[25] As historians, we should hesitate to assert this, and should advise our readers to adopt it with much caution, and many limitations.—Trans.
[26] This dissertation, which has been sent to us by the author, bears for title, An Historical Dissertation upon the Part the Spaniards took in the Wars beyond the Seas, and upon the Influence of these Expeditions, from the Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century, by Don Fernandez de Crevarette. This work, in which a learned criticism and a sound erudition prevail, contains many valuable documents; we shall often have occasion to quote it.
[27] Migeray thus describes the murder of Conradin:—“As Charles had determined to go into Africa with the king, St. Louis, not knowing what to do with Conradin and Frederick, whom it was dangerous to keep, and still more to release, in a kingdom filled with faction and revolt, he ordered them to be brought to trial before the syndics of the cities of the kingdom.”
[28] For the preparations for the voyage of Louis IX., William of Nangis, Geoffrey de Beaulieu, the Gestes of St. Louis, the continuator of Matthew Paris, and Joinville, may be consulted.
[29] “It is true that before the king Louis took the cross, he had had several messages from the king of Tunis, and at divers times, and many had been sent to him; these messages gave Louis to understand that the king of Tunis was willing to become a Christian, and that he would the more willingly change his faith if an opportunity should occur in which his own honour and the welfare of his people would be secured. The good Christian king believed that if he and his renowned hosts should come to Tunis suddenly, scarcely could the king of Tunis refuse or excuse such a reasonable opportunity for receiving holy baptism,” &c.—Annals of the Reign of St. Louis, by William of Nangis.
[30] Some classical authorities name it Tunetum; others, Tunes.—Trans.
[31] Louis makes use of the expression: “Je vous dis le ban,” &c. which word cannot be used in this sense in English, but is very effective in French, and was employed in many legal proclamations connected with royal or seignorial rights,—as, for instance: ban is a proclamation by which all who held lands of the crown of France were summoned to serve the king in his wars.—Trans.
[32] William of Nangis says on this subject:—“This was great treachery on the part of the Saracens, and great simplicity on the part of the Christians.”
[33] Geoffrey de Beaulieu has given an account of these instructions in Latin. They are in old French in Joinville and in the Annals of the Reign of St. Louis. These three authors give them with remarkable differences. Moreau, in the twentieth volume of his Discours sur l’Histoire de France, gives another new version, which he declares to have been copied from one of the registers of the Chamber of Accounts, in which, probably, Philip le Hardi was desirous this monument should be preserved. It is this version we have principally followed in the extract we have here given.
[34] Details upon the death of St. Louis may be found in Geoffrey de Beaulieu, William of Chartres, William of Nangis, and in a letter from the bishop of Tunis, reported by Martenne; Joinville relates a few circumstances of it; but it is very much to be regretted that the good seneschal was not present at the last moments of St. Louis; how touching would his relation have been! and how much better would it have been than that which is given to us by eyewitnesses, who have written with such unfeeling dryness and conciseness!