Deeds of the Franks, Book One, Chapter Two, cont.

Our men were afflicted with such a great thirst that they drained the blood from their own horses and donkeys and drank their blood. Others were letting down belts/girdles and bits of cloth into the fish pond and then squeezing out the water into their mouth. Others were urinating into their cupped hands and drinking it. Others were digging in the damp earth, and were laying themselves down, and spreading the mud over their own chests so that they would not be so dry from thirst. Our priests and bishops were strengthened much by the Truth and were reminding men not to desert. This trial went on for eight days. Then the leader of the Alamanni(Germans) made an agreement with the Turks, that he would hand over his allies, and arranging to go out to fight, he fled to them(Turks) and many men with him. However, those who were unwilling to deny God received the death penalty. Others who had been captured alive had been one by one divided like sheep. The Turks set some of the men up as targets and were shooting arrows at them. They were selling other men and were giving men away just as if they were animals. Certain men were collecting men in their own home, they sent others to Khorasan, others to Antioch, other to Aleph or where they themselves were living. These men were the first to receive the happy martyrdom in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Then, the Turks, hearing that Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless were in Cyuito(Kibotos), a city north of Nicea, came there with great joy that they might kill those men and others who were with them. And when they had come, they encountered Walter with his men and soon killed him. Peter the Hermit a little while before this had gone to Constantinople, on account that he was unable to keep the men from going different ways, who were not willing to heed his words or himself. Truly, rushing in, the Turks killed many besides those men that the Turks found, others sleeping or nude. They killed all of these with any they found celebrating the sacred mass, who had been immediately martyred and sent above to the high altar. Those men, who had been able to get out, fled Cyuito. Other men threw themselves into the sea, others were hiding in the woods and the mountains. The Turks pursued those that were united into a fort made of wood so that they could burn those men along with the fort.

Therefore the Christians who were in the fort gathered up burning wood and fired it back at the Turks and their own fire send back consumed those same Turks but from that fire, God then freed our men. Then the Turks captured those left alive and divided up those men just as they had done before with the others and dispersed them through all these regions, some to Corosanum, other went to Persia.

All this had been done in the month of October. The emperor, hearing that the Turks had thus scattered our men, greatly rejoiced, decreed and arranged for those to be brought back across the strait. After they arrived on the other side, all weapons were taken from them.