Arnold von Winkelried

Winkelried cried: "I will open a passage into the line; protect, dear countrymen and confederates, my wife and children..." He then threw himself upon the Austrian pikes, taking some of them down with his body.

As phrased in the Halbsuterlied printed in the 1530s by Aegidius Tschudi and Wernher Steiner: Des adels her was veste, ir ordnung dik und breit, Das verdross die frommen gäste, ein Winkelriet der seit wend Irs gniesen lon, min fromme kind und frowen, so will ich ein frevel bston.

Trüwen lieben eydgnossen, min leben verlur ich mit, sie hand ir ordnung bschlossen, wir mogänds in brechen nit.

von schuhen huwents dschnäbel, man hätt gefüllt ein wagen; der adel wolt vornen dran, die andern gmeinen knechte, müstend dahinden stan.

They fastened their helmets and pushed forward They cut the tips off their shoes, as many as would have filled a cart The nobility wanted to take the front, while the common men-at-arms must stand back.

This is given by means of explanation as to how the breaking of the first rank of pikes by Winkelried could lead to immediate disaster for the Austrian side, as the leaders of the army were fighting in the van.

Haller (Schweizerschlachten, 1828) reports that in the early 19th century, a pierced mail shirt identified as that worn by Winkelried in the battle was preserved in Stans.

Haller also reports a folk tradition according to which Winkelried was found still alive after the battle, and only died of his wounds on the way home in a boat on Lake Sempach.

In the chronicle of Diebold Schilling of Berne (c. 1480), in the picture of the battle of Sempach there is a warrior pierced with spears falling to the ground, which may possibly be meant to be Winkelried.

Also from the 16th century is evidence from lists of those who fell at Sempach; the "Anniversary Book" of Emmetten in Unterwalden (drawn up in 1560) has "der Winkelriedt" at the head of the Nidwalden men.

Liebenau supposes that because this Erni signed as the last of five witnesses, after one Hans Winkelried, he was presumably still a young man at this time, which would make him of mature age at the date of the battle.

[4] As for the plausibility of Winkelried's deed, the single-handed breaking of a line of pikes to open a breach, which is then exploited to turn the course of the battle, a parallel is adduced by Liebenau is that of one Johann Stühlinger, a ministerialis in the service of Regensburg, who in a 1332 battle against Berne and Solothurn broke through the ranks of the enemy with his warhorse, creating just such an opening, which was exploited to the cost of 400 men on the Bernese side.

Juliusz Słowacki created this way of thinking in his dramatic poem "Kordian", where the titular character decides to kill the Tsar of Russia to take Poland's suffering on himself, easing a breakthrough to freedom for his nation.

19th-century painting of Winkelried's deed by Konrad Grob .