Switzerland

The Swiss as a people often suffer in the judgment of the tourist by failure to live up to their reputation as a "mountain people"-to a glorious "Alpine" character.

The dweller by the shores of the sea or by the riverine plains, setting his feet along a mountain path towards the peaks which go up to meet the sky, ordinarily feels a sense of joy and freedom as he climbs to the higher air. He seems to shake off shackles from his mind and to enter into an enjoyment of life which is less earthly and nearer to the spiritual. His imagination is impressed with the thought that truly he is mounting towards the stars. There is, to aid imagination, a definite corporal effect due to a slight change in the nature of the air. A quickening pulse seems to tell of the heart becoming more generous in response to the spirit of the mountains.

From this feeling of exhilaration of the mind and the body, which comes when ascending, after a long stay on the plains, to a mountain height, arises an almost universal belief in human thought that there is some special spiritual and ennobling influence in the mountains of the earth. Poets have sung of it again and again: philosophers have admitted to it with a more discreet but with a no less certain rapture. Many scientists have explained it with as ingenious explanations as were offered by those learned men who were set by a waggish French king to explain to him why it was that: given two dishes, each full to the brim of water, and two fish of equal size, but one dead and the other alive: and allowed that the live fish is put in the one full dish and the dead fish in the other full dish with equal care: then, whilst the water of the dish in which the dead fish is placed will overflow at once, the water of the dish in which the live fish is placed will not overflow.

That king's merry jest on his men of learning who set out to find a reason for a "fact" before finding out whether it was a fact, was neatly countered, if my memory of the story be correct, by one courtier-scientist who ingeniously pleaded that what His Majesty said on any matter must, by all loyal subjects, be accepted as a fact, and in truth did, to the loyal mind, become a fact, no unworthy suspicions being harboured that a king of France could not make, change, or annul a natural law just as well as any other law.

In truth, though, the idea that dwelling on a mountain-top has a strengthening effect on the human frame and an ennobling influence on the human character is mostly fallacious. It may be "explained" but not proved. Those who hold it, if questioned in the Socratic manner to give proofs in the first place of the existence of the ennobling influence they believe in, could well plead a general human consent on the point-a universal belief. But they would, I think, be hard put to it, to offer any more real proof than the statements of some poet, or of some philosopher, or the explanation of some scientist who had explained a circumstance without first proving it.

Let there be imagined a cross-examination on the point by some modern follower of Socrates' methods:

S. You say that the Swiss people are a noble race because they are a mountain race. Will you, if you have time, explain to me why that is so? I am very anxious to know the true reason why the fact of living on a mountain should have this fine effect on the human character.

T. On that point, surely, there is no difference of opinion at all? Every one knows that the mountain races are the most brave, the most eager for liberty, the most virtuous of the earth.

S. But it happens that I am not so wise as those people. I do not know, and I am very anxious to learn. Can you show me that it is a fact that mountain races are as you say? And afterwards, since you evidently have knowledge on this point and I am anxious to be your pupil, perhaps you will tell me why it is so.

T. You ask a rather difficult question. It is like, almost, raising the question as to whether the earth is round. Are you not satisfied to know that nearly all the poets and philosophers who have written about the mountains seem to be agreed on this point when they refer to it at all; and that few have written about mountains without making some reference to the noble nature of mountain peoples?

S. To tell you the truth, I am not quite satisfied. It is even possible that the poets have been mistaken. Probably you have heard of a German wise man named Schopenhauer and have read his writings.

T. (Interrupting.) Yes. But if he writes against mountain people I would not accept him as an authority on this point about which we are talking, since there are many men on the other side of so much greater authority.

S. No. I do not wish you to accept him as an authority on the character of mountain peoples. Indeed I do not know whether he has ever written at all on that subject. But he has written on the subject of female and male beauty. He does not think that women are more beautiful than men, but less beautiful. And when they would argue against him the words of the great poets, who are all quite agreed that women are more beautiful than men, he retorts that all these poets have been men, and that they have been blinded by their passions for women, and have not been able therefore to come to a sound and cool judgment. He argues that if the greatest poets had been women the beauty of men and not of women would have been sung. Does that not seem to you a rational argument?

T. Yes. Certainly it is not absurd. There may be some truth in what he says.

S. So the words of the poets may not always be accepted as proof of the truth, especially if it can be shown that they may be prejudiced regarding the matters of which they speak.

T. I agree with you there. But I do not see that there is any necessary application to the point about which we were arguing-the noble character of mountain peoples.

S. I wish to come to that now. I accept what you say that very many poets and wise men have exalted the character of mountain peoples. But now, can you tell me were those poets and wise men themselves generally of mountain peoples?

T. No, certainly not. You cannot argue that they were prejudiced in that way. Indeed in my recollection I can recall no very great poet or philosopher who was of a mountain people and was brought up and educated in his own country.

S. Now that seems to me to be a very pertinent fact. It is the case, then, that though mountain peoples are superior to other peoples, they do not produce and rear poets and philosophers to any extent; that these praises of the better qualities of mountain peoples come from the great men whom the peoples of the plains produce? Yet surely the peoples who produce most plentifully great men, poets and philosophers, are the greatest peoples?

The dialogue need not be pursued further until T., like Euthyphron, finds that he is in a hurry and it is time to be off. Its purpose is to suggest that it is not at all necessary to endorse without question the very generally accepted idea that there is some specially beneficent effect on the human character in mountain life. The exhilaration that one feels in going on a journey from the plains to the mountains is real, and on it apparently has been built all the fabric of mountain worship. That exhilaration is in all probability far more the effect of a change of living conditions than of a passing to better conditions. Human life primitively flowed fluid, here and there, in nomadic movements. When it began to congeal in cities and communities it departed from natural conditions, and Nature often exacts as a penalty some atrophy of the life impulse. But a change of environment and of air-any change-brings usually a stimulus. Nature thinks we are off to be nomad children playing at her skirts again, and gives back to us as a reward a hint of the old savage energy. I have felt a keen renewal of energy going up from the plains to the mountains: and after a year on the tableland a far keener renewal on going back to the plains. It is in like case with most people, I think, if they would take the trouble to examine into the matter. But most of us live on the plains and go for our holidays to the hills (or the sea) and associate the exhilaration arising from change of air or surroundings to some special quality of mountain conditions. Those who live on the mountains and might in turn proclaim the exhilaration of going down on to the plains are few and not markedly vocal for securing a public hearing.

There is an early poem of Tennyson, which expresses no more than the orthodox view of the influence of mountains on our human nature:

Of old sat Freedom on the heights,

The thunders breaking at her feet:

Above her shook the starry lights:

She heard the torrents meet.

There in her place she did rejoice,

Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,

But fragments of her mighty voice

Came rolling on the wind.

Then stept she down thro' town and field

To mingle with the human race,

And part by part to men reveal'd

The fullness of her face.

THE MATTERHORN FROM THE RIFFELBERG.

Our Swiss friends are expected by the traveller to carry themselves in all things with the pride and dignity of people who are born in the original home of European liberty. But Tennyson's idea, whilst pretty, is exactly false. Civilisations and traditions of human freedom have always begun on the plains-by sea-shore and river-bank. There have been born the ideas of Freedom and Human Right, and these ideas have at a later stage made their way to the mountain ranges by various paths. In one set of cases the course of race history has run that the people of the plain have become softened by civilisation and luxury, and hairy savages from the hills have learned to steal first their cattle and then the riches of their cities, and finally their ideas. Sometimes in these cases the people of the plain have been aroused to an old vigour by the robbers of the hills, have beaten them back after having imposed upon them some ideas of law and order, and have thus set the foundations for civilised mountain communities. Sometimes, again, the people of the hills have succeeded in establishing themselves on the plain, mingling with the civilised people whom they conquered, and in time learning their culture. In another set of cases a nation as it perfected its civilisation on a plain has found it necessary to shed off some of its rougher elements, and these have taken to robber nests in the hills and carried with them some better ideas than those of the hill-tribes. Or yet again, one nation of the plain has been invaded and conquered by another nation of the plain, and its remnants have sought refuge in the hills, so forming the best historical type of mountain communities (thus the Celts did in the Highlands of Scotland and Wales when the Saxon invasion drove them from the plains of Britain).

But never has any notable civilisation sat first upon the heights and marched from there down to the plains. Always, on the contrary, human progress has progressed from the plain to the mountain; and found the path sometimes very difficult, and very treacherously defended. Where a mountain range has affected favourably the progress of human thought it has been because it gave a rampart and a refuge to the remnants of some civilisation of the plains threatened with submergence by calamity.

To get a fair impression of Switzerland and the Swiss at the outset, then, it seems to be advisable to clear away this common misconception of mountain ranges as being the nurses inevitably of heroic human natures. The Swiss have been absurdly over-praised by some, largely because of this root fallacy that a mountain people must have all the virtues. They have been unfairly over-blamed by others, who seem to have started with a preconceived idea of an impossibly heroic people and to have been soured when they found unreasonable illusions shattered. "The Swiss are stubborn, devoid of all generous sentiment, not generous nor humane," said Ruskin. There spoke the disappointed sentimentalist. Obviously he approached the Swiss from the fallacious "Alpine character" point of view, and vainly expected them to live up to the super-heroic idea he had formed of the sort of people who ought to inhabit the slopes of such magnificent mountains. Voltaire, de Sta?l, Hugo, Dumas, all abuse the Swiss. They demanded of them-carried away by that idea of the mountains enduing people with virtues-an impossible standard, and kicked at them for not living up to it, as a Chinaman kicks his joss when it does not bring rain under impossible wind conditions.

To inhabit a mountain country is, if all the facts are taken into account, a handicap rather than an advantage to a race. In the earlier stages of civilisation the mountains have imposed upon them the duty of sheltering alike fleeing patriots and fleeing criminals: and the criminals are usually the more numerous. In later stages mountains interfere greatly with the development of the machinery of civilisation. Always, too, mountain air sharpens the appetite rather than the wits, and there are some diseases attacking particularly the brain which are almost peculiar to mountain districts.

The Swiss, then, have to be considered justly rather in the light of a handicapped than of a favoured people. Their one favouring national circumstance is that their central position in regard to the great plains of Europe has put them in the track of all the chief currents of civilisation. What they have managed to effect in spite of the handicap of their mountains is one of the marvellous stories of the human race; and to the mountains they owe in the main their sense of national unity. They served as the bond of a common misfortune.

* * *

To her lakes rather than to her mountains Switzerland owed the beginnings of civilisation. Nowadays, as the curtains of mist are rolled away from the past by geologist and anthropologist, we are coming to a clearer idea of the origins of this wonderful civilisation of ours, which makes the common routine of a plain citizen to-day more full of wonders than any legend told of an ancient god.

Science, fossicking in the tunnels of the excavators and scanning closely what they bring up to the surface light, is inclined now to tell us that the beginnings of organised community life were on the lake shores of some ancient age.

The idea would be reasonable in theory even if it had no facts to support it. A lake means shelter, water, fish: it suggests-in this unlike a river-settling down. In a lake the fish teem thick and become big and fat and slothful. (Note how the little fighting trout of the rapid streams grow to the big, stupid, inert things of the New Zealand lakes, fish that come and ask to be caught, fish that a family can feed upon.) It was natural that a lake should stimulate into activity those microbes of civilisation which had infected the primitive nomads. In the Antipodes you may see to-day, in an anthropological record which is contemporary with us in time but with the Neolithic Age in development, the working of what one may call the lake forces, towards civilisation. The Australian aborigines-poor nomads almost without law, architecture, or clothing-when they won to a good steady fishing-ground managed to advance a little towards a higher civilisation. When a coast lagoon gave good supply of crustaceans and other fish, you may note at the old aboriginal camping-grounds timid ventures towards art, certain rock drawings, effective if crude. Stomachs being regularly filled, the minds of these primitives began to work. A step higher in the ascent of man-the Papuans have their most advanced communities in villages built on piles over the beaches of the sea or of the coral lagoons. The surrounding water gives some protection against prowling marauders. Draw up the bridge which makes a way to the hut, and the water at once serves it in the office of a wall. Further, the water is a source of food supply and an easier means of communication than the jungle to other sources of food supply. Finally, the water gives the little community a good drainage system without trouble: rubbish can just be cast down and it is carried away.

The early European, feeling a call to settle down and form a village, thus found in a lake the best of prompting to community life. It offered some security and so appealed to his dawning sense of property. It offered some steadiness of food supply and so appealed to his dawning sense of stability. It appealed also to the new sense of cleanliness which we must credit him with, a very primitive sense truly and many thousands of years behind ideas of modern sanitation, but still a beginning.

Recent discoveries of the remains of lake dwellings in England have established the fact that in many parts of Europe, and perhaps indeed all over the Continent, man in the Neolithic time formed the habit of living in villages built on piles over the shores of lakes, and that he kept this habit during the Bronze Age, and had not wholly abandoned it at the dawn of the Iron Age. But it was probably in Switzerland, the area richest in suitable lakes of all Europe, that the primitive lake-dwellers flourished most strongly. A whole chain of lake settlements have been discovered around Lake Zurich, and recently, when Mr. Ritter, famous for the gigantic scheme to supply Paris with water from the Swiss lakes, "corrected" the meanderings of the river Thiele which conducts the waters of Lake Neuchatel to Bienne, his engineering feat, besides gaining huge tracts of fertile land, lowered the level of Lake Neuchatel and led to some further valuable discoveries regarding the lake-dwellers. It seems clear that every Swiss lake was a centre for a thick population in the later Stone Age and the Bronze Age.

LOOKING DOWN THE RHONE VALLEY FROM MONT PELERIN, AT THE EASTERN END OF THE LAKE OF GENEVA.

The first important discoveries regarding these Swiss lake-dwellers were made in 1853, when the waters of Zurich lake sank so low that a stretch of land was laid bare along the shores. The people of Meilen, twelve miles from Zurich, took advantage of this to carry out some public works, and during the operations the workmen encountered obstacles, which proved to be wooden piles. These piles, the tops of which were but a few inches below the surface of the mud, were found to be planted in rows and squares, in great number. There were picked out of the mud bones, antlers, weapons and implements of various kinds. Dr. Ferdinand Keller was sent from Zurich to examine the workings, and he pronounced them to be the site of a lake settlement, probably of some very ancient Celtic tribe. Many marks of a prehistoric occupation had been found before 1853, but no traces of dwellings. The discovery caused a sensation, and gave a great impulse to arch?ological studies. Dr. Keller called these early settlers Pfahl-bauer, or pile-builders. Since then over two hundred of these villages have been discovered-on the shores of the lakes of Constance, Leman, Zurich, Neuchatel, Bienne, Morat, and other smaller lakes, and on rivers and swampy spots which had once been lakes. The strictly Alpine lakes, however, with their steep inaccessible banks, show no trace of these settlements.

The early lake dwellings were built on piles driven into the bed of the lake, and as many as thirty or forty thousand of these piles have been found in a single village. The houses were made of hurdlework, and thatched with straw or rushes. Layers of wattle and daub alternating formed the floors, and the walls had a covering of clay, or else of bulrushes or straw. A fence of wickerwork ran round each hut. Light bridges, easily moved, connected the huts with each other and with the shore. Each house contained two rooms at least, and some of the dwellings measured as much as 27 feet by 22 feet. Hearthstones blackened by fire in some huts remain to show where the kitchens had been. Mats of straw and reeds were found, and proofs of an organised worship of some gods.

The lake-dwellers hunted with weapons of bronze. They tilled the ground and had flocks of horses, cattle, and sheep. They wove the wool of animals, and also a fibre of flax, and made a coarse pottery. Men and women wore ornaments of metal, of glass, of leather, of carved stones. Probably the later generations of lake-dwellers were contemporary with the Homeric period in Greece, though their state of culture was inferior to that of the people of the Grecian peninsula.

Some idea, then, we may form of the people of Switzerland in prehistoric times, those times when the fair-haired Ach?ans were settling in the Hellenic peninsula the issue between themselves and an earlier Canaanitish race, and giving prompting to the stories of the Homeric legends. Celtic migrants, making their way along the great watercourses of Europe, had come to these Swiss lakes resting at the feet of the Alps, and had found there prompting to settle and to begin to cultivate a community life. Seemingly there were three different epochs in the age of the lake-dwellers, of which two were of the later Stone Age and one of the Bronze Age. Switzerland had then, probably, as thick a population as most parts of Europe, and at the earliest stage of the lake-dwellings that population was almost as advanced in culture as were the forefathers of the Grecian and Roman civilisations. But later it was not so. Those nomadic peoples who found places in the Mediterranean sun; and who there came into contact with the civilisations which had grown up on the shores of the Levant, in the valley of the Nile, and on the north coast of Africa; after mingling their blood with the Mediterranean peoples and acquiring their culture, were capable of creating great communities which unmeasurably outstripped the little primitive states of their cousins who had settled at the base of the Alps.

It is probable that, fairly close on the heels of the lake-dwellers, there came other Celtic immigrants to Switzerland, dispossessing the aboriginal peoples of the mountains, fighting with the lake-dwellers, and coming in time to as high a standard of civilisation as they. With the Iron Age the lake-dwellings seem to have been abandoned and the lake-dwellers merged into the general body of the Helvetians. What we know as Switzerland to-day was then occupied by Celts, Rh?tians, and Alamanni. Helvetia, as it was known to the Romans, took its name from the Helvetians, a tribe of Celts who had been pushed out of their own territories by the advancing tide of the Teutonic invasion and had colonised lower Switzerland.

Just as the lake-dwellers had set up a higher standard of civilisation than the mountain-dwellers in their age, so the Helvetians, occupying the lower ground of Switzerland, showed much more culture than any of their neighbours. They had adopted the Greek alphabet and kept written records of their doings. Their weapons and armour were good; their cultivation of the soil was skilful, and they had a knowledge of architecture, their fortifications in particular being praised by Roman writers as excellent. Local traditions said that Hercules had once visited Helvetia and taught the Helvetians arts and laws. That was the picturesque way of stating that their ideas of civilisation had come from Greece. These Helvetians were the easily traceable ancestors of the present Swiss, and many Swiss cities of to-day occupy the sites and keep close to the names of the old Helvetian centres-Geneva, Lausanne, Soleure, and Zurich, for examples. But the Helvetians were not strictly an Alpine race. They left the great mountains to wilder people and settled on the foothills and around the lakes.

The method of government of the Helvetians was closely modelled on the aristocratic republicanism of the Greek states. Wealthy nobles owned the land, and the rest of the population was made up of their vassals and slaves. But no one could aspire to be king. The chief Orcitrix, it is told, aspiring to kingly power, was burned to death. The Swiss do not seem to have copied the Grecian religious system, adhering to their ancient Druidical worship. Perhaps the gloomy and savage form which Protestantism was to take in after years among the Swiss, was in part due to the fact that their ancient form of worship seems to have been a particularly fierce kind of Druidism, and was very little subjected to the moderating influence of the pagan culture.

The mountain barriers kept the Helvetii for a long time from hostile encounters with the Roman power. But there is evidence that they got in touch with the Etruscans for purposes of trade through the Alpine passes from a very early age. Their chief warlike trouble came from the north, where the German population was constantly pressing down seeking fresh outlets. The first conflict between the Helvetii and the Romans was when the Tigurini tribe of Switzerland joined with the Cimbri in an attack upon Roman Gaul and defeated a Roman army under Cassius and Piso. That was 107 B.C. The Romans did not make any serious attempt to avenge that humiliation. The next meeting of the Helvetii with the Romans was not until the days of C?sar (58 B.C.). Then the Helvetii, hemmed in on one side by Roman Gaul and on the other by the swelling floods of the German migration, resolved on a mass move, abandoning their own country completely and seizing some of the rich lands of Gaul.

It was a strange design and was carried out with strange persistency. Two years were devoted to the organisation of the great move, and on the appointed day practically all the Helvetii, men, women, and children, with all their beasts and their property assembled at Geneva. Their old homes were given to the torch, burned so that there would be no temptation for the people to turn back. Julius C?sar (who followed Thucydides in the ranks of great war correspondents) tells the story: and it was C?sar who set himself to the breaking up of this great plan. At Geneva the Helvetii found the bridge over the Rhone broken up by C?sar's order. After useless attempts to cross the river, they turned towards the Jura Mountains, and whilst they were toiling over the steep and rugged Pas de l'Ecluse, C?sar returned to Italy to gather his legions. Returning to Gaul, he arrived in time to see the Helvetians cross the Arar (Sa?ne). The Tigurini were the last to cross. On them C?sar fell and almost exterminated them, thus wiping out the old stain on the Roman arms. The Roman legions had crossed the Sa?ne in twenty-four hours, and this feat so excited the admiration of the Helvetians, who had themselves taken twenty days to cross, that they sent legates to treat with C?sar for a free passage. They promised him that they would do no harm to any one if he would comply with their request, but threatened the full rage of their arms if he should intercept them. C?sar asked them to give hostages to confirm their promise. "The Helvetians are not accustomed to give hostages; they have been taught by their fathers to receive hostages, and this the Romans must well remember," was the reply.

A DISTANT VIEW OF THE JURA RANGE FROM THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE LAKE OF GENEVA.

The Helvetians continued their march, C?sar watching for an opportunity of attacking them. At Bibracte, west of Autun in Burgundy, C?sar seized a hill, posted his troops there, and charged the enemy with his cavalry. The Helvetians fiercely repulsed the attack, and poured on the Roman front, but were quite unable to stand against the steady discipline of the legions. They lost the battle but won the respect of C?sar, and the remnant of this "nation on trek" were helped by him to return to their homes and were allowed to become allies of Rome, with the task assigned to them of guarding the Rhine frontier against the Germans. But the Helvetii found this vassalage irksome, rebelled, were punished, and their country subjugated by the Roman roads as well as the Roman legions.

The Helvetia thus brought under Roman sway was not all of the Switzerland of to-day. Some of the Swiss cantons were comprised in the old province of Rh?tia, which was not subdued by the Roman arms until the days of the first Augustus. Then, however, the Rh?tians, who were kindred with the Italian Etruscans, came so completely under Roman influence that to this day in the valleys of the Engadine a corrupted Latin tongue is spoken, somewhat similar to that of the Roumanians of the Balkan Peninsula. Under Augustus western Switzerland was incorporated with the Roman province of Gaul, having its capital at Lyons; eastern Switzerland was joined with Rh?tia, having its capital at Augsburg. Thus early in history the difference between Gallic Switzerland and Teutonic Switzerland begins to show itself.

Helvetia was much favoured by the Romans and became in effect the frontier province for the defence of the empire against the Germans. After a time the Helvetians were but little distinguishable from the Romans, adopting their manners and their faith. Wealthy Romans loved to make their summer resorts along the lake of Geneva, and Aventicum, the Helvetian capital, became a great Roman city.

At Avenches (which was the Roman Aventicum) there are to-day but 2000 people, but there can be seen remains of a Roman wall four miles long and in some places 15 feet high. In the day of Vespasian the city was as big as Canterbury is to-day, and with its walls, theatre, and aqueduct could look down upon the miserable contemporary village of Londinium. Helvetia, under the Romans, followed, in fine, very much the same course as Britain under the Romans.

With the decay of the Roman power Helvetia, like Britain, was made to feel at the hands of the barbarians a harsh punishment for its acceptance of the Italian civilisation. In the third century of the Christian era the Alamanni swept over the country, looting and devastating and retiring. In the fourth century they came again and took possession of all the east. The Burgundians followed, and, to a greater degree than most of the civilised world, Switzerland had to face the horrors that followed the disruption of the Roman Empire. Gradually there emerged from the welter the beginnings of the Switzerland of to-day, in part representing the old Gallic Helvetians and Etruscan Rh?tians, in part the Alamanni (Germans) and the Burgundians. With the coming of the northern invaders Christianity, which had supplanted Paganism in Helvetia as it had in Rome, was almost stamped out. But as the power of the Burgundians grew over that of the Alamanni the country began to turn again towards Christianity.

In the sixth century missionaries from Ireland did much to spread the Christian faith in Switzerland. The most famous of these was St. Columban, who established a monastery at Luxeuil, of which he soon made a storm centre, involving himself in constant troubles with the Gallic clergy and with the Italian Pope. There is extant a famous letter of his to Pope Boniface IV. It is addressed by him to "the most beautiful head of all the churches of entire Europe. The most sweet Pope, the most high President, the most reverent investigator." After that flood of "blarney" St. Columban goes on to complain of the infamia in which the Papal Seat is steeped. Out of that remonstrance nothing seems to have come, but when St. Columban joined issue with the masterful Queen Brunhilde of Burgundy he met a spirit as imperious as his own. To guard her own power in the Court of Burgundy the famous Brunhilde encouraged her grandson, the reigning king, to keep mistresses rather than to marry a queen. St. Columban referred to the children of these mistresses as a "brothel brood." Shortly after he was exiled by force from Luxeuil, and is next heard of at Nantes, ready, it seemed, to embark for Ireland, his native land. But he changed his mind, turned back on his tracks, and established himself on the lake of Constance, where he preached successfully to the heathen and threw their idols into the lake. Next St. Columban went over to Northern Italy, abusing his disciple St. Gall who was too sick to accompany him. St. Gall remained in Switzerland and founded the famous monastery of St. Gall, visited by Charlemagne in 883.

Charlemagne was particularly fond of Switzerland and the Swiss, and founded many monasteries and schools in the country. Often he resided in Switzerland, and it is from Switzerland that comes the story which tells that his justice and mercy were so well renowned as to be known even to the animals. There was, the story runs, near his palace at Zurich a chapel on the river-side where he had placed a bell for people to ring if they wished to appeal for justice. One day as he was at dinner this bell began to ring. None could inform him what was the matter. The bell rang a second time, and then a third. On this the emperor rose from the table, saying, "I am sure there is some poor man you do not wish me to see." He walked down the hill to the chapel, where, hanging to the bell rope, he found a snake. The snake led Charlemagne to a tuft of nettles, and examining the spot he found a large toad sitting on the eggs in the serpent's nest. At once, grasping the meaning of the appeal, Charlemagne passed sentence that the toad should be killed. The next day the snake entered the dining-hall of the emperor, climbed on the table, and, beckoning the emperor to remove the lid of his golden goblet, dropped into it a beautiful jewel.

With the death of Charlemagne his empire was broken up and Switzerland was doomed to centuries of struggle in the vindication of her independence. The story of that struggle is one of the most fascinating of the national records of the Middle Ages.

* * *

Throughout the Middle Ages Switzerland and the Swiss were always in the eye of Europe. Sometimes the spectacle they presented was that of a patriot people pushing back the tyrant and the invader with an unearthly courage, and luck more unearthly still. Sometimes it was that of a martial clan, safe in a great mountain fastness, offering venal swords to the highest bidder, and giving in return for their mercenary pay as high a courage and as stubborn a fidelity as was ever inspired by love of country. No court but knew the Swiss in some capacity.

A great London palace, part of which survives to-day as the Royal Chapel of the Savoy, was built by Peter of Savoy, Prince of West Switzerland, who built also the Castle of Chillon sung by Byron, and kept great affairs going in both those far-apart countries. There is on record a prediction of Machiavelli of Florence that the Swiss were destined to be "masters of all Italy"-a prediction which time has not justified, but which was reasonable enough then in the light of the wonderful military virtue and the unscrupulousness of the Swiss. Almost every European nation felt their prowess as enemies or allies.

A very curious and contradictory-seeming picture-this Swiss character in the Middle Ages, so stubborn in defence of its own poor little home-patch, so cynical in its readiness to do a patriot's service for the pay of a mercenary. The stubborn defence of an essentially poor country was not in itself strange. It is human nature that the man who has little defends it more savagely than the owner of vast possessions. There is false reasoning in that story of the four robbers who attacked a B?otian in order to rob him, and having subdued him after a very fierce fight in which they were almost vanquished, and having found that he had but ten coppers, said in astonishment, "If he had had silver money he would have killed us all." The Swiss followed the ordinary course of human character in their fierce defence of a small and poor country.

FLUELEN, AT THE END OF URI LAKE.

But they followed it in an heroic degree. How can one, however, reconcile with that noble patriotism the readiness-suggesting an inherited survival of the desperate migratory spirit of the Helvetii of C?sar's time-to go abroad and bear arms for any country rich enough to offer good pay? It is easier to record than to explain the facts. But they are of a piece with the Swiss spirit of to-day, which mingles with a high patriotism and a sturdy pride a willingness to take servile occupation in exile abroad for the sake of gain, and finds in that no sacrifice of dignity.

In a previous chapter a very slight sketch of the history of Switzerland was given to the time of Charlemagne. In the confusion which followed his death Switzerland was divided up, the Treaty of Verdun (843) assigning West Switzerland and East Switzerland to different kingdoms. West Switzerland was part of the Burgundian Kingdom, and after Charlemagne their national pride centred chiefly in Bertha, "the spinning Queen," who fortified the country against the Saracens and the Hungarians. By the eleventh century Switzerland was united again, but when the dispute between Pope Gregory VII. and the Emperor Henry IV. (it was the time when the Popes claimed, and to an extent enforced, a temporal and spiritual overlordship over Europe) plunged the whole continent into a series of wars, Switzerland suffered with the rest of Europe. The twelfth century saw an important development for the Swiss national character when Berne and other "Free Cities" were founded by Bertold V. of the House of Zaeringer. These "Free Cities" acted as a counterpoise to the growing power of the Swiss feudal nobles of the country districts, and helped much to shape the country towards its future of a Federal Republic. This was the time of the Crusades and, needless to say, the Swiss did not miss that opportunity for martial service.

With the thirteenth century comes the first beginning of the Swiss Republic, the story of which is bound up with the rise of the House of Habsburg, a house from which was to spring one of the proudest monarchies of Europe, but which kept no foothold in Switzerland, the land which was the first seat of its power. Habsburg Castle still dominates the canton Aargau, but it is a monument of Swiss independence rather than of Austrian Empire. It is not certain whether the Habsburgs were of Swiss or of Swabian birth, but certainly their early history is most intimately bound up with the Swiss canton. It is the story that one of their ancestors, Radbot, hunting in the Aargau, lost his favourite hawk, and found it sitting on the ridge of the Wülpelsberg. Delighted with the view, Radbot built a castle there, and called it Hawk Castle, Habichtsburg, which became "Habsburg."

In a book which is designed to give only so much of the history of Switzerland as will make interesting its monuments and its people, it would be tedious to attempt to detail all the circumstances which led up to the birth of the Swiss Republic. But the leading facts are these. During the reign of King Albrecht (1298-1308), son of the famous Habsburger Rudolf, the Eastern Cantons of Switzerland, which were under the Habsburg House but had certain liberties which they closely cherished, were ill-governed. Albrecht had set governors over the cantons, who were oppressive in their taxation and cruel in their methods of enforcing payment. So much was their oppression and cruelty resented in the Forest Cantons-Unterwalden, Schwyz, and Uri-that there was formed by three patriots, Attinghausen, Stauffacher, and Melchthal, a conspiracy of protest. These patriots, explaining their plans to their friends, arranged nightly meetings on the Rütli, a secluded Alpine meadow above the Mytenstein, on Uri lake. This became the Runnymede of Swiss freedom. Records, more or less trustworthy, tell that in 1307 the Swiss patriots decided on definite action. Then at a meeting attended by thirty-three men on the Rütli rebellion was agreed upon.

How far one may accept the story of William Tell as giving a correct account of the final incident leading to the revolt of the Forest Cantons I cannot say. There certainly was a Hapsburg governor, Gessler, in charge of the canton Uri about this time (1307). Certainly, too, he was of a cruel and tyrannical disposition. But the story of Tell is thought by later historians to have been of much earlier origin as regards its main details.[1] Muller, however, accepts it. Kopp, who has subjected historical legends to a very searching analysis, rejects it on grounds which appear clear. But, very wisely, the Swiss keep to a story which conveys so valuable a lesson of patriotism. In the national history of Switzerland Tell's defiance of the tyrant is the first paragraph.

[1] It is difficult to decide whether it is superfluous to tell once again the story of Tell. On the principle that a good story cannot be told too often, here are the main "facts" as given in Swiss histories:

"One day the Austrian Governor of Uri, Gessler, set up a pole in the market-place of Altdorf. Upon this pole he set his hat, and gave orders that every Swiss who passed should bow down before it, in homage to his Austrian masters. Tell came by and did not bow. Gessler ordered him to be seized. Tell was a very famous archer. So the Governor bade his soldiers seize Tell's son and set the boy against a tree. An apple was placed on the child's head, and Tell was bidden to shoot at that mark. Tell took two arrows, placed one on his bow-string, and made careful aim. He shot his arrow, and it cleft the apple in two. Gessler demanded then why he had taken two arrows. Tell said: 'If the first arrow had injured my son, the second would soon have pierced thy heart.' Tell was then bound and placed in the Governor's barge, and the boat was rowed across the lake. When the barge was far from the shore, a sudden storm came. Tell was the most expert boatman of them all, and Gessler ordered that Tell should be unbound, and the hero took the tiller and steered the boat through the storm to safety. But then he killed Gessler with an arrow and took to the forest and there gave the first call to active revolt."

To come back to the region of ascertained fact, it seems clear that the first union for liberty of the Forest Cantons was formed in 1291. The battle of Morgarten, which set the seal of success on their revolt, was fought in 1315. There a great Hapsburg force under Duke Leopold was defeated by a far inferior band of Swiss peasants. The story of the battle illustrated once again the triumph of novelty in military strategy and tactics. The Swiss had prepared on a hill-side a great artificial avalanche of stones and trees. This was let loose on the Austrians as they passed by, killed many, filled the rest with dread and confusion, and made the finish of the battle a mere slaughter.

Morgarten made the name of Switzerland respected all over Europe and set the foundations of the liberty of the Swiss people. After the battle the allied Forest Cantons went to Brunnen, to renew by oath and enlarge the league of 1291. This for nearly five hundred years remained the fundamental law of union between the three States. The Forest Cantons, as three independent republics, claimed autonomy in their local affairs. Only for national purposes was there to be a central authority. Thus was the "Federal" idea, which had been much favoured by the Greek States, revived in Europe. It was the first of the modern Federations. The Swiss Federal plan was followed later, to a greater or less extent, in the constitutions of the United States, Germany, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. It is suggested to-day by some optimists as the basis of a possible far-off European combination to end the wars of the world.

Around the nucleus of the three Forest Cantons other Swiss States gathered. After a while the three States had become eight, Lucerne (1332) and Zurich (1352) being the first of the recruits. There was during this time a state of almost constant war with Austria, in which sometimes the Swiss cantons were strong enough to take the offensive. The year 1386 saw the great battle of Sempach, of which Arnold Winkelried was the hero. Campbell, among many others, has sung of his fame:

Inspiring and romantic Switzers' land,

Though mark'd with majesty by Nature's hand,

What charm ennobles most thy landscape's face?

Th' heroic memory of thy native race,

Who forced tyrannic hosts to bleed or flee,

And made their rocks the ramparts of the free!

Their fastnesses roll'd back th' invading tide

Of conquest, and their mountains taught them pride.

Hence they have patriot names,-in fancy's eye-

Bright as their glaciers glittering in the sky:

Patriots who make the pageantries of Kings

Like shadows seem, and unsubstantial things.

Their guiltless glory mocks oblivion's rust-

Imperishable, for their cause was just.

Heroes of old! to whom the Nine have strung

Their lyres, and spirit-stirring anthems sung:

Heroes of chivalry! whose banners grace

The aisles of many a consecrated place,-

Confess how few of you can match in fame

The martyr Winkelried's immortal name!

Duke Leopold III. marching towards Lucerne with a great army for those days (some say 12,000, others 24,000 men) encountered at Sempach the Swiss force (said to have been only 1500 men). The Austrian force formed a phalanx bristling on every side with lances. In the first stages the fight went badly for the brave mountaineers; sixty of them were slain before a single Austrian fell. They could not pass the hedge of lances.

Then said Arnold of Winkelried, "I'll make a way for you, comrades; take care of my wife and children!" He sprang upon the enemy with arms widely outspread, and gathered into his body the points of all the lances within his reach. Thus a gap was formed in the line, and into this gap leapt the Swiss, and came to close quarters with their enemy, who fell into confusion. Victory for the Swiss, a dreadful carnage of the Austrians followed. All Europe was astounded. The name of Swiss came to be associated with heroic courage and invincible might in battle. That the result was no mere "fluke" was proved a little later at Naefels, when an Austrian army suffered another disastrous defeat at the hands of the Swiss patriots. On the first Thursday of April each year Naefels celebrates that victory, and in 1888 all the people of Switzerland assembled there, in person or in spirit, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the victory.

ALTDORF. The traditional scene of William Tell's exploits.

The battle of Naefels, establishing as it did on an unquestioned pre-eminence the military virtues of the Swiss, inaugurated, too, that strange system of foreign service on the part of Swiss soldiers which would be shameful if it were not lighted up by so many deeds of high chivalry and noble fidelity. The Swiss Republic was now safe in its own house against aggression. The terrible prowess of its peasantry had been announced to every possible foe. But it felt the need of a foreign policy to secure an extension of territory, and it was this need which brought it into the orbit of general European diplomacy and into the temptation of mercenary service. By the next century, when the Swiss prowess had won new laurels at the battles of Grandson, Morat, and Nancy, the little patch of mountain and valley which is Switzerland had become a great diplomatic centre for Europe, its Republican leaders courted by France, the Italian States, Hungary, Germany, and England. Internecine trouble between the Swiss themselves was not uncommon, but throughout, despite differences of language, and later differences of religion, a Swiss idea of nationality lived constantly. In 1499 the Swiss League separated definitely from all vassalage to the German Empire. In 1513 the "League of the Thirteen Cantons," which represented the Swiss nationality until the days of Napoleon, was constituted. A severe defeat of the Swiss forces in 1515 by France left the French with the highest opinion of Swiss courage, and eager to take under their patronage the little Republic. An alliance in 1516 between France and Switzerland began a close friendship between the two countries, which continued with but little interruption until the French Revolution, when modern Switzerland may be said to have come into the arena of history.

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