Zitat
Barefoot, shaggy, clad in ragged sackcloth, covered in sores and filth, living on roots and grass and also at times on the roasted corpses of their enemies, the Tafurs were such a ferocious band that any country they passed through was utterly devastated. Too poor to afford swords and lances, they wielded clubs weighted with lead, pointed sticks, knives, hatchets, shovels, hoes, and catapults. When they charged into battle, they gnashed their teeth as though they meant to eat their enemies alive as well as dead. The Moslems, though they faced the crusading barons fearlessly, were terrified of the Tafurs, whom they called 'no Franks, but living devils.' The Christian chroniclers themselves ~~ clerics or knights whose main interest was in the doings of the princes ~~ while admitting the effectiveness of the Tafurs in battle clearly regarded them with misgiving and embarrassment. Yet, if one turns to a vernacular epic written from the standpoint of the poor one finds the Tafurs portrayed as a Holy People and 'worth far more than the Knights.'
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