The Adventurous Simplicissimus

very small penetrating power of the ammunition of the time. Oliver (bk. IV, chap. 14) is merely bruised on the forehead by a bullet fired a few paces off: and bullets then weighed ten to the pound. It is true that he has, as it seems, been rendered ball-proof by the wicked old Provost Marshal, whose skull Herzbruder (bk. II, chap. 27) caused his own servant to split with an axe at Wittstock, when no pistol could slay him: but the peasant in book I, chapter 14, cannot be killed by a bullet fired close to his head, perhaps by reason of the thickness of his skull. To celebrated persons particularly the reputation of being gefroren attached. Count Adam Terzky, Wallenstein’s confidant, was supposed to be so protected: the superstition regarding Claverhouse, who could only be killed with a silver bullet, is well known: and even as late as 1792 there was a belief among his soldiers that Frederick William II of Prussia was invulnerable. Grimmelshausen’s adventuress “Courage” (of whom more hereafter) is supposed to be “sword-and bulletproof”: and towards the end of the war “Passau Tickets,” or amulets protecting against wounds, were manufactured and sold, while a host of minor magic arts, more or less connected with invulnerability, were believed to exist. For such tricks the passage from the generally uninteresting Continuatio, which is given as Appendix B of this book, is a kind of locus classicus.

Another whole cycle of superstitions centres round the belief in possible invisibility of persons. Of this we have no example in Simplicissimus, though the whole plot of the delightful double romance of the Enchanted Bird’s-Nest (also fully discussed hereafter) depends on it. On the other hand, the story of the production of the puppies from the pockets of the colonel’s guests by the wizard Provost in book II, chap. 22, is narrated by a man who plainly believed such things possible; and absolute credence is given to the powers of prophecy possessed both by old Herzbruder (bk. II, chaps. 23, 24) and by the fortune-teller of Soest (bk. III, chap. 17), who is apparently a well-known character of the times. It is noteworthy that Herzbruder thinks meanly of the art of palmistry.

Coming to the actual career of Simplicissimus as chronicled in the romance which bears his name, we are at the outset confronted by some strange chronology. The boy is born just after the battle of Höchst in 1622, and is captured by the troopers when ten years old; he is with the hermit two years (bk. I, chap. 12) till the latter’s death, and makes his first “spring into the world” after the battle of Nördlingen in the autumn of 1634. He is in Hanau during Ramsay’s rule, and spends there the winter of 1634⁠–⁠5. In the spring of 1635 (there was still ice on the town-moat) he was captured by Croats. The following eighteen months are occupied by his adventures as a forest-thief and as a servant-girl, and the next certain note of time we have is that of the battle of Wittstock, September 24, 1636. There follow the happenings at Soest and the six months internment at Lippstadt. But at the time of the siege of Breisach, in the winter of 1638, he has long been back from Paris; his marriage, therefore, must have taken place before the completion of his sixteenth year. Strange as this may appear, the story appears to be deliberately so arranged. For it will be observed that just before the lad’s capture by the Swedes it is plainly implied (bk. III, chap. 11) that he has not yet arrived at the age of puberty. Grimmelshausen intends him to be a “Wunderkind”⁠—a youthful prodigy; and such an explanation is far more likely than that the author is simply careless and counting on the carelessness of his readers to conceal the incongruity. For the continual references to the time of year at which various events happen seem to prove that he had sketched for himself something like a chronology of his fictitious hero’s life. And it is exceedingly difficult ever to detect him in the smallest false note of time. The date of the banquet and dance at Hanau is exactly fixed by the capture of Braunfels in January 1635 (bk. I, chap. 29): and Orb and Staden had both been captured before Simplicissimus could well have delivered his oration on the miseries of a governor (bk. II, chap. 12). These may seem small matters, but it must be remembered that Grimmelshausen had no Dictionary of Dates before him. The battle of Jankow in 1645 gives us the last exact date to be found in the book, and Tittmann is probably right in assuming that with that engagement the author’s personal connection with the war ceased. By the time Simplicissimus returns from his Eastern wanderings the “German Peace” had been concluded.

At the very beginning of Simplicissimus’s story he is brought in contact with at least one historical personage⁠—James Ramsay, the Swedish commandant of Hanau, whose heroic defence of that town is well known. Simplicissimus is said to be the son of his brother-in-law, one Captain Sternfels von Fuchsheim. This man’s Christian name is nowhere given; the boy is expressly said by his foster-father (bk. V, chap. 8) to have been christened Melchior after himself, and the fictitious character of the supposed parentage seems amply proved by the fact that the whole name, “Melchior Sternfels von Fugshaim” (as it is often spelt), is an exact anagram of “Christoffel von Grimmelshausen.” We may therefore pass over as unmeaning the attribution to this supposed father of “estates in Scotland.” by the pastor in book I, chapter 22, and must probably consign to the realms of imagination the lady-mother, Susanna Ramsay, also. That Grimmelshausen was really brought in contact, possibly as a page, with the commandant of Hanau,