Caricature of Henri Druey as Louis Napoleon · BARRICADES PROJECT

Object Title

Caricature of Henri Druey as Louis Napoleon

URL

https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/004313/2022-03-10/

Description

Henri Druey was a lawyer and politician in the Swiss canton of Vaud, created under French occupation during the revolutionary wars, but preserved by the Congress of Vienna. He was educated n the 1820s in a number of European cities and returned to the Vaud where he quickly attained political office. He was a defender of popular sovereignty, but also saw the need for stronger federal state institutions.
When the Canton of Lucerne decided to re-admit the Jesuit order and give it control of their educational provision there was widespread protest in other cantons. The Vaud legislature took the position that , if Lucerne had agreed to it, that was their right. Druey was initially drawn to that position, but rejected it because he saw the decision as emanating from an elite, with it being difficult (for all the claims of popular sovereignty) for the people to object to the decision given that only a majority of the whole electorate (not merely those voting) could challenge a decision of the council.
The Vaud did not follow Druey’s position, and on 2 February 1845 it mandated it’s delegates on the Federal Diet to vote against the expulsion of the Jesuits. With rising popular feeling in Vaud against the Jesuits, conflict broke out on 14 February 1845. A substantial Lausanne crowd forced the resignation of the Council, with Druey and radical colleagues from the Council joining the crowd. In an impromptu constituent assembly a provisional government was formed (including Druey) to act until the election of a new Grand Council and until a Council of State was approved. The new constitution gave much greater weight to direct democracy in the canton, and the canton was declared to be a democratic republic. Druey was named President of the Executive Council of State.
In effect this was a successful popular coup, producing a revised constitution, and with Druey going on to become a leader on the Executive Council of the Swiss Republic.
He also (uncharacteristically for a politician) expressed the hope that caricature would take off in the Swiss context, responding to a new Swiss satirical journal: “The tendency of the Charivari is radical, without any doubt, it also supports the unlimited sovereignty of the people in constitutional matters, and it attacks the doctrinaires, the Methodists and the new aristocracy. Its weapons, like that of newspapers of this kind, are ridicule, jokes, satire. It is a kind of imitation of the French Charivari, but it does not have as much mind, nor the same political tact. It is to be hoped that this will come, because this kind of newspaper is one of the needs of the time [...]. Indeed, he even seemed to admire a caricature of himself as Louis Philippe that appeared in La Guêpe in 1851.
Caricature is often a weapon of the weak and an irritant for those in power, but while Druey approved of it in the first sense, there is little sign that he thought it objectionable. In that tolerance he exemplified his deep egalitarian and populist beliefs and his commitment to the development of an open public sphere.

Contributor

Mark Philp

Spatial Coverage

Vaud, Switzerland

Temporal Coverage

1845

Date

1845