a came to Paris to pay their respects
to their new ruler. The Minister of War was thereupon charged to treat
them with every courtesy, to entertain them at dinner, to give them
3,000 francs apiece, and to hint that on their presentation to
Bonaparte they might make a short speech expressing the pleasure of
their people at being united with France. By such deft rehearsals did
this master in the art of scenic displays weld Elba on to France and
France to himself.

Even more important was Bonaparte's intervention in Switzerland. The
condition of that land calls for some explanation. For wellnigh three
centuries the Switzers had been grouped in thirteen cantons, which
differed widely in character and constitution. The Central or Forest
Cantons still retained the old Teutonic custom of regulating their
affairs in their several folk-moots, at which every householder
appeared fully armed. Elsewhere the confederation had developed less
admirable customs, and the richer lowlands especially were under the
hereditary control of rich burgher families. There was no constitution
binding these States in any effective union. Each of the cantons
claimed a governmental sovereignty that was scarcely impaired by the
deliberations of the Federal Diet. Besides these sovereign States were
others that held an ill-defined position as allies; among these were
Geneva, Basel, Bienne, Saint Gall, the old imperial city of Muehlhausen
in Alsace, the three Grisons, the principality of Neufchatel, and
Valais on the Upper Rhone. Last came the subject-lands, Aargau,
Thurgau, Ticino, Vaud, and others, which were governed 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,