As soon as the Grand Master of the Temple heard that the infidels had crossed the Jordan and were ravaging the christian territories, he sent messengers to a castle of the Templars called “The Convent of Caco,” situate four miles distant from La Feue, commanding all the knights that could be spared from the garrison at that place to mount and come to him with speed. The knights had retired to rest when the messengers arrived, but they arose from their beds, and at midnight they were encamped with their horses around the walls of the castle of La Feue. The next morning, as soon as it was light, the Grand Master, at the head of ninety of his knights, rode over to Nazareth, and was joined at that place by the Grand Master of the Hospital and forty knights of the garrison of Nazareth. The Templars and Hospitallers were accompanied by four hundred of their foot soldiers, and the whole force, under the command of the two Grand Masters, amounted to about six hundred men. With this small but valiant band, they set out in quest of the infidels, and had proceeded about seven miles from Nazareth in the direction of the Jordan, when they came suddenly upon a strong column of Mussulman cavalry amounting to several thousand men, who were watering their horses at the brook Kishon. Without waiting to count the number of their enemies, the Templars raised their war cry, unfolded the blood-red banner, and dashed into the midst of the astonished and terrified Mussulmen, dealing around them, to use the words of Abbot Coggleshale, “death and damnation.” The infidels, taken by surprise, were at first thrown into confusion, discomfited, and slaughtered; but when the smallness of the force opposed to them became apparent, they closed in upon the Templars, overwhelmed them with darts and missiles, and speedily thinned their ranks with a terrific slaughter. An eye-witness tells us that the military friars were to be seen bathed with blood and sweat; trembling with fatigue; with their horses killed under them, and with their swords and lances broken, closing with the Mussulman warriors, and rolling headlong with them in the dust. Some tore the darts with which they had been transfixed from their bodies, and hurled them back with a convulsive effort upon the enemy; and others, having lost all their weapons in the affray, clung around the necks of their opponents, dragged them from their horses, and endeavoured to strangle them under the feet of the combatants. Jacqueline de Mailly, Marshal of the Temple, performed prodigies of valour. He was mounted on a white horse, and clothed in the white habit of his order, with the blood-red cross, the symbol of martyrdom, on his breast; he became, through his gallant bearing and demeanour, an object of admiration, even to the Moslems. Radolph compares the fury and the anger of this warlike monk, as he looked around him upon his slaughtered brethren, to the wrath of the lioness who has lost her