Note 89 — CANTO III.

“Moreover, when the Miramamolin brought over from Africa against King Don Alfonso, the eighth of that name, the mightiest power of the misbelievers that had ever been brought against Spain, since the destruction of the kings of the Goths, the Cid Campeador remembered his country in that great danger; for the night before the battle was fought at the Navas de Tolosa, in the dead of the night, a mighty sound was heard in the whole city of Leon, as if it were the tramp of a great army passing through; and it passed on to the royal monastery of St Isidro, and there was a great knocking at the gate thereof, and they called to a priest who was keeping vigils in the church, and told him that the captains of the army whom he heard were the Cid Ruydiez, and Count Ferran Gonzalez, and that they came there to call up King Don Fernando the Great, who lay buried in that church, that he might go with them to deliver Spain. And on the morrow that great battle of the Navas de Tolosa was fought, wherein sixty thousand of the misbelievers were slain, which was one of the greatest and noblest battles ever won over the Moors.”—Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid.