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By Root 1696 0

advantage in this combat.” Suppose the Saracens were to send not knights but mere varlets, what honor or advantage would be gained in defeating them? Suppose the challenge were a ruse to seize Christian knights as prisoners, of which they had so far taken none? Such a fight could not take Mahdia, whatever its outcome. Moreover, a trial at arms, especially with an unfamiliar enemy, should never be accepted without great deliberation nor without authority of the Senior Council and full knowledge of the challengers’ identity by name and surname, rank and arms. Coucy rebuked the champions for indiscipline and for failure of the subordination to high command which ought to prevail in an army. In that concept he was ahead of his countrymen.

Although his advice won many adherents, others supported Comte d’Eu and Philippe de Bar, who insisted that the challenge, having been accepted, could not be disavowed and that combat must ensue. Led by Geoffrey Boucicaut, who in his “overflowing pride” offered to fight with twenty against forty, the champions duly rode forth in their armor to the appointed time and place. A throng of their comrades accompanied them, increasing in numbers by the moment until virtually all the able-bodied were present, leaving the camp guarded only by the sick under the command of Coucy. Seeing such numbers, the Berber champions preferred not to appear.

Intending to prevent the clash, doubtless on Coucy’s advice, the Duc de Bourbon hurries up on his mule, to find himself surrounded by several thousand excited warriors. Fearing that he will not be obeyed if he orders retreat, he decides to let the occasion govern. Beginning with an attack on the enemy camp, battle is joined and fiercely waged. The Christians harm but cannot destroy the greatly superior Saracen army, and, suffocating in their armor, themselves suffer many losses. They are bathed in sweat, gasping for breath through open mouths and dilated nostrils, devoured by thirst. The wounded breathe their last in the arms of their comrades; the exhausted sink to the ground to lie motionless. By twilight even D’Eu counsels retreat on the ground that if the Saracens charge the camp, “there is no one there but the Sire de Coucy with a few men and many sick; they could all be lost,” and the camp overrun.

Accounts differ widely as to casualties: two knights and four squires, according to Bourbon’s biographer; no less than sixty, many of whom he names, according to Froissart. Whatever the number, they were lost in a pointless battle.

Frustration compounded the physical miseries of a siege that had lasted two months without result. Talk of raising the siege was heard. Grumblers said that skirmishing could never take the town. For every one of the enemy slain, ten could take his place because the Saracens were in their own country. Winter was coming with long and cold nights, and suspicion rose that the Genoese, “who are rude people and traitors,” might desert, sailing away by night in their ships. Impatient at the long lapse in trade, the Genoese were indeed growing restless. They said they had expected the French to take Mahdia within two weeks but, as matters were going, they would never conquer the town, much less Tunisia, this year or next. Amid these doubts and discontents, a War Council was convened which agreed on a final major effort to take Mahdia by assault.

The day was carnage. Resistance of the Saracen field army, led by the Sultan’s sons, was intense. Mahdia’s garrison, fighting “in the certitude of a glorious reward in the other world,” poured from the walls a shower of arrows, stones, and burning oil which succeeded in destroying the crusaders’ great assault tower. Men-at-arms on ladders climbed to the very brink of the walls to be toppled back. Despite the strongest assaults, which almost carried one of the city’s three gates, Mahdia could not be taken. The Berber field army was repelled, but, as so often in France, the walled city withstood its enemies.

Afterward, both sides were ready to end hostilities. The beleaguered Berbers, suffering