elates sounded the _Te Deum_ for
the most splendid success which had shone on the banners of the
Christians since the time of Charles Martel. The loss of the Africans,
even according to the Arabian writers, who admit that the centre was
wholly destroyed, could not fall short of one hundred and sixty thousand
men.[40]

[Footnote 37: These chains are not mentioned by the Arabs; but what can
be expected from their brevity?]

[Footnote 38: The standard-bearer of Rodrigo, don Domingo Pasquel, canon
of Toledo, showed that he was well fitted to serve the church militant;
he twice carried his banner through the heart of the Mahometan forces.]

[Footnote 39: The Arabian account says that the Andalusians were the
first to flee.]

[Footnote 40: Of this great battle we have an account by four
eye-witnesses: 1, By King Alfonso, in a letter to the Pope; 2, by the
historian Rodrigo of Toledo; 3, by Arnaud, Archbishop of Narbonne; 4, by
the author of the _Annals of Toledo_.

The reduction of several towns, from Tolosa to Baeza, immediately
followed this glorious victory--a victory in which Don Alfonso nobly
redeemed his failure in the field of Zalaca--and which, in its immediate
consequences, involved the ruin of the Mahometan empire in Spain. After
an unsuccessful attempt on Ubeda, as the hot season was raging, the
allies returned to Toledo, satisfied that the power of Mahomet was
forever broken. That Emperor, indeed, did not long survive his disaster.
Having precipitately fled to Morocco, he abandoned himself to licentious
pleasures, left the cares of government to his son, or rather his
ministers, and died on the 10th day of the moon Shaffan, A.H. 610 (A.D.
1214), not without suspicion of poison.

By recent writers of Spain the number of slain on the part of the
Africans was two hundred thousand; on that of the Christians,
twenty-five individuals only. Of course the whole campaign is
represented as miraculous; and, indeed, actual miracles are
recorded--which we have neither space nor inclination to notice.]

THE FIRST CRUSADE

A.D. 1096-1099

SIR GEORGE W. COX

(Religious feeling in the eleventh century rose to a great pitch of
enthusiasm, and led men of various nations, with still more various
motives and aims in worldly affairs, to pursue one common end with their
whole heart. Between the years 1096 and 1270 these attempts of Christian
nations to rescue the Holy Land from the "Infidels," as the Mahometans
wer