Alfonso ruled upward of fifty years. Incessant wars now followed between the followers of the Cross and the Crescent, and a frenzy for martyrdom on the part of the Christians had to be repressed by a Christian archbishop at the solemn request of the Cadis. Garcia of Oviedo died without children shortly after his accession; when his brother Ordoño II. reunited the whole of his father’s dominions. He transferred the seat of government to Leon, and altered the title of King of Oviedo into that of King of Leon. This Ordoño abandoned the peaceful policy of his greater father, and undertook many expeditions with varying and uncertain success against the Arabs. He plundered Merida in 917, and routed the Berbers in Southern Spain in 918. Yet three years later, at Val de Junqueras (921), near Pamplona, the Christians suffered disastrous defeat. The usual rebellion at home was appeased by the treacherous execution or murder of no less than four counts of Castile in 922, and was followed by the king’s death in 923. Of Fruela II. (923-925), Alfonso IV. (925-930), and Ramiro II. (930-950), little need be said, but that they lived and reigned as kings of Leon. To Ramiro, however, is due, at least, the honor of an authentic victory over the Moslem forces of the great Caliph, Abdur Rahman an Nasir (939), at Simancas, and afterward in the same year at Alhandega. Ramiro, after the usual rebellion, abdicated, in 950, in favor of his son Ordoño--who had married Urraca, daughter of the principal rebel of the day, Fernan Gonzalez, count of Castile--and who succeeded his father as Ordoño III. But decapitation was a far more certain way of suppressing rebellion than matrimony; and Fernan Gonzalez lived to intrigue against his daughter and her royal husband in favor of Sancho, a younger brother of the king. Ordoño, however, held his own against his brother, and revenged himself on his father-in-law, by repudiating his wife; who, with her personal and family grievances, was promptly _acquired_ by Sancho, who succeeded, on his brother’s death, to the crown of which he had failed to possess himself by force. But even as a legitimate sovereign, Sancho, surnamed the Fat, was not allowed to reign in peace. He was driven from his kingdom by that most versatile rebel, Count Fernan Gonzalez, and sought refuge at the court of his uncle Garcia of Navarre at Pamplona. Thence, in company with Garcia, and his mother Theuda, he journeyed to the court of the Caliph at Cordova, where the distinguished visitors were received with great show of welcome by Abdur Rahman at Az Zahra; and where Hasdai, the Jew, the most celebrated physician of the day, succeeded in completely curing Sancho of the distressing malady--a morbid and painful corpulency--which incapacitated him from the active discharge of his royal duties.