A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [306]
From a distance the sound of drums and clarions signaled the approach of the Saracens’ relief army, reported to number 40,000. Camping behind the city, they ventured no major offensive but kept up a series of stinging raids on swift horses, descending on the Christians when the sun was hottest, forcing them into combat in their heavy armor. The Europeans were “almost burned up” inside their steel while the Berbers wore cuirasses of quilted cloth or leather. If pursued, they dispersed rapidly, only to regroup and pursue the enemy, who, burdened by armor, lost many dead. Almost every day and sometimes at night for the next six to seven weeks, the skirmishes continued.
Genoese ships supplied the Christian camp by sea with provisions from Sicily and Calabria, but deliveries were irregular, leaving privation during the gaps. The heavy wine imported by the Genoese caused lethargy. Heat and thirst, wounds and fevers, and illness from bad water—the same conditions, except for plague, suffered by the crusade of St. Louis—preyed upon the besiegers. Swarms of insects as well as the impregnability of the town depressed their spirits. They tried to ration provisions and to encourage one another. “The Sire de Coucy in particular,” according to loyal Froissart, “looked after the welfare of the poorer knights and squires whereas the Duc de Bourbon was indifferent, and sat cross-legged in front of his pavilion requiring everyone to address him through a third person with many reverences, not caring whether the lesser knights were embarrassed. The Sire de Coucy, by contrast, put them at ease. He was kind to all and behaved more graciously than the Duc de Bourbon who never conversed with the foreign knights and squires in the agreeable manner of the Sire de Coucy.”
Having brought no battering rams to break down walls, the besiegers began construction of a huge assault tower on wheels. It was three stories high, to overtop Mahdia’s walls, and forty feet square with enclosed sides. Meanwhile, the defenders, suffering from the blockade, sent envoys to parley. Conducted before Bourbon and Coucy, who listened attentively to the speech as translated by a Genoese, the envoys asked why the French and English knights had come to make war on those who had not harmed them. They said they had troubled only the Genoese, which was natural among neighbors, for it had been customary “to seize mutually all we can from each other.”
The answer required care to be sure of making a good case for a just war. Bourbon and Coucy consulted with twelve of the leading lords and, evidently on the assumption that infidels were ignorant, replied that they came to make war on the Saracens because they were unbelievers “with no creed of their own,” which made them enemies, and also to retaliate upon their forefathers “for having crucified and put to death the son of God called Jesus Christ.”
“At this answer the Saracens did nothing but laugh, saying it was the Jews who had crucified Jesus Christ and not they.” The parley evidently ended there.
Subsequently, a Berber and a Christian, meeting outside the walls, entered a dispute—probably not spontaneous, because the Berbers were looking for a way to take prisoners—on the relative merit of their religions. The Berber offered a challenge to decide the issue by the combat of ten champions from each side. Instantly responding, ten crusaders, including Guy and Guillaume de Tremolile, Geoffrey Boucicaut, and two English knights, presented themselves, while the camp buzzed in excited anticipation of the event. Only Coucy disapproved.
“Hold your tongues, you who never consider consequences,” he said. “I see no