There for nearly seven days they strive
intensely, and at last they set themselves in battle array, and the
nations of the North, standing firm as a wall and impenetrable as a zone
of ice, utterly slay the Arabs with the edge of the sword."
The European writers all concur in speaking of the fall of Abderrahman
as one of the principal causes of the defeat of the Arabs; who,
according to one writer, after finding that their leader was slain,
dispersed in the night, to the agreeable surprise of the Christians, who
expected the next morning to see them issue from their tents and renew
the combat. One monkish chronicler puts the loss of the Arabs at three
hundred and seventy-five thousand men, while he says that only one
thousand and seven Christians fell; a disparity of loss which he feels
bound to account for by a special interposition of Providence. I have
translated above some of the most spirited passages of these writers;
but it is impossible to collect from them anything like a full or
authentic description of the great battle itself, or of the operations
which preceded and followed it.
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