CHAPTER V
A CLASH WITH DEMOCRACY: GENEVA
AND JEAN- JACQUES ROUSSEAUWe shall probably not devote to the largest monarchies articles as long as this one;
but in the eyes of the philosopher the republic [of Geneva] is no less interesting
than the history of great empires.... If our religion prevents our thinking that the
Genevese have worked effectively for their happiness in the other world, reason
obliges us to believe that they are about as well off as men can be in this one.
—D’ALEMBERT ON GENEVA IN THE ENCYCLOPÉDIE, 1757
During the whole of the last century the history of Geneva affords little more than
an account of the struggles between the aristocratical and popular parties.
—ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, 1797
Post tenebras lux.
—MOTTO OF THE CITY OF GENEVA
Geneva in 1760 was a city of about 25,000 people, about the equal of Philadelphia
in size, though not growing as rapidly. A man could walk across the town in fifteen
minutes; the whole territory of the independent republic (which did not join the
Swiss Confederation until 1814) comprised only seventy square miles. It was en-
closed by the kingdoms of France and Sardinia, except for a few miles along the
lake. From the Genevan point of view Sardinia was huge, and France almost infi-
nite in extent. The city lived at the mercy of these two, or by the local balance of
power between them; often enough, hostile soldiers had threatened its frontiers. A
republic lying between two monarchies, a salient of Protestantism projecting into
the Catholic world, its industrious people were forever on the alert, still manning