In the post-revolutionary period, people in the Ormont highlands did not take to the new ideas promoted by the likes of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and others. The ancien régime in Bern therefore curried favored with the population by exonerating it from taxes and granting it relative freedom, all the while protecting it from disaster. Little open to change, the people of the Ormonts had long resisted the Protestant reformation; hencefroth they dreaded the revolutionary violence raging in France and therefore took a dim view of the liberal ideas advocated by exiled residents from Vaud.

(Excerpt from press folder)