HISTORICAL PICTURES

OF

THE MIDDLE AGES,

IN

Black and White;

MADE ON THE SPOT

From Records in the Archives of Switzerland

A WANDERING ARTIST.

"L'univers est une espèce de livre, dont on n'a lu que la première page quand
on n'a vu que son pays. J'en ai feuilleté un assez grand nombre."-Le Cosmopolite.
"The affairs of Switzerland occupy a very small space in the great chart of
European history. But in some respects they are more interesting than the
revolutions of mighty kingdoms. Nowhere besides do we find so many titles to
our sympathy, or the union of so much virtue with so complete success."

HALLAM'S View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages.

PREFACE.

A PREFACE is usually so seldom read, and generally so little wanted, that the author of this work long hesitated as to the propriety of appending one. The reflection, however, that it was ushered into the world under the title of History, at length decided her to point out explicitly the abundant sources whence the materials were drawn, lest it might be supposed that these sketches were, in reality, nothing more than a few leading facts laid down to form a superstructure for a fabric of fiction. All the principal details of "the Nuns' War," more especially liable to suspicion from the dramatic character of its incidents, will be found in Würstisen's Great German Chronicle of Bâsle, published scarcely one hundred years afterwards, when the events narrated were yet in the memory of many aged persons, by whom they were transmitted to posterity, both orally and by writing. A short notice of this famous cloisteral