Conflicts & Resolutions · War

Sonderbund War

1847 · 19th century

The Sonderbund War was a brief civil war in Switzerland in November 1847, in which the federal army under General Guillaume-Henri Dufour defeated the Sonderbund, a league of seven Catholic cantons, in under a month and with roughly a hundred dead. It was the last armed conflict on Swiss soil, and its outcome cleared the way for the federal constitution of 1848 and the modern Swiss federal state.

Sonderbund War
Image: Translation by User:Sandstein, original by Marco Zanoli (Sidonius) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Mentioned in 2 profiles

Old Swiss ConfederacyDeclineSwiss ConfederationMilitary, Governance, Summary

Mentioned in 1 state history

Swiss Confederation

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Sonderbund War. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/sonderbund-war
MLA
“Sonderbund War.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/sonderbund-war. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Sonderbund War.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/sonderbund-war.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Sonderbund War’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/sonderbund-war (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻