 The aristocratic Ancien Régime had been weakened severely during the Napoleonic Wars, when the Confederacy had been a French satellite state.The episode of the Helvetic Republic, short-lived as it had been, had instilled democratic ideals in the population.The restauration of the Ancien Régime after the end of the Napoleonic era proved to be only temporary, until Switzerland became a federal state in 1848 when its first democratic constitution was passed.