Still, even in Spain, the tendency was for material
ambitions to gain the upper hand. All classes in the Christian kingdoms
benefited by the wresting of a new province from the infidel. The nobles
received new fiefs; the burghers flocked into the cities evacuated by the
Moors, or were encouraged, by large grants of privileges, to build new cities; round
the cities clustered communities of peasants, who joyfully exchanged the barren
security of the northern uplands for the risks and the prizes of the river
valleys. No kings were so popular as those who planned and carried to a
successful conclusion these ventures for the common good. One such ruler, James
the Great of Aragon, has left us in his memoirs a faithful and instructive
account of the use to which he and his subjects turned one of these so-called
Crusades.
At six years of age he had succeeded to a divided kingdom and the
shadow of a royal prerogative. At fourteen he began a hard struggle, for the
mastery of his rebellious barons and cities, which lasted five years and earned
for him more credit than substantial success. When at length the rebels sued for
peace, he was obliged to grant it without exacting compensation; the Crown
remained as poor after the victory as before it. A little later he conceived
the idea of attacking the Moors in the Balearic Isles, "either to convert
them and turn that kingdom to the faith of our Lord, or else to destroy
them." He propounded his plan to the Cortes (1229); and in a moment
dissension was changed to harmony, civil indifference to loyal enthusiasm. The
barons said that to conquer a Saracen kingdom set in the sea would be the
greatest deed done by Christians for a hundred years.
