Simplicissimus

by Johann Grimmelshausen

  I sold the horse and soon found myself once more in the company of the kind of thieves and rogues I had left behind in Liege. They recognised me at once by the way I played cards, and I them: we both knew the same tricks. I immediately joined their gang and helped them break into houses at night whenever I could. However, I lost my taste for thieving shortly afterwards when one of us was caught in the Old Market trying to snatch a plump purse from a lady, more especially when I saw him stand in the stocks with an iron collar half the day, then have one ear cut off and receive a good thrashing. At that time the colonel we served under at Magdeburg was recruiting men to strengthen his regiment, so I enlisted as a soldier. In the meantime my father had heard where I was and wrote to his agent to find out what I was doing. This happened just after I had taken the emperor’s shilling, which the agent reported to my father, who told him to buy me out, whatever the cost. Hearing of this, I was afraid he was going to send me to prison and didn’t want to be bought out. However when the colonel heard I was the son of a rich merchant, he set such a high price on my freedom that my father left me where I was with the idea of letting me cool my heels in the army for a while to see if I might mend my ways.

  It wasn’t long afterwards that the colonel’s clerk died and he appointed me in his place, as you know. Then I began to have hopes of rising step by step, even, perhaps of ending up as a general. I learnt from the secretary what kind of behaviour was expected and my ambition led me to assume a decent and respectable manner instead of getting up to my old tricks. However, I still made no progress, but then the secretary died and I told myself I must make sure I got his post. I was as free with my money as possible; when my mother heard I had turned over a new leaf she started sending me money again. But young Herzbruder was the colonel’s favourite. He was preferred to me and being convinced the colonel was going to give him the secretary’s post I decided to get rid of him. In my impatience to ensure my promotion I got the provost-sergeant to make me proof against all weapons, intending to challenge Herzbruder to a duel and settle matters with the sword. However, I never managed to find the right opportunity and the provost-sergeant also advised against it, saying, “Even if you do dispose of him, it’ll do you more harm than good because you’ll have murdered the colonel’s favourite.” He suggested it would be better if I stole something when Herzbruder was also present and passed it on to him – the provost-sergeant – and he would see to it that Herzbruder lost the colonel’s favour. I fell in with this and took the silver-gilt goblet at the colonel’s christening party and gave it to the provost-sergeant, who used it to get young Herzbruder out of the way when, as you’ll doubtless remember, he filled your clothes with little puppies by magic.’

  Chapter 21

  How Simplicius fulfilled Herzbruder’s prophecy to Oliver when neither recognised the other

  When I heard Oliver tell me with his own lips what he had done to my dearest friend I saw red, yet could not take revenge; on the contrary, I had to suppress my reaction so that he wouldn’t notice how I felt, so I asked him to tell me what had happened to him after the battle of Wittstock.

  ‘In that encounter’, he said, ‘I didn’t behave like a pen-pusher who looks no further than his inkwell, but like a true soldier. I had a good mount, I was sword- and bullet-proof and I wasn’t assigned to any particular squadron, so I gave a demonstration of my valour, like a man who is determined to rise in the world through his sword or die. I rushed hither and thither round our brigade, looking to involve myself and show that I was more use for fighting than writing. It was no good, however, luck was with the Swedes and I had to share our general misfortune and accept the quarter I had been refusing not long before.

  With other prisoners I was put into an infantry regiment which was sent to Pomerania to get back up to strength. Since there were many new recruits and I had given proof of outstanding bravery, I was made corporal. However, I had no intention of spending longer sitting on my backside there than was necessary. I was determined to rejoin the imperial army, since that was where I felt I belonged, even though I would doubtless have had better chances of promotion with the Swedes. My escape I arranged as follows. I was sent with seven musketeers to bring in the arrears of war-levies from an out-of-the-way part of the district where we were quartered. When I had collected more than 800 guilders I showed the money to my men till their eyes glittered greedily and we agreed to share it and decamp together. When we had done that, I persuaded three of them to help me shoot the other four. We then redistributed their share so that we had two hundred guilders each and set off for Westphalia. On the way I persuaded one of the three to help me shoot the other two and, when we started dividing up the spoils, I strangled him and thus had the eight hundred guilders when I reached Werl, where I enlisted and had a good time with all the money.

  At the time when this was running out, though not my taste for high living, I heard a lot about a young soldier in Soest who had taken a large amount of booty, making a great name for himself into the bargain, and I was encouraged to emulate him. Because of his green dress people called him the Huntsman, so I had a similar outfit made and proceeded to steal under his name in the territories of both our regiments, going to such extremes that they threatened to ban both of us from foraging. At that he stayed in his quarters, but I continued my pilfering as much as I could under his name so that the Huntsman issued a challenge to me. Let the devil fight him, not me! In fact, I was told he had the devil behind him, so he would have made short work of my bullet-proof skin!

  However, he was too clever for me in the end. With the help of his servant he inveigled me into a sheep-fold along with my comrade and tried to force me to fight with him there and then, in the moonlight and in the presence of two demons he had brought as seconds. When I refused, he forced me to do the most humiliating thing in the world, which my comrade told people about. I was so ashamed I ran away to Lippstadt and took service with the Hessians. However, they didn’t trust me so I didn’t stay there for long but trotted off to join the Dutch. There I found I was paid more punctually, but life in their army was too boring for my liking. Discipline was as strict as in a monastery and we were expected to live as chastely as nuns.

  Now I didn’t dare show my face among the imperial, Swedish or Hessian forces, having deserted from all three, and it was about time for me to leave the Dutch as well since I had raped a girl and it looked as if the fruit of my act was soon to see the light of day. I decided to take refuge with the Spanish army, hoping I could get home from there to see what my parents were doing. But when I tried to put my plan into effect my compass went haywire and I ended up with the Bavarians and joined the troop of Merode’s Brethren following them. I marched with them from Westphalia to the Breisgau and kept myself by gambling and stealing. When I had money I spent my days in the gaming yard, my nights in the wine-booths, and when I had nothing I stole whatever I could find. I often stole two or three horses in one day, both from the pasture and the stables, sold them and gambled away the proceeds. At night I would sneak into people’s tents and take their most valuable possessions from under their very heads. When we were on the march and going through a narrow pass I would keep a sharp eye on the knapsacks the women carried and cut them off. In this way I managed to keep body and soul together until after the Battle of Wittenweier, where I was captured and once more put into an infantry regiment, this time as a Weimar soldier. However, I didn’t like the camp before Breisach so I quickly deserted and set up as a soldier on my own account, as you can see. And since then I’ve dispatched many a proud fellow and earned a deal of money, I can tell you. I don’t intend to stop until the supply dries up. And now it’s your turn to tell me what you’ve been doing.’

  Chapter 22

  What happened to Oliver when he let the cat out of the bag

  When Oliver had finished I couldn’t get over my astonishment at the workings of Divine Providence. I came to see how the Lord in His fatherly goodness had not only protected me fro
m this monster when I was in Westphalia but had contrived that he should go in fear of me. Only then did I realise what a trick I had played on him, which old Herzbruder had prophesied but which Oliver, as I reported in Chapter 16, had interpreted differently, and to my great advantage. If this fiend had known that I was the Huntsman of Soest, he would certainly have paid me back for what I did to him in the sheep-fold. I also thought how wise Herzbruder had been to couch his predictions in such obscure form, and yet, although his prophesies generally came true, it was difficult to see how, except by some bizarre twist of fate, I was going to avenge the death of a man who deserved the gallows and the wheel. I also realised how fortunate it was that I had not told my story first. If I had, I would have revealed to him how I had humiliated him. While these thoughts were going through my mind I noticed some marks on his face which had not been there in the camp outside Magdeburg and I assumed the scars were a memento of Tearaway, who, disguised as a demon, had scratched him all over the face. So I asked him where they came from, adding that although he was telling me his life story, he must be keeping quiet about the best part since he hadn’t told me who had marked him like that.

  ‘Oh, Simplicius’, he replied, ‘if I were to tell you all of my doings we would both soon weary of it. However, to show you that I’m keeping nothing back I’ll tell you the truth about these scars, even though it makes me look a fool. I think I must have been destined from birth to have a face covered in scars. Even as a child I was scratched by my schoolmates whenever I wrestled with them. One of the demons attending the Huntsman of Soest gave me such a going-over you could see the marks of his claws on my face for six weeks afterwards. However, they healed up and left no traces; the weals you can see came from somewhere else. When I was quartered with the Swedes in Pomerania I had a beautiful mistress and made my landlord give up his bed to us. His cat had got used to sleeping there and, unlike its master and mistress, was unwilling to give up its comfortable bed tamely, and used to come and pester us every night. This annoyed my mistress so much (she couldn’t stand cats anyway) that she swore she wouldn’t make love to me again until I got rid of the cat. I naturally wanted to continue to enjoy her favours and decided to carry out her wishes in such a way that I would get my own back on the cat and enjoy myself into the bargain. I put it in a sack and went with it to a big open field together with my landlord’s two powerful watch-dogs, which didn’t care for cats at all but had taken to me. I chose the field because I thought that with no tree in sight for the cat to climb up the dogs would chase it all over the place like a hare, which would amuse me no end. But damn me if that cat didn’t have other ideas. When I let it out of the sack and it saw nothing but an open field with its two worst enemies and nothing to climb up it didn’t just sit there and wait to be torn to pieces, it shot up onto my head, that being the highest place it could see. I knocked my hat off attempting to stop it and the more I tried to dislodge it, the deeper it stuck its claws in to hold on. The dogs naturally joined in, baring their teeth and jumping up all round me to get at the cat, which refused to get down and clung on as best it could, with its claws fixed into my face and other parts of my head. It kept lunging at the dogs with its needle-sharp claws. Most of the time it missed them, but never me. Since it did occasionally catch the dogs on the nose, they tried to knock it off with their paws, giving me even more slashes across the face. And when I tried to get hold of the cat with both hands to pull it off, it bit and scratched with all its might. I was so badly scratched, mauled and savaged by both the dogs and the cat that I was unrecognisable and, worst of all, I was in danger of having my nose or ears bitten off completely when the dogs snapped at the cat. My collar and jerkin were as covered in blood as the stalls used to restrain horses when they bleed them on St. Stephen’s Day. The only way I could think of to stop my head being used as a battle-ground was to fall down onto the ground so the dogs could get at the cat. Eventually the dogs did kill the cat, but instead of the fun I had expected all I got were derisive remarks and the face you now see before you. I was so furious I later shot the two dogs and beat my mistress, since she had put me up to it, black and blue so that she ran away from me. Doubtless she couldn’t have loved such a repulsive face any longer anyway.

  Chapter 23

  A brief story as an example of the trade in which Oliver was a master and Simplicius an apprentice

  I was tempted to laugh at Oliver’s tale but had to put on a show of sympathy. Then, just as I was starting to tell him my own story, we saw a coach with two outriders approaching, so we went down from the church tower and took up position in a house on the street from which it was easy to waylay them as they passed. I kept my loaded musket in reserve while Oliver shot down one of the riders before they knew we were there. The other galloped off and I, with my gun cocked, forced the coachman to stop and get down, at which Oliver leapt on him and split open his head from skull to teeth with his broadsword. He would have gone on to butcher the women and children in the coach – they already looked pale as corpses – but I refused to allow it, telling him he would have to deal with me first.

  ‘Oh you fool, Simplicius’, he said, ‘I would never have thought you would get cold feet like this.’

  ‘What have you got against these poor innocent children, brother?’ I replied. ‘If they were men and could defend themselves it would be different.’

  ‘Fry the eggs and you get rid of the brood’, he replied. ‘I know these young bloodsuckers well. Their father, the major, is a real slave-driver, the biggest bully in the whole army.’ With that, he was all for killing them again, but I managed to restrain him until eventually he relented. It was a major’s wife, her maid and three pretty children, for whom I felt heartily sorry. We locked them up in a cellar so they wouldn’t raise the alarm too soon. All they had to eat there, until someone came to free them, was fruit and some turnips. After that we stripped the coach of everything of value and rode off with seven fine horses into the densest part of the forest.

  Once we had tethered them, I looked around and saw a man standing stock-still beside a tree not far from us. I pointed him out to Oliver, saying we had better be careful, but he just laughed. ‘It’s only a Jew I tied up there, you fool. The blackguard froze to death ages ago.’ He went up to him, gave him a pat under the chin and said, ‘But you gave me lots of lovely ducats, didn’t you, you cur!’ As he shook the dead Jew’s chin a few doubloons fell out which the poor soul had managed to keep hidden even after his death. Oliver felt in his mouth and collected twelve doubloons and a precious ruby. ‘I have you to thank for this, Simplicius’, he said and gave me the ruby, keeping the money for himself. Then he went to fetch the labourer and told me to stay with the horses, but to be careful the dead Jew didn’t bite me, by which he meant to suggest that I lacked his bravery.

  Once he had gone, I started reflecting on the dangers of the situation I was in. I thought of mounting one of the horses and riding off, but I was worried that Oliver might catch me in the act and shoot me, since I suspected he was just testing my loyalty and hiding somewhere nearby to see what I did. Then I contemplated slipping away on foot, but I was afraid that even if I avoided Oliver I was unlikely to escape the Black Forest peasants, who had the reputation of knocking any soldiers they caught on the head. On the other hand, I told myself, if you take all the horses, so that Oliver has no means of pursuing you, and are caught by Weimar troops you’ll be condemned as a murderer and broken on the wheel. All in all, there seemed to be no safe means of getting away, especially as I was in a trackless forest I was completely unfamiliar with.

  At the same time I was having qualms of conscience for stopping the coach and allowing the poor coachman to be butchered and the two women and the innocent children locked in a cellar, where they might perhaps languish and die like the Jew over there. I tried to comfort myself that I was innocent, having been compelled to take part against my will, but my conscience countered that with all the other evil deeds I had recently committed I des
erved to fall into the hands of justice in the company of that arch-murderer. Any punishment I received would be my just desserts; perhaps the Lord of Righteousness had even ordained I should be brought to book in this manner. Finally I became more optimistic and asked the Lord in His great goodness to rescue me from this predicament. Having worked myself into a more pious mood, I told myself, ‘What a fool you are! You’re not tied up or imprisoned, the whole wide world is open to you. Haven’t you got enough horses to escape on? Or if you don’t want to go on horseback, aren’t your legs fast enough to get you away?’

  While I was tormenting myself with these thoughts and not coming to any decision, Oliver returned with the farm labourer, who led us to a farm where we ate and each slept in turn for a few hours. After midnight we rode on and came about noon to the Swiss frontier, where Oliver was well known. We ordered a splendid meal and sat down to have a good time while the landlord sent for two Jews, who bought the horses from us at half price. It all went so smoothly there was no need for much discussion at all. The main thing the Jews wanted to know was whether the horses had come from the Swedish or the imperial army. When we told them they were from the Weimar forces they said, ‘In that case we can’t take them to Basle. We’ll have to ride them to Swabia to sell them to the Bavarians.’ I was astonished at their wide acquaintance and familiarity with the different armies.