tabbing him with his dagger, while Walter of Eschenbach clove his
head in twain with his sword. This bloody work done, the conspirators
spurred rapidly away, leaving the dying emperor to breathe his last with
his head supported in the lap of a poor woman, who had witnessed the
murder and hurried to the spot.

This deed of blood saved Switzerland from the vengeance which the
emperor had designed. The mountaineers were given time to cement the
government they had so hastily formed, and which was to last for
centuries thereafter, despite the efforts of ambitious potentates to
reduce the Swiss once more to subjection and rob them of the liberty
they so dearly loved.

_THE BLACK DEATH AND THE FLAGELLANTS._

The middle of the fourteenth century was a period of extraordinary
terror and disaster to Europe. Numerous portents, which sadly frightened
the people, were followed by a pestilence which threatened to turn the
continent into an unpeopled wilderness. For year after year there were
signs in the sky, on the earth, in the air, all indicative, as men
thought, of some terrible coming event. In 1337 a great comet appeared
in the heavens, its far-extending tail sowing deep dread in the minds of
the ignorant masses. During the three succeeding years the land was
visited by enormous flying armies of locusts, which descended in myriads
upon the fields, and left the shadow of famine in their track. In 1348
came an earthquake of such frightful violence that many men deemed the
end of the world to be presaged. Its devastations were widely spread.
Cyprus, Greece, and Italy were terribly visited, and it extended through
the Alpine valleys as far as Basle. Mountains sank into the earth. In
Carinthia thirty villages and the tower of Villach were ruined. The air
grew thick and stifling. There were dense and frightful fogs. Wine
fermented in the casks. Fiery meteors appeared in the skies. A gigantic
pillar of flame was seen by hundreds descending upon the roof of the
pope's palace at Avignon. In 1356 came another earthquake, which
destroyed almost the whole of Basle. What with famine, flood, fog,
locust swarms, earthquakes, and the like, it is not surprising that many
men deemed the cup of the world's sins to be full, and the end of the
kingdom of man to be at hand.

An event followed that seemed to confirm this belief. A pestilence broke
out of such frightful virulence that it appeared indeed as if man was to
be swept from the