200 year anniversary of the Helvetic Republic, but to allow individual cantons to celebrate if they wished. Act of Mediation The Swiss Confederation was re-established as a result of the Act of Mediation issued by Napoleon Bonaparte on 19 February 1803 in the aftermath of the Stecklikrieg. The period of Swiss history from 1803 to 1815 is itself known as Mediation. The act abolished the previous Helvetic Republic, which had existed since the invasion of Switzerland by French troops in March 1798. After the withdrawal of French troops in July 1802, the Republic collapsed (Stecklikrieg). The Act of Mediation was Napoleon's attempt at a compromise between the Ancien Régime and a Republic. This intermediary stage of Swiss history lasted until the Restoration of 1815. In 1803 Napoleon's Act of Mediation partially restored the sovereignty of the cantons, and the former subject territories of Aargau, Thurgau, Vaud, and Ticino became cantons with equal rights. Likewise, the Three Leagues, formerly an associate (Zogewandter Ort) but not a full member of the confederacy, became a full member as the canton of Graubünden. The city of St. Gallen, also historically an associate of the confederacy, along with its own former subject territories (and with those formerly belonging to the Abbey of Saint Gall) became a full member as the canton of St. Gallen, for a total of nineteen cantons. In contrast, the territories of Biel, Valais, the former Principality of Neuchâtel (the later canton of Neuchâtel), of the Bishopric of Basel (the later Bernese Jura), and of Geneva did not become part of the Swiss confederacy until the end of the Napoleonic era. With Napoleon acting as a mediator and declaring that the natural political state of the Swiss is a Federation, the Act of Mediation dissolved the Helvetic Republic and addressed many of the issues that had torn the Republic apart. It restored the original Thirteen Cantons of the old Confederation and added six new cantons, two (St Gallen and Graubünden or Grisons) having been formerly associates, and the four others being made up of the subject lands conquered at different times — Aargau (1415), Thurgau (1460), Ticino (1440, 1500, 1512), and Vaud (1536). The Act of Mediation consists of nineteen separate constitutions for the nineteen sovereign cantons, ordered alphabetically, followed by a "Federal Act" (Acte Fédéral, pp. 101–109) detailing mutual obligations between the cantons and provisions for the Federal Diet. In the