On October 29th the Sonderbund deputies offered to dissolve their league, but only on conditions which were equivalent to a concession by the other side of all the claims to assert which the league had been formed, and on the rejection of these terms by the majority, they left the Diet, Bernard Meyer, the deputy from Lucerne, calling upon God to decide between them. “You had better not speak of God,” exclaimed the deputy from Catholic Solothurn; “this business is not His, but the Devil’s work.” On November 4 the Diet finally resolved that the Sonderbund be put down by force of arms, that the frontiers of the seceding cantons be occupied, and all intercourse with them be broken off. The command of the Federal forces had been entrusted to Colonel William Henry Dufour, of Geneva. Switzerland possesses no standing army; but every able-bodied man goes through military training, and there is a permanent staff of superior officers, on which Dufour held the post of Quartermaster-General. He was now sixty years old; and though in his youth he had served in the French army during all the time of Napoleon’s great campaigns, and risen to the rank of captain, he had seen no active service, having passed those stirring years as an engineer-officer in the island of Corfu, which for most of the time was blockaded by the English fleet. When Geneva became part of Switzerland, in 1815, he transferred his services to the Confederation, and gained a considerable reputation as a student and teacher of military science. He was also at the head of the Commission which from 1833 onwards was engaged in the production of the finest map of any country which up till then had existed--the Ordnance Map of Switzerland. Only a few days before he had remarked to one of his officers that it was lucky for them both that their duties would prevent them from taking an active part in the conflict! As the result showed, no better man could have been chosen. On October 25th he received the rank of General, and took the oath of office as Commander-in-Chief. In a few days he had under his orders a force of nearly 100,000 men and 174 guns. The Sonderbund leaders had been unable to find a commander among the citizens of the seceding cantons. Their choice finally fell upon Colonel Ulrich Salis-Soglio, of Chur in Graubünden. Like Dufour, he was an elderly man, but had had the advantage of actual military experience. He had served in the Bavarian army during the Leipzig campaign, and had distinguished himself at the battle of Hanau. For twenty-five years he had been an officer in the Swiss regiment in the Dutch service. He is described as a man of charming manners and chivalrous courage; but by no means Dufour’s equal as a strategist. Curiously enough he was a Protestant. The Sonderbund forces amounted in all to about 78,000 men and 72 guns. He commanded only the forces of the “Forest Cantons” and Zug. General Maillardoz commanded in Fribourg, General Kalbermatten in Valais.