Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/206

 i 9 4 THE LATER MIDDLE AGES the whole of the state, and Rudolf of Hapsburg was chosen German king, though he was by no means possessed, in his Rudolf of own territorial dominion, of the wealth and resources Hapsburg. n which the Saxon, Franconian, or Swabian emperors had been able to rely. We have reached, in short, a point at which Italy ceases to be bound up with the German Empire; and the emperor, when any one does receive the Imperial Crown, no longer has that semblance of universal authority which had hitherto attached to his person. The name of Alfonso the Wise of Castile, and the fact that he was chosen by some of the electoral princes to be emperor, 4. The pro- is significant of the changes which had been taking gress of Spain, place in Spain since the fall of the kaliphate of Cordova. From the northern strip of territory, washed by the waters of the Bay of Biscay, the kingdom of Castile, having absorbed that of Leon, pushed southward until towards the close of the eleventh century it had driven the Moors beyond the Tagus. The career of conquest, however, was checked by the arrival of a fresh Moorish immigration, and Spain was turned into a sort of crusading area, where men might go to fight the Moslem instead of transplanting them- selves to Syria. The achievements of the Cid Campeador belong partly to the regions of romance; nevertheless, they have a solid historical basis. Different and antagonistic Moorish dynasties succeeded each other, and the tide of success ebbed and flowed throughout the twelfth century. For the Christians were no more united than the Moors. From the French marches and the region lying between the Ebro and The Kingdoms the Pyrenees, the kingdom of Aragon was pushing of Spain. forward, while the north-eastern corner of Spain, including Barcelona, was joined to the county of Provence, the southern portion of Burgundy. Navarre, between Aragon and Castile, was another small independent kingdom; and the Christians who had pushed into Portugal refused to recognise Castile's supremacy. Barcelona and the province of Catalonia, however, soon became associated with Aragon; and this kingdom developed a considerable naval power, acquired possession of the western islands of the Mediterranean, and