, Italian ducats, and French crowns.
It is true, this fact was not considered so disgraceful in those times
as it would be to-day. For, two hundred years since, half the court of
England, with the king at their head, were in the pay of Louis XIV. But
it would appear that bribery became more frequent and more impudent in
Swiss politics than in those of other countries at the same period. On
one occasion the French minister had his money-bags publicly opened at
Berne, and the royal pensions or bribes distributed in the town with the
sound of the trumpet. At Friburg heaps of crowns were openly displayed,
piled up with shovels, and the bystanders were asked if the silver did
not sound better than the empty promises of the Emperor Maximilian,
nicknamed _Pochidanari_, or the Pennyless. At another time the French
ambassador went to the baths of Baden, in Arau, where people from all
parts of the country were assembled, kept open house, paid the score for
large troops of the company, and actually threw gold into the bathing
rooms, for the women to scramble for. The result of a course like this
was very injurious to Swiss character. Highly honorable for courage and
fidelity, it has yet been considered as too generally colored by the
love of money, verifying the proverb, "_point d'argent, point de
Suisse_."

But this mercenary spirit was not the only evil brought upon the
confederacy by the victories of the fifteenth century. Internal
differences of the gravest nature soon followed. The division of the
spoil was very unsatisfactory to the rural cantons. They made loud
complaints of injustice, and became extremely jealous of the greater
intelligence, power, and influence of the towns; while the burghers, in
their turn, became suspicious of the pastoral cantons, accusing them of
wishing to promote disturbances between themselves and their
subjects--subjects, we say, for the towns having acquired by conquest or
purchase parcels of territory here and there, governed them as the
feudal lords governed their vassals. In short, from the whole history of
that period it is evident that a spirit of suspicion and jealousy was
rife throughout the confederacy, threatening disunion and revolution. In
the hope of restoring confidence and unity, a council or Diet was
convened at Stantz, one of the principal towns of the canton of
Unterwalden.

One by one, the deputations from the different cantons made their
appearance at the little town of Stan