The history of these numerous kingdoms would be nearly as fatiguing to the reader as to the writer. It presents, for the space of two hundred years, nothing but accounts of repeated massacres, of fortresses taken and retaken, of pillages and seditions, of occasional instances of heroic conduct, but far more numerous crimes. Passing rapidly over two centuries of {86} misfortunes, let it suffice to contemplate the termination of these petty Moorish sovereignties. Christian Spain, in the mean time, presented nearly the same picture as that exhibited by the portion of the Peninsula still in possession of the Mohammedans. The kings of Leon, Navarre, Castile, and Aragon were almost always relatives, and sometimes brothers; but they were not, for that reason, the less sanguinary in their designs towards each other. Difference of religion did not prevent them from uniting with the Moors, the more effectually to oppress other Christians, or other Moors with whom they chanced to be at enmity. Thus, in a battle which occurred A.D. 1010 between two Mussulman leaders, there were found among the slain a count of Urgel and three bishops of Catalonia.[1] And the King of Leon, Alphonso V., gave his sister Theresa in marriage to Abdalla, the Moorish king of Toledo, to convert him into an ally against Castile. Among the Christians, as among the Moors, crimes were multiplied; civil wars of both a local and general nature at the same time distracted Spain, and the unhappy people expiated with {87} their property and their lives the iniquities of their rulers. While thus regarding a long succession of melancholy events, it is agreeable to find a king of Toledo called Almamon, and Benabad, the Mussulman king of Seville, affording an asylum at their courts, the one to Alphonso, the young king of Leon, and the other to the unfortunate Garcias, king of Galicia, both of whom had been driven from their kingdoms by their brother Sancho, of Castile, A.D. 1071 Heg. 465. Sancho pursued his brothers as though they had been his most implacable enemies; and the Moorish monarchs, the natural enemies of all the Christians, received these two fugitive princes as brothers. Almamon, especially, lavished the most affectionate attention upon the unfortunate Alphonso: he endeavoured to entertain him at Toledo with such varied pleasures as should banish regret for the loss of a throne: he gave him an income, and, in short, treated the prince as though he had been a near and beloved relative. When the death of the cruel Sancho (A.D. 1072, Heg. 466) had rendered Alphonso king of Leon and Castile, the generous Almamon, who now had the person of the king of his enemies in his {88} power, accompanied the prince to the frontiers of his kingdom, loaded him with presents and caresses, and, at parting, offered the free use of his troops and treasures to his late guest.