timosin]--having for a long time defended
his beleaguered city, and having in this siege manifested the utmost of
what suffering and perseverance can do, if ever prince and people did,
and his misfortune having delivered him alive into his enemies' hands,
upon articles of being treated like a king, neither did he in his
captivity discover anything unworthy of that title. His enemies, after
their victory, not finding so much gold as they expected, when they had
searched and rifled with their utmost diligence, they went about to
procure discoveries by the most cruel torments they could invent upon the
prisoners they had taken: but having profited nothing by these, their
courage being greater than their torments, they arrived at last to such a
degree of fury, as, contrary to their faith and the law of nations, to
condemn the king himself, and one of the principal noblemen of his court,
to the rack, in the presence of one another. This lord, finding himself
overcome with pain, being environed with burning coals, pitifully turned
his dying eyes towards his master, as it were to ask him pardon that he
was able to endure no more; whereupon the king, darting at him a fierce
and severe look, as reproaching his cowardice and pusillanimity, with a
harsh and constant voice said to him thus only: "And what dost thou think
I suffer? am I in a bath? am I more at ease than thou?" Whereupon the
other immediately quailed under the torment and died upon the spot. The
king, half roasted, was carried thence; not so much out of pity (for what
compassion ever touched so barbarous souls, who, upon the doubtful
information of some vessel of gold to be made a prey of, caused not only
a man, but a king, so great in fortune and desert, to be broiled before
their eyes), but because his constancy rendered their cruelty still more
shameful. They afterwards hanged him for having nobly attempted to
deliver himself by arms from so long a captivity and subjection, and he
died with a courage becoming so magnanimous a prince.

Another time, they burnt in the same fire four hundred and sixty men
alive at once, the four hundred of the common people, the sixty the
principal lords of a province, simply prisoners of war. We have these
narratives from themselves for they not only own it, but boast of it and
publish it. Could it be for a testimony of their justice or their zeal
to religion? Doubtless these are ways too differing and contrary to so
holy an