For six years after the Prime Minister's death, his son Muzaffar maintained the unity of the kingdom. Then followed the deluge of greedy adventurers, rival khalifs, and impudent pretenders. The Spaniards, who formed after all the bulk of the population in which they were merged, loved to be ruled by a king; they liked a dynasty, and were proud of the memories of the great Omeyyad house. The rule of a minister, however just and good, was not their idea of government; the king must rule by himself. So they rebelled against the authority of a second son of Almanzor, who had provoked them by publicly putting in his claim to succeed to the throne, and they insisted on the Khalif taking the reins of State into his own weak hands. The unfortunate Hishām, thus suddenly dragged out of the seclusion of his harīm, where he had been a happy prisoner for thirty years, in vain implored the people not to demand impossibilities of him; they would have him rule, and when it became clear to everybody that the feeble middle-aged man was as helpless as an infant, they made him abdicate, and set up another member of his family in his place. This was really the end of the Omeyyad dynasty of Andalusia. Khalif after khalif was set up for the next twenty years; one was the puppet of the Cordovans, another was the puppet of the Slav guards; a third was the puppet of the Berbers; a fourth was a sort of figure-head to mask the ambition of the ruler of Seville; but all were puppets of some faction, and had no vestige of real authority. The throne-room in the palace became the scene of murder after murder, as khalif succeeded khalif. One poor wretch hid himself in the oven of the bath-room, till he was discovered, dragged out, and butchered before the eyes of his successor, whose turn was not far off. Hishām II., the poor creature who had been kept in a state of perpetual infancy by Almanzor and the queen-mother Aurora, was forced to play his part in the raree-show. He was again set up, and again pulled down; and the silken chains of his imprisonment among the beauties of his harīm were exchanged for the gloomy walls of a real dungeon. What became of him afterwards is unknown. His women said that he had contrived to escape, and had taken refuge in Asia, or at Mekka. The throne possessed few attractions for the miserable Khalif, who loved seclusion and pious duties; and he must have known that his presence in Andalusia gave a rallying cry to ambitious partisans, and could only lead to further strife. It was natural that he should prefer to end his days in the exercise of devotion at the holy temple of Islam. An impostor, who closely resembled Hishām in person, set himself up as the Khalif at Seville, and was acknowledged as a convenient puppet by the powerful lord of that city; but the real Hishām had disappeared for ever, and no one heard of him again.