Numbers of the mountaineers lay dead or wounded. The line of spears
seemed impenetrable. The Swiss began to waver. The enemy, seeing this,
advanced the flanks of his line so as to form a half-moon shape, with
the purpose of enclosing the small body of Swiss within a circle of
spears. It looked for the moment as if the struggle were at an end, the
mountaineers foiled and defeated, the fetters again ready to be locked
upon the limbs of free Switzerland.
But such was not to be. There was a man in that small band of patriots
who had the courage to accept certain death for his country, one of
those rare souls who appear from time to time in the centuries and win
undying fame by an act of self-martyrdom. Arnold of Winkelried was his
name, a name which history is not likely soon to forget, for by an
impulse of the noblest devotion this brave patriot saved the liberties
of his native land.
[Illustration: STATUE OF ARNOLD WINKELRIED.]
Seeing that there was but one hope for the Swiss, and that death must be
the lot of him who gave them that hope, he exclaimed to his comrades, in
a voice of thunder,--
"Faithful and beloved confederates, I will open a passage to freedom and
victory! Protect my wife and children!"
With these words, he rushed from his ranks, flung himself upon the
enemy's steel-pointed line, and seized with his extended arms as many of
the hostile spears as he was able to grasp, burying them in his body,
and sinking dead to the ground.
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