Helvetic Club
The Helvetic club on french completely helvétique Club de Paris , was a revolutionary combination of Swiss patriots in the early stages of the French Revolution .
The association included Patriots v. a. from Freiburg, who fled to France after the Chenaux trade in 1781. The Helvetic Club criticized the aristocratic regime of the cantons and was active in the French National Assembly , in the barracks of the Swiss regiments in Paris and among journalists. On May 20, 1790, he had his first success: Despite the current Franco-Swiss treaty, the Constituent Assembly decided to release two Freiburg residents who had been sentenced to galley fines in France after the Chenaux trade. The lawyer Jean Nicolas André Castella edited most of the Helvetic Club's publications, with the help of other Freiburg residents such as François-Joseph Rey, also a lawyer, and François Roullier, wine merchant and co-founder. Its first official meeting took place on June 6, 1790. The Helvetic Club initially prospered, but soon lost many members. The unpaid Swiss distanced themselves for financial reasons, the military out of fear of being charged with high treason. After the leaders had also fallen out, the Helvetic Club disbanded on August 3, 1791.
Some members joined other immigrant associations, including a. the Club des Allobroges . The Helvetic Club had tried to spread the revolutionary ideas in Switzerland through active propaganda and to trigger uprisings. The newspaper "Correspondance générale helvétique" was founded, of which only three issues appeared, and under the hand of Castellas distributed eighteen-page pamphlet "Lettre aux Communes des villes, bourgs et villages de la Suisse et de ses alliés, ou l'Aristocratie suisse dévoilée" and sent numerous letters. But the reaction of the Swiss authorities was violent, and the attempts by the Helvetic Club to seduce him were unsuccessful: the Swiss were not ready to follow the example of the French. After all, certain unrest in the Valais and the diocese of Basel can be traced back to the Helvetic Club, which changed the French perception of Switzerland and helped prepare the revolution of 1798.
literature
- A. Méautis, Le Club helvétique de Paris (1790-1791) et la diffusion des idées révolutionnaires en Suisse , 1969
- La Suisse et la Revolution française , exhibition catalog, Lausanne, 1989 (abridged German translation 1989)
Web links
- Ariane Brunko-Méautis: Club helvétique. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 23, 2003 , accessed April 10, 2020 .
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Individual evidence
- ↑ Albert Soboul: The Great French Revolution. 5th edition, Athenäum-Verlag, p. 188
- ^ Georges Andrey: Chenaux trade. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .