War seemed the natural atmosphere of life to the Castilian of pure blood, whose ancestors had all been crusaders. Unable to compete in agriculture or industry with the thrifty Moslems or Jews who remained behind on the lands that he reconquered, he decided that labour, except with the sword, was the hall-mark of slaves; and this unfortunate fallacy, widely adopted, became the ultimate ruin of Spain. It turned her from the true road of national prosperity, which can be gained only by solid work, while it prevented nobles and town representatives from understanding one another, and so rendered them incapable of common action in the ‘Cortes’, or national parliament. The fallacy went farther, for it made war between noble and noble seem a natural outlet for martial zeal when no Moslem force was handy on which to whet Christian swords. The part played by the King in this land of independent crusaders and aristocratic cut-throats was difficult and precarious. Though not so legally bound by the concessions he had been forced to make as in Aragon--where no king might pass a law without the consent of his Cortes and where the ‘Justiciar’, a popular minister, disputed his supreme right of justice--mediaeval Castilian monarchs were in practice very much at the mercy of their subjects. Henry II of England had been able to burn down his barons’ castles and hang some of their owners, thus paving the way of royal supremacy; but kings of Castile could scarcely adopt such drastic measures against subjects usually more wealthy than themselves, whose castles were required as national fortresses, and whose retainers formed the main part of Christian armies against the Moors. Instead, custom and circumstances seemed ever forcing the rulers of Castile to grant new liberties, and to alienate their lands and revenues in constant rewards and bribes. [Sidenote: The ‘Siete Partidas’] This was one of the failings of Alfonso ‘the Learned’, who in spite of his boast, ‘Had I been present at the Creation I would have arranged the world better,’ was certainly not ‘the Wise’, as he is sometimes called. Alfonso was a great reader and a scientist in advance of his day; but the best work that he ever did for his kingdom was the publication of the _Siete Partidas_ (Seven Divisions), a compilation of all the previous laws of Spain, both Roman and Gothic, drawn up and arranged in a single code. For the rest, apart from his somewhat academic cleverness, he was vain, irresolute, and superficial. On one occasion he divorced his wife; and then, when the new wife he had chosen, a Norwegian princess, had already arrived at a Spanish port, he decided to send her away and retain the old. This capriciousness was of a piece with the rest of his actions.