A wall of brushwood built by captives at Esztergom
Editorial contextEsztergom, the richest city in Hungary, had fortified itself with ditches, walls and wooden towers. Roger says the Tartars had their captives carry bundles of branches and pile them into a high wall along the edge of the ditch in a single effort, then set thirty stone-throwing machines behind it and pounded the city and its wooden towers day and night. The builders of this siege work, he notes, were the prisoners.
Meanwhile the people of Esztergom had fortified themselves very strongly with ditches, walls and wooden towers. … Then one day the Tartars surrounded the city, and the captives who were with them carried so many bundles of branches that on one side of the city, on the brink of the ditch, they built a high wall of the bundles all at once, and immediately behind that wall they set the thirty machines already mentioned
Working translation
Original wording
Strigonienses interim se cum fossatis muris et turribus ligneis fortissime munierant. … Ecce una dierum ciuitatem Tartari circumdederunt, et captiui qui cum eis erant tot ramorum fasciculos portauerunt, quibus in una parte ciuitatis supra fossati supercilium altum murum simul et semel de fasciculis construxerunt, et statim post murum illum dictas triginta machinas posuerunt
About Mongol army and its captives
Keep in mind
Roger was not at Esztergom; he reports the siege from others.
Wooden houses burned, stone palaces stormed
Editorial contextSeeing they could not hold the town, the Hungarian, French and Lombard citizens who ran Esztergom burned the suburbs and the many wooden houses right up to the stone palaces, destroyed their cloth and goods, buried their gold and retreated into the palaces. Enraged at losing the plunder, the Tartars stormed the palaces; Roger doubts fifteen people survived. The castle itself, held by a Spanish count with crossbowmen, was not taken.
But the Hungarians, the French and the Lombards, who were as it were the masters of the city, seeing that they could not defend themselves, burned the suburbs and the wooden houses, of which there were many, right up to the palaces of the city. … Afterwards they began to storm the palaces. These were quickly taken, and I do not believe, to tell the truth, that fifteen people of the whole city survived
Working translation
Original wording
Hungari vero et Francigenae ac Lombardi, qui quasi erant domini ciuitatis, se non posse defendere aduertentes combusserunt suburbia et domos ligneas, quae multa erant, usque ad palatia ciuitatis. … coeperunt postmodum palatia expugnare. Quibus velociter expugnatis, non credo ut verum fatear quod XV de tota remanserunt ciuitate
About Mongol army; Hungarian, French and Lombard defenders
Keep in mind
Roger adds that the Tartars 'roasted men alive like pigs'; like other atrocity details it is reported, not witnessed.