elical freedom, involved in this breach, be
lost? He feared a too ready compliance. "Gracious, loving Lords," he
wrote, "our messengers come in again this moment. I observe indeed how
the matter stands. They now give good words, and pray and beg. But do
not be misled, and regard no wry faces, but command us, beforehand, to
act with earnestness, not to surrender our advantage, but to accept
only a solid peace; for no one can give better words than these people,
and when we are out of the field, they will return in one month and
attack us. For God's sake act boldly. By my life, I desire not to
mislead you, nor give way myself. One cannot write everything. Stand
fast in God. Yield nothing to wry faces, till the right is established.
God be with you. In haste, in haste!"

After this he did his utmost in the camp at Cappel, so that the
treasurer, Rudolph Thumeisen, the deputy to Aarau, was instructed to
demand positively, liberty to preach the Gospel everywhere in the
Territories, the abrogation of the Alliance with Austria, the
abjuration of all pensions and the punishment of those, who would
propogate and dispense them, the costs of the war and indemnification
for the children of the martyred Jacob Kaiser. Meanwhile in Aarau the
continuance of the armistice only was determined on, and the
prosecution of the negotiations by arbitrators in the vicinity of the
camps transferred to Steinhausen, in the canton of Zug.

It had been previously said, that the commons-at-war (_landsgemeinden_)
should themselves hear the complaints and arguments of the opposing
parties. The leaders and deputies of the army of the Five Cantons made
the beginning in the camp of the Zurichers. An eye-witness, Kessler of
St. Gall, has given the following graphic picture of the event. It is
here told in his own words: "Now, at the request of the Five Cantons,
it was appointed, that, on the next Monday, a committee should come
over from their camp into ours, in order to interrogate each other as
well as the friendly arbitrators. So a high scaffolding was raised upon
barrels in the field before Cappel. On this was placed the banner of
Zurich, with all the ensigns and officers then encamped at Cappel, and
around the scaffolding stood the common soldiers. After the committee
of the Five Cantons, thirty in number, had been conducted over by the
Zurichan trumpeter, the umpires approached; one rose after the other on
the scaffold, speaking to the array and exho