170 - How those in the town made known to the King of Castile the difficulty they were in, and concerning the counsel he took about it

Summary

When this took place, the people in the town thought that, on account of the siege ladder breaking (caused by the catapult) and of the loss of that squire and others who had been wounded, the king would not want to attack again, fearing similar damage to what had taken place on that occasion. So they began to jeer with loud cries, deriding the attack that had been made on them, uttering insults and other words with which they thought they could get their own back on the men in the camp. But the king, who had the opposite intention, immediately ordered the siege ladder to be hurriedly repaired, and arranged to have a large cane fence erected to protect the camp and the ladder for when they made a new assault.

When the people in the town saw the siege ladder being repaired, and the great haste to finish the cane fencing, they realised that it was the king's will to consolidate his siege until he could take the town, either by force or by surrender. They sought a way to inform the King of Castile of the tight situation they were in and expected to be from then on, given the way those outside were behaving, and to ask if he would kindly help them.

The King of Castile, who already knew of this, summoned his royal council about how he could give assistance to this town, during which meeting many arguments were put forward. These were the main ones: some said that they were amazed that so great and powerful a house as that of Castile, renowned in the whole world, should, for its sins, be placed in such subjection that a handful of Portuguese, with a knight they had adopted as their king, were overrunning the land, despite them, and besieging towns large and small like the one under discussion now, which they could not assist. Furthermore, this was not with all their king's men but with the few that had remained after the losses at the ford, a force which they reckoned to be some 1,500 lances, some good, some bad, but no more.