The calm was shortlived: once Napoleon himself was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, the democratic, federal balance in Switzerland collapsed. The 1815 Congress of Vienna reasserted old patrician privileges throughout Europe, not least in Switzerland, where aristocratic families regained control over local and federal politics. Geneva, Neuchâtel and Valais entered the Swiss Confederation as new cantons, and Bern was granted the Jura as compensation for its losses in Aargau and Vaud. For fifteen years, the political situation simmered, until street fighting in Paris in 1830 sparked in Switzerland the Regeneration, a similar movement of liberalization. This led to seizures of power around the country by united bands of peasants, urban merchants, and craftspeople, who drew up cantonal constitutions enshrining equality and political rights for all – rural and urban alike – and instituted democratic elections to the cantonal governments. In 1831, the patricians of Basel condoned a localized civil war, and the division of the formerly unified canton into two antagonistic half-cantons, rather than surrender any of their powers to radical activists.

Despite ongoing political conflict, Switzerland was nonetheless enjoying an economic boom. Manufacturing industry had slowly been mechanized from the turn of the century but, unlike in Britain – the only country in Europe to be more industrially advanced – Switzerland experienced no rush to the cities by an impoverished proletariat. Swiss factories, where they existed, were in rural areas, and drew their labour from the local peasantry, who often came to work after tending to their herds in the fields. Cottage industry, where textiles were processed or watches assembled by individuals working in their own homes under contract from urban suppliers, remained a mainstay of Swiss economic development. The piecemeal, individual-driven Swiss textile industry was efficient enough to stave off competition from Britain’s “dark satanic mills” throughout the first half of the century. In addition, new – and diverse – fields of expertise in chemical production, chocolatemaking and tourism boosted national confidence and the image of the country in the eyes of the world. Internal religious conflict, however, was again rearing its head.