retainers, availed themselves, like all the German princes, of the
confusion, divisions, and interreigns which frequently distracted the
empire in the succeeding centuries, in order to establish a firm and
unlimited authority of their own. Henceforth the annals of this country
furnish us with little more than catalogues of the bishops and dukes,
who were still, at times, nominated by the emperors; and of the domains
granted out by them to different indigenate families; with accounts of
the atrocious cruelties exercised by these lords over their vassals; and
with anecdotes of the prowess of the natives in several expeditions into
Italy and Palestine, in which they still voluntarily accompanied the
emperors.

The repeated acts of tyranny exercised by those arbitrary despots, who
had now shaken off all manner of restraint, at length exasperated the
people into a general revolt, and brought on the confederacy; in which
the bishop and most of the nobles were glad to join, in order to screen
themselves from the fury of the insurgents.

The first step towards this happy revolution was made by some _venerable
old men dressed in the coarse grey cloth_ of the country, who in the
year 1424 met privately in a wood near a place called Truns, in the
Upper League; where, _impressed with a sense of their former
liberties_,[AD] they determined to remonstrate against, and oppose, the
violent proceedings of their oppressors. The abbot Dissentis was the
first who countenanced their measures; their joint influence gradually
prevailed over several of the most moderate among the nobles; and hence
arose the league which, from the colour of its first promoters, was ever
called the Grey League; which, from its being the first in the bold
attempt to shake off the yoke of wanton tyranny, has ever since retained
the pre-eminence in rank before the two other leagues; and which has
even given its name to the whole country, whose inhabitants, from the
circumstances of their deliverance, pride themselves in the appellation
of _Grisones_, or the _grey-ones_.[AE] From this period nothing has ever
affected their freedom and absolute independence, which they now enjoy
in the most unlimited sense, in spite of the repeated efforts of the
house of Austria to recover some degree of ascendency over them.

From this concise view of the history of the Grisons, in which I have
carefully guarded against favouring any particular hypothesis, it
appears, that as no