The land groaned under violence; the despotism was distant and delegated; the sovereign too far removed to hear the universal lamentation. It became intolerable. A few brave hearts reasoned, that God had never granted power to any emperor, king, or bailiff to commit such injustice; and that death was preferable to a continued submission under so ignominious a yoke. The wife of Werner Stauffacher, of Schwyz, being brutally treated by one of the bailiffs’ officers, in the absence of her husband, on his return reporting the affair to him, exclaimed, “Shall we mothers nurse beggars at our bosoms, and bring up maid-servants for foreigners? What are the men of the mountains good for? Let there be an end of this!”[101] Stauffacher sought the counsel of Walter Fürst, of Uri, and Arnold Melchthal, of Unterwalden; and these three, from the result of that counsel, became famous as “The Patriot Three that met of yore, Beneath the midnight sky, And leagued their hearts on the Rütli shore In the name of liberty.” Being well acquainted with the most injured, the most intrepid, and the most implacable of their countrymen, they determined to see them, and ascertain whether they would be willing to risk their lives in defence of their liberties. If the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, no less true is it in all history, that the insolence of tyranny is the cradle of liberty. Rütli, so called from the uprooting and clearing of the trees (German, _ausgereutet_), a secluded field below Seelisberg, in the Canton of Uri, on a steep, small promontory standing out from the mountain and surrounded on three sides by the waters of the lake, was the spot chosen for their council chamber.[102] On the night of the 7th of November, 1307, descending from their mountains, or crossing the lake in small fishing-boats, came the patriot three, each, as he had agreed to do, bringing ten true and brave herdsmen, stout of heart and strong of limb. They silently gathered at the lonely spot, as they had concerted. The love of native soil, the feeling of freedom and security under the protection of the laws of the country, the feeling of being ill treated and subjugated by a foreign debauchee, a determination to throw off so obnoxious a yoke--all these great and good qualities were shared by these untutored, but heroic, noble-minded peasants. A handful of patriots, meeting at midnight, and attesting the justice of their cause to the Almighty Disposer of events, the God of equity and mercy, the protector of the helpless; calm and united, proceeding to the delivery of their country; retaining all the serene forbearance of the most elevated reason, amid the energies and the fury of vindictive right. They could bear to die, but not to be subdued: “They linked their hands,--they pledged their stainless faith In the dread presence of attesting Heaven, They knelt, and rose in strength.”