pains to impress on his hearers how much Swiss interests were bound up with those of France. There was no mistaking his meaning, which, to do him justice, he did not attempt to conceal. The members of the Conference, whom Napoleon treated all through with marked distinction, were quite alive to the danger threatening their country, but trusted that some turn of the wheel might avert it. After this parley the Consul redrafted the Mediation Act, and presented it in person on the 19th of February for signature, afterwards taking leave of the whole deputation. La Harpe gained for the Swiss the countenance of the Emperor Alexander, and Prussia and Austria were engaged in a territorial squabble, and no interference took place. An epoch of peace and prosperity followed the general amnesty (April 15, 1803) granted by the Mediation Act. The period of quiet was broken only by the Bockenkrieg in 1804, a rising in which an attempt was made by the country folk of the Zurich Canton to stand against the unredeemed land rents and tithes still due to the city.[94] The insurrection was put down by force.[95] Six new cantons were formed by the new Act--Bünden, St. Gall, Thurgau, Aargau, Vaud, and Ticino; and these were added as equals to the thirteen _Alte Orte_, the management of its own affairs being granted to each. The liberal principles inaugurated by the "Helvetic" were to a great extent borne in mind, though the lower orders were still excluded from direct political representation. Mercenary wars, military movements, and leagues between separate cantons, were strictly forbidden; but so, also, was forbidden the maintenance of a federal army, save a small force to maintain order, and thus the country was robbed of adequate means of defence. Freiburg, Bern, Soleure, Basel, Zurich, and Lucerne, became in their turns managing or dictatorial cantons for one year at a time. That is, they were the seats of the Diet, and their chief magistrate--schultheiss or burgomaster, as the case might be--became Landammann. To the larger cantons, _i.e._, those having not less than one hundred thousand inhabitants, two votes at the Diet were assigned, to the smaller, one vote. It is not necessary to go into more minute details here, as there are numerous constitutional changes to be noted between that period and the year 1874.