The Alps of the Tyrol had for centuries been the asylum of liberty. The ancient German communal system had there continued to exist even in feudal times. Exactly at the time when the house of Habsburg lost its most valuable possessions in Switzerland, at the time of the council of Constance, Duke Frederick, surnamed Friedel with the empty purse, was compelled by necessity and for the sake of retaining the affection of the Tyrolese, to confirm them by oath in the possession of great privileges, which his successors, owing to a wholesome dread of exciting the anger of the sturdy mountaineers, prudently refrained from violating. The Tyrol was externally independent and was governed by her own diet. No recruits were levied in that country by the emperor, excepting those for the rifle corps, which elected its own commanders and wore the Tyrolean garb. The imposts were few and trifling in amount, the administration was simple. The free-born peasant enjoyed his rights in common with the patriarchal nobility and clergy, who dwelt in harmony with the people; in several of the valleys the public affairs were administered by simple peasants; each commune had its peculiar laws and customs. The first invasion of the Tyrol, in 1703, by the Bavarians, was successfully resisted. The Bavarians were driven, with great loss on their side, out of the country. A somewhat similar spirit animated the Tyrolese in 1805, and their anger was solely appeased by the express remonstrances of the Archduke John, whom the inhabitants of the Austrian Tyrol treated with the veneration due to a father. They now fell under the dominion of Bavaria, whose benevolent sovereign, Maximilian Joseph, promised, under the act dated the 14th of January, 1806, "not only strongly to uphold the constitution of the country and the well-earned rights and privileges of the people, but also to promote their welfare": but, led astray by his, certainly noble, enthusiasm for the rescue of his Bavarian subjects from Jesuit obscurantism, he imagined that similar measures might also be advantageously taken in the Tyrol, where the mountaineers, true to their ancient simplicity, were revolted by the severity of the cure, attempted too by a physician of whose intentions they were mistrustful. Bavaria was overrun with rich monasteries; the Tyrol, less fertile, possessed merely a patriarchal clergy, less numerous, more moral and active. There was no motive for interference. The conscription that, by converting the idle youth of Bavaria into disciplined soldiery, was a blessing to the martial-spirited and improvident population, was impracticable amid the well-trained Tyrolese, and, although the control exercised by a well-regulated bureaucracy might be beneficial when viewed in contradistinction with the ancient complicated system of government and administration of justice during the existence of the division into petty states and the manifold contradictory privileges, it was utterly uncalled for in the