Democrats and Aristocrats 271
and General Councils, was again raised, as in 1766. The Small Council and the
Négatifs again appealed to the guarantors, France, Zurich, and Bern. And again
the arguments raised in this miniscule affair took to high and general levels. One
might suppose all civilization and all humanity to be involved. The Geneva trou-
blemakers, said a Bern official, were “sectaries of J. J. Rousseau and other false
philosophers of the day.” There was a premonition of the Holy Alliance and the
Protocol of Troppau when one of the Geneva Small Council, Micheli du Crest,
writing to the French foreign office, and expatiating on “the atrocious and unpro-
voked horrors of sedition,” urged collective intervention “in the cause of all legiti-
mate governments and of all sovereigns.” On the other hand, a Geneva democrat,
a painter then in Paris named Bourrit, was able to get personally to Vergennes
and use language like that of Vergennes’ own protégés, the Americans. Bourrit,
like the Americans, brought in various purely historical arguments, but also be-
came more abstract: the sovereign at Geneva was the General Council, the Small
Council was only the government—“if the government is abusive, and instead of
being the guardian of the laws becomes their violator, the sovereign has the right
to change it.”^58
France, Zurich, and Bern intervened with troops. Vergennes, willing enough to
sponsor democratic revolution in America or in Holland to undermine the British
empire, saw no such advantage in Geneva at his very doors. French and Swiss sol-
diers besieged the city for three weeks. Patrols circulated inside; various Small
Councillors were held as hostages; St. Peter’s church, Calvin’s own church, became
a storehouse for gunpowder, and the banker, Etienne Clavière, a Burgher leader,
mounted guard with a thousand or so others. Brissot was in the city, forming his
ideas on revolution, and so was the future conservative Mallet du Pan, making
observations of contrary tendency on the same subject. A proposal for reconcilia-
tion, urging the Négatifs to give up their politique aristocratique, was signed by 1,020
Burghers. Nothing came of it, and the troops forced their way into the city.
The guarantor powers, consulting with the Négatifs, drew up an Edict of Pacifi-
cation. This was submitted to the General Council for its approval. Only half the
authorized voters appeared, and of these 113 voted against it. One syndic, several
patricians, and most of the Reformed clergy were in this number; that is, they sup-
ported the Burghers against restoration of the old system by foreign arms. The new
statute, accepted by the General Council, 411 to 113, was soon denounced as the
Black Code.
The Pacification, or code noir, undid the actions not only of 1782 but of 1768. The
General Council lost the right of deliberation. Syndics were to be declared elected
if they obtained one- quarter of the votes cast in the General Council. The “circles”
were abolished and replaced by public cafés, and militia exercises were forbidden.
Three hundred of the 460 Natives recently admitted to Burgher rights now lost
them. Fifteen persons were banished for ten years. Others went into a technically
voluntary exile. In addition, as if to add insult to injury, and with implications that
readers of Chapter V will perceive, the restored patricians insisted against manifest
opposition on building a theater. Even Mallet du Pan thought this unwise.
58 Ibid., 52–53, 76, 80.