At that stage of history the welfare of the country depended to a great extent on the personal character of the imperial sovereigns. They visited Swabia and Burgundy, enforcing order and discipline, holding diets at important places, and assigning prerogatives to secular and religious foundations. In truth, these imperial visits promoted greatly the development of rising cities. Of the German emperors none came so often to Switzerland as the powerful Salic ruler, Henry III. When he left Burgundy--he was often at Basel and Solothurn--the people felt, says a contemporary writer, as if the sun had gone down. Henry II. and Henry III. held imperial diets at Zurich, and the latter used to reside there for weeks together, and lavished privileges and gifts on her religious foundations. He promoted festivals in the royal palace (Pfalz), in the Lindencourt; and Zurich was the meeting-place for his Burgundian and Italian subjects, the capital of Swabia, and residence of the Swabian dukes, where they here established their mint. His wise administration tended greatly to destroy all political difference and hostile feeling between the two Helvetias. This national concord (1057-77) was still further strengthened by the rule of Rudolf of Rheinfelden, who for twenty years swayed the destinies of the country as "Rector of Burgundy" and Duke of Alamannia. The regal and ducal power had been bestowed upon him by the Empress Agnes, on the death of Henry III., whose son-in-law he was. Rudolf was from the manor of Rheinfelden, near Basel, and was a distant connection of the Burgundian royal family. He held vast estates on Geneva lake, and in Swabia, and thus met with no opposition on the part of the nobility of Burgundy. But this long period of peace was suddenly and sadly interrupted by a terrible catastrophe which fell upon the empire; the fierce antagonism which arose between Gregory VII. and Henry IV. The emperor was unwilling to submit to the excessive encroachments of the Church, or, rather the Pontiff, on his prerogatives, and like William I. of England, entirely repudiated the Pope's claims, and tried to check his encroachments. The "Conqueror" indeed had gained so much power that the Pope could not issue excommunications against English subjects except by William's permission, but Henry IV. fell a victim to the Interdict. Never was sovereign more humiliated by the Papal power, nor more humiliated himself to escape the terrible punishment, for interdicts were fearful weapons in the hands of the Pontiffs of the Middle Ages. The story of this long struggle--how the emperor failed to carry his point--his wanderings across the Alps in the depth of winter--his submission at Canossa--for all this, full of thrilling interest as it is, the reader must be referred to the history of Germany. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF LAUSANNE.]