THE WEST IN THE CRUSADING ERA 195 was later able to extend its sphere of action to Sicily, where we shall presently find the royal house of Aragon laying claim to the Sicilian Crown. All these Spanish kingdoms, however, were in a state of mutual rivalry, which counterbalanced the rivalries between the Moorish dynasties. Even Castile itself was again separated from Leon. Christian princes allied themselves with one or another of the Moorish factions, and sometimes even sought Moorish aid against their Christian rivals. Early in the thirteenth century, however, when Innocent in. was pope, Alfonso of Castile, called the Noble, irritated the Moors up to such a point that they sank their The Moors quarrels, proclaimed a religious war, and gathered driven back, a host of Moslems from Africa to aid them. In 1212, the face of the tremendous danger, the Christian princes united, and a great defeat was inflicted on the Moors at the decisive battle of Navas de Tolosa. The Moorish power was driven back into the kingdom of Granada. Castile and Leon were presently united again permanently. The only real rival to Castilian supremacy in the peninsula was Aragon, though Portugal had securely established her own independence, and was establishing her maritime reputation on the west. While the German emperors were waging their long struggle with the popes, and seeking to maintain in Italy a supremacy which the antagonism between Germans and 5. The French Italians made impossible, France and England Monarchy, were both being consolidated into powerful kingdoms. The process, however, was following different lines in the different countries. From the time when Hugh Capet, as premier noble of France, secured the throne for his own family, it had been the business of the king to remain the premier noble, and to make himself something more. At the beginning of the twelfth century, he was hardly so much. His great feudatories of Normandy, of Anjou, of Aquitaine, of Toulouse, each of them ruled over territory as great as the royal domain. The policy of the French king, which was followed systemati- cally from the early part of the twelfth century, was that of
