Arnold von Winkelried Arnold von Winkelried or Arnold Winkelried is a legendary hero of Swiss history . According to 16th century Swiss historiography , Winkelried ' s sacrifice brought about the victory of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the Battle of Sempach ( 1386 ) against the army of the Habsburg Duke Leopold III of Austria . The legend . 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 . Historicity . The historicity of Winkelried and his deed has been taken for granted in 19th - century historiography , but in the 20th century it was commonly deconstructed as pure legend . Since the late 20th century , scholarship is again inclined to consider its historicity as plausible , even though no positive proof can be given to substantiate it . The earliest record of the deed is in the Zürcher Chronik , a manuscript compiled in the 1480s based on older sources . The hero in this account is unnamed , identified just as " ein getrüwer man under den Eidgenozen " ( a faithful man among the " Eidgenossen " ( " confederates " ) ) . In the chronicle of Diebold Schilling of Berne ( c . 1480 ) , in the picture of the battle of Sempach there is a warrior pierced with spears falling to the ground , which may possibly be meant to be Winkelried . In the chronicle of Diebold Schilling of Lucerne ( 1511 ) , though in the text no allusion is made to any such incident , there is a similar picture of a man who has accomplished Winkelried ' s feat , though he is dressed in the colours of Lucerne . The name of Winkelried first appears in the 16th century . The hero is still nameless in " De Helvetiae origine " by Rudolph Gwalther ( 1538 ) , but Aegidius Tschudi ( 1536 ) has " a man of Unterwalden , of the Winkelried family , " this being expanded in the final recension of the chronicle ( 1564 ) into " a man of Unterwalden , Arnold von Winckelried by name , a brave knight , " . He is entered ( in the same book , on the authority of the " Anniversary Book " of Stans , now lost ) on the list of those who fell at Sempach at the head of the Nidwalden ( or Stans ) men as " Herr Arnold von Winckelriet , Ritter , " this being in the first draft " Arnold Winckelriet . " Some recensions of the " Sempacherlied " , which originally dates to about the time of the Burgundian Wars in the 1470s , do mention Winkelried , but these sections are mostly considered additions from the early 16th century , as in the additions by H . Berlinger of Basel to Etterlin ' s chronicle ( made between 1531 and 1545 ) , or the version in Werner Steiner ' s chronicle ( 1532 ) . Also from the 16th century is evidence from lists of those who fell at Sempach ; the " Anniversary Book " of Emmetten in Unterwalden ( drawn up in 1560 ) has " der Winkelriedt " at the head of the Nidwalden men . A book by Horolanus , a pastor at Lucerne ( about 1563 ) , has " Erni Winckelried " some way down the list of Unterwalden men . It thus appears that the legend may have originated by the 1430s , or at the latest the 1470s , that is within 50 or at the most 90 years of the battle , but the name of " Winkelried " was not associated with the hero before the 1530s or perhaps the 1520s , i . e . the time of the Swiss Reformation , more than 130 years after the battle . The history of the Winkelried family of Stans has been minutely worked out from the original documents by Hermann von Liebenau in 1854 . Liebenau was the first to draw attention to one Erni Winkelried who signed as a witness on a document dated 1 May 1367 . This is the only candidate on record for a possible identification of Winkelried with a historical character . Liebenau supposes that because this Erni signed as the last of five witnessses , after one Hans Winkelried , he was presumably still a young man at this time , which would make him of mature age at the date of the battle . He further reasons that the fact that this Erni is absent from record during the 1370s , while Hans is repeatedly seen as a witness , might indicate that during this time the young Erni was abroad in foreign service . The same name Erni Winkelried however resurfaces on a document dated 29 September 1389 , after the battle . Liebenauer again notes how the Erni Winkelried of 1389 signs as the last of the three in his party , which again indicates that he was the youngest among them . Furthermore , an Arnold Winkelried is again attested as " landamman " of Unterwalden in 1417 , it is clear that there were at least two people with this name , perhaps father and eldest son . The older Erni would then have been born around 1350 , and the younger around 1370 . As for the plausibility of Winkelried ' s deed , the single - handed breaking of a line of pikes to open a breach , which is then exploited to turn the course of the battle , a parallel is adduced by Liebenau is that of one Johann Stühlinger , a " ministerialis " in the service of Regensburg , who in a 1332 battle against Berne and Solothurn broke through the ranks of the enemy with his warhorse , creating just such an opening , which was exploited to the cost of 400 men on the Bernese side . The pikes ( " spiesse " ) of the Austrian knights in historical paintings are commonly depicted as the long pole weapons of the 15th - century pike square , but this is an anachronism . The pikes of the late 14th century would still have been considerably shorter . As according to the testimony of the Sempacherlied , the Austrian nobility insisted to fight against the underestimated Swiss in the front rank , it would have been sufficient to break into just the van of the Austrian army to kill Leopold and other leaders of the army , which would have ended the battle immediately . Significance . Similar to William Tell , the figure of Winkelried was an important symbol during the formation of the Swiss federal state , and an icon of Swiss independence during World War II . Napoleon referred to Winkelried as “ the Swiss Decius immortalized ” at Sempach . The " Sempacherlied " of ca . 1836 , one of the expressions of Swiss patriotism during the period of Restoration , is dedicated to the heroism of Winkelried . The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges uses his name , among many other known Swiss , as a paradigm of the Swiss spirit in one of his late poems : " Los Conjurados " ( The Conspirators ) , which also gives its name to the book . There is a philosophy called " Winkelriedism " , which name is taken from the hero ' s name . It is based on an individual giving himself up idealistically and sacrificially to the enemy for the betterment of others . Juliusz Słowacki created this way of thinking in his dramatic poem " Kordian " , where the titular character decides to kill the Tsar of Russia to take Poland ' s suffering on himself , easing a breakthrough to freedom for his nation . Słowacki considered Poland the " Winkelried of Nations " , a bitter and fatalistic sentiment .