Act of Mediation

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 19th of February 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte signed a document in Paris that erased a country from the map. The Helvetic Republic, which French troops had installed just five years earlier, was abolished with a stroke of the pen. In its place, Napoleon created something new: the Swiss Confederation. He called the document the Act of Mediation, casting himself not as a conqueror but as a peacemaker. What drove him to this unusual act? What had gone so wrong in Switzerland that France's most powerful man felt compelled to intervene personally? And what kind of Switzerland did the Act actually produce?

• 2. A Republic That Could Not Stand

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  French troops crossed into Switzerland in 1798 and swept away the old order. The decentralized, aristocratic Old Swiss Confederation gave way to the Helvetic Republic, a highly centralized state modeled on French revolutionary ideals. The problem was immediacy. The changes were too abrupt and too sweeping, and they brushed past something the Swiss held deeply: their attachment to their own canton or city.

  For four years, French soldiers remained in Switzerland largely to keep the Helvetic Republic alive against a restless population. The republic's own government was split between two factions. The Unitaries wanted a single, strong central government. The Federalists wanted self-governing cantons. A draft constitution produced in 1802 was put to a popular vote in June of that year and quickly defeated.

  Napoleon made his next move in July 1802. He withdrew French troops, officially to comply with the Treaty of Amiens, but really, as the source suggests, to make the Swiss understand that their best hopes lay in appealing to him directly.

• 3. The Stecklikrieg

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  The moment French troops left, the rural population rose. In the Canton of Léman, a revolt called the Bourla-papey broke out over the restoration of feudal land holdings and taxes. That uprising was quieted through concessions. What followed was not.

  The Stecklikrieg took its name from the Stäckli, the wooden club carried by the insurgents. They clashed with the official forces of the Helvetic Republic in a series of engagements: at the Renggpass near Pilatus on the 28th of August, through artillery attacks on Bern and Zürich in September, and in a skirmish at Faoug on the 3rd of October. The Republic's forces were poorly equipped and poorly motivated. The central government capitulated militarily on the 18th of September, retreating from Bern to Lausanne, and then collapsed entirely.

  With Switzerland in chaos and his strategic interests in the region threatened, Napoleon had the opening he needed to call Swiss representatives to Paris.

• 4. What the Act Created

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  Napoleon declared in the preamble of the Act that the natural political state of the Swiss was as a Federation. He was positioning himself as someone restoring what the Swiss always were, not imposing something foreign.

  The Act's next 19 sections covered the 19 cantons that existed in Switzerland at the time. The original 13 members of the old Confederation were restored, and 6 new cantons were added. Two of those new cantons, St Gallen and Graubünden, had previously been associates of the old Confederation. The remaining four were lands that had once been subject territories of other cantons: Aargau, absorbed in 1415; Thurgau in 1460; Ticino across three annexations in 1440, 1500, and 1512; and Vaud in 1536. Five of the six new cantons received modern representative governments. Graubünden was the exception.

  In the 13 original cantons, many pre-revolutionary institutions came back. The landsgemeinden, or popular assemblies, were restored in the democratic cantons. Other cantonal governments were placed in the hands of a great council for legislation and a small council for executive power. Much of the language in the Act was deliberately vague, giving the cantons considerable room to interpret their own arrangements.

• 5. The Federal Structure

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  Forty articles that followed, known as the Acte fédéral, defined the duties of the central government. The Confederation was charged with providing equality for all citizens, building a Federal Army, removing internal trade barriers, and handling international diplomacy. There were to be no privileged classes, no burghers with special status, no subject lands.

  Every Swiss citizen was free to move and settle anywhere in the new Confederation. The cantons pledged to respect each other's constitutions, borders, and independence. Switzerland was mentioned throughout the document by name.

  The highest federal body was the Tagsatzung, or Diet. It rotated each year among six vororten, the leading cities: Fribourg, Bern, Solothurn, Basel, Zürich, and Lucerne. The presiding officer was the Landammann der Schweiz, who was the chief magistrate of whichever vorort hosted that year's Diet. Six cantons with populations above 100,000 each received two votes in the Diet: Bern, Zürich, Vaud, St Gallen, Graubünden, and Aargau. The remaining cantons each had one.

  Two amendments to the Act, containing 13 and 9 articles respectively, governed the transition from the collapsed Republic. Louis d'Affry was appointed Landammann der Schweiz during the transition and given extensive powers until the Diet could convene. Inside each canton, a seven-member commission ran local affairs until new elections were held.

• 6. Napoleon's Gains and the Erosion of Rights

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  The Act gave Napoleon what he needed most: stability on a key border. It stopped Swiss instability from bleeding into his expanding empire or weakening his army. Switzerland became a pro-French buffer state between France and both Austria and the German states. Napoleon thought enough of this arrangement to add a new title in 1809: Médiateur de la Confédération suisse, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation.

  But the rights the Act had promised began to erode almost immediately. In 1805 the Diet restricted the right to move freely between cantons, a right the constitution itself guaranteed, by requiring ten years of residence before a person could gain political rights or access to communal property in a new canton.

  In 1806 the principality of Neuchâtel was handed to Marshal Berthier. In 1810 the Valais was occupied and converted into the French department of the Simplon, securing the Simplon Pass for French use. French troops occupied Ticino from 1810 to 1813. Swiss soldiers were sent into foreign campaigns, including the French invasion of Russia, which ate away at the neutrality Switzerland had long maintained.

• 7. The End of the Mediation

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  As Napoleon's power began to weaken in 1812 and 1813, Switzerland's position grew precarious. Austrian forces, backed by a reactionary faction inside Switzerland, crossed the Swiss border on the 21st of December 1813. The Diet offered no real resistance. On the 29th of December, under Austrian pressure, the Diet abolished the 1803 constitution that the Act of Mediation had created.

  On the 6th of April 1814, a gathering called the Long Diet met to write a replacement. Progress stalled repeatedly. The Diet remained deadlocked until the 12th of September, when Valais, Neuchâtel, and Geneva were elevated to full membership in the Confederation, bringing the total number of cantons to 22. Even then, the Diet made little headway before the question of Switzerland's future was folded into the larger negotiations at the Congress of Vienna.

  The Act of Mediation had also altered one small territory whose fate most accounts overlook: it destroyed the statehood of Tarasp and transferred it to Graubünden, a quiet decision that reshaped the map of what is now Switzerland's largest canton.