The most distinguished men of Zurich fell one after another under the blows of the Waldstettes.[1220] Rudi Gallmann found the glorious tomb he had wished for, and his two brothers stretched beside him left their father's house desolate. Toning, captain of the arquebusiers, died for his country as he had foretold. All the pride of the population of Zurich, seven members of the Smaller Council, nineteen members of the Two Hundred, sixty-five citizens of the town, four hundred and seventeen from the rural districts: the father in the midst of his children,—the brother surrounded by his brothers,—lay on the field.
Gerold Meyer of Knonau, son of Anna Zwingle; at that time twenty-two years of age, and already a member of the council of Two Hundred,—a husband and a father,—had rushed into the foremost ranks with all the impetuosity of youth. "Surrender, and your life shall be spared," cried some of the warriors of the Five Cantons, who desired to save him. "It is better for me to die with honour than to yield with disgrace," replied the son of Anna, and immediately struck by a mortal blow, he fell and expired not far from the castle of his ancestors.
The ministers were those who paid proportionally the greatest tribute on this bloody day. The sword that was at work on the heights of Cappel thirsted for their blood: twenty-five of them fell beneath its stroke. The Waldstettes trembled with rage when they discovered one of these heretical preachers, and sacrificed him with enthusiasm, as a chosen victim, to the Virgin and the saints. There has, perhaps, never been any battle in which so many men of the Word of God have bitten the dust. Almost everywhere the pastors had marched at the head of their flocks. One might have said that Cappel was an assembly of christian churches rather than an army of Swiss companies. The Abbot Joner, receiving a mortal wound near the ditch, expired in sight of his own monastery. The people of Zug, in pursuit of the enemy, uttered a cry of anguish as they passed his body, remembering all the good he had done them.[1221] Schmidt of Kuprach, stationed on the field of battle in the midst of his parishioners, fell surrounded by forty of their bodies,[1222] Geroldseck, John Haller, and many other pastors, at the head of their flocks, suddenly met in a terrible and unforeseen manner the Lord whom they had preached.
ZWINGLE'S LAST MOMENTS.
But the death of one individual far surpassed all others. Zwingle was at the post of danger, the helmet on his head, the sword hanging at his side, the battle-axe in his hand.[1223] Scarcely had the action begun, when, stooping to console a dying man, says J. J. Hottinger, a stone hurled by the vigorous arm of a Waldstette struck him on the head and closed his lips. Yet Zwingle arose, when two other blows which struck him successively on the leg,[1224] threw him down again. Twice more he stands up; but a fourth time he receives a thrust from a lance, he staggers, and sinking beneath so many wounds, falls on his knees. Does not the darkness that is spreading around him announce a still thicker darkness that is about to cover the Church? Zwingle turns away from such sad thoughts; once more he uplifts that head which had been so bold, and gazing with calm eye upon the trickling blood, exclaims: "What evil is this? They can indeed kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul!"[1225] These were his last words.
He had scarcely uttered them ere he fell backwards. There under a tree (Zwingle's Pear-tree) in a meadow, he remained lying on his back, with clasped hands and eyes upturned to heaven.[1226]
THE FURNACE OF TRIAL.
While the bravest were pursuing the scattered soldiers of Zurich, the stragglers of the Five Cantons had pounced like hungry ravens on the field of battle. Torch in hand, these wretches prowled among the dead, casting looks of irritation around them, and lighting up the features of their expiring victims by the dull glimmering of these funereal torches. They turned over the bodies of the wounded and the dead; they tortured and they stripped them.[1227] If they found any who were still sensible, they cried out, "Call upon the saints and confess to our priests!" If the Zurichers, faithful to their creed, rejected these cruel invitations, these men, who were as cowardly as they were fanatical, pierced them with their lances, or dashed out their brains with the butt-ends of their arquebuses. The Roman-catholic historian, Salat of Lucerne, makes a boast of this. "They were left to die like infidel dogs, or were slain with the sword, or the spear, that they might go so much the quicker to the devil, with whose help they had fought so desperately."[1228] If any of the soldiers of the Five Cantons had recognised a Zuricher against whom they had any grudge, with dry eyes, disdainful mouth, and features changed by anger, they drew near the unhappy creature, writhing in the agonies of death, and said: "Well! has your heretical faith preserved you? Ah ha! it was pretty clearly seen to-day who had the true faith......To-day we have dragged your Gospel in the mud, and you too, even you are covered with your own blood. God, the Virgin, and the saints have punished you." Scarcely had they uttered these words before they plunged their swords into their enemy's bosom. "Mass or death!" was their watchword.
ZWINGLE'S LAST MOMENTS.
Thus triumphed the Waldstettes; but the pious Zurichers who expired on the field of battle called to mind that they had for God one who has said: "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?"—"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." It is in the furnace of trial that the God of the Gospel conceals the pure gold of his most precious blessings. This punishment was necessary to turn aside the Church of Zurich from the "broad ways" of the world, and lead it back to the "narrow ways" of the Spirit and the life. In a political history, a defeat like that of Cappel would be styled a great misfortune; but in a history of the Church of Jesus Christ, such a blow, inflicted by the hand of the Father himself, ought rather to be called a great blessing.