13th Century Crusader Humor

Now you might have bought the currently popular stereotype that Crusaders were crude rude barbarians more interested in slaughter, plunder and general mayhem than leading a good Christian life. That's the trouble with stereotypes, they're so ... uh... stereotypical!

They were actually a funloving bunch as this short extract from the account of Jean de Joinville's account of his role in the Seventh Crusade shows. He finished his little book in 1309.

I must tell you here of some amusing tricks the Comte d'Eu played on us. I had made a sort of house for myself in which my knights and I used to eat, sitting so as to get the light from the door, which, as it happened, faced the Comte d'Eu's quarters. The count, who was a very ingenious fellow, had rigged up a miniature ballistic machine with which he could throw stones into my tent. He would watch us as we were having our meal, adjust his machine to suit the length of our table, and then let fly at us, breaking our pots and glasses. On one occasion when I had bought a supply of fowls and capons, and someone or other happened to have given the count a bear, he let the animal loose among my poultry, and it had killed a dozen of them before anyone could get there. The woman who looked after my fowls had beaten the bear with her staff.