of the Moslem general, Al-Senani, who commanded the broken line, had enabled him to consolidate its wings, not as yet engaged, and, rallying the stragglers, he made a determined attack upon the enemy’s camp. Thus, in different parts of the field two battles were in progress, in which a portion of each army constituted the assailants. Of the knights who had so boldly hurled themselves against the Moslem host, but few escaped the spears and arrows of the Almohades. Despite the strength of the Christian position, it was taken by Al-Senani and his Andalusians, and the picked Castilian troops, unable to withstand the shock of the Moslem charge, were utterly routed. The heavy armor of the chivalry of Alfonso impeded their movements and delayed their flight; their senses were bewildered by the din and tumult of battle, and the fierce Mauritanian horsemen, strangers to pity in the hour of triumph, were deaf to the supplications of a defeated and helpless foe. The manifest exaggerations of the ancient chronicles render it impossible to form even an approximately correct estimate of the Christian loss. It must, however, have been enormous; but the proximity of the mountains, inaccessible to the Moorish cavalry, undoubtedly preserved numbers who would otherwise have perished. Twenty thousand prisoners taken in Alarcos, which fortress was stormed immediately after the battle, were liberated without exchange or ransom, an act of unusual generosity, which, while acquiring for Yakub the unfavorable criticism of his subjects, was considered an evidence of weakness by the ungrateful recipients of his favor, incapable of understanding such indulgence in wars ordinarily waged with indescribable barbarity. The fruits of this great victory were limited to the possession of a few thousand captives and the plunder of the Castilian camp. At no time had the Christian territory been more vulnerable to the attack of an invader than after the battle of Alarcos. The power of Castile was temporarily destroyed. Navarre, intimidated by the approach of the Moslems, was now ready for the oath of fealty and the humiliating rendition of tribute. Leon was also suspected of entertaining secret negotiations with Yakub, whose influence had not improbably contributed to the inimical relations generally existing between the Christian states of Northern Spain. Aragon, deprived of its sovereign and arrayed against its neighbors, was a prey to political intrigue as well as exposed to the danger of foreign conquest. Portugal alone, protected in a measure by her remoteness from the seat of war, resolutely upheld by her uncompromising attitude the sinking fortunes of the Christian arms.