To-day they are waiting in the north of Africa for Sohail to move once again to the north: when she does so, they will rise again as a single man, and regain their passionately loved Alhambra, their beautiful kingdom of Andalusia. Tradition is fond of showing us a nucleus of fervent Christian patriots obliged by the invading Arab hordes to retire to the north-western corner of the Iberian peninsula. Here they made a stand, a last glorious stand, and, gradually increasing in strength, they were at last able to drive back the invader inch by inch until he fled across the straits to trouble Iberia no more. Nothing is, however, less true. The noblemen and monarchs of Galicia, Leon, and Oviedo--later of Castile, Navarra, and Aragon--were so many petty lords who, fighting continually among themselves, ruled over fragments of the defeated Visigothic kingdom. At times they called in the Arab enemy--to whom in the early centuries they paid a yearly tribute--to help them against the encroachments of their brother Christians. Consequently they lacked that spirit of patriotism and of national ambition which might have justified their claims to be called monarchs or rulers of Spain. The Church was no better. Its bishops were independent princes who ruled in their dioceses like sovereigns in their palaces; they recognized no supreme master, not even the Pope, whose advice was ignored, and whose orders were disobeyed. It was not until the twelfth or thirteenth century that the Christian incursions into Moorish territory took the form of patriotic crusades, in which fervent Christians burnt with the holy desire of weeding out of the peninsula the Saracen infidel. This holy crusade was due to the coming from France and Italy of the Cluny monks. Foreigners,--like the Romans, the Church, the Visigoths, and the Moors,--they created a situation which facilitated the union of the different monarchs, prelates, and noblemen, by showing them a common cause to fight for. Besides, anxious to establish the supreme power of the Pope in a land where his authority was a dead letter, they crossed the Pyrenees and broke the absolute power of the arrogant prelates. The result was obvious: the Church became uniform throughout the country, and its influence waxed to the detriment of that of the noblemen. Once again the kings learnt to rely upon the former, thus putting an end to the power of the latter. Once more the Church grew to be an ecclesiastical organization in which the role of the prelates became more important as time went on. In short, if the coming of the Moors retarded for nearly six hundred years the birth of the Spanish nation, this birth was directly brought about by the political ability of the Cluny monks; the Moors, on the other hand, exerted a direct and lasting influence on the shaping and moulding of the future nation.