Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/502

488 poor wretches whom they had mustered to attend them to the field. King Philip of France opened the battle of Crécy, in 1314, by charging his Genoese cross-bowmen with his chevaliers, and slaughtering them right and left!

The only men who resisted successfully these mounted ravagers and maintained for themselves some of the rudimentary rights of humanity were the merchants and artisans in the walled cities of Italy and Flanders; the Swiss, in their mountain fastnesses; and the insular English, whose dreadful long-bows would send arrows a cloth-yard in length through the best Milanese plate-armor. In consequence of the excellence of the English archery the Man on Horseback throve there 80 poorly that the worst condition of the English people in the middle ages was always better than the best condition of those on the Contient. Nor could the Man on Horseback's charge avail against the Italian and Flemish burghers, behind their solid walls.

In 1386 a horde of Austrian cavaliers, who were striving to reduce the Swiss mountaineers to serfdom, penetrated some distance into the Canton of Unterwalden. The ground was so rugged that they had to dismount, and proceed on foot. They were compelled to cut off the long toes of their shoes in order to be able to walk. They were suddenly confronted at Sempach by a small band of determined peasants. Arnold Struth von Winkelried performed his immortal act of self-sacrifice, by breaking with his naked breast the firm front of lances, and his companions rushed in and slew the clumsy dismounted horsemen. This and similar victories secured the freedom of the dwellers among the Alps, and bred there a race of men who were to become the flails to help beat feudalism to fragments.

With these exceptions the print of the war-horse's hoof was on every fertile acre in Europe. The long lance of his rider was the sickle which reaped the fruit of every man's labor. Greedier and greedier every year grew the hungry horde of steel-clad riders. Less and less of the comforts of life they left the abject peasantry. Nearer and nearer the condition of the laboring cattle sank those who delved and planted, and reaped and garnered.

The horsed harpies knew themselves well. They delighted in the character of birds and beasts of prey, and were proud to make lions, tigers, bears, eagles, and hawks, the cognizances by which they were known.

The sole mitigation of this reign of misery for the many was that, in spite of their armor, these rapacious harriers occasionally devoured one another. The strongest slew the less strong; the lions killed off some of the hyenas and jackals; the eagles tore to pieces the kites and hawks. The strongest and craftiest lord of some single hill-top killed off a number of his associates in the robbery business, or seized their lands after they had drunk and gorged themselves into the grave, and became lord of all the hill-tops commanding the entire plain or valley