Simplicissimus (6 page)

Beside that, I was so preoccupied with the things I had heard and seen that day that I thought less about food and how I was going to survive than about the enmity between soldier and peasant. But so cruelly did they persecute each other that my simple mind could come to no other conclusion than that mankind must consist not of one race, all descended from Adam, but of two, wild and tame, like other animals.

Such were my thoughts as I fell asleep, wretched and cold and with a hungry stomach. Then it seemed, as if in a dream, that all the trees around my hut changed and took on a different appearance. At the top of every tree sat a noble cavalier and the branches were covered with all kinds of men in place of leaves. Some of them had long pikes, others muskets, short swords, halberds, banners, drums and fifes. It was a brave sight, all neatly arranged, descending row upon row. The roots, however, consisted of people of little consequence, artisans, labourers, farmers and the like, who, nevertheless, gave the tree its strength, which they renewed whenever it needed it. They even replaced the fallen leaves from among their number and to their own even greater detriment. All the while they complained about those who were sitting in the tree, and not without good reason, for the whole weight of the tree was resting on them and squeezing all the money out of their purses, even though they had seven locks. And if the money did not come, the commissaries would give them a good going over with a scourge they called a military execution, forcing sighs from their hearts, tears from their eyes, blood from under their nails and the marrow from their bones. And yet there were some jokers among them who were not worried about all this. They made light of it and mocked them instead of comforting them in their distress.

Thus the roots of these trees passed their days in misery and lamentation, but those on the lowest branches had to put up with even greater toil and hardship. The latter, however, were always merrier than the former, though they were also insolent, cruel, mostly godless and at all times an unbearably heavy burden on the roots. There was a rhyme about them:

This rhyme was not in the least a fabrication, it corresponded to the facts of a soldier’s life. Their whole existence consisted of eating and drinking, going hungry and thirsty, whoring and sodomising, gaming and dicing, guzzling and gorging, murdering and being murdered, killing and being killed, torturing and being tortured, terrifying and being terrified, hunting and being hunted, robbing and being robbed, pillaging and being pillaged, beating and being beaten, being feared and being afraid, causing misery and suffering miserably – in a word, injuring and destroying and in turn being injured and destroyed. And nothing could stop them, neither winter nor summer, snow nor ice, heat nor cold, rain nor wind, mountain nor valley, meadow nor marsh, not ravine, pass, sea, wall, water, fire or rampart, not father or mother, brother or sister, not danger to their own body, soul or conscience, nor the loss of Heaven or of anything else for which there are words. They went about their business until, one by one, they expired, perished, died, croaked their last in battles, sieges, attacks, campaigns, and even in their quarters (the soldiers’ earthly paradise if they should chance upon a fat farmer). Only a few survived who, if they had shown no skill at robbery and extortion, in their old age provided us with our best beggars and vagabonds.

Immediately above these wretches sat old poultry thieves who had spent some years in peril of their lives on the lowest branches, but had managed to struggle through and have the good fortune to escape death so far. These looked more earnest and respectable than those on the lowest branches because they had risen to the next rank. But above them were even higher ones, who also had a higher opinion of themselves since they had command over the lower orders. These were called jerkin-beaters because of their habit of dusting the jackets – and the heads – of the pikemen with their sticks and halberds and giving the musketeers a dose of birch-oil to grease their muskets with.

Above these the tree-trunk had an interval or gap, a smooth section without branches and greased with all the lotions and soaps that malice could devise, so that no man, however good he was at climbing, could scale it, neither by courage, skill or knowledge, unless he came from the nobility. It was more smoothly polished than a marble column or a steel mirror.

Above this part sat those with the banners, some of them young, some quite well on in years. The young ones had been hauled up by their cousins, but the older ones had climbed up under their own steam, either by a silver ladder known as the Bribery Backstairs, or by some other bridge that Fortune had made for them, no one else being available. Above them were even higher ones, who had better seats but still had toil, worries and opposition. However, they enjoyed the advantage that they could lard their purses with slices of the fat which they cut – with a knife called War Levy – out of the root. Their greatest skills they showed when a commissary came with a tub full of money and poured it over the tree to refresh them. Then they caught the best of what was raining down on them and let through as good as nothing to the lowest branches. That was why more of the lower ones died of hunger than by the hand of the enemy, a danger to which those above seemed immune. Thus there was a continual scrabbling and climbing on the tree because everyone wanted to sit in the highest, happiest places.

There were some lazy good-for-nothings, however, not worth the army bread they were given. These made no effort at all to reach a higher position and just did what their duty required. The lower ones who were ambitious hoped the higher ones would fall so they could take their place. But when one out of ten thousand succeeded, their success only came at that disgruntled age when they would be better employed sitting in the ingle-nook roasting apples than facing the enemy in the field. And if there was a man who was in a good position and did his duty honestly, he was envied by the others, or lost both his rank and his life through some unforeseen, unlucky bullet. Nowhere was it harder than at that smooth part of the trunk I mentioned before, for any officer who had a good sergeant was unwilling to lose him, which would be the case if he were made an ensign. So instead of the experienced soldiers it was scribblers, footmen, overgrown pages, poor nobles, vagabonds and parasites, or someone’s cousin, who became ensigns and thus stole the bread out of the mouths of those who deserved it.

This annoyed one sergeant so much that he began to complain loudly, but a lordling said, ‘Do you not know that the high ranks in the army have always been filled with nobles, they being most suited to those offices? Grey beards alone do not defeat the enemy, otherwise one could hire a herd of billy-goats. People say,

Tell me, thou old cripple, are not nobly born officers better respected by the troops than those who have been common soldiers? And how can you keep discipline in war when there is no respect? Cannot the general trust a nobleman better than a peasant lad who has run away from the plough and has no thought of doing good by his own parents? A true nobleman would rather die with honour than bring dishonour on his family through treason, desertion or behaviour of that kind. It is laid down that the nobility should be given precedence in all things and John of Platea expressly states that the nobility should have preference in filling offices and that it is proper that they should be preferred to commoners. This is usual in all legal systems and is confirmed by the Bible, for it says in Ecclesiastes 10, 17, ‘Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles’, a magnificent testimony to the precedence due to the nobility. And even if one of your kind is a good soldier, inured to the smell of gunpowder and able to give a good account of himself in every action, yet that does not mean he is equally capable of giving orders to others. This quality, on the other hand, is innate to the nobility, or acquired in earliest youth. Seneca says, ‘A heroic soul has this quality, that it is urged on towards honour; no noble spirit takes pleasure in small and worthless things.’ Publio Fausto Andrelini expressed this in a distich:

Moreover the nobility has greater means to aid their subordinates with money and find recruits for weak companies than a peasant. As the saying has it, setting the peasant above the nobleman is a recipe for disorder. Also the peasants would become much too arrogant if they were made lords straight away, for it is said,

If the peasants, by reason of ancient and acknowledged custom, had military and other offices in their possession, as the nobility does, they would certainly do all they could to stop a nobleman acquiring them. In addition, although people are often keen to help you soldiers of fortune (as you are called) to rise to high honours, you are generally so old by the time you have been tested out and found worthy of higher things that one must have misgivings about promoting you. By then the fire of youth has gone out and your only thought is how best to pamper and protect your sick bodies, worn out by all the hardships you have been through and of little use for warfare, caring not who fights and gains honour. A young hound is much more willing in the chase than an old lion.’

The sergeant answered, ‘Who would be foolish enough to serve in the army if he had no hope of being promoted for his good conduct and thus rewarded for his loyal service? The Devil take such wars. The way things are at present, it makes no difference whether one does one’s duty properly or not. I have often heard our old colonel say he wanted no one under his command who did not firmly believe he could rise to be a general through performing his duty well. The whole world must acknowledge that those nations which promote common but honest soldiers and reward their courage most often triumph in battle. One can see this in the Persians and Turks. It is said,

The lordling replied, ‘If an honest man has genuine qualities which come to the notice of his superiors, then he will certainly not be overlooked. Nowadays you can find many men who have abandoned the plough, the needle, the cobbler’s last and the shepherd’s crook for the sword, who have acquitted themselves well and through their bravery been raised high above the gentry to the rank of count and baron. What was the imperial general, Johann von Werd? A farmer. The Swede Stallhans? A tailor. The Hessian colonel, Jacob Mercier, had been a shoemaker and Daniel de St. Andree, the commandant of Lippstadt, a shepherd. There are many other examples which, to save time, I will not mention here. This is not something which is new to the present, nor will there in the future be any lack of low-born but honest men who rise to high honour through war; it even happened in the past. Tamburlaine was a swineherd who became a powerful king, the terror of the whole world; Agathocles, King of Sicily, was a potter’s son; Telephas, a wheelwright, became King of Lydia; the father of Emperor Valentinian was a rope-maker; Maurice the Cappadocian, a bondslave, became emperor after the second Tiberius; John of Tzimisces was a scholar who became emperor. Flavius Vobiscus records that Emperor Bonosus was the son of a poor schoolmaster; Hyperbolus, the son of Chermidi, was first a lamp-maker then Prince of Athens; Justinus, who ruled before Justinian, was a swineherd before becoming emperor. Hugh Capet, a butcher’s son, was King of France; Pizarro, likewise a swineherd, was later Governor of Peru and weighed out gold by the hundredweight.’

The sergeant answered, ‘All this sounds well enough, but I can still see that the doors to some positions of dignity are kept closed to us by the nobility. Scarcely have they crawled out of the shell, than nobles are immediately given places which we cannot think of attaining, even if we have done more than many a nobleman who is now appointed colonel. And just as among the peasantry many a noble mind wastes away because a man lacks the means to study, so many a brave soldier grows old still bearing his musket who deserves command of a regiment and could have rendered his general great services.’

I had had enough of listening to the old ass. Indeed, I felt he deserved the treatment he complained of because he often thrashed his soldiers like dogs. I turned again to the trees, with which the whole countryside was filled, and watched how they moved and knocked against each other. The men in them rained down by the score; a crack, and there was one on the ground already, dead in a second. In the same second one lost an arm, another a leg, a third his head. As I watched I thought that all the trees I could see were just one tree with Mars, the God of War, on the top, and covering the whole of Europe with its branches. It seemed to me that this tree could have overshadowed the whole world, but since it was blasted, as if by a cold north wind, by envy and hatred, suspicion and malice, arrogance, pride, avarice and other such fine virtues, it appeared thin and sparse, which was why someone had carved the following rhyme on its trunk: