In the middle of 1794, during the Reign of Terror, Robespierre's grip on the revolutionary regime was at its tightest, although he soon succumbed to the guillotine when another faction came to the fore. This was no time for associates of the Girondins, like Williams, to be in Paris, and with the help of the man assumed to be her lover, John Hurford Stone, she fled to Switzerland. A Tour in Switzerland was not written until 1797, and was published a year later. By then, Williams was back in France and the country was under the more moderate regime of the Directory. As in her Letters, so in the Tour, Williams could look back and see the Reign of Terror as a dark, regressive episode in an otherwise enlightened process of revolutionary change, although it was popularly viewed as the worst excess of a bloody and violent period of French history.

While the chance to contextualize this period was one political motivation for the composition of the Tour, there was another reason. In 1797, what Williams in her Preface to the Tour would call ‘the electrical fire’ of revolution was about to release its ‘subtle spark’ and ignite its neighbour Switzerland (TS, 1, 4); Bonaparte (later emperor Napoleon) was about to invade. This was a timely moment to comment on the necessity for change in Switzerland. While she would join in the tradition of other published travellers to Switzerland by sketching its ‘sublime scenery’, Williams claims the originality of her Tour lies in her observations of the ‘present moral situation of Switzerland’ (TS, 1, 3) and a comparison with the present state of France. As we have seen in her poetry and her Letters, Williams was influenced by the ‘philosophical historians’ like Gibbon, Hume and Robertson, who were motivated to show the influence of customs and manners in shaping the fortunes of nations. The Tour is as much part of that tradition as it is part of a tradition of travel writing. Indeed, Gibbon wrote, but never published, two volumes of a history of Switzerland that celebrated the old Swiss struggle for independence. Gibbon was critical, though, of contemporary Swiss politics and the aristocratic republics. To some degree, Williams’ Tour completes Gibbon's projected history, outlining the fall of Swiss liberty but projecting its imminent return.