"Madame, this is to let you know that the city of Carcassone was besieged by him who calls himself the Viscount, and by his accomplices, on the Monday following the Octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Mary[417]. And immediately we who were within the city took from them the suburb _Graveillant_, which is before the Toulouse gate; and thence we obtained much timber, which was of great use to us. The said suburb extended from the Barbican of the city as far as the corner of the said city. And the same day, our enemies, through the multitude of their forces, took from us a mill. Afterwards, Olivier de Termes, Bernard Hugon de Serre-Longue, Géraud d'Aniort, and those who were with them, lodged themselves between the corner of the city and the water; and there, on the same day, by means of the ditches in that spot, and by breaking up the roads which lay between them and us, they so fortified themselves that we could by no means get at them. "On another side, between the bridge and the Castle Barbican, Pierre de Fenouillet and Renaud de Puy, Guillaume Fort, Pierre de la Tour, and many others of Carcassone, established themselves. And at both these places they had so many Cross-bowmen[418], that no man could stir out of the city without being wounded. Afterwards they set up a mangonel before our barbican, when we lost no time in opposing to it from within an excellent Turkish petrary[419], which played upon the mangonel and those about it; so that when they essayed to cast upon us, and saw the beam of our petrary in motion, they fled, utterly abandoning their mangonel. And in that place they made ditches and palisades. Yet, as often as we discharged our petrary, we drove them from it, still being unable to approach the spot on account of the ditches, the pits, and the bolts from their bows(?)--_propter fossata, quarellos et puteos qui ibi erant_. "Moreover, Madame, they began to mine at the barbican of the Narbonne gate; and we, having by listening ascertained where they were at work, proceeded to countermine; and we built within the barbican a strong stone wall, so as still to retain half the barbican in surety: they then set fire to the props of their mine, and a breach was made in the outer part of our barbican. "They also began to mine against another tower (_tornellam_) of the outer ballium, but by countermining we succeeded in dispossessing them of the work. Afterwards they began (to mine) beneath another wall, and destroyed two of our battlements (_cranellos de liceis_): but we speedily set up a good strong palisade between us.