THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

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© 2009 Max Wickert
The Christians were now masters of the field. Far from it, the dispirited Saracens dragged the wounded Almont from
the stream and brought him back to the fortress. He cursed them for their faint courage and for the loss of the sacred
images. That night, between the pain of his wound and his shame at losing the idols, he slept little.
The Christians returned to camp with the captured treasure. In the morning they brought the four golden idols and all
the captured riches as a gift to Charles. The king wept for joy and thanked God for the victory. Then, looking at the
idols and all the other wealth, he said: “My brothers and sons, it would displease God if I were so avaricious as to
claim all this gold. But let you, who have shed your blood for it, divide it among you.” He only retained the enemy
banners, but commanded that the idols be carried through the camp, kicked and dragged through the mud, and spat
upon by all the whores of the army, and then broken up and molten, the gold to be shared by the Christian knights,
along with the other captured treasure. And so it was done, to delight the Christians and to spite the Saracens.
The Capture of Almont’s Tower
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Here our author returns to Duke Gerard of the Thicket, who had crossed the Italian sea to Rome
and entered Apulia. He found guides who led him into Aspramont in a manner that King Charles
was unaware of his coming. He learned how King Almont had overrun all Calabria and sought an
encounter with him, following for several days upon his traces. When he learned that he had
returned to the tower-fortress that he had built in Aspramont, Gerard followed him there. Gerard
had fifteen thousand knights with him, as well his two sons and two of his nephews.
When Gerard was three leagues from the tower, he was told how close he was to Almont’s fort; he
therefore commanded to pitch camp at nightfall. (This was the evening of the same day when
Almont had been defeated.) He divided his battle order in three divisions. The first, with a
vanguard of two thousand, he gave to his son Arnaut and commanded him, at daybreak the next
morning, to hasten toward the fort to draw out the enemy. At the same time he put the second
division under the command of Rainier, his oldest son, and of Miles of Zamora, with eight thousand
knights, and bade them to position in an ambush near the fort and to surround the enemy, if they
could, and to put them all to the sword. “And if you see many folk issuing against you, draw back