Every Swiss man therefore is drilled, armed, and ready to turn out and fight; in his house, within arm’s reach, must hang his gun, his uniform, and sword. The _concierge_ who accepts your _pourboire_ may be a captain in the line, and the driver of your _voiture_ a corporal. Some one, writing of the universal fusion between the military and civic elements, tells this incident: A gentleman called to see a lawyer on business; asking the servant if the lawyer was in, he answered, “The colonel is not here, sir, but you can see the major.” So the visitor was shown in, and saw the major, who was the lawyer’s partner, and when he made a statement of his business, he was told, “That is not in my department, the captain will look after it.” The captain was the firm’s clerk, and while talking to him, a second clerk came into the office, whom the captain saluted, saying, “Good day, lieutenant.” In the public schools even the girls receive some training which fits them to be useful auxiliaries in the army. They learn to stanch the flow of blood, to dress a gunshot wound, and to nurse the sick; they know some chemistry and are quick at sewing, binding, dressing, and such medical arts. And if need, they would march in line with knapsacks on their backs, as their mothers did in times past. The Helvetic women fought against the army of Octavianus Augustus in 16 B.C., and when all was lost, hurled their young children at the Roman soldiers and rushed forward to meet their own death. In the old days of trial by judicial combat, _assumere duellum_, the chronicles of 1288 contained this curious entry: _Duellum fuit in Bern inter virum et mulierem, sed mulier prevaluit_. Not only men but women fought at the battle of Stantz, and among the killed were counted one hundred and thirty women. During the French invasion of 1798, upward of eight hundred women took up arms in the _Landsturm_, and bore all the fire of the enemy in the last actions. At Fraubrunnen two hundred and sixty women received the enemy with scythes, pitchforks, and pickaxes; one hundred and eighty were killed, and one of them, whose name was Glar, had two daughters and three granddaughters who fought by her side,--these six heroines all were found among the dead. In the Swiss Reformed Church, in administering the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper, the men go up first and the women afterwards, with the single exception of Geiss, in Appenzell, where, on account of their service at the battle of Amstoss, the women go up first.