As, however, they gradually grew inured to adversity, and understood the few hard advantages which their situation afforded them, they began to make incursions into the territories of their conquerors, and to seize for themselves some part of the fair possessions, once entirely their own. But every inch of ground was defended by the same fervid valor by which it had originally been won. The Christians, indeed, though occasionally defeated, generally gained something by each of their more considerable struggles; but what they gained could be preserved only by an exertion of bravery and military power hardly less painful than that by which it had been acquired. In 801, we find them already possessing a considerable part of Old Castile; but the very name now given to that country, from the multitude of castles with which it was studded, shows plainly the tenure by which the Christians from the mountains were compelled to hold these early fruits of their courage and constancy.[3] A century later, or in 914, they had pushed the outposts of their conquests to the chain of the Guadarrama, separating New from Old Castile, and they may, therefore, at this date, be regarded as having again obtained a firm foothold in their own country, whose capital they established at Leon. [3] Manuel Risco, La Castilla y el mas Famoso Castellano, Madrid, 1792, 4to, pp. 14-18. From this period, the Christians seem to have felt assured of final success. In 1085, Toledo, the venerated head of the old monarchy, was wrested from the Moors, who had then possessed it three hundred and sixty-three years; and in 1118, Saragossa was recovered: so that, from the beginning of the twelfth century, the whole Peninsula, down to the Sierra of Toledo, was again occupied by its former masters; and the Moors were pushed back into the southern and western provinces, by which they had originally entered. Their power, however, though thus reduced within limits comprising scarcely more than one third of its extent when it was greatest, seems still to have been rather consolidated than broken; and after three centuries of success, more than three other centuries of conflict were necessary before the fall of Granada finally emancipated the entire country from the loathed dominion of its misbelieving conquerors.