674 Chapter XXVIII
figures, and even colleagues, in the Swiss revolution, entered upon curiously diver-
gent lines of development, in which the problems of the small political satellite are
well illustrated.
It was Ochs, at first, who objected to French intervention, and put his faith in
spontaneous Swiss uprisings by which the old order in the several cantons would
be displaced, and a Swiss National Assembly be convened to enact a constitution.
It was La Harpe, at first, who welcomed the French army into Switzerland, and
even believed that the Swiss were so divided that the new constitution should be
drafted and imposed by the French.^11 Thereafter the two men moved in opposite
directions. Invited to Paris in December 1797, Ochs sat in conferences with La
Harpe, Bonaparte, and the French Directors, at which it was decided that France
should sponsor revolution in Switzerland. To Ochs was assigned the task of pre-
paring a constitution, and he did so, believing that his draft would be discussed
and amended by a future Swiss convention; but in fact Bonaparte and La Harpe
vetoed the idea of such a convention, and the Directors Reubell and Merlin de
Douai made numerous changes in Ochs’ draft.
Ochs was persuaded, nevertheless, to lend his name to the constitution (which
the Swiss call the “Paris constitution” of 1798), so that it might seem more accept-
able in Switzerland. Once the Helvetic Republic was promulgated, Ochs found
himself repeatedly taking the French point of view, urging compliance with French
demands for men and money, finding excuses for the most arbitrary actions of the
French government and its agents, and persuading his countrymen to accept the
needs of French foreign policy, all on the ground that no other defense against
Swiss reactionaries and Austrian influence was possible, until the name of Ochs,
who was certainly a man of great personal integrity, became identified with the
most unpleasant forms of collaborationism. La Harpe, on the other hand, once the
new republic was set up, increasingly resisted the French demands, criticized the
more extortionate practices of the French occupation, and tried to avoid signing a
treaty that would subordinate the Helvetic Republic to French foreign policy,
while at the same time tending to a more radical position in Swiss internal affairs,
looking to a rapid extinction of seigneurial rights, to special taxes on the wealthy,
and to the confiscation and sale of church and émigré properties, so that a Swit-
zerland energized by its own revolution would be the less dependent on France.
The result was that by a coup d’état of 1799 La Harpe drove Ochs out of the Hel-
vetic government, only to be driven out himself in 1800.
Only at Basel, in January 1798, did events follow Ochs’ original formula. The
country people rose up, burned a few chateaux, and lent aid to revolutionary bour-
11 See the discussion by G. Steiner, ed., Korrespondenz des Peter Ochs, II, clxxxiii– ccviii; and the
letter of La Harpe to General Brune, Paris, March 8, 1798, in Strickler, Actensammlung, I, 499–500:
“The Executive Directory will put the finishing touch to its favor to us, if it persists in replacing the
Gothic Swiss constitution, mother of all evils, with an indivisible republic that will unite the various
peoples of Switzerland.... The minions of oligarchy will doubtless redouble their efforts to prevent
the execution of this salutary measure.... Ah! Citizen General, preserve us from the double scourge
of federalist oligarchy and delirious demagoguery. You have the force needed to render us this signal
service... for you yourself to give us a constitution that would cost us years of labor and torrents of
blood if we undertook to do it ourselves.” There seems to be a critical misprint here of vous for nous in
line 2 of p. 500.