And thereupon they sent Werner, Baron of Attinghausen, Landammann of Uri, like his fathers before him and his posterity after him, to the Imperial Court.  But the King was quarrelling with his Electors, and was in bad humor, and sent to Uri to forbid them from assessing land-rates on a convent there.  Whereupon the men of Schwyz, being without protection, made a league for ten years with Werner, Count of Honburg; and that their submission to the Austrian power might not be construed into a duty, they sent to the King for an Imperial Bailiff.  Albrecht appointed Hermann Gessler of Brunek, and Beringer of Landenberg, whose cousin Hermann was in much favor with him.  Beringer’s manners were rough even at the Court; and to get rid of him, they sent him to tame the Waldstaette.  He appointed Bailiffs whose poverty and avarice were the cause of much oppression, emboldened as they were by the ill-feeling of the King towards the men of Schwyz, whose freedom the King had refused to confirm, and waited only for opportunity to annihilate their ancient rights, after the example he had already set in Vienna and Styria.

The Imperial Bailiffs resolved to take up their abode in the Forest Cantons,—­Landenberg in Unterwalden, near Sarnen, in a castle of the King’s, while Gessler built a prison-castle by Altorf in Uri; for within the memory of men no lord had dwelt in Schwyz.  They used their power wantonly;—­unjust and weary imprisonments for slightest faults; haughty manners, and all the stings of insolent authority;—­and no redress to be had at the King’s hands.  The peace and happy security of the men of Schwyz were gone, and they looked in one another’s faces for the thing that was to be done.  The honored families of their race were despised and called peasant-nobles;—­there was Werner Stauffacher, a well-to-do and well-meaning man; and the Lord of Attinghausen above all, of an ancient house, in years, with much experience, and true to his country; there was Rudolph Redings of Biberek, whose descendants live to this day in Schwyz, supporting still the honor of their name; and the Winkelrieds, mindful of the spirit of their ancestor who slew the dragon.  In such persons the people believed; they knew them and their fathers before them; and when they were made light of, there was hatred between the people and the Bailiffs.  As Gessler passed Stauffacher’s house in Steinen, one day, where the little chapel now stands, and saw how the house was well built, with many windows, and painted over with mottoes, after the manner of rich farmers’ houses, he cried to his face, “Can one endure that these peasants should live in such houses?”