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Certain portions of Upper Alsace, lands on both sides of the Rhine, Thurgau, Argau in Switzerland, Breisgau, and some other seigniories in the Black Forest were under his sway. These particular domains were so remote from Innsbruck that the authority of the hereditary overlord had long been eluded. The nobles pillaged the land near their castles very much at their own sweet will.
Even if the imbedded fossil shells of the loess had been lacustrine, instead of being, as we have seen, terrestrial and amphibious, the vast height and width of the required barrier would have been fatal to the theory of a lake: for the loess is met with in great force at an elevation of no less than 1600 feet above the sea, covering the Kaiserstuhl, a volcanic mountain which stands in the middle of the great valley of the Rhine, near Freiburg in Breisgau.
What was done more or less in secret is now proclaimed on the housetops, and the result, as might be expected, is in many ways interesting and instructive.* * Die Jesuiten an den deutschen Furstenhofen des 16ten Jahrhunderts. Auf Grund ungedruckter Quellen. Von Bernhard Duhr, S. J., Freiburg im Breisgau, 1901.
And how in that same year Duke Albrecht met with a bloody end, such as befell no King or Emperor of the Germans before or after him, at the hands of Duke John, his nephew, whose inheritance he had kept back, and other conspirators; and what vengeance overtook the murderers; and how Duke John, escaping in the habit of a monk into Italy, was no more heard of, but became a shadow forever, like the rest of them; and how, eight years afterwards, came the expedition of Duke Leopold of Austria against the Waldstätte, and the fight at Morgarten, where the Swiss, thirteen hundred mountaineers in all, Wilhelm Tell among them, routed twenty thousand of the well-armed chivalry of Austria, dating from that heroic Thermopylae of theirs the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy, as, larger and perhaps not less resolute, we see it to-day, ready to defy, if need be, single-handed, the greatest military nation of the earth; and how, thirty years afterwards, the men of Schwyz and Uri go forth, nine hundred strong, among them Tell, and Werner Stauffacher, now bent with years, to the aid of Bern, threatened by the nobles roundabout; and how, in 1332, was formed the league with Lucerne, whereby the beautiful lake gets its name as the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons; and how, one sultry July day in 1386, the men of Schwyz and Uri and Unterwalden, together with other Swiss, some of them armed with the very halberds with which their fathers defended the pass at Morgarten, fought again their hereditary enemy, Austria, by the clear waters of the little Lake of Sempach; how, when they saw the enemy, they fell upon their knees, according to their ancient custom, and prayed to God, and then with loud war-cry dashed at full run upon the Austrian host, whose shields were like a dazzling wall, and their spears like a forest, and the Mayor of Lucerne with sixty of his followers went down in the shock, but not a single one of the Austrians recoiled; and how at that critical, dreadful moment, for the flanks of the enemy's phalanx were advancing to encompass them, there suddenly strode forth the Knight Arnold Strutthan von Winkelried, crying, "I will make a path for you! care for my wife and children!" and, rushing forward, grasped several spears and buried them in his breast, a large, strong man, he bore the soldiers down with him as he fell, and his companions pushed forward over his dead body into the midst of the host, and the victory was won, and another book was added to the epic story of the men of Schwyz and Uri and Unterwalden; and how Duke Leopold fell fighting bravely, as became his house, and six hundred and fifty nobles with him, so that there was mourning at the Court of Austria for many a year, and men said it was a judgment upon the reckless spirit of the nobles; and how Martin Malterer, standard-bearer, of Freyburg in the Breisgau, happening to come upon Leopold as he was dying, was as one petrified, and the banner fell from his hands, and he threw himself across the body of Leopold to save it from further outrage, waiting for and finding his own death there; and how this ruinous contest between Switzerland and Austria was not finally closed till the time of Maximilian, in 1499, when first the right of private war was abolished in Germany; and how, through the various fortunes of the succeeding centuries, the character of the Swiss has remained for the most part the same as in the earlier time: these things one may read at large elsewhere; but we hasten to the conclusion.
"Courage, Father Joseph, Breysach is ours!" whispered Richelieu in the ear of the Capuchin, who had long held himself in readiness to be despatched into that quarter; so delighted was he with this joyful intelligence. Already in imagination he held Alsace, Breisgau, and all the frontiers of Austria in that quarter, without regard to his promise to Duke Bernard.
The Hapsburgs recognized the independence of the now enlarged Cisalpine Republic. France and Austria agreed to frame a treaty of commerce on the basis of "the most favoured nation." The Emperor ceded to the dispossessed Duke of Modena the territory of Breisgau on the east of the Rhine.
Now he turned away from the Reformers more decidedly than the old theologian himself, became more and more violent in his enmity to them and their cause, and like Erasmus, though two months earlier, left Basel, which had become hateful to him, in order to settle as an academical teacher in the still Catholic University at Freiburg, in the Breisgau.
"Courage, Father Joseph, Breysach is ours!" whispered Richelieu in the ear of the Capuchin, who had long held himself in readiness to be despatched into that quarter; so delighted was he with this joyful intelligence. Already in imagination he held Alsace, Breisgau, and all the frontiers of Austria in that quarter, without regard to his promise to Duke Bernard.
The ill success of the French arms in the Netherlands had cheated the activity of operations in Alsace and Breisgau; but in 1638, the war in that quarter took a more brilliant turn.
French artillery stationed in the vicinity of Nieuport cooperated to shell the German coast batteries at Westende. In retaliation for the bombardment of the open towns of St. Dié and Gérardmer by German aeroplanes, a French aeroplane squadron assailed the railroad and military establishments of Freiburg in Breisgau.
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