, spoke for them. A simple people, innocent
of human learning, they could urge against the patent of the Emperor
only the tradition of their fathers, and judgment went against them
touching the matter, and no question was made in it as to the validity
of the Emperor's patent. It was an unexpected blow to the Schwyzers.
Tradition among people living solitary grows into a religious right,
which they fight for readily. For eleven years their turbulence went
unpunished; for Henry V. had other matters on his hands, and his two
successors conferred other privileges upon the convent. Thirty years
afterwards, however, in 1142 or thereabouts, at the solicitation of the
monks, obedience was commanded by the Emperor Conrad III., then on the
point of departing with his Crusaders to Palestine. But the people
answered,--"If the Emperor, to our injury, contemning the traditions of
our fathers, will give our land to unrighteous priests, the protection
of the Empire is worthless to us." Thereupon the Emperor waxed wroth;
the ban was laid upon them by Hermann, Bishop of Constance; but they
withdrew, nevertheless, from the protection of the Empire, and Uri and
Unterwalden with them,--fearing neither the Emperor nor the ban, for
they could not conceive how it was a sin to maintain the right, and so
they pastured their cattle without fear.

When Friedrich I. came to the throne and wanted soldiers, he sent Graf
Ulrich of Lenzburg, Bailiff of the Waldstaette, into the valleys to speak
to the men of Schwyz. "The heart of the people is in the hands of noble
heroes," says the historian;--gladly did the youths, six hundred strong,
seize their arms and go forth under Graf Ulrich, whom they loved, to
fight for the Emperor his friend, beyond the mountains, in Italy. And
now it came the Emperor's turn for the ban; the whole Imperial House of
Hohenstaufen fell into spiritual disgrace; Friedrich II. was cursed at
Lyons as a blasphemer; but these things did not turn away the hearts of
the men of Schwyz from his House.

Long after the time of this Ulrich, the last reigning Graf of Lenzburg,
shortly after the Swiss Union had been renewed, at the instance of
Walther of Attinghausen, in 1206, Unterwalden chose Rudolph, Count of
Hapsburg, for Bailiff. He endeavored to extend his authority over the
other two Cantons, in which he was aided by the Emperor Otho IV., of the
House of Brunswick, who had been raised to the throne in opposition to
the House of Swabi