[Footnote 4: The best information concerning the authority held by the provincial governors, who enjoyed almost unlimited sway over their districts, is to be met with in the excellent biography of Solomon Landolt, the provincial governor of Zurich, by David Hesz. Landolt was the model of an able but extremely tyrannical governor (he ruled over Greisensee and Eglisau) and gained great note by his salomonic judgments and by his quaint humor. He founded the Swiss rifle clubs and introduced that national weapon into modern warfare. He was also a painter and had the whim, notwithstanding the constant triumph of the French, ever to represent them in his pictures as the vanquished party.]
[Footnote 5: Hirzel wrote at that time, in his "Glimpses into the History of the Confederation," that Captain Henzl had been deprived of his head because he was the only man in the country who had one. Zimmerman says in his "National Pride," "A foreign philosopher visited Switzerland for the purpose of settling in a country where thought was free; he remained ten days at Zurich and then went to—Portugal." In 1774, the clocks at Basel, which, since the siege of Rudolph of Habsburg, had remained one hour behindhand, were, after immense opposition, regulated like those in the rest of the world. Two factions sprang up on this occasion, that of the Spieszburghers or Lalleburghers (the ancient one), and that of the Francemen or new-modellers (the modern one).]
[Footnote 6: Laharpe was at the same time a demagogue in the Vaud and tutor to the emperor Alexander at Petersburg.]
[Footnote 7: Valtelline with Chiavenna and Bormio (Cleves and Worms) were ill-treated by the people of the Grisons. Offices and justice were regularly jobbed and sold to the highest bidder. The people of Valtelline hastily entered into alliance with France, while the oppressed peasantry in the Grisons rebelled against the ruling family of Salis, which had long been in the pay of the French kings, and had, since the revolution, sided with Austria. John Müller appeared at Basel as Thugut's agent for the purpose of inciting the confederation against France.—Ochs's History of Basel.]
[Footnote 8: While here, he gave Fesch, the pastry-cook, whose brother, a Swiss lieutenant, was the second husband of Bonaparte's maternal grandmother, a very friendly reception. The offspring of this second marriage was the future Cardinal Fesch, Letitia's half-brother and Napoleon's uncle, whom Napoleon attempted to create primate of Germany and to raise to the pontifical throne.]
[Footnote 9: Some of the cantons imagined that France merely aspired to the possession of Valais, and, jealous of the prosperity and power of Berne, willingly permitted her to suffer this humiliation.-Meyer von Knonau].
[Footnote 10: Two Bernese, condemned to work in the trenches at
Yferten, on being liberated by the French, returned voluntarily to
Berne, in order to aid in the defense of the city. A rare trait, in
those times, of ancient Swiss fidelity.]
[Footnote 11: A good deal of it was spent by Bonaparte during his expedition into Egypt, and, even at the present day, the Bernese bear is to be seen on coins still in circulation on the banks of the Nile.—Meyer von Knonau.]
[Footnote 12: The venerable Pestalozzi assembled the orphans and founded his celebrated model academy at Stanz. Seventy-nine women and girls were found among the slain. A story is told of a girl who, being attacked, in a lonely house, by two Frenchmen, knocked their heads together with such force that they dropped down dead.]
[Footnote 13: Not far from Pruntrut is the hill of Terri, said to have been formerly occupied by one of Cæsar's camps. The French named it Mont Terrible and created a department du Mont Terrible. Vide Meyer von Knonau's Geography.]