Meanwhile the French army succeeded in driving all the armies of the Coalition off Swiss soil, but the need to preserve French control of the satellite states in Italy caused the French to lose some interest in Switzerland and try to restore stability as quickly as possible. The sovereignty of the Helvetic Republic was recognised at the Treaty of Luneville on 9th February 1801, which also re-established the French hold on Italy. On 9th May Napoleon proposed a new constitution for Switzerland, hoping to reconcile the interests of both the federalists and the centralists. The resulting "Malmaison Constitution" was rejected in favour of another which had been drawn up by Swiss representatives under C.L. Haller, but this too met with much hostility in the rural areas, including the Toggenburg. On 28th October there was another
coup d'état
, led by the anti-French resistance leader Alois Reding, in favour of a federalised government.
In 1802 the Treaty of Amiens brought peace to Europe for a while, but in Switzerland near-anarchy prevailed with four constitutions tried and failed. A third
coup d'état
on 17th April brought in a unitary government under a version of the Malmaison Constitution, established by a referendum of dubious legality (abstentions were counted as votes in favour). In August Napoleon finally lost patience and withdrew all the French troops. Fighting broke out again from the end of August. On 19th September 1802 the Great Council met at Bern and tried to bribe Napoleon to accept the restoration of the
ancien régime
, while the city was terrorised by a peasant army. On the 26th Reding opened a new parliament in the hope of forming an alternative government, but only Appenzell out of the north-eastern cantons was represented there. On 3rd October the army of the federalists made a successful
attack on the forces of the Republic, but failed to follow it up. Napoleon intervened once more and re-established the Republic by another threat of invasion. Reding's parliament resisted his orders and the invasion took place on October 21st. Within a week the parliament was dissolved, Reding was imprisoned and yet another constitution was drafted. This time a few federalists and leaders of the Republic were among the Swiss representatives involved, these included Karl Müller-Friedberg (who in 1815 became Landammann of St. Gallen until his retirement in 1831).
The new constitution became law on 19th February 1803. Six new cantons were created, including St. Gallen and in the following month all foreign hereditary rights were abolished, which finally brought to a legal end the temporal rule of the Prince-Abbot. (The abbey itself was dissolved in 1806 and its buildings used for secular purposes.) Yet another constitutional assembly met in Paris, with 75% of its members drawn from the centralists and 25% from the federalists. On 10th March the Helvetic Republic was disbanded and much of its early reforms were cancelled. Some historians think, however, that the ideas and ideals of the Helvetic Republic lived on and were made apparent in the Congress of Vienna of September 1814, where the Swiss Confederation was revived and increased by another 22 cantons. There was no attempt to bring back the status of "subject land" to the Toggenburg or other similar regions. Switzerland was also affected by the Europe-wide restoration movements after the fall
of Napoleon in 1815. The Swiss themselves voted for a return to the
ancien régime
, which reduced the central government to the point (it was said) that all its ministers could travel in one coach. A truly national government was not established in Switzerland until 1848.
Changes in Switzerland at the time of Bräker's death:
In 1798 Europe was still only on the very threshold of the far-reaching changes of the 19th century, and such changes as had taken place had not all yet reached Bräker's homeland. Politically and culturally France was still the dominant power and Napoleon's armies were still extending the French empire. There were signs of change, however, in that the fate of Europe was now bound up with the development of European colonies. Britain was among the leading powers in the Industrial Revolution, and had pioneered inventions such as the steam engine, which was to enormously increase industrial production, and also revolutionise transport. The development of machine printing, invented by Germans but first put into mass production in
