Crusading They Went

AS a child I was given the stories of Alfred Duggan to read. Duggan, who lived from 1903 to 1964, was an English eccentric and playboy, a college acquaintance of Evelyn Waugh’s. Through the 1950s and early 1960s he produced a stream of vivid historical novels, none of them, I think, set any later than the 13 th century. One of my great favorites was Knight with Armour, in which Roger de Bodeham, landless second son of an obscure Anglo-Norman family, goes off with Robert of Normandy on the First Crusade. Roger makes it all the way to Jerusalem, taking part in the final, victorious assault on the city. While fighting on the walls, he suffers an unlucky stroke from an enemy’s sword and falls to the street below, breaking his back.

Dazed, sick and dying, he raised himself on his sound right arm and looked about him. To right and left the ramparts were black with pilgrims; someone had tied one end of a rope round a merlon, and was sliding down inside the city. He landed just beside Roger, waved his sword in the air, and uttered a great roar of “Ville Gagnée!” [“The city is won!”] Roger was scarcely conscious now, but that familiar triumphant cry raised a feeble echo in his mind; “Ville Gagnée,” he groaned in answer, as his head fell forward and his spirit took flight.

About the Author

John Derbyshire

Mr. Derbyshire is a former contributing editor of National Review.

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AS a child I was given the stories of Alfred Duggan to read. Duggan, who lived from 1903 to 1964, was an English eccentric and playboy, a college acquaintance of Evelyn Waugh’s. Through the 1950s and early 1960s he produced a stream of vivid historical novels, none of them, I think, set any later than the 13 th century. One of my great favorites was Knight with Armour, in which Roger de Bodeham, landless second son of an obscure Anglo-Norman family, goes off with Robert of Normandy on the First Crusade. Roger makes it all the way to Jerusalem, taking part in the final, victorious assault on the city. While fighting on the walls, he suffers an unlucky stroke from an enemy’s sword and falls to the street below, breaking his back.

Dazed, sick and dying, he raised himself on his sound right arm and looked about him. To right and left the ramparts were black with pilgrims; someone had tied one end of a rope round a merlon, and was sliding down inside the city. He landed just beside Roger, waved his sword in the air, and uttered a great roar of “Ville Gagnée!” [“The city is won!”] Roger was scarcely conscious now, but that familiar triumphant cry raised a feeble echo in his mind; “Ville Gagnée,” he groaned in answer, as his head fell forward and his spirit took flight.