Austorc de Segret was an Auvergnat troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 with only one surviving sirventes

Sirventes

The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...

, "No sai quim so, tan sui desconoissens".

Written in a rime

Rime

Rime is a coating of ice:*Hard rime, white ice that forms when water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects, such as trees*Soft rime, similar to hard rime, but feathery and milky in appearance...

 mimicking that of the Italian troubadour Sordello's

Sordello

Sordello da Goito or Sordel de Goit was a 13th-century Lombard troubadour, born in the municipality of Goito in the province of Mantua...

 "Aitant ses plus viu hom quan viu jauzens", Austorc's sirventes is almost a planh

Planh

The planh or plaing is a funeral lament used by the troubadours, modeled on the medieval Latin planctus. It differed from the planctus in that it was intended for a secular audience...

for Louis IX of France

Louis IX of France

Louis IX , commonly Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 until his death. He was also styled Louis II, Count of Artois from 1226 to 1237. Born at Poissy, near Paris, he was an eighth-generation descendant of Hugh Capet, and thus a member of the House of Capet, and the son of Louis VIII and...

, who died in 1270 on the Eighth Crusade

Eighth Crusade

The Eighth Crusade was a crusade launched by Louis IX, King of France, in 1270. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades of Frederick II are counted as a single crusade...

. Besides lamenting Louis, the troubadour laments the defeat suffered by the Crusaders against the "Saracens, Turks

Turkish people

Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

, and Arabs". He concludes that either God or the Satan is misleading Christians: there is no other possible explanation for the power of the Muslims. But among the humans Austorc is nonetheless willing to excoriate for the failed Crusade is Louis's brother Charles of Anjou, the caps e guitz (head and guide)—in Austorc's words—of the infidels because he convinced Louis to attack Tunis

Tunis

Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....

, not the Holy Land

Holy Land

The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...

, and he immediately negotiated a peace with the Muslims after Louis's death.