The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen

Author:Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780141982120
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

An unequal battle in which the weaker party wins and the victor is taken prisoner

My pride increased with my luck – and led, eventually, to the inevitable fall. We pitched camp about half an hour from Rehnen, and my best mates and I requested permission to go into town to get our weapons repaired. Permission was granted. However, we all felt like having a good laugh, so we popped into the finest tavern and had a couple of musicians come over and fiddle away while we sank our wine and beer. Things were going like a bomb, with no expense spared. Only our purses felt any pain. I went so far as to buy rounds for lads from other regiments. Oh yes, I was every inch the young prince, with lands and retainers in spades and shedloads of money to splash out yearly. As a result we received better service than some cavalrymen splashing out rather less money at another table. This miffed them, and they began taking the piss. ‘Look at those footsloggers,’ (they took us for musketeers, you see; and it’s true: there’s no creature on Earth looks more like a musketeer than a dragoon; when a dragoon falls off his horse, a musketeer stands up) ‘how come they’re chucking so much cash about?’ Another replied, ‘I know: inside every piglet you’ll find a big spender whose mummy sow sends him pennies each week to spend on his mates so that one day they’ll get him out of the shit or maybe carry him over a nasty ditch.’ The words were aimed at me, whom they evidently took to be a young nobleman. I learnt this from the serving wench, but not having heard it myself, all I could do to get my own back was to arrange for a large tankard of wine to be passed around for us to toast the health of all honest-to-goodness musketeers – drowning out each toast, however, by making such a din that no one could hear what was being said. This annoyed the cavalrymen even more, until one of them said openly, ‘Damn it! Just imagine life as a footslogger.’ Tearaway retorted, ‘And what business is that of bootblacks?’ They let that pass; Tearaway was glaring so fiercely that no one felt like baiting him further. Still, the jibe grated, and eventually one fine-looking fellow said straight out, ‘If these cockroaches can’t strut on their own dung heap (he assumed we were billeted in the town, you see, because our clothes didn’t have the typically weather-beaten look of those worn by musketeers, who spend the whole time in the open), bet you anything you’ll find them in the boozer. It’s a well-known fact: in battle we wipe them out the way falcons stoop on pigeons!’ This time it was my turn to retort, ‘We’re the ones who take towns and citadels. Plus we’re given the job of defending them. You horse couldn’t lure a mutt away from a smelly rats’ nest behind the stove.

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