Civilisation and morals declined, and vice and crime throve to such an extent as to bring the Castilian people everywhere into contempt. From the court itself all sentiment of honour and justice had disappeared. The king neglected his Portuguese wife in the most insulting manner, and treated his mistress, Leonora de Guzman, as queen. Garcilasso de la Vega, Alfonso’s favourite, made himself notorious by perfidy, trickery, and murder till he and his son were slain by the indignant nobles; Osorio and the Jew Joseph, who, as the king’s all-powerful advisers and high officials, had acquired for themselves great wealth, but had also roused the hatred of the people by their covetousness and extortions, were at last delivered to their enemies by Alfonso himself, when the one was surreptitiously murdered and the other hunted from the country with disgrace and ignominy; their wealth went to feed the royal coffers. Under such circumstances the Saracens could have easily made new conquests, had not Granada too been distracted at the same time by internal wars. The king concluded a truce with Castile, by which Alfonso gained time for the complete overthrow of his domestic enemies. [Sidenote: [1337-1350 A.D.]] After having won over the Basques to his side by confirming their rights and liberties in an assembly of that bold mountain people under the famous oak of Guernica, he conquered one hostile town after the other, divided his enemies by making separate treaties with each, and aided by the diligent mediation of Pope Benedict XII compelled them, one by one, to make homage and submission. Alfonso de Haro and other faithless barons made atonement with their lives. Even the king of Portugal overcame his indignation at the insults offered to his daughter, and the machinations of the royal quasi-wife Leonora de Guzman, and, on Alfonso’s promising to atone for the injury and treat his wife as her position rightfully demanded, he made his peace with him (1339). Immediately afterwards a new Saracen army from Africa landed on the Spanish coast under Abul-Hakam, and in conjunction with the emir of Granada began a holy war with the siege of Tarifa (1340). But the battle of Salado struck the death-blow of the Mohammedan power in Spain, and enriched the Christian victors with unlimited booty. The pope too, who had forwarded the undertaking by briefs and exhortations to a crusade, received magnificent tokens of the victory as a reward.