While Richard himself, “quicker than quarrel from crossbow,” spurred at the head of his picked followers to what had now become the van instead of the rear, and drove off its assailants—the Turkish right wing—with great slaughter,[781] the rest of the Frank cavalry charged the Turkish centre and left wing and put them both to headlong flight, also with heavy loss of life. Saladin’s secretary and friend, Bohadin, escaping from the rout of the centre, tried to rejoin first the left wing and then the right, but found each division in worse plight than the one he had quitted; and when he reached the reserve he found there only seventeen men remaining to guard the Standard, all the rest having been called up by the Sultan to support their comrades, and shared their fate. Saladin tried hard to rally the fugitives, and when the Franks, having also rallied to their Standard, re-formed their ranks and sought to continue their march, they were impeded by repeated attacks which they had to turn and repel. At last another charge, led by William des Barres and Richard on the famous Fauvel, which he had brought with him from Cyprus, drove the assailants and carried the pursuers right up into the hills. There the dangers of the unknown and difficult ground were too great for the Franks to venture on an engagement; they therefore withdrew from the pursuit, and proceeded along the lower ground till the whole host was encamped outside Arsuf,[782] Saladin making no further attempt to molest them. He had succeeded in collecting all that was left of his army; but his losses were very heavy, and they included several emirs, while among the Christian slain was only one man of distinction, James of Avesnes.[783] Richard’s assertion that the battle of Arsuf had cost Saladin more lives of noble Saracens than he had lost in any one day for the last forty years[784] may not be literally exact; but Bohadin does not attempt to minimize [Sidenote: _Sept. 7_] the disaster or to disguise its effect on the survivors and on Saladin himself. “God alone knows what intense grief filled his heart. All our men were wounded, if not in their bodies, in their hearts.”[785]