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.