in jeopardy, sought thus to rouse the passion of the army. But the passion roused was too often the scowl of hatred. Bitter schisms rent the Church, and the cry of the Orthodox for help would strike a far different chord than that of sympathy in the Eutychian and Nestorian breast. Lastly, the social and ancestral associations of the Syrian Bedouin, while alien from his Byzantine masters, were in full accord with his brethren from Arabia; and of this instinctive feeling, the invaders knew well how to take advantage. With these lukewarm and disunited multitudes, compare now the Moslem force in its virgin vigour, bound together as one man, and fired with a wild fanatical zeal to ‘fight in the ways of the Lord,’ and so win at once heavenly merit and worldly fortune;--their prize, the spoil of the enemy, and the fair maidens of Syria ravished from their homes; or, should they fall in battle, the reward of the martyr, heaven opened and beautiful virgins, black-eyed Houries, beckoning, with all the wanton graces of paradise, to their warm embrace.[166] Of warriors nerved by this strange combination of earth and heaven, of the flesh and of the spirit, of the incentives both of faith and rapine, of fanatical devotion to the Prophet and deathless passion for the sex, ten might chase a hundred half-hearted Romans. The forty thousand Moslems were stronger far than the two hundred and forty thousand of the enemy. [Sidenote: The Moslems paralysed by separate commands.] The Roman army, swollen by the battalions of Bahân, and spreading over the plain, began to overlap the Moslems and force them back into a straitened place. But with Khâlid’s energy, things soon began to mend. In a series of encounters, the enemy, being worsted, retired behind the intrenched ravine. But in other ways the situation remained the same. The five battalions of the Moslem host were separately pitched; the conduct of public prayer (mark of supreme command) was separate in each; the attacks were separately made; and so, from want of combination, they failed in delivering a decisive blow. The issue hung fire. A month passed, and Khâlid became impatient. To secure success, command must be vested in a single hand. He saw the fault, and set himself to remedy it. [Sidenote: Khâlid obtains supreme command for a day.]