From Brixen to Sterzing one traverses the widening, narrowing, and again widening valley of the Eisack. Past Spinges, with its memories of the fierce battle in 1797, when General Joubert was marching through the Puster Thal to make a junction with Napoleon. His advance was not, however, permitted unchecked. The inhabitants of Spinges might not be many, but they were Tyrolese. It happened, too, that a few companies of the Landsturm were in the neighbourhood, and so these and the men of Spinges marched out to meet Joubert's immensely superior force. The French troops were armed with bayonets as well as guns, and the barrier they made was found unpierceable by the brave but badly armed patriots. But the opportunity or need produced the man as it had done rather more than four centuries before in Switzerland when Arnold von Winkelried gathered the Austrian spears into his bosom at Sempach. In this case it was one Anton Reinisch, of Volders, who "played the man," and heroically leapt, scythe in hand, amongst the French bayonets, a score of which pierced his body, and thus, hewing right and left ere he fell, carved a way for his comrades, and enabled them to break up the French lines. [Sidenote: THE MAID OF SPINGES] But Spinges will be celebrated still more in romance, as it has been in history, by the act of that anonymous maiden "the Maid of Spinges," who, during the fight around the church of the village, mounted in company with the men the wall of the churchyard, and, armed with a hay fork, helped, by her strong arms as well as her example, to successfully repel three fierce attacks of the French soldiery. Unknown[18] by name, yet the fame of her courageous act, typical as it was of those of many others of her sex during the long and fierce struggle waged by the Tyrolese against the invaders of their beloved land, has descended through generations. On the other side of the valley to Spinges is Franzenfeste at the mouth of the defile known as the Brixener Klause. Few people stop at Franzenfeste, we imagine. To ramble on the hillsides would be an act of foolhardiness, for they are honeycombed with forts. It is a great strategic position, commanding the Brenner and the entrance to the Puster Thal; and investigation of the hillsides and neighbourhood, it is needless to say, is not encouraged by the Austrian Government. It is possible in the future that the spot which saw much fighting in 1797 and 1809 will again be the scene of military operations, and a struggle not less fierce, and far more bloody. Who knows? [Sidenote: STERZING AND MATREI]