"Dear Federates and true, my life I give to
win:
They have their rank too firm, we cannot break
it in:
Hei! a breaking in I'll make.
The while that you my offspring to your protection
take."

Herewith did he an armful of spears nimbly take;
His life had an end, for his friends a lane did make:
Hei! he had a lion's mood,
So manly, stoutly dying for the Four Cantons' good.

And so it was the breaking of the nobles' front began
With hewing and with sticking,--it was God's holy plan:
Hei! if this He had not done,
It would have cost the Federates many an honest one.

The poem proceeds now with chaffing and slaughtering the broken enemy,
enjoining them to run home to their fine ladies with little credit or
comfort, and shouting after them an inventory of the armor and banners
which they leave behind. [7]

[Footnote 7: It is proper to state that an attack has lately been made
in Germany upon the authenticity of the story of Winkelried, on the
ground that it is mentioned in no contemporaneous document or chronicle
which has yet come to light, and that a poem in fifteen verses composed
before this of Halbsuter's does not mention it. Also it is shown that
Halbsuter incorporated the previous poem into his own. It is