ld then be
a council of affairs against the enemy and _my lords_ (the government
of Zurich); and if we would again be warned home and _then go_, it
would serve to the damage and hindrance of the kingdom of God."

This unholy proceeding was soon detected by Collin and other men of
honor. They returned home, obedient to the renewed summons of the
government. Those who staid behind no longer concealed their plan of
open resistance; and this spreading over the surrounding country
entered also the boundaries of Zurich.

The first news of it was received by the government from the _landvogt_
of Eglisau. The payment of taxes and villanage were refused. A deputy
of the Council was pelted with stones. The rebellion extended more and
more into the mountain regions. A swarm of insurgents fell upon the
monastery of Rueti--the abbot having escaped with the money, jewels and
archives--and rioted and caroused there. In many parishes the alarm was
sounded; the house of the Knights of St. John at Bubikon was surprised
and met a fate similar to that of Rueti. The government with great
difficulty succeeded in producing a momentary calm, by a decree
inviting the excited country people to hand in their demands and wishes
in writing. This was done by the districts of Grueningen, Kyburg,
Greifensee, Eglisau and Andelfingen, and thus it soon came to light in
what close connection these disturbances in Zurich stood with those,
which then, under the name of the Peasant's War, set a great part of
Germany in a blaze. Streams of blood and executions by thousands
suppressed it there. In Switzerland such dreadful scenes could be
prevented.

Still, the complaints, handed in by the districts of Zurich just named,
were closely copied after the twelve articles, which the rebellious
peasants of Germany everywhere demanded of their lords. But if reasons
for rebellion are to be sought in the tyranny of many nobles, as well
as in the confused ideas of the people, then, instead of finding abuses
in Switzerland, in the canton of Zurich, there was less cause for
complaint against the oppression of the people by the government at no
period of her history.

The Council therefore, conscious of an upright purpose and strengthened
by the increase of the city-guilds, took the points of complaint, which
were presented, into consideration. To yield as far as was fair and
just, to hold firmly to all that was sustained by sealed treaties and
documents, was the gener