He was ambushed by the
lord of Rougemont and the
lord of Voudenay, and the
Archpriest's men. They were stronger than him, defeated him and ransomed him for thirty thousand francs. He paid them the whole sum in cash. He was infuriated by his capture and by what it cost him, and swore that he would not return to his castle until he had got the money back. So he gathered a large number of companions together once again and went to
La Charité-sur-Loire where he asked the captains,
Lamit,
Corsuelle, the
Bourc de Périgord - and myself who had gone there to rest - if we would care to join him on a raid. We asked him, "Where to?"
"By my faith," he said, "we will cross the
Loire at Port Saint-Thibaut and from there we will scale and capture the
town and castle of Sancerre. I have sworn an oath never to return to any castle of mine until I have seen the
Sancerre boys. If we can get our hands on the garrison and on the three lads,
Jean,
Louis and
Robert, we will have recovered our losses and be lords of the land. Our assault would be fairly easy. They are not expecting us and sitting around here is not doing you any good anyway."
"That is true", we replied.
We all agreed to the plan and began to prepare at once.'
'Then it so happened,' continued the
Bascot de Mauléon, 'that the garrison of
Sancerre came to know of our scheme. At that time they had a captain called
Guichard Aubergeon, a noble squire born in
Lower Burgundy, who was very adept at guarding the town, castle and lands of
Sancerre, and the young lords inside, for all three of them were knights by then.
This
Guichard had a brother who was a monk at the
abbey of Saint Thibaut, quite close to
Sancerre. This monk was sent by his
brother to
La Charité-sur-Loire to deliver some protection money owed by several towns. They paid no attention to him. I do not know how but he found out about our entire plan and the names of the captains of the castles nearby
La Charité and their forces and exactly when, where and how they would cross the river at Port Saint-Thibaut. He then promptly returned to inform his
brother. The
Sancerre boys, the
count and his
brothers, began to prepare for this as soon as they could and sent out a call to the knights and squires of
Berry and the
Bourbonnais, and to the captains of the neighbouring garrisons, until they were a good four hundred lance strong of fine fighting men. They planned a cunning ambush of two hundred lance outside
Sancerre in a wood. We left
La Charité at sunset and rode in ranks at vigorous pace, arriving at
Pouilly. We had had a great number of boats brought to the port below to allow ourselves and our horses to cross. We duly crossed the
Loire, just as we had planned, and by midnight were all safely on the other side with our horses. Since it would soon be getting light, we had one hundred of our lance stay behind to guard the horses and boats, while the rest of us continued on at pace straight past the ambush, which made not a move on us.
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