prudence, tried to
persuade the duke to keep in the rear, as the true position for a
leader. He smiled proudly in reply, and exclaimed with impatience,--

"What! shall Leopold be a mere looker-on, and calmly behold his knights
die around him in his own cause? Never! here on my native soil with you
I will conquer or perish with my people." So saying, he placed himself
at the head of the troops.

And now the decisive moment was at hand. The Swiss had kept to the
heights while their enemy continued mounted, not venturing to face such
a body of cavalry on level ground. But when they saw them forming as
foot-soldiers, they left the hills and marched to the plain below. Soon
the unequal forces confronted each other; the Swiss, as was their
custom, falling upon their knees and praying for God's aid to their
cause; the Austrians fastening their helmets and preparing for the fray.
The duke even took the occasion to give the honor of knighthood to
several young warriors.

The day was a hot and close one, the season being that of harvest, and
the sun pouring down its unclouded and burning rays upon the combatants.
This sultriness was a marked advantage to the lightly-dressed
mountaineers as compared with the armor-clad knights, to whom the heat
was very oppressive.

The battle was begun by the Swiss, who, on rising from their knees,
flung themselves with impetuous valor on the dense line of spears that
confronted them. Their courage and fury were in vain. Not a man in the
Austrian line wavered. They stood like a rock against which the waves of
the Swiss dashed only to be hurled back in death. The men of Lucerne, in
particular, fought with an almost blind rage, seeking to force a path
through that steel-pointed forest of spears, and falling rapidly before
the triumphant foe.

Numbers of the mountaineers lay dead or wounded. The line of spears
seemed impenetrable. The Swiss began to waver. The enemy, seeing this,
advanced the flanks of his line so as to form a half-moon shape, with
the purpose of enclosing the small body of Swiss within a circle of
spears. It looked for the moment as if the struggle were at an end, the
mountaineers foiled and defeated, the fetters again ready to be locked
upon the limbs of free Switzerland.

But such was not to be. There was a man in that small band of patriots
who had the courage to accept certain death for his country, one of
those rare souls who appear from time to time in the centuries an