ABSTRACT
W h e n King Charles had equipped the twenty-five galleys of En G. Cornut and they had left Marseilles, and he had appointed the forty knights of Provence who were to enter the lists with him, he acted with the same great wisdom that the Lord King of Aragon had done about the hundred and fifty knights, for he had over three hundred letters sent to knights in diverse directions to say that they should enter the lists with him, being, each one of them, a knight whom he loved and trusted much. And of these some were Romans and some from every city of Tuscany and Lombardy, and there were Neapolitans and knights from Calabria and from Apulia and from the Abruzzi and from the Marches and from Languedoc and from Gascony; and each one imagined that the truth was that King Charles loved and esteemed him so much that he wished him to be in the lists with him. But he had quite settled in his mind that he would have mostly Frenchmen or Provengals. But he did this in order that, for all time, they and their descendants should believe that King Charles loved them much, so that they, therefore, should take his part, for each of these knights was very powerful indeed in his own country. And as he had planned, so it has happened ; the greatest party and the greatest strength that King Robert1 had in Rome and in Tuscany and in Lombardy and in the other places,
he had for this reason that each man said: “ My father was to have been one of the hundred to enter the lists with King Charles against the King of Aragon.” And they prided themselves much upon it, and so they should, if it were as they imagined. Wherefore you see how many friends he knew how to gain for himself and for his people without its costing him anything. And so you can think that both the Lord King of Aragon and King Charles were wise enough ; but King Charles had the advantage of him of long experience, because of the many more days he counted.
