On the other hand, it was with feelings of sullen desperation that the Christians armed themselves at midnight for the decisive conflict of the morrow. They were not oblivious of the national and religious interests dependent on their constancy and their valor. Their allies, on whose support they had reckoned, had perfidiously deserted them. Their resources were exhausted. Unjustly, as the event demonstrated, yet not without foundation, suspicions of the fidelity of some in their ranks whose dispositions had once been hostile, and who had privately negotiated with the enemy, were entertained. The disastrous results of former contests, the present disadvantages of inferior numbers and position, even the most fervent exhortations of ecclesiastical zeal, were inadequate to remove or counteract. By the weird light of fires and torches the sacrament was administered to the Christian warriors, admonished by the activity of their enemies, whose sounds of preparation could be faintly heard from their distant camp. The officers received their final orders, and the troops were disposed in the array of battle. The right wing was commanded by Sancho, King of Navarre; the centre by Alfonso; the left wing by Pedro, King of Aragon. The attack was begun by the Castilians, who with headstrong impetuosity rushed forward to storm the enemy’s intrenchments. They were received, however, with a courage worthy of their own, and their formation was shaken by the solidity of the Moslem ranks. Both armies soon became engaged; the Spanish mountaineers, inexperienced in warfare and sickened by the frightful carnage, took to flight; and the nobility were left, with momentarily diminishing numbers, to contend with the myriads of barbarians who threatened to overwhelm them. It was then that Alfonso, with his guards, plunging into the serried masses of the enemy, retrieved the failing fortunes of the day. The supplications and the threats of divine vengeance uttered by the ecclesiastics, who, attired in their sacred vestments and holding aloft the crucifix, intercepted the retreat of the mountaineers, caused them to rejoin their devoted comrades, whose valor awakened their admiration while it magnified their cowardice. The battle now raged with fury along the entire line. The Berbers, without reflection on the consequences, exposed their half-naked bodies to the swords of the Christian knights, whose armor received without impression the strokes of the missile weapons of the Desert. The slaughter of these wretched fanatics was appalling; but the places of those who fell were instantly supplied by others, who sought at the hands of the infidel the martyr’s death, which is a certain passport to the Moslem paradise. In the very crisis of the struggle, while victory was hanging in the balance, the day was lost by a flagrant act of treachery. The hajib of Mohammed, Saad-Ibn-Djiami, who exercised despotic influence over the feeble