THE struggle between the believers in Papal Infallibility and their opponents, which to-day divides all Central and Southern Europe into two hostile camps, is by no means the new thing that it is the fashion to believe. No doubt the Vatican Council and its uncompromising decision have given Ultramontanism a more definite form, and its adversaries a clearer war cry. But Ultramontanism, with all its present aims, belief, and teaching, existed thirty years since as a political power. Its restless spirit of aggression, concentrated at that time in a country that seemed especially open to assault, first broke the stillness of the long peace that followed Waterloo, and gave astonished Europe the spectacle of war on a great scale-one altogether unknown to the greater part of the then living generation. Switzerland, now recognised within and without as one and indivisible for all political ends, was in 1847 little better than a heterogeneous mass of separate states, each governed by its own laws, and following its own customs, and in great part regarding the cantonal authority as something more sacred than that of the Federation, and the union in which they were bound as one rather of common convenience than of binding obligation. The views of a large section of her citizens were in fact politically identical as regarded the question of State or Federal government with those of the Virginians who in 1861 were driven, sorely against their personal will, to decide for immediate secession or permanent federation, and to whom loyalty to Virginia, and the cause she espoused, seemed a more sacred tie than allegiance to the side of the majority resolved to uphold the Union by force of arms. It is true that the question

1 From the posthumous Campagne du Sonderbund, by the late General Dufour. (Pub.

of the institution of slavery, long sanctioned but at last openly assailed, was not present, as in America, to force on a contest. But its place was fully supplied by the activity of the Catholic party, which, hopeless of imposing its will on the Federal Diet, aimed to create a smaller Switzerland of its own, where the true religion might hold its sway unchecked.

For years past this party had been seeking domination by means of winning particular cantons. Its followers could command but eight of the twenty-five cantonal administrations that exist: the twenty-two cantons being thus enlarged in practice by the separation into two for all administrative purposes of Appenzell, Basle, and Unterwald. They had struggled hard for the mastery in others which were more divided; but a sharp defeat in St. Gall had now come to range that powerful canton against them in the Diet, and made it certain to contain a majority of their avowed opponents. The Jesuits, though nominally proscribed, had been not only present, but as usual especially active in the cause of Rome, and had drawn upon themselves a more than usual share of the obloquy their policy has so often had to bear in civil strife. And it is hard to say whether the open introduction of the Order by the Catholics of Lucerne, or the sudden suppression on the other side of all conventual establishments by the Protestant majority in Aargau, acted more powerfully in heating the passions already raised. The Catholic cantons finally, after much discussion of the oppression with which they declared themselves threatened, came to the resolve of forming a Sonderbund or "separate confederacy" of their own, able to guard its own interests if the Diet declared against them. Lucerne, Friburg, Valais,

accordingly concluded a private treaty for joint offence or defence. They even began to arm their militia, and raise works on the most exposed parts of their frontiers. They formed a common council of war, and named secretly the commanders who were to head their joint contingents. In fact they took measures, just as the Southern members of the Washington cabinet did before Lincoln was sworn in, designed to put them ahead of their adversaries before the National Council met. And though probably enough their leaders were honestly desirous to avoid the appeal to arms, they hardly expected to be able to do so when their deputies left them to meet at Berne; whilst a large part of their people were anxious for open struggle, believing themselves at once the supporters of a just cause, and the fit representatives of the heroic Switzerland of old days, and quite strong enough to hold their own by force against the rest of the Federation, made up as this was in great part of modern aggregations, as Geneva, the Grisons, and Neufchatel, which had had no share in the glories of the olden struggles of the land for freedom.

Nor was their belief altogether presumptuous, despite a great numerical inferiority. It is true that the most extensive of all, the Valais, was cut off from the rest of Switzerland by the Bernese Alps, and could only influence the cause of a struggle remotely, unless it took the field singlehanded at the first, with extraordinary promptitude. Friburg also, large, civilised, and powerful, was yet an isolated canton, divided from its proposed allies by the whole width of Berne, stanchly Protestant in faith and bound by every tie to the Federation, which had made it the chief state, and the seat of the government. But the other five lay clustered together in the very heart of the Republic. Schwytz gave its very name to the once warlike and still proud Federation. Uri, Unterwald, Zug, and Lucerne joined it round the historic "Lake of the Four Forest Cantons,"

selves, though the fair sheet of water takes its ordinary name from the last only. If true to each other, their happy situation, with easy water communication to aid it, must surely enable them to divide the scattered forces of the outlying cantons, and should open war come, to beat them in detail. Old associations, joint interests, and common pride in a history unstained by defeat: all these, now lit up by religious fire, seemed to promise the ardour and endurance that lead to success. Mindful, however, of the fact that their cantons included a large Protestant population, the leaders of the movement from first to last strove to give it a political aspect, and to impress on all that listened to them that it was a constitutional, and not a religious struggle. The Jesuit question was admitted to be the actual point of rupture; but this was represented throughout the seven cantons as merely a test chosen to see how far the Government of the Federation would attempt to override its members; and for this reason, more than for his actual reputation, the general, Salis, whom they named as their chief commander, was himself a Protestant.

By the 21st October, 1847, the rupture within the Diet had gone so far that it became plain both sides were resolved on the appeal to arms. The deputies of the Sonderbund were still indeed present at Berne, But they now openly repudiated the dictation of the majority as to any of the internal affairs of the cantons, and their friends at home were busy arming and drilling the 40,000 men whom they boasted of having ready to defend the new confederacy. The Diet therefore voted the rather longdelayed step of naming its general for the coming contest: an act of the highest importance in that constitutionally governed country, for it created an entirely new set of functions and powers outside the ordinary machinery of administration. Switzerland has no general to her army under ordinary circumstances. Indeed the title is strictly reserved for one or two distinguished men

mander-in-chief in the field. Her militia forces, whether embodied for training or not called out, are left to the sole charge, so far as the Federation is concerned, of a Minister of War, who may be a civilian. Discipline is administered chiefly through the inspectors of the various arms, and the so-called Federal staff has very limited duties and powers. But when once a Commander-in-chief is appointed in such an emergency as that which arose in 1847, his powers may be said to be supreme, being exercised unquestioned over men and material so far as they exist; and even financially he is subject to little of the control which often checks such officers in other states, his responsibility ceasing after the crisis has passed away. It is, in fact, taken for granted that the Republic does the best and wisest thing for the time by choosing out the citizen fittest to save it, and then committing its fortunes absolutely to his hands. Such a choice is therefore doubly momentous. In this case it assumed plainly that civil war was imminent, a war for separation or union; and it left the question of the future integrity of the Federation to be settled practically by the judgment and genius of a single soldier.

No councillors ever made a wiser selection than those who unanimously voted Guillaume Henri Dufour of Geneva to this high office. There were other ex-officers of the old Napoleonist army in Switzerland who had seen more of war than he; for his actual service under fire had been confined to the single sea-engagement off Corfu where he fell, desperately wounded, into British hands. But he was one of those soldiers who, wherever placed, direct their whole energies to a profession that to most seems thankless during long peace. He had become known all over Europe by his works on military engineering and tactics. And he was at least as much a patriot as a soldier or author. fellow-citizens at Geneva had admired the self-abnegation which led him, on the separation of the canton from France after Napoleon's fall, to refuse the step offered him by the new Government in

His

his old service, and to resign his commission, not from any political antipathy to the Bourbons, but on the simple ground that having now become a Swiss citizen (for Geneva had fallen to the Federation), his duty was to Switzerland. and not to France under any ruler, were it emperor or king. He had devoted himself to his new duty on being charged with the organization of the local militia, with as much zeal as though he had been named to lead some newly-formed corps in the Grand Army. And the devotion had been rewarded by his being taken into the service of the Federation for similar objects, but with larger means; so that he formed a military school of such excellence as to draw admiration from regular soldiers of all armies, and framed a system of training and discipline for the Republican militia on which Switzerland still relies. Its true praise is that those who have come after him believe that they have but to perfect what he roughly framed in order to solve one of the greatest political problems of modern times, the power of defending a nation by arms without maintaining a standing army. Pure, unselfish, of true republican simplicity in habit and thought, with large views on foreign policy, but abstaining systematically from the domestic differences that distracted his country, this worthy soldier was as well qualified by nature to meet the storm of revolution in council, as he was by the close professional training pursued systematically ever since he entered the Ecole Polytechnique as an unknown student forty years before, to guide masses of men to the field.

"If we must come to the last extremity," he wrote in his letter to the Diet, accepting the trust laid on him, "I will never go beyond the limits of moderation and humanity. I shall not lose sight of the fact that the action is between fellow-citizens of a Federation. I shall discard all political excitement, and confining myself exclusively to my military duties, strive to maintain order and discipline among the Federal troops, to cause public and private property to

be respected, to protect the Catholic religion in the persons of its ministers, houses of worship and religious establishments; in a word, do all that in me lies to soften the inevitable evils of war."

Four days later the Diet expressed its full confidence in its new general by calling out a levy of 50,000 militia, and confiding them absolutely to his authority.

Although one or two of the cantons hesitated at first, like the border States of America in 1861, to respond to the appeal, others armed supplementary battalions to support the cause of union in addition to their prescribed contingents; so that in a short time more men were actually under arms than the levy required. This somewhat complicated the task of the necessary organization into brigades and divisions; but whilst this work went forward under Colonel Frey, his zealous and active chief of staff, Dufour himself laid out the scheme of his campaign. It has been pointed out that the Sonderbund was geographically divided into three separate parts; that known as the Waldstetten or Forest Cantons, comprising the five cantons lying round or near Lake Lucerne, and Friburg, and the Valais; which last two lay each separate from its allies. Dufour had first to consider the assembly of the six divisions in which he collected his army; and he distributed their head-quarters partly with a view to the convenience of gathering them together rapidly, and partly to occupying certain points where the agents of the Sonderbund had been busy stirring up disaffection, or calling at least for neutrality in those cantons that voted against them in the Diet. But coming military exigencies were also borne in view. And so the First Division, collected in and on the north of Lake Geneva, cut Friburg off from the Valais on the other side of that lake. Second Division formed in Berne, and chiefly on the side of Friburg, served to separate that state from the Forest Cantons. The Third, Fourth, and Fifth,

The

Zurich, all faced towards the Forest Cantons, and were soon apparently ready to enter them by a concentric movement. The Sixth was outside all immediate operations, being formed in the outlying cantons of the Grisons and Ticino. Dufour's cavalry was collected in the open country about Solothurn, behind the three divisions formed to threaten Lucerne and its neighbours. Although so much enthusiasm was shown in certain cantons, the order to form these divisions showed a serious falling off from the Diet; for Neufchatel and the Inner Appenzell declared that they would remain neutral in this war of brothers. And at the same time the need of action was more apparent than ever, for on learning the preparations making to sustain the Federal authority, the deputies of the Sonderbund quitted the Diet in a body, declaring that they threw on the majority the responsibility of the war forced on them. On the 4th of November the final decree of Federal execution was resolved on by the majority that remained. It ordered the dissolution of the rebellious Confederacy by force of arms; and that the General of the Diet might not lack the needful force, the whole of the cantonal reserves which had been assembling locally by brigades, in their respective districts, were now added to the active army, and so passed under his orders, doubling at a word the numbers at his disposal.

The unknown and obscure men who ruled at Berne understood the task before them, as will appear later, much better than President Lincoln did fourteen years afterwards, when he called out 75,000 three-months' volunteers to put down a Confederacy which had tenfold the strength of the Sonderbund. Yet it would be rash to conclude from this their superiority to the American President, or to condemn utterly his want of foresight, and that of his adviser, Seward, whose diplomacy abroad was founded on the same delusion as Lincoln's call to arms. What may be safely affirmed is, that neither of these American statesmen had the innate genius which en