ON PLAIN AND PEAK 



till when, at the head of 4,500 men, he had attacked 

 and routed the Bavarians, not till when, with his 

 peasant army, he had carried Innsbruck by storm, 

 that the secret of the conspiracy leaked out. 



There is nothing that shows the devotion of the 

 Tyrolese to their Emperor more than the story 

 of that insurrection. Austria, utterly routed at the 

 battle of Austerlitz, lay at the feet of Napoleon, and 

 Tyrol had been handed over by him to Bavaria, the 

 vassal of France. 



But the spirit of the mountaineers was uncon- 

 quered. For three years indeed they had groaned 

 under the Bavarian yoke. But during that time 

 the Austrian Emperor had never ceased encourag- 

 ing the idea of a rising ; and Andreas Hofer, a 

 plain, honest, God-fearing peasant, the landlord of 

 a village inn, had been summoned to Vienna to 

 consult with the Government on the best means of 

 carrying it out. The Emperor's own brother had 

 told the peasant leader that Austria would never 

 lay down her arms until Tyrol was once more freed 

 from the hated Bavarian rule; and the "good" 

 Kaiser Franz himself had assured his faithful 

 Tyrolese that he would never be a party to a peace 

 that did not restore their country as a part of the 

 Austrian Empire. Little wonder that the simple 

 peasants trusted such promises ! 



Hofer had two trusty lieutenants in Haspinger, 



222 



