While he was thus making war against the Northern infidels news was
carried all over Christendom of a catastrophe which had befallen the
good cause in the South of Europe, where the Spanish Christians had met
with such a defeat and massacre at the hands of the Moors as had never
been known in the proudest day of Saladin.
Thursday, the 9th of Shaban, in the 605th year of the Hejira, is known
all over the West as the amun-al-ark, the year of the battle of Alarcos,
gained over the Christians by the Moslems of Andaluz, on which fatal day
Christendom suffered a defeat so signal, that it was feared the Spanish
peninsula would be entirely wrested away from the dominion of the
Cross. On that day the Franks lost 150,000 men and 30,000 prisoners.
A man-slave sold among the unbelievers for a dirhem; a donkey for
the same; a sword, half a dirhem; a horse, five dirhems. Hundreds of
thousands of these various sorts of booty were in the possession of the
triumphant followers of Yakoobal-Mansoor. Curses on his head! But he
was a brave warrior, and the Christians before him seemed to forget
that they were the descendants of the brave Cid, the Kanbitoor, as the
Moorish hounds (in their jargon) denominated the famous Campeador.
A general move for the rescue of the faithful in Spain--a crusade
against the infidels triumphing there, was preached throughout Europe
by all the most eloquent clergy; and thousands and thousands of valorous
knights and nobles, accompanied by well-meaning varlets and vassals of
the lower sort, trooped from all sides to the rescue.
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