Charles Pictet de Rochemont

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Charles Pictet de Rochemont
Statue of Charles Pictet de Rochemont on the Promenade de la Treille in Geneva

Charles Pictet de Rochemont (born September 21, 1755 in Geneva , † December 28, 1824 in Lancy ) was a Swiss diplomat , politician and officer .

Life

Charles Pictet came from a Geneva patrician family . He was the son of Charles Pictet (1713–1792), a colonel in the Dutch service, and Marie, née Dunant. After brief studies in Geneva, he began a military career in France in 1775 , where he served in the army for 12 years. When he married Adélaïde Sara de Rochemont in 1786, he changed his family name to "Pictet de Rochemont". After his return to Geneva in 1788 he became a member of the «Conseil des Deux Cents» (Parliament of the Geneva Republic) and a senior officer in the Geneva troops.

In 1794, during the Geneva Revolution, he was sentenced to one year of house arrest. In 1796, together with his brother, the natural scientist Marc-Auguste Pictet , and Frédéric-Guillaume Maurice, he founded the magazine “Bibliothèque britannique” (since 1816 “Bibliothèque universelle” ), which aimed to disseminate all important discoveries made and published works in England. In 1798 he bought an estate near Lancy, which he worked personally and where he raised merino sheep in particular .

Diplomatic activity

Until 1798, Geneva was an independent republic allied with Switzerland ( Neighborhood ). In 1798, Geneva was occupied and annexed by France. After the liberation of Geneva on December 31, 1813, a strategic goal of the Geneva government was the admission of Geneva into Switzerland as a canton in order to avoid future attempts at influence by the great powers. One problem, however, was the fragmentation of the Geneva territory, which consisted of several enclaves surrounded by Savoyard and French territory and which had no land connection with Switzerland.

Pictet de Rochemont, together with François d'Ivernois, was a Geneva delegate at the conferences of the great powers that were to recognize the regained independence of Geneva and to accept its accession as a canton to Switzerland. The most delicate point of his mission was to enlarge the Geneva territory in such a way that a contiguous area was created that had a land connection with the rest of Switzerland. As early as January 1814, Pictet de Rochemont submitted the Geneva concerns to the great powers in Basel. Both at the first peace negotiations in Paris in May 1814 and at the Congress of Vienna (September 1814 to May 1815) the area expansion could not be achieved because the French delegate Talleyrand did not want to cede the Pays de Gex . In contrast, the independence of Geneva and its unification with Switzerland was accepted.

Pictet de Rochemont took part in the further negotiations for the Second Peace of Paris from August 1815 as an authorized representative of the Swiss Diet . He achieved that Geneva got six parishes of the French Pays de Gex ( Collex-Bossy , Genthod , Le Grand-Saconnex , Meyrin , Pregny , Vernier and Versoix , a total of 49.3 km² and 3343 inhabitants.). His second success was the recognition of permanent Swiss neutrality by the great powers (France, Great Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria) on November 20, 1815.

To negotiate the territorial expansion south of the Rhone , Pictet de Rochemont was sent from the canton of Geneva and Switzerland to Turin in 1816 and was again successful. With the Turin Treaty (March 16, 1816), Victor Emanuel I , King of Sardinia-Piedmont , ceded 24 parishes to Geneva, which are known as "communes réunies" ( Aire-la-Ville , Anières , Avusy , Bernex , Carouge , Chêne-Bourg , Choulex , Collonge-Bellerive , Compesières , Confignon , Corsier , Hermance , Laconnex , Lancy , Meinier , Onex , Perly-Certoux , Plan-les-Ouates , Presinge , Puplinge , Soral , Thônex , Troinex and Veyrier , in total 108.8 km² and 12,700 inhabitants). In addition, a duty-free zone was established around the canton of Geneva as the hinterland of the Geneva economy, and the Savoyard Chablais was militarily neutralized.

For his services, Pictet de Rochemont was made an honorary member of the Geneva government and was recognized by the Swiss Diet. After 1816 he devoted himself mainly to his estate, but was still a member of the «Conseil représentatif» (cantonal parliament). He died in 1824.

literature

  • Paul Widmer: Swiss foreign policy and diplomacy from Pictet de Rochemont to Edouard Brunner . Zurich, ISBN 978-3-03823-632-0 (2nd updated edition 2014)
  • Jean-Daniel Candaux: Histoire de la famille Pictet 1474–1974 . Geneva 1974.
  • Hans Brugger: Charles Pictet de Rochemont and Philipp Emanuel v. Fellenberg. A friendship, 108 pages, described to the Swiss people, Francke (Verlag) Bern 1915.
  • Leopold Boissier: Pictet de Rochemont, in: Grosse Schweizer , Atlantis Verlag, Zurich, Geneva 1938.
  • Edmond Pictet: Biography, travaux et correspondance diplomatique de C. Pictet de Rochemont . Lausanne 1892 digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3DUI1CAAAAIAAJ~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Die kleine Enzyklopädie , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, Volume 2, p. 360