spirit of that monarch, had alienated the Andalusians by tyranny. The governors of the frontier castles taken by the crusaders had been treated with the greatest indignity by that official, and one, whose intrepidity had exacted even the admiration of an unfeeling foe, he had caused to be put to death by torture. The remonstrances of the Arabs of Andalusia were received with insult; they were declared inferior in rank and courage to the Almohades, and the hajib publicly announced that they would hereafter be assigned to the least honorable position on the march and in the face of danger. The double imputation of plebeian extraction and cowardice, a reproach as false as it was unwise, was deeply resented by the Andalusians, many of whose families traced their lineage beyond the era of the Prophet; their courage had been tested for centuries in the wars of the Peninsula, and it was they who had stormed the Christian camp at Alarcos and contributed far more than the Africans to the completeness of that splendid victory. Exasperated by the unjust treatment of the hajib, and not without reason apprehensive of the power such a tyrant would enjoy if successful, they resolved to sacrifice country, religion, independence, and honor to the vindication of their offended national dignity. At a signal from their commander they marched away from the field. The sudden withdrawal of a body of sixty thousand men produced a panic; the Moslem lines were shattered, and the terrified fugitives, entangled in the ropes to which the infantry had been attached, were thrown into hopeless confusion, and remained at the mercy of the Castilian cavalry. The efforts of the Christians were now directed towards the summit of the eminence crowned with the scarlet pavilion of the Sultan. For a brief period the squadrons of the Almohades held their ground, but the weight of the armored horsemen eventually proved too great for the lighter Africans; Sancho, at the head of the Navarrese, broke the chain which encircled the Moslem entrenchment, and the victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, forever afterwards famed in song and story, was lost and won. Mohammed, who, with the apathy of a fatalist, from his commanding position had viewed the rout of his army, fled with only four thousand followers. The butchery which ensued exceeded belief, and the most conservative estimate of the killed was a hundred thousand. Orders had been issued, in accordance with the merciless barbarity of the time, that whoever, for any cause, spared the life of a Moslem should himself be punished with death; and the naturally cruel instincts of the Spanish soldiery, exasperated by the remembrance of past reverses and by the losses resulting from a desperate resistance, scarcely required the incentive of fear to suppress the sentiments of humanity. From dawn to twilight the conflict had continued, four hours of that time being consumed in the pursuit and massacre. In the bloody