vulnerable, on a certain Sunday night they brought the castle, together with some other machines, to that place. At dawn they set up the machines on the eastern side, and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday they established them firmly in place. The count of Saint-Gilles, however, set up his machine on the southern side. As they burned with eagerness for the siege, their hearts were burning with intolerable thirst, and a silver coin could not purchase enough water to quench a man's thirst. Finally, on the fourth and fifth day, gathering all their forces, they started to attack the walled city. But before the attack took place, the bishops and priests directed the people who were their subjects to sing litanies, and to undertake fasts, to pray, and to give alms. The bishops remembered what had once happened at Jericho, that the walls of the perfidious city had fallen when the Israelites' trumpets sounded, and they marched seven times around the city, carrying the sacred ark, and the walls of the faithless city fell down.[212] They too circled Jerusalem in their bare feet, their spirits and bodies contrite, as they tearfully cried out the names of the saints. Both the leaders and the people came together in this time of necessity, to implore divine assistance. When this was accomplished with great humility, on the sixth day of the week, after they had attacked the city with great forcefulness, and their common effort had proved to be of no avail, such a great torpor fell upon the whole army that their strength vanished, and the steady misfortunes undermined the determination of the most courageous men. As God is my witness, I have heard, from men renowned for their truthfulness, who were present in the divine army, that after their unsuccessful assault upon the walls of the city, you would have seen the best of the knights who had returned from the walls striking their hands, shouting angrily, lamenting that God had deserted them. And I also learned, from sources no less reliable, that Robert, count of Normandy, and the other Robert, prince of Flanders, met and shared their mutual grief, weeping copiously, and declaring themselves the most wretched of men, since the Lord Jesus had judged them unworthy of worshipping His Cross, and of seeing, or rather of adoring His tomb. But as the hour drew near at which Jesus, who for the second time delivered the people from the prison of Egypt, is believed to have ascended the Cross, duke Godfrey and his brother, count Eustace, who had not stopped battling from their castle, steadily struck the lower walls with battering rams, while at the same time attacking the Saracens, who were fighting to protect their lives and country, with stones, with various other kinds of missiles, and even with the points of their swords,