In the early morning of Friday 26 April 1816, after a Channel crossing which had lasted sixteen hours, Lord Byron landed in Ostend. He was heading for Switzerland, and more particularly for Geneva. For many of us now, Geneva is where the United Nations meet or where the very rich, who prefer not too much scrutiny into their financial affairs, keep their bank accounts. In 1816 its reputation was rather different. Although the town had only very recently become an official member of the Swiss confederation, it benefited from the warm feeling which had existed in Britain towards Switzerland in the late eighteenth century. Here was a conglomeration of small states, none of them very wealthy and all of them poorly resourced, which had fought for their independence and then heroically defended it against much more powerful neighbours. What made this feat seem especially impressive was that it had been achieved while those states (or cantons) continued to maintain a limited system of representative democracy. For the British, Switzerland was the only other country in Europe whose government was non-autocratic. This was why its invasion by the French revolutionary forces in 1798 had been such a shock to the liberal-minded. Looking back on that event, both Wordsworth and Coleridge identified it as the moment when their faith in the French Revolution finally collapsed. Byron was still then a boy, and he would never totally abjure revolutionary principles, but for him too Switzerland had high symbolic value.

However much they might admire Switzerland in general, the reason that many of Byron's compatriots had a special feeling for Geneva had little to do with politics.