The Cid came out of his trenches to rout the Almoravides at Quarte and in the valley of Alcoy; he extended his conquests to Murviedro, and formed an independent alliance with the King of Aragón. And, if the report of Ibn-Bassam, the Arab chronicler, be true, he had more vaulting ambitions: in a gust of exaltation, the Cid—so we are told—was heard to say that, as the first Roderick had lost Spain, a second Roderick might be destined to win it back. Ibn-Bassam writes in good faith, but he is a rhetorician, and moreover, in this case, he gives the story at second-hand. It is difficult to believe that a clear-headed, practical man like the Cid, who had recently found it hard enough to seize a single province, can have talked in this wild way about winning back all Spain. If he did, his judgment was greatly at fault: the Reconquest was not completed till four centuries later, and little more was done towards furthering it during the Cid’s last days. His lieutenant, Alvar Fáñez, was beaten at Cuenca: the Almoravides, flushed with victory, again defeated the Cid’s picked troops at Alcira. The Cid was not present on the field, but the mortification was too much for him: he died—‘of grief and fury,’ so the Arab historians state—in July 1099. Supported by Alvar Fáñez and Bishop Jerónimo, Jimena held out for another two years: then she retreated northwards, after setting fire to the city. Valencia—the real ‘Valencia del Cid’—ceased to exist. The Christians marched out by the light of the flaming walls; the Cid’s embalmed body was mounted for the last time on Babieca (a horse as famous as Roland’s Veillantif), and was taken to San Pedro de Cardeña. There you may still see what was his tomb, with this inscription on it:— Belliger, invictus, famosus marte triumphis, Clauditur hoc tumulo magnus Didaci Rodericus. But his body, after many vicissitudes, now rests in the unimposing town hall of Burgos.