Chapter 140 - Concerning certain things that happened to the besieged city folk at the hands of those in the siege camp

Summary

When that day of great toil, both by sea and by land, had passed, and the Master and the city folk saw how all this had so cunningly been done to them, without their having any suspicion, they set a better guard and watch on the galleys and other things. As the king had the city surrounded with a great multitude of men, and likewise the river along it fully occupied by his naos and galleys, with which he prevented them from getting any aid or supplies, the city began to suffer a greater drain on its resources than it had experienced before because of the men who had come in the fleet. Therefore, being well aware of all this, the king was of the opinion that he was poised to take the city by starvation.

Now, while the city was maintaining itself as well as it could, there were not at that time more than twenty horsemen in it, for as soon as they realised that they were going to be besieged, they immediately sent all the horses to the other side of the river, because they could not feed them if the siege lasted for a long time. Those twenty included Juan Alfonso de Baeza, Gómez García de Hoyos, Vasco Martins de Gá, Luís Henriques and others like them.

Even for those few horses that were there, they could not obtain fodder; instead, they bought pillows full of straw, emptied them, and gave the straw to the horses to eat. At times these horsemen went out with foot soldiers and crossbowmen to skirmish with their enemies. The men in the siege camp came forward to meet them, and they fought with one another as is customary.

If we were to recount in detail all the things that happened to them on both sides in battles and skirmishes, this entire day would not be enough; you would get tired of listening, and we would get weary of writing. Nonetheless, leaving aside those deeds that could plainly be told, just consider what typically occurs in similar encounters: fortune, which cannot please both sides, sometimes decreed that the enemy would force the men of the city back to the gates; sometimes the Portuguese would force the Castilians back to the stockade of their encampment near the Santos Well.