To the ardour for crusades, in the minds of European warriors, had succeeded a passion for distinguishing and enriching themselves by chivalric enterprizes and adventurous expeditions, in which, however, some remembrances of the holy wars were always mingled. The Genoese having formed the project of making war upon the coasts of Barbary, whose piratical inhabitants infested the Mediterranean, demanded a leader and troops of the king of France. On the report alone of such an enterprize, a crowd of warriors, eager to signalize their bravery, issued from all the provinces; the count d’Auvergne, the sieur de Coucy, Guy de la Trimouille, and Messire Jean de Vienne, admiral of France, solicited the honour of combating the infidels in Africa; fourteen hundred knights and nobles, under the orders of the duke of Bourbon, repaired to Genoa, and embarked on board the fleet of that republic; the French and the Genoese, the first led by a desire for booty and the love of glory, the latter by the more positive interests of their commerce, went to this war beyond the sea as to a banquet. “Beautiful and pleasant,” says Froissart, “was it to behold the order of their departure, and how those banners, pennons, and streamers, fairly and richly wrought with the arms of the noble knights, floated to the wind and glistened in the sun; and to hear those trumpets and clarions sound and resound, and other musicians performing their parts, with pipes, flutes, and macaires, as well as the sound and the voice which issued from them, reverberate over all the sea.” After a few days’ sailing, the Christian army arrived on the coast of Barbary, and laid siege to the city of _Africa_. The inhabitants offered some resistance, and not being able to conceive why they were thus attacked by an enemy they did not know, and of whom they had never heard, they sent deputies to the camp of the Christians to demand of them what motive had brought them beneath their walls. The Genoese, doubtless, reminded the deputies of the piracies carried on in the Mediterranean and upon the coasts of Italy; but the knights could not allege any grievance, and must have felt considerably embarrassed how to answer the questions of the besieged. Froissart, who gives an account of this expedition, informs us that the duke of Bourbon called a council of the principal leaders, and after they had deliberated upon the question proposed by the Saracens, he addressed this reply to them, which we shall report in the old language as near that of the times as we are able: “They who demand why war is made against them, must know that their lineage and race put to death and crucified the son of God named Jesus Christ, and that we wish to avenge upon them this fact and evil deed. Further, they do not believe in the holy baptism, nor in the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ; and all these things being considered is why we hold the Saracens and all their sect as enemies.”