Page images
PDF
EPUB

allow itself to be caught, and ordered the friendly pie to be conveyed to Padua, and delicately nourished.

But it is time to close this sketch of the life of this famous chieftain-the most inhuman of those numerous Italian warriors of the middle ages, whose science and

| valor might have made them a blessing to their beautiful country, but who plunged it deeper and deeper into those feuds, which finally, by destroying the resources of its vitality, rendered it an easy prey to the grasping stranger.

THE SWISS REVOLUTION.

THE idea and sentiment of liberty must be very deep in human nature, or man would not still cling to it-seek it, as he does, after all that has transpired to make him abandon it. The mightiest empires have exerted and exhausted their mightiest efforts to stifle its breathings. Monarchs of every name have made it the one long scheme and purpose of their lives to cause it to perish in their dominions, and to root it out from the memories of their subjects; and, at death, they have left their partial successes therein as choice jewels for the inheritance of their houses, and have imposed the continuance of the tradition as one of the most solemn of duties. The talents of all the wily counsellors that bounties and patronage could win, have been concentrated in plotting its ruin. The ministers of religions, false and true, have been wheedled to betray it, or forced to become its executioners. Men, in the attempt to defend it, have poured out their blood like water; have desolated their best-loved hearths; have made their own wives widows, and their children orphans; have watered with their tears the captive's bread, and have felt through dreary years the dungeon mildew devouring their members and gnawing at their vitals. And as each old generation passes away, it perceives that the price of liberty is continual sacrifice and heroic suffering, and that, even thus, its rescue is but partial and soon declines; and yet the eye of the veteran kindles with that of the youth, and their voices unite in invoking that for which the one has suffered, and the other

VOL. II. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

[ocr errors]

is ready to suffer, and thus the struggle is continued and perpetuated. Liberty must be very dear to the human heart.

But the name of liberty has been assumed, and its privileges abused by monstrous broods, so numerous and odious, that memory refuses to rehearse their catalogue. When worthlessness would seek for distinction, or misrule for power, or cupidity for fortune, or hatred for vengeance, or voluptuousness for unbridled license, how often has each called itself the advocate of liberty! How often have they joined their forces to assault authority and good order! How often, especially in the days nearest our own, have they made the name of liberty the rallying cry of crime, and a sound portending calamity and woe to the citizens of quiet and peace! Thus have the powers of evil availed to bury the graceful form of liberty beneath hideous ruins, or to shroud it in lurid colorings, till the poet has described it, and the painter figured it, and a sentiment too common stamped it, even on a nation's currency, but as a zoneless bacchanal. Still men, and the lovers of man, have not ceased, from amid the cloudy terrors of evil fashionings, to invoke it with their voices, and to evoke it by their good deservings. Again, then, liberty must be something very dear to man, and, moreover, very noble in itself, that it is thus sought after and thus loved.

The sentiment of liberty is indeed something very noble, for by it God has distinguished man from the lower parts of creation, which are governed by necessary

5

laws; and it is very dear to man's heart, | Alps, were intended but as torch-lights for because it is a necessary condition of his the assassins of Europe, as firebrands for essential nature. a continental conflagration, as signals for the overthrow, not of thrones, but of law

For, whether in aspiration or in act, liberty is the element that girdles round-not of kings, but of nations and their the throne of the mind. And, though itself be not reason, it yet, with equal step, accompanies all the operations of reason, and without it reason becomes unreason. And yet reason is not the seat of the liberty that so encompasses it, but that other faculty, which, in the triune spirit, is ordained the scholar and yet the mistress of reason the scholar to be enlightened by it as to what is truth, and the mistress to force it, despite its lessons, into perverse windings, or to compel it to the just application of its teachings.

This faculty, need we say it, is the will, in naming which we have said free will, since these two are so knit that without freedom there is no will, and without will there is no freedom. Ubi voluntas, ibi libertas.

But in our first parents' fall, the human will was perverted, and two kinds of liberty were lost liberty from sin, and liberty from misery. Liberty from necessity was preserved to man, as a ground of merit or demerit. This is what we understand by natural liberty; and from all that we have said, we may gather why man so clings to seeking it, and has so abused it.

We have been meditating on the recent tragedies of Swiss revolution; and whoever is acquainted with the long history of that romantic confederacy, and understands the guilty violence that has just now dishonored virginal freedom on the mountains of Uri and of Schwytz, will agree, with a burning heart, that all we have said of liberty, and more than we are sufficient to say, has been illustrated, has been embodied in their annals.

Pens of an authority, and tongues of an eloquence, far other than ours, have been pleading, in Europe, the cause of prostrate, outraged Switzerland. They cried in the ears of the great powers of Europe, while the great nations of Europe were yet powers, that the conspiracy of revolutionists in the city of Berne was not a local affair; that the ruin of the Swiss constitution was not the end, but only the means of the conspirators; that the flames of civil war, kindled in the homesteads of the

most cherished institutions. Oppressors disregarded and have fallen; and if any movement has indeed been made towards securing the true and reasonable rights of the people in parts of Europe, we may be sure that their late masters look with regret not more poignant on what they have lost, than do the jacobins centred in Switzerland on what they have thereby failed to gain. Switzerland, indeed, is a little country, but the questions that have shaken her concern all Europe. Wisdom must prevent their consequences, or time will show them yet further; for the secret lodges of Berne have purposes not yet fulfilled.

But if Swiss affairs interest the adjoining nations of Europe by their actual tendencies, they may interest others in the way of solemn lessons. For us republicans, for us constitutional republicans, oh! how many lessons might be drawn from the history, and at length from the calamities of an elder republic; and how many arguments might be found in the causes of those calamities, for principles whose application our national interests are at this moment loudly demanding. These we cannot pretend to discuss at length, nor as their importance would warrant, in the present essay; but we shall nevertheless have natural occasion to indicate some of them less or more pointedly, and shall thus leave them to the reflection or to the minuter examination of our readers.

The race which has rendered Switzerland famous in modern Europe, were emigrants from the remote North. Passing by their earliest struggles and sufferings amid the rugged Alps, the records of which are more or less uncertain, we find them, early in the ninth century, possessed of liberty and a formal constitution; for Louis le Debonnaire, in extending to them the paternal protection of the Carlovingian empire, expressly guarantied to them the preservation of these. The fundamental provisions of this constitution bear a most striking resemblance to the laws of the ancient Scandinavians, as they may be found detailed in the poetical legends that have come down to us from Olaus and Johannes

Magnus,* or as they have at a later date been collected and critically examined by the learned Messenius, in his "Scondia Illustrata.” This constitutional correspondence in their social fabric between Switzerland and the extreme North, of itself proves the origin of the race, and is at the same time an illustration of the truth, that constitutions which show the vigor of permanence and vitality, which successfully resist encroachments from without, and bind firmly to one another their constituents from within, are not the handiwork of political forecast, nor are hewn out as a creation de novo by the statesmen of an incipient people; but that their foundation, on the contrary, is in the public synderesis of the primitive community, and their shapings are the gradual results of the practical needs and peculiar position of each nation as it grows towards maturity. Switzerland, which, since the Congress of European powers at Vienna in 1815, has consisted of twenty-two cantons, takes its name from the canton of Schwytz, which was the first nucleus of the confederation, and has ever been the soul of its glory, and the noblest guardian of its liberties. Uri and Unterwalden, co-ordinate in race and origin with Schwytz, were always knit to it in feeling, and, from early in the twelfth century, formed with it a regular defensive league. These three cantons formed the Waldstaaten, or Woodland States. The customs and manners, and the complete sovereignty of each canton, by stipulation, remained inviolable; but the entire support of the three was pledged to resist any foreign interference. About the middle of the thirteenth century, they chose the celebrated Rodolph of Hapsburg to be the head and arbiter of their league. This was in evident obedience to the prevailing sentiment of Europe at that time, whose aspirations were for an emperor of all Christendom, to be elected, not less for his high personal worth, than for the extent of his material resources; and to whom, therefore, all disputes between nations might be referred for a rightful adjustment a magnificent conception, but why has it proved so unsatisfactory in practice?

The same century had not passed away

*Historia Gentium Septentrionalium, Basilea, 1567.

|

till the people of the Waldstaaten found that this chieftainship of a stranger was likely to be abused to purposes of foreign aggression; and with the manly energy that they have ever displayed in coping with perils, they compelled the Count of Hapsburg, elevated though he now was to the position of emperor, to retrench himself within the faculties that had been conceded to him. A solemn renewal of the alliance between the three Waldstaaten was consequently made in the year 1291, and on the same occasion they re-enacted an ancient law, that no man who was of foreign birth, be his qualifications or his character what they might be, should ever exercise the office of a judge among them. They applied the same rule to their clergy with a few exceptions, and this identity of sympathy between the people and their pastors has been a powerful promoter of the union that has always existed in these countries, between their patriotism and their religion.

When Rodolph of Hapsburg died, his house began the base, degenerate course that has ended by rendering it, first the enemy, and now, at length, the laughingstock of Christendom. At the very beginning of the fourteenth century, Albert, son of Rodolph, set about the task of wantonly injuring the Waldstaaten, that he might thence find occasion to reduce them beneath his iron yoke. What kind of success he had has become matter of story and of song wherever patriotism or political liberty is prized. He sent the notorious Gesler to administer justice in Schwytz and Uri, and Beringer in like capacity to Unterwalden. But these emissaries of oppression had scarcely had time for more than to commence their task, when Werner Von Stauffach, Arnold Anderhalden, and Walter Furst, meeting together by night at the great rock which marks the boundary between Uri and Unterwalden, on the Lake of Waldstaaten, plighted there their troth to one another that, God helping, they would set their country free. This was on the 17th of November, 1307. The day was fixed, upon which each of them, with a chosen band of patriots, was, in their respective cantons, to raise the cry of liberty, to which they well knew that every Swiss heart was ready to answer at the cost of its blood. But in the interval of the oath

and its intended accomplishment, the sonin-law of Walter Furst, the heroic Tell of Burglen, rid Switzerland and the world of Gesler, and, as is well known, retrieved the fortunes of his country.

Eight years later Prince Leopold, brother of Frederic, came against the Waldstaaten to take an Austrian vengeance, with more than ten thousand men. These he had considered amply sufficient wherewith to chastise a handful of unruly mountaineers. Some thirteen hundred Swiss assembled and met them on the henceforth classic heights of the plain of Morgarten. Leopold escaped with the remnant of his shattered host. Hitherto the Swiss had lived together as a band of brothers; we have now no record of the slightest internal troubles having ever disturbed their repose. But as usual, prosperity brought them friends. Zug, Glarus, and Lucerne, sought admission to so valiant a confederacy. Why not admit them? The same greedy house of Hapsburg, with its double-faced eagle, was seeking their destruction, that had sought the ruin of the Waldstaaten. Besides, to have them for allies would be not only to increase the numerical strength of their fighting men, but to throw a friendly wall between the German empire and the original cantons. They were admitted. Then Zurich, and at length Berne, sought part in the league. The latter had domestic feuds to be thus appeased, as well as foreign enemies to be repelled. The principle of new accessions had been once acted upon-why should the action not be repeated? No reason was found, and anew the hand was extended to them also. With one partial and temporary exception, the Waldstaaten have always sufficed for themselves and their own defence, but how seldom have they sufficed for the fickle Lucernese, and the factious men of Zurich and of Berne.

Nevertheless, hitherto the admission of the latter cantons seemed almost acts of generosity, and it cannot be denied that for a while the new allies rendered important aid in the wars of the Swiss with the Austrians. But as their arms were always successful, new territories were from time to time falling into their hands, or were ceded to them by feudal powers. Among these were Baden, Bremgarten, and Mellingen. It was here that the evil

[ocr errors]

influence of the later confederate cantons became active. Lucerne, Zurich, and Berne were republican, not by fundamental constitution, but by the force of circumstances; they had never the sentiment of liberty at heart, and accordingly they were eager to seize on foreign possessions, not to free them from oppression, but to substitute themselves as new masters. After this evil example, the original cantons were drawn away, and they too would become suzerains. To this unhappy course Uri presented a glorious and a holy exception. It refused its share in the partition of the foreign possessions, professing that the wars they had undertaken were in obedience to their conscience and their country, and that they would not defile themselves by receiving any other recompense.

Schwytz pursued for a while another course, and was thereby led to quarrel and at length to fight with Zurich, in the maintenance of only probable rights. But Zurich, which had been a traitor from the beginning, forgetting her solemn covenant with the confederacy, and forgetting the special obligations that she owed to the elder cantons, called in the aid of Austria, and had France likewise to a certain extent engaged to assist her with troops.

The faith of treaties was guarded by the ancient Swiss with unparalleled fidelity. That their forefathers had given their word for such or such a thing, sufficed them for a reason to forego or to suffer, rather than to violate the legacy of their maply honor. The confederates, therefore, were stung to the quick by the turpitude of Zurich's conduct, and willingly espoused the cause of Schwytz. The armed forces that were assembling to attack them seemed certain to overwhelm them by their numbers, and were of noted valor. But a band of only sixteen hundred men, mostly from the Waldstaaten, burst upon them like an avalanche of their native Alps, and swept them from the country. Zurich, left to herself, soon felt the misery of her isolation, and begged to be received again into the confederacy. The professing penitent was forgiven by the good Swiss, and once more took her place in the league-soon again to give its members fresh trouble. The date of its reconciliation was A. D. 1460.

New wars followed, with Austria and

In the second year of the sixteenth century, two other states, Schaffhausen and Bale, which had been dependencies, became confederates; and finally, in 1513, Appenzell was added to their number. This was the last addition till the dissolution of the confederacy by the French Revolution, and its restoration by the allied powers at the Congress of Vienna, A. D, 1815.

with Burgundy, and the successes of the | Von Fluhe, by standing steadfast to their Swiss arms and the possessions they thus constitution, and suffering severely for its acquired, were again the bane of their in- conservation. ternal peace. Lucerne, Zurich, and Berne, the feeblest on the field of battle, wished to be stoutest in dividing the booty, on account of their numerous aristocracy and superior wealth already acquired. At the diet of Stantz their bitter contentions came to a head, and they were about to separate to engage in the bloodiest of their civil wars, when in a manner marvellous, (miraculous say the chronicles,) all passions were quelled by the sudden appearance in the diet of a gray-haired hermit named Nicholas Von Fluhe. This was one of those wonderful characters that we find from time to time in the pages of history, particularly during the middle ages, living in continual and utter solitude; but who at length, at some imminent national crisis, burst upon the theatre of events, the most foreign to their habits and thoughts, concentrating and expending in a few short days, or even hours, the intellectual energies of an entire and remarkable life, holding every eye, hushing every murmur, captivating every heart by the unearthly majesty of their mien, rebuking error, rectifying mistakes, denouncing judgments of terror upon disobedience, finally restoring order to the distracted state, setting the political vessel upon her true course, and then delivering up the helm to capable governors, and vanishing as suddenly as they had appeared, and leaving those they had delivered thankful for the benefit, but bewildered at the method.

Such an one was the venerable hermit of the Alps, Nicholas Von Fluhe, who appeared in this diet of Stantz in 1481, composed the disputes of the cantons, induced them to renew their federal league with each other, and moreover to admit the states of Friburg and Solothurn to the standing of confederate cantons, assuring them, on the faith of prophetic vision, that these two cantons would continue thankful for the favor, and would yet render signal services to the interests of the league. In the then actual state of the confederacy their admission was undoubtedly sound policy, both from the local position they occupied, and from the stable character of their population. They have, or at least Friburg has, verified also the promises of

But the golden age of the Swiss republic seemed already past. Some cantons, indeed, more, and others less, and the ancient Waldstaaten least of all, yet all in their degree, were infected with the desire of the riches and aggrandizement with which they had been brought into contact. Thence began the disposition to sell their services to foreign princes, for the hope of greater gain; and in the pursuit of this they treasured up for themselves causes of deeper sorrow, or abandoned themselves to the evil courses of the nations with whom they mingled. And thus the sons of this virtuous and heroic republic, after that, like Samson, they had with their naked hands rent the jaws of the lion of imperial despotism that roared against them, returning after many days to the decaying carcase, drew forth indeed meat from the eater and sweetness from the strong; but in the end found something sweeter, to their corrupted taste, than honey, and something stronger than a lion,—and the Nazarite laid down his head in the lap of European vices, and was shorn of the locks of his glory.

To the dissensions and quarrels between the cantons, was now soon to be added the intensity of religious hatred; for we are arrived at the period of the great ecclesiastical revolutions of the sixteenth century. Zurich and Berne were predisposed to change, and were accordingly the first to embrace the new doctrines of Calvin and Zuingle. God knows they had need enough of a change, if it could but have inspired them with some sentiments of virtue or of honor. Zurich became the champion of the reformed creed, and exerted itself to the utmost in its propagation. As to the ancient Waldstaaten, such a revolution must have been impossible till the prime

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »