Meanwhile Zwingle lay extended under the tree, near the road by which the mass of the people was passing. The shouts of the victors, the groans of the dying, those flickering torches borne from corpse to corpse, Zurich humbled, the cause of Reform lost,—all cried aloud to him that God punishes his servants when they have recourse to the arm of man. If the German Reformer had been able to approach Zwingle at this solemn moment, and pronounce these oft-repeated words: "Christians fight not with sword and arquebus, but with sufferings and the cross,"[1229] Zwingle would have stretched out his dying hand, and said, "Amen!"
DAY AFTER THE BATTLE.
Two of the soldiers who were prowling over the field of battle, having come near the reformer without recognising him, "Do you wish for a priest to confess yourself?" asked they. Zwingle, without speaking (for he had not strength), made signs in the negative. "If you cannot speak," replied the soldiers, "at least think in thy heart of the Mother of God, and call upon the saints!" Zwingle again shook his head, and kept his eyes still fixed on heaven.[1230] Upon this the irritated soldiers began to curse him. "No doubt," said they, "you are one of the heretics of the city!" One of them, being curious to know who it was, stooped down and turned Zwingle's head in the direction of a fire that had been lighted near the spot.[1231] The soldier immediately let him fall to the ground. "I think," said he, surprised and amazed, "I think it is Zwingle!" At this moment Captain Fockinger of Unterwalden, a veteran and a pensioner, drew near: he had heard the last words of the soldier. "Zwingle!" exclaimed he; "that vile heretic Zwingle! that rascal, that traitor!" Then raising his sword, so long sold to the stranger, he struck the dying Christian on the throat, exclaiming in a violent passion, "Die, obstinate heretic!" Yielding under this last blow, the reformer gave up the ghost: he was doomed to perish by the sword of a mercenary. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." The soldiers ran to other victims. All did not show the same barbarity. The night was cold; a thick hoar-frost covered the fields and the bodies of the dying. The Protestant historian, Bullinger, informs us that some Waldstettes gently raised the wounded in their arms, bound up their wounds, and carried them to the fires lighted on the field of battle. "Ah!" cried they, "why have the Swiss thus slaughtered one another!"
The main body of the army had remained on the field of battle near the standards. The soldiers conversed around the fires, interrupted from time to time by the cries of the dying. During this time the chiefs assembled in the convent sent messengers to carry the news of their signal victory to the confederate cantons, and to the Roman-catholic powers of Germany.
BARBAROUS OUTRAGE.
At length the day appeared. The Waldstettes spread over the field of battle, running here and there, stopping, contemplating, struck with surprise at the sight of their most formidable enemies stretched lifeless on the plain; but sometimes also shedding tears as they gazed on corpses which reminded them of old and sacred ties of friendship. At length they reached the pear-tree under which Zwingle lay dead, and an immense crowd collected around it. His countenance still beamed with expression and with life. "He has the look," said Bartholomew Stocker of Zug, who had loved him, "he has the look of a living rather than of a dead man.[1232] Such he was when he kindled the people by the fire of his eloquence." All eyes were fixed upon the corpse. John Schönbrunner, formerly canon of Zurich, who had retired to Zug at the epoch of the Reformation, could not restrain his tears; "Whatever may have been thy creed," said he, "I know, Zwingle, that thou hast been a loyal confederate! May thy soul rest with God!"
But the pensioners of the foreigner, on whom Zwingle had never ceased to make war, required that the body of the heretic should be dismembered, and a portion sent to each of the Five Cantons. "Peace be to the dead! and God alone be their Judge!" exclaimed the avoyer Golder and the landamman Thoss of Zug. Cries of fury answered their appeal, and compelled them to retire. Immediately the drums beat to muster; the dead body was tried, and it was decreed that it should be quartered for treason against the Confederation, and then burnt for heresy. The executioner of Lucerne carried out the sentence. Flames consumed Zwingle's disjointed members; the ashes of swine were mingled with his: and a lawless multitude rushing upon his remains, flung them to the four winds of heaven.[1233]
CONSTERNATION OF ZURICH.
Zwingle was dead. A great light had been extinguished in the Church of God. Mighty by the Word as were the other reformers, he had been more so than they in action; but this very power had been his weakness, and he had fallen under the weight of his own strength. Zwingle was not forty-eight years old when he died. If the might of God always accompanied the might of man, what would he not have done for the Reformation in Switzerland, and even in the Empire! But he had wielded an arm that God had forbidden; the helmet had covered his head, and he had grasped the halberd. His more devoted friends were themselves astonished, and exclaimed: "we know not what to say!......a bishop in arms!"[1234] The bolt had furrowed the cloud, the blow had reached the reformer, and his body was no more than a handful of dust in the palm of a soldier.