Democrats and Aristocrats 269
enlightened men in the country.”^55 But she thought he should not trust them. Im-
mediately after the Austrian restoration there arrived in Brussels, in January 1791,
as temporary governor- general, the Austrian diplomat Mercy- Argenteau, better
known to general history as the counsellor to Marie Antoinette during all her
years at Versailles. Mercy- Argenteau favored the Belgian democrats, as a means of
weakening the Estates party. He even received suggestions for reform from their
spokesmen. He reported to Vienna that their number was growing in important
circles. But he was afraid of them. It was clear to him that their views were in the
long run incompatible with Hapsburg rule. And he feared the French Revolution.
“The Estates,” wrote Mercy, “no doubt are not very deserving; but there is a
danger in leaning too easily and too precipitately toward the opposite party, con-
sidering the example of the misfortunes of France, and the French emissaries who
are here, and of whom I am apprehensive.”^56 In short, by 1791, even the enlight-
ened monarchy of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II, and even Leopold II
as a man, unique in a world peopled by Louis XVI, George III, and William V in
the lengths he might go to conciliate democratic reformers, were thrown by fear of
the French Revolution into a position of supporting constituted bodies, privileged
classes and entrenched aristocracies.
The restored Austrian regime did not last long. In April 1792 France and Aus-
tria went to war, and in the following November the French republican army
poured into the Austrian Netherlands. When General Dumouriez won the battle
of Jemappes, there were Belgians who welcomed him, but this touches on a later
part of the story.
A View of Switzerland
There was no monarchy in Switzerland, not even the shadow monarchy of the
House of Orange. There was no nobility, not even the subdued nobility of the
Dutch provinces or the well- behaved nobility of Belgium. There was no foreign
rule to generate movements of independence. That the Swiss cantons nevertheless
suffered from the same problems as were common elsewhere only reveals more
clearly the basic issues. As Peter Ochs observed, in an amusing description of all
the kinds of people in his own town of Basel who resisted change, the most re-
spected and influential voices, without king, nobility, or Catholic Church, were
“aristocratic.”
There was no Swiss state. There was only the Eidgenossenschaft, the oath-
fellowship of thirteen sovereign cantons, perpetually leagued together for external
defense. Except for a few cantons that were mountainous, rural, and Catholic,
these “oath- fellows” were essentially certain German- speaking and Protestant
towns, notably Bern, Zurich, and Basel. French- speaking Vaud, Valais, Neuchatel,
and Geneva were not cantons, and Geneva did not even belong to the league.
Town oligarchies, in Switzerland as elsewhere, ruled over townspeople and coun-
55 Ibid., 400.
56 Ibid., 436.