Sunday, May 2, 2010

Deeds of the Franks, Book III, Chapter ix, cont.

Right from the first, these were our appointed battle lines. On the left part was that wise man, Bohemond, Robert of Normandy and the skillful Tancred, Robert de Ansa, Richard of the Principality. The Bishop of Le Puy came across the other mountain and encircled the amazed Turks on all sides. On the left, also rode the bravest of soldiers Raymond, the Count of St. Giles. On the right part was Duke Godfrey, sternest soldier in Flanders the Count, Hugo the Great and many other whose names I do not know.

However, immediately upon the arrival of our soldiers, the Turks, Arabs, Saracens and Agulani, all barbarian nations, gave flight swiftly through shortcuts on the mountains and across the flat plains. There were however numbers of Turks, Persians, Publicans, Saracens, Agulani, and other pagans 360,000 over and above the Arabs, whose number is known to no one except God alone. They fled much too quickly to their own tents, and there it was not permitted them to remain for a little while. For a second time, they took flight, and we had followed them killing them all in one day. And we received the many spoils, gold, silver, horses and asses, camels, sheep, and oxen and so much else that I cannot know. And unless the Lord was been with us in war and had quickly set up another battle line for us we would not have escaped, this battle lasted from the third hour to the ninth. But the all-powerful God, devout and compassionate, who would not permit his own soldiers to perish, nor to fall into the hands of his enemies, sent aide quickly to us. There were among the dead, two of our noble soliders, that is Godfrey of Mount Scabioso, William, son of the Marquis and the brother of Tancred, and other knights and foot soldiers whose names I do not know.

Was there ever anyone so wise and learned that he would dare to describe the military skill and might of the Turks, who was reckoning to frighten the people of the Franks with their arrows just as they terrified the Arabs, Saracens, Armenians, Syrians and Greeks? But if it is pleasing to God they would never prevail as much as our people did. They say truly themselves to be of the race of the Franks and as such no man is more naturally given to be warriors than the Franks and them. I speak the truth that no one will dare to forbid. Certainly if they would always have been steadfast in Christian faith and with Christian sanctity, and they would chose to acknowledge one god in the trinity - of God and his Son born of a virgin mother, that he suffered and had been resurrected from death and to have ascended into heaven with his disciples looking on and to have sent full comfort by the Holy Ghost and, with right minds and faith, if they had believed in him, reigning in heaven and on earth then nothing would be able to destroy these Turks not power, or greater strength, or wars, or greatest of minds. And however through the grace of God, the victory was ours. This war had been fought on the first of July.

2 comments:

Tracy said...

if they had believed in him, reigning in heaven and on earth then nothing would be able to destroy these Turks not power, or greater strength, or wars, or greatest of minds.
But if the Turks had been Christians, they surely wouldn't have been fighting them anyway?

The Red Witch said...

Not there would not have been any need to fight them. Anonymous was commenting that they were such a formidable fighting force that, if God had been on their side for being Christian, they would have been invincible.