The Sonderbund War
Henri Dufour statue, Geneva© julia slater / swissworld.org
The Sonderbund was ended by a quick and almost bloodless war in November 1847. The federal troops, led by the conservative Henri Dufour, were anxious to move quickly before the European powers could intervene. The main battle took place at Lucerne. After the federal victory there the other Sonderbund members surrendered.
Alarmed at the liberals' success, the conservative regimes in France, Austria and Prussia warned Switzerland not to change its constitution unilaterally. But fortunately for the Swiss, a wave of revolution swept through all its neighbours at the beginning of 1848.
By the time the European situation had clarified, the Swiss federation was too firmly established for the conservatives to be able to turn the clock back.
- Dufour is best remembered for his successful generalship during the Sonderbund war, but he was also an outstanding mathematician, engineer and cartographer. His background was modest: both parents were craft workers.
- As a young man he was responsible for the embankment of the waterfront in Geneva and helped design the world's first permanent wire-cable suspension bridge there in 1823. In 1838 he founded the Federal Office of Topography (still the office responsible for map production) and it was under his direction that the first complete topographical map of Switzerland was published in 1865 to international acclaim.
- Switzerland's highest mountain, Dufour peak (4634 meters/15,199ft) bears his name.