The Sardinian general who claimed to have "fought alongside Napoleon" soon took over from Dufour as commander-in-chief of the Free League.
Dufour had been thrown in prison on multiple charges, including squandering a chance to strike, to await trial after the war. That was only because Joseph Loei had fought to secure him some leniency.
During the previous war, Dufour had executed so many deserters that quite a few of them had influential connections. Their families naturally seized this chance to kick him while he was down.
Among those deserters had been officers who had refused to advance against the enemy.
Yet Joseph Loei knew Dufour was innocent. Dufour himself had not wanted to take part in the war; it was Joseph Loei who had asked him to come out of retirement.
So Joseph Loei did everything he could to save Dufour. He might have escaped the death penalty, but he would not escape punishment altogether; life imprisonment or exile was inevitable.
Meanwhile, the two states that had surrendered, Fribourg and Zug, could no longer hold out. The Church and the Legitimists had already been stripped of nearly all their property, and the common people had been squeezed dry.
Joseph Loei knew it was time to find new sources of revenue, so he turned his sights on Aargau and Saint Gallen.
Although these two cantons had sided with the Free League before the war began, they were not Liberal Cantons, and there was plenty of fat to be skimmed from them.
Aargau and St. Gallen resisted fiercely. The Church held sway over St. Gallen's leadership, but their objections came to nothing. St. Gallen and Aargau were liberalized, and forced to shoulder the crushing burden of the war alongside Zug and Fribourg.
But oppression always bred resistance, especially among the people