The towns and districts which had been hitherto excluded from a share in government welcomed a change which seemed to place them on a level with their former superiors: the mountain-cantons fought with traditional heroism in defence of the liberties which they had inherited from their fathers; but they were compelled, one after another, to submit to the overwhelming force of France, and to accept the new constitution. Yet, even now, when peace seemed to have been restored, and the whole purpose of France attained, the tyranny and violence of the invaders exhausted the endurance of a spirited people. The magistrates of the Republic were expelled from office at the word of a French Commission; hostages were seized; at length an oath of allegiance to the new order was required as a condition for the evacuation of Switzerland by the French army. Revolt broke out in Unterwalden, and a handful of peasants met the French army at the village of Stanz, near the eastern shore of the Lake of Lucerne (Sept. 8). There for three days they fought with unyielding courage. Their resistance inflamed the French to a cruel vengeance; slaughtered families and burning villages renewed, in this so-called crusade of liberty, the savagery of ancient war. [French intrigues in Rome.] Intrigues at Rome paved the way for a French intervention in the affairs of the Papal States, coincident in time with the invasion of Switzerland. The residence of the French ambassador at Rome, Joseph Bonaparte, was the centre of a democratic agitation. The men who moved about him were in great part strangers from the north of Italy, but they found adherents in the middle and professional classes in Rome itself, although the mass of the poor people, as well as the numerous body whose salaries or profits depended upon ecclesiastical expenditure, were devoted to the priests and the Papacy. In anticipation of disturbances, the Government ordered companies of soldiers to patrol the city. A collision occurred on the 28th December, 1797, between the patrols and a band of revolutionists, who, being roughly handled by the populace as well as by the soldiers, made their way for protection to the courtyard of the Palazzo Corsini, where Joseph Bonaparte resided. Here, in the midst of a confused struggle, General Duphot, a member of the Embassy, was shot by a Papal soldier. [64] [Berthier enters Rome, Feb. 10, 1798.] [Roman Republic, Feb. 15, 1798.]