lost almost all the valour and strength of his army.”[26] Fifty men, who had been banished from Schwitz in a period of civil discord, hearing of their country’s imminent danger, came to the frontier, and requested permission to serve in the army. The magistrates, whose uncalculating and resolute adherence to law, uninfluenced by expediency, has something noble in it, refused to sanction their appearance within the confines, and the exiles, equally determined in their patriotism, took post an an eminence beyond the frontier of the canton[27]. In this situation they contributed materially to the success of the day. They commenced the attack by rolling down rocks upon the Austrians as soon as they were entangled in the difficulties of the valley; and their countrymen, posted further on upon the mountain side, seized promptly on the favourable moment, and by the novel and unexpected manner of their attack, and the vigour with which they wielded their long and massive halberts, favoured by the difficulties of the ground, improved a temporary disorder into a total defeat. The disinterested bravery of the exiles was recompensed by restoration to their civil rights. Two other attacks at other points of their frontier were defeated by these gallant mountaineers on the same day, which was ever after commemorated by the Forest Cantons as a festival, and the names of those who fell at Morgarten were recited annually by the Schwitzers in the field of Rutli, the venerated spot in which the overthrow of the Austrian tyranny was planned.