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He then assembled his forces, took a tender leave of the queen, and marched out to meet the enemy.
As soon as he was departed, the queen gave way to the excess of her sorrow, and clasping her hands together, "Alas!" exclaimed she, "if the king, my husband, should fall in battle, I shall be left a widow, in the power of a cruel monster, and my unborn child will be doomed to slavery." This idea redoubled her affliction. The king wrote to her every day; but one morning, when she was watching for the usual messenger, with fear pictured in his countenance, he dismounted immediately, and entering her presence, "Oh! madam," said he, "all is lost; the king is slain, the army defeated, and the ferocious conqueror almost at our backs."
The poor queen fell senseless; her attendants carried her to bed, and all her women stood weeping round; they tore their hair in the bitterness of their affliction, and no scene in the world could have been more affecting. But their sobs and lamentations were soon drowned by the cries that every where spread through the palace of the cruel manner in which the victorious army was desolating the city. The wicked king, at the head of his savage troops, was incessantly employed in exciting them to acts of cruelty
