Now while the fellow thus lamented the torments he had endured, came another party of foot-soldiers by a cross road through the wood, who had met the above-mentioned boors, caught five and shot the rest dead: and among the prisoners were four to whom that maltreated trooper had been forced to do that filthy service a little before. So now, when both parties had found by their manner of hailing one another that they were of the same army, they joined forces, and again must hear from the trooper himself how it had fared with him and his comrades. And there might any man tremble and quake to see how these same peasants were handled: for some in their first fury would say, “Shoot them down,” but others said, “Nay: these wanton villains must we first properly torment: yea, and make them to understand in their own bodies what they have deserved as regards the person of this same trooper.” And all the time while this discussion proceeded these peasants received such mighty blows in the ribs from the butts of their musquets that I wondered they did not spit blood. But presently stood forth a soldier, and said he: “You gentlemen, seeing that it is a shame to the whole profession of arms that this rogue (and therewith he pointed to that same unhappy trooper) have so shamefully submitted himself to the will of five boors, it is surely our duty to wash out this spot of shame, and compel these rogues to do the same shameful service for this trooper which they forced him to do for them.” But another said: “This fellow is not worth having such honour done to him; for were he not a poltroon surely he would not have done such shameful service, to the shame of all honest soldiers, but would a thousand times sooner have died.” In a word, ’twas decided with one voice that each of the captured peasants should do the same filthy service for ten soldiers which their comrade had been forced to do, and each time should say, “So do I cleanse and wash away the shame which these soldiers think they have endured.”
Thereafter they would decide how they should deal with the peasants when they had fulfilled this cleanly task. So presently they went to work: but the peasants were so obstinate that neither by promise of their lives nor by any torture could they be compelled thereto. Then one took the fifth peasant, who had not maltreated the trooper, a little aside, and says he: “If thou wilt deny God and all His saints, I will let thee go whither thou wilt.” Thereupon the peasant made reply, “he had in all his life taken little count of saints, and had had but little traffic with God,” and added thereto with a solemn oath, “he knew not God and had no art nor part in His kingdom.” So then the soldier sent a ball at his head: which worked as little harm as if it had been shot at a mountain of steel. Then he drew out his hanger and “Beest thou still here?” says he. “I promised to let thee go whither thou wouldst: see now, I send thee to the kingdom of hell, since thou wilt not to heaven”: and so he split his head down to the teeth. And as he fell, “So,” said the soldier, “must a man avenge himself and punish these loose rogues both in this world and the next.”
Meanwhile the other soldiers had the remaining four peasants to deal with. These they bound, hands and feet together, over a fallen tree in such wise that their back-sides (saving your presence) were uppermost. Then they stript off their breeches, and took some yards of their match-string and made knots in it, and fiddled them therewith so mercilessly that the blood ran. So they cried out lamentably, but ’twas sport for the soldiers, who ceased not to saw away till skin and flesh were clean sawn off the bones. Me they let go to my hut, for the last-arrived party knew the way well. And so I know not how they finished with the peasants.
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