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Updated: June 29, 2025
But the Swiss would not give up their freedom; and three cantons, as the divisions of Switzerland are called, joined together, and swore to stand by each other, and never to submit to Austria. Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were the names of these three cantons. A little later another canton joined the three. These four cantons lie round a lake which is called the Lake of the four Forest Cantons.
The flower of the Austrian chivalry perished on the field of Morgarten, beneath the halberts, arrows, and iron-headed clubs of the shepherds. Leopold, himself, though he succeeded in gaining the shattered remnant of his forces, had a narrow escape, while the Swiss, animated by victory, hastened to Unterwalden, where they defeated another body of Austrians.
If we are to receive the Gospel, which teaches liberty among brethren, then will we also become our own masters, an independent canton like Unterwalden and Uri. The Provost, who did not know how to resist them, fled with a few friends to Bern, where, for a decent maintenance, he surrendered the monastery along with its domains and privileges into the hands of the Council.
Nearly opposite Brunnen is the meadow of Grütli, where the union of the Swiss patriots took place, and the bond was sealed that enabled them to cast off their chains. It is a little green slope on the side of the mountain, between the two Cantons of Uri and Unterwalden, surrounded on all sides by precipices.
In complaints against the abolition of their pilgrimages, the inhabitants of the Bernese Oberland joined with their neighbors of Unterwalden. Pastoral races are very tenacious of old customs. If these be taken away their respect for law is often shaken at the same time. The government of Bern had to experience this.
Still, they afford us the necessary key to a right understanding of the part played by him in the affairs of the Confederacy, during the last two years of his life, and hence we cannot omit here the main ideas. "In ancient times," so he writes, "Zurich and Bern united as confederates with the Four Forest Cantons, Luzern, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden.
At that period, the thirteen cantons of the Swiss Confederacy were not yet, as now, equal in virtue of the bond, nor bound together directly by one and the same covenant. They were properly united only with the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as with a common centre, but among themselves by special treaties.
Opposite, green with steep grass, and set with châlet villages, the Fron-Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of the Unterwalden pine.
And if this ring, so goes the saying, can be lifted off its hook, then the marriage, which was not a happy one, will be annulled." "Then I will annul it," said Andrea. "I will break the bonds as my fathers broke the bonds which bound my poor country to the tyrants of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden." "Are you not a Swiss, yourself ?" asked the magistrate severely.
He made no effort to reimpose local governors on the people of the Waldstaette, but, on the contrary, confirmed the charters of Schwyz and Uri, granted one to Unterwalden, and acknowledged jurisdiction.
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