It was becoming self-conscious. Like England,
France was on the road to one-man power, but unlike England, the way
had been marked by no liberal or constitutional mile-posts.
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
[Sidenote: Development of the Spanish and Portuguese Monarchies]
South of the Pyrenees were the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies,
which, in a long process of unification, not only had to contend
against the same disuniting tendencies as appeared in France and
England, but also had to solve the problem of the existence side by
side of two great rival religions--Christianity and Mohammedanism.
Mohammedan invaders from Africa had secured political control of nearly
the whole peninsula as early as the eighth century, but in course of
time there appeared in the northern and western mountains several
diminutive Christian states, of which the following may be mentioned:
Barcelona, in the northeast, along the Mediterranean; Aragon, occupying
the south-central portion of the Pyrenees and extending southward
toward the Ebro River; Navarre, at the west of the Pyrenees, reaching
northward into what is now France and southward into what is now Spain;
Castile, west of Navarre, circling about the town of Burgos; Leon, in
the northwestern corner of the peninsula; and Portugal, south of Leon,
lying along the Atlantic coast.
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