The field of battle afforded a rich harvest for the victors, who stripped the dead, and rifled the bodies of the women of collars, bracelets, ornaments of gold and silver, and costly jewels, with which the Moorish female loved to decorate her person. Sated with plunder, the soldiers took the first occasion to leave their colours and return to their homes. Their places were soon supplied, as the display of their riches sharpened the appetites of their countrymen, who eagerly floaked to the banner of a chief that was sure to lead them on to victory and plunder. But that chief, with all his stern authority, was no match for the spirit of insubordination that reigned among his troops; and, when he attempted to punish one of their number for a gross act of disobedience, he was made to understand that there were three thousand in the camp ready to stand by their comrade and protect him from injury.[103]
The wild excesses of the soldiery were strangely mingled with a respect for the forms of religion, that intimated the nature of the war in which they were engaged. Before entering into action the whole army knelt down in prayer, solemnly invoking the protection of Heaven on its champions. After the battle of Ohanez, where the mountain streams were so polluted with the gore that the Spaniards found it difficult to slake their thirst, they proceeded to celebrate the _fête_ of the Purification of the Virgin.[104] A procession was formed to the church, which was headed by the marquis of Los Velez and his chivalry, clad in complete mail, and bearing white tapers in their hands. Then came the Christian women, who had been rescued from captivity, dressed, by the general's command, in robes of blue and white, as the appropriate colours of the Virgin.[105] The rear was brought up by a body of friars and other ecclesiastics, who had taken part in the crusade. The procession passed slowly between the files of the soldiery, who saluted it with volleys of musketry as it entered the church, where _Te Deum_ was chanted, and the whole company prostrated themselves in adoration of the Lord of Hosts, who had given his enemies into their hands.
From this solemn act of devotion the troops proceeded to the work of pillage, in which the commander, unlike his rival, the marquis of Mondejar, joined as heartily as the meanest of his followers. The Moorish captives, to the number of sixteen hundred, among whom, we are told, were many young and beautiful maidens, instead of meeting with the protection they had received from the more generous Mondejar, were delivered up to the licentious soldiery; and for a fortnight there reigned throughout the camp a carnival of the wildest riot and debauchery.[106] In this strange confusion of the religious sentiment and of crimes most revolting to humanity, we see the characteristic features of the crusade. Nowhere do we find such a free range given to the worst passions of our nature as in the wars of religion,--where each party considers itself as arrayed against the enemies of God, and where the sanctity of the cause throws a veil over the foulest transgressions that hides their enormity from the eye of the transgressor.