All over Switzerland throughout the 18th century the tight grip exercised by the narrow-based ruling groups was liable to be challenged. The ruling circles clamped down hard on any threat to their power.

Probably the best known rebel was Major Davel (1670-1723), a lawyer and former army officer. In 1723 he presented a manifesto to the authorities in Lausanne, calling for an end to Bernese domination and for Vaud to become the 14th canton. He was arrested and executed. The Davel affair made little impact at the time: it was only in the mid-19th century that the people of Vaud started to regard him as a hero.

A few years later, in 1749, the so-called "Henzi Conspiracy" aimed to widen the circle of people entitled to wield political power in Bern. Its leader, Samuel Henzi (born 1701), and two co-conspirators were executed. Henzi enjoyed some fame at the time as a writer and satirist, and the case was noted even beyond the borders of Switzerland. The leading German dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing used Henzi's story as the basis for a play.

Luckier than these two, since he was executed only in effigy (in 1735), was the noted Genevan military engineer, physicist and cartographer Jacques-Barthélemy Micheli du Crest (1690-1766), who came from one of the families entitled to a seat in the city's ruling council. His crime was to have allied himself with the petty bourgeoisie in criticising controversial plans for building fortifications for the city. He was forced into exile, and although he escaped execution in Geneva, he spent the last quarter of his life imprisoned by the Bernese for the minor role he played in the Henzi conpiracy.