How they did what they did the God of Battles knows best; but that they did it is certain.  All accounts of the fray agree, Bohadin with Vinsauf, Moslem and Christian alike.  What pent rage, what storm curbed up short, what gall, what mortification, what smoulder of resentment, bit into King Richard, we may guess who know him.  Such it was as to nerve his arm, nerve his following to be his lovers, make him unassailable, make a devil of him.  Not a devil of blind fury, but a cold devil who could devise a scope for his malice, choose how to do his stabbing work wiseliest.  Inside the town gate they took up close order, wedgewise, linked and riveted; a shield before, shields beside, Richard with his double-axe for the wedge’s beak.  They took the steep street at a brisk pace, turning neither right nor left, but heading always for the citadel, boring through and trampling down what met them.  This at first was not very much, only at one corner a company of Nubian spears came pelting down a lane, hoping to cut them off by a flank movement.  Richard stopped his wedge; the blacks buffeted into their shields with a shock that scattered and tossed them up like spray.  The wedge held firm; red work for axe and swords while it lasted.  They killed most of the Nubians, drove bodily through the rabble at their heels; then into the square of the citadel they came.  It was packed with a shrieking horde, whose drums made the day a hell, whose great banners wagged and rocked like osiers in a flood-water.  They were trying to fire the citadel, and some were swarming the walls from others’ backs.  The square was like a whirlpool in the sea, a sea of tense faces whose waves were surging men and the flying wrack their gonfanons.

King Richard saw how matters lay in this horrible hive; these men could not fight so close.  Cavalry can do nothing in a dense mass of foot, bowmen cannot shoot confined; spearmen against swords are little worth, javelins sped once.  So much he saw, and also the straining crowd, the lifted, threatening arms, the stretched necks about the citadel.  ’O Lord, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance.  At the word, sirs, cleave a way.’  And then he cried above the infernal riot, ’Save, Holy Sepulchre!  Save, Saint George!’ and the wedge drove into the thick of them.

This work was butcher’s work, like sawing through live flesh.  Too much blood in the business:  after a while the haft of the King’s axe got rotten with it, and at a certain last blow gave way and bent like a pulpy stock.  He helped himself to a beheaded Mameluke’s scimitar, and did his affair with that.  Once, twice, thrice, and four times they furrowed that swarm of men; nothing broke their line.  Richard himself was only cut in the feet, where he trod on mailed bodies or broken swords; the others (being themselves in mail) were without scathe.  They held the square until the Count of Champagne came up with knights and Pisan arbalestiers, and then the day was won.  They drove out the invaders; on the Templars’ house they ran up the English dragon-flag.  King Richard rested himself.