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Updated: June 29, 2025
Thereupon the Emperor waxed wroth; the ban was laid upon them by Hermann, Bishop of Constance; but they withdrew, nevertheless, from the protection of the Empire, and Uri and Unterwalden with them, fearing neither the Emperor nor the ban, for they could not conceive how it was a sin to maintain the right, and so they pastured their cattle without fear.
The people of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, notwithstanding the dislike they had shown to his ancestor, voluntarily appointed him their protector; and he gave them, in 1274, the firm assurance that he would treat them as worthy sons of the Empire in inalienable independence; and to that assurance he remained true till his death, which happened in 1291, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.
Of the Swiss communities Uri seems to have first established its freedom within the empire, and in that canton liberty was most completely preserved from the perils that always threatened Switzerland in this period. Under Rudolph it was at first the policy of the empire to secure the attachment of the Swiss by making the two other cantons, Schwyz and Unterwalden, similarly independent.
The prison at Uri was captured, and Landenberg also, as he descended to hear mass, by twenty men from Unterwalden; but, escaping, he fled across the meadows from Sarnen to Alpnach, where he was overtaken and made to swear that he would never set foot again in the Waldstätte, and then suffered to depart safely to the King.
Then the King of France received twenty thousand men from the cantons with whom he was allied; maintained himself in Italy, and gave to the three cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, 1502-1503, the districts of Palenza, Riviera, and Bellenz. But, as soon as the King thought he could do without the Swiss, he paid them badly and irregularly.
In German, Wolfenschiessen a young man of noble family, and a native of Unterwalden, who attached himself to the house of Austria and was appointed Burgvogt, or seneschal, of the castle of Rossberg. He was killed by Baumgarten in the manner and for the cause mentioned in the text. Literally, the Foehn is loose!
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.
But Anthony zer Pot, of Uri, cried to his men to strike with their halberds on the shafts of the spears, which he knew were made hollow to render them lighter, and, at the same time, Arnold von Winkelried, a knight from Unterwalden, devoting himself for his country, cried out: 'I'll open a way for you, Confederates! and, seizing as many spears as he could grasp in his arms, dragged them down with his whole weight and strength upon his own bosom, and thus made an opening for his countrymen to penetrate the Austrian ranks.
But, when almost in despair, the tide of battle was turned by the acts of a single Swiss soldier, Arnold Winkelried, of Unterwalden. He communicated his plan to his immediate neighbors, and then, rushing forward, he grasped as many of the Austrian spears as he could reach; and, gathering them together, he bowed to the ground with the spears buried in his breast.
Deering was forced to accept the nomination for treasurer by this feeling of the unanimity and genuineness which pervaded each succeeding action, and when the vote was called, and the men thrust their hands in the air and shouted, they had something of the same feeling that lay at the heart of the men of Uri, and Unterwalden, and Schwyz when they shouted their votes together in the valley with the mighty cordon of guarding mountains around them.
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