ABSTRACT
At the outbreak of the French Revolution, the question of neutrality did not stand in the foreground of Swiss policy. It was not until the revolutionary armies had swept over the French frontier and come into conflict with Europe, that is, after the beginning of the revolutionary wars in the spring of 1792, that the question of neutrality became a practical issue for Switzerland. Of course, even then there could be no question of neutrality of feeling. The local governments, and with them the classes from which they were drawn, that is, the politically, socially and economically prominent families, further, privileged members of the bourgeoisie and even the professional officers in foreign armies—all these stood by old, royalist France. In the Confederation the friends of the Revolution formed only a small minority, mainly recruited from the younger progressives in the cantonal capitals and country towns.
