Tyrol and Its People

by Clive Holland

The task that Hofer and his companions set themselves was no easy one. The country swarmed not only with the soldiers of the Bavarian occupation force, but with spies who seem always to spring up whenever the price of treachery is worth earning. The punishment for men taking part in any such schemes as that in which Hofer, Speckbacher, and Haspinger and their faithful companions were engaged in was death. Death not only for the principals, but death for the humblest participant. Nevertheless the plan prospered. It is interesting to remember the very large and important part which was played in the organization of the peasants' uprising by the Tyrolese innkeepers, or wirthe, who were very dissimilar to the ordinary conception which English people have of men of their class. They were usually the most wealthy as well as the most solid members of the village communities in which they dwelt and kept their Wirthshaus, around which, indeed, much of the social as well as the municipal life of the village centred. They were better informed than many of their neighbours, for whatever travellers came to the villages found their way to their hospitable roofs; and what echoes of the outer world ever reached the secluded villages filtered its way, as it were, through them. It was in these men that Hofer found his greatest allies and ablest assistants. During the three years which succeeded the Bavarian occupation and the peasant rising, the innkeepers of Tyrol were busy gathering round them small bodies of trusted men, who, fired by a common desire to free their country, would, indeed, have suffered death rather than betray a single word of the secret arrangements of which they gradually became cognizant.

When many of the preparations were completed Andreas Hofer commenced a correspondence with the Government in Vienna—which seemed so incapable and unwilling to assist the brave people it had seemingly abandoned in their struggle for freedom—in the person of the Archduke John. But although Hofer and his companions do not seem to have received very much definite or material encouragement from the Emperor or his advisers, they proceeded to Vienna, had several interviews with the Archduke, who appeared to be most favourably inclined to their scheme, and at these interviews the plan of campaign was definitely formulated. In the end Hofer returned to St. Leonard raised to the dignity of Commander-in-Chief of the national forces, and with full powers to do what he deemed best in the interests of the country.

What he did not, however, secure was any support from Vienna in the form of arms or disciplined troops with which to leaven his "ragged coats." The courage of the men who entered upon a campaign against trained and tried soldiers armed with the most up-to-date weapons of those times can scarcely be estimated just as it most certainly cannot be over-praised. Owing to the rigorous search for arms which the Bavarians and French had instituted in almost every dwelling in the land, during the two or three years which intervened between the Treaty of Pressburg and the uprising of the peasants under Hofer, it was not possible to obtain and store new weapons in any quantity even if to do so had not been rendered difficult from the hosts of spies which overran Tyrol and seemed to lurk beneath almost every rock. Thus it was that out-of-date weapons—most of which had seen service in the war of a century before—billhooks, scythes, clubs and pitchforks, with whatever other arms their own ingenuity could devise or the village blacksmiths make, were pitted against the arms of some precision of the French and Bavarian troops. All that the peasant forces had to sustain them in the struggle against well-armed and disciplined veterans, superior as regards knowledge of warfare, was dauntless courage and a greater acquaintance with the country and of hill fighting.

THE SCHWARZHORN, S. TYROL

Upon Hofer's return with his companions from Vienna his Inn became the resort—more or less secretly—of all who were truly desirous of joining the popular movement and of freeing the country. Many, we are told, blamed him for trusting so implicitly all who came. But to objectors he made the same answer: "There are no traitors amongst my countrymen." That his confidence was not misplaced was abundantly shown by the fact that the secret of a conspiracy so vast that it may be said to have extended north, south, east, and west almost throughout Tyrol was unrevealed until the ever-memorable night of April 10, 1809, when the time fixed for the uprising arrived.

THE SUMMONS TO ARMS

On the evening of that day the peasants of the Passeyer and other valleys were called to arms by means of great fires which blazed out in the darkness of the clear April sky in long, ruddy banners of flame. Every hill crest in the vicinity of the Passeyer Valley had its signal fire, and these were answered by others on the mountains overshadowing the distant valleys. On the morrow Andreas Hofer found himself at daybreak at the head of nearly 5000 men who had one and all "confessed" and received the Sacrament ere taking up arms in their sacred cause of liberty.

The Bavarians were at once hotly attacked and routed; and on the 12th, soon after dawn, upwards of 15,000 peasants had rallied to Hofer's standard and appeared before Innsbruck. With indomitable bravery they captured the bridge over the Inn, carried the heights by assault, and entering the town engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand conflict with the troops of General Bisson (who was in command of the joint French and Bavarian forces) and compelled him to surrender.