On 17 October 1802 Lord Hobart wrote to Major-General Villettes in Malta, to the Governor-General in India, Marquess Wellesley, and to Major-General Francis Dundas, the acting governor of the Cape of Good Hope, instructing all three men that the process of restoring the status quo ante bellum in Malta, at the Cape, and in the French Indian posts should be suspended. Until then the British government’s policy had been, albeit lethargically, to implement the peace terms agreed at Amiens, an attitude reciprocated by the French, who operated with equal lethargy. But in September and October 1802 it seemed to the British that the French policy of extension and exploitation in Europe had moved up a gear, though in fact in most cases it was simply that processes long in train had finally come to a resolution. In Germany at the beginning of October the Diet at Regensburg had at last formally appointed the Deputation to discuss the implementation of the secularisation changes, and the Franco–Russian mediation had effectively imposed those changes on the Deputation, a fact which implied a great extension of French influence eastwards. In September Piedmont had been annexed to the French Republic, an annexation which followed that of the island of Elba, and the duchy of Parma continued to be occupied by the French when the Habsburg duke died in October. There continued to be a French force also in Holland, despite the clause in the Treaty of Lunéville providing for its withdrawal, and in Tuscany French occupation continued even though a new Bourbon king had been installed there; in both of these cases the occupation forces were financed and supplied from local sources. But what seems to have triggered the British colonial action in the immediate term was a crisis which developed in Switzerland.

It is in a way curious that, of all the territories into which French power had been exported, or was intruding, it should be Switzerland into which the British government most actively intervened. Of them all, Switzerland – the Helvetic Republic – was the most remote from Britain, for the others were of much easier access.