country is very sandy, and when it is dry there is very much dust; wherefore the Saracens, when the wind was blowing against the Christian host, stationed themselves in great numbers upon the hills where was the said sand, and stirring it up with their horses and with their feet, set it all in motion, and caused much annoyance and vexation to the host; but when water rained down from heaven the said plague ceased, and King Charles with the Christians, having prepared engines of divers fashions both for sea and land, set himself to attack the city of Tunis; and of a truth it is said, if they had gone on, in a short time they would have taken the city by force, or the king of Tunis with his Turks and Arabs would have abandoned it. Sec. 38.--_How King Charles concluded a treaty with the king of Tunis, and how the host departed._ [Sidenote: 1270 A.D.] The king of Tunis with his Saracens seeing themselves in evil case, and fearing to lose the city and the country round about, sought to make peace with King Charles and with the other lords by free and liberal covenants, to which peace King Charles consented and concluded it in the following manner: first, that all the Christians which were prisoners in Tunis, or in all that realm, should be freed, and that monasteries and churches might be built by the Christians, and therein the sacred office might be celebrated; and that the gospel of Christ might be freely preached by the minor friars and the preaching friars and by other ecclesiastical persons; and whatsoever Saracen should desire to be baptized, and turn to the faith of Christ, might freely be allowed so to do; and all the expenses which the said kings had incurred were to be fully restored to them; and beyond that the king of Tunis was to pay tribute every year to Charles, king of Sicily, of 20,000 golden pistoles; and there were many other articles which it were long to tell. Concerning this peace some said that King Charles and the other lords did for the best, considering their evil state from the pestilential air and the mortality among the Christians; for the king of Navarre, when King Louis was dead, fell sick and departed from the host and died in Sicily, and the cardinal legate of the Pope died; and the Church of Rome in those times had no pastor which could provide for all things, and Philip, the new king of France, desired to depart from the host and return to France with his father's body. Others blamed King Charles, saying that he did it through avarice, to the end he might henceforward, by reason of the said peace, always receive tribute from the king of Tunis for his own special benefit; for if the kingdom of Tunis had been conquered by all the host of the Christians, it would have afterwards pertained in part to the king of France, and to the king of England, and to the king of Navarre, and to the king of Sicily, and to the Church of Rome, and to divers other lords which were at the conquest.