ARNOLD OF, one of the restorers of Swiss freedom, was the son of a wealthy proprietor, and was born in the canton of Unterwalden, in the latter half of the thirteenth century. His real name was Winckleried, but he was universally known by the name of his residence. At this time Switzerland groaned beneath the oppression of Albert of Austria. One day the valet of Hardenberg, an Austrian bailiff, seized upon a yoke of oxen belonging to Melchthal's father, and, as he was driving them away, remarked, that peasants, if they wanted to eat bread, should hold the plough themselves. Stung by such insolent rapacity, young Melchthal struck the menial to the ground, and fled from punishment to his native fastnesses. The information that his father's eyes had been put out by the revengeful tyrant, served only to strengthen his determination to free his country. He received into his confidence Fürst, of the canton of Uri, and Stauffacher, of the canton of Schwyz. On a night of November 1307 the three patriots met on the solitary banks of the Lake of Lucerne, and there they took an oath to advocate in their several cantons the cause of freedom, and to drown every revengeful feeling and every personal motive in the one prevailing desire for the liberty of their country. The bold feats of William Tell, in the same month, accelerated the execution of their plans, and raised to arms the natives of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. Arnold of Melchthal, along with his compatriots Fürst and Stauffacher, led the mountaineers on to victory. On the battlefield of Sempach he is said to have attempted, single-handed, to break an impregnable line of Austrian lances, and to have fallen with "a sheaf of spears" sticking in his breast.