the Moslems adopted the latter alternative. The uncontrollable temper of their enemies, infuriated by the loss of anticipated booty and inflamed with religious hatred, was too great a menace to be lightly braved in the presence of men who would, under the most insignificant pretext, indulge to satiety their ferocious instincts. Fifty thousand persons abandoned their homes and sought temporary safety beyond the Xucar, which was designated as the new boundary of Christian conquest; a truce nominally of seven years, but whose actual duration was entirely dependent on the capricious indulgence of the victor, was agreed upon, and the royal standard of Aragon was raised by the Moslems themselves upon the battlements of Valencia. It required all the authority of the King to repress the fierce passions of his unruly followers, some of whom did not hesitate to violate the provisions of the treaty and the laws of military discipline by attempts to plunder the helpless and the distressed who had been compelled to yield to the inexorable results of war. The heads of these mutineers, insensible alike to the claims of public faith and the suggestions of humanity, were promptly struck off by the King himself, whose evident intention to maintain inviolate the pledges he had given produced a salutary effect on the turbulent and insubordinate spirits of his command. The houses and the estates abandoned by their former owners, who preferred exile and penury to the risk of death or oppression, were apportioned among such of the crusaders as had distinguished themselves by the amount of their contributions, the importance of their military service, or the number of the retainers who had followed them to battle. Considerable difficulty was incurred in adjusting the conflicting claims of those who, exaggerating the value of their achievements and the generosity of their donations, demanded an undue share of the reward. Three hundred and eighty knights and nobles were, according to the judgment of the King, deemed worthy of investiture with fiefs derived from the lands of the conquered territory, whose tenures imposed upon each feudatory the obligation of guarding for four months in every year a certain portion of the border. The clergy, as was usually the case, secured by superior dexterity and by the influence attaching to their sacred office the most valuable of the lands affected by the public distribution.