The Story of the Nations: PortugalStephens, H. Morse (Henry Morse)
History
The Story of the Nations: Portugal
Stephens, H. Morse (Henry Morse)
Portugal -- History
The king’s death brought about the catastrophe. He left all his
dominions to his legitimate daughter, Urraca, with the result that there
was five years of fierce fighting between Henry of Burgundy, Alfonso
Raimundes, the son of Count Raymond, Alfonso I., of Aragon, and Queen
Urraca, during which the Almoravides quietly consolidated their power
and prepared for a fresh attack upon the Christians. Nothing proves
more certainly that the crusading spirit was often only a cloak for
personal ambition than this terrible internecine war, in which princes
and nobles changed sides and broke their plighted words with a
recklessness supposed to be distinctive of a most abandoned age. While
they fought with each other, the Mohammedans advanced. The Almoravide
Ali, who had succeeded his father, Yūsuf, in Spain and Morocco,
reconquered Talavera and Madrid, and laid siege to Toledo, while his
famous general, Seyr Ibn Abi-Bekr, reconquered the Moorish emīrs of
the western towns, who had revolted, and in 1112 besieged Santarem,
which then formed the southernmost outpost of the county of Portugal.
Before he took it however, Seyr died, and Count Henry, who had been
forced to come south in order to meet the invaders, once more returned
to continue his wars with the Christian princes. Only one incident in
Count Henry’s march against the Mohammedans deserves record, and that is
the refusal of the citizens of Coimbra to admit their count into their
city, or to follow him to the front, unless he confirmed the privileges
granted to them by Donna Theresa, and granted them certain fresh
concessions. Henry was forced to grant them, and on the death of Seyr,
he again advanced into Spain, and joined in further intrigues. These did
not last long, for on May 1, 1114, Count Henry died at Astorga, not
without a suspicion that he had been poisoned by Queen Urraca, leaving
his wife Theresa as regent during the minority of his son, Affonso
Henriques, who was but three years old.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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