CHAP. IX.
How the seven Champions of Christendom arrived, with
all their troops, in the bay of Portugal, where St.
George, made an oration to his soldiers. The dissention
in the Pagan army; With other things that happened.
AT the appointed time, the Christian Champions, with each one a well approved army, met in the bay of Portugal, the number of which joined together, was about five hundred thousand; unto whom St. George, their appointed general, made the following oration:
“Fellow soldiers and kind country-men, whose valour the world admires and dreads, we are now going into the field of honour, and to the work of man-hood: the time is now, at hand we have long-looked and prayed for, and your work the noblest in the world: pour forth, therefore, your utmost forces, that ages to come may know what the lance, the ax, the sword and the bow, can do in the hand of the valiant: fear not the numerous force of our enemies, whose number is rather a burthen than an advantage unto them: but know, your cause is the bell, the defence of the Christian religion, and your native countries, which will oppose all their vast numbers. Whosoever therefore desires riches, honours and rewards, know, that they are all to be gotten by the overthrow of those miscreants, who will fly before your valour, as flocks of sheep before the greedy wolf.”
This soldier-like oration put such courage into the breasts of the soldiers, that, with a general voice, they cried out, ‘To arms, to arms, with the magnanimous Champion St. George of England,’ in which gallant resolution we will leave them for a while, to relate what happened in the army of the Pagans, who, like grasshoppers overspreading a country, met in the land of Hungary, in such multitudes, that had not God frustrated their intentions, the Christian army had been but a morsel, scarce sufficient for them for one meal; by
