As soon as the order for retreat was given, the Mussulmans, with loud cries, set out in pursuit of the Christians. The soldiers of Jerusalem closed their ranks, and marched in silence, sword in hand, bearing away their wounded and dead. The Saracens, who could not shake or break through their enemy, and who, in their pursuit, found no trace of carnage, believed they were actually fighting against men of iron. The region which the Christians were traversing was covered with heath, thistles, and other plants dried by the heat of the summer. The Saracens set fire to these; the wind bore the flames and smoke towards the Christian army, and the Franks marched over a burning plain, with clouds of smoke, ashes, and dust floating over and around them. William of Tyre, in his history, compares them to smiths, to such a degree were their clothes and their faces blackened by the fire which devoured the plain. The knights, the soldiers, and the people who followed the army, gathered in a crowd around the bishop of Nazareth, who bore the wood of the true cross, and conjured him with tears to put an end by his prayers to calamities they were no longer able to bear. The bishop of Nazareth, touched by their despair, raised the cross, imploring the mercy of Heaven,—and, at the moment the direction of the wind was changed. The flames and the smoke which desolated the Christians were immediately wafted against the Mussulmans. The Franks pursued their march, persuaded that God had wrought a miracle to save them. A knight, whom they had never before seen, mounted on a white horse, and bearing a red standard, preceded the Christian army, and conducted it out of danger. The people and the soldiers took him for an angel from heaven, and his miraculous presence reanimated their strength and their courage. At length the army of Baldwin, after having undergone all sorts of misery, returned to Jerusalem, where the inhabitants rejoiced at its arrival, singing these words from the Scriptures, “_Let us give ourselves up to joy, for that people that was dead is resuscitated; it was lost, and behold here it is found again._”