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Villehardouin, Geoffroi de, 1150-1213

"Memoirs or Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the Conquest of Constantinople"


There was taken Thierri of Loos, wounded in the face, and in peril of
death. There, too, were most of his people taken, for few escaped.
William of Perchoi fled on a hackney, wounded in the hand.
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Those that escaped from the discomfiture rallied in the church of St.
Sophia.
He who dictates this history heard blame attached in this
affair-whether rightly or wrongly he knows not-to a certain knight
named Anseau of Remi, who was liegeman of Thierri of Loos the
seneschal, and chief of his men; and who abandoned him in the fray.
Then did those who had returned to the church of St. Sophia in
Nicomedia, viz. William of Perchoi and Anseau of Remi, take a
messenger, and send him flying to Constantinople, to the Emperor
Henry; and they told the emperor what had befallen, how the seneschal
had been taken with his men; how they themselves were besieged in the
church of St. Sophia, in Nicomedia, and how they had food for no more
than five days; and they told him he must know of a certainty that if
he did not succour them they must be killed or taken. The emperor, as
one hearing a cry of distress, passed over the straits of St. George,
he and his people, each as best he could, and pell-mell, to go to the
relief of those in Nicomedia. And so the march to Adrianople was put
off once more.
When the emperor had passed over the straits of St. George, he set his
troops in array, and rode day by day till he came to Nicomedia.


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