assailants, it seemed as if the whole army would be annihilated, and not
a man escape to tell the tale.

Numbers of gallant knights, the flower of the Austrian, nobility, fell
under those vengeful clubs. Numbers were drowned in the lake. A
halberd-thrust revenged Switzerland on Landenberg, who had come back to
his doom. Two of the Gesslers were slain. Death held high carnival in
that proud array which had vowed to reduce the free-spirited
mountaineers to servitude.

Such as could fled in all haste. The van of the army, which had passed
beyond those death-dealing rocks, the rear, which had not yet come up,
broke and fled in a panic of fear. Duke Leopold narrowly escaped from
the vengeance of the mountaineers, whom he had held in such contempt.
Instead of using the ropes he had brought with him to hang their chiefs,
he fled at full speed from the victors, who were now pursuing the
scattered fragments of the army, and slaying the fugitives in scores.
With difficulty the proud duke escaped, owing his safety to a peasant,
who guided him through narrow ravines and passes as far as Winterthur,
which he at length reached in a state of the utmost dejection and
fatigue. The gallantly-arrayed army which he had that morning led, with
blare of trumpets and glitter of spears, with high hope and proud
assurance of victory, up the mountain slopes, was now in great part a
gory heap in the rocky passes, the remainder a scattered host of wearied
and wounded fugitives. Switzerland had won its freedom.

The day before the Swiss confederates, apprised of the approach of the
Austrians, had come together, four hundred men from Uri, three hundred
from Unterwald, the remainder from Schwyz. They owed their success to
Rudolphus Redin, a venerable patriot, so old and infirm that he could
scarcely walk, yet with such reputation for skill and prudence in war
that the warriors halted at his door in their march, and eagerly asked
his advice.

[Illustration: THE CASTLE OF PRAGUE.]

"Our grand aim, my sons," said he, "as we are so inferior in numbers,
must be to prevent Duke Leopold from gaining any advantage by his
superior force."

He then advised them to occupy the Morgarten and Sattel heights, and
fall on the Austrians when entangled in the pass, cutting their force in
two, and assailing it right and left. They obeyed him implicitly, with
what success we have seen. The fifty men who had so efficiently begun
the fray had been banished from Sc