rejected. Commencement of Hostilities. Further Prolongation of the Armistice. Truce broken. Soleure, and Fribourg taken by the French. Disorders among the Swiss Troops. Provisionary Government at Berne. Negotiations, rejected by the French General. March of the French Troops towards Berne. Valour of the Swiss Troops. Entry of the French into Berne. Massacre of their Officers by the Swiss Troops. Depredations of the French Soldiery in the Country, and of the French Generals in Berne. Revolutions of the Cantons of Zurich and Lucerne. Refusal of the lesser Cantons to accept the Constitution. Contributions levied on the Aristocracy of Berne. Hostages sent to the Fortress of Huninguen. Meeting of Deputies from the Swiss Cantons at Arau. Formation of the Legislative Body. Nomination of DiInsurrection in the Canton of Lucerne. Invasion of the Canton of Zurich by the Troops of the lesser Cantons. Severe Contests between the French and Swiss Armies. Acceptance of the Constitution by the lesser Cantons. Insurrections in the Vallais. Despotic Conduct of the French Directory. Embassy of Rapinat in Switzerland. Violences committed by the French Commissary at Zurich. Independent Conduct of the Swiss Government. Powers given to Rapinat by the French Directory. Changes in the Swiss Government made by the French Commissary. Disavowal of Rapinat's Conduct by the French Directory. Compliance of the Helvetic Government with the Projects of the Directory. Election of Ochs to the Helvetic Directory. Colonel Laharpe named Director. Remonstrances with the French Directory rectors. with Respect to their Conduct in Switzerland. Cessation of French Tyranny in Switzerland. Treaty concluded. WHILST the papal see was de operated by similar instruments with WHILST the wacular that of Rome, the French arms expected that a country so long and intimately connected with France, by its position, by perpetual alliance, by commerce, and partly by language, should escape the influence of the principles of its revolution when states far more remote and distinct were strongly imbued with their spirit. But previously to the epocha of the French revolution, various parts of the confederation had been the seat of civil discord and popular murmurs. In some cantons the indignant spirit of the subject had led him to revolt against what he deemed the oppressive administration of the ruler, in others, the distinctions which exist in society, and which form the different classes of privileged and unprivileged individuals, were strangely and inversely distributed. The French revolution, declaring the principle of equality, found a wide predisposition amongst the subjects of the Swiss confederacy to embrace the cause, and as strong a resistance on the part of the governors, who were deeply interested in opposing the progress of an opinion so immediately subversive of authority. Conscious that with such a system no brotherhood could be cherished, many of the leading cantons put themselves in a state of watchfulness, bordering on hostility, against the principles established by the French national assembly, and also against those whose admiration led them to the imprudent avowal or propagation of the doctrines which resulted from those principles. But, with so powerful a sanction, the frowns of power were ineffectual to calm the murmurs of discontent; and claims, which fear or policy had hitherto shut up in silence, were now produced, with confidence that they would be ad1799. mitted from the sentiment of fear, if not of justice. Amongst those who were most active in demanding a review of their grievances where the inhabitants of the French part of the canton of Berte, known by the name of the Pays-de-Vaud. The nobles and the higher classes of this province had long transmitted to their children an hereditary hatred of 'the government of Berne, arising not so much from any sense of individual oppression, or from general suffering under a despotic administration, as from that sentiment of humiliation which is felt by generous minds when subjected to the dominion of persons for whose talents or rank in society they feel only contempt. This disaffection was not concealed: historians and travellers have recorded the fact. Nor is it singular that the desire of change should operate on the titled and the rich, whilst they viewed their political existence depending on the will of a self-elected sovereign, and their 'provinces subjected to the administration of an emissary of those whom they considered as usurpers of their rights. But, however strongly the sensibility of the subject-inhabitants of the Pays-de-Vaud was excited by this political degradation, they were compelled to submit, or brood over their grievances, real or imaginary, in silence. They were in. capable of procuring redress by force, and the sovereign burghers of Berne were too firmly seared on their curule thrones to heed the remontrances of impotent claimants or to lis en to the murmurs of discontent. Partial insurrections against the governments of certain can ons had often taken place in Switzerland. These disorders had some M 1 Himes times been suppressed and punished with the interposition of the neighbouring cantons, where the danger was not excessive; but when these insurrections wore the serious characters of rebellion or revolt, the whole confederation marched against the conspiracy. France before the revolution had even lent its aid to the suppression of those domestic quarrels, and had become the executioner of the insulted sovereign; so that, whatever was the degree of oppression, or whatever the desire of resistance, redress was become hopeless, and change impossible. Bar, although the hand of those Swiss governments weighed heavy ou the political offenders who examined with too scrutinising an eye into the doctrine of popular rights, or who ventured upon the commission of overt acts, such as murmuring against certain privileges of the sovereign, by which these complainants thought themselves personally aggrieved, in the disposal and profits arising from their industry; yet, where passive and unremitting obedience sat easy on the mind of the subject, no masters were more kind and gentle. The persevering and laborious activity of the peasant had tamed the soil where it was stubborn, and brought to its highest perfection that which was susceptible of culture; and this industry, guided by œconomy, had spread not only ease and comfort, but even wealth and abundance, over the land. On this peaceable class of subjects the eye of the Swiss magistrate had shone with peculiar complacency, and in some cantons, particularly that of Berne, had given room for a sort of social compact against the inquisitive and encroaching spirit of the inhabitants of towns, such as artisans and manufacturers, whose knowledge or means of information, contrasted with the ignorance of the peasant, gave umbrage to his ally the burgher. It was the policy of the latter to maintain the spirit of rivalry between these subject-classes; and so successfully was this system followed in the principal cantons, that the ignorant but favourite peasant was taught to refuse all alliance with the more cultivated inhabitant of towns; and the merchant, who added to the wealth of the husbandman by the purchase and exchange of his produce, was regarded also as an object of inferiority and contempt. But, if this reciprocity of affection existed in some cantons between the peasant and burgher, in others, where interest was the ruling passion of the governors, their power and avarice weighed more heavy on the industry and personal freedom of the peasant. The governments of the cantons were, for the most part, very dissimilar; but all writers agree in the existence of vexatious and oppressive abuses in all. The despotism of their institutions; the abuses of elections to sovereign councils; the daily and encroaching spirit of authority; the overgrown influence of patrician families; the striking inequality which prevailed, even on this basis, of aristocratical power; the monopoly of places of profit to the exclusion of worth and talent; the undefined limits of pro-consular administration; the want of encouragement to the arts and sciences; the neglect of education amongst those who were destined to rule, the void of which was filled up by idleness, arrogance, ignorance, and dissipation-are so many features, features, presented by writers of different characters and discordant sentiments, to fill up the picture of this vaunted region of happiness and liberty. would eventually be considered and redressed. However modest might have been their demands when their hopes of redress were founded on the justice of their cause, the projects of inde-, pendence which they now enteriained and avowed awakened the vigilance of the governors to a peremptory refusal of seditious and revolutionary pretensions. But to have rejected such pretensions without further animadversion might be an encouragement for future application; "the snake was scotch"ed, not killed;" and an occasion was eagerly sought, when for some overt act, since petition for redress was no crime, the indignation of government might be let loose on the offenders, and chastisement for present offences might legalise punishment for the past. The time was too big with events to suffer such occasions to be long delayed; and the celebration of the anniversary of the 14th of July, 1791 (when meetings of the friends to the French revolution in the Pays-deVaud took place at Ouchy and Rolle, small towns on the lake of Geneva), was the occasion, or the pretext, for the establishment of a high commission, composed of two senators and two of the great council of Berne, at Lausanne, to try the offenders who had been present at these assemblies. It does not appear, from the most minute and detailed examination of the numerous papers and volumes to which these meetings, and the labours of the high commissaries, have given birth (since from these incidents we must date the decline and fall of the Swiss governments), that any of these disorders or acts of sedition took place, with which those who were arraigned before the high tribunal have been accused; and the sentence pronoun. M 2 These defects had long been the subject of animadversion previous to the event of the French revolution, and remonstrances had been made by the inhabitants of the l'ays de-Vaud against certain oppressive measures of their sovereigns, the barghers of Berne, which they had promised but neglected to redress, the petitioners having no other resource than in the justice of their cause. But no sooner had the revolution given an apparent form and substance to the principles on which it was founded, than these suppliants laid aside the tone of petition and complaint, and began to hesitate whether the redress which they had so ardently sought, and to which they had bounded their wishes, was an object worthy of their acceptance. But if the Swiss governments meditated any change in their constitution previous to the French revolution, this event pregnant with mischief to established governments in general, made them more circumspect in the indulgence of their liberality; and no change was effected, except by the cantonof Berne, which granted, in case of vacancy, the admission of two families of the Pays-de-Vaud to the dignity of burgher, with certain restrictions, of which one was the remission of any solid benefits for the space of half a century. However great this concession might have been deemed by the sovereign, the benefit was too confined and remote to be an object of public gratitude: but, as such a symptom of relaxation had discovered itself, hopes were entertained by the discontented, that their reclamations ced ded against Muller de la Mothe, quaJified by the tribunal as "magistrate of the city of Lausanne, and our vassal," and which condemned him to twenty-five years solitary imprisonment in the dungeons of Arbourg, states as the primary charge, "that he had left the sovereign ignorant of the dangerous projects entertained against the constitution, with which he had been for some time acquainted." The same sentence of twenty-five years' imprisonment, which was pronounced against Rosset, states his repeated denial of any knowledge of hostile intention against the government of the country in the meeting of the 14th of July, as an aggravation of the crime for which he was about to be punished. The sentence against these unfortunate vassals was li terally put into execution on the 3d of May, 1792, and others of their fellow subjects felt in different modes the effects of the indignation of their governors: some were condemned for ten years to drag the carts which the criminals employ in cleansing the streets of Berne; others, for the same term, to a punishment scarcely less infamous, that of being chained among the blues to hard labour; some were imprisoned for a shorter time, many dismissed from their employments civil and religious, some banished the country for a certain period, and others for life. In this proscription several of the nobles of the Pays-de-Vaud were involved; but none was more signalised by the vengeance of the tribunal than general Laharpe, the seigneur of Yeus, who, escaping from its fury, was condemned to be beheaded, and his family reduced to misery by the confiscation of his estates. The severity of this high commission, which was held forth by the government as a mea sure purely comminatory, acquired bunal, which name was likewise it the title of the revolutionary trigiven to those which were eighteen months after erected, in France. If the celebration of a festival, which, whatever were the secret intentions of the guests, (and no doubt their dispositions were not less hostile at that period than at former times to the abuses of their government,) has been signalised by sedition, since the charges on that no external act of disobedience or head were utterly disproved; if a meeting of this sort, publicly advertised, where admittance was refused to none, and where, if in the effusion of their joy they pledged the liberty of the French, and success assembly, they poured out also lito the labours of the constituent bations to the prosperity of the Helvetic confederation, and that of the canton of Berne, was punished with so little moderation, the malpect from a repetition of their recontents had certainly little to exclamations, since the intention even of making them was imputed as a crime. established tranquillity within, since This severity having rethe commission had sought their those who had not been attainted by safety in flight-some across the Atlantic, and others in France-the confederacy found fresh causes for allies the French, whose new system inquietude in the conduct of their of government accorded but ill with treaties. Hence the revolt of the the spirit or letter of their ancient regiment of Château-vieux, the disarming of the regiment of Ernst at Marseilles, the projected dismemberment of the regiment of Steiner at Lyons, and the dismissal by the legislative body of the Swiss guards at Paris, under pretences, whether ill |