and won their liberty extremely dear. They had no less than sixty pitched battles with the Austrians, and they have retained to this day that independence which they have so well merited.

The thirteen towns, or cantons, which properly constitute the Swiss or Helvetic republic were united by a reciprocal convention, of which the chief article relates to the mutual succors and assistance to be furnished to any of the confederated states as should suffer from foreign attack or violence. The proportion of these succors was minutely stipulated. Another article of the convention stipulated the procedure in accommodating all domestic differences between the several cantons. Each of the cantons was, in all matters that regard not the national confederacy, an independent state. The form of government in the several states was very various. It was in some monarchical, in others aristocratical, and in others again democratical. In the monarchical states, some of the princes of the Germanic body were the sovereigns, as the bishop of Basle, and the abbot of St. Gall. Thus each state had its own form of government, and was regulated by its own particular laws, which it had an unlimited power of framing and of altering, and of modelling its own constitution. All affairs relating to the united confederacy were transacted either by letters or congresses. Letters from foreign powers to the whole confederacy were sent to the town of Zürich, and any proposal or notification from a town or canton, intended for general deliberation, was likewise transmitted thither, from whence it was officially circulated to all the other cantons, who either returned their opinion by letter, or if the matter was doubtful or of great importance, appointed a conference to be held by two deputies from each of the states,-on which occasions a deputy of Zürich sat as president of the assembly.

Thus the whole Helvetic body consisted properly of thirteen distinct, independent, and free republics, united by convention for their mutual security and protection. The Helvetic body, for more than six centuries, supported itself in a respectable state of independence; made war, concluded treaties, modelled its own constitution, enacted laws and ordinances, both in affairs civil and ecclesiastical, and exercised all the various powers of sovereignty. Under the freedom of these republican constitutions, the country of Switzerland came to be wonderfully improved. Where the lands are naturally fertile, and happily situated, they have been cultivated with the utmost skill and success; where nature has denied its advantages, art has amply supplied them. The produce of the country consists in corn, wine, oil, silk, and flax; and of the two last commodities, vast quantities are purchased from other neighboring quarters, which the Swiss employ themselves in manufacturing. The situation of Switzerland, bounded as it is by Germany, Italy, and France, affords great convenience for the sale and dispersion of these manufactures; and there is a

communication with the Mediterranean by the river Rhône, and with the German Ocean by the Rhine. Several great lakes afford an inland navigation; and these, and the rivers of the country, the industrious Swiss have turned to the utmost possible advantage. As there is rather a superabundance of population in this country, a great part of the youth were bred to the profession of arms. The art military was there a profitable branch. of trade. The republics let out their troops for hire to other nations; and the French, Germans, Spaniards, Sicilians, and the Dutch, found high advantage in the employment of the Swiss mercenaries, who have occasionally constituted the most valuable and best-disciplined part of their armies. It is a remarkable fact, demonstrative both of the populousness of the country and the prevalence of the military profession above all others, that the single canton of Bern, which in extent of territory is not half the size of Yorkshire, was able to bring into the field 100,000 well-disciplined troops at the shortest warning.

The struggles which we have seen so long subsisting between the popes and the emperor, had produced nothing fixed as to the power and prerogatives of each, or as to the great question, who should acknowledge the other's superiority. Henry VII. renewed his claim to Italy, and fought his way to Rome, where he was solemnly crowned, and ordained all the princes of Italy to pay him an annual tribute, styling himself Lord Paramount of the Pope. The pope, as is said, vindicated his rights, by employing a Dominican friar to poison the emperor in the consecrated wafer in which he took the sacrament.

Lewis of Bavaria, whom the pope, John XXII., had deprived and excommunicated, marching likewise to Rome, and holding a general council in the church of St. Peter, solemnly deposed the pontiff and created a new one; but Lewis was called home by the troubles of Germany, and John regained his seat, while the emperor's pope was sent to prison. The papal seat was at this time at Avignon, a city which belonged to the counts of Provence; and it did not return to Rome till the year 1377, when Gregory II., at the request of the citizens of Florence, who judged it might be for their advantage, brought back the residence of the popes to the Vatican.

Under Charles IV., the successor of Lewis of Bavaria, the empire of Germany assumed a more settled form of government than it had hitherto enjoyed. Charles published at Nuremberg that famous imperial constitution, known by the name of The Golden Bull, which was in fact the first fundamental law of the Germanic body. This new constitution, which was made with the utmost possible solemnity, reduced the number of the German electors to seven, whereas, before, all the nobility or lords who were possessors of fiefs, and all the prelates, claimed right to vote in the election of an emperor. The seven electors were the arch

bishops of Mentz, Treves, and Cologne; the king of Bohemia, the count Palatine, the duke of Saxony, and the margrave of Brandenburg. The golden bull assigned to each of the electors one of the great offices of the crown: the elections were ordered to be made at Frankfort; the emperor to be consecrated at Aixla-Chapelle by the elector of Cologne; the first diet to be held at Nuremberg; the electorates to be inherited without division by the eldest sons according to the law of primogeniture. The other articles of this celebrated bull regard little else than the pomp of the coronation, and the ceremonial of the court.

Whether the residence of the popes should be at Avignon or at Rome, was a question of no small consequence to the church. It was, in short, a contest whether the clergy of Italy or of France should have the superiority. The French cardinals, at this time the majority of the conclave, being disgusted with the insolence of Urban, who was an Italian, retired to Naples and chose another pope, Clement VII. A short time after, another faction of the cardinals chose a third pope, John XXIII. Meantime the emperor Sigismund judged this division of the holy church to be a very proper occasion for his interfering to decide the dispute, and thus vindicate that imperial authority over the papal see, which had given birth to so many contests. For that purpose he summoned a general council of the church to meet at the city of Constance in Switzerland. Here Sigismund, who had surrounded the council with his army, ordered, in the first place, all the three popes to resign their dignity; and this being complied with, he next made the council elect a fourth person, Martin V., of the family of Colonna.

This important business being ended, Sigismund allowed the council to proceed to their spiritual concerns: and of this nature there were some of the transactions of this celebrated council so remarkable, as to attract the attention of all Europe.

John Huss, the father confessor of queen Sophia of Bavaria, had read some of the books of Wickliffe, who, at this early time, had begun to open the eyes of the people of England to the papal usurpations and the scandalous lives of the pontiffs and their bishops. Wickliffe had gone a step further, and had attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation. Huss did not meddle with these abstruse points, but railed against the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the disorderly lives of the popes and bishops. He was cited to appear before the council of Constance, and was examined touching the most obnoxious passages of his writings. To deny the hierarchy, and to reproach the conduct and morals of the bishops, were sufficient crimes in the judgment of a council of these bishops, and Huss was condemned to be burnt alive. He might have saved his life by simply declaring that he abjured all his errors. The emperor Sigismund, who wanted to save him, thus reasoned with him:-"What harm can there be," said he,

“in any man declaring that he abjures his errors? I am ready this moment to declare that I abjure all my errors;" but John Huss was too sincere to save his life by an equivocation, and he suffered death with heroic courage.

A few months afterwards, Jerome of Prague, the disciple and the friend of John Huss, underwent the same fate with his master. He was a man of superior talents and of great eloquence. The fear of death was at first too powerful, and he signed a recantation of his opinions; but no sooner had he heard how his master had encountered death than he was ashamed to live. He publicly retracted his recantation, preached forth his doctrines, and was condemned to the flames. He made a speech to his judges, which Poggio, the Florentine, who heard it, declares was equal to the finest specimen of Greek or Roman eloquence. "He spoke," says he, "like a Socrates, and walked to the kindled pile with as much serenity as that great philosopher displayed when he drank the poisoned cup.'

These executions were attended with consequences to the emperor of which he had little expectation. The succession to the kingdom of Bohemia was opened to him by the death of his brother Winceslaus; but the Bohemians were so exasperated at the fate of their two countrymen, that it cost Sigismund a bloody war of sixteen years' continuance before he acquired the full possession of these dominions.

CHAPTER XII.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries-Deputies from Burghs first called to Parliament-Edward I.-Conquest of WalesScotland--Obscurity of its early History-Malcolm Canmore-David I.Alexander III.-Bruce and Baliol competitors for the Crown-Designs of Edward against Scotland-Sir William Wallace-Battles of Falkirk and Stirling-Death of Wallace-Robert Bruce Edward II. Battle of Bannockburn-Edward III.-Battle of Halidown Hill-Invasion of France--The Black Prince-Battle of Cressy-of Durham-of Poictiers-Richard II. -Henry IV.

AFTER the death of John, that wicked and detestable tyrant, we saw his son, the young Henry III., crowned under the auspices of the earl of Pembroke, the protector; and the abdication of Lewis, who found it in vain to persist in his endeavors to possess himself of the kingdom which was now united, to a man, against him. Henry III. had not the vicious disposition of his father,

but he was a weak and contemptible prince; fitted to be abused and trampled on by those aspiring barons who had so lately vindicated and extended their rights. Through the whole course of his reign, the kingdom was embroiled in commotions, which proceeded chiefly from that weak and mean policy of Henry in bestowing his offices of trust on foreigners, in order to be a check on the turbulent disposition of the English. These commotions, unimportant in the main in their effects, produced, however, one consequence well deserving observation. Simon Montfort, earl of Leicester, son of that Montfort whom we have lately beheld as the head of the crusade against the Albigenses, encouraged by the weakness of his sovereign, and his own power and popularity, resolved to attempt an innovation in the government, and to wrest the sceptre from the hand of Henry. He called a meeting of the barons, from whom, however, he concealed his particular scheme, and an association was entered into for the redress of public grievances. The king, to appease the growing disorders, summoned a Parliament at Oxford, where he agreed that certain persons of authority-twenty-four barons-should be appointed to digest a new plan of government. At the head of these was Montfort, and their measures contained the first regular plan of the British House of Commons. It was ordered that each county should choose four knights, who should examine into the grievances of their respective constituents, and attend at the ensuing parliament to give information of their complaints. These knights of the shires soon exemplified their power against the very persons to whom they owed it. The twenty-four barons, under Leicester, began to overturn the whole arrangement of the offices of government, and to substitute creatures of their own in place of those who had formerly filled them. They delegated to twelve persons, appointed by themselves, the whole powers of parliament, and seemed resolved to continue themselves in office for ever; thus substituting a vile oligarchy in place of the constitution of the kingdom. The knights of the shires, who now perceived their aim, and the aspiring views of their leader, the earl of Leicester, began to show a very laudable spirit. They remonstrated against the continuance of this junto in office; and they called upon the king's eldest son, prince Edward, a youth of noble spirit and most promising abilities, to interpose his authority, and to save England from perdition.

Edward was at this time about twenty-two years of age. He acted with the utmost propriety; and without openly taking the reins from the hands of a father who was unable to hold them, he adopted every measure, apparently under the king's authority, for vindicating his dignity and the interests of the kingdom.

Leicester now began to show the motives of his conduct without reserve. He had raised a formidable army in Wales, assisted by the prince of that province. The citizens of London, with