“The Spanish Muslims were fully aware of who Charles Martel was and what he had done to their aspirations. Indeed, Muslims in Spain had learned from their defeat that the Franks were not a sedentary people served by mercenary garrison troops, nor were they a barbarian horde. They, too, were empire builders, and the Frankish host was made up of very well trained citizen volunteers who possessed arms, armor, and tactics superior to those of the Muslims. Indeed, when the Muslims tried to invade Gaul again in 735, Charles Martel and his Frank gave them another beating, so severe that Muslim forces never ventured very far north again. Forty years later, Martel's grandson joined the long process of driving them from Spain.”
In battle:
Roland was the medieval Achilles and the last survivor of Charlemagne’s rearguard at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, where they were treacherously ambushed. As the end neared, he dreaded the seeming inevitability that his sword Durendal would fall into Saracen hands. 
Long before George arrived, the men of Silene decided to do something about the fearsome beast in their country, so they assembled and marched off. But when they were face to face with the monster their hearts gave out, the Golden Legend reports. They fled. 
Richard had been in Acre making preparations to return to England to deal with the urgent business there (traitors trying to take his kingdom). The Crusade was over, he thought, a brilliant but doomed campaign which he planned to return to after taking back his own kingdom. 
This thread will get dark, but a note of hope emerges at the end (as always). 
To clarify, I’m talking about the actual Dark Ages, from about the Fall of the Western Roman Empire to the 11th century, or so. I am not talking about the Middle Ages, which are sometimes called "dark" but which obviously weren’t dark. 
Just a few days back, the Viennese fired distress rockets into the night sky to let any friends who might be out there know that they needed help—now or never. The city had been under siege for almost two months by the Ottoman Turks. 
Long before St George's arrival on the scene, the city of Silene had been terrorized by a dragon with "envenoming" breath. The townspeople went with weapons to meet him. "And when they saw him," the Golden Legend says, "they fled."
Fernando never lost a battle against the Moors. He took Cazorla, Úbeda, Niebla, Murcia, Cartagena, Jaén, and more. He took Cordoba and reclaimed the bells of Santiago. He took the jewel of Al-Andalus, Sevilla, after an impossible siege.
Of course the rest of the knightly virtues are embodied in these adventures, but loyalty is a special concern—the possibilities that arise when loyalty is the law, and the disasters that follow when betrayal creeps in. Kingdoms are at stake.
The legend of Scanderbeg is set in motion when he, youngest son of an Albanian nobleman, is taken by the Ottomans at age eight, indoctrinated into Ottoman ways, forced to convert to Islam, subjected to all sorts of Ottoman horrors.
Loyalty has a curious standing in a time like ours. We’ve been trained to see it mostly as a one-way street: something to be given by soldiers to commanders, by employees to executives, and so on.
In my lifetime there have been three major attempts to bring the Arthurian saga to the big screen: 1995’s First Knight (starring Sean Connery as Arthur), 2004’s King Arthur (Clive Owen), and 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Charlie Hunnam).
After Crusader victories at Acre and Arsuf, the Saracens withdrew to Jerusalem and contented themselves with harassing their enemy’s foraging parties. In one instance, Western knights and squires found themselves trapped and badly outnumbered.
Backstory: El Cid arrives at a key moment in the Reconquista—a man "born at a fortunate hour.” 
Calculative people tend to assume that only a lucrative prize at the end could justify the dangers of a 2000-mile armed pilgrimage through hostile territory, culminating in violent battle. Otherwise, why would so many take up the Cross?
This is a full cast production. A few of the minor parts are clearly read by amateurs, but that hardly diminishes the overall effect. Charlemagne, Ganelon, and Roland are excellent. And the narrator goes next-level as the drama unfolds and the battle approaches. 
Whether post-war regime literature is good for young ladies is a different convo. But for boys, it’s a good way to bore them to death and convince them that books are not for them.