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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 December 2023
The Master decided to raise his siege and make his way to Coimbra, where it was already certain that at his order all the bishops and proctors of the towns and cities who intended to take his side had come together. According to their summons, it was in order to decide with them how they were to pursue this war into which they had been thrust out of sheer necessity. As some engines of war were there, including two trebuchets, for which the conditions were not right to take them to Lisbon, the Master ordered them to be burnt so that the enemy could not make use of them.
Here it should be known that at this time the region around Lisbon was much ravaged, with a desperate lack of provisions, owing to the arrival and encampment of the King of Castile. This also applied to the territory around Torres Vedras and other places in that area. Seeing how they were left so impoverished while in the power of the Castilians, how constrained they were by such necessity and how they did not know what would happen to them afterwards, many farmers and other people who lived there, when they learned that the Master intended to leave, came to him with their wives, children and many infants. Thus there assembled all those who lived in the outskirts of Torres Vedras and its surrounding area, along with people from some other places.
When the Master saw so many people in such conditions and how they all cried out that he should have mercy on them and allow them to accompany him so that they could have some provisions and not remain in the power of their enemies, he was worried about what to do with them. It would have pleased him more to have that many men-at-arms who might help him, than to take along with him men, women and children, all wracked with want. They were so many and of such a kind that they might well then call him the father of all men.
Even a blind man who lived in the outskirts, hearing how the Master was leaving accompanied by all these people, started to call out with loud cries, pleading in the name of God to take him with them and not leave him in the power of such evil people.
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