Read Simplicissimus for Free Online Page B

that one would lose patience and put an end to his suffering with a bullet. It was all in vain however. He annoyed them so much they put him in the barrel in which the musketeers had found him and buried him alive. As he was so keen to die, they said, they had decided not to grant his wish, just to spite him.
    While he was bemoaning the agony he had been through, another party of foot-soldiers appeared from one side. They had met the peasants, captured five of them and killed the rest. Among the captives were four of those for whom the mutilated trooper had been forced to perform the shameful service only a short time ago. When the two parties realised, from their shouts, that they were on the same side, they came together and once more the trooper told what had happened to him and his comrades. Then you would have been astonished to see how the peasants were maltreated. Some of the soldiers were so furious they wanted to shoot them straight away, but others said, ‘No. First of all we must subject them to torture, but thoroughly, to pay them back for what they did to this trooper.’ While this was going on the peasants received such blows to the ribs with muskets that I was surprised they did not start to spit blood. Finally a soldier stepped forward and said, ‘Gentlemen, the abominable way these five peasants treated this rascal (pointing to the trooper) brings shame on all soldiers, so it is quite right for us to wash out this blot on our honour by making these rogues lick the trooper one hundred times.’ Another, however, said, ‘This fellow is not worth the honour we do him. If he had not been such an idle coward, he would surely have died a thousand deaths rather than perform this shameful service, to the dishonour of all soldiers.’ Finally all were agreed that each of the peasants who had been thus cleansed should perform the same service to ten soldiers; and each time they must say, ‘Herewith I wash away and erase the shame the soldiers imagine they suffered when a coward licked our backsides.’ They put off a decision as to what they would do with the peasants afterwards until the latter had carried out their cleansing task. But the peasants were obstinate, and neither promises to let them go free, nor torture could make them comply.
    Meanwhile one of the soldiers took aside the fifth peasant, who had not had his arse licked, and said to him, ‘If you will deny God and his saints, I will let you go wherever you like.’ To this the peasant answered that he had never thought anything of the saints and had had little to do with God, and swore a solemn oath that he did not know God and had no desire to enter His kingdom. At that the soldier fired a bullet at his forehead, which, however, had no more effect than if he had fired at a mountain of steel. Then he drew his sword and said, ‘Oho, so that’s who we’re dealing with, is it? I promised to let you go where you liked, so now I’m sending you down to hell, since you don’t want to go to heaven’, and split his head right down to the teeth. As the peasant fell, the soldier said, ‘That’s the way to avenge yourself, punishing these rogues in this world and the next.’
    At the same time the other soldiers were dealing with the four peasants who had had their arses licked. They bound their hands and feet together round a fallen tree in such a way that their backsides (if you will forgive me again) were sticking up nicely in the air. Then they pulled down their trousers, took several yards of fuse, tied knots in it and ran it up and down in their arses to such effect that the blood came pouring out. The peasants screamed pitifully, but the soldiers were enjoying it and did not stop their sawing until they were through the skin and flesh and down to the bone.
    However, they allowed me to return to my hut, since the party which had just arrived knew the way, so I never saw what they finally did to the peasants.

Chapter 15
     

Simplicius’s hut is