The Measures against German Refugees …

Friedrich Engels (1848-12-28)

The Troops back from Tessin – The Patrician Commune

** Bern, December 24. The new measures of the Federal Council, which are so highly appreciated by the Reich, consist not only in the circular and Herr Steiger’s inspection trip, but principally in the expulsion from Switzerland of three extremely harmless refugees who have published a most innocuous, merely reportorial pamphlet about the last Baden uprising; further, in the action taken against the periodical: “Die Revolution” and the so-called “Wehrbund hilf Dir”.

The free-corps leader J. Ph. Becker in Biel, a Bernese cantonal citizen for a year, placed himself at the head of a military association under the above name, which was intended to organise all the German free-shooters present in Switzerland into a German legion. The affair looks dangerous, but was not at all so. The legion existed only on paper; there was no talk of armament; still less of drilling. Its only purpose was to prevent further precipitate and planless free-corps expeditions, and since all free-corps expeditions are necessarily precipitate and planless (witness the two Lucerne ones, the two Baden ones, and that of Val d’Intelvi), the “Wehrbund” was bound to lead to the prevention of all free-corps expeditions altogether.

But that was precisely what neither the Baden nor the Swiss government wanted, and since the leaders of the association, through all manner of cherished reminiscences of all secret society activity and through a more or less swaggering demeanour, gave the government a pretext for acting, and since furthermore the whole plan falls under the Bernese free-corps law, the best opportunity was at hand to see here a deep-laid conspiracy and preparations for a new imminent invasion of Baden.

To this was added Becker’s imprudence in announcing his weekly paper, the “Revolution”, on its title as “Organ of the democratic Wehrbund hilf Dir”. In short, Herr Ochsenbein, who came to Biel either by chance or on purpose, prompted the intervention of the public authorities. The specimen number of the “Revolution” was seized, one of the editors, Michel, expelled from the canton, and a house search was held at Becker’s. Afterwards people thought better of it. The encroachment on press freedom was too provoking. The seizure was lifted and the Revolution will continue to appear; but judicial investigation has been instituted against Becker and it will probably be all up with the Wehrbund hilf Dir. The German imperial philistine can sleep soundly again.

In Tessin all troops have been discharged. How greatly the Ticinesi have been slandered by the Eastern Swiss is shown by the excellent understanding in which the Bernese battalion sent there lived with the population. It is, of course, also true that this battalion from the outset behaved quite differently from the Zurich and Appenzell men. At a banquet given to the officer corps, the Bernese Colonel Seiler declared neutrality to be a necessary evil and looked forward to the time when Switzerland, freed from this fetter, could fight for liberty alongside other nations. The battalion subscribed one day’s pay as a contribution for the Italian refugees. If the gentlemen of Zurich and Appenzell had acted in this way, instead of exercising a spiteful gendarme police with pleasure and fraternising with Austrian officers, the Ticinesi would have met them quite differently.

A few days ago a highly amusing philistine meeting took place here in Bern. The residential community assembled to declare whether it would accept the burdens of the seat of the federal government. The patricians, defeated in the last citizens’ community and seeing before their eyes the actual onset of the division of property between burghers and residents, sought here their revenge. With the actual cession of the residential community’s property they would make the town independent of the patriciate, lose a mass of lucrative posts and the chief support of their preponderant influence in the municipal council, not to speak of the considerable direct financial loss. They therefore brought all their intrigues to bear – to have the seat of the federal government removed from Bern again! They declared that the burdens of the seat of the federal government were stated so indefinitely that one risked being shamefully taken in by the Federal Council; further, that the state, and not the town, must bear the greatest part of the costs, and under these pretexts they proposed to vote a miserly 300,000 francs, and no more. The law on the seat of the federal government however requires unconditional acceptance of the conditions within one month, and the month expires on the 28th. Acceptance of the patrician proposal thus amounted to a rejection of the seat of the federal government. The plausible proposals for economy and security of the patricians found tremendous favour with the Bernese philistines, so that the radicals, who wished to retain the seat at any price, almost despaired of carrying their cause. The discussion lasted the whole day, and only in the evening did the radicals scrape together 419 votes, which against 314 decided for unconditional acceptance of the obligations imposed by the Federal Assembly. There you have an example of the miserable parochial penny-pinching that dares to lay down the law even in the capital of Switzerland!