words of the
peasants, and herd with other poor beggars to the end of his life.
Besides these, there are many who wish to be soldiers, mothers' sons,
beardless boys, like young calves, who know nothing of suffering, who
have sat beside the stove and roasted apples, and lain in warm beds.
When they are brought to a foreign country, and meet with all kind of
strange arrangements, food, drink, and other things, they are like soft
eggs that flow through the fingers, or like paper when it lies in the
water. It is thus not only with foot Landsknechte, but also with young
nobles. When they are led to the field in devastated countries, where
all is consumed and laid waste, and they can no longer carry their
well-filled bread wallets and drinking-flasks on their necks, they
first pine away, hunger and thirst, then eat and drink unusual things,
from which result all kinds of maladies. These delicate vagabonds ought
to remain at home, attend to the tillage, or sit in the shop by the
pepper-bags, and shift for themselves, as their fathers and mothers
have done, fill their stomachs at eventide, and go to bed; thus they
would not be slain in war. It is truly said that soldiers must be hardy
and enduring people, like unto steel and iron, and like the wild beasts
that can eat all kinds of food. According to the jocose saying, the
Landsknechte must be able to digest the points of their wheel-nails;
nothing must come amiss to them, even if necessity required that they
should eat dogs' or cats' flesh, and the flesh of horses from the
meadow must be like good venison to them, with herbs unseasoned by salt
or butter. Hunger teaches to eat, if one has not seen bread for three
weeks. Drink one may have gratis, for if one can get no water from the
brook, one can drink with the geese out of the pond or the puddle. One
must sleep under a tree, or in the field; there is plenty of earth to
lie on, and of sky for a canopy; such must often be the Landsknecht's
sleeping-room, and from such a bed no feathers will stick to his hair.
Hence arises the old quarrel between the fowls and geese and the
Landsknechte, because the former can always sleep in feathers, whilst
the latter must often lie in straw. There is another animal that
clashes with the Landsknechte, that is the cat; as the soldiers know
well how to pilfer, they are enemies to the cats, and friendly to the
dogs. According to the old doggerel, a Landsknecht should always have
with him a beautif