In the beginning of the sixteenth century, intercourse with their neighbours was changing the old simple manners of the Swiss. Their repeated victories over Charles the Bold of Burgundy had led to the belief that the Swiss infantry was the best in Europe, and nations at war with each other were eager to hire Swiss troops. The custom had gradually grown up among the Swiss cantons of hiring out soldiers to those who paid best for them. These mercenaries, demoralised by making merchandise of their lives in quarrels not their own, and by spending their pay in riotous living when they returned to their native valleys, were corrupting the population of the Confederacy. The system was demoralising in another way. The two great Powers that trafficked in Swiss infantry were France and the Papacy; and the French king on the one hand, and the Pope on the other, not merely kept permanent agents in the various Swiss cantons, but gave pensions to leading citizens to induce them to persuade the canton to which they belonged to hire soldiers to the one side or the other. Zwingli, in his earlier days, believed that the Papacy was the only Power with which the Swiss ought to ally themselves, and received a papal pension for many years. § 2. _Zwingli's Youth and Education._[10] Huldreich (Ulrich) Zwingli, the Reformer of Switzerland, was born on January 1st, 1484 (fifty-two days after Luther), in the hamlet of Wildhaus (or Wildenhaus), lying in the upper part of the Toggenburg valley, raised so high above sea-level (3600 feet) that fruits refuse to ripen. It lies so exactly on the central watershed of Europe, that the rain which falls on the one side of the ridge of the red-tiled church roof goes into a streamlet which feeds the Danube, and that which falls on the other finds its way to the Rhine. He came third in a large family of eight sons and two daughters. His father, also called Huldreich, was the headman of the commune, and his uncle, Bartholomew Zwingli, was the parish priest. His education was superintended by Bartholomew, who became Dean of Wesen in 1487, and took the small Huldreich with him to his new sphere of work. The boy was sent to the school in Wesen, where he made rapid progress. Bartholomew Zwingli was somewhat of a scholar himself. When he discovered that his nephew was a precocious boy, he determined to give him as good an education as was possible, and sent him to Basel (Klein-Basel, on the east bank of the Rhine) to a famous school taught, by the gentle scholar, Gregory Buenzli (1494-98).