Bucar, the brother of Yussef, came to revenge him, but he knew not with whom he had to deal. Bishop Hieronymo led the right wing, and made havoc in the ranks of the foe. "The bishop pricked forward," we are told. "Two Moors he slew with the first two thrusts of his lance; the haft broke and he laid hold on his sword. God! how well the bishop fought. He slew two with the lance and five with the sword. The Moors fled."
"Turn this way, Bucar," cried the Cid, who rode close on the heels of the Moorish chief; "you who came from behind sea to see the Cid with the long beard. We must greet each other and cut out a friendship."
"God confound such friendships," cried Bucar, following his flying troops with nimble speed.
Hard behind him rode the Cid, but his horse Bavieca was weary with the day's hard work, and Bucar rode a fresh and swift steed. And thus they went, fugitive and pursuer, until the ships of the Moors were at hand, when the Cid, finding that he could not reach the Moorish king with his sword, flung the weapon fiercely at him, striking him between the shoulders. Bucar, with the mark of battle thus upon him, rode into the sea and was taken[pg 093] into a boat, while the Cid picked up his sword from the ground and sought his men again.
The Moorish host did not escape so well. Set upon fiercely by the Spaniards, they ran in a panic into the sea, where twice as many were drowned as were slain in the battle; and of these, seventeen thousand and more had fallen, while a vast host remained as prisoners. Of the twenty-nine kings who came with Bucar, seventeen were left dead upon the field.
The chronicler uses numbers with freedom. The Cid is his hero, and it is his task to exalt him. But the efforts of the Moors to regain Valencia and their failure to do so may be accepted as history. In due time, however, age began to tell upon the Cid, and death came to him as it does to all. He died in 1099, from grief, as the story goes, that his colleague, Alvar Fañez, had suffered a defeat. Whether from grief or age, at any rate he died, and his wife, Ximena, was left to hold the city, which for two years she gallantly did, against all the power of the Moors. Then Alfonso entered it, and, finding that he could not hold it, burned the principal buildings and left it to the Moors. A century and a quarter passed before the Christians won it again.
When Alfonso left the city of the Cid he brought with him the body of the campeador, mounted upon his steed Bavieca, and solemnly and slowly the train wound on until the corpse of the mighty dead was brought to the cloister of the monastery of Cardeña. Here the dead hero was seated on a throne, with his sword Tisona in his hand; and, the story goes, a[pg 094] caitiff Jew, perhaps wishing to revenge his brethren who had been given sand for gold, plucked the flowing beard of the Cid. At this insult the hand of the corpse struck out and the insulter was hurled to the floor.
The Cid Campeador is a true hero of romance, and well are the Spaniards proud of him. Honor was the moving spring of his career. As a devoted son, he revenged the insult to his father; as a loving husband, he made Ximena the partner of his fame; as a tender father, he redressed his daughters' wrongs; as a loyal subject, he would not serve a king on whom doubt of treachery rested. In spite of the injustice of the king, he was true to his country, and came again and again to its aid. Though forced into the field as a free lance, he was throughout a Christian cavalier. And, though he cheated the Jews, the story goes that he repaid them their gold. Courage, courtesy, and honor were the jewels of his fame, and romance holds no nobler hero.
It will not be amiss to close our tale of the Cid with a quotation from the famous poem in which it is shown how even a lion quailed before his majesty:
"Peter Bermuez arose; somewhat he had to say;