VOL. LXVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ]1 



besides many considerable honours and privileges in the empire, a grant of the 

 supreme authority in this country, by the investiture of the office of hereditary 

 president or bailiff over all Rhaetia. His successors not only enjoved this pre- 

 rogative to the extinction of the Carlovingian race of emperors in Ql I, but re- 

 ceived accumulated favours from other succeeding monarchs, as the bigotted de- 

 votion of those times or motives of interest prompted them. And so far did 

 their munificence gradually extend, that the sole property of one of the 3 leagues 

 was at one time vested in the hands of the bishop. This prelate and the nobles, 

 the greatest part of whom became his retainers, availed themselves, like all the 

 German princes, of the confusion, divisions, and interreigns which frequently 

 distracted the empire in the succeeding centuries, in order to establish a firm and 

 unlimited authority of their own. Henceforth the annals of this country fur- 

 nish us with little more than catalogues of the bishops and dukes, who were 

 still, at times, nominated by the emperors ; and of the domains granted out by 

 them to different indigenate families ; with accounts of the atrocious cruelties 

 exercised by these lords over their vassals ; and with anecdotes of the prowess of 

 the natives in several expeditions into Italy and Palestine, in which they still 

 voluntarily accompanied the emperors. The repeated acts of tyranny exercised 

 by those arbitrary despots, who had now shaken off all manner of restraint, at 

 length exasperated the people into a general revolt, and brought on the confede- 

 racy ; in which the bishop and most of the nobles were glad to join, in order to 

 screen themselves from the fury of the insurgents. The first step towards this 

 happy revolution, v/as made by some venerable old men dressed in the coarse 

 grey cloth of the coinitry, who in the year 14'24 met privately in a wood near a 

 place called Truns, in the Upper League ; where, impressed with a sense of their 

 former liberties, they determined to remonstrate against, and oppose the violent 

 proceedings of their oppressors. The abbot of Dissentis was the first who 

 countenanced their measures ; their joint influence gradually prevailed over seve- 

 ral of the most moderate among the nobles ; and hence arose the League which, 

 from the colour of its first promoters, was ever after called the Grey League : 

 which, from its being the first in the bold attempt to shake off the yoke of 

 wanton tyranny, has ever since retained the pre-eminence in rank before the 2 

 other leagues ; and which has even given its name to the whole country, whose 

 inhabitants, from the circumstances of their deliverance, pride themselves in the 

 appellation of Grisons, or the grey ones. From this period nothing has ever 

 affected their freedom and absolute independence ; which they now enjoy in the 

 most unlimited sense, in spite of the repeated efforts of the house of Austria to 

 recover some degree of ascendancy over them. 



From this concise view of the history of the Grisons, it appears, that as no 

 foreign nation ever gained any permanent footing in the most mountainous parts 



c '2 



