In obedience to the first of these contradictory instructions, the Bernese colonel Gross had given notice to the French outposts that the truce would come to an end at ten in the evening of the 1st of March; but when he withdrew his former announcement on the arrival of counter-orders, Schauenburg would admit no further parley. He had already attacked, without warning, the old castle of Dornach, in the neighbourhood of Bâle, which sustained a siege of twenty-four hours. The attack of a Bernese division near Vingels was repulsed with loss, and the French surprised the Bernese posts at Lengnau, which they carried after an obstinate resistance. The town of Solothurn capitulated, on Schauenburg’s appearance before it. The passage across the Aar now lay open to the French troops. Fribourg was attacked and taken, though a stand was made by the Bernese garrison. Erlach was now compelled to withdraw his troops behind the Aar and the Sense; though it was not without extreme reluctance that the men of Bern abandoned Morat. On the 3rd of March, Brune destroyed one of the finest monuments of Swiss courage and union, the Ossuary of Morat; and the French, among whom were many natives of Burgundy, honoured the bones of their ancestors with a grave, after an interval of more than three hundred years. Now at length, Bern, Solothurn, and Fribourg proclaimed a levy _en masse_ of the able-bodied men within their territories. The Bernese army was in a dreadful state of confusion; particularly that division which stood directly opposed to Brune, in which the distrust and exasperation of the soldiers were at their highest pitch. Officers were dismissed by their soldiers, and others put in their place. Colonels Stettler and Ryhiner were bayonetted and shot before the very gates of Bern; and Colonels Crusez and Goumoens fell beneath the sabre-strokes of their own dragoons. Nevertheless, the troops were again assembled under command of Grafenried, who was admirably supported by his officers, and repulsed the French in every attempt to charge them at the point of the bayonet. Eighteen cannons were taken from the enemy, and their loss in men besides was very considerable. _The Capitulation of Berne; the Constitution Unitaire (1798 A.D.)_