682 Chapter XXVIII
an army of their own (in addition to the old militia) to the extent of 18,000 men,
as an auxiliary force to operate with the French army, and to be maintained and
equipped at French expense. A good many people in Switzerland, including
Pestalozzi as well as Ochs, believed this proposal to be altogether reasonable.
The Helvetic army, however, never developed the strength of the Batavian, or
even the Cisalpine, and its weaknesses revealed the weakness of the Helvetic revo-
lution itself.^25 There were too many who wished for the advantages of the revolu-
tion without having to fight for them, or who complained of the French yet were
content to remain dependent upon them. Many others, of course, objected to the
new regime altogether. It was said that the country could not possibly supply
18,000 men, though at least 11,000 Swiss mercenaries had been in the French
service in 1789. It was said that Switzerland, already drained by French requisi-
tions, could not afford such an army, even at French expense, which might only
take the form of renewed French requisitions. The French asked the Swiss to in-
troduce conscription, on the model of the new French conscription law of 1798.
“Nothing would better suit the kings,” said Ochs, “than for republics to renounce
compulsory service.”^26 The Helvetic Directory, after a delay, proposed conscription
to the legislative councils, which, on the eve of invasion by the Austrians and Rus-
sians in 1799, flatly refused it. Voluntary enlistment proceeded slowly. In some
places, notably the former Pays de Vaud, there was an enthusiasm to join; and
within limits the new army served as a school of new republican citizenship. The
officers, for example, came from various social classes. They included professional
soldiers who had seen service with European monarchies in former times, but they
also included a former monk of St. Gallen, a butcher, and an impecunious land-
owner whose income had disappeared when the Helvetic government abolished
seigneurial dues. Some of these officers were later to be with Napoleon in Russia,
and one lieutenant of 1799 lived to become commander- in- chief of the Swiss Fed-
eral Army in 1830. In the overall view, however, for an army planned for 18,000,
only 469 officers and 3,587 men were actually incorporated in the six demi-
brigades of which the force was composed. And these units suffered heavily from
desertion.
On the other hand, attempts to raise a Swiss counter- revolutionary armed force
at British expense were even less successful. The most vociferously reactionary dis-
tricts contributed the least. Supposedly, by September 1799, there were 2,800 men
in such units, but hardly two- thirds were in the field. The Genevese Mallet du Pan,
who was editing the British Mercury in London at this time, and who regarded all
partisans of the Helvetic Republic as traitors, reported with disgust, or perhaps
with deliberate exaggeration to terrify the conservative powers into action, that far
more Swiss, including even a few women, were fighting on the French side than on
the side of the Coalition.^27 On the whole, to quote a Swiss historian, “there was as
little enthusiasm in Switzerland for military service in English pay, which might
lead to a campaign against France, as there was willingness to fight for the
25 See F. Bernoulli, Die helvetischen Halbbrigaden im Dienste Frankreichs, 1798–1805 (Bern, 1934).
26 Korrespondenz, II, 486.
27 British Mercury, III ( July 1799), 341–43.