V.
These rude manners, filled with chances and dangers, produced as many heroes as brigands. First comes the Count Gaston, one of the leaders of the first crusade; he was, like all the great men of this country, an enterprising and a ready-minded man, a man of experience and one of the vanguard. At Jerusalem he went ahead to reconnoitre, and constructed the machines for the siege; he was held to be one of the wisest in counsel, and was the first to plant upon the walls the cows of Bearn. No one struck a heavier blow or calculated more exactly, and no one was fonder of calculating and striking. On his return, he fought against his neighbors, twice besieged Saragossa, and once Bayonne, and, along with king Alphonso, won two great battles against the Moors. Ah, what a time was that, for minds and muscles framed for adventure! No need then to seek for war; it was found everywhere, and profit along with it.
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Such a fine career as those cavalcades had among the marvellous cities of the Asiatic Saracens and of the Spanish Moors! What a quantity of skulls to cleave, of gold to bring home! It was thus that the overflow of force and imagination was discharg was no foolish affair of a random shot or clumsy bullet, in the midst of a well-ordered manouvre. Then one encountered all the hazards, the unforeseen, of knight-errantry; the senses were all awake; the arms wrought and the body was a soldier; Gaston was killed as a private horseman in ambuscade, with the bishop of Huesca.
That which pleases me in history is the minor circumstances, the details of character. A mere scrap of a phrase indicates a revolution in the faculties and passions; great events are contained in it at their ease, as in their cause. Here in the life of Gaston is one of those words. The day that Jerusalem was taken, quarter had been granted to a large number of Mussulmans. “But the next day, the rest, displeased at seeing that there were any infidels alive, mounted upon the roofs of the temple, and massacred and mangled all the Saracens, both men and women.” * There was neither reasoning nor deliberation; at the sight of a Mussulman’s dress, their blood mounted in wrath to their face, and they sprang forward, like lions or butchers, struck them down and dismembered them. Lope de Vega, an antique Christian, a severe Spaniard, renewed this savage and fanatical sentiment:
* The following fact is from the Siege of Antioch: “Many of
our enemies died, and some of the prisoners were led before
the gate of the city, and there their heads were cut off, in
order to discourage those who remained in the city.”
Garcia Tello. Father, why have you not brought a Moor for me to see him!
The elder Tello; (showing him the prisoners.) Well, Garcia, those are Moors.
Garcia. What? Those are Moors? They look like men.
Old Tello. And indeed they are men.
Garcia. They do not deserve to be.
Old Tello. And why?
Garcia. Because they believe neither in God nor in the Virgin Mary; the sight of them makes my blood boil, Father.
Old Tello. Are you afraid of them?
Garcia. No more than you, Father. (Going toward the prisoners.) Dogs, I would tear you in pieces with my hands; you shall know what it is to be a Christian. (He darts upon them and pursues them.)
Old Tello. Ah, the good little fellow! Gracious Heaven! He is fine as coral.
Tello. Mendo, see that he does them no harm.
Old Tello. Let him kill one or two; so do they teach a falcon to kill when he is young.
In fact, they are falcons or vultures. In the song of Roland, when the doughty knights ask from Turpin the absolution of their sins, the archbishop for penance recommends them to strike well.
But at the same time they have the mind and the soul of children. “Deep are the wells, and the valleys dark, the rocks black, the defiles marvellous.” That is their whole description of the Pyrenees; they feel and speak in a lump. A child, questioned about Paris, which he had just seen for the first time, replied: “There are a great many streets, and carriages everywhere, and great houses, and in two squares two tall columns.” The poet of old times is like the child; he does not know how to analyze his impressions. Like him, he loves the marvellous, and takes delight in tales where all the proportions are gigantic.
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In the battle of Roncevaux everything is aggrandized beyond measure. The worthies kill the entire vanguard of the Saracens, a hundred thousand men, and, afterward, the army of King Marsile, thirty battalions, each composed of ten thousand men. Roland winds his horn, and the sound travels away thirty leagues to Charlemagne, and is echoed by his sixty thousand hautboys. What visions such words awakened in those inexperienced brains! Then all at once the bow was unbent; the wounded Roland calls to mind “men of his lineage, of gentle France, of Charlemagne his lord who supports him, and cannot help but weep and sigh for them.” At the conclusion of the carnage with which they filled Jerusalem, the crusaders, weeping and chanting, went barefoot to the holy sepulchre. Later, when a number of the barons wanted to leave the crusade of Constantinople, the others went to meet them, and entreated them on their knees; then all embraced each other, bursting into sobs. Robust children: that expresses the whole truth; they killed and howled as if they were beasts of prey, then when once the fury was calmed, they were all tears and tenderness, like a child who flings himself upon his brother’s neck, or who is going to make his first communion.