➔ Revolution and Contention: How Switzerland Got Its Constitution
| 5 minute read
Chapter 5 of my retelling of A Concise History of Switzerland by Clive H. Church and Randolph C. Head (Cambridge University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-521-14382-0). Fifty years of chaos, civil wars, and foreign meddling. Somehow, out of all that mess, modern Switzerland was born.
The French Show Up (1798)
In 1798, France invaded Switzerland. Swiss patriots in Basle and Vaud had already started their own revolutions. They planted liberty trees and demanded equal rights for the countryside. The real muscle came from France though. General Brune marched in, took Berne, stripped its treasury, shipped the city’s famous bears to Paris, and that was that.