CHARACTER AND MANNERS OF THE TYROLESE. 129 



in 1809, to rise unanimously against the Frencli dominion. The 

 enemies whom they were about to encounter, were the same 

 troops with whom they had maintained many severe contests in 

 the former wars. The power whom they fearlessly attacked was 

 the power before whom they had seen all the monarchies of Eu- 

 rope successively bow ; and beneath the weight of whose arms, 

 even the gigantic might of Russia had been constrained to bend. 

 When the peasantry of Tyrol flew to arms, they knew well the 

 perilous and desperate service on which they were entering. 

 Every man took leave of his family, and his friends, as of those 

 whom he would probably never meet again. They prepared 

 themselves, after the pious manner of their country, for what they 

 deemed a holy warfare, by the most solemn rites of their religion. 

 The priest in every parish assembled those who were to join the 

 army, and animated them by his exhortations, and blessed those 

 who might die in defence of their country. Every family assem- 

 bled together, and prayed, that the youths who were to leave it 

 might support their good name in the hour of danger, and die 

 rather than dishonour their native land. In many instances even 

 the sacrament was administered, as for the last time in life, and 

 accompanied with the solemnities which the Catholic church en- 

 joins for the welfare of a departing soul. It was with such holy 

 rites, and by such exercises of family devotion, that those brave 

 men prepared themselves for the fearful warfare on which they 

 were entering ; and it was the spirit which they thus inhaled that 

 supported them when they were left to their own resources, and 

 enabled them, even amidst all the depression arising from the de- 

 sertion of their aUies, and famine among themselves, to present 

 an undaunted front to the hostility of combined Europe. 



It was 2i singular and extraordinary circumstance, with what 

 unanimity, and how simultaneously the insurrection began over 

 every part of the country. The tidings of the Austrians having 

 crossed the Inn, and of a corps approaching the Tyrol, had no 

 sooner reached the frontier, than it was conveyed, with almost 

 magical celerity, to the remotest valleys. Everywhere the inhabi- 

 tants, without any concert among themselves, took up arms, and 

 marched at the same moment towards the chief towns of the dis 

 tricts in which they were placed. The Austrian authorities, charg- 

 ed with organizing the insurrection in their course up the valleys, 

 met the different corps of peasantry descending with the fowling 



