Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/175

 ARNOLD VON WINKELRIED 111 ful ; yet, when he pleased, he could assume a character of stern command. Such, at least, Bruce has been described by the old historian, and we may easily be- Heve it, since the outward semblance agrees so well with what is recorded of his life and actions. ARNOLD VON WINKELRIED (DIED, 1386) T incident with which this name is connected is, after the purely legend ary feat of 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 oi 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 res- cue. Commending his wife and children to the care of his comrades, he rushed toward the Austrians, gathered a number of their spears together against his breast, and fell pierced 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 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 sulid 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 Winkelrieds of Stanz were a knightly family when we first hear of them, though toward the end of the fourteenth century they seem to have been but simple men without the honors 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 May i, 1367 ; while the same man, or perhaps another member of the family, Erni von Winkelried, is plaintiff in a suit at Stanz, on Septembei 29, 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 Stanz, about the time of the battle of Sempach. The ques- tion is thus narrowed to the points, was he present at the battle, and did he then perform the deed commonly attributed to him ? The determination of this ques- tion requires a minute investigation of the history of that battle, to ascertain if