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STAUFFACHER. In Unterwalden yonder 'tis the same; And bloody has the retribution been. The imperial seneschal, the Wolfshot, who At Rossberg dwelt, longed for forbidden fruits Baumgarten's wife, that lives at Alzellen, He wished to overcome in shameful sort, On which the husband slew him with his axe. FURST. Oh, Heaven is just in all its judgments still! Baumgarten, say you? A most worthy man.
And she is there strongly besought to join the Zurichers, now promptly rising in self-defence. But Bern, for some time back, had been endeavoring, principally through Luzern, to bring Unterwalden into a more peaceful humor. She had not yet put any troops under arms, and had received information from the Five Cantons that they too would not be the first to do it.
Charles rejected all overtures, and on the third of March the brave little Swiss army sallied against us, "heralding their advances by the lowings of the Bull of Uri and the Cow of Unterwalden, two enormous instruments which had been given to their ancestors by Charlemagne." God was against Charles of Burgundy, and his army was utterly routed by one of less than a fourth its size.
A few years ago the surface of the Lake of Lungern, in the Canton of Unterwalden, in Switzerland, was lowered by driving a tunnel about a quarter of a mile long through the narrow ridge, called the Kaiserstuhl, which forms a barrier at the north end of the basin. More important slips occurred at Fesiolo on the shore of Lago Maggiore in 1867 and 1869, and on the Lake of Orta in 1868.
There is a remarkable scarcity of anything like fine-grown, timber; the underwood is luxuriant enough, especially where the mountain laurel abounds; but in ten thousand acres of stunted firwood, you would look in vain for any one tree fit to compare with the gray giants that watch over Norwegian fiords, or fit to rank in "the shadowy army of the Unterwalden pines."
Flying appeals went out at the same time from Zug. First, volunteers hastened thither; then came the militia of Schwyz, of Uri, of Unterwalden the latter well armed and particularly eager for war. Messengers were despatched to Waldshut and Feldkirch for Austrian aid. The Zurichers halted at Cappel. A declaration of war was also made against the Five Cantons.
This led to tumults and violence, and finally to civil war between the different cantons, those which adhered to the old faith being assisted by Austria. Lucerne, Uri Schwytz, Zug, Unterwalden took the lead against the reformed cantons, the foremost of which was Zurich, where Zwingle lived. Zurich was attacked.
From small beginnings, the Confederation of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden grew, by the addition of other communities, until it reached its present proportions, of twenty-two Cantons, in 1815. Lucerne was the first to join; then came Zurich, Glarus, Zug, Bern, etc. The early Swiss did not set up a sovereign republic, in our acceptation of the word, either in internal or external policy.
We are told how, at a critical moment in the great battle of Sempach, when the Swiss had failed to break the serried ranks of the Austrian knights, a man of Unterwalden, Arnold von Winkelried by name, came to the rescue.
They made it a condition of assistance to the Emperor Friedrich in 1231, when he went down into Italy to fight the Guelphs, that he should deprive this Rudolph of the office of Imperial Bailiff; and then they went forth, six hundred strong, and did famous work against the Guelphs, with such fire in them that the Emperor not only knighted Struthan von Winkelried of Unterwalden, but gave that valley a patent of freedom, according to which the Schwyzers voluntarily chose the protection of the Empire.
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