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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.

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MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER
The flowers of history, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain. Vol. II. A.D. 1066 to A.D. I307.
page 580



injured neither the king nor his horse. They slew, indeed, numbers of the people. And when the king was advised not any longer to go unarmed in that way, because of the danger o f the arrows which were flying about, out of the clouds as it were, and which he ought to guard against as proceeding from the devil, in the meridian of his power, he replied, " A thousand shall fall beside me, and ten thousand at my right hand, but the arrows shall not approach to hurt me. We have undertaken a just war in the name of the Lord, therefore we will not fear what man can do to us, since God is on our right hand, therefore we shall not be moved." Another day, when the king was riding unarmed close under the wall, so that all the English army was alarmed, his furious enemies threw down a stone of enormous size in order to crush the king. A marvellous thing happened. At the violent shock of this huge stone, as at the stroke of a thunderbolt, the destrier of the king fell to the ground on his back, like Balaam'β ass, giving place to the destroyer. And the soldiers running up, dragged the king down the hill, and chiding him, said, " My lord, why do you, without your armour, go nearer to the wall than all the rest, in order to fight with them ? are you ignorant that many arrows are aimed at you from above, from the wall ? Who smote Abimelech, the son of Jerubbael ? Did not a woman throw a fragment of a millstone on him from the wall, and slay him in Thabes ? Remain now in your tent, for if we fly, what happens to us will not be of great importance to them ; or if half of us are slain, they will not care much, since your person alone is accounted equal to ten thousand men. It is better for us, therefore, that you should be somewhere else in a safe place." And the king replied, " AB the Lord bveth, I will not leave you, whether you go to death or to life." Then the king ordered a battering ram to be constructed, which the Greeks call Nicontes,1 as conquering all things, and a wolf of war. But the ram being a bad one, and unskilfully put together, did little or no good. But the wolf of war, though less costly, was more injurious to the besieged. Now listen to a strange circumstance. The immense engines, by the blow of one sword, pierced through the two opposite walls of the citadel, which were founded on the rock, as an arrow would fly through a piece of cloth. And many stones, shot from the lesser engines, striking the thicker walls, when they came against the wall stuck in it, and being,


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