Léman was also one of the five cantons — purely administrative subdivisions — of the Rhodanic Republic planned in March 1798 by the French general Guillaume Brune.

Following the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1789, Frédéric-César de La Harpe (at that time the tutor to the children of Tsar Paul I of the Russian Empire) began to plot a Vaudois uprising from St. Petersburg.

La Harpe was a republican idealist, seeing the rule of the Bernese administration as oligarchical, and as an infringement of the natural rights of the people of Vaud and the other subject states, such as Fribourg.

[2] The citizens of Pays de Vaud reacted to the French announcement with excitement and declared the creation of the Lémanic Republic.

France replied by immediately sending portions of André Masséna's army under an officer named Mesnard from Italy to occupy the southern shore of Lake Geneva.

However, the messenger did not have the password[clarification needed] and two of the hussars of the aide-de-camp's escort were shot by a Bernese outpost stationed a few miles from Yverdon.

[4] The Bernese government called for military support from the other cantons of the Confederation and replaced Weiss with Erlach von Hindelbank, but the aristocrats of Bern quickly fell to squabbling among themselves.

While he had declared on 22 February that the French came as friends and bearers of freedom and would respect the property of the Swiss citizens, in Bern he emptied the treasuries and magazines.

On 10 and 11 March he sent off eleven four-horse wagons full of booty, nineteen banners, and three bears (which they nicknamed respectively Erlach, Steiger, and Weiss).

[5] In January 1802, patriots (unitarians) from several smaller cantons met in Aargau to find ways to ensure the revolution of 1798 was not undone by the federalists and started plotting a new coup for spring 1802.

[6] These efforts were apparently driven by several of the members of the tribunals who had been replaced following the 1800 address, like Claude Mandrot or former cantonal judge Potterat.

The sub-prefect of Cossonay noted that the raid had been conducted by a large number of people and that they had taken the time to sort through the archives, taking all deeds and administrative papers of value but leaving all family records in place.

[8] Although March remained otherwise calm, rumors of an insurrection planned for early April began to circulate, and while Polier's warnings were mostly unheeded by the government of the Helvetic Republic, additional French troops were stationed in the most agitated districts.

Kuhn found himself faced by an estimated 3,000 of Reymond's insurgents, against whom he had a contingent of only 400 French troops at his disposal, some of whose officers were said to be sympathetic to the Vaudois cause.

Kuhn was instructed to reject the insurgents' demands, but on his return to Lausanne, he promised a general amnesty and the abolition of all feudal taxes on his own authority.

Deprived of the military support from France, the unpopular government of the Helvetic Republic was defeated in Bern on 18 September 1802 and fled to Lausanne.