The heroic death of Arnold Winkelried. Arnold von Winkelried or Arnold Winkelried, a legendary hero of Swiss history who 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 and so 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. From Hutchinson's History of the Nations, published 1915.