| abstract | - According to legend, the Swiss initially could not break the close ranks of the Habsburg pikemen. Winkelried cried: "I will open a passage into the line; protect, dear countrymen and confederates, my wife and children..." He then threw himself upon the Austrian pikes, taking some of them down with his body. This broke up the Austrian front, and made an opening through which the Swiss could attack. As phrased in the Halbsuterlied printed in the 1530s by Aegidius Tschudi and Wernher Steiner: Two other verses describe the order of battle of the Austrian side. According to this testimony, the knights dismounted, presumably because they were forced to fight from the lower ground, and they cut off their shoe-tips for better mobility. Even though they would have had a sufficient force of mercenaries to engage the outnumbered Swiss, the nobility wanted to engage the enemy on their own, because they were concerned that the mercenaries would make such short work of the peasants that they themselves would not see any action at all, which would have been to their dishonour: This is given my means of explanation as to how the breaking of the first rank of pikes by Winkelried could lead to immediate disaster for the Austrian side, as the leaders of the army were fighting in the van. Haller (Schweizerschlachten, 1828) reports that in the early 19th century, a pierced mail shirt identified as that worn by Winkelried in the battle was preserved in Stans. Haller also reports a folk tradition according to which Winkelried was found still alive after the battle, and only died of his wounds on the way home in a boat on Lake Sempach.
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