Legends -- France; Legends -- Germany; Legends -- Rhine River Valley
"The besieged prepare at once for a sally. Sebile places the helmet
on her husband's head and kisses him, never to see him more alive.
The enemy are disarmed; three thousand of them are killed by the time
Baldwin cuts his way to his uncle, to whom, as his liege lord, he makes
complaint against the Saxons. The Emperor's answer contains little but
philosophic comfort: 'Fair nephew, so goes war; when your day comes,
know that you will die; your father died, you will not escape. Yonder
are your enemies, of whom you complain; I give you leave, go and strike
them.' Uncle and nephew both perform wonders. But Berard is killed
by Feramor, one of Guiteclin's sons, and the standard which he bore
disappears under him. Baldwin engages Feramor; each severely wounds the
other; the fight is so well contested that Baldwin offers to divide the
land with him if he will make peace. The Saxon spurns the offer, and is
killed.
"But 'Baldwin is wounded in the breast grievously; from thence to the
spur his body is bloody.' Saxons, Lusatians, Hungarians perceive that
his blows lessen and fall slow. 'Montjoie!' he cries many a time,
but the French hear him not. 'When Baldwin sees that he will have no
succour, as a boar he defends himself with his sword.... Who should have
seen the proud countenance of the king, how he bears and defends himself
against the paynim, great pity should surely take his heart.' Struck
with fifteen wounds, his horse killed under him, he offers battle on
foot. They dare not approach, but they fling their swords at him, and
then go and hide beneath a rock. Baldwin, feeling death approaching,
'from the fair eyes of his head begins to weep' for sorrow and rage. He
now addresses an elaborate last prayer to God; but whilst he is on
his knees, looking toward the East, a Saxon comes to cut off his head.
Baldwin, furious, seizes his sword, which had fallen from his hand
on the green grass, and with a last blow cleaves the Saxon to the
shoulders, then dies.
"The news is carried to the Emperor, who laments his ill fate. Rest
he has never had; the paynim folk have killed him the flower of his
friends, Roland at Roncevaux and now Baldwin. 'Ha, God! send me death,
without making long delay!' He draws his sword, and is about to kill
himself when Naymes of Bavaria restrains him and bids him avenge
his nephew's death. The old man, however, exposes his life with such
recklessness, the struggle is so unequal, that Naymes himself has to
persuade him to leave the battle and enter the city until the Herupe
nobles come to his aid. 'Dead is Count Roland and Count Oliver, and all
the twelve peers, who used to help in daunting that pride which makes us
bend so; no longer at your right hand is Baldwin the warrior; the paynim
have killed him and Berard the light; God has their souls.... If you are
killed ... in your death alone a hundred thousand will die.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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