672 Chapter XXVIII
their cause best advanced by peace, and hardly even saw a chance for Swiss revolu-
tion until the treaty of Campo Formio brought peace to the continent. The more
ardent Batavians and Cisalpines, once their new republics were established, were
eager to fight Britain and Austria respectively; most Helvetic republicans tried to
remain neutral in the War of the Second Coalition, expecting the French to pro-
tect them. The Swiss produced no such apostles of international revolution as
Filippo Buonarroti, who believed that no peace could be made with kings. In
Switzerland, as in the Dutch provinces and in Italy, once the new republic was
established, an intense struggle followed between unitarists and federalists, the
former being the democrats, the latter the moderates. Territorial uniformity, the
equalization of rights between town and country, between Stadt and Land, or bur-
gher and peas ant, a basic issue in all the sister republics, and in the French Revolu-
tion itself, was most especially of the essence of the Helvetic revolution. We hear
more of peasant uprisings in Switzerland than in Holland or Italy. The Swiss rural
people were in fact radically divided. Those of the democratic Alpine cantons or
Urkantone, such as Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, were strongly opposed to the
Helvetic movement, wishing to keep their ancient liberties unaltered by such
modern developments; but the peasants of the subject districts (like the sujets of
Geneva) put on revolutionary demonstrations in 1798; and it must be remembered
that one such subject district, the Thurgau which belonged to Zurich, had almost
as many people as Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden combined. A degree of coopera-
tion between rebellious peasants and urban leaders is a characteristic of the Hel-
vetic revolution which we miss in the revolutions of the Italian triennio. Finally, to
complete this comparison, Switzerland suffered, less than the Italians but more
than the Dutch, from the burdens and problems imposed by French requisitions,
levies, and pillaging, and by the disputes between French civilian commissioners
and military commanders in its territory.
Swiss Unity vs. External Pressures
Crises of internal and of external origin combined at the end of 1797 to threaten
the Swiss confederation, as the treaty of Campo Formio between France and Aus-
tria, following upon the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic, seemed to open
the prospect of a new political order in Europe. As elsewhere, the internal and the
external were inseparable. Swiss partisans of the old ways hoped that Austria and
Great Britain would remain strong; those who desired change looked with a mix-
ture of hope and fear to France. Reformers were alarmed by the discussions be-
tween France and Austria initiated in November at the Congress of Rastadt. They
feared that these two powers, the better to digest their respective gains under the
treaty, would agree upon a guarantee of the existing order in Switzerland. If so, the
opportunity for a new course in Switzerland would be missed.
Internal stresses had accumulated to the point where the leading innovators had
to make decisions. Resentment against Bern continued in the French- speaking
areas of Vaud and Valais. Peter Ochs and his circle at Basel, including men both