,
cockade and
seal stamp from the Helvetic Republic During the
French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s, the French Republican armies expanded eastward. In 1793, the
National Convention had imposed friendship with the United States and the
Swiss Confederation as the sole limit while delegating its powers in foreign policy to the
Committee of Public Safety, but the situation changed when the more conservative
Directoire took power in 1795 and
Napoleon conquered
Northern Italy in 1796. The French Republican armies enveloped Switzerland on the grounds of "liberating" the Swiss people, whose own system of government was deemed
feudal, especially for annexed territories such as
Vaud. Some Swiss nationals, including
Frédéric-César de La Harpe, had called for French intervention on these grounds. The invasion proceeded largely peacefully since the Swiss people failed to respond to the calls of their politicians to take up arms. On 5 March 1798, French troops completely
overran Switzerland and the
Old Swiss Confederation collapsed. On 12 April 1798, 121 cantonal deputies proclaimed the Helvetic Republic, "One and Indivisible". On 14 April 1798, a cantonal assembly was called in the
canton of Zürich, but most of the politicians from the previous assembly were re-elected. The new régime abolished
cantonal sovereignty and
feudal rights. The occupying forces established a centralised state based on the ideas of the
French Revolution. Many Swiss citizens resisted these "
progressive" ideas, particularly in the central areas of the country. Some of the more controversial aspects of the new regime limited
freedom of worship, which outraged many of the more devout citizens. In response, the Cantons of
Uri,
Schwyz and
Nidwalden raised an army of about 10,000 men led by
Alois von Reding to fight the French. This army was deployed along the defensive line from
Napf to
Rapperswil. Reding besieged French-controlled
Lucerne and marched across the
Brünig pass into the
Berner Oberland to support the armies of Bern. At the same time, the French General
Balthasar Alexis Henri Antoine of Schauenburg marched out of occupied
Zürich to attack
Zug, Lucerne and the
Sattel pass. Even though Reding's army won victories at Rothenthurm and
Morgarten, Schauenburg's victory near
Sattel allowed him to threaten the town of
Schwyz. On 4 May 1798, the town council of Schwyz surrendered. On 13 May, Reding and Schauenburg agreed to a cease-fire, the terms of which included the rebel cantons merging into a single one, thus limiting their effectiveness in the central government. However, the French failed to keep their promises in respecting religious matters and before the year was out there was another uprising in
Nidwalden which the authorities crushed, with towns and villages burnt down by French troops. No general agreement existed about the future of the Swiss. Leading groups split into the ''
, who wanted a united republic, and the Federalists'', who represented the old
aristocracy and demanded a return to cantonal sovereignty.
Coup attempts became frequent and the new régime had to rely on the French to survive. Furthermore, the occupying forces insisted that the accommodation and feeding of the soldiers be paid for by the local populace, which drained the economy. The treaty of alliance of 19 August with France, which also reaffirmed the French annexation of the
Prince-Bishopric of Basel and imposed French rights over the Upper
Rhine and the
Simplon Pass for evident strategic reasons towards Germany and Italy, also broke the tradition of neutrality established by the Confederation. All this made it difficult to establish a new working state. In 1799, Switzerland became a virtual battle-zone between the French, Austrian, and
Imperial Russian armies, with the locals supporting mainly the latter two, rejecting calls to fight with the French armies in the name of the Helvetic Republic. Instability in the Republic reached its peak in 1802–1803; it included the '
uprising and the ' civil war of 1802. By then, the Republic was 12 million francs in debt, having started with a treasury of 6 million francs. This, together with local resistance, caused the Helvetic Republic to
collapse, and its government took refuge in
Lausanne. At that time,
Napoleon Bonaparte, then
First Consul of France, summoned representatives of both sides to
Paris in order to negotiate a solution. Although the Federalist representatives formed a minority at the conciliation conference, known as the "Helvetic Consulta", Bonaparte characterised Switzerland as federal "by nature" and considered it unwise to force the country into any other constitutional framework. On 19 February 1803, the
Act of Mediation abolished the Helvetic Republic and restored the cantons. With the abolition of the centralized state, Switzerland became a confederation once again, called the
Swiss Confederation. ==Constitution==