When Nuño Laynez repeated these generous words to the cavaliers, the blood glowed in their veins, and they prepared themselves manfully for the field; nor did the count give them time to cool before he put himself at their head and marched to meet the enemy. He found them drawn up on the opposite side of a river which was swollen and troubled by recent rains. Without hesitation he advanced to ford it, but his troops were galled by flights of darts and arrows as they crossed, and received with lances on the water’s edge; the bodies of many floated down the turbid stream, and many perished on the banks. They made good their crossing, however, and closed with the enemy. The fight was obstinate and the Castilians were hardly pressed, being so inferior in number. Don Fernan Gonzalez galloped along the front of the enemy. “Where is the Count of Toulouse?” cried he; “let him come forth and face me,—me, Fernan Gonzalez of Castile, who defy him to single combat!” The count answered promptly to the defiance. No one from either side presumed to interfere while the two counts encountered, man to man and horse to horse, like honorable and generous cavaliers. They rushed upon each other with the full speed of their horses; the lance of Don Fernan pierced through all the armor and accoutrements of the Count of Toulouse and bore him out of the saddle, and before he touched the earth his soul had already parted from his body. The men of Toulouse, seeing their chief fall dead, fled amain, but were pursued, and three hundred of them taken.[66] [66] _Cron. Gen. de España._ The field being won, Count Fernan Gonzalez alighted and took off the armor of the Count of Toulouse, with his own hands, and wrapped him in a xemete, or Moorish mantle, of great value, which he had gained when he conquered Almanzor. He ordered a coffin to be made, and covered with cloth of gold, and studded with silver nails, and he put therein the body of the count, and delivered it to the captive cavaliers, whom he released and furnished with money for their expenses, making them swear not to leave the body of the count until they had conducted it to Toulouse. So the count, who had come from France in such chivalrous state, at the head of an array of shining warriors, returned in his coffin with a mourning train of vanquished cavaliers, while Count Fernan Gonzalez conducted his victorious troops in triumph back to Burgos. This signal victory took place in the year of our Redemption 926, in the beginning of the reign of Alfonso the Monk on the throne of Leon and the Asturias.[67] [67] Mariana, lib. 8, c. 5, p. 367. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER X. How the Count went to receive the Hand of a Princess, and was thrown into a Dungeon.—Of the Stranger that visited him in his Chains, and of the Appeal that he made to the Princess for his Deliverance.