Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/137

Rh Cantons. The love of justice and humanity led them to the battle against the tyrants. Their victory was perfect. God was with them.

The following Sunday the Confederates again met and renewed their oath for the defense of freedom and fatherland.

The murder of the covetous Duke Albrecht, by the hand of his nephew, and the slaughter of Gessler by William Tell, assisted at the same time the Swiss struggle for freedom. A pause ensued of astonishment and horror. But soon the house of Hapsburg armed itself afresh, that it might crush with all its force the young, free Switzerland. Duke Leopold, the brother of the murdered Albrecht, and the flower of Austrian chivalry, armed himself and took the field against the people of the Forest Cantons. But the herdsmen and peasants of the Forest Cantons also armed themselves. Hence occurred at Morgarten, on the 16th of March, 1315, that ever-memorable fight, in which a few hundred peasants of the three Forest Cantons, overcame, nay annihilated, a host of twenty thousand Austrians. And Duke Leopold, who swore to revenge upon the people of the Forest Cantons the death of his brother Albrecht, who threatened to trample the peasants under his foot, and who carried with him a wagon full of ropes to bind them with,—the proud, stately Duke Leopold was obliged to fly before the peasants. It was with difficulty that he saved his life. By lonely forest paths, and with but few followers, he reached Winterthur late in the evening, pale as death, and sorely dejected.

But the people of the Forest Cantons returned loud