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public funds, the common property, the monastery property, all has been seized from us. What the French do not make their own they declare to be national property, and that's what they call freedom and equality.

The French troops are still lodged in the heart of Switzerland and get the best out of it. They continually make demand after demand, each one worse than the one before. First they plundered the town coffers, the treasuries, the arsenals, and have taken many millions in war contributions. Now they are making claims about every store, all the fruit and victuals in the whole of Switzerland. And that is done by the magnanimous nation, that brings freedom to all peoples, the nation that is everywhere feared and everywhere victorious, which is still keeping tens of thousands of troops afoot on foreign soil by unjust levying, which for several years has kept their troops on foreign soil, without victuals of their own, without stores, they devour the provisions of other nations, and snatch the bread from the mouths of townsmen and country folk, stealing their money and their cattle too, wherever they could contrive to get their hands on them. And this is done by the magnanimous nation that makes all peoples free! Herrjemini, what freedom! Yes, the freedom to beg when one has nothing left. But in our Toggenburg we have so far come through fairly well."

[Much of the wealth looted from Switzerland was used to finance Napoleon's campaigns in Italy and Egypt. The Swiss cantons were also forced to provide food, clothing and wages for any French troops occupying their land or even merely passing through.]

11th July "But I have now no part nor lot in this land. These brutal ants, these worms of earth who think themselves so mighty and yet are only powerless maggots, may do as they please. That troubles me but little any more. My part and lot is rest from all trouble and labour, from all sorrow and grief, in cool mother earth. I am fortunate. My wish has been granted. I always wished for such a gradual decline of all my strength, a becoming ripe for death, when I could lay myself down having done with the world, weary and tired, and breathe out my spirit with my last breath, and have it said of me: he died old and full of years. [...] In this too my good Genius will fulfil my wish, that my life's end is not to come to pass in the beautiful time of spring, nor yet in the splendid days of summer, but will rather snatch me away from under the nose of grey winter [...]"

12th July "Life still holds more good than evil. As I have always so declared my whole life long, so I still declare it in my last days. Yes, I certainly count these among the happiest of my life. Though my flesh is wasted from my bones, my strength has left me, and a sharp pain drives through my skeleton frame, now here, now there, yet my spirit is still calm, cheerful and lively, and is able to comfort and compose itself amid all bodily suffering. And why should it not be so? Were it not for these bodily troubles I should lack for nothing. Never in my life have the things I need in life been borne to me with so little trouble on my part. Never did I eat my bread with fewer cares, though my appetite is failing, and not half the quantity awakes it, which formerly I would have eagerly devoured in my greed, yet here and there is a morsel that suits my palate very well and makes up for all the rest.

Never, in my whole life, did I enjoy more freedom than now. I can tend my brittle body as I like, rest, move about, sleep when I like. And even though sleep is not always ready at my command, yet every night I have it for a sweet short while. I can choose my nourishment to my own taste, even my own caprice, and prepare it to suit my own palate. In the last years of my life kind Providence has sent me for the first time a friend, a friend without equal, this happiness having otherwise been unknown to me in my whole life. He is my comfort, my all in all to me in these last days. Just to think of him makes me forget all sorrow, for I have been assured that he will not forsake me to the very end. My family and acquaintance have never in my life treated me so considerately and obligingly. One could say that they would lay their hands for my feet to tread on. My neighbours too are more obliging than before, and for money or kind words will give me what they never would have given me before, goat's milk and the like.

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