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Updated: May 16, 2025
As the mountain chain of the Jura, stretching from the Rhine to the Rhone, almost completely closed in the Helvetic country towards the west, and its narrow defiles were as ill adapted for the passage of such a caravan as they were well adapted for defence, the leaders had resolved to go round in a southerly direction, and to open up for themselves a way to the west at the point, where the Rhone has broken through the mountain-chain between the south-western and highest part of the Jura and the Savoy mountains, near the modern Fort de l'Ecluse.
The regency having complied in this particular with the earnest request of his most christian majesty, Mr. Bamaby, the British minister to the Helvetic body, took the alarm, and presented the magistracy of Fribourg with a remonstrance, couched in such terms as gave offence to that regency, and drew upon him a severe answer.
The Helvetic Government at this time made him a grant of about thirty pounds a year, which in 1801 was raised to one hundred, but was stopped entirely in 1803, by the dissolution of the Government. This was barely sufficient for his own subsistence, and the small remains of his private fortune were absorbed in the maintenance of his family.
When the Helvetic Association assembled at Neuchatel in the following summer, the young president, from whom the members had expected to hear new tidings of fossil fishes, startled them by the presentation of a glacial theory, in which the local erratic phenomena of the Swiss valleys assumed a cosmic significance.
That the four largest would contain more than half the inhabitants of the confederating states, and therefore would govern the others as they should please. That history affords no instance of such a thing as equal representation. The Germanic body votes by states. The Helvetic body does the same; and so does the Belgic confederacy.
But this moment came not: unwieldy as was the march of the Helvetic caravan, the leaders knew how to guard against a surprise, and appeared to be copiously provided with supplies as well as most accurately informed by their spies of every event in the Roman camp.
This course was most natural for the Belgae, who were brought by neighbourhood and manifold intermixture into closer relation to the Germans who had crossed the Rhine, and moreover, with their less-developed culture, probably felt themselves at least as much akin to the Suebian of alien race as to their cultivated Allobrogian or Helvetic countryman.
Just at this time the Helvetic invasion, which was closely interwoven with the German and had been in preparation for years, began. According to their own reckoning the whole body consisted of 368,000 persons, of whom about a fourth part were able to bear arms.
Moreau also gained a great victory over the Austrians at Hohenlinden, and Macdonald performed great exploits amid the mountains of the Italian Tyrol. Lombardy was erected into an independent state, Venice was restored to Austria, and the independence of the Batavian, Helvetic, Cisalpine, and Ligurian republics was guaranteed.
Certain statements lead us to infer that in the Belgic districts there were some 200 persons to the square mile a proportion such as nearly holds at present for Wales and for Livonia in the Helvetic canton about 245; it is probable that in the districts which were more cultivated than the Belgic and less mountainous than the Helvetian, as among the Bituriges, Arverni, Haedui, the number rose still higher.
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