the Italian bailiwicks, and most of all in those of the Grisons. The inevitable tendency of such treatment was to debase the popular character in those districts, and its effects have left unequivocal traces even to this day.

In those towns of which the constitution was grounded on corporate bodies, the privileges of the burghers and their guilds received progressive extensions. Propositions were made which would hardly have been conceivable in monarchical states, and could only, in fact, take place where particular classes had to decide upon the destiny of the rest of their fellow-countrymen. In Bâle it was several times proposed, under the pretext of protection to agriculture, that the exercise of certain manufactures should be prohibited altogether in the rural part of the canton.[c]

FEDERAL RELATIONS OF THE SWISS STATES

The federal bond which united the various cantons and their allies was very loose, and far different from that which fastened together the united provinces of Holland, or even from the federal compact of the United States of North America. There was not in Switzerland any permanent sovereign body, no standing federal magistrate equally acknowledged by all, no central government having its own establishment, its own treasury, its own servants, civil and military. The general diets could not decide upon any important question, unless it had been previously debated and decided on in the councils of each of the cantons, who were applied to by their own deputies for fresh instructions at every new case which was brought before the diet. The cantons were not even each allied to all. The eight older cantons had among them a federal compact for their common defence, and even of these eight the five first only, viz. Zurich, Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, and Lucerne, were bound to enter into no other alliance without each other’s consent; while the other three, Glarus, Zug, and Bern, were at liberty to form alliances with other states or foreign princes, provided such alliances contained nothing prejudicial to the federal bond. The eight cantons were also bound, by the convention of Stanz, to assist one another in supporting the form of government established in each of them.

The five junior cantons, viz. Fribourg, Solothurn, Bâle, Schaffhausen, and Appenzell, had no federal bond with the whole of the rest, nor among themselves, but every one of them was allied to some one or more of the others. The three forest cantons alone were allied to every one of the other cantons. By these means, however, the guarantee of common defence was secured to each; for, as any canton attacked had the right of calling some other cantons to its assistance, and as these were entitled to call others, all would be brought in to take a part, in virtue of their particular bonds.

The general diets of the confederation were either ordinary or extraordinary. The ordinary diets met once a year at Frauenfeld in Thurgau, instead of Baden, where, until the treaty of Aarau in 1712, they had been accustomed to meet. The deputy from Zurich presided: he brought forward the matters to be discussed, collected the votes, framed the resolutions, etc. Each canton or associate had one vote and questions were decided by a simple majority. The sittings were held with closed doors, and at the end of the session the deputy of Zurich drew up a statement of the decisions of the diet, of which he sent a copy round to each canton. The principal business of the diet was to hear appeals from the common bailiwicks, and to inspect the accounts and inquire into the conduct of the bailiffs.

Extraordinary diets were assembled at the request of any particular canton, or of any of the foreign ministers in case of urgent business. In such a case the canton of Zurich summoned the other cantons to send their deputies to Frauenfeld, or any other place fixed upon, acquainting them at the same time with the nature of the subjects which were to be discussed, in order that the cantonal governments might give instructions to their deputies accordingly. The foreign minister, at whose request an extraordinary diet was convoked, was bound to pay the expenses of the deputies who were thus called from their homes at an unexpected season.

The partial diets were held by the Protestant cantons at Aarau, and by the Catholic ones at Lucerne. There was no fixed time for their meeting, but they were summoned as the occasion required it.

A regulation, called the “defensionale,” was, as we have seen, agreed upon at a general diet held at Baden in 1668, for providing against sudden emergencies, such as an attack from foreign powers, when the proceedings of the diet would have proved too slow for the common safety. In such a case deputies were to be named by all the members of the Helvetic body, and invested with full powers to direct the military force of the nation, which was to be raised by contingents from the militia of each state. This body consisted of 9600 men for the thirteen cantons, 1400 for the associates, and 2400 for the subject bailiwicks—in all 13,400 men; which number, however, might be doubled and trebled if required.

The militia of each canton consisted of all the males from sixteen to sixty years of age, and these received military instruction at certain epochs. Only one-third of the whole, however, consisting of the youngest and strongest, were enrolled into regiments, the other two-thirds supplying them with recruits if necessary. The regiments were divided into fusileers and electionaries, the fusileers being all young unmarried men, who were considered as always ready to march at a moment’s notice; the electionaries were composed of the married men, of an age and size proper for service, and these were called out after the fusileers. When in active service they received regular pay; but every man was bound to provide his own uniform, arms, and accoutrements.

The Swiss, it is well known, furnished troops to several European powers, according to certain treaties or capitulations, as they were called, agreed upon between those powers and the various cantons. The chief power having Swiss troops in its service was France, who had retained them ever since the treaty made between the Swiss and Louis XI. Under Louis XIV the number of Swiss troops in the French service amounted to 28,000 men; but, in 1790, at the beginning of the French Revolution, there were not more than 15,000, who were divided into twelve regiments. Six Swiss regiments were in the service of Holland, four were serving in Piedmont, four at Naples, and four in Spain: the pope had also a small body guard of Swiss. There has been considerable misconception abroad upon this subject; the cantons have been represented as selling their countrymen as if they were cattle, while the truth is that the men were not sold, but enlisted of their own accord for a certain period of time, receiving the bounty money.[d]

Agriculture was advanced by the cultivation of clover and of other artificial grasses, and by the consequent increase of pasturage and manure. Many districts which had formerly been regarded as unfruitful were thus rendered remarkable for fertility. The processes of manuring, and many other processes in Swiss cultivation, became a model for foreign agriculturists. Arts and manufactures were extended more and more widely. In the canton of Bern, in the Thurgau, and elsewhere, industry was employed on native materials in the linen manufacture; in Zurich, St. Gall, and Appenzell, in working up imported wool in spinning, weaving, and cotton printing. Silk manufactures occupied Zurich and Bâle, and the latter town enriched itself by its riband manufacture. Trade in all its branches throve at Geneva; where a wholesale watch manufacture was conducted, and from whence watchmaking was soon spread through the district of Neuchâtel, where it suggested many other mechanical processes.

Intellectual culture and social refinements marched abreast with commercial wealth. Not only the towns were embellished with architectural structures, but in the Emmenthal, and around the lakes of Zurich and Geneva, arose new and splendid edifices which bespoke increasing opulence. In Neuchâtel, which a century before had been inhabited by shepherds, the villages assumed the appearance of towns; and the wealthy marts of England or the Netherlands were recalled to the mind of the traveller by the principal street of Winterthur. Intercourse with other states in trade or in foreign services naturalised new wants and desires, yet many still adhered to the old usages and manners. In whole districts, especially in the democratic cantons, public opinion imperiously set limits to the advance of luxury. In other places sumptuary laws maintained a struggle with the various arts of invention; and a wholesome state of simplicity was preserved in Zurich, St. Gall, and Bâle, in which celibacy became a rarity.[c]

Although in political matters dissentions prevailed, yet in intellectual and scientific life a sense of the unity of the fatherland was beginning to arise, notably in the reformed towns, where intellectual life had made great strides since the success of the war of Toggenburg. Men began to study their own position, learnt to know the individuality of Switzerland, and drew thence the hope of a brighter future. The pioneers of the movement were Scheuchzer of Zurich, and Haller of Bern. J. J. Scheuchzer (1672-1733), physician and naturalist, made himself famous by various journeys into the Swiss Alps, wrote the first natural history of Switzerland, and also completed a large map of Switzerland, by which labours he put new life into patriotism.

Albrecht von Haller (ob. 1777), the great poet and naturalist, by unrivalled industry acquired an extensive and learned education; he also possessed a strong poetic vein, and a warm and patriotic heart. Among his poems which appeared in 1732, Die Alpen (The Alps) made a great impression by its poetic depth and the novelty of its ideas. Full of indignation at the depravity of the time, and yearning for natural and unspoiled conditions, he there depicts with vigorous touches the life of nature and of men in the Alps, the simple, beautiful customs of the Alpine folk, with a patriotic warmth and enthusiasm before unknown. In another poem, Der Mann der Welt (The Man of the World), he laments the degeneration of his fatherland; in a third, Die verdorbenen Sitten (Demoralisation), in contradistinction to the good old times, he apostrophises the decay of his own day, exclaiming—“O Helvetia, once the land of heroes, how is it possible that the men whom we now behold could have descended from thy former inhabitants?” By his poems and his researches in natural science Haller became so famous in other lands that he received a number of honourable calls; yet he declined them all: he wanted to devote his powers to his beloved country, and from 1753 until his end he served her as a government official with affectionate devotion and self-sacrifice.[e]

J. C. Lavater

(1741-1801)

Eloquence and daring imagination conferred European celebrity on Lavater. Rousseau promulgated truths in education and in politics which will not be lost for future generations, whatever alloy of paradox or perverse misapplication they might suffer from himself or his followers. The bitterness of religious and political dissension which had long prevailed in so many odious forms began to decline, and the personal worth of men began to be estimated by less absurd criteria than their speculative opinions. Old prejudices vanished, or at all events were mitigated, and even if the recognition of principles more enlightened was with many a matter of fashion and imitation, still those may be deemed fortunate whose existence falls on a period in which truth and liberal sentiments find favour and adoption.

On the whole, the century was not worse than those which had preceded it. Even if the forms of government favoured many abuses, a more extended spirit of activity prevailed amongst the people than in previous generations; and though it is true that no extraordinarily great actions were performed, it is also true that no great occasion called for their performance. It cannot be denied that too much jealousy prevailed between the cantons, and that more reliance was often placed on strangers than on fellow confederates. But Germany, which united might have given law to Europe, had been even more distracted by like errors, reduced to a mere battle-field for foreigners, and robbed of its most valuable dependencies.[c]

Seldom during the eighteenth century did the confederates act together. Only once did the confederation appear as a unit toward the outside. That was in 1777, when an alliance was concluded with France which well expressed the subserviency of the Swiss at this period to that country. The members of the diet convened at Solothurn went through a humiliating ceremony. They appeared in a body at the ambassador’s hotel, followed him to church and thence to the place of the deliberations. By this treaty the Helvetic body was bound to render a levy of six thousand men to France in case her territory was invaded, and in return the king of France promised the Swiss help in danger and to maintain the privileges accorded them by his predecessors.[a][f]

SWITZERLAND FEELS THE SHOCK OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

[1789-1794 A.D.]

The Swiss government, as well as that large portion of their subjects who were contented with their condition, and desired no alteration in it, were startled out of a state of perfect tranquillity by the first shock of the French revolution. The shifting of the whole political scenery of Europe surrounded them with entirely new embarrassments. They resembled steersmen tolerably capable of guiding their bark safely through the tempests of their native lakes; but who found themselves now on unknown seas without chart or compass. The situation of the Swiss regiments engaged in the French service afforded the first reason for disquietude; the next was the apprehension of infection from the principles predominant in France. Alarming political movements soon began in the interior; and the solution of the problems which were set before Swiss politicians by the progress of events in the neighbouring countries was the more difficult the more various were the views, wants, and relations of the cantons, and the lands which were subject to them.

It was in the latter districts, as might have been expected, that the new ideas gained the greatest currency, and that the first attempts were made for their realisation. Educated and thinking men in the subject towns and territories brooded resentfully on their exclusion from all public posts and dignities. In those cantons where trade and manufactures were most cultivated, it was regarded as an intolerable hardship by the enterprising and wealthy rural proprietor, that he was hindered by oppressive regulations from purchasing the requisite raw materials, or from disposing of the products of his industry in any quarter except to a wholesale dealer of the capital. Similar resentments were excited by corporate privileges. Nevertheless, in the German regions of Switzerland, a longer time elapsed before the new modes of thinking, and the comparisons which they suggested, set the public mind in motion. This took place much sooner in the west, where the French language and neighbourhood made communication easier; above all, in Geneva, where nothing but an auspicious hour was waited for to burst asunder a yoke imposed by foreigners.

A rise in the price of bread, which was imputed to the government, gave occasion to the long prepared explosion. On the 26th of February, 1789, the burghers assailed the garrison with everything which could be turned into a weapon of offence. Fire-engines with boiling water supplied the place of artillery: the garrison was put to the rout, and the power of the government overturned the more easily, as its foreign props had now ceased to support it. The ruling class was compelled to throw itself wholly on the citizens, to restore the ancient liberties of the town, and to recall the banished heads of the representatives. But the hour was come for the ruin of Genevan independence. The country people and habitans of the town now demanded an equality of rights with the burghers, on the model of republican France; and the latter power was induced to second their wishes, by the suggestions of the ex-representative Clavière. The malcontents were kept for a while in check by troops from Bern and Zurich; but, on the withdrawal of these in 1792, the country people, habitans and natifs, flew to arms, made themselves masters of the town, deposed the government, and established, on the model of France, a national convention, with committees of general safety and of public welfare.

A show of moderation and tranquillity lasted some time longer; but distrust and exasperation received continual new aliment, and the disinterested friends of peace could hardly prevent some furious outbreak. Many votes were gained to a proposed new constitution, by the hope of securing order and repose; and in the beginning of 1794 it was adopted by a large majority. In April, syndics and council were again installed in their former functions, and the event was announced to Zurich and Bern with expressions of hope and confidence. Bern, however, could not resolve, on the instant, to give the name of confederates to these newly re-established authorities; and what had been done had no effect in mitigating the violence of those who put themselves forwards as the organs of the multitude, which they first set in motion for their own purposes, and then were forced, in turn, to flatter its passions, in order to continue popular favourites. Meanwhile, the price of necessaries rose, while trade and industry stagnated; and the repeated demands for so-styled free-will offerings to the public were answered by supplies more and more sparing.

In order to crush, at a stroke, all resistance, and to furnish themselves with the necessary stores and ammunition, the party of terrorists made a nocturnal seizure of the arsenal in July, 1794, occupied all the posts in warlike array; and filled the prisons of the town, and even the corn-magazine, with nearly six hundred men, whom they chose to designate as aristocrats; and amongst whom were a number of the most respectable members of the magistracy, merchants, and men of letters. Of eight of the prisoners first examined, a revolutionary tribunal contented itself with sentencing one to death; but the clamour and threats of the multitude worked on these unsteady judges to retract their verdict, and extend the same condemnation to all the others. The doom of four of these was commuted for banishment by the general assembly; but a band of wretches again collected, stormed the prisons, and the bloody tribunal now sentenced their victims to be shot; and afterwards endeavoured to excuse itself on the plea that this had only been done to prevent worse atrocities. More executions followed, which included several persons who had actively promoted revolution. Numbers were banished, in order to secure the ruling party a majority in the general assembly. The large sums required by a revolutionary government for the payment of public officers, and the armed force of the populace, were defrayed by imposing heavy contributions on the possessors of property; indifferentists being made to pay double, aristocrats a treble amount.

[1796 A.D.]

Party spirit, however, cooled by degrees; approximations and concessions took place between all classes of citizens, who felt, in common, the general ruin of public and private happiness; and the disappointment of all the hopes which had formerly found indulgence. In 1796, a return to the old constitution was agreed upon, on condition of equality of rights being conceded to the old and new burghers, and the town and country inhabitants. The exiles returned home, and all rejoiced that they could again breathe freely. For two years more, the little republic dragged on an infirm existence; till it was finally united with France in 1798, and forced to partake, for fifteen years, the destinies of that country.

Of the men who had at different times been banished for political offences from Switzerland, many had taken refuge in the French metropolis, and endeavoured to persuade the republican statesmen that their enemies were equally those of France. [Notable among them was La Harpe of Vaud, who published a treatise on the situation of the Pays de Vaud and demanded its restoration from Bern.] Their representations found the easier audience, as Switzerland was already regarded with greedy eyes by their hearers. “At an early period of the Revolution,” observes an English writer,[i] “the views of France were directed towards Switzerland, as well from its importance as a barrier on her eastern frontier, as from its central position between the German Empire and Italy. The reduction, therefore, of Switzerland, was a favourite object of the republican rulers, and was only suspended by the dread of adding its people to the host of enemies who menaced France on all sides; they accordingly temporised under the mask of friendship, and succeeded in preserving the neutrality of the Helvetic confederacy, by fomenting the national antipathy to the house of Austria. Yet even during this specious display of friendship, their agents industriously spread disaffection, and prepared the mine which was ready to explode on the first favourable opportunity: such an opportunity presented itself at the conclusion of the treaty of Campo Formio, which left the Swiss without an ally on the Continent. At this period the French Republic had acquired a colossal strength. The king of Sardinia, deprived of half his territory, was the vassal of France; the pope, and the king of Naples, owed the possession of a precarious sceptre to the forbearance of the directory; Prussia pertinaciously maintained her close connection with the new republic; and Austria, vanquished by the genius of Bonaparte, had concluded a dishonourable peace.

“But the French rulers were not content with planting the tricoloured flag on the summit of Mont Blanc, on the left bank of the Rhine, and at the mouth of the Scheldt, and with establishing the limits of their empire by the natural boundaries of the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Mediterranean and the ocean. With a view to secure their territories against the future aggressions of the continental powers, they purposed to form a series of dependent republics along the line of their frontiers, as a kind of outwork, to remove the point of attack. At the extremities of this line they had already established the Ligurian and Batavian republics; the Cisalpine soon followed. A connecting link of this chain was Switzerland, which covered the most vulnerable parts of the French territory; and, from its natural strength and central position, formed the citadel of Europe.”

Besides these motives, acknowledged by the French themselves, their rapacity was stimulated by the treasures known to exist at Bern and elsewhere, the amount of which, as usual, was enormously exaggerated. What was required, in short, was not a motive but a pretext for intermeddling with the internal regulations of the Helvetic body. That body had with the utmost caution avoided giving offence; had recognised every successive form of government in France; and had turned out of their territories the unfortunate French émigrés who had fled thither for refuge from the rage of their own countrymen.

The triumphs of Napoleon in Italy were concluded by the construction of the Cisalpine Republic. The Swiss subjects of the Valteline, Chiavenna, and Bormio, were tempted to desire participation in the freedom thus established on their borders; and Napoleon offered the Grisons the alternative of conceding equal rights to these districts, or of seeing them included in the new Cisalpine state. Parties ran so high on this proposal, that no friendly understanding was possible; and when the term allowed for reply elapsed without any being given, Napoleon put his threat into effect, and confiscated all property belonging to the Grisons contained in the above-mentioned districts.

Such was the first encroachment on the ancient limits of Switzerland: shortly afterwards the bishopric of Bâle was annexed to France. Great consternation was caused by these proceedings in the confederation; but still more serious evils were at hand. In the canton of Bâle the peasantry murmured loudly against the town: in the Aargau several towns advanced tumultuous claims against Bern, for the recovery of their old and chartered rights; and the Pays de Vaud reclaimed its freedom with more impatience than ever. It was said besides, that a French army was already marching on Switzerland; ostensibly to support the claims of the malcontents, but really to make themselves masters of the land for their own purposes. Bern and Fribourg hastily levied forces for the coercion of their turbulent dependencies; and a diet of the confederacy was summoned at Aarau. Much was said and nothing done at this meeting, as the cantonal governments neither trusted each other nor their subjects. The members of the diet renewed the original league of the cantons, as if urged by the presentiment of its coming dissolution. The oath had hardly been taken, when a messenger from Bâle brought the intelligence that the mansions of the land-vogts were in flames; that a large body of peasantry had entered the town, and that all the subject districts had declared themselves free.

The spectacle of feebleness and fear in the authorities, combined with dogged resistance to the wishes of the people, of course diffused, instead of quelling, the spirit of revolt. As in the thirteenth and succeeding century, the prerogatives of the nobles had been forced to yield to the claims of a class of burghers and of shepherds, so soon as the example of the Lombard towns, and the growth of public prosperity, had excited independence of feeling; so likewise, in the times of which we are treating, it had ceased to be within the power of a privileged class to contend with success against the claims of the so-called third order, encouraged as it was by the example of France. Some districts, indeed, took no part in the prevalent agitations, and pertinaciously adhered to the accustomed order of things; others, more distinguished for enlightenment and enterprise, demanded an equality of rights in town and country; others, again, required the restoration of ancient franchises: some regarded nothing as attainable but by French interference; while nobler minds retained an insurmountable abhorrence for the agency of strangers in the internal affairs of their country.

[1797-1798 A.D.]

It became more and more evident that the policy of the French directory led them to foment intestine discord in Switzerland. For several years past it had been observed, that foreign emissaries set themselves to work upon the public opinion. A person of the name of Mengaud made his appearance at Bâle, under the unusual and equivocal title of commissary, and set his seal on the papers of the French embassy: this individual not only made no secret of his intelligence with the malcontents in Switzerland, but affected to display it ostentatiously. He went to Bern on the 10th of October, 1797, where he demanded, in a note addressed to the government, the dismissal of the English ambassador Wickham, who had certainly exerted himself openly against France, but had done so as the envoy of a power at war with that country. Bern referred the demand of Mengaud to the then directing canton, as a matter which concerned the whole confederacy.

Wickham relieved for the moment the embarrassment of the Helvetic body, while he deprived the French directory of a present pretence for violence, by taking his departure on a tour into Germany; but he left an able diplomatist behind him in the person of his secretary Talbot. Mengaud was received at Zurich and Bern with undisguised aversion, and no diplomatic visits were paid him at either of these places. In the month of November, an embassy from the latter town had been sent to Paris; which, though admitted to an audience of the director Barras, soon received a rude dismissal homewards.

Great were the hopes infused into the disaffected party by the promises of Mengaud, and other subordinate agents of France; and proportional fears were excited amongst the friends of the old system, including the greater number of public functionaries. In order to increase their uneasiness, Mengaud threatened the diet of the confederation in January, 1798, with the entrance of French troops into Switzerland, should Austria be suffered to occupy the Grisons. He travelled to the place of meeting at Aarau, with tricoloured flags flying from his carriage; and, on his arrival there, hung out an immense banner in front of his house. The triumphant revolutionists of Bâle had already formed a tricoloured flag of their own, by the addition of green to their formal cantonal colours, black and white, and their delegate at Paris, Ochs, had hastily sketched what he called an Helvetic constitution, on the model of that of the French Republic. This document was printed in Italian, French, and German, and distributed by Mengaud, not in official quarters only, but throughout the whole population of the cantons.

FRENCH TROOPS IN SWITZERLAND

In the mean time, a division of the French army, under Menard, appeared on the western frontier; and the Pays de Vaud, protected by it, declared its independence of Bern. The Bernese government saw the necessity of trying the force of arms on its subjects; and the command of the forces having been declined by councillor Erlach of Spiez, who had hitherto been one of the strongest assertors of aristocracy, it was conferred on Colonel Rudolf Weiss, who had, till then, sustained the character of a champion of the opposite system; and had contributed, by a published work,[g] to the favourable temper of the partisans of Robespierre towards the Swiss confederation. An unusual delegation of full powers placed in his hands the whole military government of the Vaud. The new commander held conferences with the leaders of the malcontents; published a treatise[h] intended to conciliate them, but intermixed conciliation with menace. Chillon was recovered by surprise from the insurgents, and the German troops of Bern were moved on the frontiers of the Vaud.

Meanwhile, General Menard was already on the lake of Geneva, with ten thousand men of the conquering army of Italy; and to him the insurgent leaders, alarmed for their own safety, addressed themselves. Menard replied, that he was instructed to give them aid and protection; and threatened Colonel Weiss that he would repel force with force, if the former should persist in drawing troops around a territory already declared independent, and in arming the communes against each other. Without taking any measures of defence—without even attempting to maintain himself on the high grounds—Weiss withdrew to the neighbourhood of Yverdun. It happened, accidentally, that two French hussars were shot on the outposts of the Bernese army, because they had not immediately answered the challenge of the sentinels. This incident was taken up by Menard, and afterwards by the directory, as an infringement of the law of nations, and the commencement of hostilities.

The revolution of Bâle, and the entrance of French troops into the Pays de Vaud, rendered it impossible for reflecting men any longer to doubt that sweeping social changes were inevitable. Yet the Swiss democracies would not be persuaded that anyone could shake their constitutions, or force on them a new species of freedom. The numerous friends of things as they were still hoped to steer themselves through the crisis without any great sacrifices, by mere dint of tenacity and delay. Many, moreover, flattered themselves with the notion that the plans of France were levelled at no wider mark than the Vaud; and were prompted by a petty feeling of jealousy towards Bern [the stronghold of the aristocracy], to see nothing in the affair but a mortification to that envied canton.

It could hardly be conceived at Bern, that the French should have advanced without meeting any resistance up to Yverdun, while the headquarters of Colonel Weiss were withdrawn behind Avenche. He was instantly dismissed from his command, which was transferred to General Erlach of Hindelbank; but the evil effects of exorbitant discretionary powers had been so sensibly felt, that the opposite extreme was now adopted. Meanwhile, the leading statesmen of Bern, had, at length, became convinced that concessions must be made to the people. Fifty-two members were added to the great council from amongst the burghers, citizens of the minor towns, and rural inhabitants. It was resolved to introduce, within a year’s time, a new constitution; in which admission to every public function should be open to all, and due proportion should be observed in the emoluments of all public services. These resolutions were laid before the directory, together with a demand for the withdrawal of the French troops. The government also stooped to make a like communication to Mengaud, to acquaint him with the actual political system of Bern, and inform him of the wish of that canton to preserve peace with France. Mengaud made just such an answer as ought to have been expected from him. He demanded a prompt and complete change of the old political system, declared that further delays could not be suffered by the majesty of the French Republic; and designated the persevering defenders of the existing order as a handful of inveterate tyrants.

Disregarding their own positive engagements, the French, on the 8th of February, took possession of the town of Bienne. Yet the confederates still hoped to conciliate France, and were encouraged in this illusion by General Brune, who now commanded the French troops, reinforced by several thousand men, and fixed his headquarters at Payerne. This subtle leader, who, without having performed a lengthened public career, was, to borrow a diplomatic expression, rompu dans les affaires, proposed, with artful blandishments, and with hinted hopes of peaceful adjustment, an armistice of fourteen days; during which the discipline and enthusiasm of the Bernese army had time to abate, indecision and distrust to increase, and recruits to join the French army.

Meanwhile, General Schauenburg had collected a division of troops on the frontiers of Solothurn and Bern, equal in strength to that of Brune. The latter announced, on the 26th of February, that he had received full powers to treat from the executive directory. He proposed his ultimatum to the Swiss delegates, that without farther delay they should introduce a provisional government, take measures for the establishment of a new constitution, with securities for freedom and equality, liberate all prisoners for political offences, and withdraw their own troops, as well as those of the other cantons. On the due fulfilment of these conditions, the French troops should be drawn off likewise; and should not again enter the Swiss territory, unless the government called for their assistance.

On the very day when Brune had given his insolent ultimatum, Erlach entered the great council at Bern, accompanied by eighty of his officers, who were members, like himself, of that body. In a moment of unusual resolution, he was invested with full powers to commence hostilities on the close of the armistice. However, two days afterwards, the delegates returned from Brune’s encampment at Payerne. Erlach and his brothers in arms were no longer present in council; the rest of that body were paralysed by the imminent and gigantic danger; and the full powers which had just been given the general were taken away. The same evening, Erlach received instructions not to attack the French, which fired his troops with anger and suspicion, and tended to confirm the belief in the treachery of their leaders, already widely prevalent in the army. Brune’s ultimatum, in all its principal features, was accepted. The delegates of Zurich, Wyss, and Tscharner sought a conference with him, when he renewed his former offers in cold and peremptory language; but now added a novel stipulation to them, namely, that, even after the confederate troops were disbanded, his should remain till the new constitution should be established. It was affirmed, truly or otherwise, that he granted, without difficulty, an extension of the truce for twenty-four hours; notwithstanding which, the delegates, on their return, saw his troops already in motion for the attack. Orders for the commencement of hostilities had also been forwarded from the council of war at Bern to the army, and two hours afterwards, retracted.

In obedience to the first of these contradictory instructions, the Bernese colonel Gross had given notice to the French outposts that the truce would come to an end at ten in the evening of the 1st of March; but when he withdrew his former announcement on the arrival of counter-orders, Schauenburg would admit no further parley. He had already attacked, without warning, the old castle of Dornach, in the neighbourhood of Bâle, which sustained a siege of twenty-four hours. The attack of a Bernese division near Vingels was repulsed with loss, and the French surprised the Bernese posts at Lengnau, which they carried after an obstinate resistance. The town of Solothurn capitulated, on Schauenburg’s appearance before it. The passage across the Aar now lay open to the French troops. Fribourg was attacked and taken, though a stand was made by the Bernese garrison.

Erlach was now compelled to withdraw his troops behind the Aar and the Sense; though it was not without extreme reluctance that the men of Bern abandoned Morat. On the 3rd of March, Brune destroyed one of the finest monuments of Swiss courage and union, the Ossuary of Morat; and the French, among whom were many natives of Burgundy, honoured the bones of their ancestors with a grave, after an interval of more than three hundred years. Now at length, Bern, Solothurn, and Fribourg proclaimed a levy en masse of the able-bodied men within their territories. The Bernese army was in a dreadful state of confusion; particularly that division which stood directly opposed to Brune, in which the distrust and exasperation of the soldiers were at their highest pitch. Officers were dismissed by their soldiers, and others put in their place. Colonels Stettler and Ryhiner were bayonetted and shot before the very gates of Bern; and Colonels Crusez and Goumoens fell beneath the sabre-strokes of their own dragoons. Nevertheless, the troops were again assembled under command of Grafenried, who was admirably supported by his officers, and repulsed the French in every attempt to charge them at the point of the bayonet. Eighteen cannons were taken from the enemy, and their loss in men besides was very considerable.

The Capitulation of Berne; the Constitution Unitaire (1798 A.D.)

The native troops had now fully recovered spirit and confidence; but just as Grafenried prepared to cross the Sense at Neueneck, the decisive intelligence arrived that Bern was in the hands of the enemy! Early on the 5th, an attack had been made by Schauenburg on Solothurn. His force was far numerically superior to the Bernese; his horse artillery terrified the native militia by its novelty, and his cavalry was nearly eight-fold that of Bern in numbers. At Fraubrunnen, the French turned the left flank of the Bernese: in the Grauholz and at Breitenfeld their militia under Erlach offered a brave resistance, armed with scythes and other agricultural implements. Men, women, and even children mixed, and fell in the mortal struggle. On its unsuccessful issue, ensued the capitulation of Bern.

All was lost: the armed bands of the peasantry dispersed in every direction with loud accusations of treason against their officers, many of whom were slain by their own men. Amongst these was the general Erlach, an illustrious name in the annals of Bern. That unfortunate commander, and the avoyer Steiger, when the fortune of the day was decided, retreated towards the Oberland, whither they knew that arms and money had already been despatched by the government, and where they still hoped to offer an effective resistance. But Erlach was murdered in the way by the enraged fugitives, who breathed nothing but revenge for their imaginary betrayal, and it was only by chance that Steiger did not meet a similar fate.

Even public extremity could not restore public spirit. Every little canton treated, armed, and cared for itself exclusively, totally regardless of the rest. Wherever the authorities had, till then, withheld freedom from their subjects, they no longer delayed to grant it; but bestowed emancipation with so ill a grace, as to indicate how gladly they would have refused it, had they dared.

France now assumed a tone of direct command, and proclaimed the dissolution of the Helvetic body, and the establishment of a constitution unitaire, embracing the whole of Switzerland under one uniform system of government. This system announced a perfect equality of rights between the inhabitants of the towns and of the villages, assigned the nomination of judges, magistrates, and legislators, to the people in their primary assemblies, and entrusted to the government the choice of executive functionaries. The founders of this new Helvetic republic next proceeded to the more material objects of their mission. They levied large contributions on the towns, appropriated the treasures amassed at Bern, Zurich, Solothurn, and Fribourg, and carried off many members of council and other persons, as hostages for the further payments exacted from those places.

But the people of Uri, Nidwalden, Schwyz, and Glarus, were resolved not to deliver up their old independence so easily, and organised a heroic, though a useless, resistance under their brave leader Aloys Reding. The most brilliant and the most sanguinary struggle took place at Rothenthurm, in the neighbourhood of the battle-field of Morgarten. These Alpine shepherds combated with a spirit and success which showed them not unworthy of their forefathers. Thrice were the attacks of regular troops, four times their number, repulsed, with serious loss on the side of the enemy. But the vigour of this peasant militia was exhausted by their very successes, and they were, finally, compelled to accept terms from the invaders, and to bow beneath the yoke of the Helvetic Republic. Thus ended the old Swiss confederation, after enduring for a term of nearly five centuries. “It fell,” says an enlightened native historian,[1] “not exactly for want of strength in the bands which held it together; for, without any stronger bond of union the old confederates won their freedom, crushed or repelled the force of mighty antagonists, and rendered themselves powerful and formidable. The Swiss succumbed in the last unfortunate struggle, because the feeling of duty, the lofty faith in their country and its fortunes, had become chilled in the bosoms of the many, and because the democratical cantons thought of none but themselves.”

While the well-instructed friends of their country regretted the rude violence with which every link in the system of society, from the Alps to the Jura, had been totally torn away from its ancient holdings, they could not fail to perceive the ultimate benefits educible from the general convulsion. The former aggregation of little states had been productive of estrangement and enmity; the cantons had been proved powerless, even for self-defence; separately too poor for public enterprises; collectively incapable of any combined action. But now an opportunity seemed to be given to the Swiss people of becoming one great family, enjoying equal rights. The mass of the people, however, was not penetrated by such ideas, and only deplored the breach made in their old habits and usages. They had, indeed, demanded freedom and independence, but not this melting up into an uniform mass. They would have preferred that every petty district, nay, every single valley, should become a free and independent canton, ruling itself in its own assemblies, according to its own pleasure, and only connected by federal ties with the rest of the Swiss people. The whole subsequent march of events tended only to increase the desire for a subdivided federative system of this kind, and the aversion for the newly established order. The new general government, called an executive directory, after its prototype at Paris, resided at Aarau without inspiring either respect or confidence, dependent on its sole protectors, the French plenipotentiaries. In the senate and the great council, composed of delegates from all the cantons, the conflicting opinions of parties caused an incessant wordy warfare. Out of doors the same parties abandoned parliamentary weapons, and asserted their discordant creeds with arms in their hands. New and old laws and regulations were perpetually coming in collision. While the state was often without the most indispensable means for its maintenance, and even for the daily pay of its functionaries, the French plenipotentiaries, leaders, and subalterns, rioted in shameless superfluities at the cost of the country, and sent to France the surplus of their plunder.

The discontents of the people were considerably aggravated by the murmurs and manœuvres of the ci-devant authorities; of the monks who apprehended the abolition of all monasteries; of the priests who had suffered diminution of the stipends, and of the traders and artisans in the towns who no longer enjoyed the sweets of corporations and monopolies. They trusted to the approaching renewal of war between France and Austria, and prepared to support the emperor for the expulsion of the French. When the whole population was summoned, in July, 1798, to take the oath of allegiance to the newly formed constitution, disturbances and revolts took place in many districts.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Ludwig Meyer.

CHAPTER VI. SWITZERLAND SINCE 1798

CHANGES OF CONSTITUTIONS AND ADMINISTRATIONS

War with France was at length renewed by the emperor of Austria, and a division of his army entered the Grisons. A signal defeat sustained by the French troops near Stockach, in Swabia, the victorious advance of the Austrian army into Switzerland, and the removal of the seat of the Helvetic government from Lucerne to Bern, seemed to inspire the conflicting parties with renewed animation and fury. Swiss fought against Swiss under the banners of France and Austria; tumults and revolts took place on account of the French conscription or in favour of the Austrian invasion; battles were fought between foreign armies in the valleys, on the Alps, and on the banks of the lakes; and horse and man clambered over heights which had formerly been only known to the chamois hunter. The Grisons and the mountainous lands as far as the St. Gotthard were alternately won and lost by French and Germans. The victorious banners of Austria were carried on the left as far as Zurich and the St. Gotthard, on the right up to the banks of the Rhine, supported by the Russians under Suvarov. Switzerland had never sustained such desolating inroads since the times of the Romans, Alamanni, and Burgundians.

Many of the old superseded members of the government now looked forward to the speedy restoration of their authority, which they here and there attempted to recover with the assistance of the Austrian bayonets: even the new abbot of St. Gall resumed the exercise of his feudal rights, such as they had existed before the recent emancipation which had been granted to the people. The effects of this iniquitous resumption did not fail soon to be felt by the proud prelate himself; Zurich and Schaffhausen, too, were soon forced to acknowledge that the people did not wish to be replaced in its state of subjection. The decisive and brilliant victory of Massena near Zurich, and the destruction of Suvarov’s army, which had marched over the Alps from Italy, restored the Helvetic constitution throughout the whole country. Parties now supplanted and succeeded each other in quick succession, so that none could remain long at the helm or consult for the public benefit.

[1801 A.D.]

First of all, the legislative councils dissolved the executive directory, and substituted for it an executive committee; then, in its turn, this executive committee dissolved the councils, convoked a new legislature, and styled itself an executive council. Twelve months afterwards a general Helvetic diet was assembled at Bern for the formation of a new and improved constitution: this, like the former deliberative bodies, was arbitrarily deposed from its functions, and a newest-of-all constitution established, in October, 1801. Alois Reding, the victor of Rothenthurm, as the foremost Swiss landammann, was placed at the head of the senate; but as he possessed neither the confidence of the French rulers nor that of those who detested all recurrence to the old state of things, a new act of arbitrary power deposed him from the presidency of the council.

These continual changes of administration were looked upon with absolute indifference by the Swiss people, who only sighed at the total interruption of law and order, the increase of taxes, and the lawless acts of the French soldiery. The Valais more particularly suffered by the military tyranny to which it was subjected. The object of France was to separate it from Switzerland, in order to keep a route open across the Alps into Italy.

In the same degree as popular consideration ceased to attend the ever-changing but equally odious aspects of the new government, individual opinions and wild fancies obtained prevalence. Mystical views were propagated in Appenzell; and the anabaptists reared their heads once more in Bern and Zurich. The quiet of the former town and its neighbourhood was suddenly disturbed by a swarm of fanatics from Amsoldingen. Two years before, a quack doctor and fanatic, by name Antony Unternerer, had fixed his abode in that village. A certain flow of language, combined with prepossessing manners and the profuse employment of benedictory formulas in human diseases, as well as in those of cattle, had gained for this fellow the confidence of the multitude. He held meetings in which particular parts of the New Testament were interpreted in a new and peculiar manner; and his adherents ceased their attendance on the ordinary divine service. Unternerer addressed a summons in writing to the supreme tribunal of Bern, to appear, with all its prisoners and their keepers, in the cathedral church on the morning of Good Friday, when the Saviour of the world would ascend the pulpit and hold his judgment. He also summoned all his disciples to meet at Bern on the same day. Many of them had already remained during several days assembled together; and, anticipating the coming judgment, had transferred their worldly possessions to others. Curiosity drew a multitude together from all quarters. Unternerer himself was announced as Saviour by his adherents; and seditious projects peeped out under the mantle of fanaticism. However, such a wholesome effect was produced by the arrest of the ringleader, the consignment of his most conspicuous followers to the lunatic hospital, and the billetting of dragoons in the houses of others, that the poor enthusiasts soon came to their senses, lamenting the error of their ways and the transfer of their properties.

THE EVACUATION OF SWITZERLAND; THE NOMINATION OF DEPUTIES (1802-1803 A.D.)

[1802-1803 A.D.]

The Peace of Amiens, betwixt France and the other belligerent powers in consequence of which the French garrisons were drawn home out of Switzerland, afforded opportunity to the party and provincial spirit to show itself with new vigour. On the 12th of July Montrichard, the French resident in Switzerland, communicated in an extra-official note to the Helvetic landammann, Dolder, that he had received commands from the minister of war to hold himself, with the troops under his orders, in readiness for instant return to France. The landammann laid this note before the then executive council, who were considerably embarrassed by its import, and addressed themselves to Montrichard and to the Swiss ambassador at Paris, to petition for a postponement of the measure. But shortly afterwards, Boizot, secretary of the Helvetic embassy, arrived from Paris with Talleyrand’s note, which fixed for the approaching 20th of July the complete evacuation of Switzerland. It was now out of the question for the heads of the Helvetic government to oppose themselves to a measure invoked by the wishes of a large majority. Accordingly the executive council did its best to assume an unconstrained and easy attitude; and with all expedition voted its liveliest thanks to the first consul for his purpose of withdrawing his troops from Switzerland, which they hailed as the highest proof of his benevolence and respect for the independence of the Helvetic nation.

The reply of the French minister was couched in terms of disinterested delicacy, which almost seemed ironical. He talked of the French troops as the battalions which the first consul had consented to leave in Switzerland on the conclusion of peace. He based the proposed measure on the confidence entertained by the first consul in the virtues of the Helvetic people, who were now better agreed, as he said, on the principles of political organisation, and in whose attachment the government would find sufficient securities for the maintenance of order and tranquillity. “The Helvetic government could regard this resolution but as a pledge of the consul’s confidence in its friendly intentions and policy, and of his disinclination to meddle with the internal affairs of other nations.”

It is impossible to assign with any certainty the motives by which this ambiguous language and conduct were dictated. The first consul may have meant to give a popular example of moderation and respect for the faith of treaties; or he may have designed a covert chastisement for the feeble attempts at independence made by the Helvetic government and its refusal of unconditional acquiescence in the projected separation of the Valais; or he may have wished to extort an express prayer for the stay of his troops, or to revive the struggle of parties, and compel the Helvetic government to throw itself into the arms of France, and urge him, as though against his will, to assume the part of arbiter and ruler; or, finally, perhaps, the best solution of his conduct may be found by supposing the combination of all or most of these motives.

Conformably with the system thus enforced upon them, the executive council made known to the Swiss people the departure of the French troops, as a gracious boon the offer of which they had eagerly accepted. In effect, the removal of these troops was performed with such celerity that none were left behind but the sick in the hospitals and a handful of men here and there to guard whatever French property was not of a movable description.

The news of the retreat of the French troops and the ill-concealed uneasiness of the government flew through the country with wonderful rapidity, and everywhere roused the concealed but numerous enemies of the existing order, who had hitherto lurked inactively, as it were in scattered cantonments. The Valais declared itself independent. Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden took up arms against the Helvetic government. The town of Zurich, likewise, threw off allegiance to it—an example which was speedily followed by Schaffhausen and Bâle. A general levy took place in the Aargau against Bern: the helpless Helvetic government fled for refuge to Lausanne, while a diet was held in Schwyz for the restoration of the old league. The feeble body of troops in the pay of the government were driven from the interior of the country, and followed their employers into the Vaud: everywhere the opposite factions prepared for active hostilities; the towns planned the destruction of the general government; the peasants armed for their freedom against the pretensions of the towns; and the Pays de Vaud arrayed itself in defence of Helvetic unity. Blood had already flowed, and civil war appeared inevitable, when Napoleon turned his eyes again upon Switzerland, and commanded peace in a tone which was not apt to meet with resistance.

“Inhabitants of Switzerland” (such were the terms of a declaration addressed by him through General Rapp to the cantons of the Helvetic Republic): “you have presented, during two years, a melancholy spectacle. Sovereign power has alternately been seized by opposite factions, whose transitory and partial sway has only served to illustrate their own incapacity and weakness. If you are left to yourselves any longer, you will cut one another to pieces for years, without any prospect of coming to a rational understanding. Your intestine discord never could be terminated without the effective interposition of France. I had resolved not to mix in your affairs; but I cannot and will not view with indifference those calamities to which I now perceive you exposed. I retract my former resolution. I offer myself as your mediator, and will exert my mediation with that energy which becomes the powerful nation in whose name I speak. Five days after reception of the present declaration, the senate shall assemble at Bern to nominate three deputies to be sent to Paris, and each canton will also be admitted to send delegates thither. All citizens who have held public employments during the last three years may also appear at Paris to deliberate by what means may best be effected the restoration of concord and the reconciliation of parties. Every rational man must perceive that my purposed mediation is a blessing conferred on Switzerland by that providence which, amidst so many concurring causes of social dissolution, has always preserved your national existence and independence. It would be painful to think that destiny had singled out this epoch, which has called to life so many new republics, as the hour of destruction to one of the oldest commonwealths in Europe.”

The Helvetic senate instantly replied to this announcement by declaring that it received, with lively gratitude, this new proof of the friendly dispositions of the first consul, and would conduct itself in all points in conformity with his wishes. In a proclamation addressed to the Helvetic people, after some allusion to the mighty and uplifted arm of the mediator, it recommended union, tranquillity, and calm expectation. The cantonal diets met to elect deputies to Paris. The several communes also were permitted to despatch delegates thither at their own expense. The mandate of Napoleon and the presence of his soldiers induced conflicting parties to suspend their hostilities, and tacitly, at least, to acquiesce in his mediation, as they could come to no agreement with each other.

[1803-1813 A.D.]

On the 10th of December, 1803, Swiss delegates were received in the office of foreign affairs at Paris, to hear a note of Bonaparte read, in which he addressed them as president of the French and Cisalpine republics, and laid down the basis of his intended mediation. “A federal constitution,” he said, “is a point of prime necessity for you. Nature herself has adapted Switzerland for it. What you want is an equality of rights among the cantons, a renunciation of all family privileges, and the independent federative organisation of each canton. The central constitution may be easily arranged afterwards. The main points for your people are neutrality, promotion of trade, and frugal administration: this is what I have always said to your delegates when they asked my advice; but the very men who seemed to be the best aware of its truth turned out to be the most obstinately wedded to their privileges. They attached themselves, and looked for support, to the enemies of France. The first acts of your insurgents were to appeal to the privileged orders, annihilate equality, and insult the French people. No party shall triumph; no counter-revolution take place. In case of violation of neutrality, your government must decide upon making common cause with France.”

On the 12th, Bonaparte received a select number of the Swiss deputation to whom he further addressed himself as follows: “The only constitution fit for Switzerland, considering its small extent and its poverty, is such a one as shall not involve an oppressive load of taxation. Federalism weakens larger states by splitting their forces, while it strengthens small ones by leaving a free range to individual energies.” He added, with an openness peculiar to great characters, and unequivocally indicative of good will, “When I make any demand of an individual, he does not often dare to refuse it; but if I am forced to apply myself to a crowd of cantonal governments, each of them may declare itself incompetent to answer. A diet is called: a few months’ time is gained; and the storm blows over.”

Almost every word of the first consul during these negotiations has historical value. Most of his expressions wear a character of greatness; all of them afford a clue to the system on which he acted. One or two passages, taken at random here and there, will suffice for a specimen: “It is the democratic cantons which distinguish you, and draw on you the eyes of the world. It is they which do not allow the thought of melting you up with other states to gain any coherence or consistency. The permission to settle wherever they please, in pursuit of their vocation, must be extended to all natives of Switzerland. The small cantons are said to be averse to this principle; but who on earth would ever think of troubling them by settling amongst them? France will re-open a source of profit in favour of these poorer cantons, by taking additional regiments into her pay. France will do this, not because she needs additional troops but because she feels an interest in attaching these democracies.”

THE ACT OF MEDIATION (1813 A.D.); CABALS FOLLOW NAPOLEON’S FALL

The Act of Mediation, which resulted from these conferences, restored the old federative system; but not without introducing very considerable improvements. The amnesty announced by it precluded all persecutions, and the new agitations necessarily arising from them. All servitude and all privilege were abolished; while equality of rights and freedom of industry were established. The mischievous freedom formerly enjoyed by the several cantons of entering into hostilities or alliances against each other was quite put an end to. In future, they could only use their arms against the common enemy; and the objects of the whole league could no longer be frustrated by the humours of its individual members.

The dissolution of the Helvetic general government followed naturally on the completion of the above-mentioned arrangements; and soon afterwards Napoleon recalled his troops from Switzerland. The people, in almost every part of the country, returned quietly to their usual occupations, and tendered their allegiance to the new order of things. In the canton of Zurich alone several communes refused the oaths; complaining of the difficulties newly thrown in the way of the redemption of tithes, ground-rent, and other burdens. They would listen to no friendly representations; but committed acts of violence on unoffending functionaries, set fire to the castle of Wadenschwyl, and finally took to arms. The prolonged disorders of former years had accustomed them to lawless self-defence; but the insurrection was soon suppressed by the aid of the neighbouring cantons, combined with the well-affected part of the Zurichers.

The ringleader John James Willi, shoemaker in the village of Horgen, and others of his more conspicuous comrades, were punished with death. The less distinguished rioters suffered imprisonment, and forty-two offending communes were visited with a war-tax of above 200,000 florins. It was well that the first flame of revolt was speedily extinguished, before it had time to spread itself through the country. Parties remained everywhere unreconciled; and each imagined nothing to be required for their predominance but the fall of the new order of things. The friends of Helvetic unity still murmured at the cantonal partition of the country. The monasteries murmured as they felt their existence threatened; and Pancrace, the ci-devant abbot of St. Gall, openly stigmatised the inhabitants of that district as contumacious vassals of the empire. Many of the country people murmured, who wished for Landsgemeinde, on the model of the original cantons. Many patrician and city families murmured that their privileges were swept away, and the peasantry no longer their subjects. The majority of the people, however, wished for nothing but peace and quiet, and decidedly adhered to the existing order of things, and the rights which they had acquired under that order.

Thus the peace of the country remained for the most part undisturbed; and a series of comparatively prosperous years followed. The energies of the Swiss had been awakened by the years of revolution and of civil war, and displayed themselves in a hitherto unprecedented degree. They no longer stood apart from each other as formerly, like strangers; but had been made better acquainted by the storms of social collision. The concerns of each canton were now interesting to all. Journals and newspapers, which had formerly been suppressed by timid governments, instructed the people in useful knowledge, and drew its attention to public affairs. The Swiss of all cantons formed societies for the furtherance of objects of common utility, for the encouragement of various arts and sciences, and for the maintenance of concord and patriotism. The canal of the Linth formed a lasting monument of this newly reawakened public spirit.

Since the people had ceased to be viewed as in a state of perpetual infancy a new impulse was given to trade and industry, which were now no longer cramped and confined, as formerly, by corporate restrictions and monopolies. The participation in public affairs allowed to all free citizens enforced a mild and equitable conduct on the governments. Schools were increased and improved throughout the country; the military force was newly organised; and, on the whole, a greater number of laudable objects were provided for in the space of ten years than had been thought of in the previous century.

When the throne of Napoleon sank under the power of the allies, the public-spirited part of the Swiss nation fondly imagined that the hour was come in which their country’s honour and independence might be established on a firmer footing than ever. To preserve the benefits gained to the land by his act of mediation was the wish of a large majority of the people. If the Swiss had sometimes felt, along with others, the iron arm of that formidable despot (who had, however, spared them more than any neighbouring population), yet his gift of a constitution had become deservedly dear to them. It had dried up innumerable sources of discord. Under it a fellow-feeling, never before experienced, had been diffused in the same degree as individual pride had been humbled. The cessation of a state of subjection, wherever it had before existed, had decupled the number of confederates, and all restraints on free communication betwixt one canton and another had been removed.

The cantons sent their contingents for the protection of the frontiers, voted extraordinary imposts for their maintenance, and a diet was assembled at Zurich with unanimous instructions from its constituents. This body declared with one voice its resolution “to observe a conscientious and impartial neutrality with regard to all the high belligerent powers,” expressing, at the same time, its full anticipation that “the same would be acknowledged upon their part.” It addressed itself as follows to the confederates: “The great and only end of all our endeavours is to maintain this neutrality by every means in our power; to protect our country’s freedom and independence; to preserve its soil inviolate, and to defend its constitution.” The senate of Bern expressed itself as follows: “Our object is to guard the pacific borders of our country inviolate from the march of foreign armies; we are unanimously resolved, however, at all events, to maintain tranquillity, order, and security in our canton by all the means which stand in our power.”

Such was the general sense of the Swiss people. Not such, however, was the sense of the great families in the once dominant towns of the confederation. Many of these wished to see their country invaded by foreign armies, by aid of which they hoped to restore the old league of the thirteen cantons, with all its hated appendages of sovereignty and servitude, which had vanished from the face of the land in 1798.

The Swiss delegates were received in a friendly manner by the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia; but no direct recognition of their neutrality was vouchsafed to them. The satellites of these monarchs gave them distinctly to understand that Switzerland was regarded and would be treated as nothing else than as a limb of the French system. A large Austrian force was collected on the frontiers, particularly in the neighbourhood of Bâle; yet many still believed that a determined vindication of neutrality would not be put down by violence. In the meantime, the Swiss delegates were stopped at Fribourg in Brisgau on their return homewards from Frankfort, and their letters were intercepted. A general enervation seemed to have spread itself over the conduct of the affairs of the confederation at this crisis. There is no ground for supposing that the men who led their forces and presided in their governments acted the part of secret conspirators against the order of things which they professed to defend. But when the overwhelming powers of the allies came pouring in upon them; when these were joined by kings who owed their crowns to Napoleon; when even the French ambassador dissuaded reinforcement of the frontier cordon—when, in short, the ancient state of things renewed its sway on every side, while a decided popular will showed itself nowhere, opposition was in a manner overwhelmed by the force of circumstances.

A proclamation, couched in terms of mildness and of amity, was issued by Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian commander-in-chief; and at the same time Count Capo d’Istria declared, on his arrival in Zurich, that the monarchs could not recognise a neutrality which, in the existing situation of Switzerland, must be nothing more than nominal. The armies of the allied powers hoped to find none but friends there. Their majesties pledged themselves solemnly not to lay down their arms until they should have secured the restoration to Switzerland of the territories wrested from her by France—a pledge which we shall presently see was adhered to but indifferently. They disclaimed all wish to meddle with her internal constitution; but at the same time could not allow her to remain under foreign influence. They would recognise her neutrality from that day in which she became free and independent.

The Austrian army marched over the Rhine on the 21st of December, 1813, through the territories of Bâle, Aargau, Solothurn, and Bern, into France. During the first months of the following year the burdens and even the dangers of war were felt very severely in the northern and western parts of Switzerland, particularly in Bâle, which received much annoyance from the obstinate defence of Hüningen, and the hostile disposition of the commander of that place. Geneva, too, while she welcomed in anticipation the new birth of her ancient independence, saw herself suddenly surrounded with the actual horrors of warfare, and threatened with a regular siege. The continual passage of large bodies of troops brought malignant fevers and maladies in their train, and it became more and more difficult to supply them with provisions.

On the entrance of the Austrian troops, Bern set the example of abolishing the Act of Mediation, and reclaimed the restoration of the predominance which she had previously enjoyed in the Helvetic body. The example was followed first by Solothurn and Fribourg, and then by Lucerne. In Zurich, too, the diet declared the Act of Mediation, by virtue of which it was sitting, null and void, and drew up a plan for a new confederation of the nineteen cantons. But this was not enough for some of the men in power at that time, who demanded nothing short of the restoration of the old league of the thirteen cantons, and had already summoned the Pays de Vaud and the Aargau to return under the government of Bern. These cantons, however, resolutely rejected the proposal.

The diet, which was again convoked at Zurich and consisted of delegates newly elected by all the nineteen cantons, was now the only feeble bond which kept the Helvetic body together. Interested voices were raised on every side for annihilating or mutilating the last constructed cantons, which for sixteen years had enjoyed the boon of freedom and independence. Zug demanded a part of its former subject lands from the Aargau; Uri, the Valle Levantina from the canton of Ticino; Glarus, the district of Sargans from the canton of St. Gall; the prince abbot Pancrace, his former domains and sovereignties in the Thurgau; Schwyz and Glarus combined to demand compensation for their privileges over the districts of Utznach, Gaster, Wesen, and Ersatz; Unterwalden, Uri, and Schwyz united in a similar demand for compensation for the sovereign rights which had formerly been possessed by them in Aargau, Thurgau, St. Gall, and on the Ticino.

In these cabals and commotions Zurich, Bâle, and Schaffhausen displayed the least of prejudice or passion; while the Aargau and the Vaud showed themselves worthy of their freedom by the spirited resolution of their people. In the lands and towns of Bâle, Solothurn, and Zurich it was proposed to espouse the cause and rally round the standard of the Aargau. Bern, however, avoided open hostilities, and even offered to recognise the independence of the Vaud on certain conditions, which were rejected by the latter. Aargau now made menacing demonstrations, and a dangerous ferment showed itself in the Oberland. Here, as in many other places, the jealousy and suspicion of the various parties came into play, in proportion as discussion was broached on the limits to be assigned to the rights of the people and their governments. News was daily received of scattered plots and insurrections, of imprisonments and banishments, in various places. The town of Solothurn called for the protection of a Bernese garrison against the threatened attacks of its own people. Swiss troops were precipitately despatched to the banks of the Ticino to prevent the breaking out of civil war; while other troops were sent into the canton of St. Gall to put an end to a scene of absolute confusion.

[1815 A.D.]

While Switzerland was thus given up to a state of such disquietude that blood had already flowed in more than one district, and the gaols of several towns were filled with prisoners, the plenipotentiaries of the great powers were sitting in congress at Vienna, to establish the peace of Europe on a durable foundation. The allies had already allowed the addition to the Helvetic body of Geneva, as well as of the Valais, and the Prussian principality of Neuchâtel. Swiss delegates made their appearance with equal promptitude in the imperial metropolis on the Danube, as they had done eleven years before in the capital of France.

But the politics of Europe moved no faster at Vienna than those of Switzerland did at the diet of Zurich. No settlement of Swiss affairs had been made, when the sudden news of Napoleon’s landing from Elba and his triumphal march through France awakened European diplomacy once more from its slumbers. The diet called to arms the half contingent of fifteen thousand men for the defence of the frontiers. Two battalions of the Vaud were detached hastily to Geneva, and the same canton received as friends and comrades the troops of Bern, against which it had taken up arms a month before. The most important elements of discord seemed to have disappeared—the most inveterate enemies to be reconciled.

On the 20th of March, 1815, the definitive arrangements of the allied powers were promulgated. The existing nineteen cantons were recognised, and the increase of their number to two-and-twenty confirmed, by the accession of Geneva, Neuchâtel, and the Valais. The canton of Vaud received back the Dappenthal, which had been taken from it by France. Bienne and the bishopric of Bâle were given to Bern by way of compensation for its former sovereign rights over the Vaud. One moiety of the customs received in the Vale Levantina was assigned to Uri; the prince abbot Pancrace and his ci-devant functionaries were indemnified with 8000 florins yearly. A decision was also given on the indemnification of those Bernese who had possessed jurisdictions in the Pays de Vaud, and on many other points in dispute. The complaints of the Grisons alone were disregarded—Chiavenna, the Valtellina, and Bormio, which had now become the property of Austria, were neither restored nor was any compensation for them given, notwithstanding the clause to the contrary in Prince Schwarzenberg’s proclamation.

The cantons now remodelled their respective constitutions in the midst of agitations of all kinds. Those in which the supreme power is assigned to the Landsgemeinde for the most part removed the restrictions on the popular prerogative, which had been introduced by the Act of Mediation, and approximated anew to pure democracy. In the city cantons the capitals recovered, though in various modifications and proportions, a preponderance in the system of representation. Even in these privileged places, however, many friends of the public weal remained true to the conviction tried and proved by past experience (and about to receive after no long period additional confirmation from the march of events)—that participation of the lesser towns and rural districts in public functions was a requisite condition for the permanence of tranquillity; and that the members introduced from these remoter parts of the country would form vigorous roots of the slender stem of authority, and fix them wide and deep in a republican soil.

SWITZERLAND DEVELOPS ALONG NEW LINES

[1817-1823 A.D.]

In 1817, the confederates were led by the invitation of the emperor Alexander into a signal deviation from the policy of their forefathers. They entered into a close alliance with Austria, Russia, and Prussia; and allowed themselves to be mixed up with the system of the great powers, by giving their adhesion to the Holy Alliance, unmindful of the lessons left by the Swiss of old times.

On the conclusion of the War of Liberation from Napoleon, an opinion which the allied powers had encouraged by their promises became prevalent through great part of Germany—that the efforts of the people should be requited by the grant of representative constitutions. The realisation of this object was pursued by open and secret means, which soon aroused attention and mistrust on the part of the governments. Investigations were set on foot, followed up by penal inflictions; and many of the accused parties made their escape into Switzerland. A similar course was taken by some Italians, on the suppression of the Piedmontese revolts and the abortive revolution of Naples. Natives of France, moreover, who had given offence to their government, either by republican principles or by adherence to the cause of Napoleon, in like manner sought a place of refuge in Switzerland. These occurrences did not fail to give umbrage to several cabinets, which was increased by the friendly welcome and assistance afforded to the fugitives from Greece. It never seemed to occur to foreign potentates what a blessing in the vicissitudes of European affairs was the existence of a land to which political victims of all parties might resort as an inviolable sanctuary.

The year 1823, that of the French invasion of Spain under Louis XVIII, seemed an epoch of especially unfriendly dispositions in more than one European court against Switzerland. There were personages who would willingly have used these dispositions to effect some limitation of Helvetic independence; but their influence was either insufficient for that purpose in the cabinets to which they belonged, or Europe seemed as yet not ripe for success in such an experiment. Meanwhile the remonstrances and demands of continental powers afforded matter of anxious consultation to the Helvetic diet; and their usual subjects of discussion were increased by two new topics—foreign police and surveillance of the press.

It was resolved that both these points touched the prerogatives of the separate cantons, and therefore did not admit of decision at any general diet. An invitation was accordingly issued to the governments of all the cantons, exhorting them to adopt vigorous measures, in order that nothing might find its way into newspapers and journals inconsistent with proper respect to friendly governments. With regard to foreign police it was proposed to take measures for preventing the entrance or residence of such strangers as had left their country on account of crimes or efforts at disturbance of the public repose; and for providing that no foreigners should be admitted except such as could show certificates or passports from their respective governments.

In many of the cantons these demands were met by a ready alacrity not only to urge their execution in their full extent but even to improve on them by subjecting discussion of domestic as well as of foreign affairs to strict surveillance. On the other hand, in more enlightened parts of the confederacy, it was thought that public discussion and the old right of sanctuary should be guarded from every species of encroachment. The diets continued to busy themselves with deliberations on both subjects. Returning tranquillity diminished the uneasiness of the cabinets; and, by consequence their inquisitive and minute attention to Switzerland. Individuals lost the importance which had formerly been ascribed to them, and the sojourn of strangers in Switzerland again became freer. The press occasioned more prolonged discussions at the diets and in several of the councils; but in the midst of these it obtained more and more freedom, and in some districts shook off all its former restrictions.

During these years an interest in church affairs diffused itself amongst laymen, as well as amongst theologians by profession. In the educated classes religious indifferentism became less frequent; while the genuine spirit of tolerance made progress. This tendency, like every other widely extended mental movement, had its questionable as well as its pleasing features. Shocking ebullitions of fanaticism are reported to have taken place in Zurich, Bern, and other cantons. A footing was gained in Fribourg and the Valais by the revived order of Jesuits; and the friends of human improvement could not regard without anxiety their influence in ecclesiastical matters and in education.[b]

REACTION AND REFORM; EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION OF JULY

The reaction making itself manifest throughout Europe in the third decade of the nineteenth century appeared also in the individual cantons of Switzerland and in its general government. The same disparity between the rights of the nobility and those of the people which existed in northern Germany was to be found here. As we have seen, the cantons for the most part had an aristocratic government in which a few favoured families, the patricians, had so decided a preponderance that there was hardly a shadow of representation of the people. As at an earlier period in other countries there had been a distinction between Stadt and Amt (city and subject land), so at this time in Switzerland the same distinction was still made between Stadt and Landschaft (city and rural district). The citizens belonging to the latter were permitted to send but a few members to the “great council” of a canton.

With such privileges in the hands of the patrician families the administration of the state was as bad as possible. Offices were apportioned more according to birth than merit, the finances were not always managed in the interests of the state. The evils of the administration of justice had become proverbial. Federal laws for the regulation of domestic intercourse and commerce were not thought of. The diet which met at one of the three leading places (Vororte)—Bern, Zurich, and Lucerne—did not fall behind the German diet in reactionary sentiment, adhered closely to the system of Metternich and sent its men as mercenaries to France and Naples that it might provide appointments as officers for the young patricians.

[1830-1832 A.D.]

The younger generation, such as was growing up at the universities and elsewhere, would not content itself with such republics. Everywhere the opposition of the liberals was becoming active against the rule of the oligarchies. Since the uprisings in northern Germany, especially, the demand for constitutional reforms became still more general. Societies were formed and the liberal press did not tire in proclaiming the principles of the new era; political equality, abolition of all privileges, equal representation for all the citizens of a canton, freedom of the press, etc. Bern, at that time the chief place (Vorort, capital), whose government was the most aristocratic of all, September 22nd, 1830, sent a circular letter to the governments of the cantons urging them to proceed against the press and to hold fast to the old constitutions. This only fanned the flame. In the months of October and November assemblies of the notables and of the people were held in almost all the cantons, the principles of new constitutions were determined upon, and in a few weeks the governments were forced to accept them.

Place de la Palud, Lausanne

Already before the revolution of July, in May, 1830, the oligarchal-ultramontane government in Ticino was overthrown and a different one erected on a democratic basis. The new constitution was accepted by the people in March, 1831. Events took a similar course in Zurich, where it was chiefly a matter of the relation of the rural districts (Landschaft) to the too powerful city; in Aargau, St. Gall, Lucerne, Solothurn, Fribourg—where the hierarchical aristocracy, supported by the Jesuits and congregationalists (Congregisten) who had been driven out of France, mustered out soldiers but was overthrown together with everything belonging to it; in Vaud—where, acting with the hot-bloodedness of Frenchmen, the people called out to the great councillors (Gross-räthe) of Lausanne, “Down with the tyrants!” and established a radical constitution; in Schaffhausen and in Bern—where the deposed government for a time had the mad plan to maintain itself by help of the discharged Swiss soldiers of Charles X; in Bâle—where bloody encounters twice occurred, and where for the adjustment of the quarrel federal troops had to take station, the great council of the city consented rather to a separation from the rural districts than conform to their demands. Thus there were formed here in 1832 the two half-cantons, Bâle (city) and rural Bâle (with its government at Siestal). Similar desires for separation also showed themselves in Schwyz and Valais, but they were laid aside after embittered conflicts. On the other hand, the old constitution remained in force in Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Geneva, Glarus, the Grisons, and Appenzell. In Neuchâtel the liberal party would no longer recognise the king of Prussia as the sovereign, but was suppressed in 1831 by the energy of the Prussian general Von Pfuel; and the movement ended in a victory for the existing government.

SIEBENER KONKORDAT; DISPUTES OVER ASYLUM AND RELIGION

[1832-1845 A.D.]

The party which in 1831 had secured a more liberal form of government in a majority of the cantons strove also to achieve reforms in the federal constitution. At the diet of 1832 it obtained the appointment of a commission which was to revise the federal statutes and present its conclusions to an extraordinary session of the diet of 1833. The liberal cantons, Bern, Aargau, Thurgau, St. Gall, Solothurn, Zurich, and Lucerne, concluded the agreement of the Seven (Siebener Konkordat) for the preservation and attainment of popular sovereignty. On the other hand the conservative party, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Valais, Neuchâtel, and the city of Bâle, united in the league of Sarnen (Sarner-Bund). In conjunction with the neutral party these succeeded in 1833 in balking federal revision. As a result their hopes and demands increased. Armed bands from Schwyz and the city of Bâle, July 30th, 1833, entered Outer Schwyz and rural Bâle to compel the submission of these seceding districts. The consequence was that Schwyz and Bâle city were occupied by federal troops and the league of Sarnen was declared annulled. The separation of Bâle into two independent cantons was recognised and the reunion of Schwyz was declared—this, however, with complete equality of rights.

The gathering of many fugitives from Germany, Poland, and Italy, who found an asylum in republican Switzerland but who at times abused hospitality, brought on complications with foreign powers. The most active among these revolutionists was Giuseppe Mazzini of Genoa, who in spite of total lack of any promise of success was continually setting on foot new attempts at insurrection, to keep his Italian fellow countrymen in practice. “Young Italy” which he founded at that time caused an inroad of about four hundred men under General Romarino into Savoy in order from this point to revolutionise Piedmont and the rest of Italy. After the occupation of several villages the undertaking foundered because of the indifference of the people. From this time on Switzerland in the eyes of the outside world appeared as the hearth of radicalism, especially as Mazzini wished to extend his activity to the whole of Europe and for the republicanisation of this continent founded “Young Europe.” Now it rained diplomatic notes. The neighbouring powers complained of the abuse of the right of asylum and held out the prospect of the most hostile measures, if Switzerland would not expel the participants of the Italian raid and keep a better watch over the rest. Louis Philippe went farthest in severity toward Switzerland and even threatened her with war if she would not expell Louis Napoleon, who had returned from America, and was living in Arenenberg as a citizen of Thurgau. The latter left Switzerland for England of his own accord.

Even more important were the consequences of the religious conflicts. The calling of Doctor Strauss from Würtemberg to the University at Zurich in 1839 roused the rural population to arms and caused the fall of the liberal government at Zurich; this did not again secure supremacy till 1845. More significant was the question of the convents. In a conference at Baden in 1834 seven cantons had determined upon the subjection of the church to the authority of the state and the employment of the convents for purposes of general usefulness. Most violent was the quarrel over this matter in the canton Aargau, whose radical government finally, in 1841, closed all the convents, among others the wealthy one of Muri, and took possession of the property for “purpose of instruction and benevolence.” Among the bigoted Catholics there was great excitement over this. It led to a victory of the ultramontane party in Lucerne and Valais in 1844. This party called the Jesuits to Lucerne to take charge of the instruction of youth.

[1845-1847 A.D.]

In this affair the wealthy farmer Joseph Leu and Sigwart Müller showed themselves especially active. The Jesuits had also established themselves in Fribourg and Schwyz. To expel them from Switzerland was the aim of all the liberal cantons. The expedition of the free lances (Freischaren) of 1845 under the leadership of Ochsenbein of Bern met with failure. The government of Lucerne, still more embittered by the murder of Leu, assumed a terrorising attitude, demanded the punishment of the free lances, and restoration of the convents of the Aargau; and when no attention was paid to these demands concluded with Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais a separate league (Sonderbund) for mutual protection against external and internal enemies. This league within a league was not to be endured; and, since the liberal cantons were in the majority, they decided at the diet in Bern, in July, 1847, upon the dissolution of the Sonderbund, as being contrary to the Pact of Federation (Bundesvertrag) and upon the expulsion of the Jesuits. As the fanatics of Lucerne failed to obey the diet, orders were given for federal action against the cantons of the Sonderbund. The federal army was mustered in and the experienced general Dufour of Geneva was placed at its head.[c]

THE SONDERBUND WAR (1847 A.D.)

[1847 A.D.]

Europe had followed with an attentive eye the events we have just related. Peoples were preoccupied with them, courts saw in them a source of serious anxiety. All, taking the Vienna congress as their point of view, desired a federative, neutral, and peaceable Switzerland. From this point of view the cause of the Sonderbund seemed to them to have justice on its side. But everywhere, owing to diversified interests, the language differed. “A fine country and a good people,” said King Louis Philippe, “but it is in a bad way. Let us keep from interfering. To hinder others so doing is to render them a great service.” Guizot nevertheless proposed to occupy himself in Swiss affairs in a conference to be held at Paris or in London, but he was unsuccessful. Once Austrian troops on the one hand, French on the other, drew near Switzerland, but they were speedily recalled to their cantonments. Metternich would willingly have taken the lead, had he not known that France could not leave Austria to interfere alone. Thenceforth, of the two powers, one contented itself with secretly aiding the Sonderbund by relays of arms and money, the other with lavishing encouragements on the seven cantons through its ambassador.

Prussia hesitated, recommending Neuchâtel prudence. Czar Nicholas could not understand an intervention unless the powers had sixty thousand men behind them. Great Britain would not interfere at all. Under the ministry of Lord Palmerston, a young statesman named Peel, son of the illustrious minister of that name, joined the Bear Club at Bern where radicals met. At Rome, the French ambassador, Rossi, an ancient deputy of the Geneva diet, was charged to solicit Pius IX to recall the Jesuits from Lucerne. It was thought both in London and Paris that the best means of restoring peace to Switzerland was to take from the radicals their principal grievance and their flag. The holy father contented himself with letting the Swiss know that he would remain passive in the strife (passive se habere decrevit).

Switzerland, under these circumstances, was persuaded that the moment had come frankly to declare to Europe her intention of being sole interpreter of her Pact of Alliance; to have done with the questions that agitated her; and to constitute herself on the basis of an enlarged and equitable democracy, which would soon see her the first on the road towards which all European peoples were proceeding. She knew the states which lavished advice on her to be torn by a revolutionary spirit and incapable of uniting against her in a common resolution. It was under the influence of this thought that Ochsenbein opened the confederation diet on the 5th of July, 1847.

Although only the son of a hotel keeper, without instruction in the classics, but gifted with prompt and pleasing intelligence, he presented himself unembarrassed before an assembly wherein the heads of the two parties dividing Switzerland were sitting, and at which the majority of ministers from foreign powers assisted. Frankness characterised his discourse. Foreseeing a European crisis—“Our modern world,” said he, “rests on worm-eaten columns, on institutions that have for support only the powers of habit and interests, a construction that the slightest storm will make a ruin. Well, this storm approaches; the colossus is quite aware of it. He sleeps a dangerous sleep.” Descending from these heights to questions of the moment, the president of the diet proclaimed the right of the majority, whom Switzerland had always recognised. When this majority had been declared, he courteously invited all the cantons to join with it. Callame, a Neuchâtel deputy, exposed in language firm and untouched by passion the gravity of events that had given place to a separate alliance, and demanded that they should leave those who had concluded it the time to convince themselves that it was no longer necessary.

In reality, the vote of the majority meant a declaration of war. The diet adjourned so as to give the parties time either to unite or to finish their preparations for hostilities. It reassembled on the 18th of October. Two delegates, envoys of peace, were sent from each of the Sonderbund cantons, but they met with scant welcome: one-half wanted war.

Colonel Dufour is Made Commander of the Army

On the 29th of October the deputies from the seven cantons left Bern, and on the 4th of November it was decided that the decree ordering the dissolution of their alliance should be executed by arms. The diet put on foot fifty thousand men, and entrusted the command, with the rank of general, to Colonel Dufour, of Geneva. No name in the army was more respected, none had more weight. Dufour did not belong to either side. In sympathy he was conservative, but was none the less a man of progress. He had been in the wars and published writings on military science, fruits of a long and wide experience. No chief knew as he did the canton militia, over whose manœuvres he had for a number of years presided in the camp at Thun, as chief instructor of the engineering corps. To these warlike qualities he united the virtues of a man of peace. He was occupied in the elaboration, on a plan he had conceived, of the fine map of Switzerland which bears his name, when he was called to quit the pursuits of the student for the field of battle. He comprehended the danger to his country. He clearly perceived his duty, and he thought only of accomplishing it.

In accepting the first command he made what he considered necessary stipulations, demanding a sufficient number of troops and absolute power. All this he obtained, though not without some resistance. He was given 100,000 men and 260 field pieces. This army he distributed into seven divisions. In the choice of superior officers, he exacted that he alone should judge of their capacity without any regard to political opinion; this was the way both to get excellent officers and to prepare for what he considered to be his duty—the quieting of hatreds after the struggle. In a short time there was no longer question of politics in the army. Addressing once his heads of divisions, “I shall never depart,” he said, “from the laws of moderation and humanity. A stranger to political agitation and faithful to my military duties, I shall try to establish order and discipline in the federal troops, to make public and private property respected, to protect the Catholic religion in her ministers, her temples, and her religious establishments—in a word, to do everything to soften the inevitable evils of war. If violence be used, let it not come from us. After fighting, spare the vanquished; however strong one may be, relieve the despair of the enemy: then we can congratulate ourselves after the fight on never having forgotten that it was between confederates.”

These instructions being made known, the general resolved to trust nothing to chance, and to make no offensive movement unless sure of the superiority of his forces; this he recognised as the surest way towards a speedy ending with the least bloodshed. Soon the confidence he inspired began to show itself. The city of Bâle, long undecided, sent him excellent artillery. Neuchâtel and Appenzell alone continued to take no part in the war. The promptitude with which the army got under arms, well ordered, well clothed, and well equipped, astonished foreigners. The redivision of troops was necessitated by the situation. The country occupied by the Sonderbund formed three distinct masses—Fribourg, the original cantons, and Valais. Dufour proposed to attack them separately, and to begin with Fribourg.

Preparations of the Sonderbund

The powers held exaggerated ideas of the Sonderbund forces. It could hardly put on foot more than thirty thousand regular troops. The Landsturm, it is true, meant a more considerable number of men, but not having received sufficient organisation could not be compared to the excellent reserves of the large cantons, and did not give the help expected of them. Far from one another, the separatist states could only with difficulty lend one another aid. The original cantons tried nevertheless to keep their ways open by means of boldness in offensive actions. Even before the diet began its campaign, the men of Uri seized the St. Gotthard passes (November 3rd); threw themselves across the Levantina, surprised three thousand Ticinese encamped at Airolo, and drove them as far as the Moesa bridge. But arrived at this point, they found themselves face to face with Grisons and Ticino militia, superior to them in number, who stopped their progress. The expedition had no other result than that of holding back two thousand excellent soldiers from the places where decisive blows were to be struck. Another attempt, made from Lucerne, to penetrate into Catholic Aargau and to free Fribourg, by means of a diversion, had no better success.

The Capitulations of Fribourg and Lucerne End the Sonderbund

Without taking much account of these movements, Dufour occupied himself only in concentrating his forces so as to surround the Sonderbund states, on all their accessible frontiers. His provisions were assured, his hospital organised. Immediately upon the rupture being announced, Colonel Ochsenbein, who presided over the diet, left office to put himself entirely at the disposition of the general-in-chief. The general placed him at the head of the Bernese reserves, which composed his seventh division and which he assimilated with the active troops. He stationed them first on the Lucerne frontier, and when he arranged to draw near Fribourg, he called Ochsenbein to advance towards that capital, in order to make the enemy think he would attack from the eastern side. However, twenty thousand men and fifty-four artillery pieces, under colonels Rilliet, Burkhard, and Donatz, advanced from the north and west by different routes, and kept their movements secret that they might arrive on the same day at the gate of Fribourg. On the 13th the town was surrounded. An experienced leader, Colonel Maillardoz, had raised defences all round, and they had prepared to attack these exterior forts when the Fribourg government, recognising the impossibility of resistance, gave up the town, dismissed the troops, and renounced the Sonderbund. The taking of Fribourg would not have cost the federal army a single man if through a mistake a Vaudois troop had not rushed under fire from the Bertigny redoubt, which resulted in seven killed and a large number wounded.

As soon as Fribourg had capitulated the general confided to Colonel Rilliet the care of occupying the military cantonments and watching the entrance of Valais. He himself hastened to Aarau, to prepare for the investment of Lucerne. Two rivers, the Emme and the Reuss, protected this town. The bridges on these rivers had been broken or fortified. The ground on which it was foreseen that the most serious engagements would be delivered was the labyrinth which stretches from the Reuss to the Lake of Zug; bristling with wooded hills, where passage had been stopped by barricades and mines had been laid in the defiles. It was necessary to attack these strong positions, because they served as a link between Schwyz and Lucerne, and success on this point was decisive, whilst elsewhere it was not so. The leader whom the five cantons had put in charge of their militia, Ulrich de Salis-Soglio, understood this, and went to these places. The forces he could dispose of were some twenty thousand regulars and a similar body of the Landsturm. Salis had learned warfare in fighting Napoleon. A sincere Protestant, he had nevertheless devoted himself to a cause which had his political sympathies, but of which he despaired.

A resolution being taken to force his entrenchments, Dufour set five divisions of his army on the march from the various points they occupied, giving them Lucerne as object. Ochsenbein’s reserves went down the Emme valley, overcoming a lively resistance. The Burkhard and Donatz divisions approached the Emme and the Reuss between the bridges of Wolhusen and Gislikon, at the same time that colonels Ziegler and Gmur at the head of some odd thousands of men attacked Salis in his intrenched camps. Ziegler mastered the Gislikon bridge and the Honau defiles. Gmur, after having received on his march the submission of Zug, scaled the heights of Meyers Kappel. Everything made for success. Victory was hotly disputed, but the Schwyzers were in the end thrown back towards Immensee, whence they fell back on Art and Goldau. Troops from the other cantons turned to Lucerne. The separation of Schwyz with its allies was accomplished. On every hand the federal troops marched simultaneously on that capital. The gates were opened to them by a convention, and on the 24th of November Dufour made his entry. On the following days the Waldstätte and the Valais made their submission. Twenty-five days after the decree of execution the task of the army was complete—the Sonderbund no longer existed.[d]

[1848-1874 A.D.]

The diet now debated the draft constitution drawn up by Kern of Thurgau and Druey of Vaud, which in the summer of 1848 was accepted by fifteen and a half cantons, the minority consisting of the three forest cantons, Valais, Zug, Ticino, and Appenzell (Tuner Rhodes), and it was proclaimed on September 12th.

From 1848 onwards the cantons continually revised their constitutions, always in a democratic sense, though after the Sonderbund War Schwyz and Zug abolished their Landsgemeinde. The chief point was the introduction of the referendum, by which laws made by the cantonal legislature may (facultative referendum) or must (obligatory referendum) be submitted to the people for their approval; and this has obtained such general acceptance that Fribourg alone does not possess the referendum in either of its two forms, Ticino having accepted it in its optional form in 1883. It was therefore only natural that attempts should be made to revise the federal constitution of 1848 in a democratic and centralising sense, for it had been provided that the federal assembly, on its own initiative or on the written request of fifty thousand Swiss electors, could submit the question of revision to a popular vote. In 1866 the restriction of certain rights to Christians only was swept away; but the attempt at final revision in 1872 was defeated by a small majority, owing to the efforts of the anti-centralising party. Finally, however, another draft was better liked, and on April 19th, 1874, the new constitution was accepted by the people. This constitution is that now in force, and is simply an improved edition of that of 1848. The federal tribunal (now of nine members only) was fixed (by federal law) at Lausanne, and its jurisdiction enlarged, especially in constitutional disputes between cantons and the federal authorities, though jurisdiction in administrative matters (e.g., educational, religious, election, commercial) is given to the federal council—a division of functions which is very anomalous, and does not work well.

A Swiss Finial

A system of free elementary education was set up, and many regulations were made on ecclesiastical matters. A man settling in another canton was, after a residence of three months, only, given all cantonal and communal rights, save a share in the common property (an arrangement which as far as possible kept up the old principle that the “commune” is the true unit out of which cantons and the confederation are built), and the membership of the “commune” carries with it cantonal and federal rights. The referendum was introduced in its “facultative” form—i.e., all federal laws must be submitted to popular vote on the demand of thirty thousand Swiss electors or of eight cantons. If the revision of the federal constitution is demanded by one of the two houses of the federal assembly or by fifty thousand Swiss citizens, the question of revision must be submitted to a popular vote, as also the draft of the revised constitution—these provisions, contained already in the constitution of 1848, forming a species of “obligatory referendum.” It was supposed that this plan would lead to radical and sweeping changes, but as a matter of fact there have been (1874-1886) about one hundred and seven federal laws and resolutions passed by the assembly, of which nineteen were by the referendum submitted to popular vote, thirteen being rejected, while six only were accepted—the rest becoming law, as no referendum was demanded. There has been a very steady opposition to all schemes aiming at increased centralisation. By the constitutions of 1848 and 1874 Switzerland has ceased to be a mere union of independent states joined by a treaty, and has become a single state with a well-organized central government.

[1874-1887 A.D.]

This new constitution inclined rather to the Act of Mediation than to the system which prevailed before 1798. A status of “Swiss citizenship” was set up, closely joined to cantonal citizenship: a man settling in a canton not being his birthplace got cantonal citizenship after two years, but was excluded from all local rights in the “commune” where he might reside. A federal or central government was set up, to which the cantons gave up a certain part of their sovereign rights, retaining the rest. The federal legislature (or assembly) was made up of two houses—the council of states (Stände Rat), composed of two deputies from each canton, whether small or great (forty-four in all), and the national council (National Rat), made up of deputies (now 145 in number) elected for three years, in the proportion of one for every twenty thousand souls or fraction over ten thousand, the electors being all Swiss citizens. The federal council or executive (Bundesrat) consisted of seven members elected by the federal assembly; they are jointly responsible for all business, though for the sake of convenience there are various departments, and their chairman is called the president of the confederation. The federal judiciary (Bundesgericht) is made up of eleven members elected by the federal assembly for three years; its jurisdiction is chiefly confined to civil cases, in which the confederation is a party (if a canton, the federal council may refer the case to the federal tribunal), but takes in also great political crimes—all constitutional questions, however, being reserved for the federal assembly. A federal university and a polytechnic school were to be founded; the latter only has as yet been set up (1887) and is fixed at Zurich. All military capitulations were forbidden in the future. Every canton must treat Swiss citizens who belong to one of the Christian confessions like their own citizens, for the right of free settlement is given to all such, though they acquired no rights in the “commune.” All Christians were guaranteed the exercise of their religion, but the Jesuits and similar religious orders were not to be received in any canton. German, French, and Italian were recognised as national languages.

The constitution as a whole marked a great step forward; though very many rights were still reserved to the cantons, yet there was a fully organised central government. Almost the first act of the federal assembly was to exercise the power given them of determining the home of the federal authorities, and on November 28th, 1848, Bern was chosen, though Zurich still ranks as the first canton in the confederation. By this early settlement of disputes Switzerland was protected from the general revolutionary movement of 1848.

The federal constitution of 1848 set up a permanent federal executive, legislature, and tribunal, each and all quite distinct from and independent of any cantonal government. This system was a modified revival of the state of things that had prevailed from 1798 to 1803, and was an imitation of the political changes that had taken place in the cantonal constitutions after 1830. Both were victories of the centralist or radical party, and it was therefore but natural that this party should be called upon to undertake the federal government under the new constitution, a supremacy that it has kept ever since. To the centralists the council of states (two members from each canton, however large or small) has always been a stumbling-block, and they have mockingly nicknamed it “the fifth wheel of the coach.” In the other house of the federal legislature, the national council (one member per twenty thousand, or fraction of over ten thousand of the entire population), the radicals have always since its creation in 1848 had a majority. Hence, in the congress formed by both houses sitting together, the radicals have had it all their own way. This is particularly important as regards the election of the seven members of the federal executive which is made by such a congress. Now the federal executive (federal council) is in no sense a cabinet—i.e., a committee of the party in the majority in the legislature for the time being. In the Swiss federal constitution the cabinet has no place at all. Each member of the federal executive is elected by a separate ballot, and holds office for the fixed term of three years, during which he cannot be turned out of office, while as yet but a single instance has occurred of the rejection of a federal councillor who offered himself for re-election.

Further, none of the members of the federal executive can hold a seat in either house of the federal legislature, though they may appear and speak (but not vote) in either, while the federal council as such has not necessarily any common policy, and never expresses its views on the general situation (though it does as regards particular legislative and administrative measures) in anything resembling the “speech from the throne” in England. Thus it seems clear that the federal executive was intended by the federal constitution of 1848 (and in this respect that of 1874 made no change) to be a standing committee of the legislature as a whole, but not of a single party in the legislature, or a “cabinet,” even though it had the majority. Yet this rule of a single political party is just what has taken place. Between 1848 and the end of 1899, thirty-six federal councillors were elected (twenty-three from German-speaking, eleven from French-speaking, and two from Italian-speaking Switzerland, the canton of Vaud heading the list with seven). Now of these thirty-six two only were not radicals, viz. M. Ceresole (1870-75) of Vaud, who was a Protestant liberal-conservative, and Herr Zemp (elected in 1891), a Romanist conservative; yet the conservative minority is a large one, while the Romanists form about two-fifths of the population of Switzerland. But, despite this predominance of a single party in the federal council, no true cabinet system has come into existence in Switzerland, as members of the council do not resign even when their personal policy is condemned by a popular vote, so that the resignation of Herr Welti (a member of the federal council from 1866 to 1891), in consequence of the rejection by the people of his railway policy, caused the greatest amazement and consternation in Switzerland.

[1891-1900 A.D.]

The chief political parties in the federal legislature are the right, or conservatives (whether Romanists or Protestants), the centre (now often called “liberals,” but rather answering to the whigs of English political language), the left (or radicals), and the extreme left (or the socialists). In the council of states there is always a federalist majority, since in this house the smaller cantons are on an equality with the greater ones, each indifferently having two members. But in the national council (147 elected members) there has always been a radical majority over all other parties, the numbers of the various parties after the triennial elections of 1899 being roughly as follows: radicals, 86; socialists, 9; Centre, 19; and the Right, 33. The socialists long worked under the wing of the radicals, but now in every canton (save Geneva) the two parties have quarrelled, the socialist vote having largely increased. In the country the anti-radical opposition is made up of the conservatives, who are strongest in the Romanist, and especially the forest cantons, and of the “federalists” of French-speaking Switzerland. There is no doubt that the people are really anti-radical, though occasionally led away by the experiments made recently in the domain of state socialism: they elect, indeed, a radical majority, but very frequently reject the bills laid before them by their elected representatives.

From 1885 onwards Switzerland had some troubles with foreign powers owing to her defence of the right of asylum for fugitive German socialists, despite the threats of Prince Bismarck, who maintained a secret police in Switzerland, one member of which, Wohlgemuth, was expelled in 1889, to the prince’s huge but useless indignation. From about 1890, as the above troubles within and without gradually subsided, the agitation in the country against the centralising policy of the radicals became more and more strongly marked. By the united exertions of all the opposition parties, and against the steady resistance of the radicals, an amendment was introduced in 1891 into the federal constitution, by which fifty thousand Swiss citizens can by the “initiative” compel the federal legislature and executive to take into consideration some point in the federal constitution which, in the opinion of the petitioners, requires reform, and to prepare a bill dealing with it which must be submitted to a popular vote. Great hopes and fears were entertained at the time as to the working of this new institution, but both have been falsified, for the initiative has as yet only succeeded in inserting (in 1893) in the federal constitution a provision by which the Jewish method of killing animals is forbidden. On the other hand, it has failed (in 1894) to secure the adoption of a socialist scheme by which the state was bound to provide work for every able-bodied man in the country, and (also in 1894) to carry a proposal to give to the cantons a bonus of two francs per head of the population out of the rapidly growing returns of the customs duties.

The great rise in the productiveness of these duties has tempted the Swiss people of late years to embark on a course of state socialism, which may be also described as a series of measures tending to give more and more power to the central federal government at the expense of the cantons. So, in 1890, the principle of compulsory universal insurance against sickness and accidents was accepted by a popular vote, in 1891 likewise that of a state or federal bank, and in 1898 that of the unification of the cantonal laws, civil and criminal, into a set of federal codes. In each case the federal government and legislature were charged with the preparation of laws carrying out in detail these general principles. But in 1897 their proposals as to a federal bank were rejected by the people, while at the beginning of 1900 the suspicion felt as to the insurance proposals elaborated by the federal authorities was so keen that a popular demand for a popular vote was signed by 115,000 Swiss citizens, the legal minimum being only 30,000: they were rejected (20th of May, 1900) on a popular vote by a two to one majority. The preparation of the federal codes has progressed quietly, drafts being framed by experts and then submitted for criticism to special commissions and public opinion. But this method, though the true one to secure the evolving of order out of chaos, takes time.

By a popular vote in 1887 the federal authorities were given a monopoly of alcohol, but a proposal to deal similarly with tobacco has been very ill received (though such a monopoly would undoubtedly produce a large amount), and would pretty certainly be refused by the people if a popular vote were ever taken upon it. In 1895 the people declined to sanction a state monopoly of matches, even though the unhealthy nature of the work was strongly urged, and have also resolutely refused on several occasions to accept any projects for the centralising of the various branches of military administration, etc. Among other reforms which have recently been much discussed in Switzerland are the introduction of the obligatory referendum (which hitherto has applied only to amendments to the federal constitution) and the initiative (now limited to piecemeal revision of the federal constitution) to all federal laws, etc., and the making large federal money grants to the primary schools (managed by the several cantons). The former scheme is an attempt to restrain important centralising measures from being presented as laws (and as such exempt from the compulsory referendum), and not as amendments to the federal constitution, while the proposed school grant is part of the radical policy of buying support for unpopular measures by lavish federal subventions, which it is hoped will outweigh the dislike of the cantons to divest themselves of any remaining fragments of their sovereignty.[e]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Transcriber’s Note: Chapters I-IV are not in this volume.

Chapter I. Switzerland to the Founding of the Confederation (earliest times to 1291 A.D.)

b Strabo, Geographica.

c John Wilson, History of Switzerland (in the “Cabinet Cyclopædia”).

d Ferdinand Keller, Pfahlbauten.

e Frederic Troyon, Habitations lacustres.

f Victor Gross, Les Proto-helvétes.

g Elisée Reclus, The Lacustrian Cities of Switzerland (in Smithsonian Report for 1861).

h G. O. Montelius, De Chronologie der Pfahlbauten in Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien. Vol. XXX.

i John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times.

j T. Studer, Pfahlfan Bevölkering in Zeit für Ethr. Verband, 1885.

k Rudolf Virchow, in letter prefixed to V. Gross, Les Proto-helvétes.

l Robert Munro, The Lake Dwellings of Europe.

m A. Vieusseux, The History of Switzerland.

n Michael Stettler, Annales.

o Johann von Müller, Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft.

p Alexandre Daguet, Histoire de la Confédération Suisse.

Chapter II. The Rise of The Swiss Confederation (1288-1402 A.D.)

c E. A. Freeman, The Historical Geography of Europe.

d A. Rilliet, Les Origines de la Confédération Suisse.

e J. Dierauer, Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft.

f W. A. B. Coolidge, History of Switzerland in Encyclopædia Britannica.

g K. Dändliker, Histoire du Peuple Suisse.

k J. Von Müller, Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft.

l G. Meyer von Knonau, Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstätte, in Sweizer Oeffentliche Vorträge.

m A. Huber, Die Waldstätte, Uri, Sweiz, Unterwalden, etc.

n R. von Radegg, Capella Eremitana.

o John of Winterthur, Chronikon Vitodurani in W. Oechsli’s Anfänge der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft.

p W. Oechsli, Quellenbuch zur Schweizer Geschichte.

q A. Vieusseux, The History of Switzerland.

r J. Wilson, History of Switzerland.

s J. Vulliemin, Histoire de la Confédération Suisse.

Chapter III. The Confederation at the Height of its Power (1402-1516 A.D.)

b W. A. B. Coolidge, Switzerland, in Encyclopædia Britannica.

c A. Vieusseux, The History of Switzerland.

d Vulliemin, Histoire de la Confédération Suisse.

e A. Dauget, Histoire de la Confédération Suisse.

f A. Morin, Précis de l’Histoire.

g Wilson.

h P. Verri, Storia di Milano.

i F. Guicciardin, Historia di Milano.

Chapter IV. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

b A. Vieusseux, The History of Switzerland.

c J. K. L. Gieseler, Compendium of Ecclesiastical History.

d J. Wilson, History of Switzerland.