(Dufour ordered his troops to tend to the wounded, anticipating the formation of the Red Cross in which he participated years later) first Freiburg capitulated on November 12th then Lucerne on the 24th of the same month. The Federal Diet declared the Sonderbund unconstitutional in October 1847, it was ordered forcibly disbanded by General Guillaume Henri Dufour who led the federal army of 100,000 and defeated the Sonderbund forces under Johann Ulrich von Salis-Soglio in a campaign that lasted only a few weeks, from November 3 to November 29, and cost about 100 lives. This provoked a revolt, especially since the rural cantons were strongholds of Ultramontanism ( that is, those most affected by the law that has just been approved ) When Lucerne, in retaliation, recalled the Jesuits to direct his education later that year, groups of armed radicals (Freischärler) invaded the canton. The Sonderbund alliance was concluded after the Federal Diet headed by the Radical Party government obtained approval for a bill (against the Catholic Church) from the majority of the cantons, among the various clauses of the law we find acts such as the closure of monasteries and convents in Aargau in 1841, and seizure of their properties. A little something, just the basics of how it started, The Sonderbund War of November 1847 was a civil war fought to decide whether Switzerland should remain a relatively free political confederation or centralize and strengthen the federal government at the expense of the autonomies of the cantons.īeginning after seven Catholic cantons governed by conservative administrations, formed the Sonderbund ("separate alliance" : composed of the cantons Lucerne, Freiburg, Valais, Uri, Schwyz ,Zug and Unterwalden ) in 1845 to protect their interests against a centralization of power and a strongly anti-clerical policy by the ruling radical party ( supported by the majority of Protestant and liberal Catholic cantons of Ticino and Solothurn ).
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