The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862

Then they began a-shooting against us in the
grove,
And their long lances toward the pious Federates
move:
Hei! the jest it was not sweet,
With branches from the lofty pines down rattling
at their feet.

The nobles' front was fast, their order deep
and spread;
That vexed the pious mind; a Winkelried he
said,
"Hei! if you will keep from need
My pious wife and child, I'll do a hardy
deed.

"Dear Federates and true, my life I give to
win:
They have their rank too firm, we cannot break
it in:
Hei! a breaking in I'll make.
The while that you my offspring to your protection
take."

Herewith did he an armful of spears nimbly take;
His life had an end, for his friends a lane did make:
Hei! he had a lion's mood,
So manly, stoutly dying for the Four Cantons' good.

And so it was the breaking of the nobles' front began
With hewing and with sticking,—it was God's holy plan:
Hei! if this He had not done,
It would have cost the Federates many an honest one.

The poem proceeds now with chaffing and slaughtering the broken enemy, enjoining them to run home to their fine ladies with little credit or comfort, and shouting after them an inventory of the armor and banners which they leave behind.[7 - It is proper to state that an attack has lately been made in Germany upon the authenticity of the story of Winkelried, on the ground that it is mentioned in no contemporaneous document or chronicle which has yet come to light, and that a poem in fifteen verses composed before this of Halbsuter's does not mention it. Also it is shown that Halbsuter incorporated the previous poem into his own. It is furthermore denied that Halbsuter was a citizen of Lucerne. In short, there was no Winkelried! Perhaps we can afford to "rehabilitate" villains of every description, but need therefore the heroic be reduced to déshabillé? That we cannot so well afford. We can give up William Tell's apple as easily as we can the one in Genesis, but Winkelreid's "sheaf of Austrian spears" is an essential argument against original sin, being an altogether original act of virtue.]

Veit Weber, a Swiss of Freiburg, also wrote war-verses, but they are pitched on a lower key. He fought against Charles the Bold, and described the Battle of Murten, (Morat,) June 22, 1476. His facetiousness is of the grimmest kind. He exults without poetry. Two or three verses will be quite sufficient to designate his style and temper. Of the moment when the Burgundian line breaks, and the rout commences, he says,—

One hither fled, another there,
With good intent to disappear,
Some hid them in the bushes:
I never saw so great a pinch,—
A crowd that had no thirst to quench
Into the water pushes.

They waded in up to the chin,
Still we our shot kept pouring in,
As if for ducks a-fowling:
In boats we went and struck them dead,
The lake with all their blood was red,—
What begging and what howling!

Up in the trees did many hide,
There hoping not to be espied;
But like the crows we shot them:
The rest on spears did we impale,
Their feathers were of no avail,
The wind would not transport them.

He will not vouch for the number of the killed, but gives it on hearsay as twenty-six thousand drowned and slain; but he regrets that their flight was so precipitate as to prevent him from recording a more refreshing total. He is specially merry over the wealth and luxurious habits of Charles, alludes to his vapor-baths, etc.:—

His game of chess was to his cost,
Of pawns has he a many lost,
And twice[8 - Once, the year before, at Granson.] his guard is broken;
His castles help him not a mite,
And see how lonesome stands his knight!
Checkmate's against him spoken.

The wars of the rich cities with the princes and bishops stimulated a great many poems that are full of the traits of burgher-life. Seventeen princes declared war against Nuremberg, and seventy-two cities made a league with her. The Swiss sent a contingent of eight hundred men. This war raged with great fierceness, and with almost uninterrupted success for the knights, till the final battle which took place near Pillerent, in 1456. A Nuremberg painter, Hans Rosenplül, celebrated this in verses like Veit Weber's, with equal vigor, but downright prosaic street-touches. Another poem describes the rout of the Archbishop of Cologne, who attempted to get possession of the city, in 1444. All these Low-German poems are full of popular scorn and satire: they do not hate the nobles so much as laugh at them, and their discomfitures in the field are the occasion of elaborate ridicule.

The Lanzknechts were foot-soldiers recruited from the roughs of Germany, and derived their name from the long lance which they carried;[9 - It is sometimes spelled landsknecht, as if it meant country-fellows, or recruits,—men raised at large. But that was a popular misapprehension of the word, because some of them were Suabian bumpkins.] but they were also armed subsequently with the arquebuse. They were first organized into bodies of regular troops by George Frundsberg of Mindelheim, a famous German captain, whose castle was about twenty miles south-west of Augsburg. It was afterwards the centre of a little principality which Joseph I. created for the Duke of Marlborough,[10 - The French soldier-song about Marlborough is known to every one.] as a present for the victory of Hochstädt (Blenheim). Frundsberg was a man of talent and character, one of the best soldiers of Charles V. He saved the Imperial cause in the campaign of 1522 against the French and Swiss. At Bicocco he beat the famous Swiss infantry under Arnold of Winkelried, a descendant, doubtless, of one of the children whom Arnold Struthabn left to the care of his comrades. At Pavia a decisive charge of his turned the day against Francis I. And on the march to Rome, his unexpected death so inflamed the Lanzknechts that the meditated retreat of Bourbon became impossible, and the city was taken by assault. His favorite mottoes were, Kriegsrath mit der That, "Plan and Action," and Viel Feinde, viel Ehre, "The more foes, the greater honor." He was the only man who could influence the mercenary lancers, who were as terrible in peace as in war.

The Lanzknecht's lance was eighteen feet long: he wore a helmet and breastplate, and was taught to form suddenly and to preserve an impenetrable square. Before him all light and heavy cavalry went down, and that great arm of modern war did not recover from its disgrace and neglect till the time of Frederic. But his character was very indifferent: he went foraging when there was no campaign, and in time of peace prepared for war by systematic billeting and plundering. It was a matter of economy to get up a war in order to provide employment for the Lanzknecht.

Hans Sachs wrote a very amusing piece in 1558, entitled, "The Devil won't let Landsknechts come to Hell." Lucifer, being in council one evening, speaks of the Lanzknecht as a new kind of man; he describes his refreshing traits of originality, and expresses a desire to have one. It is agreed that Beelzebub shall repair as a crimp to a tavern, and lie in wait for this new game. The agent gets behind a stove, which in Germany would shield from observation even Milton's Satan, and listens while the Lanzknechts drink. They begin to tell stories which make his hair stand on end, but they also God-bless each other so often, at sneezing and hiccupping, that he cannot get a chance at them. One of them, who had stolen a cock and hung it behind the stove, asks the landlord to go and fetch the poor devil. Beelzebub, soundly frightened, beats a hasty retreat, expressing his wonder that the Lanzknecht should know he was there. He apologizes to Lucifer for being unable to enrich his cabinet, and assures him that it would be impossible to live with them; the devils would be eaten out of house and home, and their bishopric taken from them. Lucifer concludes on the whole that it is discreet to limit himself to monks, nuns, lawyers, and the ordinary sinner.

The songs of the Lanzknecht are cheerful, and make little of the chances of the fight. Fasting and feasting are both welcome; he is as gay as a Zouave.[11 - Who besings himself thus, in a song from the Solferino campaign:—"Quand l'zouzou, coiffé de son fez,A par hasard queuqu' goutt' sous l'nez,L'tremblement s'met dans la cambuse;Mais s'il faut se flanquer des coups,Il sait rendre atouts pour atouts,Et gare dessous,C'est l'zouzou qui s'amuse!Des coups, des coups, des coups,C'est l'zouzou qui s'amuse."] To be maimed is a slight matter: if he loses an arm, he bilks the Swiss of a glove; if his leg goes, he can creep, or a wooden leg will serve his purpose:—

It harms me not a mite,
A wooden stump will make all right;
And when it is no longer good,
Some spital knave shall get the wood.

But if a ball my bosom strikes,
On some wide field I lie,
They'll take me off upon their pikes,—
A grave is always nigh;
Pumerlein Pum,—the drums shall say
Better than any priest,—Good day!

There is a very characteristic piece, without date or name of the writer, but which, to judge from the German, was written after the time of Luther. Nothing could better express the feeling of a people who have been saved by martial and religious enthusiasm, and brought through all the perils of history. It is the production of some Meistersinger, who introduced it into a History of Henry the Fowler, (fought the Huns, 919-935,) that was written by him in the form of a comedy, and divided into acts. He brings in a minstrel who sings the song before battle. The last verse, with adapted metre and music, is now a soldier's song.

Many a righteous cause on earth
To many a battle growing,
Of music God has thought them worth,
A gift of His bestowing.
It came through Jubal into life;
For Lamech's son inventing
The double sounds of drum and fife,