“One of the first who fell in the Austrian army was Frederick, the bastard of Brandis, a bold and strong man, who alone inspired as much fear as twenty others; and near him was killed Frietzhend, called the Long, who boasted that he alone would resist the Confederates. The servants of the nobles, who had been left with the baggage, seeing the fortune of the day, saved themselves upon their masters’ horses. The banner of Austria dropped from the hands of Henri d’Escheloh. Ulrich d’Ortenburg fell upon the flag of the Tyrol. Ulrich d’Aarburg rushed to preserve the former. He held it aloft, and endeavoured to restore the day, but without success. He fell mortally wounded; and collected his remaining strength to exclaim, ‘Save it, Austria, save it!’ The Duke broke through the press, and received the banner from his dying hand. It soon re-appeared above the combatants, steeped in blood, and borne by Leopold himself. A crowd of gentlemen collected for his defence, and fell around him. At length he exclaimed, ‘Since so many lords are dead by my side, I also, like them, will die with honour.’ He sprang forth from among his friends, rushed into the thickest of the enemy, and there met his doom: he fell, and while weighed down by his ponderous armour and struggling in vain to raise himself, he was approached by a common man from Schwitz, who levelled a blow at him. Leopold called out, ‘I am the Duke of Austria;’ but the man either heard him not, believed him not, or thought that in a day of battle the highest rank conferred no privilege: the Duke received a mortal wound. Martin Malterer, the banneret of Friburg in Brisgau, saw the disaster: he stood appalled: the banner dropped from his hand: he threw himself upon the corpse of his slaughtered sovereign to preserve it from insult, and there met his own fate.
“The Austrian infantry now, looking round in vain for their Duke, betook themselves to flight. The nobles called loudly for their horses; but the dust they saw rising at a distance marked the road by which their faithless servants had long since led them away. Oppressed by their heavy armour, by heat, thirst, and fatigue, they still resolved to avenge their sovereign; and if they could not preserve their lives, at least not to fall easy victims to the resistless fury of their triumphant foes.
“Among the leaders of the Confederates fell Conrad, landamman of Uri; Sigrist, landamman of Underwalden above the Forest; and Peterman de Gundoldingen, the avoyer of Lucern. While the latter was bleeding to death, one of his townsmen approached him to learn his dying requests: he, unmindful of all private concerns, answered, ‘Tell our fellow-citizens never to continue an avoyer longer than one year in office; tell them that this is the last advice of Gundoldingen, who dies contented, wishing them repeated victories, and a long series of prosperous years;’ thus saying, he breathed his last. The banner of Hohenzollern was taken by a shepherd of Gersan. The services of the burghers of Bremgarten, who withdrew from the field covered with the blood of slaughtered foes, were so greatly prized by the Austrian princes, that they immortalized their valour by a change in the colours of their town livery. Nicholas Gutt, avoyer of Zoffingen, fell, together with twelve of his townsmen. Regardless of every concern but that of preventing his banner from falling into the hands of the enemy, he tore it into small pieces, and was found among the dead with the staff fast locked between his teeth. His successors in office have ever after been made to swear that they would maintain the banner ‘even as Nicholas Gutt had maintained it.’ Six hundred and fifty-six counts, lords, and knights, whose presence was wont to grace the court of Austria, were found among the slain; and it became proverbial among the Confederates, ‘that God had on this day sat in judgment on the wanton arrogance of the nobles.’”[30]
CHAPTER VIII.
Thermopylæ[31]—Battle of St. Jaques, near Basle—Siege of Malta in 1565—Destruction of the “Sacred Band” in the Greek Revolution—Roncesvalles.
The plain of Thessaly is so entirely surrounded by mountains, that only one practicable, or at least only one frequented road leads southward from it into Greece; and even this is commanded by a difficult and dangerous pass, the celebrated Thermopylæ, where the first stand was made by Greece against Xerxes, and the noblest instance of Spartan heroism displayed. The ridge of Œta, which runs in an unbroken line from west to east, falls precipitously into the sea, leaving but a narrow slip of level ground, which had, in old times, been fortified by the Phocians who lay immediately south of Thessaly, and were separated from it only by Mount Œta, to check the depredations of their Thessalian neighbours. At this spot some hot springs burst from the mountain, whence the name Thermopylæ, which signifies the Warm Gates, and here the pass was about fifty feet wide; but to the northward it grew still narrower, and in one part required the assistance of masonry to make the road passable even for a single carriage. A more favourable spot for stopping an invading army could not have been selected, and it seems not impossible, that if the force of Greece, or even a large portion of it, had been stationed there, the Persian advance might have been effectually checked. But in the time that union was most required, jealousy and selfishness swayed the Grecian councils. Thessaly was already lost, through the same fear which afterwards abandoned Attica to the invader; and now, when the fate of all Greece northward of the Isthmus was in the balance, the Peloponnesians were only anxious to fortify the approach to their own peninsula, and to remain near home, in case a debarkation should be made from the fleet. Under various pretences of religion each state kept back the contingent which it ought to have supplied, except Arcadia, which sent a force amounting to 2120 men. The rest of Peloponnesus contributed less than 1000 men, divided in the following proportions: Mycenæ, then a small, but still independent town, sent 80; Phlius, 200; Corinth, 400; and Sparta only 300 men, but these were powerful in the generous devotedness of Leonidas, their king and general. The whole force of Athens served in the fleet. But though the Peloponnesians themselves held back, they published a manifesto, to excite the northern Greeks to resistance. “These troops,” it is said, “were but the forerunners of a larger body that might be daily expected; the sea was well guarded by the Athenians, Æginetans, and others; and there was no ground for extravagant alarm, for it was no god, but a man, that waged war upon Greece; and there was no man to whom evil did not at some time happen, and the greatest evils to the most exalted persons: it was therefore probable that the invader’s hopes would be frustrated.” The little town of Thespiæ, to its eternal honour, sent 700 men;[32] Thebes, ill affected to the cause, but 400; the Phocians added 1000, and the Opuntian Locrians came with their whole force. Their number is not mentioned by Herodotus, but Pausanias estimates it “not to have exceeded 6000 men.”[33] Thus the army consisted of about 11,200 heavy-armed citizens, attended perhaps by 13,000 light-armed soldiers, consisting chiefly of slaves, supposing the same proportion to have existed between the services as existed afterwards at the battle of Platæa, where each Spartan was attended by seven Helots, and the other Grecians, upon the average, by one slave a-piece.
On the approach of the Persians the disinclination of the Peloponnesians to the service was manifested by a proposal to retreat to the Isthmus. This was warmly opposed by the Locrians and Phocians, and finally negatived by Leonidas, who instead despatched a messenger to demand reinforcements. Meanwhile Xerxes sent forward a scout to observe the motions of the Grecian army. A wall, as has been mentioned, stretched across the level, behind which the greater part of it was quartered, so that he only saw an outpost of Spartans, who were amusing themselves with gymnastic exercises, and combing their long hair, and took no notice whatever of the intruder. On hearing what he had seen, Xerxes marvelled; and thinking it impossible that so insignificant a force should be resolute to contest the passage, he allowed them four days to disperse, and sent against them, on the fifth, the Medes and Cissians, with orders to take them alive and bring them into the royal presence. When they had been repulsed with slaughter, a chosen body of Persian foot, called the Immortals, advanced with confidence to fulfil the commands of their sovereign, and were in their turn compelled to retreat from the firm array of the Grecians; not, we are led to believe, from inferiority in the qualities, mental or bodily, which constitute the excellence of a soldier, but their numbers were useless in so confined a spot, and their short spears and light defensive armour proved ineffectual to penetrate the longer lances and iron panoply of their opponents. The attack, however, though still fruitless, was repeated in every various way that their ingenuity could devise, and the Persian monarch is said to have leaped thrice from his throne as he sat anxiously viewing the progress of his troops. On the morrow the battle was renewed in hope of wearing out by fatigue and wounds the scanty force of the Grecians, but still it was in vain; and Xerxes was reduced to much perplexity, when he learnt from a Thessalian, Ephialtes the Malian, that another practicable road across the mountain existed. The traitor did not long enjoy the fruits of his perfidy, for a price was set on his head by the Amphictyonic council, and he was slain by one that had a private quarrel with him. It was known to Leonidas that such a path existed; and the Phocians were appointed to guard it, and posted at the summit of the pass. They could not see the enemy’s approach for the oaks with which the mountain was covered; but, about daybreak, were roused by the tread of men upon the fallen leaves. They flew to arms; but, being galled by the Persian missiles, they retreated to one side for the advantage of higher ground, and thus left a free passage to the enemy, who hastened to profit by their error, and left them in undisturbed possession of the post so injudiciously chosen. The army at Thermopylæ was already forewarned; first by the seer Megistias, who from the omens foretold the approach of death; then by deserters from the Persian camp, announcing the march of an army across the mountain; and lastly from the watchmen stationed on the heights, who brought news that it had forced the passage.
Their flank being thus turned, it became impossible for the Greeks to maintain their position; and now a question ensued concerning the measures to be adopted; one party recommending a retreat, while the other urged the duty of remaining to the last at their post. The dispute was terminated by the retreat and dispersion of the majority to their several homes, while the rest remained with Leonidas, resolved to die rather than turn their backs upon the enemy; or, as another story runs, which Herodotus is more inclined to credit, Leonidas himself dismissed his allies, seeing them slow in spirit to encounter death, retaining with him only the 300 Spartans, whose institutions forbade them to retreat, even when resistance was hopeless. The Thespians and Thebans alone remained: the Thebans very unwillingly; but Leonidas detained them as hostages for the fidelity of their countrymen. The Thespians on the other hand insisted on remaining, saying that they would not go away, abandoning Leonidas and the Spartans, but rather abide and die with them. Demophilus, son of Diadromus, was their general. According to Pausanias, the eighty Mycenæans also remained. One motive for Leonidas’s devotion is to be found in the deep respect and attachment to national institutions which was only common to him with his countrymen: but he is said to have had a more peculiar and personal inducement. The Delphic oracle had foretold that Sparta herself, or one of her kings, must fall; and this prediction, in recalling the fame of Codrus, must have suggested the possibility of rivalling him. But rather than to either of these feelings we would attribute it to the belief that his death would be more useful to Greece than his life; the only motive perhaps which could justify the sacrifice of so many brave men, at the time when they were most needed. Greece did indeed require some noble example to rouse her councils to unanimity and firmness: and he who gave it has his due reward in the admiration of the brave and patriot spirits of all nations and of all succeeding ages.