History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 139, the Crusade, the Crusade against the Cathars, King Peter the Second of Aragon, part one.

Hello again.

Last week we saw Simon de Monfor emerge victorious from the northern part of southern France.

Having conquered all of the Arginay except for the town of Montabant, it seemed that Simon

may have, for the first time, managed to wrestle the whole of Long Dock into submission.

By the end of last week's episode,

the town of Toulouse and a smattering of strongholds

in the mountainous regions of the county of Poix were the only places

holding out for the rebels.

It is now, with Simon de Monfort seemingly victorious that we are going to leave the land of the

Raimons and take a closer look at the land of the Alphonseos. More specifically we are going to concentrate on a man who has

been absent from our narrative for a while King Peter the second of Aragon.

But we can't really understand

King Peter without also taking a closer look at the Kingdom of Aragon and we can't really understand the Kingdom of Aragon without

understanding medieval Spain as a whole. And of course we can't really understand medieval Spain without knowing some of what came before.

To prevent this from turning into a lengthy sub-series all of its own, we are going to have to summarize and leave a lot out.

Still, by the end of this next couple of episodes, you should have a deeper understanding of King Peter the Second of Aragon and his kingdom.

Right, where to start? Well, Spain occupies most of the Iberian Peninsula, which for any of you who don't know is a box-shaped piece of land jutting out of the southwest corner of Europe.

The northern part of the peninsula is surrounded by the waters of the Bay of Biskay.

The western part looks out into the Atlantic Ocean, while the southern

and eastern sides border the Mediterranean Sea. The northeastern corner of the box is attached to Europe with the Pyrenees Mountains, which

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