Simplicissimus (22 page)

I wanted to tell them the story of my whole life so that the circumstances of my strange adventures would explain everything and reveal the true answers to these questions. However, the intelligence officer, tired and in a bad mood after all the marching, was not that interested and told me just to answer the questions as briefly as possible. I therefore answered as follows, although no one could understand what had really happened to me from it:

When my statement had been written down, he said, ‘How can you deny you have been a student? Once, at the time we still thought you were a fool, when the priest celebrating mass said,
Domine non sum dignus
, people heard you say in Latin that we all knew that already?’

‘Sir’, I answered, ‘some other people taught me that. They told me it was a prayer to be used when the chaplain was saying mass.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the intelligence officer. ‘I can see you’re just the type whose tongue will have to be loosened by torture.’

‘God help me’, I thought, ‘I hope they don’t loosen my head too.’

The next morning the judge-advocate-general sent word to our provost-sergeant that he should keep a good eye on me for he had a mind to examine me himself once the armies halted. Doubtless that meant I would have been tortured, if God had not decided otherwise. While I was in custody I kept thinking of both the pastor in Hanau and old Herzbruder, both of whom had prophesied what would happen to me if I were to get rid of my fool’s costume.

Hardly had we made camp that evening than I was taken to the judge-advocate. He had my statement and writing materials on the desk in front of him and began to interrogate me more closely. I told him all my adventures, just the way they had happened, but I was not believed. The answers to his questions were so pat and the whole story so strange that the judge-advocate could not make up his mind whether he was dealing with a fool or an arch-villain. He told me to take a pen and write something, to see whether he could recognise my handwriting or make any other deductions from it. I took the pen and paper with the ease of someone who uses them every day and asked what I should write. The judge-advocate-general, being perhaps annoyed that the interrogation was going on so late into the night, said, ‘Oh, write that your mother’s a whore.’ I wrote down the exact words he had said and when he read them it just made my situation worse, for the judge-advocate said he really did believe I was a villain now. He asked the provost-sergeant whether I had been searched and whether any papers had been found on me.

‘No’, answered the sergeant, ‘there was no point in searching him since he was naked when the provost-marshal handed him over.’

But it was no use, the provost-sergeant was made to search me in the presence of all the rest, and since, unfortunately, he did it thoroughly he found the two donkey’s ears full of ducats round my arms. Immediately the judge-advocate said, ‘What do we need any further proof? This traitor was doubtless planning some mischief. Why else would a person in his right mind dress up in a fool’s outfit? A man disguise himself in woman’s clothes? Why else would he have such a considerable sum of money on him unless he was planning some big operation? Did he not admit that he learnt to play the lute while he was staying with the governor of Hanau, that past-master of trickery. What other artful practices do you think he learnt from those rogues, gentlemen? The best way to deal with him is to have him tortured tomorrow then burnt at the stake. He deserves no better anyway, since he was in company with the sorcerers.’

Anyone can easily imagine how I felt. I knew I was innocent and I trusted in God, yet I could see the danger I was in and mourned the loss of my ducats, which the judge-advocate-general had pocketed.

However, before this harsh verdict could be carried out, Banér’s forces fell upon us. For a while the two armies struggled to gain the upper hand, then the Swedes attacked and quickly captured our heavy artillery. Our provost-sergeant kept well back from the battle-line with his men and prisoners, but we were still close enough to our brigade to be able to recognise each man from behind by his clothes. And when a Swedish squadron attacked them we were as much in danger of our lives as those who were fighting. At one point there were so many bullets singing through the air above us that it looked as if the salvo had been aimed deliberately at us. The faint-hearted ducked, as if they thought they could hide inside themselves, but those with more nerve and more experience of these affairs let the bullets fly over their heads without batting an eyelid.

In the battle itself, however, each man tried to avoid death by dispatching the enemy immediately in front of him. The dreadful noise of the guns, the clatter of harnesses, the clash of pikes and the cries of both attackers and wounded combined with the trumpets, drums and fifes to produce fearful music. You could see nothing but thick smoke and dust, which seemed to be trying to hide the horror of the dead and wounded. In the middle of it all you could hear the pitiful wails of the dying and the excited cheers of those who were still full of fight. The longer the battle went on the livelier the horses seemed to get in defending their masters, so furious they were in performing the duties that were imposed on them. Some fell dead under their riders, covered in wounds which were the undeserved reward for their faithful service. Others fell on top of their riders, thus in their death having the honour of being carried by the men whom they had had to carry during their lives. Yet others, relieved of the intrepid burden which had controlled them, left the men to their mad frenzy and ran off to enjoy their old freedom in the open fields.

The earth, whose usual task it is to cover the dead, was itself strewn with corpses, all with different mutilations: there were heads that had lost the bodies they belonged to and bodies lacking heads; some had their entrails hanging out in sickening fashion, others their skull smashed and the brain spattered over the ground; you could see dead bodies emptied of blood and living ones covered in the blood of others; there were shot-off arms with the fingers still moving, as if they wanted to get back into the fighting, while some men ran away without having shed a single drop of blood; there were severed legs lying around which, even though they had been relieved of the burden of their body, had become much heavier than they were before; you could see mutilated soldiers begging to be put to death, others to be granted quarter and spared.

In a word, it was a pitiful sight. The Swedish victors drove our defeated army from the field, splitting it up and scattering it completely with their swift pursuit. At this turn of events our provost-sergeant also decided to flee with his prisoners although we would have had nothing to fear from the conquerors. The provost-sergeant was threatening to kill us if we did not go with him when young Herzbruder galloped up with five other troopers and fired his pistol at him, saying, ‘So it’s you, is it, you old dog. Let’s see if you still have time to make a few more puppies. Take that for your pains.’ But the bullet bounced off the provost-sergeant as if he had been a steel anvil.

‘Oho, is that the way it is?’ said Herzbruder. ‘Well, I’m not doing you the favour of coming to see you for nothing. You’re going to die, even if your soul is glued fast to your body.’ At that he forced one of the musketeers of the provost-sergeant’s guard to strike him down with an axe if he wanted to be spared himself. Thus the provost-sergeant got his just reward and I was recognised by Herzbruder, who released me from my fetters and chains, put me on a horse and got his servant to lead me to safety.

Although my rescuer had his servant lead me out of any further danger, he himself was driven by the desire for honour and booty so far into the midst of it that he was captured. When the victors were dividing up the spoils and burying their dead after the battle, it was discovered that Herzbruder was missing so I, along with his servant and horses, became his captain’s property. He employed me as a stable lad, which I had to accept, getting nothing out of it but his promise that if I did well he would mount me (that is make me a trooper) when I was a bit older, and with that I had to be content.

Immediately afterwards the captain was promoted to lieutenant-colonel. I had the office David performed for Saul: in camp I played the lute and when we were on the march I had to carry his cuirass for him, which I did by wearing it, and an onerous task it was too. Although this armour is designed to protect the wearer from the blows of the enemy, I found the opposite was the case. Protected by it, the animal life that I hatched out could attack me all the more safely. Underneath the cuirass they were free to go about their business as they pleased so that it seemed more as if I were wearing it for their protection rather than my own, especially since I could not get my hands under it to carry out a punitive raid on them.

I spent my time thinking up all kinds of stratagems by which I could destroy this army. I had neither the time nor the opportunity to exterminate them by fire (i.e. in an oven), by water or by poison, though I was well aware of what quicksilver can do, and I simply did not have the means of getting rid of them by wearing different clothes or a clean shirt. I had to put up with them and supply them with flesh and blood. And when they nibbled and gnawed at me under the cuirass I would whip out a pistol as if I were going to fire on them, but all I did was to pull out the ramrod and use it to scrape them away from their fodder. Finally I discovered how to tie a scrap of fur round it to make a delousing rod with which I fished them out by the dozen and then killed them on the spot. It didn’t make much difference, though.

Once the lieutenant-colonel was ordered to take a strong detachment on an expedition through Westphalia. If he had had as many men as I had lice he would have terrified the whole world; as it was, he had to proceed with caution and make a secret camp in the Günner Mark, a wood between Hamm and Soest. At that time the problem with my lodgers was coming to head; they so tormented me with their tunnelling that I began to be worried they were going to set up house between my skin and my flesh. They are such a plague it is no surprise the Brazilians eat them out of rage and desire for revenge. There came a point where I could bear the agony no longer. Most of the troopers were either feeding their horses, sleeping or on sentry duty, so I went a little way away, under a tree, to fight it out with my enemies. I took off the cuirass, even though others put one on before going into battle, and started such a massacre that soon my two swords – my thumb-nails – were dripping with blood and covered in dead bodies. Those I could not kill I sent into exile, wandering under the tree.

Whenever I remember this engagement my skin immediately starts to itch, just as if I were still in the middle of the battle. It did occur to me that I should not wage war on my own blood, especially not on such loyal servants who would stick to me through thick and thin, even if I were executed or broken on the wheel, and who, there being so many of them, had often softened the hard earth when I slept out in the open. Nevertheless, I continued my savage butchery and was so engrossed in it that I did not even notice when a party of Imperial cavalry attacked the lieutenant-colonel’s position and eventually came upon me, relieved the poor lice, and took me prisoner. They showed not the slightest fear, despite the fact that I had a thousand times more claim to valour than the seven-at-one-blow tailor. I fell to the share of a dragoon and the best booty he had from me was the lieutenant-colonel’s cuirass, for which he got a fairly good price from the commandant in Soest, where they were quartered. I had to serve the dragoon, who thus became my sixth master in these wars.