The Helvetic Republic 677
“invited” the eastern region (the Grisons or Dreibünde) to enter the Helvetic Re-
public as a new canton of Rhaetia or Graubunden. Here, however, internal dissen-
sion was very great. Conservatives and Catholics of eastern Switzerland would
have nothing to do with the Helvetic Republic; they preferred Austria; and Aus-
trian troops entered this part of Switzerland in October 1798, a few weeks before
Mack’s attack on Rome opened the War of the Second Coalition. During this war
the French under Masséna pushed the Austrians out of the Grisons, where the
local patriots, in March 1799, proclaimed the canton of Rhaetia as part of the
Helvetic Republic. With this action, the essential outlines of modern Switzerland
were delineated.
Partition or dissolution had been avoided. Neutrality was difficult or impossible.
The history of the Helvetic Republic, as one Swiss writer has remarked, cannot be
understood except as a phase of the European conflict between revolution and
counter- revolution.^17 The French needed their ideological sympathizers in power in
Switzerland. As Reubell said in 1801 (after Suvorov’s campaign of 1799), his deci-
sion to sponsor revolution in Switzerland had kept the Russians out of Paris.^18 By
the same token, the powers of the Second Coalition much preferred the Swiss old
regime. Conversely, the parties in Switzerland depended on foreign support against
each other.
“Switzerland today must be either Austrian or French,” wrote Talleyrand to
Ochs in August 1798; “I do not suppose it will hesitate in this choice.”^19 The view
was the same, mutatis mutandis, on the other side. William Wickham, the British
emissary to Switzerland, worked strenuously to restore the old order there. He did
not suppose that the country could remain neutral or truly independent. The old
cantons in their old form, he wrote to Grenville in August 1799, “must be deliv-
ered, bound hand and foot—they cannot have any will of their own.... The great
Powers of Europe, if they are unanimous, may make of these states what they
please.”^20
of Geneva and Neuchâtel, and with some modification of boundaries, really date from the revolution
of 1798. It is somewhat as if the United States chose to date its independence from the lawful treaty of
1783 instead of from the revolutionary action of 1776.
17 Steiner in Ochs, Korrespondenz, II, ccxxix.
18 Reubell, who did not get along with Bonaparte during the Consulate, made a private note,
printed in the appendix to the Ochs Korrespondenz (ii, 562), and worth quoting at length: “Every day
I hear the E(xecutive) D(irectory) blamed for having revolutionized Switzerland, and strangely
enough the present government is one of the first to blame it.
“It was after a dinner for Bonaparte and Ochs that Bonaparte pressed Ochs, in my presence, to
hurry up with the revolution. The conference took place in my drawing room, shortly after Bonaparte
returned from Italy, and it is no doubt to remove all suspicion of his own complicity in this revolution
that he now affects to disavow it.
“But far from disavowing it myself I think that I never deserved better of the country than in press-
ing for it with all my strength. If we had not occupied Switzerland Suvorov would have been in Paris
and Bonaparte could not have won the battle of Marengo. I can see that brutes... wild beasts and
imbeciles... who would desire to see Suvorov in Paris would continue to find fault with the Swiss
revolution. Intelligent and sensible patriots will keep silent.... Look at what this Switzerland was: a
crazy formless assemblage of governments without any connection, some oligarchic, others demo-
cratic, all despotic and all enemies of the French Republic.”
19 Ochs, Korrespondenz, II, 439.
20 Dropmore Papers, V, 218.