120 LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 



Middle Ages the inhabitants had a master. Divided, generally, by rocky 

 barriers into separate communities, the people are in a degree united by 

 the beautiful lake of the Forest cantons. These people, from the ear- 

 liest records, have been, and are now, poor and pastoral. They form the 

 democratic cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Untervvaldeu, the nucleus of 

 Swiss confederation. As early as the twelfth century they had a repre- 

 sentative at the court of the Emperor of German}^, then the titular sov- 

 ereign of Switzerland. Eudolph of Habsburg, whose castle was near 

 the confluence of the Eeuss and the Aar, the father of the founder of 

 the house of Austria, was elected the representative of these peasants, 

 and subsequently the family claimed the dignitary to be hereditary. 

 This claim was never admitted, and to its impolitic enforcement by 

 Albert of Habsburg, accompanied by circumstances of peculiar indignity 

 on his own part, and of great cruelty and oppression on the part of his 

 bailiif Gessler, was owing the revolution headed by Tell and his com- 

 I)anions. 



In pursuit of these same hereditary rights, Frederick of Austria, with 

 his armies, entered the Forest cantons by their mountain passes, deter- 

 mined to overrun and crush them. He was successfully resisted at the 

 pass of Morgarten by one thousand three hundred men, and nine thou- 

 sand of his troops perished in this defeat. Thus was developed that 

 fierce military spirit which has led the Swiss of every age to acts of the 

 most devoted heroism. 



From their wars with the dukes of Austria, the Swiss came out in 

 1412 with eight cantons recognized as independent. The appetite for 

 war had been whetted by this successful resistance to oi^pression, and 

 was carried to its height by the defeat of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, 

 and of his magnificent troops, at Grandson and at Morat. The spoils 

 of these great armies suddenly enriched the people. Labor was neg- 

 lected and fell into contempt, and the profession of arms alone consid- 

 ered worthy occupation for a Swiss. The nation was for a time debased 

 by a mercenary militar}^ spirit, and it required two centuries of blood- 

 shed to impress the lessons necessary to their regeneration. The wars 

 of the Eeformation gave the last of this series of unhappy lessons, and 

 at their close left the several cantons confirmed in their attachment to 

 the same churches in behalf of which they had expended to no purpose 

 their blood and treasure. In 1712 the confederation had attained nearly 

 its present limits, but some of the present cantons were held as trib- 

 utary provinces by the others. The Swiss spirit of former days burst 

 forth when republican France began to proselyte by force of arms, and 

 the constitution of the new Helvetic republic was presented at the point 

 of the sword, and enforced by its edge. While the cantons of the plain 

 were held by the French armies, pleasantly occui)ied in appropriating 

 the savings of the aristocrats, and in giving liberty to the people by 

 depriving them of their independence, the Forest cantons dared to 

 declare that they had been free since the days of Tell, and Melchthal, 



