Ulrich Ochsenbein

The cantonal act by the seven Catholic cantons, although constitutionally permissible, provokes widespread popular indignation.

Ulrich Oschsenbein, a thirty-four-year-old Bernese staff officer and ardent radical, leads bands of volunteers from Protestant cantons in an unsuccessful expedition against the clerical government of Luzern in March 1845.

Switzerland's deep religious divisions lead in December 1845 to the formation of a secret separatist defensive league of Roman Catholic cantons known as the Sonderbund, comprising Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Fribourg, and Valais.

Constantin Siegwart-Müeer, the coalition's strongman, presides over the Sonderbund as head of the war council.

This act is a violation of the Federal Treaty of 1815, Section 6 of which expressly forbids such separate alliances.

The formation of the Sonderbund (German Separatist League; formally Schutzvereinigung [Defense Union]) is even more vehemently denounced by the liberal and radical cantons.

A reformist majority in the Swiss Diet, representing the other cantons, declares the Sonderbund, an alliance of seven Catholic cantons, to be incompatible with the Federal Pact and demands its dissolution in July 1847.

It also votes for the drafting of a new Federal Pact, and for the expulsion of the Jesuits.

Ulrich Ochsenbein, as president of the Bernese government, simultaneously presides over the confederation Diet during the proscription of the Sonderbund and the initial phase of the subsequent civil war.

Ulrich Ochsenbein heads the committee of constitutional revision that directs the reorganization of the federal system through February and April 1848, and later this year, in the new bicameral Diet, he presides over the Nationalrat (national assembly).

Kern joins with Henri Druey of Vaud in drafting a new federal constitution modeled after that of the United States, which is established in 1848.

Sovereignty is divided among the cantons and the federal state.

Representatives to the federal government are elected either by a majority of the country's population or by the canton, thereby providing national representation for the small cantons.

A common foreign policy is finally possible.

In addition, the state now regulates customs, currency, weights and measures, and the postal service.

It also provides for the protection of the rights and liberties of all citizens and for the promotion of the national welfare.

With political stability, the Swiss can now spend a greater portion of their time and efforts developing industry, agriculture, and communications.

The Swiss Confederation reconstitutes itself as a federal republic on September 12, 1848.

One of the successes of the Revolutions of 1848, the Swiss Federal Constitution, patterned on the United States Constitution, enters into force, creating a federal republic, and one of the first modern democratic states in Europe.

Few lives had been lost in the twenty-five-day civil war, making reconciliation relatively easy.

The peace settlement of 1848 requires the former members of the Sonderbund to pay six million francs for the cost of the war and charges the cantons of Appenzell Inner-Rhoden and ...

...Neuchâtel fifteen thousand and three hundred thousand francs, respectively, as fines for having been neutral.