ABSTRACT
In the midst of the argument over Guillaume Henri Dufour's appointment, the Diet had taken another major step toward war. Nor would he permit the pressure of anti-Sonderbund sentiment to affect the spirit in which he wished to see the war conducted. But in 1847, Fribourg's chief attraction for Dufour was that it made a logical first target for his campaign against the Sonderbund. As for the War Council's plan to attack Basel, Dufour shrugged it off. "Ils n'oseront pas," he said—"they won't dare, and besides, Ziegler is there." In addition, the Sonderbund's War Council, as soon as it had word of Dufour's impending operations against Fribourg, had prepared plans for an attack in the direction of Basel to divert the enemy's forces. And planning the war largely in terms of campaigning against the three principal cantons only—Fribourg, Lucerne, and the Valais—rather than against all seven was an inspired decision as well.
