Ch. 1-5

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BOOK I.

Chap i. : TREATS OF SIMPLICISSIMUS’S RUSTIC DESCENT AND OF HIS UPBRINGING
ANSWERING THERETO

            There appeareth in these days of ours (of which many do
believe that they be the last days) among the common folk, a certain
disease which causeth those who do suffer from it (so soon as they have
either scraped and higgled together so much that they can, besides a few
pence in their pocket, wear a fool’s coat of the new fashion with a
thousand bits of silk ribbon upon it, or by some trick of fortune have
become known as men of parts) forthwith to give themselves out gentlemen
and nobles of ancient descent.  Whereas it doth often happen that their
ancestors were day-labourers, carters, and porters, their cousins
donkey-drivers, their brothers turnkeys and catchpolls, their sisters
harlots, their mothers bawds—yea, witches even: and in a word, their
whole pedigree of thirty-two quarterings as full of dirt and stain as
ever was the sugar-bakers’ guild of Prague.  Yea, these new sprigs of
nobility be often themselves as black as if they had been born and bred
in Guinea.

            With such foolish folk I desire not to even myself, though
‘tis not untrue that I have often fancied I must have drawn my birth from
some great lord or knight at least, as being by nature disposed to follow
the nobleman's trade had I but the means and tools for it.  ‘Tis true,
moreover, without jesting, that my birth and upbringing can be compared
to that of a prince if we overlook the one great difference in degree. 
How ! did not my dad (for so they call fathers in the Spessart1) have his
own palace like any other, so fine as no king could build with his own
hands, but must let that alone for ever. ‘Twas painted with lime, and in
the place of unfruitful tiles, cold lead and red copper, was roofed with
that straw whereupon the noble corn doth grow, and that he, my dad, might
make a proper show of nobility and riches, he has his wall round his
castle built, not of stone, which men do find upon the road of dig out of
the earth in barren places, much less of miserable baked bricks that in a
brief space can be made and burned (as other great lords be wont to do),
but he did use oak, which noble and profitable tree, being such that
smoked sausage and fat ham doth grow upon it, taketh for its full growth
no less than a hundred years; and where is the monarch that can imitate
him therein?  His halls, his rooms, and his chambers did he have
thoroughly blackened with smoke, and for this reason only, that ‘tis the
most lasting colour in the world, and doth take longer to reach to real
perfection than an artist will spend on his most excellent paintings. 
The tapestries were of the most delicate web in the world, wove for us by
her that of old did challenge Minerva to a spinning match2.  His windows
were dedicated to St. Papyrius for no other reason than that that same
paper doth take longer to come to perfection, reckoning from the sowing
of the hemp of flax whereof ‘tis made, than doth the finest and clearest
glass of Murano: for his trade made him apt to believe that whatever was
produced with much pains was also more valuable and more costly; and what
was most costly was best suited to the nobility.  Instead of pages,
lackeys, grooms, he had sheep, goats, and swine, which often waited upon
me in the pastures till I drove them home.  His armoury was well
furnished with ploughs, mattocks, axes, hoes, shovels, pitchforks, and
hayforks, with which weapons he daily exercised himself.  The yoking of
oxen was his generalship, the piling of dung his fortification, tilling
of the land his campaigning, and the cleaning out of the stables his
princely pastime and exercise.  By this means did he conquer the whole
round world so far as he could reach, and at every harvest did draw from
it rich spoils.  But all this I account nothing of, and am not puffed up
thereby, lest any should have cause to jibe at me as at other new-fangled
nobility, for I esteem myself no higher than was my dad, which had his
abode in a right merry land, to wit, in the Spessart, where the wolves do
howl goodnight to each other.  But that I have as yet told you nought of
my dad’s family, race, and name is of the sake of precious brevity,
especially since there is here no question of a foundation for
gentlefolks for me to swear myself into; ‘tis enough if it be known that
I was born in the Spessart.

            Now as my dad’s manner of living will be perceived to be
truly noble, so any man of sense will easily understand that my
upbringing was like and suitable thereto: and whoso thinks that is not
deceived, for in my tenth year I already learned the rudiments of my
dad’s princely exercises: yet as touching studies I might compare with
the famous Amphistides, of whom Suidas reports that he could not count
higher than five: for my dad had perchance too high a spirit, and
therefore followed the use of these days, wherein many persons of quality
trouble themselves not, as they say, with bookworms’ follies, but have
their hirelings to do their ink-slinging for them.  Yet I was a fine
performer on the bagpipe, whereon I could produce most dolorous strains. 
But as to knowledge of things divine, none shall ever persuade me that
any lad of my age in all Christendom could there beat me, for I knew
nought of God or man, of Heaven or hell, of angel of devil, nor could
discern between good and evil.  So it may be easily understood that I,
with such knowledge of theology, lived like our first parents in
Paradise, which in their innocence knew nought of sickness or death or
dying, and still less of the Resurrection.  O noble life ! (or, as one
might better say, O noodle’s life !) in which none troubles himself about
medicine.  And by this measure ye can estimate my proficiency in the
study of jurisprudence and all other arts and sciences.  Yes, I was so
perfected in ignorance that I knew not that I knew nothing.  So I say
again, O noble life that once I led !  But my dad would not suffer me
long to enjoy such bliss, but deemed it right that as being nobly born, I
should nobly act and nobly live: and therefore began to train me up for
higher things that gave me harder lessons.

Chap. ii. :  OF THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS THAT DIGNITY TO WHICH
SIMPLICISSIMUS ATTAINED, TO WHICH IS ADDED THE PRAISE OF SHEPHERDS AND
OTHER EXCELLENT PRECEPTS

            For he invested me with the highest dignity that could be
found, not only in his
household, but in the whole world: namely, with the office of a shepherd:
for first he did entrust me with his swine, then his goats, and then his
whole flock of sheep, what I should keep and feed the same, and by means
of my bagpipe (of which Strabo writeth that in Arabia its music alone
doth fatten the sheep and lambs) protect them from the wolf.  Then was I
like David (save that he in place of the bagpipe had but a harp), which
was no bad beginning for me, but a good omen in time, if I had any manner
of luck, I should become a famous man: for from the beginning of the
world high personages have been shepherds, as we read in the Holy Writ of
Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons: yea, of Moses also, which must
first keep his father-in-law his sheep before he was made law-giver and
ruler over six hundred thousand men in Israel.

            And now may some man say that these were holy and godly men,
and no Spessart peasant-lads knowing nought of God?  Which I must
confess: yet why should my then innocence be laid to my charge?  Yet,
among the heathen of old time you will find examples as many among God’s
chosen folk.  So among the Romans were the noble families that without a
doubt were called Bubulci, Vituli, Vitellii, Caprae, and so forth,
because they had to do with the cattle so named, and ‘tis like had even
herded them.  ‘Tis certain Romulus and Remus were shepherds, and
Spartacus that made the whole Roman world to tremble.  What ! was not
Paris, King Priam’s son, a shepherd, and Anchises the Trojan prince,
Aeneas’s father?  The beautiful Endymion, of whom the chaste Luna was
enamoured, was a shepherd, and so too the grisly Polypheme.  Yea, the
gods themselves were not ashamed of this trade: Apollo kept the kine of
Admetus, King of Thessaly; Mercurius and his son Daphnis, Pan and
Proteus, were all mighty shepherds: and therefore be they still called by
our fantastic poets and patrons of herdsmen.  Mesha, King of Moab, as we
do read in II Kings, was a sheep-master; Cyrus, the great King of Persia,
was not only reared by Mithridates, a shepherd, but himself did keep
sheep; Gyges was first a herdsman, and then by the power of a ring became
a king; and Ismael Sophi, the Persian king, did in his youth likewise
herd cattle.  So that Philo, the Jew, doth excellently deal with the
matter in his life of Moses when he saith the shepherd’s trade is a
preparation and a beginning for the ruling of men, for as men are trained
and exercised for the wars in hunting, so should they that are intended
for government first be reared in the gentle and kindly duty of a
shepherd: all which my dad doubtless did understand: yea, to know it doth
to this hour give me no little hope of my future greatness.

            But to come back to my flock.  Ye must know that I knew as
little of wolves as of mine own ignorance, and therefore was my dad the
more diligent with his lessons: and “lad,” says he, “have a care; let not
the sheep run far from each other, and play thy bagpipe manfully lest the
wolf come and do harm, for ‘tis a four-legged knave and a thief that
eateth man and beast, and if thou beest anyways negligent he will dust
thy jacket for thee.”  To which I answered with like courtesy, “Daddy,
tell me how a wolf looks: for such I never saw yet.”  “O thou silly
blockhead,” quoth he, “all thy life long wilt thou be a fool: thou art
already a great looby and yet knowest not what a four-legged rogue a wolf
is.”  And more lessons did he give me, and at last grew angry and went
away, as bethinking him that my thick wit could not comprehend his nice
instruction.

Chap iii. : TREATS OF THE SUFFERINGS OF THE FAITHFUL BAGPIPE

            So I began to make such ado with my bagpipe and such noise
that ‘twas enough to poison all the toads in the garden, and so methought
I was safe enough from the wolf that was ever in my mind: and remembering
me of my mammy (for so they do use to call their mothers in Spessart and
the Vogelsberg) how she had often said the fowls would some time or other
die of my singing, I fell upon the thought to sing the more, and so I
sang this which I had learned from my mammy:

1. O peasant race so much despised
    How greatly art thou to be priz’d?
    Yea, none thy praises can excel,
    If men would only mark thee well.
2. How would it with the world now stand
    Had Adam never till’d the land?
    With spade and hoe he dug the earth
    From whom our princes have their birth.
3. Whatever earth doth bear this day
    Is under thine high rule and sway,
    And all that fruitful makes the land
    Is guided by thy master hand.
4. The emperor whom God doth give
    Us to protect, thereby doth live:
    So doth the soldier: though his trade
    To thy great loss and harm be made.
5. Meat for our feasts thou dost provide:
    Our wine by thee too is supplied:
    Thy plough can force the earth to give
    That bread whereby all men must live.
6. All waste the earth and desert were
    Didst thou not ply thy calling there:
    Sad day shall that for all be found
    When peasants cease to till the ground.
7. So hast thou right to laud and praise,
    For thou dost feed us all our days.
    Nature herself thee well doth love,
    And God thy handiwork approve.
8. Whoever yet on earth did hear
    Of peasant that the gout did fear;
    That fell disease which rich men dread,
    Whereby is many a noble dead.
9. From vainglory art thou free
    (As in these days thou well mayst be),
    And lest thou shouldst through pride have loss,
    God bids thee daily bear thy cross.
10. Yea, even the soldier’s wicked will
    May work thee great advantage still:
    For lest thou shouldst to pride incline,
    “Thy goods and house,” saith he, “are mine.”

            So far and no further could I get with my song: for in a
moment was I surrounded, sheep and all, by a troop of cuirassiers3 that
had lost their way in the thick wood and were brought back to their right
path by my music and my calls to my flock.  “Aha,” quoth I to myself,
“These be the right rogues ! these be the four-legged knaves and thieves
whereof thy dad did tell thee ! “  For at first I took horse and man (as
did the Americans the Spanish cavalry) to be but one beast, and could not
but conceive these were the wolves; and so would sound the retreat for
these horrible centaurs and send them a-flying: but scarce had I blown up
my bellows to that end when one of them catches me by the shoulder and
swings me up so roughly upon a spare farm horse they had stolen with
other booty that I must needs fall on the other side, and that too upon
my dear bagpipe, which began so miserably to scream as it would move all
the world to pity: which availed nought, though it spared not its last
breath in the bewailing of my sad fate.  To horse again I must go, it
mattered not what my bagpipe did sing or say: yet what vexed me most was
that the troopers said I had hurt my dear bagpipe, and therefore it had
made so heathenish an outcry.  So away my horse went with me at a good
trot, like the “primum mobile4,” for my dad’s farm.

            Now did strange and fantastic imaginings fill my brain; for I
did conceive, because I sat upon such a beast as I had never before seen,
that I too should be changed into an iron man.  And because such a change
came not, there arose in me other foolish fantasies, for I thought these
strange creatures were but there to help me drive my sheep home; for none
strayed from the path, but all, with one accord, made for my dad’s farm. 
So I looked anxiously when my dad and mammy should come out to bid us
welcome: which yet came not: for they and our Ursula, which was my dad’s
only daughter, had found the back-door open and would not wait for their
guests.

Chap. iv. : HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS’S PALACE WAS STORMED, PLUNDERED, AND
RUINATED, AND IN WHAT SORRY FASHION THE SOLDIERS KEPT HOUSE THERE

            Although it was not my intention to take the peace-loving
reader with these troopers to my dad’s house and farm, seeing that
matters will go ill therein, yet the course of my history demands that I
should leave to kind posterity an account of what manner of cruelties
were now and again practised in this our German war: yea, and moreover
testify by my own example that such evils must often have been sent to us
by the goodness of Almighty God for our profit.  For, gentle reader, who
would ever have taught me that there was a God in Heaven if these
soldiers had not destroyed my dad’s house, and by such a deed driven me
out among folk who gave me all fitting instruction thereupon?  Only a
little while before, I neither knew nor could fancy to myself that there
were any people on earth save only my dad, my mother and me, and the rest
of our household, nor did I know of any human habitation but that where I
daily went out and in.  But soon thereafter I understood the way of men’s
coming into this world, and how they must leave it again.  I was only in
shape a man and in name a Christian: for the rest I was but a beast.  Yet
the Almighty looked upon my innocence with a pitiful eye, and would bring
me to a knowledge both of Himself and of myself.  And although He had a
thousand ways to lead me thereto, yet would He doubtless use that one
only by which my dad and mother should be punished: and that for an
example to all others by reason of their heathenish upbringing of me.

            The first thing these troopers did was, that they stabled
their horses: thereafter each fell to his appointed task: which task was
neither more nor less than ruin and destruction.  For though some began
to slaughter and to boil and to roast so that it looked as if there
should be a merry banquet forward, yet others there were who did but
storm through the house above and below stairs.  Others stowed together
great parcels of cloth and apparel and all manner of household stuff, as
if they would set up a frippery market.  All that they had no mind to
take with them they cut in pieces.  Some thrust their swords through the
hay and straw as if they had not enough sheep and swine to slaughter: and
some shook the feathers out of the beds and in their stead stuffed in
bacon and other dried meat and provisions as if such were better and
softer to sleep upon.  Others broke the stove and the windows as if they
had a never-ending summer to promise.  Houseware of copper and tin they
beat flat, and packed such vessels, all best and spoiled, in with the
rest.  Bedsteads, tables, chairs and benches they burned, though there
lay many cords of dry wood in the yard.  Pots and pipkins must all go to
pieces, either because they would eat none but roast flesh, or because
their purpose was to make there but a single meal.

            Our maid was so handled in the stable that she could not come
out; which is a shame to tell of. Our man they laid bound upon the
ground, thrust a gag into his mouth, and poured a pailful of filthy water
into this body: and by this, which they called a Swedish draught, they
forced him to lead a party of them to another place where they captured
men and beasts, and brought them back to the farm, in which company were
my dad, my mother, and our Ursula.
  And now they began: first to take the flints out of their pistols and
in place of them to jam the peasants thumbs in and so to torture the poor
rogues as if they had been about the burning of witches5: for one of them
they had taken they thrust into the baking oven and there lit a fire
under him, although he had as yet confessed no crime: as for another,
they put a cord round his head and so twisted it tight with a piece of
wood that the blood gushed from his mouth and nose and ears.  In a word,
each had his own device to torture the peasants, and each peasant his
several torture.  But as it seemed to me then, my dad was the luckiest,
for he with a laughing face confessed what others out of the midst of
pains and miserable lamentations: and such honour without doubt fell to
him because he was the householder.  For they set him before a fire and
bound him fast so that he could neither stir hand nor foot, and smeared
the soles of his feet with wet salt, and this made our old goat lick off,
and so tickle him that he well nigh burst his sides with laughing.  And
this seemed to me so merry a thing that I must needs laugh with him for
the sake of fellowship, or because I knew no better.  In the midst of
such laughter he must needs confess all that they would have of him, and
indeed revealed to them a secret treasure, which proved far richer in
pearls, gold, and trinkets than ant would have looked for among peasants.
 Of the women, girls, and maidservants whom they took, I have not much to
say in particular, for the soldiers would not have me see how they dealt
with them.  Yet this I did know, that one heard some of them scream most
piteously in divers corners of the house; and well I can judge it fared
no better with my mother and our Ursel than with the rest.  Yet in the
midst of all this miserable ruin, I helped to turn the spit, and in the
afternoon to give the horses drink, in which employ I encountered our
maid in the stable, who seemed to me wondrously tumbled, so that I knew
her not, but with a weak voice she called to me, “O lad, run away, or the
troopers will have thee away with them. Look to it well that you get
hence: thou seest in what plight…” And more she could not say.

Chap. v. : HOW SIMPLICISSIMUS TOOK FRENCH LEAVE, AND HOW HE WAS TERRIFIED
BY DEAD TREES

Now did I begin to consider and to ponder upon my unhappy condition and
prospects, and to think how I might best help myself out of my plight. 
For whither should I go?  Here indeed my poor wits were far too slender
to devise a plan.  Yet they served me so far that towards evening I ran
into the woods.  But then whither was I to go further ? for the ways of
the wood were as little known to me as the passage beyond Nova Zembla
through the Arctic Ocean to China.  ‘Tis true the pitch-dark night was my
protection: yet to my dark wits it seemed not dark enough; so I did hide
myself in a close thicket wherein I could hear both the shrieks of the
tortured peasants and the song of the nightingales; which birds regarded
not the peasants either to show compassion for them or to stop their
sweet song for their sakes: and so I laid myself, as free from care, upon
one ear, and fell asleep.  But when the morning star began to glimmer in
the east I could see my poor dad’s house all aflame, yet none that sought
to stop the fire: so I betook myself thither in hopes to have some news
of my dad; whereupon I was espied by five troopers, of whom one holloaed
to me, “Come hither, boy, or I will shoot thee dead.”

            But I stood stock-still and open-mouthed, as knowing not what
he meant or would have; and I standing there and gaping upon them like a
cat at a new barn-door, and they, by reason of a morass between, not
being able to come at me, which vexed them mightily, one discharged his
carbine at me: at which sudden flame of fire and unexpected noise, which
the echo, repeating it many times, made more dreadful, I was so terrified
that forthwith I fell to the ground, for terror durst not move a finger,
though the troopers went their way and doubtless left me for dead; nor
for that whole day had I spirit to rise up.  But night again overtaking
me, I stood up and wandered away into the woods until I saw afar off a
dead tree that shone: and this again wrought in me a new fear: wherefore
I turned me about posthaste and ran till I saw another such tree, from
which I hurried away again, and in this manner spent the night running
from one dead tree to another.  At last came blessed daylight to my help,
and bade those trees leave me untroubled in its presence: yet was I not
much the better thereby; for my heart was full of fear and dread, my
brain of foolish fancies, and my legs of weariness, my belly of hunger,
and mine eyes of sleep.  So I went on and on and knew not whither; yet
the further I went the thicker grew the wood and the greater the distance
from all human kind.  So now I came to my senses, and perceived (yet
without knowing it) the effect of ignorance and want of knowledge: for if
an unreasoning beast had been in my place he would have known what to do
for his sustenance better than I.  Yet I had wit enough when darkness
again overtook me to creep into a hollow tree and there take up my
quarters for the night.

Edited by David Anderson

1The Spessart is a small mountain range in the southwestern Germany.  It
reaches its highest point in the Geiersberg at 1918 feet.  Situated
between the Odenwald and the Hohe Rhön, its slopes are forested with
vineyards and fruit trees growing at the western foot. “Spessart, The,”
The Columbia Gazetteer of the World. Ed. By Saul B. Cohen. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998), vol. 3, p. 3000.

2Simplicissimus refers to Arachne of Greek mythology, who was an
extremely accomplished weaver.  Arachne challenged the goddess Athena to
a weaving competition.  Athena’s creation depicted the gods and
goddesses, while Ariadne’s weaving showed the same gods and goddesses
making love.  When Athena saw the tapestry's superiority, she destroyed
it in jealousy.  Arachne hanged herself, but before the rope killed her,
Athena took pity on her and changed the rope into a cobweb and Arachne
into a spider.  The “tapestries” that decorate Simplicissimus’ house are
spider webs.  “Arachne,” The New Encyclopedia Britannica, (Chicago:
Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1997), vol 1, p. 510.

3Cuirassiers were members of a certain kind of heavy cavalry in European
armies.  They wore armor called cuirasses, which consisted of a backpiece
and a breastplate that covered their upper bodies.  “Cuirassier” and
“Cuirass,”  Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Springfield,
Massachusetts: G & C Merriam Company, 1976) p. 551.

4The Prime Mover was a part of the conceptual theory of the astronomy
espoused by Aristotle and others that there is an outer sphere of the
universe that it responsible for the movement of all celestial bodies.
Taub, Liba Chaia. Ptolemy’s Universe (Chicago: Open Court, 1993), p.
113-122.

5The burning of witches occurred throughout Germany during the Thirty
Years War.  Witch trials were carried out by both Protestants and
Catholics. The climax of witch trials took place between 1627 and 1631 in
southwestern Germany after a terrible plague.  Midelfort, H.C.  Witch
Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684 (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1972), p. 73, 77, 194.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
