The Convoy to Nîmes

Abstract

King Louis distributes fiefs to his barons but neglects William, his most loyal knight. Rejecting Louis’s subsequent offers, all of which would be detrimental to worthy families or the monarchy itself, William proposes to take Nîmes from the Saracens and hold it as Louis’s vassal. Employing a strategy reminiscent of the Trojan horse, William and his men fill barrels with knights and weapons, and prepare to smuggle them into Nîmes on carts. Disguised as a merchant, William tricks the Saracens and leads the convoy into the city, where he and his men defeat the Saracens and assume control of Nîmes. In this poem, the portrait of King Louis is increasingly unflattering, while his vassal gains in heroic stature. Despite the seriousness of its territorial and spiritual concerns, The Convoy to Nîmes contains a strong dose of the humor that permeates the cycle as a whole.