Schwyz lies at the foot of the Hacken Mountain, which rises with double peaks known as the Mythen, (Murray and the tourists, with dubious etymological right, translate Mitres,)—with the dark forests above it on the slopes, and the green openings sparkling in the sunlight, where men and their herds of cattle breathe a purer air. Behind these everlasting walls the spirit of freedom has found a resting-place through the turbulent centuries, during which, on rough Northern soil, the new civilization was taking root, hereafter to overshadow the earth.
Touching the origin of these men of Schwyz, there is a tradition, handed down from father to son, which runs in this wise.
"Toward the North; in the land of the Swedes and Frisians, there was an ancient kingdom, and hunger came upon the people, and they gathered together, and it was resolved that every tenth man should depart. And so they went forth from among their friends, in three bands under three leaders, six thousand fighting men, great like unto giants, with their wives and children and all their worldly goods. And they swore never to desert one another, and smote with victorious arm Graf Peter of the Franks, who would obstruct their progress. They besought of God a land like that of their ancestors, where they might pasture their cattle in peace; and God led them into the country of Brochenburg, and they built there Schwyz; and the people increased, and there was no more room for them in the valley. Some went forth, therefore, into the country round about, even as far as the Weissland; and it is still in the memory of old men how the people went from mountain to mountain, from valley to valley, to Frutigen, Obersibenthal, Sanen, Afflentsch, and Jaun;—and beyond Jaun dwell other races."
The time and circumstance of this wandering are unknown, and we may make what we will of it; but to the men of Schwyz the tradition is an affirmation of their original primal independence. And of old time, also, the Emperors have admitted that these people of their own free will sought and obtained the protection of the Empire,—a privilege by no means extended to all the dwellers of the Waldstätte, (or Forest Cantons,) but confined to the men of Schwyz.
As the Emperors were often absent, engaged in great wars, and the times were very troublous, and there was need of some commanding character among them, for the administration of the criminal law touching the shedding of blood, they often made the Count of Lenzburg Bailiff. But no matter of any moment could be acted upon without the sense of the people being taken, of the serf as well as the freeman: for these two classes existed not less among these primitive people than elsewhere, in the feudal times; and this community of counsel of freeman and serf is related to have worked harmoniously, "for equality existed of itself, by nature, there." They chose a Landammann, or chief magistrate,—a man free by birth, of an honorable name and some substance; and for judges also they were careful to select men of substance, "for he careth most for freedom and order who hath most to lose"; and for the greater peace of the land there was a Street-Council, consisting of seven reputable men, who went through the streets administering justice in small causes here and there, as in the East the judges sat at the city-gate or at the door of the palace.
As the people increased, the valleys of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden were separated and grew to be independent in their own domestic matters, while united with respect to external affairs, as in the league made in 1251 between Zurich, Schwyz, and Uri;—they were like the Five Nations of Canada, says the historian, but more human through Christianity. Their religious belief was simple and fervent; the Goths, as Arians, had rejected the supremacy of the Pope; and now there came secretly teachers from the East, through Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Hungary, even into Rhaetia, and thence to these fastnesses of the Alps. The mind of men, thus left free, developed itself according to the different character of the races. The people of Schwyz were strengthened in their adherence to the authentic Word of God, as it was with the Apostles, without the use of pictures or the bones of saints; this Word they learned by heart, and made little of the additions of men; hence they got to be heretics, and were called Manicheans; but Catholicism conquered them at last.
Thus simple and unknown lived this ancient people,—destined to restore in the end the Confederacy of Helvetia, lost since the days of Caesar's victory, thirteen hundred years before,—till Gerhard, Abbot of Einsiedeln, complained of them to the Emperor Henry V. for pasturing their cattle upon the slopes which belonged to the convent: for, forgetful of the people who dwelt in these parts, whose existence, indeed, was concealed from him by the monks, the Emperor Henry II., in 1018, had bestowed upon the convent the neighboring desert; and the Abbot, of course, did not fail to make the most of the gift. Thus there occurred a collision. The Abbot pursued these poor peasants with the spiritual power, which was not light in those days, and summoned them before the Diet of Nobles of Swabia; but they rejected that tribunal, for they acknowledged only the authority of the Emperor. Whereupon the Abbot laid his complaint before Henry V. at Basel, where Graf Rudolph of Lenzburg, Bailiff of Schwyz, spoke for them. A simple people, innocent of human learning, they could urge against the patent of the Emperor only the tradition of their fathers, and judgment went against them touching the matter, and no question was made in it as to the validity of the Emperor's patent. It was an unexpected blow to the Schwyzers. Tradition among people living solitary grows into a religious right, which they fight for readily. For eleven years their turbulence went unpunished; for Henry V. had other matters on his hands, and his two successors conferred other privileges upon the convent. Thirty years afterwards, however, in 1142 or thereabouts, at the solicitation of the monks, obedience was commanded by the Emperor Conrad III., then on the point of departing with his Crusaders to Palestine. But the people answered,—"If the Emperor, to our injury, contemning the traditions of our fathers, will give our land to unrighteous priests, the protection of the Empire is worthless to us." 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.
When Friedrich I. came to the throne and wanted soldiers, he sent Graf Ulrich of Lenzburg, Bailiff of the Waldstätte, into the valleys to speak to the men of Schwyz. "The heart of the people is in the hands of noble heroes," says the historian;—gladly did the youths, six hundred strong, seize their arms and go forth under Graf Ulrich, whom they loved, to fight for the Emperor his friend, beyond the mountains, in Italy. And now it came the Emperor's turn for the ban; the whole Imperial House of Hohenstaufen fell into spiritual disgrace; Friedrich II. was cursed at Lyons as a blasphemer; but these things did not turn away the hearts of the men of Schwyz from his House.
Long after the time of this Ulrich, the last reigning Graf of Lenzburg, shortly after the Swiss Union had been renewed, at the instance of Walther of Attinghausen, in 1206, Unterwalden chose Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg, for Bailiff. He endeavored to extend his authority over the other two Cantons, in which he was aided by the Emperor Otho IV., of the House of Brunswick, who had been raised to the throne in opposition to the House of Swabia, and who, for the purpose of conciliating him, made him Imperial Bailiff of the Waldstätte. An active, vigorous man this Rudolph, grandfather of the Rudolph who was afterwards called to be King of the Germans, whom the Swiss, scattered in their hamlets, were little prepared to make head against, and therefore recognized him with what grace they might, after an assurance that their freedom and rights should be maintained; and he smoothed for them their old controversy with the monks of Einsiedeln, and got a comfortable division of the property made in 1217. But he was hateful to them, nevertheless; and although we know nothing of the way in which he administered his office, we conjecture that it was partly because the Emperor who appointed him was not of the House of Hohenstaufen, to which they were attached, and partly because he claimed that the office of Bailiff was hereditary in his family, whereas the men of Schwyz preferred to offer it of their own free will to whom they would. They made it a condition of assistance to the Emperor Friedrich in 1231, when he went down into Italy to fight the Guelphs, that he should deprive this Rudolph of the office of Imperial Bailiff; and then they went forth, six hundred strong, and did famous work against the Guelphs, with such fire in them that the Emperor not only knighted Struthan von Winkelried of Unterwalden, but gave that valley a patent of freedom, according to which the Schwyzers voluntarily chose the protection of the Empire.
And now Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg, founder of the Austrian monarchy, strides into the history of the men of Schwyz. A tall, slender man this Rudolph, bald and pale; with much seriousness in his features, but winning confidence the moment one spoke with him by his friendliness, loving simplicity; a restless, stirring man, with more wisdom in him than his companions had, equal or superior to him in birth or power, working his way by device when he could, by the strong arm when that was needed. He took the part of the peasants against the nobles, and used the one to put down the other. In the midst of the turmoils in which he got involved with Sanct Gallen and Basel, and while encamped before the walls of the latter city, he was wakened in his tent at midnight by Friedrich of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nürnberg; for there had come from Frankfort on the Main Heinrich von Pappenheim, Hereditary Marshal of the Empire, with the news, that, "in the name of the Electors, with unanimous consent, in consideration of his great virtue and wisdom, Lewis Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria had named Count Rudolph of Hapsburg King of the Roman Empire of the Germans": at which Rudolph was more astonished than those who knew him, it is recorded. Not because of his genealogy, nor his marriage with Gertrude Anne, daughter of Burcard, Count of Hohenburg and Hagenlock, did he win this great fortune, but, as the Elector Engelbrecht of Cologne said, "because he was just and wise and loved of God and men." And now the world learned what was in him; and how for eighteen years he kept the throne, which no king for three-and-twenty years before him had been able to hold, history will relate to the curious.