“The besieged prepare at once for a sally.  Sebile places the helmet on her husband’s head and kisses him, never to see him more alive.  The enemy are disarmed; three thousand of them are killed by the time Baldwin cuts his way to his uncle, to whom, as his liege lord, he makes complaint against the Saxons.  The Emperor’s answer contains little but philosophic comfort:  ’Fair nephew, so goes war; when your day comes, know that you will die; your father died, you will not escape.  Yonder are your enemies, of whom you complain; I give you leave, go and strike them.’  Uncle and nephew both perform wonders.  But Berard is killed by Feramor, one of Guiteclin’s sons, and the standard which he bore disappears under him.  Baldwin engages Feramor; each severely wounds the other; the fight is so well contested that Baldwin offers to divide the land with him if he will make peace.  The Saxon spurns the offer, and is killed.

“But ’Baldwin is wounded in the breast grievously; from thence to the spur his body is bloody.’  Saxons, Lusatians, Hungarians perceive that his blows lessen and fall slow.  ‘Montjoie!’ he cries many a time, but the French hear him not.  ’When Baldwin sees that he will have no succour, as a boar he defends himself with his sword....  Who should have seen the proud countenance of the king, how he bears and defends himself against the paynim, great pity should surely take his heart.’  Struck with fifteen wounds, his horse killed under him, he offers battle on foot.  They dare not approach, but they fling their swords at him, and then go and hide beneath a rock.  Baldwin, feeling death approaching, ‘from the fair eyes of his head begins to weep’ for sorrow and rage.  He now addresses an elaborate last prayer to God; but whilst he is on his knees, looking toward the East, a Saxon comes to cut off his head.  Baldwin, furious, seizes his sword, which had fallen from his hand on the green grass, and with a last blow cleaves the Saxon to the shoulders, then dies.

“The news is carried to the Emperor, who laments his ill fate.  Rest he has never had; the paynim folk have killed him the flower of his friends, Roland at Roncevaux and now Baldwin.  ’Ha, God! send me death, without making long delay!’ He draws his sword, and is about to kill himself when Naymes of Bavaria restrains him and bids him avenge his nephew’s death.  The old man, however, exposes his life with such recklessness, the struggle is so unequal, that Naymes himself has to persuade him to leave the battle and enter the city until the Herupe nobles come to his aid.  ’Dead is Count Roland and Count Oliver, and all the twelve peers, who used to help in daunting that pride which makes us bend so; no longer at your right hand is Baldwin the warrior; the paynim have killed him and Berard the light; God has their souls....  If you are killed ... in your death alone a hundred thousand will die.’

“They lead him away, unwilling, from the field.  Baldwin’s corpse is carried by him on his shield.  Sebile comes to meet the Emperor and asks of her husband.  Charles bids her look at him.  She faints to the ground.  There is true pathos (though somewhat wire-drawn) in her lament, when she comes to herself: