Upon the third day, the sixteenth of July, in the year twelve hundred and twelve, the Christian army was drawn up in battle array. The troops were formed into three divisions, each commanded by a king. Alphonso was in the centre, at the head of his Castilians and the chevaliers of the newly-instituted orders of Saint James and Calatrava; Rodrique, archbishop of Toledo, the eyewitness and historian of this great battle, advanced by the side of Alphonso, preceded by a large cross, the principal ensign of the army; Sancho and his Navarrois formed the right, while Peter and his subjects occupied the left. The French crusaders, now reduced to a small number by the desertion of many of their companions, who had been unable to endure the scorching heat of the climate, marched in the van of the other troops, under the command of Arnault, archbishop of Narbonne. Thus disposed, the Christians descended towards the valley which separated them from their enemies. {105} The Moors, according to their ancient custom, everywhere displayed their innumerable soldiers, without order or arrangement. An admirable cavalry, to the number of a hundred thousand men, composed their principal strength: the rest of their army was made up of a crowd of ill-armed and imperfectly trained foot-soldiers. Mohammed, stationed on a height, from which he could command a view of his whole army, was encompassed by a defence made of chains of iron, guarded by the choicest of his cavaliers on foot. Standing in the midst of this enclosure, with the Koran in one hand and an unsheathed sabre in the other, the Saracen commander was visible to all his troops, of whom the bravest squadrons occupied the four sides of the hill.