CASUALTY RECORD // May 17, 1798
French invasion of Switzerland
Estimated casualties — killed, wounded, captured, and missing — by side, with confidence labels per surviving record.
Casualties by side
1 sides catalogued · combined 1,798 estimated
Confédération suisse (« Confédération des XIII cantons »)
1,798
Medium-confidence figure
Battle context
The French invasion of Switzerland, conducted from January to May 1798, ended the existence of the Old Swiss Confederacy, a political entity that had maintained independence through the preceding centuries. Combined with simultaneous internal revolts constituting the Helvetic Revolution, the invasion produced the collapse of the Swiss ancien régime and the abolition of its institutions. In their place, France imposed the centralized Helvetic Republic, organized as one of the sister republics subordinate to the French First Republic. Within the broader French Revolutionary Wars, the conquest secured France's southeastern flank and extended the revolutionary state-building project into Alpine territory, demonstrating that French forces and internal revolutionary movements could together dismantle established confederal structures. Swiss resistance, mounted by a force roughly half the size of the French army, resulted in nearly 1,800 recorded casualties on the confederate side before organized opposition collapsed.
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