Pedro did not forget the glove or its message; and when the Sicilians, rising in wrath at the Easter Vespers,[34] massacred their Angevin tyrants, it was Aragonese ships that brought them succour, and Pedro who defied the anathemas of the Pope and the power of France to drive him from his new throne. All the failures and victories of the years that followed, when Aragonese and Angevin claimants deluged ‘the Kingdom’ and adjoining island with blood, are more a matter of Italian than Spanish history, and it is with Castile that the interests of the peninsula become mainly concerned. Castile in later mediaeval times consisted of some two-thirds of the whole area of Spain, stretching from the Bay of Biscay in the north to the confines of the Moorish kingdom of Granada in the south. As her name suggests, she was a land of castles, built originally, not like the strongholds of Stephen’s lawless barons in England--to maintain a tyranny over the countryside--but as military outposts in each fresh stage of the reconquest from Islam. Naturally those who lived in such outposts, and might be wakened any night to take part in a border foray or to withstand a surprise attack, expected to receive special privileges in compensation. This was as it should be, and grateful Kings of Castile, in order to encourage traders as well as knights and princes to settle on their dangerous southern border, offered concessions in the form of charters and revenues with a reckless prodigality at which other European monarchs would have shuddered. Trouble began when, with the steady advance of the crusading armies, outposts ceased to be outposts; and yet their inhabitants, naturally enough again, saw no reason why they should be deprived of the privileges and riches that they had won in the past. Had they known how to use their independence, when danger from the Moors diminished, in securing a government conscious of national needs and aspirations, Spain might have become the political leader of Europe. Unfortunately the average Castilian felt only a selfish sense of the advantages that liberty might afford, without realizing in the least that their possession entailed heavy responsibilities. Thus he allowed his country to degenerate into anarchy.