With respect to this matter of military judgment yet one more difficulty appears, i.e., our complete ignorance of mediæval minor tactics. In most other respects, our ignorance is qualified. We know that our European ancestors of seven and eight hundred years ago could and did move large armies from France to Palestine, both by land and overseas. Therefore we are compelled to credit them with a considerable degree of discipline and an effective commissariat and intelligence service; to deny such obvious conclusions is merely to make a fool of oneself. We are well informed concerning their fortifications and siege work, which played so important a part in their wars. But as to the details of their tactical formations and especially as to the regularity of those formations we know nothing at all. Hence it is possible for highly educated veteran soldiers of to-day to argue that there was, for instance, no generally understood and practised method of passing from column to line and back again! Accordingly it is not surprising to find that scholars disagree fundamentally over the Battle of Muret, and that no full reconstruction seems possible. Nevertheless, after comparing all the evidence now available, an accurate outline of the action can be fixed. This I shall now attempt. The Crusaders went out by the Sales Gate. The evidence seems to show that they traversed the chatelet or outwork, and left the fortifications by the eastern gate through which they had entered the town. They then followed the road between the eastern wall and the river, marching all the time with the least possible noise as to avoid attracting attention. Evidently the first part of the movement (i.e., the passage through the outwork) was a feint at retreat deliberately shown to the enemy in order to mislead him, and the second (the march along the river bank) a concealed move, in order to obtain the effect of surprise. The column followed the route by which they had come until the bridge over the Garonne was reached. Then, instead of turning to the right and crossing it, they went straight ahead, passed under the walls of the castle, and (still unobserved by the enemy) crossed the St. Sernin bridge at the mouth of the Louge. As soon as the first squadron had crossed, it deployed to the left and charged down upon those of the enemy (i.e., part of the Toulousain militia reinforced by certain Catalan knights, under the Count of Foix) who had that morning unsuccessfully attacked the Toulouse Gate. William d’Encontre and William des Barres surprised them completely, and scattered them in a few moments, “like dust before a gale.” The technical phases of this part of the action seem never to have been considered by historians. Inasmuch are they are of some interest in themselves, and furthermore, shed light upon the flagrant indiscipline in the southern army, they are worth a moment’s consideration.