The Helvetic Republic 669
asm by the Swiss. Under modern conditions as they were developing, with uni-
form territorial organization on an expanding scale, it was hard to see how a city as
important as Geneva could live encysted in a larger body. In any case the French
Directory had no intention of leaving it alone. After a series of protests and
counter- protests, with imposition, removal, or reimposition of blockade, the
French Directory annexed Geneva in 1798 as part of its general plan of that year
for the reorganization of all Switzerland.
Geneva became the chef- lieu of a new French department, the Léman. To make
it big enough for a department, the Directory added bits of French and of former
Savoyard territory to its jurisdiction. Only a few Genevese, irritated to the point of
desperation by their own internal conflicts, welcomed the annexation as a solution
to problems that they had not solved themselves. The Genevese were never content
with membership in the French Republic and Empire, which, however, proved to
be not without its reward. When Geneva became a Swiss canton in 1815 it re-
tained some of the former French and Savoyard territory which the French Re-
public had bestowed upon it. That is why the canton of Geneva today, though one
of the smallest in Switzerland, is a good deal larger than the old republic of Rous-
seau and Calvin.
The Swiss Revolutionaries
It has never been easy in the English- speaking world to see that along with French
military intervention in Switzerland there went a good deal of native Swiss revolu-
tionism and willing collaboration on the part of the Swiss themselves. Especially
among political reformers and in romantic literary circles in England, where a
tendency to sympathize with foreign revolutionary efforts could be found, there
had come to be an image of Switzerland as a land of peaceful and innocent liberty,
in which no internal revolutionary disturbance was to be expected. The legend of
William Tell, for example, was appealed to by conservatives as well as revolutionar-
ies in both Switzerland and other countries.^6 Or (to take another symbol) Lord
Byron in 1816 visited the famous chateau at the water’s edge in the Pays de Vaud
at the eastern end of Lake Geneva. He was so appalled by its dungeons that he
wrote his famous poem The Prisoner of Chillon on the horrors of prolonged solitary
confinement. The poem referred to a sixteenth- century episode. It was not gener-
ally realized in England or America that Chillon was used as a state prison until
1798.
Another “prisoner of Chillon” attracted little attention when he turned up as a
refugee in Philadelphia in 1794. This was F. A. Rosset, of a prominent Lausanne
family, who had taken part in a political banquet held at Lausanne in July 1791
to celebrate the fall of the Bastille. In discoursing on the liberation of France and
of mankind, the banqueters had really meant to voice their dissatisfaction at the
subjection of Vaud to Bern. Bern reacted accordingly, sensing sedition. Several
6 Cf. R. Labhart, Wilhelm Tell als Patriot und Revolutionär, 1700–1800. Wandlungen der Tell-
Tradition im Zeitalter des Absolutismus und der französische Revolution (Basel, 1947).