During the course of the crusades, we see Spain occupied in its own boundaries with defending itself against those same Saracens whom the other nations of Europe went to contend with in the East; in the north of the Peninsula, some Christian sovereignties had maintained themselves, which began to be formidable under Sancho the Great, king of Castile and Arragon. The valour of the Castilians, sustained by the example of the Cid, and by the influence of chivalric manners, and seconded by warriors from all the provinces of France, took Toledo, before the end of the eleventh century. But the conquests of the Spaniards did not afterwards correspond with the splendour of their early triumphs; as fast as they retook provinces from the Moors, they made separate kingdoms of them; and the Spanish power, thus divided, became, in some sort, weakened by its own victories. The invasion of the Moors in Spain bore some resemblance to that of the Franks in Asia. It was the religion of Mahomet that animated the Saracen warriors to the fight, as the Christian religion inflamed the zeal and ardour of the soldiers of the cross. Africa and Asia often answered to the appeal of the Mussulman colonies in Spain, as Europe did to the cries of alarm of the Christian colonies in Syria. Enthusiasm gave birth on both sides to prodigies of heroism, and held fortune for a long time suspended between the two inimical nations and the two inimical religions. A spirit of independence naturally grew up among the Spaniards, during a war in which the state had need of all its citizens, and in which every citizen, by that means, acquired a great degree of importance. It has been remarked, with reason, that a people that has done great things, that an entire people called to the defence of its country, experiences an exaggerated sentiment of its rights, shows itself more exacting, sometimes more unjust towards those who govern, and often feels tempted to employ against its sovereigns the strength it had employed against its enemies. Thus we may see in the Spanish annals, that the nobility and the people were more turbulent than in other countries, and that monarchy was there at first more limited than among the other nations of Europe.