Civil war had already broken out before the arrival of Affonso at Lisbon in 1246, when he declared himself Defender of the kingdom; Donna Mencia behaved in a most disgraceful manner to the king, whom she had ruined; Sancho and the Castilian troops which he brought to his help were defeated, and the unfortunate monarch, whose early years had been so full of promise, retired to Toledo where he died, deserted and unhappy, on January 8, 1248. With such a commencement it might have been expected that the reign of Affonso III. would have been a period of civil war and internal dissension, or at the least of complete submission to the Church and the feudal nobility; but, on the contrary, it was from a constitutional point of view the most important of all the early reigns, and also that in which Portugal concluded its warfare with the Mohammedans in the Peninsula and attained its European limits. In short, Affonso III. proved by the events of his reign to be essentially a politic king, if not a high-minded man. On his brother’s death he exchanged his title of “visitador” or “curador” of the realm for that of king, and, in order to establish his fame as a warrior and a crusader, he at once prepared to complete the conquest of the Algarves, where most of the acquisitions of Sancho II. had been lost to the Moors during the civil war. Aided by his uncle, Dom Pedro, and the Knights Hospitallers under Gonçalo Peres Magro, he was speedily successful, taking Faro, Albufeira, which he granted to the knights of Aviz, and Porches, which he assigned to his chancellor, Estevão Annes, in 1249, and Ayamonte, Cacello, and Tavira in 1250. This extension of the Portuguese territory was by no means acceptable to Alfonso X. “the Wise,” who was now king of Castile and Leon; and after a short war, Affonso III. consented to marry Alfonso’s illegitimate daughter, Donna Beatrice de Guzman, though the Countess of Boulogne was still alive, and to hold the Algarves in usufruct only.