Furthermore, if I am not mistaken, he adds that, while they were maintaining the siege of Antioch, a brilliant red light, like a fire, shone in the night above the army, and it also unmistakably took the form of a cross. Some of the wise men there related the fire to future battles, and said that the appearance of a cross was a sign of certain salvation and victory to come. We do not call this an error, for many witnesses confirm this testimony. About this, I say, leaky Parmeno should be able to keep silent.[257] Something like this occurred at the beginning of the journey, which I happened to pass over earlier[258] when I spoke of the movements of the eclipses and shooting stars which were seen. One day during the summer, towards evening, such a great fire appeared in the Northern sky that many people rushed from their homes to find out who was the enemy destroying their lands with such flames. All these events we firmly believe to have been portents of the wars which were to come. And now, having put aside the things that we thought might be treated separately, let us return to the order of the narrative. No one can express how courageously Jerusalem was defended by its inhabitants during the siege. You would have seen how they had learned to hurl stones at the ballistic machines, how to cover their walls with timber and mats, and how to hurl what they called Greek fire at the machines, since they knew that the greatest difficulty for the besiegers was the lack of material. But the Franks, known for their cleverness, quenched the raging fire by sprinkling vinegar on it; in addition, they struck with sharp scythes anything found hanging over the walls. The Saracens added iron hooks to their long spears, with which they struck our men who, dressed in cuirasses, were fighting from the tops of machines; drawing their swords, our men made sticks out of their spears. But what best showed the vehement commitment of the Saracens was the fact that when one of them was struck by one of our men, the shield of the man who had been struck was snatched up, quicker than speech, by another man, who took up the place from which the first had fallen, so that none of our men could have known that his blows had wounded any of them.