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] his guard is broken;
His castles help him not a mite,
And see how lonesome stands his knight!
Checkmate's against him spoken.
[Footnote 8: Once, the year before, at Granson.]
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] 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] 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.
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 10: The French soldier-song about Marlborough is known to every one.]
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.