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 Swabia, and who, for the purpose of conciliating him, made him Imperial Bailiff of the Waldstaette.  An active, vigorous man this Rudolph, grandfather of the Rudolph who was afterwards called to be King of the Germans, whom the Swiss, scattered in their hamlets, were little prepared to make head against, and therefore recognized him with what grace they might, after an assurance that their freedom and rights should be maintained; and he smoothed for them their old controversy with the monks of Einsiedeln, and got a comfortable division of the property made in 1217.  But he was hateful to them, nevertheless; and although we know nothing of the way in which he administered his office, we conjecture that it was partly because the Emperor who appointed him was not of the House of Hohenstaufen, to which they were attached, and partly because he claimed that the office of Bailiff was hereditary in his family, whereas the men of Schwyz preferred to offer it of their own free will to whom they would.  They made it a condition of assistance to the Emperor Friedrich in 1231, when he went down into Italy to fight the Guelphs, that he should deprive this Rudolph of the office of Imperial Bailiff; and then they went forth, six hundred strong, and did famous work against the Guelphs, with such fire in them that the Emperor not only knighted Struthan von Winkelried of Unterwalden, but gave that valley a patent of freedom, according to which the Schwyzers voluntarily chose the protection of the Empire.