CHAPTER 12: ST. JAKOB AN DER BIRS

CHAPTER 12: ST. JAKOB AN DER BIRS

Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh, October 2017

                                                                                 

                                                                       

A week or so after his return to Marseilles, Duncan helped to treat a middle-aged nurse from Menton in the Hospital of St John after she caught an infection in her lungs from one of her patients. He mixed her a daily brew of lungwort and hedge woundwort, and threw in a sprinkle of lambium for good measure, After a week, she began to improve and he spent many a happy time at her bedside talking about the delights of living in her home city on the East Rivière where the sparrows nestled in the twigs on the trees by the beech.

Bagoas took to bird-spotting while he was patrolling the incomplete ramparts of Marseilles. One morning, he spotted three herons, each perched on one leg, an aura of hummingbirds bringing joy out of nowhere, and a black-headed grebe. Thereupon, he sat on a tuffet with a pretty girl from Poitiers, and whiled the time away.

During some of his busy moments, Bagoas helped to mix the gunpowder in the arsenal annexe. His friend Tachi from Toulouse also taught him how to mix 'stink powder' by blending the gunpowder with liquidae ammonia and a few further special ingredients. After tightly packing the stink powder into small spherical leather bags, he was, using some technical tricks taught to him by Tachi, able to manufacture stink bombs, which creating a mighty pong when they were exploded,

Just for practice, Tachi and Bagoas fired a few stink bombs from a cannon on the ramparts which overlooked the sea, When they hit a short-toed eagle, the effect was gut-wrenching. They also attached two dozen of the bombs to lengthy fuse cords, and Bagoas preserved a few of the thus fused stink bombs for himself for a rainy day. They manufactured their fuses by soaking a woollen cord in a solution of saltpetre.

The money grubbing Count René sent a trading mission across the Middle Sea to Tripolitania to treat with the Bey of Tripoli, Gurgut Agba, in the hope of profiting from ever more imports of fig, acacia, and juniper trees, alfalfa grass, and luxuries of the East. Bey Gurgut enjoyed the favours of the assertive Danish twins, an obstinate boy and an argumentative girl, one on each of his gargantuan knees, who René sent in a gilded cage.

The well-humoured Bey arranged to feast with Count René and his knights on Île d'If accompanied by a selection of Nubian girls and Makurian cross-dressers from his harem. But Count René had another, highly cunning, agenda in mind, since he wanted to exploit the Bey and his soldiers to the full.

Duncan and Bagoas enjoyed the good life when the nurse from Menton rose from her sickbed, whereupon she encouraged them to spend time with her drinking ale by the harbour. Bagoas invited his pretty friend from Poitiers to come along too, and the conversation sometimes got quite out of hand.

Come July, Duncan's and Bagoas's lives went topsy turvy once again. When they were summoned by Count René to the Palace Augustus for another meeting with Sir Peregrine Flynn, they guessed that they would be sent somewhere utterly crazy. And they weren't far wrong.

“The Armagnac mercenaries have gone ape-shaped with boredom since the resumption of the peace with England,” explained the insightful count. “They're slow to adapting to life without war, and hundreds of them have taken to raping and pillaging throughout the countryside.”

“Where do they hail from?” asked Sir Peregrine, with a snobbish flick of his eyebrows. “The Pyrenees or the Asturias?”

“Somewhere like that, and they're a proud breed of their own. After their bloody civil war with the Burgundians, King Charles hired them as mercenaries and they served us well against the English, though without the finesse of loyal Provençans.”

“Why don't you take the opportunity to invade Aragon now that you're finally free of the English yoke?” asked Duncan, tongue in cheek.

“We're also thinking of extending our frontiers to the Rhine,” replied the highly ambitious count, with a happy smile, “but I've come up with an easier trick. The Swiss Confederacy is still laying siege to Zürich, which makes the fat Holy Roman Emperor of Habsburg spawn kittens in Vienna. Thirty thousand Armagnac mercenaries, and a couple of hundred cannon from Flanders, should make swift work of the cheese makers and turn them into burnt bread makers.”

“Crikey!” swore Bagoas, under his smelly breath.

Now that the English are finally out of their hair, the French think they can rush off and conquer the Swiss, thought Duncan, giving the lad's lug a gentle tap. But they're so very dependent on their work-horses from Armagnac.

“What a fabulous idea, Sire!” Duncan exclaimed. “And how do you plan to participate?”

“The Dauphin will be in command, nominally at least. It would be too unwieldy and expensive to take my entire Compagnie de Marseilles to La Suisse. I therefore propose to ride north with fifty of my knights, and with a hundred choice infantry who will be mounted on fine horses while they travel, and dismount before battle.”

“Unfortunately, our Captain Jacques Königswater has been stricken with the la jument vert lurge, and is unable to fight,” interjected Sir Peregrine, “and I don't want to lead the bloody infantry.”

“That is of scant consequence. Lieutenant Duncan Cottier will command my company of troopers, and Sergent Bagoas de Frêne will polish my boots, and a lot more if he knows what's good for him,”

“Are you convinced that your bodyguard will be large enough to protect your noble person, Sire?” asked the thus promoted lieutenant.

“Perchance not,” replied Count René, giving Duncan a quizzical look, “but a hundred Berbers with the Goliath of Tripolitania at the fore may well yield the counterbalance.”

Michty me! agonised Duncan. Not Gurgut Agba again!

“But where will we parley with the autocratic Dauphin and his knights?” inquired Sir Peregrine, also most taken aback.

“In the court of the elegant Philippe, Duke of Burgundy in fair Dijon on the first Sunday in August. The Armagnacs will meet us in the Holy Roman Empire in Alsace whither they will march by way of Lorraine.”

Duncan mopped his brow. “Good! They will thereby avoid confrontation with the vengeful Burgundians, who would boil their guts.”

“And the Dauphin should take care in his petulance,” added Sir Peregrine. “Philippe Le Bon rivals him for the throne of France, as he rivalled his father before him.”

“Cripes!” exclaimed Bagoas, wiping his mouth.

“You might well swear your mouth off again while we're crossing the State of Franche-Comté de Bourgogne,” said Sir Peregrine, tweaking Bagoas's left ear. “The Free Burgundians are just as belligerent as their prickly bedfellows in France.”

“And give yourself a good wash in Dijon,” said Count René with a smile. “The Court of Duke Philippe is one of the most splendid in Europe, and the Knights of the Golden Fleece are sans pareil.”

A week or so later, Gurgut Agba, Bey of Tripoli appeared in the Frioul Archipeligo with five long-ships, each laden with twenty Berber warriors and twenty Persian horses. They disembarked at Havre de Morgiret on Frioul Island, and awaited the pleasure of Count René of Provence.

When Sir Peregrine Flynn took a boat trip to Frioul Island to parley with Agba, accompanied by Sergeant Bagoas de Frêne and a fulsome wench from Marseilles, the Bey took a fancy to both handsome Bagoas and the wench, and said as much. The sergeant stamped his feet and flew into a strop, and Gurgut had to make do with the pretty wench when she onto a bench did flop.

But after supper, Gurgut followed Bagoas around the cliff top when the sergeant went for a piddle. And after a mighty struggle, the gigantic Bey lifted Bagoas's shirt against the bark of a stricken beech tree.

“I'll kill you for this!” roared Bagoas, but all to no avail.

The following morning, the Bey and his warriors were taken to Marseilles in two large Romanesque galleys, where they paraded through the streets and billeted in the Château Flambeau next to the in dissolute count's palace. But Sergeant Bagoas went back to his barracks and plotted his revenge. He thought he'd ne'er ever regard the Bey as his best friend.

Following a relatively uneventful journey to Dijon during mid-August 1444, René, Count of Anjou and his knights and men set up camp in colourful marquees outside the eastern walls of the spired city. The Bey of Tripoli and his Berber warriors pitched their far less impressive nomadic tents closer to the stream, while the Burgundian Knights of the Golden Fleece jousted in the background.

During that very evening, good King René and Bey Gurgut Agba entered the majestic city with Sir Peregrine Flynn and Lieutenant Duncan Cottier, who were dressed in their courtiers' finery, to dine with the Burgundian nobility in Le Palais des Ducs.

Duncan was nervous about mixing with such exalted company, and was surprised when he was seated with Sir Peregrine at the top end of the centre table within hearing distance of the mercurial Philippe, Duke of Burgundy and the piscatorial Dauphin of France, who were enthroned like a royal couple behind the high table. Count René sat solemnly to the Dauphin's right, and the Berber misfit, Bey Gurgut to the resilient duke's left. Philippe's doughty duchess was away shopping in Flanders, which may well, thought Duncan, have been a better place to be.

“A pleasant ride from Paris, dearest Louis?” inquired Philippe the Good, a touch tersely.

A plain, pious-looking man almost fifty years of age, Philippe was wearing the collar of firesteels of his very own Order of the Golden Fleece.

Now fully twenty-one years of age, the Dauphin's face was beginning to turn mug-shaped.

“Yes, verily so, dear cousin,” he replied, sipping his claret twixt his upturned lips,”and a reasonably encouraging reception from the tiresome peasants along the way.”

“I will be amused to hear how you next upset your father. Maybe you should seek the protection of this humble court when he throws you to the dogs.”

“My heart is in Grenoble even when I'm getting my posterior kicked in gay Paris, dear Philippe,”

“I admire your form of words,” replied the Duke of Burgundy. “And how is your dear wife of Lorraine, cousin René? I hope she's recovered from the melancholic flu,”

“Bearing up, bearing up, Your Highness,” replied the surly Count René, with a modest attempt at a stiff smile.

“At least it's not the bloody flux,” responded the snoot-ridden duke, with an impolite chuckle.

“She's merely pining for her much-loved Naples, my Lord,”

“Perchance she's pining for an unhorned man,” joked the Duke. “But prithee, King René. Why did you bring this huge monster on my left into my very own city of Dijon?”

The Count gritted his teeth, whilst the Bey of Tripoli growled like an unleashed tiger.

“The Bey of Tripoli and I have recently negotiated a trading agreement which will greatly increase our Crown revenue,” replied René, tensing his hands. “Moreover, he proposes to help us subjugate the seven cantons of La Suisse for France and to raise the Swiss siege of the Free City of Zürich in the name of the Holy Roman Emperor of Habsburg.”

“You don't need the Berbers to help you,” exclaimed the duke, with a curt frown. “In sacred Switzerland, no less! The brutish Armagnac mercenaries will blast half the country away by themselves,”

“We must have a care, René,” added the Dauphin, flapping his wrist. “The people of Basel have a modicum of Teutonic fire left in their bellies. They may find a way of defending themselves in a manner to be reckoned with.”

“Balderdash, dear Louis, if you'll pardon the word,” replied the Count, noisily clearing his nostrils. “We outnumber the Swiss in Basel and Farnsburg by odds of ten to one. We'll brush straight by them and relieve brave Zürich within the week.”

“Will you really?” replied Duke Philippe. “You forget the 30,000 Swiss troops who are laying siege to Zürich.”

At that, Bey Gurgut Agba suddenly rose imperiously to his feet and seemed to quote a phrase from the story of 'the depravity of Sodom' in Genesis.

“Bring the angels out so that we may know them,” he sternly commanded.

“What!!!” exploded the saintly Bishop of Langres, spilling his claret all over his well-laundered lap.

“And roll out the barrel,” added the lascivious Bey. “More wine and a boot of malmsey, infidel scum!”

Duke Philippe retained his humour, despite the acute feelings of embarrassment among the lords and bishops of Burgundy. “I'm never in that frame of mind during August,” he pontificated, “but bring in the orchestra and ask the lutists to play a sweet tune.”

Sergeant Bagoas was not completely idle while his three superiors were away dining in the palace. When all was quiet, he crept over to the baggage train and removed a canvas satchel from his second travelling bag, The satchel contained several of the stink bombs which he and Tachi had manufactured in Marseilles. Since all the Berbers were singing around a camp-fire away beside a copse, Bagoas was able to crawl on his hands and knees, unnoticed, to Bey Gurgut's huge, nomadic tent, He slipped one of the stink bombs under the back of the tent, and stretched the fuse cord along the ground to the outside. Thereupon he did the same thing with another stink bomb at the front of the tent. That accomplished, he scarpered back to his marquee, and fell fast asleep.

After the tortuous episode during his supper with the Duke of Burgundy, the gargantuan Bey of Tripoli retreated to Le Jardin d' Eden brothel where he met a couple of exotic cross-dressers, one of each assumed gender. One thing led to another, and he invited the intriguing duo to spend the night in his tent outside the city walls.

When Bagoas awoke just before crack of dawn, he crept to the Bey's tent and ignited both fuse cords, the one at the back before the one at the front, whereupon he hot-footed it to the copse. A quarter minute later there was a loud bang followed by another, as a huge pong rent the air. Gurgut Agba and the two cross-dressers arose, like spluttering phoenixes, from the remnants of the tent, and fell writhing and semi-conscious to the ground.

Following an immense brouhaha, the three victims were revived by pouring ale down their throats. Both Duncan and Sir Peregrine guessed who'd perpetrated the crime, and they gave Bagoas a hard slapping around his head.

“The monster deserved it,” snarled Bagoas, between his shrieks, “for the things he did to me.”

Fortunately, the Berbers were too mesmerised by the situation to understand what was going on.

The Provençans dismantled their marquees during the morning of their departure for Switzerland.

Lieutenant Duncan Le Cottier and Sir Peregrine Flynn were saddling their horses when they were approached by a passive-faced gentleman wearing a pale blue cloak and riding a loopy grey mare. Duncan experienced a feeling of déjà vue but couldn't think, for the life of him, where he'd seen the man before. The worldly gentleman could have been an impoverished merchant or even a defrocked cleric. He was about forty years old, and plump with a fading hairline.

The newcomer slowly dismounted his horse, stumbled towards Duncan and Sir Peregrine, limping badly, and proffered his thumb-less hand.

“How wonderful to meet two Scots in these foreign lands. I am Aeneas Piccolomini of Corsignano.”

Count René must have told the rogue that we're Scottish, concluded Duncan. I wonder if he's an enemy agent?

“Are you a defrocked priest?” replied Sir Peregrine, withholding his hand. “What are your attitudes to morals?”

“To strictness in morals or fluidity in politics I have no pretence, Sir,” said the man. “I am but a caring and open-minded person.”

Duncan admired the gentleman's form of words.

“You must be a poet!” he exclaimed

“Yes, verily. Until recently, I was the poet laureate in the court of the Emperor Frederick in Vienna,”

“You jest, Sir,” exclaimed Sir Peregrine, with an angry twitch. “Just look how you're dressed.”

“My comical romance The Tale of Two Lovers was popular in Siena.”

“But why are you interested in conversing with two Scots?” inquired Duncan.

“I swear before God that when I landed in Dunbar in 1435,” replied Aeneas, “I walked barefoot through the icy snow to the Blessed Shrine of our Lady in Whitekirk to thank Him for saving me from the tempestuous seas. My legs were much afflicted with pain, as indeed they still are, but a kindly Scottish family took me in from that stark, barren wilderness. That gave me a life-long affinity for the Scots.”

Did I spot the tottering fool in Duns wondered Duncan, or perchance it was by the Castle Inn in Dirleton?

“Is that really so?” asked Sir Peregrine. “And what was the purpose of your mission to Scotland?”

“To o-observe, to o-observe m-m-matters of possible interest in Scotland and England,” stuttered Aeneas. “It was a secret mission, so secret. I cannot tell you more.”

Maybe he was sent by the Pope, wondered Duncan.

Sir Peregrine scowled. “An unlikely tale. Do you have any business of note with us, Sir? Maybe you should be on your way.”

“Yes, I wish, if you so wish, to ride with you into Switzerland, so that I can record the details of your next battle. I would be able to draw a plan of the battlefield for the all peaceful Holy Roman Emperor himself.”

“I'll have to ask the feisty Count of Provence about that,” prevaricated Duncan, rubbing his chin.

“We'll bury you in a wall if we discover that you're a spy for the Swiss,” added Sir Peregrine, with a dark frown.

“Please call me Aeneus P.,” requested the mysteriously mystical Italian gentleman, with the gentlest of smiles.

By late morning, bold Count René and the puzzle-some Dauphin were ready to set off with their retinues. They were accompanied by the Berbers, and their still fuzzy-headed Bey, who was clinging bravely onto his gigantic steed. They cantered at an easy pace, eastwards across the French border with Franche-Comte de Bourgogne. They spent that night camped outside the historic city of Besançon, within a horseshoe bend of the Doubs and close to the Swiss border. The following night they camped in the Trouée de Belfort, a strategic pass on the border of the Rhône and Rhine basins, and awaited news from the Armagnac mercenaries moving south through Alsace.

During the morning of 25th. August 1444, Sergeant Bagoas de Frêne was talking to the guards on duty at the front of the camp when two dark-haired Armagnacs rode up on white horses.

“Our eagle-eyed commandants beg the sassy Dauphin's permission to cross the border into La Suisse,” announced the homely one, “and to meet in formation with his knights and foot-lickers a full mile below the soon-to-be-stricken City of Basel.”

The handsome one fluttered his eyelashes at Bagoas. “I'd rather fancy a ride with you, mon cher, and maybe we'll meet again on some sunny day.”

“Très bien,” replied Bagoas, with a courteous nod.

“Please call me Jean-Pierre-Louis,” said the handsome Armagnac, “and give me a kiss.”

Aeneas P. was reclining on a hillock by the wayside, smiling benignly.

“War perpetuates war,” he soliloquised. “It is you, young lovers, who can make peace perpetuate peace. Do not let any pompous mortal tell you otherwise.”

At noon on that auspicious day the knights and merry men out of Dijon joined forces with 30,000 Armagnac mercenaries ten miles away from the Alsace-Swiss border, as they marched, from the north-west-west, upon the angelic, walled city of Basel, which straddled the mighty Rhine. The thus combined French royal army crossed the border as it ran through a thicket beyond the white turrets of the Castle of Hégenheim.

The army stationed itself between the City of Basel to the north and the village of Münchenstein to the south. They set up a mighty camp some two hundred yards to the west of the pretty River Birs, as it flowed north to the far mightier Rhine riddled with stone bridges.

The Armagnacs aimed their cannon, as they slowly arrived all mixed up in the baggage train, at the walls of the beleaguered city. This was a choice of some potential significance. What is a wise decision to some may be bordering on insanity to others!

Aeneas P. pointed a couple of groggy soldiers in the direction of a courtyard by the Birs containing the small hospital of St. Jakob, before making a spectacle of himself by standing atop a small hillock.

How did plump Aeneas know the way to the hospital? wondered Duncan. Is he a resident of the besieged city, after all? Maybe he'll creep back through the Spalen Gate.

Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini attracted a large crowd about him as he spoke.

“The forthcoming struggle at St. Jakob an der Birs will be celebrated in Swiss legend and history as the centuries roll forth and La Suisse becomes a powerful nation which dominates the finances of the world,” he prophesied, flourishing his hands like Elijah, “but there is no need for this confrontation, since the financial forces of our nations and our wealthy families should learn to live in harmony. Some of those families who are wealthy now may also be wealthy in five hundred years from now, but at great sacrifice to our yeomanry and peasantry during the centuries to come if the disharmony persists.”

He sounds like a progressive Christian, thought Duncan.

“We'll burn you at the stake and eat your entrails for supper to celebrate our great victory,” bragged a fair-headed braggart from Marseilles, who Lieutenant Duncan promptly heartily kicked.

Dauphin Louis and Count René gathered for parley with the arrogant knight Burkhard the Seventh Münch, from nearby Landskron Castle in Alsace, and several somewhat more courteous Armagnac officers. Sir Peregrine Flynn and Lieutenant Duncan Le Cottier were among those also in attendance.

Burkhard Münch was a pear-shaped fellow with pig-like ears. His red-speckled face resembled a cow more than a bull.

What a contrast there is in God's contributions to mankind, thought Duncan, and what diverse company we have here today!

“We will commence our bombardment of the city at noon tomorrow,” announced Prince Louis of Orléans, resting his delicately pointed foot on a tuffet, “after the poor souls have been given their chance to treat and surrender.”

The crass Burkhard Münch scratched himself like a spring chicken. “Only a light picket will be needed in front of your troops, Any attempt to sortie from the city is doomed from the outset.”

“The main resistance between here and Zürich is a small garrison in Farnsburg,” explained the well-informed Count René. “We can handle them at our leisure, of course.”

“With all due expediency, I would prefer!” blurted Burkhard Münch, wringing his hands like a fraught school teacher. “You should send vanguards of Armagnacs to Muttenz and to Prattein this very night.”

An Armagnac officer with a big, black beard and cauliflower ears was none too happy at that.

“Take care lest the cheese makers attack us out of Liestel, Sire,” he growled. “Their sprightly youths can become fearsome stroppy if cornered like rats.”

“Mere puppy dogs!” replied Burkhard Münch, in mirth. “But you should send 1000 men to each village, methinks, to prove their worth.”

“My thanks for your wise counsel which is gratefully accepted, dear Burkhard, seventh of a noble Alsatian lineage,” replied the Dauphin, with a fishy grin. “and now cometh the hour to feast, make merry, and make hay with the baggage girls.”

Methinks Prince Louis treats the noble Armagnacs like fodder, thought Duncan. King Charles keeps their Count imprisoned in Carcassonne in fear of his allegiance to the King of Castile, while paying their rent.

“Sir Peregrine Flynn is celebrating his fortieth birthday tomorrow,” announced Count René, in grand style, “and after this campaign he will return in Scotland for ample respite.”

The Dauphin of France raised his well-filled glass. “I'll drink a whisky for sweet Peregrine, and share a pretty tart!”

“Thereafter, I with my dear wife and children in the Kingdom of Fife will contentedly enjoin,” added Sir Peregrine, with a sublime smile.

Lieutenant Duncan Le Cottier felt a touch envious at that.

While the misshapen Dauphin tossed and turned with a pretty Alsatian from Altkirch, and his lithe underling from Thessaly arched his back and licked his royal master's tootsies, the Swiss commanders at Farnsburg sent a troop of 1300 eager young pikemen to Liestel, where they were joined by a local force of 200. And when the first cock crowed, the pikemen descended on Prattein where they surprised and routed the Armagnac vanguard troops.

“Onwards to Muttenz!” cried Arnold Shick of Uri, and in Muttenz the débâcle was harshly repeated.

The messenger Jean-Pierre-Louis Le Sage of Lectoure survived the brutality of the Swiss pikes, and he rode back at pace, while severely injured, for the French camp beyond the Birs.

“Onwards 'cross the Birs!” cried pretty Arnold, raising the crimson red flag of Schwyz, and scarce one of his foolhardy Swiss comrades baulked at the opportunity to die like the brave Spartans at Thermopylae.

Much of what followed was recorded for history by the relatively calm Aeneas P., though he missed out a couple of details...

Sergeant Bagoas de Frêne was cooking his eggs for breakfast on the eastern edge of the French camp when Jean-Pierre-Louis Le Sage came hurtling towards him on his white horse, from a bridge o'er the Birs.

“Muttenz is fallen to the foe!” cried the handsome Armagnac, whilst falling from his steed onto the dusty ground below.

Bagoas seized a bugle and blew it to warn of a surprise attack, whilst his sweet friend lay dying before him. Several thousand Armagnacs promptly leapt to their feet and created a V-formation facing the Birs. They waited in frosty silence while Bagoas gave Jean-Paul-Louis his last, lingering kiss.

A quarter-hour later, 1500 hot-headed Swiss soldiers burst across the wooden bridge by the hospital of St. Jakob, and created three pike squares of 500 each.

“Aller et copuler, enfoirés françaises!” cried tall Bernard Bernoulli of Farnsburg, in a manner unrepeatable in English, unfurling the flag of Schwyz.

“Onwards for France!” cried a lanky Armagnac officer with rabbity ears, while a French knight of questionable appearance waved the colourful coat of arms of the House of Valois around his squat noddle.

Twenty Armagnac crossbowmen let loose their bolts as they advanced with their comrades towards the Swiss. And the fighting was ferocious.

The thoughtful Aeneas P. reported later that 'the Swiss ripped bloody crossbow bolts from their bodies, and charged the enemy even after they had been pierced by spears or had lost their hands, charging the Armagnacs to avenge their own deaths'.

The French knights watching the struggle from a safe distance let out a mighty groan when the Armagnacs were repulsed and fled in disorder back to their ranks.

“Blast the cheesy apes to smithereens, you fool,” snarled Burkhard the Seventh Münch, waving his fist at a raven-haired artillery officer with freckles on his face.

“C'est impossible, Monsieur,” replied the officer, with a lisp. “Our balls are still stuck in the mud in Alsace.”

It's always a question in war of who sards up and when, mused Duncan. War isn't a simple matter which follows the logic of men.

During the next two or three hours several further French attacks were savagely repulsed, as the Swiss heaped the Armagnac dead by their thousands. Bagoas bemoaned all the writhing corpses in dread.

It's time for lazy Count René to pull his finger out of his ear, thought Duncan. And so he did.

“I would to lead a cavalry charge against the enemy, Sire,” said the courageous Count of Provence, “as Caesar did to defeat the Gauls encircling Alesia. The Berbers will guard my flank, and my infantrymen will follow with pikes to clean up the faeces.”

“Do take the victory, sweet René,” replied the Dauphin, “though I grow weary with my gout and will sit this one out.”

“Would you care to accompany us on our historic charge to glory, dearest Burkhard?” inquired Count René, with an inviting smile.

“You seem to be suffering from an unfortunate misapprehension, KING René of Naples,” proclaimed the snotty-nosed Burkhard Münch, exhibiting his bovine features to the full. “As an Imperial Habsburg knight of Alsace, I am here to negotiate between the warring parties and to practise the fine art of linguistics. I do not deign to fight.”

“What a supercilious prick!” muttered Duncan, under his breath.

Lieutenant Le Cottier and Sergeant de Frêne arranged their hundred or so infantry in line, all armed with pikes and daggers, behind Count René's knights and Bey Gurgut's Berbers, who were arranged in a double V cavalry formation. At a sign from the Count, Bagoas's bugler sounded the attack, and the cavalry charged towards the depleted Swiss formations while the horses trampled many a dead or injured Armagnac beneath their hoofs.

When Duncan Le Cottier's troopers had been marching for a full half-minute behind the cavalry through the writhing flesh, he saw a terrible mélee in front. Many of the leading Provençan knights and Berber warriors were thrown in the air on the ends of the Swiss pikes, and many of the rest wallowed in the grimy mess.

As he approached the fighting, Bagoas watched with mixed emotions when he saw the Bey Gurgut Agba thrown from his horse. But the Bey drew his scimitar and laid into the Swiss pikers around him. One poor fellow from Liestel was decapitated from ear to ear. Bagoas ran forward intending to help the Bey, only to see nasty Gurgut slit a bold, fair-haired soldier from his navel to his neck.

Bagoas suddenly relived, in a flash of crimson light, what the Bey had done to him on Frioul Island, and felt like a squashed snail. At that, Bagoas went utterly berserk, and ran hard at the Bey with his pike at the level. The pike crashed straight through the gargantuan Gurgut's chain mail and shoulder blades, and out through his much-shattered chest. Since the Berber warriors were facing to the front, they didn't notice their leader's body squelching into the mud, with Bagoas's fine dagger stuck through its neck. Bagoas grinned like a jackal, and scarpered.

Duncan Le Cottier ran hurriedly forwards when he saw Sir Peregrine Flynn lying injured on the ground, anxiously guarded by his mighty steed Lucephalus.

When Duncan held Sir Peregrine's head in his arms, the wounded knight shrieked, “Take my horse, Duncan! Take my lance! Your count's life is in danger.”

Duncan promptly took Sir Peregrine's sword, seized his lance, and mounted Lucephalus, like the honourable knight he once was, and charged forwards, without a visor, into the melée. Poor, dying Peregrine was ne'er to see his wife and children in Fife e'er again.

The unfortunate Count René lay stricken on the ground holding the torn, blue-on-white Flag of Marseilles, with a dagger wedged through his thigh. Two Swiss pikemen approached him, grim-faced, and held their pikes above him, ready to send him to eternity.

“Mother, mother!” shrieked the injured count, only for the larger of the pikemen to fall to the ground with Duncan's lance through his gut. Nevertheless, the second pike descended, as if from Heaven, towards good King René's face, only to change direction at the very last moment, gashing his cheek and slicing his ear. Duncan had, in the nick of time, decapitated the shorter of the Count's assailants with Sir Peregrine's silver sword and, in so doing, diverted the thrust of his pike.

Bagoas ran over and pulled the dagger from René's injured thigh. Duncan dismounted, and he and Bagoas dragged the wounded warrior from the field, whilst Lucephalus followed dutifully behind. The remaining French cavalry and infantry retreated, any which way, around them. Yet another attack had been thwarted by the Swiss.

When Count René was back on relatively safe ground, they nestled him in a cot and the Royal physician set about tending to his wounds. Thereupon, the Dauphin sauntered up and uttered suitable pleasantries.

“Duncan Le Cottier saved my life while riding like a knight,” whispered the Count, while deep in his sweat. “I will reward him greatly and treat him like a son for the rest of my life.”

“Pray kneel before me, sweet Duncan,” begged the misfit of a Dauphin, drawing the Sword of Charlemagne from its much bejewelled scabbard.

Bagoas watched askance as the Dauphin dubbed both of Duncan's shoulders with the fabled La Joyeuse.

“Now arise, Duncan Le Cottier,” demanded the Dauphin. “A brave Scot, and Chevalier of France.”

The Dauphin had scarce replaced the celebrated sword in its scabbard, when a dark-haired Armagnac officer came stumbling up.

“A thousand indulgences, Sire,” he begged, with a stutter, “but three cart loads of cannonballs arrived from Alsace, and we've finally managed to turn the guns. They're aimed at the enemies' throats.”

Burkhard Münch burped noisily. “About time, smelly cochon! Now you can decimate the bastards and blow them to shreds.”

“And then the Armagnac Tenth will take the victory,” proclaimed the Dauphin.

The first few shots from the French cannon flew straight over the heads of the Swiss, and slaughtered a herd of cows on the other side of the Birs. But then hundreds of Swiss pikemen were torn to shreds by the intensive fusillade, while others cowered in the shit behind them.

While the artillery were reloading their cannon, a lengthy business, the Armagnac Tenth advanced stealthily, much hampered by the piles of their dead on the field. Nevertheless, the Swiss ranks broke, and the surviving pikemen poured en masse towards St. Jakob's Hospital. They rushed into the courtyard next to the hospital, which boasted a delightful flower and herb garden, and trampled the plants while packing themselves between its slender walls. The Armagnac cavalry came to a halt within charging distance of the hospital, while their commanders deliberated what to do next.

The jug-faced Dauphin was watching from a grassy knoll, with several of his knights and the inquisitive Aeneas.

“Your advice, s'il vous voulez, mon chevalier de plus cher,” he requested, throwing his affectionate, limp arm around Duncan Le Cottier's shoulder. “How should I command the brave Armagnacs further?”

“Offer the courageous young Swiss heroes honourable terms of surrender, Sire,” replied Duncan, “and your munificence will become renowned throughout Europe and Asia as far as the Steppes Russes themselves.”

“You should pound the striplings into the ground,” snarled Burkhard the Seventh Münch, clenching his fists, “whence the power of France will never again be challenged across this rebellious land, and your noble alliance with the Habsburgs will be upheld.”

A vigorous discussion ensued, and poor Aeneas P. broke into tears when the war hawks won the argument. The Armagnac artillery resumed its fusillade and made derelict the hospital of St. Jakob and the courtyard walls, causing great suffering within.

Two thousand or more civilian militia from Basel poured out of the Spalen Gate, in a frenzied last ditch attempt to stop the annihilation of their injured countrymen. However, the Dauphin sent a stern band of his own knights to meet them, and they were forced to escape willy nilly back into their gracious city.

During the next break in the action, the weeping Aeneas P. fell to his knees before the Dauphin, and begged him, in the name of Christ Jesus, to spare the lives of the surviving Swiss soldiers. The Dauphin prayed with the pious Aeneas to Almighty God, and sent snot-ridden Burkhard Münch to the courtyard with Duncan Le Cottier and two knights from Toulouse to offer favourable terms of surrender and passes of safe conduct.

But Burkhard Münch howled, “Today we bathe in roses and the blood of the foul Swiss” as he rode over and among the mighty dead bodies.

And when the four chevaliers entered the courtyard waving white wands of peace, the brash knight from Alsace raised his visor. “I come to accept your surrender, garçons de fantaisie.”

“Va te faire foutre, Habsburg!” howled tall Bernard Bernoulli of Farnsburg, who was missing an arm and part of his leg.

Upon hearing that obscenity, Burkhard Münch sniffed, and is said to have uttered the immortal line, “I gaze out into a rosarium that my ancestors planted one hundred years ago,”

In contrast, I, Anna, the White Witch of the Esk Burn believe that Münch said, “My ancestors planted these roses in your shit when you were still dirt-licking peasants.”

In any case, Arnold Shick of Uri felt grievously insulted as he lay struggling on the ground.

“Here enfoiré, eat one of your fucking roses,” he howled, hurling a rock that crashed into Münch's bovine face, squashing his eyes, nose and mouth.

Münch fell off his horse, flat onto the ground. The blinded knight was dragged away by his three better scented companions, only to die in agony from his horrific injury fully three days later.

Minutes after Münch was returned to his camp, the Armagnac troopers stormed the courtyard of the hospital in an absolute frenzy, while Bernard Bernoulli, a mathematician and financial expert of some repute, hid with his remaining two limbs under a bale of hay. The flower garden was turned into a morass of seething blood and flesh, while the citizens of Basel wept from the grieving walls of their city.

[Author's Note: Both Arnold Shick and Burkhard Münch are noted figures in Swiss history. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_St._Jakob_an_der_Birs.]

That evening, a band of monks came to the courtyard to carry the sixteen critically injured Swiss survivors into Basel. The ever faithful Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini prayed with them, also in deference to Pius, the humble second century martyr of Rome, and accompanied them back into his much beloved dominion of God. Bagoas thought that Aeneas resembled His Holiness, the Bishop of Rome, but that was, in all verity, a misconception.

By the next morning the French had counted well nigh 6000 Armagnac dead upon the ground, During an angry parley, and following a spot of fisticuffs, it was decided that it would be too risky to attempt to relieve Zürich, and the Dauphin ordered a full retreat through Alsace and Lorraine. While the Swiss had suffered a grievous defeat, they'd won a magnificently fought war.

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                                                CHAPTER 13