The historical geography of two of the three great Southern peninsulas is thus bound up with that of the Empires of which they were severally the centres. ♦Position of Spain.♦ The case is quite different with the third great peninsula, that of Spain. There the Roman dominion, even the province which had been recovered by Justinian, had quite passed away, and it was only a small part of the land which was ever reincorporated, even in the most shadowy way, with either Empire. ♦The Saracen conquest. 710-713.♦ Spain was now conquered by the Saracens, as it had before been conquered by the Romans, with this difference, that it had been among the longest and hardest of the Roman conquests, while no part of the Saracen dominion was won in a shorter time. But, if the Roman conquest was slow, it was in the end complete. The swifter Saracen conquest was never quite complete; it left a remnant by which the land was in the end to be won back. But the part of the land which withstood the Saracen was, as could hardly fail to be the case, the same part as that which held out for the longest time against the Roman. The mountainous regions of the North were never wholly conquered. ♦Asturia 732, | united with Cantabria, 751.♦ _Cantabria_ and _Asturia_, which had never fully submitted to the Goths, now became the seat of resistance under princes who claimed to represent the Gothic kings, and part of whose dominions bore the name of _Gothia_. Twenty years after the conquest, Asturia was again a Christian principality, which was presently united with Cantabria. ♦Kingdom of Leon, 916.♦ This grew into the kingdom of _Leon_. ♦County of Castile, 904. | Kingdom, 1033.♦ The great fiefs of this kingdom on its eastern and western borders, the counties of _Gallicia_ and _Castile_—the last originally a line of _castles_ against the Saracen enemy—both showed from an early time strong tendencies to separation. ♦Kingdom of Navarre. 905.♦ Meanwhile the kingdom of _Navarre_ grew up to the east, stretching, it must be remembered, on both sides of the Pyrenees, though by far the larger portion of it lay on their southern side. ♦County of Aragon c. 760.♦ To the east of Navarre the small counties of _Aragon_ and _Riparanensia_ were the beginning of the kingdom of _Aragon_. ♦The Spanish March. 778.♦ To the east again of this was the land which, after the final expulsion of the Saracens from Gaul, became part of the Carolingian Empire by the name of the _Spanish March_. The shiftings of territory, the unions and separations of these various kingdoms and principalities, belong to the special history of Spain. But early in the eleventh century the whole north-western part of Spain, and a considerable fringe of territory in the north-east, had been formed into Christian states. ♦Beginnings of Castile and Aragon.♦ Among these had been laid the foundations of two kingdoms, those of Castile and Aragon, which were to play a great part in the affairs of Europe.