CHAPTER TWO

AMBIVALENT REVOLUTIONARIES: THE HELVETIC REPUBLIC IN REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE

Fearful of foreign intervention in April 1798, residents of Inner Switzer- land wrote to the French Directory asking, “Where can you fi nd a mode of government which more exclusively than ours puts the exercise and the rights of sovereignty in the hands of the people? in which civil and political equality is more perfect? in which every citizen enjoys a larger sum of liberty?”1 Th is letter was an attempt to forestall a French inva- sion and the implementation of French Revolutionary reforms. In a fi nal plea, the authors asked, “And what government, citizen-directors, can be more consonant to yours?”2 Th is communication claimed that the Swiss already held dear these so-called revolutionary ideals. Th ere- fore, there was no need to alter the government of the Landsgemeinde cantons. While that was not an entirely honest argument, the abstract con- cepts of liberty, popular sovereignty, civil and political equality never- theless lay at the heart of the revolutionary doctrines of the late eighteenth century. Before 1789, these ideals had been extensively dis- cussed by the intellectual elites of the Swiss Confederation. However, for the most part, those participating in these discussions in eighteenth- century Switzerland sought to reform their sociopolitical conditions rather than tear down the status quo and start anew. Th ese discussions, oft en based on the practical motivation for reforms and improvement of life for everybody residing in the republics, played a large role in the transformation of Swiss political culture. Th ese were not theoretically pure arguments, but arguments based on mixed discourses, which

1 “Schreiben der V Orte an das französische Direktorium,” 5 April 1798, in ASHR– Actensammlung aus der Zeit der Helvetischen Republik (1798–1803), ed. Johannes Strickler (Bern, 1886–1905), 1: 603–5; STASZ, Akten 1, 471; “Memorial of the Five Democratic Cantons,” 5 April 1798, translation in Heinrich Zschokke, Th e History of the Invasion of Switzerland by the French and the Destruction of the Democratical Republics of Schwitz, Uri, and Unterwalden, trans. J. B. Briatte (London, 1803), 216–23. 2 “Schreiben der V Orte an das französische Direktorium,” 5 April 1798, in ASHR, 1: 603–5. 76 chapter two included many strains of political and republican thought. However, the stakes for these Swiss discussions were raised by the events in France aft er June 1789; the universalist views of the French Revolution threatened the structure of life in Switzerland. Eff orts to institute a new regime in Switzerland illuminate the process of revolutionary transfor- mation elsewhere in Europe. In parallel developments, Europeans were forced to respond to the events in France. In Switzerland, as elsewhere, native and cosmopolitan intellectual trends came up against the uni- versalist claims of the French. Although political ideas had been under discussion before the French Revolution, aft er 1789, inhabitants had to address new conceptions and practical applications of liberty, notions of popular sovereignty, the nature of politics in Europe, as well as the possibility of new borders and political institutions.3

Between the Revolutions, 1789–98

Th e liberties of 1789 and the accompanying rhetoric of the early French Revolution heralded a new age of individual liberty and popu- lar participation in government throughout Europe.4 Robert Palmer postulated a forty-year “essentially democratic” revolutionary move- ment that swept through Europe and North America. Palmer acknowl- edged that this democracy was not necessarily a universal modern democracy but a revolution that “signifi ed a new feeling for a kind of equality,” which “emphasized the delegation of authority and the

3 For a comparative perspective see, e.g., Palmer, Th e Age of the Democratic Revolution; Godechot, France and the Atlantic Revolution; Würgler, “Dancing with the Enemy?,” esp. 14; Schama, Patriots and Liberators; Rowe, From Reich to State; Ute Planert, Der Mythos vom Befreiungskrieg: Frankreichs Kriege und der deutsche Süden— Alltag—Wahrnehmung—Deutung, 1792–1841 (Paderborn, 2007); Th omas Poell, Th e Democratic Paradox: Dutch Revolutionary Struggles over Democratisation and Centralisation (1780–1813) (Utrecht, 2007); Katherine Aaslestad, Place and Politics: Local Identity, Civic Culture and German Nationalism in North Germany during the Revolutionary Era (Leiden, 2005); Jourdan, La Révolution batave; Janet Polasky, Revolution in Brussels 1787–1793 (Hanover, NH, 1987); T.C.W. Blanning, Th e French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland, 1792–1802 (New York, 1983); Michael Rapport, “Belgium Under French Occupation: Between Collaboration and Resistance, July 1794 to October 1795,” French History 16 (2002). 4 For more on the impact of the French Revolution on European consciousness see Isser Woloch, ed., Revolution and the Meanings of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century, (Stanford, 1996), esp. Woloch, “Introduction: Th e Ambiguities of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.”