speak, temples. To add to this list of luxury, young women came with quivers full of arrows, looking like a new form of the ancient Diana; they seemed to have been brought here not to fight, but rather to reproduce. When the battle was over, those who were present asserted that new-born babies, born by women brought for this purpose on the expedition, were found thrown into the grass by these women, who, in their urgent flight from the Franks, could not endure the burden, and, more concerned for themselves than for the babies, heartlessly cast them away. In the way in which we have described, then, with Turks everywhere preventing our men from getting out, and therefore unable to procure provisions from outside, the dangers of famine took hold of nearly the entire army, and the extraordinary lack of food particularly weakened the courage of the poor people. Since the Franks, at the time that they were besieging Antioch, had prevented the inhabitants from increasing their dwindling supply of food, when they captured the city they found very little to eat. After they had used up everything they could find, a mere piece of bread cost a bezant. The scarcity of produce and of spices resulted in great hardship, and many died, their bellies bloated with starvation. About wine I shall say nothing, since no one had any at all, and he who had nothing to eat would certainly drink fruit juice. Since there was no proper meat to eat, no one finally refused to eat the flesh of horses, and the small amount of donkey meat, sought for throughout the marketplaces and purchased at exorbitant prices, was a bitter resource for many crusaders. A chicken sold for fifteen sous, an egg for two sous, and a nut for penny. If many men assemble in a place where food is scarce, everything becomes expensive. They ate a mixture of figs, thistles, and grape leaves; fruit could no longer be found on the trees; out of the leaves they made a substitute for vegetables. Wealthy men ate the flesh of horses, camels, cows, and deer, but the poor prepared the dried skins of these animals, cut them into slices, boiled them and then ate them.