in various degrees of strictness by their cantonal overlords.  Such was the old Swiss Confederacy:  it somewhat resembled that chaotic Macedonian league of mountain clans, plain-dwellers, and cities, which was so profoundly influenced by the infiltration of Greek ideas and by the masterful genius of Philip.  Switzerland was likewise to be shaken by a new political influence, and thereafter to be controlled by the greatest statesman of the age.

On this motley group of cantons and districts the French Revolution exerted a powerful influence; and when, in 1798, the people of Vaud strove to throw off the yoke of Berne, French troops, on the invitation of the insurgents, invaded Switzerland, quelled the brave resistance of the central cantons, and ransacked the chief of the Swiss treasuries.  After the plunderers came the constitution-mongers, who forthwith forced on Switzerland democracy of the most French and geometrical type:  all differences between the sovereign cantons, allies, and subject-lands were swept away, and Helvetia was constituted as an indivisible republic—­except Valais, which was to be independent, and Geneva and Muehlhausen, which were absorbed by France.  The subject districts and non-privileged classes benefited considerably by the social reforms introduced under French influence; but a constitution recklessly transferred from Paris to Berne could only provoke loathing among a people that never before had submitted to foreign dictation.  Moreover, the new order of things violated the most elementary needs of the Swiss, whose racial and religious instincts claimed freedom of action for each district or canton.

Of these deep-seated feelings the oligarchs of the plains, no less than the democrats of the Forest Cantons, were now the champions; while the partisans of the new-fangled democracy were held up to scorn as the supporters of a cast-iron centralization.  It soon became clear that the constitution of 1798 could be perpetuated only by the support of the French troops quartered on that unhappy land; for throughout the years 1800 and 1801 the political see-saw tilted every few months, first in favour of the oligarchic or federal party, then again towards their unionist opponents.  After the Peace of Luneville, which recognized the right of the Swiss to adopt what form of government they thought fit, some of their deputies travelled to Paris with the draft of a constitution lately drawn up by the Chamber at Berne, in the hope of gaining the assent of the First Consul to its provisions and the withdrawal of French troops.  They had every reason for hope:  the party then in power at Berne was that which favoured a centralized democracy, and their plenipotentiary in Paris, a thorough republican named Stapfer, had been led to hope that Switzerland would now be allowed to carve out its own destiny.  What, then, was his surprise to find the First Consul increasingly enamoured of federalism.  The letters written by Stapfer to the Swiss Government at this time are highly instructive.[220]