WINKELRIED, ARNOLD VON. The incident with which this name is connected is, after the feat of William Tell, the best known and most popular in the early history of the Swiss Confederation. We are told how, at a critical moment in the great battle of Sempach, when the Swiss had failed to break the serried ranks of the Austrian knights, a man of Unterwalden, Arnold von Winkelried by name, came to the rescue. Commend ing his wife and children to the care of his comrades, he rushed towards the Austrians, gathered a number of their spears to gether against his breast, and fell pierced through and through, having opened a way into the hostile ranks for his countrymen.
Evidence of Chronicles.—The earliest known mention of the incident is found in a Zurich chronicle (discovered in 1862 by G. von Wyss), which is a copy, made in 1476, of a chronicle written about 3o years earlier; it occurs also in De Helvetiae origine, written in 1538 by Rudolph Gwalther (Zwingli's son-in law). In both the hero is nameless. Finally, one reads the full
story in Giles Tschudi's chronicle (1564), where the hero becomes "a man of Unterwalden, Arnold von Winckelried by name." K. Mirkli (Der wahre Winkelried,—die Taktik der alten Ur schweizer, Zurich, 1886) concluded that the phalanx formation of the Austrians, as well as the name and act of Winkelried, have been transferred to Sempach from the fight of Bicocca, near Milan (April 27, 1522), where a real leader of the Swiss mer cenaries in the pay of France, Arnold Winkelried, met his death in much the same way.