Chronicles Of The Crusades: Contemporary narratives of the Crusade of Richard Couer De Lion and of the Crusade of Saint Louis. Lord John De Joinville
was some part of his discourse. Nor did the expulsion of his own monks satisfy him, but ever after, true to himself, he continued censuring the monks as before. But as he could not desist from speaking of them, lest he should incur the opprobrium of a detractor, if in their absence he should carp at their order, he resolved to keep some monk abiding with him in his court; that his conversation about them might be made less offensive, by the presence and audience of one of them. So he took as his quasi chaplain a certain monk, scarcely of age, but yet who had professed at Burton, whom to the scandal of religion he generally took about with him. 0 excess of sorrow! Even among the angels of God is found iniquity. The monk, wise and prudent, seduced to the delusion, hardened his forehead as a harlot, that he a monk should not blush when monks were reviled. Alas! how great a thirst for roving and riding! Hear me and attend a little; you shall see how the riding of this rider concluded. On a certain day, as the bishop was standing over his workmen at Coventry, his monk attending close by his side, on whom the bishop familiarly resting, said, “Is it not proper and expedient, my monk, even in your judgment, that the great beauty of so fair a church, that such a comely edifice, should rather be appropriated to gods than devils?” And while the monk was hesitating at the obscurity of the words, he added, “I,” said he, “call my clerks gods, and monks devils!” And presently putting forth the forefinger of his right hand towards his clerks, who were standing round him, he continued, “I say ye are gods, and ye are all the children of the Highest!” And having turned again to the left, concluded to the monk, “But ye monks shall die like devils; and as one and the greatest of your princes ye shall fall away into hell, because ye are devils upon earth. Truly if it should befal me to officiate for a dead monk, which I should be very unwilling to do, I would commend his body and soul not to God, but to the devil!” The monk, who was standing in the very place that the monks had been plundered of, did not refute the insult on the monks, and because on such an occasion he was silent, met, as he deserved, with the reward of eternal silence being imposed upon him. For suddenly a stone falling from the steeple of the church, dashed out the brains of the monk who was attending on the bishop, the bishop being preserved in safety for some greater judgment.
Sect. 86. The king of the English, Richard, had already completed two years in conquering the region around Jerusalem, and during all that time there had no aid been sent to him from any of his kingdoms. Nor yet were his only and uterine brother, John, earl of Mortain, nor his justiciaries, nor his other nobles, observed to take any care to send him any part of his revenues; but they did not even think of his return. However, prayer was made without ceasing by the church to God for him. The king’s army was decreased daily in the Land of Promise, and besides those who were slain with the sword, many thousands of the people perished every month by the too sudden extremities of the nightly cold and the daily heat. When it appeared that they would all have to die there, every one had to choose whether he would die as a coward or in battle. On the other side, the strength of the Gentiles greatly increased, and their confidence was strengthened by the misfortunes of the Christians; their army was relieved at certain times by fresh troops; the weather was natural to them; the place was their native country; their labour, health; their frugality, medicine. Amongst the Normans, on the contrary, that became a disadvantage which to the adversaries brought gain. For if our people lived sparingly even once in a week, they were rendered less effective for seven weeks after. The mingled nation of French and English fared sumptuously every day, and (saving the reverence of the French) even to loathing, at whatever cost, while their treasure lasted; and the well-known custom of the English being continually kept up even under the very clarions and the clangour of the trumpet or horn, they gaped with due devotion while the chalices were emptied to the dregs. The merchants of the country, who brought the victuals to the camp, were astonished at their wonderful and extraordinary habits, and could scarcely believe even what they saw to be true, that one people, and that small in number, consumed threefold the bread and a hundred-fold the wine more than that whereon many nations of the Gentiles had been sustained, and some of those nations innumerable. And the hand of the Lord was deservedly laid upon them according to their merits. So great want of food followed their great gluttony, that their teeth scarcely spared their fingers, as their hands presented to their mouths less than their usual allowance. To these and other calamities, which were severe and many, a much greater was added by the sickness of the king.
Sect. 87. The king was extremely sick, and confined to his bed; his fever continued without intermission; the physicians whispered that it was an acute semitertian. And as they despaired of his recovery even from the first terrible dismay was spread from the king’s abode through the camp. There were few among the many thousands who did not meditate on flight, and the utmost confusion of dispersion or surrender would have followed, had not Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, immediately assembled the council. He obtained by forcible allegations that the army should not break up until a truce was demanded of Saladin. All well armed stand in array more steadily than usual, and with a threatening look concealing the reluctance of their mind, they feign a desire for battle. No one speaks of the indisposition of the king, lest the secret of their intense sorrow should be disclosed to the enemy; for it was thoroughly understood that Saladin feared the charge of the whole army less than that of the king alone; and if he should know that he was dead, he would instantly pelt the French with cow-dung, and intoxicate the best of the English drunkard with a dose which should make them tremble.
Sect. 88. In the meantime, a certain Gentile, called Saffatin, came down to see the king, as he generally did; he was a brother of Saladin, an ancient man of war of remarkable politeness and intelligence, and one whom the king’s magnanimity and munificence had charmed even to the love of his person and favour of his party. The king’s servants greeting him less joyfully than they were accustomed, and not admitting him to an interview with the king, “I perceive,” said he by his interpreter, “that you are greatly afflicted; nor am I ignorant of the cause. My friend, your king, is sick, and therefore you close his doors to me.” And falling into tears, with his whole heart, he exclaimed, “O God of the Christians, if thou be a God, do not suffer such a man, so necessary to thy people, to fall so suddenly!” He was intrusted with their avowal, and thus spoke on: “In truth I forewarn you. that if the king should die while things stand as they are at present, all you Christians will perish, and all this region will in time to come be ours without contest. Shall we at all dread that stout king of France, who before he came into battle was defeated,—whose whole strength, which three years had contributed, the short space of three months consumed? Hither will he on no account return any more; for we always esteem this as a sure token (I am not speaking craftily, but simply), that those whom at first we think cowardly, we ever after find worse. But that king, of all the princes of the Christian name whom the round circle of the whole world encompasses, is alone worthy of the honour of a captain and the name of a king, because he commenced well, and went on better, and will be crowned by the most prosperous result, if only be shall remain with you a short time.
Sect. 89. “It is not a new thing for us to dread the English, for fame reported to us his father to be such, that had he come even unarmed to our parts, we should all have fled, though armed, nor would it have appeared inglorious to us to be put to flight by him. He our terror, a wonderful man in his day, is dead; but, like the phœnix, renewed himself, a thousand times better, in his son. It was not unknown to us how great that Richard was, even while his father lived; for all the days of his father, we had our agents in those parts, who informed us both of the king’s deeds, and of the birth and death of his sons. He was justly beloved for his probity by his father above all his brothers, and preferred before them to the government of his states. It was not unknown to us that when he was made duke of Aquitaine he speedily and valiantly crushed the tyrants of the province, who had been invincible before his grandfather and great grandfather;—how terrible he was even to the king of France himself, as well as to all the governors of the regions on his borders. None took of his to himself, though he always pushed his bounds into his neighbours’. It was not unknown to us, that his two brothers, the one already crowned king, the other duke of Bretagne, had set themselves up against their dear father, and that he ceased not to persecute them with the rigour of war, till he had given them both eternal repose, vanquished as they were by the length of the prosecution. Besides, as you will the more wonder at, we know all the cities of your parts by name; nor are we ignorant that the king of your country was beaten at Le Mans through the treachery of his own people, that he died at Chinon, and was