ARNOLD VON. WINKELRIED The incident with which this name is
connected is, after the feat of William Tell, the best known and
most popular in the early history of the Swiss Confederation. We
are told how, at a critical moment in the great battle of
Sempach, when the Swiss had failed to break the serried ranks of
the Austrian knights, a man of Unterwalden, Arnold von
Winkelried by name, came to the rescue. Commending his wife and
children to the care of his comrades, he rushed towards the
Austrians, gathered a number of their spears together against
his breast, and fell pierced through and through, having opened
a way into the hostile ranks for his fellow-countrymen, though
at the price of his own life. But the Tell and Winkelried
stories stand in a very different position when looked at in the
dry light of history, for, while in the former case imaginary
and impossible men (bearing now and then a real historical name)
do imaginary and impossible deeds at a very uncertain period, in
the latter we have some solid ground to rest on, and
Winkelried's act might very well have been performed, though, as
yet, the amount of genuine and early evidence in support of it
is very far from being sufficient.
The history of the Winkelrieds of Stans from 1248 to 1534 has
been minutely worked out from the original documents by Hermann
von Liebenau, in a paper published in 1854, and reprinted at
Aarau in 1862, with much other matter, in his book, Arnold von
Winkelried, seine Zeit and seine That. They were a knightly
family when we first hear of them about 1250, though towards the
end of the 14th century they seem to have been but simple men
without the honours of knighthood, and not always using their
prefix "von." Among its members we find an Erni Winkelried
acting as a witness to a contract of sale on the 1st of May
1367, while the same man, or perhaps another member of the
family, Erni von Winkelried, is plaintiff in a suit at Stans on
the 29th of September 1389, and in 1417 is the landamman (or
head man) of Unterwalden, being then called Arnold Winkelriet.
We have, therefore, a real man named Arnold Winkelried living at
Stans about the time of the battle of Sempach. The question is
thus narrowed to the points, Was he present at the battle, and
did he then perform the deed commonly attributed to him ? This
involves a minute investigation of the history of that battle,
to ascertain if there are any authentic traces of this incident,
or any opportunity for it to have taken place.
1. Evidence of Chronicles
The earliest known mention of the incident is found in a Zurich
chronicle (discovered in 1862 by G. von Wyss), which is a copy,
made in 1476, of a chronicle written in or at any rate not
earlier than 1438, though it is wanting in the 16th-century
transcript of another chronicle written in 1466, which up to
1389 closely agrees with the former. It appears in the wellknown
form, but the hero is stated to be ein getriiwer man under den
Eidgenozen, no name being given, and it seems clear that his
death did not take place at that time. No other mention has been
found in any of the numerous Swiss or Austrian chronicles till
we come to the book De Helvetiae origine, written in 1538 by
Rudolph Gwalther (Zwingli's son-in-law), when the hero is still
nameless, being compared to Decius or Codrus, but is said to
have been killed by his brave act. Finally, we read the full
story in the original draft of Giles Tschudi's chronicle, where
the hero is described as "a man of Unterwalden, of the
Winkelried family," this being expanded in the final recension
of the chronicle (1564) into "a man of Unterwalden, Arnold von
Winckelried by name, a brave knight," while he is entered (in
the same book, on the authority of the "Anniversary Book" of
Stans, now lost) on the list of those who fell at Sempach at the
head of the Nidwalden (or Stans) men as "Herr Arnold von
Winckelriet, Ritter," this being in the first draft "Arnold
Winckelriet." 2. Ballads. - There are several war songs on the
battle of Sempach which have come down to us, but in one only is
there mention of Winkelried and his deed. This is a long ballad
of 67 four-line stanzas, part of which (including the Winkelried
section) is found in the additions made between 1531 and 1545 to
Etterlin's chronicle by H. Berlinger of Basel, and the whole in
Werner Steiner's chronicle (written 1532). It is agreed on all
sides that the last stanza, attributing the authorship to
Halbsuter of Lucerne, "as he came back from the battle," is a
very late addition. Many authorities regard it as made up of
three distinct songs (one of which refers to the battle and
Winkelried), possibly put together by the younger Halbsuter
(citizen of Lucerne in 1435, died between 1470 and 1480), though
others contend that the Sempach-Winkelried section bears clear
traces of having been composed after the Reformation began, that
is, about 1520 or 1530. Some recent discoveries have proved that
certain statements in the song usually regarded as anachronisms
are quite accurate; but no nearer approach has been made towards
fixing its exact date, or that of any of the three bits into
which it has been cut up. In this song the story appears in its
full-blown shape, the name of Winckelriet being given.
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3. Lists of those who fell at Sempach
We find in the "Anniversary Book" of Emmetten in Unterwalden
(drawn up in 1560) the name of "der Winkelriedt" at the head of
the Nidwalden men; and in a book by Horolanus, a pastor at
Lucerne (about 1563), that of "Erni Winckelried" occurs some way
down the list of Unterwalden men.
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4. Pictures and Drawings
In the MS. of the chronicle of Diebold Schilling of Bern (c.
1480) there is in the picture of the battle of Sempach a warrior
pierced with spears falling to the ground, which may possibly be
meant for Winkelried; while in that of Diebold Schilling of
Lucerne (1511), though in the text no allusion is made to any
such incident, there is a similar picture of a man who has
accomplished Winkelried's feat, but he is dressed in the colours
of Lucerne. Then there is an engraving in Stumpf's chronicle
(1548), and, finally, the celebrated one by Hans Rudolf Manuel
(1551), which follows the chronicle of 1476 rather than the
ballad. The story seems to have been first questioned about 1850
by Moritz von Sturler of Bern, but the public discussion of the
subject originated with a lecture by O. Lorenz on Leopold III.
and die Schweizer Bande, which he delivered in Vienna on March
21, 1860. This began the lively paper war humorously called "the
second war of Sempach," in which the Swiss (with but rare
exceptions) maintained the historical character of the feat
against various foreigners - Austrians and others.
Most of the arguments against the genuineness of the story have
been already more or less directly indicated. (1) There is the
total silence of all the old Swiss and Austrian chroniclers
until 1538, with the solitary exception of the Zurich chronicle
of 1476 (and this while they nearly all describe the battle in
more or less detail). The tale, as told in the 1476 chronicle,
is clearly an interpolation, for it comes immediately after a
distinct statement that "God had helped the Confederates, and
that with great labour they had defeated the knights and Duke
Leopold," while the passage immediately following joins on to
the former quite naturally if we strike out the episode of the
"true man," who is not even called Winkelried. (2) The date of
the ballad is extremely uncertain, but cannot be placed earlier
than at least 60 or 70 years after the battle, possibly 130 or
140, so that its claims to be regarded as embodying an oral
contemporary tradition are of the slightest. (3) Similar feats
have been frequently recorded, but in each case they are
supported by authentic evidence which is lacking in this case.
Five cases at least are known: a follower of the count of
Hapsburg, in a skirmish with the Bernese in 1271; Stulinger of
Ratisbon (Regensburg) in 1332, in the war of the count of Kyburg
against the men of Bern and Solothurn; Conrad Royt of Lucerne,
at Nancy in 1477; Henri Wolleben, at Frastanz in 1499, in the
course of the Swabian War; and a man at the battle of Kappel in
1531. (4) It is argued that the course of the battle was such
that there was little or no chance of such an act being
performed, or, if performed, of having turned the day. This
argument rests on the careful critical narrative of the fight
constructed by Herr Kleissner and Herr Hartmann from the
contemporary accounts which have come down to us, in which the
pride of the knights, their heavy armour, the heat of the July
sun, the panic which befell a sudden part of the Austrian army,
added to the valour of the Swiss, fully explain the complete
rout. Herr Hartmann, too, points out that, even if the knights
(on foot) had been ranged in serried ranks, there must have been
sufficient space left between them to allow them to move their
arms, and therefore that no man, however gigantic he might have
been, could have seized hold of more than half a dozen spears at
once.
Herr K. Burkli (Der wahre Winkelried, - die Taktik der alien
Urschweizer, Zurich, 1886) has put forth a theory of the battle
which is, he allows, opposed to all modern accounts, but
entirely agrees, he strongly maintains, with the contemporary
authorities. According to this the fight was not a pitched
battle but a surprise, the Austrians not having had time to form
up into ranks. Assuming this, and rejecting the evidence of the
1476 chronicle as an interpolation and full of mistakes, and
that of the song as not proved to have been in existence before
1531, Herr Burkli comes to the startling conclusion that the
phalanx formation of the Austrians, as well as the name and act
of Winkelried, have been transferred to Sempach from the fight
of Bicocca, near Milan (April 27, 1522), where a real leader of
the Swiss mercenaries in the pay of France, Arnold Winkelried,
reall y met his death in very much the way that his namesake
perished according to the story. Herr Burkli confines his
criticism to the first struggle, in which alone mention is made
of the driving back of the Swiss, pointing out also that the
chronicle of 1476 and other later accounts attribute to the
Austrians the manner of attack and the long spears which were
the special characteristics of Swiss warriors, and that if
Winkelried were a knight (as is asserted by Tschudi) he would
have been clad in a coat of mail, or at least had a breastplate,
neither of which could have been pierced by hostile lances.
Whatever may be thought of this daring theory, it seems clear
that, while there is some doubt as to whether such an act as
Winkelried's was possible at Sempach, taking into account the
known details of the battle, there can be none as to the utter
lack of any early and trustworthy evidence in support of his
having performed that act in that battle. It is quite
conceivable that such evidence may later come to light; for the
present it is wanting.
Text based on the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.