=THE PRIESTS CUT DOWN.=
The men did not remain in the background. Fired with martial fury, they drove their swords through their enemies' bodies, or brained them with their arquebuses, or else, quickly reloading their guns, brought them down from a distance.[642] Being skilful marksmen, they picked out their victims; forty nobles, most of them Knights of the Spoon,[643] bit the dust; and the priests paid a large tribute to death. The fanatical anger of the clergy, who marched courageously to battle, was met by the avenging anger of the Swiss, who were irritated at seeing men of peace on the field of strife. Wildermuth had pointed out 'the false priests' to his men. 'There they are now; we must sacrifice them as did Elijah of old.' The curés, who had not expected such a resistance, found themselves cut down by those terrible Helvetians, to whom two days of suffering and the perfidy of their enemies gave a sort of transport. An excited imagination could alone, perhaps, secure victory to the Swiss. One of them in particular seemed like the angel of death. The indignation he felt at seeing the servants of God wielding the sword, carried him away, and twenty of them fell beneath his blows—a terrible fulfilment of the words of Christ to Peter: They that take the sword shall perish with the sword. A hundred of these ministers of peace, turned ministers of war, remained dead or wounded on the field.[644] The noise was frightful, and was heard a long way off. 'During the battle,' says Froment, 'there was fierce lightning in the air and loud thunder.' Was there a storm or are these words only figurative? Perhaps persons at a distance took the flashes of the guns and the noise of the battle for thunder and lightning.
=SONG OF THE BERNESE SOLDIER.=
The defeat seemed total and decided. Wildermuth and his followers thought they would have nothing more to do than march into Geneva, when an unexpected circumstance forced them to begin again. Another corps d'armée of Savoye, that which was nearest, summoned by the noise of the battle, hurried forward to Lugrin's help. It was commanded (as it would appear) by Michael Mangerot, baron of La Sarraz; he is indeed the only chief of his party mentioned by some historians.[645] Mangerot, a Frenchman by extraction and owner of the barony of La Sarraz, had been, since the Sieur de Pontverre's death, the most formidable of the Knights of the Spoon. Despite his efforts, none of his men could stand before the ardor of the Swiss, and intrepidity triumphed over numbers. Those 'tall foreigners,'[646] as the German chronicler styles the Savoyards, were alarmed and discouraged; they threw away their arms, turned their backs, and shamefully took to flight,[647] leaving the field of battle covered with firelocks, breastplates, lances, dead horses and men, among whom (says the catholic Pierre-Fleur) were many goodly personages. The loss of the Savoyards has been variously estimated from five hundred to two thousand. In the first rank of the victims of the fight the Swiss recognized their perfidious guides. The latter had lost only seven men and one woman. The hill on which these terrible blows were dealt is still called, in memory of this battle, the Molard or the mound of the dead. The valiant band of the Jura, at the sight of the victims of the day, halted on the terrible battle-field, and piously bending their knees amid the scattered arms and blood-stained corpses of their enemies, returned thanks to God for the great and unexpected victory He had granted them. The feelings which animated them have been expressed by a Swiss poet of the time in a Song of the Bernese Soldier after the Battle of Gingins, of which we give a few verses:
Rejoice, O Berne, rejoice![648]
Right joyful shouldst thou be,
For when our grief was sorest
God sent us victory.
By all the world we're hated,