The weakness of a sovereign and the arrogance of a tyrannical minister, provoking the defection of the Andalusian commanders, had decided the fate of the Saracen empire in Spain. Other disasters, apparently as serious, had been retrieved by the able emirs, generals, and statesmen who from time to time controlled the policy of that empire in the Peninsula. Other successes, not less brilliant, had been neutralized by the indecision, the incompetency, the national prejudices, or the personal rivalry of the conquerors. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, however, was one of the most decisive of the great struggles in which the Christian and the Moslem powers of the West contended for imperial supremacy. An interval of five centuries--a period signalized by almost incessant hostility--separates it from the field of the Guadalete. During that time a great monarchy had arisen, had reached the summit of military renown, literary excellence, and scientific culture, and had fallen, dragging with it the imposing fabric of civilization erected at such cost and under such favorable auspices as to encourage the hope that through the influence of its beneficent institutions and from the glorious example of its success might be effected the thorough and permanent regeneration of Europe. The khalifate had been succeeded by an era of anarchy, persecution, ruin. The fairest provinces of the Peninsula had been repeatedly abandoned to the savage hordes of the Sahara and to the equally ferocious warriors of the North. More than once, in the pursuit of their common prey, these fierce invaders, dissimilar in all the physical characteristics which distinguish the different races of humanity, yet strangely alike in the mental instincts peculiar to the unlettered and superstitious barbarian, who respects no influence but that of superior force, and despises every profession but that of arms, had encountered each other on fields of terrific battle. Amidst the confusion engendered by perpetual conflict, the individuality of the region which once was the centre of the Ommeyade empire was lost. Its provinces, sufficiently extensive and opulent to be ranked as kingdoms, were subdivided into scores of insignificant principalities. The imperial metropolis,--the centre of Faith, the destination of the pilgrim, the home of art and poetry, the emporium of commerce,--stripped of her honors and her wealth, was degraded to the position of a provincial city. Every district had its sovereign, every town its court, every castle its lord. National unity, so difficult to establish and preserve among a people whose traditions were based upon tribal prejudice and individual independence, now became utterly impossible. With each influx of foreigners came fresh cause for discord. The energies of the innumerable rulers, who, through superior address or more propitious fortune, had obtained the government of the Peninsula, instead of being directed to their mutual