Simplicissimus by Johann Grimmelshausen Read Free Book Online

pillaged, which brings him strange dreams of the country folk and what happens to them in war
     
    When I arrived home I found that my tinder-box and all my household possessions were gone, together with the meagre store of food I had grown during the summer in my garden and saved for the coming winter. What should I do now? I wondered. I quickly learnt the truth of the saying that necessity soon teaches you to pray. I gathered all my wits together to try and work out what I could do. Since, however, I was almost completely lacking in experience nothing that looked likely to succeed occurred to me. The best I could think of was to commend myself to God and put my trust in Him alone. Otherwise I would doubtless have fallen into despair and perished.
    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.

Chapter 16
     

Of the ways of the military in the present time, and how difficult it is for a common soldier to be promoted
     
    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:
    Hunger, thirst, cold and heat,
Empty purse, weary feet,
Ruthless killing, wanton strife
Add up to a lanzknecht’s life.
     
    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,