Russ, Cupronickel

Born around 1450 in Lucerne in the family of the city clerk, Melchior Russ the Elder ^[2] . He studied law in 1471 in Basel and in 1473 in Pavia ^[3] .

Upon returning to his homeland, he participated in the war in Burgundy , in particular, in the battles of Granson and Murten (1476) and the battle of Nancy (1477). In the winter of 1478, as part of the Lucerne army, he march to Bellinzona through the St. Gotthard Pass ^[4] .

He served in the city council of Lucerne as an adviser and diplomat since 1476 ^[5] , according to other sources, since 1477 ^[6] . In 1479 , he participated in embassies in France , on the occasion of negotiations with Milan , and in Hungary to the court of King Matthias Hunyadi , on whose side he took part in the war against the Ottomans . On October 13, 1479, he fought in the historic battle at the Bread Field in Transylvania , capturing rich trophies in it and receiving a promise from the Hungarian king to knight him and annually pay a pension of 300 ducats .

In 1480 he was elected to the Grand Council of Lucerne, in 1483 he was a landfog in Ebicon and Rutzee, in 1487 - a bailiff in Malters and Littau ^[7] , without leaving his post in the Lucerne city office.

In 1488, he was again sent with the embassy to Hungary to conclude a defensive alliance with Matthias Corwin , who knighted him ^[8] but did not pay the promised pension ^[9] .

In 1492 he was sent by the Elector of the Palatinate Philip Wittelsbach to Freiburg and Solothurn to engage them in a military alliance with the Bavarian Dukes Albrecht IV and George Bogaty .

In 1496 , being dragged into the trial of Bishop Jost von Zilinen , went into conflict with the Lucerne Schultgeis Ludwig Sailer, which led to his expulsion to the canton of Uri .

After the start of the Swabian war , burdened with debt, he was forced to join the army of the canton of Uri as a simple mercenary, and on July 20, 1499 he died in a battle with the detachment of Count Eitel Friedrich Hohenzollern near Reineck . In commemoration of his past achievements, the city council of Lucerne decided to redeem all his debts ^[10] .

In 1482 - 1488, Russ wrote in the Middle High German language “The Lucerne Chronicle” ( German: Lucerner Chronik ), which describes the history of Lucerne from 601 to 1414 ^[11] . As a sample, he used the Berne Chronicle by Diebold Schilling the Elder (1483), and the main sources - the illustrated chronicle of Benedict Chachtlan and Heinrich Dittlinger (1470), compiled on the basis of the earlier annals of Konrad Eustinger (1430), as well as “Description of the Burgundian War” ( German Darstellung der Burgunderkriege ) Swiss historian-humanist Albrecht von Bonstetten (1477).

A source study of the chronicle by the modern Swiss historian Maya Vonarburg Züllig revealed that 71 percent of the information in it is borrowed from Justinger's Berne Chronicle and only the remaining 29 percent is devoted to the history of Lucerne and his allies. Having included many genuine documents in his work, its compiler practically did not use archival materials ^[12] .

Russ ’Lucerne Chronicle was one of the first historical works to include the legend of William Tell ^[13] , moreover in a version earlier than that recorded in 1472–1474 by Hans Schrieber in the Sarnen White Book and in In 1507 it was included in the Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation by Petermann Etterlin . In addition to folk legends, the compiler of the chronicle used historical songs, including a description of the historical battle of Zempach (1386), which mentions the feat of an unnamed hero ^[14] , later identified by a 16th-century historian Egidius Chudi with a certain Arnold Winkelried from Unterwalden .

The chronicle of Cupronickel Russ is preserved in a single manuscript of the late XV - early XVI century and was first published by historians Franz Julius Schneller, Joseph Euthych Kopp and Johann Ludwig Wurstemberger in 1834 and 1838 in Bern in the series "Swiss Historians".

• Melchior Russen, Ritters von Lucern, Eidgenössische Chronik, herausgegeben von J. Schneller. Teil 1 // Der schweizerische Geschichtsforscher. - Bern, 1834. - XXVI, 276 s.
• Melchior Russ. Cronika. Eine Luzerner Chronik aus der Zeit um 1482, herausgegeben von Maya Vonarburg Züllig. - Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2009 .-- 220 s.

• Russ, Cupronickel // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Theodor von Liebenau. Ritter Melchior Ruß von Luzern. Vortrag, gehalten im historischen Verein in Luzern // Blätter für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Leben aus der katholischen Schweiz. - Band 12. - 1870. - S. 299ff.
• August Bernoulli. Die Luzernerchronik des Melchior Ruß . - Basel, 1872. - 115 s.
• Theodor von Liebenau. Russ, Melchior (Chronist) // Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie . - Band 30. - Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1890. - S. 9-11.
• Gregor Egloff. Melchior Russ // Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz . Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. - Band 10. - Basel: Schwabe AG, 2011.
• Regula Schmid. Russ, Melchior Jr. // Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy and Cristian Bratu. - Leiden: Brill, 2016.

• Melchior Russens, Ritters von Lucern, Eidgenössische Chronik: geschrieben im Jahre 1482 (Berne edition of the 1st part of 1834)
• Melchior Russens, Ritters von Lucern, Eidgenössische Chronik: geschrieben im Jahre 1482 (also from the University of Oxford library)