Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/238

 whether they were Jew or Christian, so they had wherewith to reward his trouble. Often would he pick an unfounded quarrel with one or other of his neighbours, so as to give him a pretext for despoiling their domains. It was quite in his power to have rested from the fatigues of war, in the society of an amiable wife; but to him repose seemed a disgraceful effeminacy. Popular opinion in those olden times deemed the sword and spear as essential to the character of the knight, as the spade and reaping-hook to that of the peaceful tiller of land, and as little to be laid aside while health and strength remained; and truly Winnebald kept up the principle vigorously. His excesses at length became perfectly intolerable; no one for miles round felt himself safe, and a powerful league was accordingly formed against him, whose members swore, at whatever cost, to drive this insatiate vulture from his nest, and to destroy his strongholds. Having sent him their mortal defiance, they armed their vassals, and by a simultaneous movement, beleaguered his three castles on the same day, giving him no time to take the field against the confederates. Hugo von Kotzau appeared with his forces before Klausenburg on the hill; Rodolph von Rabenstein, with his cavaliers, invested Gottendorf in the valley, and Ulric Spareck, surnamed the Dolphin, environed, with his archers, Salenstein on the river.