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It is very noticeable that for the first few years after 1791 Bräker shows much more interest in what was happening on the international scene than events in Switzerland itself. One possible reason for this is that the fortunes of France had a direct influence on economic conditions in Switzerland, and hence on Bräker's own business ventures and the question of how to put food on his own table. Newspapers were heavily censored in their reporting of Swiss news, but were more liberal where reports of foreign news were concerned.

The French-speaking areas of Switzerland were the first to move towards revolution, and the German-speaking north-east was among the last, while the central "Forest cantons," which had formed the earliest Confederation in the thirteenth century, resisted to the end. Many Swiss people opposed the Revolution right from the start: the cantonal governments, privileged citizens in towns, officers in foreign service and the churches (especially the Catholic church). Support for the Revolution came from well-educated men of the Enlightenment generation, in the cantonal capitals and country towns, from businessmen in rural areas and later, from the peasants. The supporters of the revolution were able to produce a flood of propaganda out of all proportion to their numbers, but it worked on grievances already in existence, mostly economic in character but including others such as intolerance in religious matters.

Bräker was aware of the abuses of power in the quasi-colonial government of the Toggenburg, but dreaded the violence and disunity that revolution might bring, He also shared the general negative attitude of the Enlightenment towards giving power to the mass of the people, and seems to have regarded the revolutionary leaders as self-seeking and self-aggrandizing. Like the majority of Swiss, he did not relish having revolution forced upon his nation by a foreign army. He writes at times of wishing to partake in a heroic defence of his homeland, yet when some people did resist the change of government, he writes that the "poor cowherds" should have known that they could not take on the French army and win. When his own life and the last stages of the revolution were drawing to a close, he was resigned to the inevitable and hoped, with his habitual optimism, that some good would eventually emerge from the chaos.

1792 aged 56

Voellmy [v 2 pp 10-11] records that in 1792 Füssli published extracts from Bräker's diary of 1779-82. A further volume was projected but never published. The early part of Bräker's diary, rather too full of "religious observations of a pietistic nature", had had a cool reception in Germany, and possibly Füssli also "shrank from bringing to light the economic and political content of the later diaries in which the man from Toggenburg expressed himself so boldly". Voellmy, however, thinks that Füssli may simply have found the later diaries were less interesting, and owing to pressure of other work, have lacked the time needed to select and edit Bräker's writing. Bräker was short of money in the 1790s and often suggested that Füssli might buy more of his writings but Füssli put him off.

The author's preface to this edition of the diaries [Voellmy, v 1 pp 12-13] shows very clearly how much Bräker had changed, and knew he had changed, since he began his diary in 1768.

"[I ...] often had it in mind to wander out into the wide world and preach repentance to other sinners. But gradually I recollected myself sufficiently to resolve, for the time being, to work only for the salvation of my particular homeland, and so to write a thick volume of penitential sermons for our Tockenburg. But at last my plans shrank right down to the modest project of furnishing a written admonition to myself and my family. In the composition of this admonition I now took all imaginable pains (almost as much as over the content itself) to scrawl the thing down on paper right prettily. For I fancied that no letter could be fine and well crafted enough, to represent worthily the elevated and weighty thoughts which my spirit had brought forth [...]"

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