We exchanged here the seeming poverty of the canton Fribourg for the air of happiness and riches peculiar to this. The peasantry appear a civil and kindly race. The females wear dark dresses and black velvet caps, whose broad wired lace worn far back from their sunburnt faces looks like the outspread wings of a hornet. The entrance to Berne is not on this side (that of the plain) striking. A long avenue leads to a handsome gate flanked by two modern bears; for the bear is omnipresent. Armed cap-a-pie on the column of one fountain, on another standing as esquire beside the figure of Duke Berthhold, forming a procession on the clock-tower, which in his time guarded the outer wall, marking in effigy the butler at the inn, and in propria persona inhabiting the town ditch outside the Aarberg gate, where four of the fraternity live on (alas!) diminished revenues, for the property bequeathed them towards the close of the last century by a bear-loving old lady, and which, it is said, had accumulated to 70 millions of francs, was seized by the French in ’98, and with the remainder of the town-treasure, and the bears themselves led away captives, were transported to Paris. In insult to the conquered, the animals received fresh names, and the new one of each was inscribed on his travelling caravan, being that of a magistrate of Berne!
It was in 1191, when the great barons of the Alps and the most powerful lords of Burgundy leagued their forces against Berthhold the Fifth, lieutenant of the empire, either, historians say, in hatred of his equitable administration, or in jealousy of his still increasing sway, that he inclosed as small towns various villages for his own and his vassals’ security; and seeking out another spot under the protection of the imperial franchise, equally distant from all his enemies, and unsuspected by his partizans, he chose a hamlet called Berne, built on a peninsula formed by the rapid Aar, when it rushes from the lake of Thun; and, about a month after he had defeated the leagued lords in one of the high valleys, surrounded it with a ditch and walls. Many knights and nobles took up their residence there; among the rest, Rodolph of Erlach, of an ancient Burgundian house, and whose descendants have seven times given chiefs to the republic, and twice saved Berne from ruin. The laws were similar to those of Fribourg.
In 1338, the year in which the emperor Louis of Bavaria convoked the diet of Frankfort to discuss the affair of his excommunication, 147 years after the foundation of Berne, when she had no protector and few allies, the counts and barons of Œchtland, Aargau, and Burgundy, urged on by the emperor, projected her destruction. The lords of the house of Neuchâtel, the counts of Kibourg, and Pierre of Gruyères and others, assembled in the castle of Nidau, whither, notwithstanding her alliance with Berne, came ambassadors from Fribourg, to say that the injuries they all suffered had a common origin, that Berne strove to level the nobles to the condition of the populace, and it being vain to essay by partial attacks to set bounds to her audacity, it would be well that united forces should raze her city to the ground.
Berne acted nobly and calmly—she besought no foreign protection, but said, in a conference which took place between her delegates and the feudal lords, that “to peace she would sacrifice all save justice.” She summoned Fribourg to a diet held at Blamatt, reckoning on the memory of their common founder and long friendship; but her deputies received no token of peace or amity, and Berne felt she was abandoned. During this time, 700 lords with the coronet on their casques, 1200 armed knights, 3000 horsemen, and more than 15,000 foot, were gathering against Berne.
Laupen, which is also on the Sense, four miles lower down than Neunneck, besieged by the allies, had demanded and obtained succour from Berne. The Bernese were themselves embarrassed in the choice of a general; of the brave knights and citizens who surrounded the avoyer of Bubenberg, none esteeming himself capable of a command on which depended the fate and liberty of their descendants; and while they still sate irresolute in council, Rodolph, knight and castellan of Erlach, son of Ulrich, under whose command many still living had conquered the leagued nobles at Donnerbuhel forty years before, rode armed into Berne.
He was at the same time guardian of the young count of Nidau and citizen of Berne. To conciliate his will with the fidelity he owed his suzerain, he represented to his ward, that to serve the cause of the nobles against his fellow-citizens would injure his interests beyond reparation; and the young count, as in reply he scornfully bade him join the ranks of his peers, said, “With two hundred coroneted casques, and a hundred and forty knights devoted to my banner, it is indifferent to me to lose a man.”
Erlach replied coldly, “You have called me a man, Sir Count; I will prove to you that I am one.”
When he had dismounted and appeared before the senate, the sight of him reviving the memory of Donnerbuhel and his father, he was named general by acclamation, and the avoyer placed the banner of the republic in his hand.
As he stood holding it, he addressed the citizens:
“I have fought with you,” he said, “in six battles, where our numbers were always inferior, and always victorious. Discipline is a sure means of conquest, and without it courage is of no avail. You, artisans, who are freemen, and obey unwillingly, you can remain free only by learning obedience to those to whom it is due; without absolute authority I will not be your general. I do not fear the foe; with God’s aid and yours we will drive him back, as when you were led by my father.”