The nations round us bear a foreign yoke;
For they have yielded to the conqueror.
Nay, even within our frontiers may be found
Some that owe villein service to a lord,
A race of bonded serfs from sire to son.
But we, the genuine race of ancient Swiss,
Have kept our freedom from the first till now,
Never to princes have we bowed the knee;
Freely we sought protection of the empire.

ROSSELMANN.
Freely we sought it--freely it was given.
'Tis so set down in Emperor Frederick's charter.

STAUFFACHER.
For the most free have still some feudal lord.
There must be still a chief, a judge supreme,
To whom appeal may lie in case of strife.
And therefore was it that our sires allowed
For what they had recovered from the waste,
This honor to the emperor, the lord
Of all the German and Italian soil;
And, like the other freemen of his realm,
Engaged to aid him with their swords in war;
And this alone should be the freeman's duty,
To guard the empire that keeps guard for him.

MELCHTHAL.
He's but a slave that would acknowledge more.