Stefano Franscini

Swiss statesman

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Born:: Oct. 23, 1796, Bodio, Switz.

Died:: July 19, 1857, Bern (aged 60)

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Stefano Franscini (born Oct. 23, 1796, Bodio, Switz.—died July 19, 1857, Bern) was a Swiss statesman and reformer whose maxim “Democracy is not so much respect for the vote of the majority as for the thought of the minority” expressed his faith in education and in the importance of public opinion.

Franscini was born into a peasant family in the canton of Ticino and in 1819 went to the seminary at Milan, Italy. At the age of 23 he became a teacher, but in 1829 he returned to Ticino, where he fought to set up a liberal regime (1830). He was secretary to the new government until 1848, when he became a member of the government of Switzerland, serving until his death.

In Ticino, Franscini did much for state education. As a member of the confederation he supported the establishment of a federal polytechnic and was the first to compile statistics in Switzerland. He educated himself on the works of Montaigne, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Melchiorre Gioia and was a liberal and humanitarian. He was the first to develop in the people of Ticino a sense of duty and a realization of the need to collaborate with the other Swiss cantons.

In La svizzera italiana (1837; “The Italian Swiss”), Statistica della svizzera (1827; “Statistics on the Swiss”), Annali del Canton Ticino (published 1953; “Annals of the Ticino Canton”), and numerous minor works, he showed himself to be a lucid and honest writer on political and social problems, often disappointed in the people whom he was trying to educate to a sense of impartial justice, but steadfast in his own love for his country.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Sonderbund

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Sonderbund

Swiss political organization

Also known as: Schutzvereinigung

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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German:: Separatist League

Formally:: Schutzvereinigung (Defense Union)

Date:: December 11, 1845 - 1848

Areas Of Involvement:: Roman Catholicism

Related People:: Constantin Siegwart-Müller

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Sonderbund, league formed on Dec. 11, 1845, by the seven Catholic Swiss cantons (Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Fribourg, and Valais) to oppose anti-Catholic measures by Protestant liberal cantons. The term Sonderbund also refers to the civil war that resulted from this conflict.

In 1841 the government of the Aargau canton decreed the dissolution of the Catholic monasteries in its territory, despite the fact that the Federal Pact (constitution of 1815) had guaranteed the monasteries’ property. The seven Catholic cantons in 1843–44 agreed that they would dissociate themselves from any canton disloyal to the Federal Pact, and in 1844 the Jesuits, whom 19th-century liberals detested, were invited to take charge of religious education in Luzern. This cantonal act, although constitutionally permissible, provoked widespread popular indignation, and a Bernese staff officer led bands of volunteers from Protestant cantons in an unsuccessful expedition against Luzern in the spring of 1845. The Catholic cantons’ subsequent formation of the so-called Sonderbund was even more vehemently denounced by the liberal and radical cantons.

In the summer of 1847, a reformist majority in the Swiss Diet voted for the dissolution of the Sonderbund, for the drafting of a new Federal Pact, and for the expulsion of the Jesuits. The Sonderbund, led politically by Konstantin Siegwart-Müller of Luzern, took up arms in November 1847 and appealed for help from abroad, but neither its military organization, commanded by Johann Ulrich von Salis-Soglio, nor its appeal were satisfactorily effective. The forces of the majority, ably led by Henri Dufour, took Fribourg on November 14 and Zug on November 21; they won a decisive victory at Gislikon on November 23, entered Luzern itself, the nucleus of the Sonderbund, on November 24, and subdued Valais on Nov. 28, 1847. The peace settlement of 1848 required the former members of the Sonderbund to pay 6,000,000 francs for the cost of the war and charged the cantons of Appenzell Inner-Rhoden and Neuchâtel 15,000 and 300,000 francs, respectively, as fines for having been neutral; a new constitution for Switzerland also was adopted. In 1852 the unpaid balance of the war costs was written off.