Having pacified Sicily, in appearance at least, and caused his son and daughter-in-law to be acknowledged by the rebels, Martin, who seems to have been in no anxiety about the security of his kingdom, proceeded to Sardinia and Corsica, with the view of restoring tranquillity also in those islands. The following year he convoked his prelates, barons, and deputies at Saragossa, and caused his son, the Sicilian king, to be acknowledged his successor; it was also decreed that Sicily and Aragon should forever be united under the same sceptre. No sooner had Martin arrived in Spain, than Sardinia again became the theatre of civil war. The Aragonese had acknowledged the rival pontiff, Benedict, and Boniface had conferred the fiefs of Sardinia and Sicily on the count de Molineto. In 1408, the Sicilian king marched against the rebels, who, with eighteen thousand infantry, did not refuse the battle. It ended in a complete triumph for the king, and was followed by the surrender of an important fortress. As the heat of the weather began to be intensely felt, the victor returned to Cagliari. That heat and the festivities consequent on his success threw him into a fever, which, though not in itself fatal, he is said to have rendered so by incontinence. He died on the 24th of July, 1409. On the death of this prince Martin and the Aragonese were anxious to name a successor to the crown.[c] Civil war was imminent when King Martin departed this life (1410), leaving the succession of the kingdom by his last will and testament to him to whom it was lawfully due. By his death the male line of the counts of Barcelona became extinct--a dynasty which had vigorously and gloriously filled the throne of Aragon for nearly three centuries. INTERREGNUM IN ARAGON (1410-1412 A.D.) [Sidenote: [1410-1414 A.D.]] No nation whose political sagacity was less highly developed by a free constitutional and political system could have emerged from the two years of revolution upon which Aragon now entered without detriment to its liberty and legal institutions. For during the interregnum the kingdom fluctuated between two perils; it might either have broken up into its three constituent parts or succumbed to a military despotism.