the country.[Z] And that no foreign garrisons were ever maintained for
any continuance of time in these parts, appears from a circumstance
related by their annalists;[AA] who say, that an inroad of the Huns in
670, when external forces would probably have been very acceptable to
the natives, was repulsed merely by a concourse of the inhabitants.

History continues to furnish us with proofs of the little connexion this
people had with other nations in their domestic affairs, notwithstanding
their dependance upon a foreign power. In the year 780, the Bishop of
Coire, who by the constitution of that see can only be a native,[AB]
obtained from Charlemain, besides many considerable honours and
privileges in the empire, a grant of the supreme authority in this
country, by the investiture of the office of hereditary president or
bailiff over all Rhaetia. His successors not only enjoyed this
prerogative to the extinction of the Carlovingian race of emperors in
911; but received accumulated favours from other succeeding monarchs, as
the bigoted devotion of those times or motives of interest prompted
them. And so far did their munificence gradually extend, that the sole
property of one of the three leagues[AC] was at one time vested in the
hands of the bishop.

This prelate and the nobles, the greatest part of whom became his
retainers, availed themselves, like all the German princes, of the
confusion, divisions, and interreigns which frequently distracted the
empire in the succeeding centuries, in order to establish a firm and
unlimited authority of their own. Henceforth the annals of this country
furnish us with little more than catalogues of the bishops and dukes,
who were still, at times, nominated by the emperors; and of the domains
granted out by them to different indigenate families; with accounts of
the atrocious cruelties exercised by these lords over their vassals; and