Many causes conspired to render the campaigns of the Moslems indecisive. Their armies, composed of many nations and commanded by numerous generals, were incapable of thorough organization and discipline. The powers of high officials claiming equal authority, undefined by law and unconfirmed by precedent, were subject to constant and vexatious interference. Prolonged operations were viewed with disfavor by soldiers accustomed to the independent movements and rapidly shifting scenes of partisan warfare. A victory was, to the morale of such a force, almost as detrimental as a defeat. The ordinarily powerful incentives to conquest--the propagation of the Faith, the hope of martial renown, the prospect of territorial acquisition--were forgotten in the desire to enjoy without delay the fruits of activity and courage. Wholesale desertions were the inevitable consequences of success. Military expeditions in the Peninsula were not, since it had become a dependency of Africa, carried on with the systematic regularity which aimed at permanent occupancy. Towns were usually pillaged and burnt. The country was desolated, the population enslaved. But it was rare that a garrison was placed in a captured city, and new fortresses were no longer erected to guard the security of the frontier. The frontier, indeed, had become the uncertain boundary of a debatable land, a region which the constant incursions of enemies had transformed into a waste, whose limits, ever shifting, were yet steadily encroaching on the Moslem domain. The fortunes of a mere province, however valuable and extensive it might be, could excite but a languid and transitory interest amidst the plots and revolutions of a distant and turbulent capital. After a foray into Castile directed by Christian refugees and renegades with real or fictitious grievances to avenge, the Moslems retired from the campaign, and the opportunity afforded by the battle of Alarcos was irretrievably lost. The next spring was passed in unprofitable excursions into Castile and Estremadura. Calatrava and Guadalajara were taken, and Salamanca was stormed and burnt to the ground after having submitted to the utmost excesses of a barbarian enemy. The absence of organized resistance, the general consternation which prevailed in every Christian community, the craven behavior of great princes, who solicited with abject humility the protection of the Almohade Sultan; the extraordinary facility with which one fortress after another was occupied by the Moslems, indicate the universal demoralization consequent upon the rout of Alarcos. A campaign conducted with energy and determination must have resulted in the complete overthrow of the Christian monarchies of the North. But Yakub, destitute of the most eminent qualifications of a commander, wasted his time and consumed the strength of his soldiers in predatory enterprises which yielded neither military distinction nor political