But a people that could shake off the nightmare stun of the day of the Foss could rise above this blow. Toledo had resisted for twenty years, and she was not yet conquered. Leon was at her back, and its king was her proclaimed knight. In 873 she forced from the Sultan a treaty acknowledging her as an independent Republic under annual tribute, and concluded an alliance with the famous Beni Casi of Aragon, a great Visigoth family converted to Islamism, who sent Lope, the chief's son, to Toledo as consul. Then came to the throne of Cordova the great Khalif, Abd-ar-Rahman III., and Toledo was to discover that here was a very different enemy from the incapable generals that had hitherto striven in vain to subdue her. Here was a mighty commander who was not to be daunted by her frowns and her wild spirit, and whose patience and dogged determination she was to find the match of her own. Genius alone could quell her, and genius came in the handsome and valiant young monarch who would win her or die. First he sent a royal order, commanding her to surrender to him her rights as a free and independent Republic, and humbly acknowledge him as liege lord. This Toledo roughly and proudly declined to do. Her reply was couched in terms of evasive menace, for eighty-four years of freedom, under the protection of the Beni Casi of Aragon and the King of Leon, had taught her to regard herself as an enemy to be duly reckoned with. Then the Sultan sent his general vizier, Said-ibn-Moudhir in May 930 to open the siege, and in June he joined him with the flower of his army, and encamped on the banks of Algodor near the Castle of Mora. Here he forced the commander to evacuate, and placed his own garrison in the fortress before advancing on Toledo. He began by camping in the cemetery and burning the outlying villages, and then, in order to show the Toledans the kind of man they had to deal with, he proceeded to build a town on the opposite bank of the Tagus, exactly fronting the royal city, on a mountain side as high as hers. Here he and his troops dwelt for eight years, persistent and unswerving, calling the town he built "Victory" in anticipation of the inevitable result. A siege of eight years! what a tale of magnificent determination and stupendous force of will and endurance on both sides. Which to praise most, wonder most at, the Toledans or Abd-ar-Rahman? What a town, what a Sultan! With such a watchful power outside the walls, the marvel is that famine so long delayed its fatal presence; but it came at last, and stalked the gaunt dim streets and humbled the city of the Goths as no other force or persuasion could have done, and after years of accumulated sufferings and privations, bereft of pride and strength and dignity, she yielded her haggard front to the Sultan's swift assault, as soon as he knew her power undermined, her patience at bay, and by nightfall the heads of her insurgent chiefs were grinning lividly over the Puerta de Visagra.