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.
