120 ROGER OF WEXDOVER. [A.D .1192 entered the city of Ramula, Saladin all the lime leading their rapid flight in his chariot. King Richard having thus put the enemy to flight, pitched his camp in the plain outside the city, to the great and unexpected joy of the besieged. ITow king Richard trith a small force defeated sixty-two thousand pagans at Joppa. On the day after his defeat Saladin was told that the king had come with only a very small army, and that he had no more than eighty knights, besides four hundred of his crossbowmen in company with him, on hearing which he was greatly enraged and indignant with his army, because they, so many thousands, had been put to the rout by such a few. He thereupon, to the confusion of his army, there counted them out, and issued his imperial edict that sixty-two thousand of them should return immediately to Joppa. take the king himself prisoner, and bring him alive on the following day into his presence. The king and his army were resting that night in security, and without fear of any inopportune attack, when at daybreak the whole army of the infidels came up and entirely surrounded the king's camp, and, that they might have no chance of escaping into the city, an immense force had stationed themselves between it and the royal camp. The king and all the Christian forces, aroused by their bustle and shouting, were wonder-struck at seeing themselves hemmed in on every side by the enemies of Christ. The king, however, perceiving their imminent dangers, immediately armed himself, and mounted his horse as if he flew with wings, and laying aside all fear of death, as if he were emboldened by the number of his enemies, encouraged by his voice his men to the combat; he himself with eleven knights, who alone out of the whole number were mounted, boldly broke through the ranks of the enemy, with his drawn sword and quivering lance, and dealt thundering blows with his clashing sword on the helmed heads of the eiieiuv, and freeing the Arab horses from their proper riders, be distributed them to his own knights, who were on foot. They, nimbly mounting them, with the king always leading the way, dispersed the troops of the enemy on all sides, and put to death without mercy all that came in their way. The pagans falling under the strokes of the enemy uttered