Fortune did not suffer them long to retain the fruits of their bad faith and rapacity. Orders were issued from Morocco to retrieve the disgrace sustained by the Moslems, and Mohammed, governor of Cordova, having invaded the lost territory, stormed one after another the places which had tempted the avarice of the adventurous foreigners; the horrors of the previous capture were repeated and even surpassed, and the Christians in their turn experienced the bitterness of defeat and the calamities of servitude. Fourteen thousand male captives, chained together, were paraded through the streets of Cordova, and fifteen thousand women, distributed through the Moslem communities of Spain and Africa, attested the fearful retribution exacted by the lieutenant of the Sultan. Three years after this event, Yakub, who in the midst of extensive projects for the amelioration of his people had never relinquished those plans of conquest which formed so important a feature in the policy of every active Moslem prince, prepared for a grand campaign against the Christians of Castile. The imperial forces, amounting to three hundred thousand men, were transported across the Strait without difficulty, and this mighty armament, for which the resources of the governors of Andalusia were greatly taxed to provide subsistence, began its march into the interior. Yakub, weary of unprofitable forays and of expeditions which inflicted no permanent injury upon the enemy, had resolved to attempt a most perilous and doubtful enterprise. The city of Toledo, whose geographical position, impregnable fortifications, and national prestige as the military centre of the Castilian monarchy made it the most important strategic point in the entire Peninsula, was the main object of his ambition. The political condition of the Christian kingdoms, whose princes, again influenced by mutual hatred, regarded with complacency the distress of their neighbors, was peculiarly favorable to the designs of the Moslems. Portugal and Leon were embroiled with the Holy See. Its interference with the royal prerogatives and its unsolicited participation in the religious disputes of those states were regarded with undisguised disapproval by a people which had never explicitly recognized the jurisdiction of the Supreme Pontiff. The jealousies of power and the hope of profiting by the discord of their rivals kept aloof from each other the kingdoms of Castile, Navarre, and Aragon. It was by the former of these, unaided and alone, that the shock of the impending tempest was to be sustained; while the other monarchies, removed from the seat of war, might await in temporary security the issue of the inevitable conflict. Alfonso VIII., who had aroused the ire and hastened the invasion of Yakub by a challenge couched in all the extravagant terms of Spanish rodomontade, now realized to the full the disastrous effects of his untimely insolence. In vain, in his extremity, he appealed