What he did not, however, secure was any support from Vienna in the form of arms or disciplined troops with which to leaven his "ragged coats." The courage of the men who entered upon a campaign against trained and tried soldiers armed with the most up-to-date weapons of those times can scarcely be estimated just as it most certainly cannot be over-praised. Owing to the rigorous search for arms which the Bavarians and French had instituted in almost every dwelling in the land, during the two or three years which intervened between the Treaty of Pressburg and the uprising of the peasants under Hofer, it was not possible to obtain and store new weapons in any quantity even if to do so had not been rendered difficult from the hosts of spies which overran Tyrol and seemed to lurk beneath almost every rock. Thus it was that out-of-date weapons--most of which had seen service in the war of a century before--billhooks, scythes, clubs and pitchforks, with whatever other arms their own ingenuity could devise or the village blacksmiths make, were pitted against the arms of some precision of the French and Bavarian troops. All that the peasant forces had to sustain them in the struggle against well-armed and disciplined veterans, superior as regards knowledge of warfare, was dauntless courage and a greater acquaintance with the country and of hill fighting. [Illustration: THE SCHWARZHORN, S. TYROL] Upon Hofer's return with his companions from Vienna his Inn became the resort--more or less secretly--of all who were truly desirous of joining the popular movement and of freeing the country. Many, we are told, blamed him for trusting so implicitly all who came. But to objectors he made the same answer: "There are no traitors amongst my countrymen." That his confidence was not misplaced was abundantly shown by the fact that the secret of a conspiracy so vast that it may be said to have extended north, south, east, and west almost throughout Tyrol was unrevealed until the ever-memorable night of April 10, 1809, when the time fixed for the uprising arrived. [Sidenote: THE SUMMONS TO ARMS] On the evening of that day the peasants of the Passeyer and other valleys were called to arms by means of great fires which blazed out in the darkness of the clear April sky in long, ruddy banners of flame. Every hill crest in the vicinity of the Passeyer Valley had its signal fire, and these were answered by others on the mountains overshadowing the distant valleys. On the morrow Andreas Hofer found himself at daybreak at the head of nearly 5000 men who had one and all "confessed" and received the Sacrament ere taking up arms in their sacred cause of liberty.