On a brisk November day in 1202, Assisi's militia marched through the city's streets. Knights sat proudly atop their steeds, citizens cheered, and banners waved as troops filed out the city gates, down the gradual slope upon which Assisi sits, to the expansive plain that spreads out below the town. Meanwhile the militia of rival Perugia was also on the march, and by mid-morning the two armies studied each other from less than half a mile away.

Then Perugia charged. Suddenly the plain was filled with the thunder of hooves and the shouts of men intoxicated with fear and hate and the sheer joy of battle. For the next few hours, the fighting raged over the plain, spilling into the woods and private castles. Sweat poured off of man and beast, as did blood, as merchants, farmers, and nobility, called upon to defend their rights and uphold their town's honor, swore and slashed at one another and then ran, some in pursuit, others for their lives.

The warriors of Assisi were defeated and then slaughtered. Those who tried to hide in the thick woods or in caves were hunted down like animals. Some were taken prisoner; others were mercilessly killed.

An Assisian partisan wrote, "Oh, how disfigured are the bodies on the field of battle, and how mutilated and broken are their members! The hand is not to be found with the foot, nor the entrails joined to the chest; on the forehead horrible windows open out instead of eyes. Oh, you of Assisi, what a dark hour was this!'

It was an especially dark hour for one 21-year-old member of Assisi's elite Compagnia dei Cavaliera, a wealthy merchant's son. Like all young men of his day, he had spent much of his youth memorizing the songs of the troubadours, ballads of knights and ladies and the glory of battle. Now he found himself bound in chains, dragged off as a prisoner across a battlefield littered with the bodies of childhood friends, through Perugia's streets lined with taunting onlookers.

The young man's name was Francis—, later famous Francis of Assisi. How Francis of Assisi was transformed from an egotistical seeker of military glory to the champion of peace is another story, —but it began with this disaster. And this contrast between the early Francis, the knight, and the later Francis, man of peace, shows the power of God to completely change a life, and to use our disasters for his purposes.