Nearly in the centre of Switzerland, around the Lake of Luzern, were the Forest Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden; defended on the north by the stormy waves of the lake, on the south by inaccessible peaks and glaciers, on the side of Germany by precipices and unbroken forests, and the Rigi in the midst. This district was inhabited by a shepherd race; the elevated and barren site of their habitations had secured them from the cruel caprices of the petty tyrants who ruled over the lower valleys, and they governed themselves under the forms of a republic. Rudolph of Hapsburg, the father of the founder of the House of Austria, a distinguished soldier and leader of the Zurich troops, the son of an Alsatian landgrave, had his castle near the confluence of the Reuss and Aar, and in 1257 was voluntarily chosen by the people as their governor. Sixteen years later he ascended the imperial throne of the Roman Empire of Germany; for eighteen years he kept the throne, and, remembering that he was by birth a native of Switzerland, he protected his countrymen from oppression, and was esteemed for his humanity, prudence, and valor. He gave firm assurance that he would treat them as worthy sons of the Empire, with inalienable independence; and to that assurance he remained true till his death, which happened in 1291. His son, Albert, who had been made Duke of Austria, ascended the throne. He was grasping and eager to make territorial acquisitions. He desired to be first Duke of Helvetia, and proposed to these Forest Cantons that they should sever their relationship, as a province of the German Empire, and become a member of his Dukedom. Though Emperor of Germany, he was Duke of Austria, and his ambition was to aggrandize the Austrian House. The peasants rejected his proposition. Jealous of this remnant of independence, which the snows and rocks had left to the peasants of upper Helvetia, he undertook to subjugate them. Failing to seduce them by diplomacy or pretended kindness, he sent landvogts, or governors, to reside in their midst; these governors bore the title of Imperial Bailiffs. Instead of sending, as was usual, some noblemen for imperial governors, whose functions were only those of high judges in capital crimes, he sent two dependants of his family, men whose dispositions were as hostile and cruel as their orders. Their mission was to goad and persecute the people into some act of rebellion, that might be used as a pretext for reducing them to the level of common slavery. There were two of these bailiffs, Berenger and Gessler, the former stationed at Sarnen, the latter at Altdorf; they were unbounded in their tyrannies, using their powers wantonly, with all the stings of insolent authority. Gessler was the most cruel; he pillaged private property, imprisoned husbands, carried off the wives, and dishonored the daughters. It was now the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the country was in a degraded and miserable condition. The land groaned under violence; the despotism was distant and delegated; the sovereign too far removed to hear the universal lamentation. It became intolerable. A few brave hearts reasoned, that God had never granted power to any emperor, king, or bailiff to commit such injustice; and that death was preferable to a continued submission under so ignominious a yoke. The wife of Werner Stauffacher, of Schwyz, being brutally treated by one of the bailiffs’ officers, in the absence of her husband, on his return reporting the affair to him, exclaimed, “Shall we mothers nurse beggars at our bosoms, and bring up maid-servants for foreigners? What are the men of the mountains good for? Let there be an end of this!”[101] Stauffacher sought the counsel of Walter Fürst, of Uri, and Arnold Melchthal, of Unterwalden; and these three, from the result of that counsel, became famous as
“The Patriot Three that met of yore,
Beneath the midnight sky,
And leagued their hearts on the Rütli shore
In the name of liberty.”
Being well acquainted with the most injured, the most intrepid, and the most implacable of their countrymen, they determined to see them, and ascertain whether they would be willing to risk their lives in defence of their liberties. If the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, no less true is it in all history, that the insolence of tyranny is the cradle of liberty. Rütli, so called from the uprooting and clearing of the trees (German, ausgereutet), a secluded field below Seelisberg, in the Canton of Uri, on a steep, small promontory standing out from the mountain and surrounded on three sides by the waters of the lake, was the spot chosen for their council chamber.[102] On the night of the 7th of November, 1307, descending from their mountains, or crossing the lake in small fishing-boats, came the patriot three, each, as he had agreed to do, bringing ten true and brave herdsmen, stout of heart and strong of limb. They silently gathered at the lonely spot, as they had concerted. The love of native soil, the feeling of freedom and security under the protection of the laws of the country, the feeling of being ill treated and subjugated by a foreign debauchee, a determination to throw off so obnoxious a yoke—all these great and good qualities were shared by these untutored, but heroic, noble-minded peasants. A handful of patriots, meeting at midnight, and attesting the justice of their cause to the Almighty Disposer of events, the God of equity and mercy, the protector of the helpless; calm and united, proceeding to the delivery of their country; retaining all the serene forbearance of the most elevated reason, amid the energies and the fury of vindictive right. They could bear to die, but not to be subdued:
“They linked their hands,—they pledged their stainless faith
In the dread presence of attesting Heaven,
They knelt, and rose in strength.”
They met to interchange oaths, and not to utter exciting speeches; “words could not weigh in the balance with that decisive night, brooding under cover of its darkness the resurrection of a nation, with those mountains, stars, rocks, and waves, and with the sword ready to be drawn in the most sacred of causes.” They were summoned, and were bidden in a few brief sentences, uttered in a low tone, to choose; and they chose wisely and greatly; they chose liberty, born of the heavens, breathing of all their odors, and radiant with all their hues. With hands uplifted to the starry firmament, Fürst, Stauffacher, and Melchthal, with subdued and slow accent, their comrades repeating after them, proclaimed, “We swear in the presence of God, before whom kings and people are equal, to live or die for our fellow-countrymen; to undertake and sustain all in common; neither to suffer injustice, nor to commit injury; to respect the rights and property of the Count of Hapsburg; to do no violence to the imperial bailiffs, but to put an end to their tyranny.” One of the men who at that momentous assembly engaged each other by the pledge of “All for each and each for all,” was William Tell, a fisher of the lake and a hunter of chamois, of Bürglen, a half-hour from Altdorf in Uri, and a son-in-law of Walter Fürst. In the mean time, Gessler thought he perceived that the people walked abroad with more confidence, and carried in their looks a haughtier expression; when satisfied that the spirit of resistance was ripe, with a view to confirm his suspicions, he determined to put down by force the first symptoms of disaffection, and invented a crime to trap the most daring and dangerous. His hat, surmounted by the Austrian crown, was placed on the top of a pole, erected in the market-place of Altdorf, and all who passed by were ordered to uncover their heads, and bow submissively before this symbol of the imperial sovereignty: