The sirventes dates from the time of Louis IX’s first crusade of 1249-1250, which ended in the French King’s defeat and ignominious capture at the battle of Mansurah on 5 April 1250: see Stanisław Stroński, «Notes de littérature provençale», Annales du Midi, 25, 1913, pp. 273-297, on pp. 283-288, IV, «Austorgius de Auriliaco cruce signatus», p. 283, n.1. In view of the textual references to his shame and failure (3-4, 35), the piece must postdate that defeat. The King was eventually freed in May after the payment of a vast ransom. While his brothers urged him to return to France, Louis announced his decision on 3 July to stay in the Holy Land, and a letter was sent to the barons of France begging for reinforcements for the crusade. Jeanroy did not understand this context, commenting rather unfortunately that «Il y a quelque naïveté à suggérer à Louis IX captif [my italics] ce moyen de réparer les désastres. Il est difficile de trouver un exemple plus topique de la tyrannie du lieu commun dans la littérature provençale» (p. 84, n. 4). The appeal to Louis in line 33 shows that the sirventes must have been composed after his release. Austorc’s wish to see the Holy Roman Emperor take the cross and leave the Empire in the hands of his son refers to Frederick II Hohenstaufen and his son Conrad IV; since his expedition of 1228-1229 Frederick had promised many times to return to the Holy Land, though Pope Innocent IV, «insensible aux malheurs de la Terre-Sainte et du roi de France, faisait prêcher une véritable croisade [...] contre Frédéric II, qu’il a excommunié au concile de Lyon en 1246, et qu’il traite d’Antéchrist» (Fabre, p. 67). The sirventes must therefore date from May 1250 at the very earliest and before Frederick’s death on 13 December 1250. – Austorc himself took the cross two years later. On 18 April 1252, already on his way to the Holy Land, he signed an act at Millau confirming the donations of his ancestors to the abbey of Bonneval. Stroński explains that the troubadour was one of the knights who, after the repression of the Pastoureaux in 1251, decided to join the king’s army in the East. He appears not to have returned or to have lived long after that date, since a few years later, between 1259 and 1260, his son Austorg died and was succeeded by his heirs. In 1252 the troubadour was probably no longer young since he is likely to have been the same man who paid homage for his lands in 1236. The troubadour’s grandson Austorg was a minor in 1260, was knighted by Saint Louis in 1266, accompanied the King on his crusade of 1270, and made his will in 1285 (Stronski, pp. 285-287).