Simon tried to imagine the butchering of those hundreds of thousands of people. He had never seen any Saracens, and so the victims in his mind's eye tended to resemble the people of Paris. He shuddered inwardly as he pictured those countless murders.
"The Tartars now entered the city whose people were all dead, and sacked and burned it. It had been such a great city that it took them seven days to reduce it to ruins."
Simon's heart turned to ice.
What if it were Paris? Could we fight any harder for Paris than the Saracens did for Baghdad?
Ex Tartari furiosi.
"They have a superstition that it is bad luck to shed the blood of royal personages. So they took the caliph and his three royal sons, who had seen their city destroyed and all their people killed, tied them in sacks, and rode their horses over them, trampling them to death."
"These deeds of the Tartars smell sweet in the nostrils of the Lord!" shouted Cardinal de Verceuil. There were cries of approval.
Without waiting for David to say more, Ugolini replied to de Verceuil. "Yes, Baghdad was the seat of a false religion. But it was also a city of philosophers, mathematicians, historians, poets, of colleges, hospitals, of wealth, of science, of art. And of two hundred thousand souls, as David has told us. Muslim souls, but souls nevertheless. Now it does not exist. And whoever thinks that the Tartars will do such things only to Saracen cities is a fool."
Simon hated to admit it, but Ugolini's words made perfect sense to him.
"They will do it everywhere!" cried someone in the audience.