USA > Vermont > Washington County > Montpelier > Addresses delivered before the Vermont Historical Society and the Vermont Historical and Antiquarian Society > Part 10
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The Swiss Republic, in one respect, that is in their de- termined rejection of foreign interference in their domes- tic affairs, presented a perfect contrast to the Dutch. The result is, Switzerland exists in honored independence. Holland on the other hand, submitted to foreign interven- tion, and shorn of her liberty, subsists in comparative subservience.
The Swiss absolutely refused, at any risk and at all times, to permit the slightest interference on the part of foreign governments, and when in 1847 they had cstab- lished their blockade or cordon, they actually prohibited to foreign agents, all access to their rebel districts. And
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while they were ready to mass their troops, to put down sedition at home, they were equally ready to mass their troops upon their frontiers, to prevent intervention from abroad. As an evidence to what exertions this patriotic spirit incited the people consider the case of the canton of Vaud. This canton has a population of 204,000 in an area of 1185 square miles. Taking the usual ratio her regular contingent, permanently maintained, should not exceed 5,000 men, and her males capable of bearing arms, between 20 and 60, not over 50,000 men, for home service and under the most favorable circumstances. Neverthe- less, Oct. 2d, 1846, the same year that the SONDERBUND promulgated their treasonable designs, this canton had nearly 20,000 men, belonging to the different services, armed and equipped according to regulation. Besides these, the authorities had organized 16 Battalions of "Hom- mes du Depot," garrison troops between 17 and 20 years of age, (each 500 strong,) and S battalions of Volunteers, be- tween the ages of 45 and 60, estimated as high as 6,000 in all: Total 34,000. The same proportion would give us 3,000,- 000 of soldiers under arms, while the ability to bear the burthen can scarcely be brought into comparison.
This proves that in whatever other respect the Swiss may have retrograded, they have not degenerated in pat- riotism. Mrs. STRUTT, in her charming volumes, entitled "A Domestic Residence in Switzerland," observes that "Nature certainly only meant the Swiss for two classes, soldiers and shepherds." "Attached alike to Liberty and to Arms, the slightest appearance of infringement upon their freedom, throws them simultaneously into a posture of defence."
"The great tie that holds the Swiss cantons together is the neutrality they observe, with respect to other nations :
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and the common cause they make of ANY attach upon themselves."
".Another admirable trait of essential union among the Swiss, is the willing and ready CHARITY with which they minister to each others wants, in times of calamity,' 'with a liberality that well illustrates the truth of a re- mark, which all who have studied mankind must have made, that it is always the habitually frugal, who are capable of the most generous actions."
"Seek not the Swiss in cultured plains, Or towns, or beaten paths among, Where modish strangers idly throng, And Inxury taints, and avarice staing : 'Tis where primeval nature reigns, Mid lonely toil and simple song, Secure alike from crime and wrong, He uncorrupt and trae remains ; 'Mid the murmurings of his fountains, And the echoes of his mountains, Where the lordly eagle soars, Where the headlong torrent roars, He is, as he was meant to be, Poor and virtuous, calm and FREE."
The prodigious effort of the little Canton of Vaud just alluded to, leads to the consideration of what would seem to be a want of sense of patriotic duty, in many of our own people.
Through the ill judged interference of rich communities or associations, the administration is not deriving the ex- peeted reinforcements from the draft just concluded .- That so many citizens are unwilling to fight ont, with their own arms, the great battle of freedom, but are will- ing to confide it to another race, and hireling hands, is unworthy of a free people, and teeming with mischief, if no remedy is at hand and applicable.
I particularly allude to the organization of a dispropor- tionate army of blacks. Their undue augmentation is pregnant with evil, if not restricted within reasonable
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limits. Not that I am opposed to negro regiments. Far from it, since I believe that I was the first, in print, to suggest their organization. But I am opposed to a negro army ontnumbering that composed of whites. Carthage, Venice, Holland, relied upon mercenaries to maintain their polity within, extend their area withont, and fight even for their independence. Rome's mobilizal militia burned Carthage; the native armies of France seized Venice, and handed her over to Austria as a prey ; and Holland, dictated to by Prussia and England, (the latter as false to the United Provinces, as she has proved to the United States.) stooped her free neck to the yoke of roy- alty ; stooped it to be abased a second time, and plundered in 1830-1, despite their own solemn guarantees, by Eng- luni and France, just as England and France would like to dismember, plunder and humiliate us. The rough edge of the work may be taken off by our black auxiliaries, but the finishing touches must be put on by ourselves, by our white brethren.
Thus by the consideration of a succession of introduc- tory suggestions, having an important bearing on the sub- ject, I have reached in order the main object of my Address.
It is remarkable that Switzerland, a few years ago, was called npon to pass through a crisis very similar to that through which the United States is now passing. As a Federation it is composed of Cantons of quite dissimilar religious faith and social tendencies. Some of them are Protestants and others are Romanists, and the political jealonsies which arise are apt to be intensified, if we may use the expression, by the antagonism of a deep religious ran- cor. On most questions, however, the Federal Diet would move along evenly enough if these causes of difference were not worked upon and fomented by dextrous, unre-
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lenting and bigoted bodies of men, particularly by that known as the Jesuits. In political ennning, recklessness and energy, they are not unlike the southern disunion leaders ; and they are like them, again, in the fact that for many years they were constant plotters of Secession .- They were always striving to arouse the prejudices of the Romanist cantons, until they should formally declare their separation from the others and from the general union.
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Nor were foreign influences wanting to aggravate the internal difficulties. The Pope afforded aid by intrigues, carried on through his Nuncios, who incited the ignorant mass. The secession party comprised the whole of that part of the population which, dwelling in wild and moun- tain districts, had not been affected by the improvements of the age. They resembled in these respects the great mass of the southern secessionists, who live apart from the civilizing influences of commerce and intellectual pursuits. Austria helped also, not by mere hints, but open threats of intervention. She supplied arms, ammunition, and even officers. The staff of the secessionists was chiefly composed of foreign officers. France, likewise, smuggled arms and ordnance stores into the disaffected districts .- All the governments with despotie tendencies, in fact, either openly or secretly supported the secessionists .- Even constitutional governments, with the exception of England, gave the national party the cold shoulder. Thus abetted, a Sonderbund, as it was called, assembled for de- liberation in May, 1846, and promulgated their Secession- ist Confederacy.
MEMBERS OF THE VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY and CITIZENS of the famed GREEN MOUNTAIN STATE, DE- SCENDANTS of the GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS who distinguish- ed themselves by their stern determination and intrepid enterprise in the times which tried men's souls, I shall
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endeavor, upon this occasion, to show you how another people, Sons of the Mountains, met the question of Seces- sion. They met it as I have no doubt you would have met it, as all RURAL Nowo Englund and RURAL New York would have met it, had they stood alone, fair and square, face to face, even as previons generations in the same dis- tricts asserted their rights on the fields of BENNINGTON and ORISKANY, STILLWATER (Bemus' Heights) and SARA- TOGA (Wilbur's Basin).
Before entering into any examination of historical oc- currences, or of military operations which have taken place in Switzerland, a few remarks are pertinent to cor- rect a popular error in regard to the defensibleness, per se, of that country, and, in fact, of any country presenting a similar physical aspect such as Western Virginia, Ten- nessee and Georgia. The plains of Italy and the levels of the Low Countries have been scarcely more fought over than the diversities and alternations of Switzerland. ZSCHOKKE, a German by birth but a Swiss by election, in his history of his adopted country, remarks that in its wars of the last 500 years, but particularly those growing out of the great French Revolution, "battle field tonched battle field ;" that " horse and man (contending) passed over the mountain tops, which the chamois hunter alone had reached before ;" that " in the valleys and on the summits of the mountains, on the lakes and above the clouds, the French and Austrians fought."
Surrounded by powerful, ambitious, and military mon- archies, Switzerland for centuries has been the "Valley of Decision," and the iron-heel of war has left its mark upon her snowy wastes, her vine elad slopes, her sunny valleys, and her romantic lake and river shores. From the sum- mit of every Alp, deemed accessible, seventy years since, to man, to the bottom of her defiles, there is scarcely a
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district that has not been drenched with the blood of na- tive and of foreign soldiery, recruited from almost every known region of Europe, Asia and northern Africa.
According to the hypothetical strategy of the newspa- pers and of the masses, positions in mountain ranges and mountainous countries, militarily occupied, are considered impregnable. Whereas it is a military axiom, established by the experience of all ages, that he who is master of the valleys is master of the mountains, for, although the mountains may not be susceptible of successful direct attack, they may be paralyzed by the cutting off of com- munications and conquered by blockade and famine .- This is indisputable except, in some rare cases, where mountain districts contain, or produce, within themely cs supplies of ammunition, food and forage .*
Perhaps the most remarkable instance of this is Fred- erie the Great's operations against the impregnable Camp of Refuge at Pirna, in Saxony, in 1756. Master of the communications and victorious over the Austrian army,
* This remarkable fact. so seldom considered .- that the possession or master- ship of the valleys determines the fate of mountains, -indicates the Rents or Garkes in the apparently invulnerable armor of an Alpine land. Through the Gaps ly which the torrent finds escape, the enemy finds entrance. They offer to il c invader breaches through which his columns can advance against the Peneiralia of Liberty. Even as the treacherous arrow of the Trojan Adulterer, Paris, fon.d its way, through the undipped heel, to the life of the otherwise invulnerable Achilles, even to the enemy finds access, by its Passes or Cole (depressions of the mountain crest lines into the interior of an elevated country), not ouly in arms but with the more fatal lures of trade and the blandishments of luxury.
The very Configuration of Switzerland and the disposition of its natural ramparts indicate, upon the map, the breaches through which its enemies have forced ihn ir way. It is least defensible towards the North and North-East. From those quar- ters the majority of the invasions have occurred. Happily for the Confederation its lofty barreu mountains inclose Inxuriant vineyards, meads and fields, furnishing vast sapplies for men and cattle. On the other hand the Protestants of Languedoc, who held at bay for years the vast power of Louis XIV, occupied a territory re- eembling Switzerland in its capabilities for defence, but not analogous in its interior features of productiveness. The War of the Cevennes demonstrated what a determined Few, although unprepared, can achieve, for a time, against the Many provided with all sufficient incans. There is a period, however, to all such efforts which is beyond the control of any WILL, however resolute. As long as they had
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seeking to relieve the Saxon forces, he compelled the latter to surrender at discretion, in about 37 days. Nev- ertheless Pirna, per se, was impregnable. We will see that the same rule has always held good with regard to SWITz- ERLAND, and that, throughout the history of the Confed- eration, its fate has not been decided on its rugged Alps or in its mountain Thermopyke's, bat in its gladsome valleys, those depressions which give access to the interior of the country, and are traversed by the main routes be- tween the capitals or chief towns o. the Cantons.
Strange it is, but still as true as strange, the ARTS OF WAR and the ARTS OF PEACE are subject to the same immutable laws of progress. WATER, WEALTH and WAR seek the same channels for their fertilizing : tredas or de- vastating floods. They equally shun the rugged heights and seek the fertile plains, for they are nmutually depend- ent. Battle fields invariably occur in localities which have the same relations to the Operations of War which towns or the sites of great fairs bear to the tides of Travel and Commerce. The result is that as Holland opposed dykes of granite, osk and concrete to the inreads of the
the means to support life. the Camisards of JOHN CAVAMER continued masters of their mountain fastnesses, and proved victorious against astonishing odds of men and material. When at length want obliged them to descend into the plains in search of supplies, they were overwhelmed by the disciplined masses of their roy- alist persecutors. Decisaated through the efforts and effects of their own valor. they were at length compelled to retreat. Close upon them followed death and desolation, for the King's forces laid everything in ruins and ashes as they ad- vanced. Thus a desert closed in upon the lugnenot heroes like the iron walls of the Italian tyrant : dil; diminishing dungeon, until, at last. all within the encom- pissing and converging colnains of the invader was crashed into submissive formless- ness in respect to rights or religion and to individual or general security. SCHAMYL, in like manner. as the Protestants of the Cevennes, found his Circassian strong. holds assailed by Russian armed floods surging up through the Circassian valleys which opened to the lowlands and to the sea, commanded by the Czaric fleets.
Just so, the Delnges of Asiatic barbarism which overwhelmed Eastern and Cen- tral Europe followed the levels of the rivers, and burst in upon Christianity and Civilization through the depressions of the border ranges, through which Com- merce had found lines of communication, proving that the Traffic and Strife. both bearing with them good and evil, in very unequal proportions however, tread the same tracks either to bless or bl st.
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ocean, so Switzerland dammed her valleys against the in- vasions of multitudinons enemies with ranks of iron men, so that it might be said of HELVETIA as of the SPARTA of AGESILAUS and the SWEDEN of the VASAS, "She did not defend her men with walls, but her walls with her men."
Although the swarthy crisp-haired veterans of HANNI- BAL picked and fought their way through the icy terrors of Mount Genevre (or the Little St. Bernard ?) ;-
Although the Emperor MAJORIAN, sounding the depths of the drifts with the staff of his lance, indicated, in mid- winter, the track for the march of his legions, fresh from battling with the savage Moors and Vandals, across the Graian Alps, to the conquest of Gaul, Spain and Africa ;-
Although FRANCIS I. tunneled the Monte Viso, far under its perpetual snow, deeming the very rocks less impervious than the ranks of their WALDENSIAN defenders, on his way to that " Combat of Giants," Marignano ;-
Although the veteran FREUNDSBERG threaded the hor- rible snow depths and yawning ravines of the Val Sabbia, at the head of that " Army of Vengeance" which repaid itself, with the accumulated gold of papal jubilees, for the spiritual tyranny and humiliations which Germany had experienced at the hands of the Popes ;-
Although PRINCE EUGENE transported " in a fearful and marvellous march," with the help of mechanical contrivances, his infantry, cavalry, and even artillery, through the frightful Val Suga and Val Fredda, hitherto deemed inaccessible, to rescue his patrial Savoy from the closing grasp of the French spoiler ;-
Although the Muscovites, under the barbarian StWAR- ROW, trampled the eternal snow of the St. Gothard and replaced the Devil's Bridge with trunks of trees lashed together with his officers' military sashes :---
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Although the Gallic demi-brigades of NAPOLEON trod into slush the everlasting snow of the Great St. Bernard, hurrying forward to his greatest victory, Marengo ;-
Although the exhilarating music of MACDONALD'S mili- tary bands excited his French divisions to charge the falling avalanches of the Splugen as if they had been columns of mortal adversaries : ---
Although I say from the days of the Curthuginian Arch-strategist to those of the Conqueror of Solferino, horse, foot, elephants, cannon and military equipages have fought their way, across the Alps, to victory, by the tracks of the hunter and the paths of the goat-herd ;-
Although cavalry and artillery have charged upon fields of ice, above the clouds, and answered, amid the mingled wreaths of vapor and powder-smoke, the electric batteries of nature with their batteries of human invention ;- yet
The fate of Switzerland has not been decided in her elevated mountain passes and upon her hoary Alps, but in her smiling valleys and along the shores of those lakes, which were alive with a semi-aquatic population, living in huts elevated on piles above their waters, anterior to the age of bronze and iron, and while her mountains were yet devoid of inhabitants.
In one respect, however, mountainous countries are impregnable. Territories, like those of the Swiss, are inexpugnable in the race of men which grow up amid the sublimity of their scenery. "Solitude," says the philosophic prose-poet, Dora d'Istria, "is the mother of great ideas." We add, Sublimity is certainly their father in minds susceptible of quickening.
The mountain race, endowed with vigorous minds in healthy bodies, seems everywhere gifted with an in- domitable resolution, as rugged and flinty as the rocks
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they have to climb and labor among in the pursuit o: their livelihood.
Moreover, just as we recognize an elevated region by its sturdy growth of peculiar timber, whether stunted or lofty, alike in their power of resisting the tempest, and by its hardy plants, characterized by their intense tenacity of life, just so a mountainous country is indicated by a stur- dy, courageous, athletic, well developed or close knit pop- nlation of liberty-loving, patriotic men.
During the American Revolution it was the moun taineers of Eastern Tennessee, South-Eastern Kentucky, and Western North, and South Carolina, who Slammed the tide of British conquest in the Southern provinces, al- though led by its ablest and boldest partizan, bull-dog FERGUSON. When the South Cardinian oligarchie chiv alry and its aristocracy, rich in human chattels, had entirely succumbed, it was the energy, sagacity and self reliance of the Mountain Men, accustomed to manual labor and exercised in their contests with savage beasts and still more savage men, which restored affairs and even hope, by their unexpected success, upon the bloodiest scene of Southern battle, the ever memorable Kings Mountain.
Just so, in this very State. Gentlemen, New Hampshire and Vermont troops, under the simple but intrepid Stark, ratified at Bennington, the great fundamental principle of government, that neither the Green Mountain region, nor any other region, should be the home of any but free-meu. The same spirit inspired the rough but patriotic ALLEN, when he laid his iron grasp upon Ticonderoga "in the name of the great .Jehovah and the Continental Congress." The same spirit, with its impulse as potential as the shrill note of the Abyssinian trumpet, styled the Cry of the
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Eagle, whose electric effect is dwelt upon by the traveller BRUCE, as marvellous to witness, aroused Vermont to arms at the commencement of the pending contest.
The Voice of the same Spirit, resounding through the . Green Mountains, as irresistibly as the appeal of the Mountain Horn or Bull of Uri, whose terrible roar re- sembled the bellowing of the enraged Grus, and of the hoarse Land Horn of Unterwalden,-whose signals struck terror to the enemies of Switzerland who had experienced their effects,-summoned together, and urged forth, under such leaders as JOHN WOLCOTT PHELPS, a magnificent array, exceeding in numbers the proportionate quota of your State, small in area and population, however great in virtues, a contingent, far more excessive in the quality of its soldiers, to fight the great fight of freedom, upon the soil, which the treason of a slavocrat-oligarchy sought to usurp and subject to the fatal influences of slavery,- hoping to build, there, upon the ruins of our free institu- tions, an aristocracy based upon their ownership in man.
Even as your lovely state is intersected by fertile val- leys, watered by such beautiful streams as the WINOOSKI, MISSISQUI, and WINTE. River, whose banks afford easy transit to the iron horse dragging long trains, freighted with the spoils of commerce and of agriculture, even so Switzerland is cleft and checkered by connecting depres- sions, the basins of its chains of lakes, gleaming like dia- monds or sapphires amid the cloud-crowned mountains, snow-capped peaks, elevations robed in ever verdant fol- iage, and glaciers spectral in their ice, when not glorious, like Iris, in the sunshine.
It is these very velvet pastures and rich meadows, bath- ed by the Swiss lakes and their tributaries, so dear to the tourist, the agriculturist and the herdsman, which have
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afforded fields of manœuvre and battle to the chivalry of the invaders, seeking to enslave their possessors. Upon such slopes and meadows, most of the Swiss battles of their wars of independence have been decided. Such depressions, alone, have offered stages for the vast conflicts, which have occurred from time to time, during the last 600 years, whence the thundering antagonism of the ar- tillery, reverberating through the encompassing moun- tains, have jarred loose the dreadful avalanches to respond with the still more terrible echo of their fall, to the roar of the contending hosts below. *
In the progress of our consideration of this subject- Swiss Secession-it appears to me that this would be the proper time, before proceeding farther, or entering upon the narrative of actual hostilities, to trace out the origin of the difficulty by a brief examination of the History of the Helvetian Republic.
The Swiss Confederation, born, 1291, in the Associa- tion of the Three Forest Cantons, on the Lake of Lucerne, grew, in 1352, to Eight by gradual aggregations. Bap- tised in blood and fire, to use a military expression, it already constituted, in the XIVth Century, a strong family of small republics.
These had gained over Austria a series of victories, whose parallels cannot be found in history. Still, al- though it had vanquished the empire, its arch enemy without, it could not overcome enemies almost as dan- gerous, although not so apparent, within ; the blemishes,
cruelties and vices of its interior administration. The tyranny of oligarchs had been permitted to succeed that of feudalism. Spiritual foundations still held the fortunes, rights, and what was far worse, the minds of their sub- ects in the fetters of superstition and ignorance. The
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terrible yoke of caste hung heavily upon the population, and nothing but the discipline, as it were, of a frontier post, exposed to the danger of attack at any moment, kept the different populations of Freedom's Citadel, in . Central Europe, from flying at each other's throats upon the least occasion. The exciting cause of disunion has ever been the same as that which lately stirred up Swiss SECESSION,-the intrigues of the Church of Rome, of its allies, of its affiliations and of its dependencies, in a word the ULTRAMONTANE OF REACTIONIST PARTY, not inaptly represented, in this country, by the SLAVOCRATS and their abettors.
In 1444, France succeeded Austria as the antagonist of Freedom and of the Cantons, and met with such a bloody reception at St. Jacob on the Birs, on the very threshold of the confederation, that, thenceforward, until her own great Revolution, the French rulers were willing rather to buy the amity than to provoke the enmity of the Swiss.
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