THE HISTORY OF THE HELVETIC CONFEDERACY. BY JOSEPH PLANTA, ESQ. F.R.S. PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. Helvetii bellica gens, olim armis virisque, mox memoria nominis TO THE KING. SIR, THE gracious permission to inscribe the following pages to Your MAJESTY, is an honour which I am bound to acknowledge with the greatest respect and gratitude. They contain the HISTORY of a CONFEDERACY, which, through many arduous struggles, long maintained its independence, and for several centuries preserved, to an artless VOL. I. A artless people, a degree of civil liberty, which effectually insured their national honour and prosperity. While every friend to virtue and humanity must lament that so happy a polity should at length have yielded to the overwhelming power of a remorseless foe, aided by the folly and corruption of a comparatively small number of its own degenerate members; its example cannot but afford useful lessons of caution to future generations, and must teach them the necessity of energy and concord towards the support of a well regulated government. The utility which, even at this period, may re sult sult from a due contemplation of the events here commemorated, has induced me to relate them: and I feel the most lively satisfaction in being suffered to lay this narrative at the feet of a MONARCH, who, ruling over a free people, has exhibited the brightest example of firmness and vigour, in resisting the torrent of vice and anarchy, which has of late threatened the subversion of civilized society. That Your MAJESTY may long live to pursue Your wise and benevolent purpose of maintaining the safety and happiness of these kingdoms, and that Your subjects may be ever |