He laughs:

… ‘Now let us see

How well my sword a vital spot can find!’

Spurring his horse, he lets the reins go free.

His sword-point with the prince’s breast aligned,

He rides towards the youth so forcibly

The point impales him and protrudes behind.

Withdrawn, it let flow blood and soul as well,

As from its horse the lifeless body fell.2

The famous simile which follows, inherited from the Iliad,3 is an example of those moments of classical pathos in which death in battle is treated elegiacally, dignified by remoteness from reality and linked with an ancient tradition of epic imagery:

As languishing a purple flower lies,

Its tender stalk cut by the passing plough,

Or, heavy with the rain of summer skies,

A poppy of the field its head will bow,

So, as all colour, draining downward, flies

From Dardinello’s face, he passes now

From life, and with his passing, passes too

Such little daring as his followers knew.4

The epic power of the first half of the poem begins to swell in volume with the mustering of the British and Northern forces recruited in response to Rinaldo’s request for help. The heraldic brilliance of these stanzas,5 the resounding titles of the captains, their emblem-bearing banners fluttering in the breeze, combine the colour and precision of a military tattoo with the delight of a pretended and detailed authenticity. This parade has a magnificent counterpart in the array of Spanish and African forces in a later canto,6 their exotic names and places of origin enriching the tapestry with bold, barbaric hues, chillingly suggestive of an alien savagery.

The siege of Paris,1 the first large-scale military event in the narrative, is directed and stage-managed with masterly control. It is divided into two phases: the attempt of the infidels to scale the walls before the arrival of the reinforcements from across the Channel, and the battle outside the walls when both sides have been assembled in full strength. This second phase is split into separate encounters between sections of the armies, according to their deployment, and varies between the surging, thronging movements of mêlées and the sharper focus of combat face-to-face. In accordance with epic tradition, supernatural aid is enlisted. In answer to Charlemagne’s diplomatically-worded prayer, God sends the Archangel Michael to assist the Christians, and Discord to disrupt the Infidel. But there is nothing supernatural about the measures taken to defend the city:

Wherever the external wall curves round,

King Charlemagne has laid his plans with care.

Culverts are driven deep into the ground,

And casemates, too, are hidden everywhere.

Both river-gates by heavy chains are bound

So that no hostile craft may enter there.

Defence is made secure at every point,

At every chink, at every weakest joint.2

The enemy, as numerous as the trees on the Apennines, as the waves that bathe the foot of Mount Atlas, or as the stars in heaven, has likewise made realistic plans for breaking through these defences:

Innumerable ladders for this aim

King Agramant collected from all hands;

Trestles and planks from every quarter came,

And quantities of plaited willow-wands.

Pontoons and boats he orders for the scheme.

The first and second army, he commands,

Shall lead the assault, and he desires to be

Among the foremost in the day’s mêlée.3

Unaware that the reinforcements, with the help of Silence, are arriving, Agramante gives the signal to begin the assault:

As the sweet leavings from some country meal,

Taken al fresco on hot summer days,

A swarm of importuning flies assail,

Making with strident wings a buzzing haze,

As starlings from the purpling tendrils steal

The ripened grapes, so the besiegers raise

Resounding shouts which deafen all the skies,

And leap to take the Christians by surprise.1

The Christians are more than ready for them:

The Christian army, waiting on the wall

With axes, lances, fire and stones and swords,

Defends the city, fearing not at all

The savagery of the barbaric hordes.

If Death upon some Christian soldier fall,

Another in his place himself affords.

The Moors at first abandon the attack,

By injuries and losses driven back.

Not only steel is used: from towers, blocks

Are thrown, and crenellated sections of

The walls are hurled, loosened by frenzied knocks;

And scalding liquid pouring from above

Which with intolerable anguish mocks

The valour of the Moors, who must remove

Themselves or else endure to lose their sight,

For Moorish helmets are not watertight.

If these were more injurious than steel,

What of the clouds of quicklime, or the pitch,

The turpentine, the sulphur, or the oil,

Or those incendiary weapons which

Spin round their targets in a flaming wheel?

The Saracens fall back into the ditch,

Vanquished on every side, and many a head

With whirling fire is harshly garlanded.2

Yet even worse awaits the Infidel. When Rodomonte forces the retreating besiegers back up the scaling-ladders and down into the ditch between the wall and the second parapet,

Until below so many of them fall,

The ditch, it seems, can scarce contain them all,1

the besieged are undismayed:

The signal they agreed on they await.2

The fearful gully, thirty feet in width, has been lined with kindling-wood, pitch, oil, saltpetre, sulphur and other fuel. At a given signal, the fires are lit:

Then many single flames form into one.

From bank to bank the ditch is full of fire.

Its tongue the pallid bosom of the moon

Appears to lick, so high it leaps, and higher.

The pall of smoke obscures the very sun,

Casting a cloak of darkness, black and dire;

Cracks, loud enough to split the earth asunder,

Resound like claps of terrifying thunder.3

Rodomonte in the meantime has leapt across the ditch. His attention attracted by the stench, he looks behind him:

He sees the hellish flames on high ascend,

He hears the lamentations and the wails,

And Heaven with his curses he assails.4

Eleven thousand and twenty-eight men, their flesh and bones reduced to charred remains,

Amid that raging holocaust lay dead.5

Rodomonte’s fury matches the dimensions of the catastrophe.6 He penetrates the inner defences of the citadel and single-handed, the embodiment of war, wreaks upon Paris such havoc as the Greeks inflicted upon Troy.

In the meantime the forces from Britain, led by Rinaldo, have arrived. He sends 6,000 English archers and 2,000 Welsh cavalry, led by Edward and Herman direct from Calais across Picardy to enter from the north by the gates of St Denis and St Martin. He himself leads Irish, Scottish and the rest of the English troops (and, presumably, their allies from the Far North) round the northern walls towards the east, then south towards the Seine, which they cross by pontoon bridges about three leagues upstream of Paris. After delivering a masterly harangue in which he impresses on the British captains their involvement in the security of Europe, he gives orders for their deployment. The Scottish troops, led by Prince Zerbino, are sent westwards along the left bank of the Seine; the English troops, led by the Duke of Lancaster, are dispatched south-west, with orders to advance towards the Spaniards; the Irish are sent farther south, by a roundabout route, with instructions to occupy the encampments behind the enemy lines. Having given these orders, Rinaldo himself rides westwards along the walls, passing ahead of Zerbino. He arrives to confront troops led by Marbalusto, the giant king of Orano, and the battle begins.1

The stanzas which follow are an example of Ariosto’s skill in maintaining clarity in the midst of medley. He would have made a superb director of large-scale historical films. The attention is held mainly by the star-performers, who point the pattern of the action as they appear in close-up, moving forward to the attack; alternately, long shots of troops in formation or of the field littered with the bodies of men and horses extend the range of vision with a sweep to which perhaps only the wide-screen cinema could do full justice. With pulse-stirring rapidity the episodes follow one upon the other, each so clearly identified that it would be possible to enact the entire conflict by using the stanzas as stage-directions.2

When the African commander-in-chief, Agramante, moves forward into the centre of the picture, his first decision is to send a detachment led by the king of Fezzan to attack the Irish, whose intentions he has now learned. He then moves northwards, from his position south-west of the walls, to aid Sobrino, by whom the Scots are being hard pressed. Zerbino has been unhorsed and only two of his captains, Ariodante and Lurcanio (who are Italians), remain to support him. Rinaldo in the nick of time rallies the fleeing Scottish troops and enables Zerbino to remount. Thus it is that at the very moment when Agramante and Dardinello arrive, Zerbino is ready to face them, Rinaldo staying to lend aid.

Meanwhile, the detachments of archers and cavalry led by Edward and Herman had entered Paris from the north, welcomed with high hopes by Charlemagne, who was not then aware of the devastation wrought by Rodomonte in the citadel.1 Charlemagne repairs to the scene of the disaster and when Rodomonte has been driven forth decides to deploy his forces ‘as for checkmate’.2 Ringing the city with defensive troops ‘from St Germain round to St Victor’s gate’,3 he issues commands that on the plain outside St Marcel all the other regiments shall gather for the final encounter.4 He himself meanwhile moves his troops round to attack the enemy in the rear, where the Spaniards are mustered under King Marsilio. Forth they march in close order, the infantry flanked by cavalry on either side, to the sound of drums and trumpets.5 The Spaniards, seeing them advance, make as if to flee but are rallied by their captains. Meanwhile, Rinaldo and the Scottish troops are still in conflict with those of Agramante and Dardinello. It is now that Dardinello is slain. His death is the turning-point. His followers, demoralized, flee in all directions:

As waters, when confined by human skill,

Swelling in volume, rise but cannot spread,

But, if the enclosing structure yields, o’erspill

The dam and with a mighty roar cascade,

So did those Africans, restrained until

Their gallant leader, Dardinel, lay dead,

Some here, some there, then scatter and disperse

Soon as they saw him tumble from his horse.1

The battle is over. King Marsilio, a shrewd tactician, wisely decides to cut his losses.