The confederate Swiss, conscious that the hour of vengeance had come, in which they must conquer or be miserably slain, marched forth to meet the foe, emboldened only by despair.  But few of the confederates were in armor.  They were furnished with such weapons as men grasp when despotism rouses them to insurrection, rusty battle-axes, pikes and halberts, and two-handed swords, which their ancestors, in descending into the grave, had left behind them.  They drew up in the form of a solid wedge, to pierce the thick concentric wall of steel, apparently as impenetrable as the cliffs of the mountains.  Thus the two bodies silently and sternly approached each other.  It was a terrific hour; for every man knew that one or the other of those hosts must perish utterly.  For some time the battle raged, while the confederates could make no impression whatever upon their steel-clad foes, and sixty of them fell pierced by spears before one of their assailants had been even wounded.

Despair was fast settling upon their hearts, when Arnold of Winkelreid, a knight of Underwalden, rushed from the ranks of the confederates, exclaiming—­

“I will open a passage into the line; protect, dear countrymen, my wife and children.”

He threw himself upon the bristling spears.  A score pierced his body; grasping them with the tenacity of death, he bore them to the earth as he fell.  His comrades, emulating his spirit of self-sacrifice, rushed over his bleeding body, and forced their way through the gate thus opened into the line.  The whole unwieldy mass was thrown into confusion.  The steel-clad warriors, exhausted before the battle commenced, and encumbered with their heavy armor, could but feebly resist their nimble assailants, who outnumbering them and over-powering them, cut them down in fearful havoc.  It soon became a general slaughter, and not less than two thousand of the followers of Leopold were stretched lifeless upon the ground.  Many were taken prisoners, and a few, mounting their horses, effected an escape among the wild glens of the Alps.

In this awful hour Leopold developed magnanimity and heroism worthy of his name.  Before the battle commenced, his friends urged him to take care of his own person.

“God forbid,” said he, “that I should endeavor to save my own life and leave you to die!  I will share your fate, and, with you, will either conquer or perish.”

When all was in confusion, and his followers were falling like autumn leaves around him, he was urged to put spurs to his horse, and, accompanied by his body-guard, to escape.

“I would rather die honorably,” said Leopold, “than live with dishonor.”

Just at this moment his standard-bearer was struck down by a rush of the confederates.  As he fell he cried out, “Help, Austria, help!” Leopold frantically sprang to his aid, grasped the banner from his dying hand, and waving it, plunged into the midst of the foe, with saber strokes hewing a path before him.  He was soon lost in the tumult and the carnage of the battle.  His body was afterward found, covered with wounds, in the midst of heaps of the dead.