The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von FuchshaimGrimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
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The Adventurous Simplicissimus: being the description of the Life of a Strange vagabond named Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph von
German fiction -- Translations into English; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Fiction
Now while the fellow thus lamented the torments he had endured, came
another party of foot-soldiers by a cross road through the wood, who
had met the abovementioned boors, caught five and shot the rest dead:
and among the prisoners were four to whom that maltreated trooper had
been forced to do that filthy service a little before. So now, when
both parties had found by their manner of hailing one another that they
were of the same army, they joined forces, and again must hear from the
trooper himself how it had fared with him and his comrades. And there
might any man tremble and quake to see how these same peasants were
handled: for some in their first fury would say, "Shoot them down," but
others said, "Nay: these wanton villains must we first properly
torment: yea, and make them to understand in their own bodies what they
have deserved as regards the person of this same trooper." And all the
time while this discussion proceeded these peasants received such
mighty blows in the ribs from the butts of their musquets that I
wondered they did not spit blood. But presently stood forth a soldier,
and said he: "You gentlemen, seeing that it is a shame to the whole
profession of arms that this rogue (and therewith he pointed to that
same unhappy trooper) have so shamefully submitted himself to the will
of five boors, it is surely our duty to wash out this spot of shame,
and compel these rogues to do the same shameful service for this
trooper which they forced him to do for them." But another said: "This
fellow is not worth having such honour done to him; for were he not a
poltroon surely he would not have done such shameful service, to the
shame of all honest soldiers, but would a thousand times sooner have
died." In a word, 'twas decided with one voice that each of the
captured peasants should do the same filthy service for ten soldiers
which their comrade had been forced to do, and each time should say,
"So do I cleanse and wash away the shame which these soldiers think
they have endured."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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