第115章

Of the spoil taken from the Moors,of how the King burned all the dead,and of what Christovao de Figueiredo did.

The King being thus in the camp,he commanded the spoil that remained of the Moors to be collected,and there were found five captains who were taken prisoners (those of highest rank were found amongst the dead);the chiefest of them was Salabatacao,[559]who was captain-general of all the troops of the Ydallcao He had taken for his guard in the battle five hundred Portuguese of the renegades who were with the Moors;and as soon as this Salabatacao saw that his army was defeated,he strove to collect and form a body of men,but could not do it because there was not one amongst them who thought of aught but to save himself.And thinking it worse to be conquered than to die,he threw himself amongst the King's troops,slaughtering them,and doing such wonderful deeds that ever after he and his Portuguese were remembered,so much were their terrible strokes feared,and the deeds they did;so that they let them pass on,and they penetrated so far amongst the troops that they found themselves close to the King's bodyguard.There the horse of Salabatacao was killed.In order to succour him the Portuguese did great deeds and killed so many men that they left a broad road behind them which no one dared to enter,and they fought so well that they got another horse for Salabatacao.As soon as he was on its back he seemed like nothing but a furious wolf amongst sheep;but since already they were all so exhausted,so wounded all over,and so encircled by the enemy (for they were attacked at every point),Salabatacao was at length overthrown,and his horse with him.And as the Portuguese who tried to succour him were all killed,not one escaping,and he himself was wounded in many places,he was taken prisoner.

The spoil was four thousand horses of Ormuz,and a hundred elephants,and four hundred heavy cannon,besides small ones;the number of gun-carriages for them was nine hundred,and there were many tents and pavilions.I take no account of the sumpter-horses and oxen and other beasts,for they were numberless,nor of the numbers of men and boys,nor yet of some women,whom the King ordered to be released.

Here the King stayed till all the dead had been burned,and the customary honours had been paid to them;and here he gave much alms for the souls of those who had been killed in battle on his side.These numbered sixteen thousand and odd.These things done,he turned again upon Rachol and pitched his camp as he had done before.