OCHSENBEIN, ULRICH

born Nov. 24, 1811, Schwarzenegg, Switz. died Nov. 3, 1890, Bellevue, Bern in full Johann Ulrich Ochsenbein Swiss politician and military leader who headed the confederation government during the Sonderbund War (1847) and presided over the constitutional reform committee of 1848. An ardent Bernese radical, Ochsenbein organized and directed an abortive military coup against the clerical government of Luzern (March 1845), precipitating the formation by Roman Catholic cantons of a conservative defense league, the Sonderbund. At Bern he championed the revision of the cantonal constitution (1846) and headed the department of the army. As president of the Bernese government (1847), he simultaneously presided over the confederation Diet during the proscription of the Sonderbund (July 1847) and the initial phase of the subsequent civil war. Through FebruaryApril 1848 Ochsenbein headed the committee of constitutional revision that directed the reorganization of the federal system, and later that year, in the new bicameral Diet, he presided over the Nationalrat (national assembly). Failing subsequent reelection to the Diet (1851, 1854), he retired briefly to France (1855), to which he was to return again in 1870 to command a French contingent in the Franco-Prussian War.