befouled themselves, should not be praised, unless provoked by
unspeakable acts. For these and for similar things he should now be
forgiven, since God has punished him in this world, where he now
languishes in jail, deprived of all his honors.

Each of the illustrious leaders was followed on the journey by many
lesser princes, whom we shall not list at this point, because it
might seem to be distracting, and we shall perhaps have better reason
for naming them in the course of the narration. Who can
count the masters of one, two, three, or four castles? There were so
many that the siege of Troy could scarcely have brought so many
together. At the time that this expedition was being undertaken by
the magnates of the kingdom, and a meeting was being held by them
with Hugh the Great, with Philip the king present, at Paris, in the
month of February, on the eleventh day of the month, a lunar eclipse
took place just before midnight. Little by little the moon turned to
the color of blood, until it had turned completely and hideously
blood red, but at dawn an unusually bright splendor shone around the
circle of the moon. Soon afterward stars seemed to fall from the
skies, like a heavy rain. This was so like a portent that many
churches considered it to be one, and they instituted public prayers
to avert the punishment that it might signify, and they wrote down
the time of the event.

Soon after, in the month of August, on the eighth day, just before
sunset, the part around the center of the moon turned black, and many
people saw this happen. It should be said that, although the moon
normally undergoes eclipses when full, nevertheless some of these
changes of colors are manifestations of portents, and are customarily
recorded in the pontifical books and in the deeds of kings. Other