The Five Cantons responded to this provoking language by unfriendly measures. They refused their subjects permission to go to Bern, and denied a safe-conduct to travelers who passed through their boundaries. The government of Luzern, excited to the highest pitch of hostility by the passionate Doctor Murner, did not prevent him from attacking Bern and her government in the most unmeasured style in various libelous writings, issued by a printing-house of his own. All this increased the hatred toward that state and the favorable inclination toward Zurich. Here collected, in the meantime, all those persons from Eastern Switzerland and the neighboring parts of Germany, who intended to be present at the conflict in Bern. On New Year's evening fifteen hundred and twenty-eight were entertained at the chamber of the Canons by the government of Zurich. The day following, preachers and scholars, more than a hundred in number, they set out, surrounded by a troop of armed men to command respect, for it had been rumored that in the free bailiwicks, where the Five Cantons swayed the majority of the rulers, they would be threatened with danger. They reached Bern on the third evening, where alsoŒcolampadius and the theologians of Strassburg, Bucer and Capito, had already arrived. Religion had put science in motion. From the union of both, politics were to receive their direction. The events in Bern were to determine the fate of Switzerland. Statesmen as well as scholars acknowledged this. The city had neglected nothing in order to make clear its honor, its rectitude and its hospitality. The government had exhibited firmness on all sides. To the Emperor himself, who in a very earnest tone had issued a positive command to abolish the Conference, it had been replied respectfully, but decidedly, that the preparations had already gone too far to permit this. On the sixth of January the business was opened in the church of the Franciscans. Of splendid accommodations for one party and mean ones for the other, as at Baden, there was nothing to be seen. Several times were the opponents of the Reformers requested to assist each other. "You see"--said the _landvogt_ Manuel, who was appointed to summon the speakers according to the rules--"how _they_ confess the articles to be good, and faithfully keep together; therefore, I pray and warn you once more, for God's sake, to bring into one place your opposing speakers, and assist each other by counsel, writing and speaking. This our gracious Lords will accept with great gratitude as a favorable token of your good-will."