Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. II.Freytag, Gustav
History
Pictures of German Life in the XVth, XVIth, and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. II.
Freytag, Gustav
Germany -- Civilization; Germany -- Social life and customs
arrangements, food, drink, and other things, they are like soft eggs
that flow through the fingers, or like paper when it lies in the water.
It is thus not only with foot Landsknechte, but also with young nobles.
When they are led to the field in devastated countries, where all is
consumed and laid waste, and they can no longer carry their well-filled
bread wallets and drinking-flasks on their necks, they first pine away,
hunger and thirst, then eat and drink unusual things, from which result
all kinds of maladies. These delicate vagabonds ought to remain at home,
attend to the tillage, or sit in the shop by the pepper-bags, and shift
for themselves, as their fathers and mothers have done, fill their
stomachs at eventide, and go to bed; thus they would not be slain in
war. It is truly said that soldiers must be hardy and enduring people,
like unto steel and iron, and like the wild beasts that can eat all
kinds of food. According to the jocose saying, the Landsknechte must be
able to digest the points of their wheel-nails; nothing must come amiss
to them, even if necessity required that they should eat dogs' or cats'
flesh, and the flesh of horses from the meadow must be like good venison
to them, with herbs unseasoned by salt or butter. Hunger teaches to eat,
if one has not seen bread for three weeks. Drink one may have gratis,
for if one can get no water from the brook, one can drink with the geese
out of the pond or the puddle. One must sleep under a tree, or in the
field; there is plenty of earth to lie on, and of sky for a canopy; such
must often be the Landsknecht's sleeping-room, and from such a bed no
feathers will stick to his hair. Hence arises the old quarrel between
the fowls and geese and the Landsknechte, because the former can always
sleep in feathers, whilst the latter must often lie in straw. There is
another animal that clashes with the Landsknechte, that is the cat; as
the soldiers know well how to pilfer, they are enemies to the cats, and
friendly to the dogs. According to the old doggerel, a Landsknecht
should always have with him a beautiful woman, a dog, and a young boy, a
long spear, and a short sword; he is free to seek any master who will
give him service. A Landsknecht must make three campaigns before he can
become an honourable man. After the first campaign, he must return home
wearing torn clothes; after the second, he should return with a scar on
one cheek, and be able to tell much of alarms, battles, skirmishes and
storming parties, and to show by his scars that he has got the marks of
a Landsknecht; after the third, he should return well appointed, on a
fine charger, bringing with him a purse full of gold, so that he may be
able to distribute whole dollars as he would booty-pence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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