He soon had good reason to repent his forbearance. In 763 Kasim escaped from confinement, rallied the citizens round him, and declared the town subject only to the Khalifa of Damascus. The siege that followed was languidly conducted. The people, we read, were suffered to cultivate their fields, and to carry produce into the city unmolested. At this rate the siege might have lasted as long as that of Candia. Kasim, meanwhile lulled into a sense of security, abused his power, and alienated his unruly subjects. On the arrival of the Amir, he was given notice to quit. Having seen him successfully elude the royal forces, Toledo opened its gates to Abd-ur-Rahman. The Amir, despairing of the townsmen’s temper, exacted from them but a nominal obedience, but his successor, Hakam, thought to coerce them by a bitter lesson. As Governor, he sent them one Amru of Huesca, a renegade Christian, “by a condescension,” he wrote, “which proves our extreme solicitude for your interests.” The renegade’s policy was thorough. He ingratiated himself with the people, and posed as the champion of their liberties. It was at their own suggestion that he raised a fortress in their very midst. The place being strongly garrisoned and all being ready, the approach of a large army, commanded by the Amir’s son, Abd-ur-Rahman, was announced. At the suggestion of the Governor, the prince was invited by the nobility into the city; and he, in return, as if to mark his sense of the honour conferred upon him, ordered a great feast to be made ready at the Castle. To this all the chief men were bidden. What followed is known as the Day of the Fosse. The guests were allowed to enter only one by one. Behind the gate stood a man with bared arm and uplifted axe. As each guest entered there was a sweep of the arm, a flash of steel, and a head rolled into the ditch already prepared. Without, nothing was heard, nothing was seen, nothing suspected. The episode reminds one of the famous Blood Bath of Stockholm. The butchery is said at last to have been revealed to those waiting outside the wall by the thick vapour issuing from the gate. A physician, who had been watching for hours, and who had noticed that none of the numerous guests who had entered, had issued forth, was the first to raise the alarm. “Men of Toledo,” he shouted, “I vow that yonder vapour is not the smoke of a feast, but rises from the blood of our butchered brethren!” This ghastly tragedy occurred in 807, and has given rise to a proverbial expression current in Spanish--_una noche Toledana_, applied to a night disagreeably passed in sleeplessness or pain.