Nothing daunted by this rebuff, and, adopting a device which the First Consul had invented for the benefit of Dutch liberty, the Bernese leaders declared that the 167,172 adult voters who had not voted at all must reckon as approving the new order of things.

The flimsiness of this pretext was soon disclosed.

The Swiss had had enough of electioneering tricks, hole-and-corner revolutions, and paper compacts.

They rushed to arms; and if ever Carlyle's appeal away from ballot-boxes and parliamentary tongue-fencers to the primaeval _mights of man_ can be justified, it was in the sharp and decisive conflicts of the early autumn of 1802 in Switzerland.

The troops of the central authorities, marching forth from Berne to quell the rising ferment, sustained a repulse at the foot of Mont Pilatus, as also before the walls of Zuerich; and, the revolt of the federals ever gathering force, the Helvetic authorities were driven from Berne to Lausanne.