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: