From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Mar 27 2003 - 19:07:28 MST
First, a joke circulating in Romania concerning American
politics:
"Mr. President, I am your doctor; I am sorry to inform
you, that you have a problem in your BRAIN. Your brain
has two parts, one Left and one Right. The Left Part
has nothing right in it, and the Right Part has nothing
left in it."
Pretty good command of English there, I'd sure say!
Anyway, I thought that it would be interesting to note how
the first Western attacks on the Middle East went down, back
a while ago:
(Sorry that I cannot vouch for either the historical accuracy
or the syntax of the following.) Crusader Habit:
There were no more than 12,000 crusaders that, in July 1099 after a
three year campaign, got to camp under the walls of Jerusalem. Their
emotion in sighting the sacred city changed into surprise when the
presiding Muslim garrison declared to be ready for an armistice. That
garrison wasn’t Turkish but Arab, because the previous year Jerusalem
had been retaken from the Selgiuchi by the Fatimidi, who had never
confronted the Franchi. But they didn’t accept the offer perhaps
because they thought a non-violent negotiation would have ruined their
triumph. Therefore they demanded unconditional surrender.
The defenders, about 1000 men, resisted for 40 days. Then they
surrendered. “Then,” a witness present, Raimondo de Agiles, famous for
his zeal and his beheaded of killed by harrow or thrown from the towers.
Others were tortured for days and days and then torched. The streets
were strewn with heads, chopped hands and feet.”
"Those marvelous things lasted until the total consummation of the 70
000 citizens of Jerusalem, including the Jews. They were crowded and
burned inside the synagogues.
Then the crusaders gathered in the grotto of the Santa Sepolcro that had
hosted the remains of Christ, who had come into the world to preach
“misericordia”, and there they cried joyfully feeling worthy of him.”
--From vol. 7, pg. 112 of Storia D’Italia by Montanelli On the first
crusade year 1099
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