High overall, with its towers and the minarets of its mosques, rose the then infidel city of Toledo, the upper part of which was then, as now, girt by Roman, and the lower part by Moorish walls. History tells us that when Alphonso VI. had been a fugitive under the persecution of his brother and predecessor, Sancho, he had found an asylum at the Court of the Caliph of Toledo, who treated him with hospitality and princely distinction; and now more than one Moorish warrior rode forth from the city to reproach Alphonso with ingratitude to his benefactor, and many a terrible and remarkable combat was fought under the walls of Toledo, among the defenders of which was Don Bellido Dolfos, who had renounced his faith and adopted the turban.
In the combats before the city, the Cid was daily occupied, and many a Moorish warrior, horse and man, rolled in the dust beneath his lance or battle-axe; and his followers were enriched by the spoil, the rare weapons, the costly garments and jewels, that his hand won.
At last there came a day—the anniversary of the victory won by Mohammed at Bedr, between Mecca and Medina—when the Moors made a dreadful sortie from Toledo, led by the renegade, Bellido Dolfos; and closing in on every hand, the Christians met them with equal ardour and fury.
The hand-to-hand fighting was terrible, and the Christian knights, led by the Cid, the Count of Toulouse, and others, dashed their horses through and through the living tide of Moors that surged around them. Gorgeous as a field of flowers, with their many-coloured turbans and flowing garments, seemed the Moors as they kept shoulder to shoulder, guarding their heads with round shields covered with glittering bosses, their sharp scimitars flashing in the sun, their shouts rolling like thunder between the Tagus and the walls of Toledo, as they fought with demoniac strength and ferocity, but fought in vain. High over all the throng towered the Cid upon Babieca, its mailed flanks stuck full of arrows and even broken lances.
'Santiágo y cerra España!' he shouted ever and anon—the old war-cry of Spain—and he hewed on all sides with Tisona, till his sword-arm grew weary, and the last who bit the dust beneath it was the traitor Don Bellido, after whose fall the Moors were driven headlong into Toledo.
The siege lasted a year, during which Ximena and her two attendants occupied a noble chamber in the palace of the Caliph. Its ceiling was adorned with arabesques and fretwork, brilliant with gold and delicate pencilling. In its centre was an alabaster fountain of perfumed water, and round it were cages of gold and silver wire, full of singing birds; and there daily the three ladies offered up their prayers on their knees for the success of the Christian arms, and for their own release.
After a year and a day Toledo capitulated, and Ximena was restored to the Cid, to whom all New Castile submitted, and who took possession of it in the name of Alphonso VI.; and Madrid, then a small village, one day to become the capital of Spain, was for the first time in the hands of the Christians, and Hiaja was the last Caliph of Toledo.
To narrate all the heroic deeds performed by the Cid after his marriage would require the space of a very large volume indeed. The great dominions he acquired for his royal master the latter increased by espousing Zaid, a daughter of the Moorish King of Andalusia, after which Rodrigo, at the head of his knights, subdued the whole of Valentia. No sovereign prince in Spain was more powerful than he; but he contented himself with the title of Cid, and never assumed that of King, though he might easily have done so. No warrior in Spain did more evil to the Moors, yet he occasionally joined the Beni Huds of Zaragossa against the Counts of Barcelona, whom he conquered twice. While he never failed in his word to a Christian, he mercilessly despoiled the Jews, from two of whom he raised money for war, by depositing with them two chests which were alleged to be full of plate, but which contained only stones and sand.
His two daughters became queens of Aragon and Navarre.
Five years after the conquest of Valentia, worn out by incessant warfare, he fell ill, and was abed when tidings were brought to him that Bucar, the Moor, whom he had expelled from that kingdom, was advancing to regain it with a mighty army of horse and foot; but Tisona lay idly in the scabbard now. For seven days preceding his death, the Cid would taste nothing but a little myrrh and balsam; and on the day he departed he took a solemn farewell of Ximena, his kinsmen, and all his knights, whom he requested to carefully bury his old war-horse Babieca, 'to the end that no dogs might eat the flesh of him whose hoofs had trodden down so much dog's-flesh of the Moors.' He bequeathed a coffer of silver to the two Jews, and desired that his body should be borne to San Pedro de Cardena, and laid beside that of his mother.