Rumour: the Tartars will pile up a mountain to overtop the walls
Editorial contextWith the Tartars on the coast, Thomas says the people of Split started 'empty rumours'. Some said the Tartars were building huge siege machines to throw the towns down; others that they were heaping up earth and stones like a mountain, so they could stand higher than the cities and take them easily. Thomas himself calls these rumours vain and baseless: a record of fear, not of what happened.
They began to spread empty rumours, inventing vain and idle opinions. Some said that the Tartars were building huge machines and many instruments of war with which they were trying to throw down these cities; others asserted that they were heaping up a pile of earth and stones like a mountain, and so, rising above the cities, would easily capture them.
Working translation
Original wording
Coeperunt autem vanos agitare rumores, confingentes opiniones vanas, & inanes. Dicebant alii quod ingentes machinas, & plurima instrumenta bellica Tartari fabricarent, quibus Civitates has deiicere conabantur; asserebant alii, quod ad montis instar terrae, ac lapidum congeriem acervabant, & sic Civitatibus supereminentes, facile eas esse capturos.
About Tartars as imagined by frightened citizens
Keep in mind
Thomas reports these as rumours he did not believe.