FEUDAL STATES OF EUROPE 273
- character, and a ruler like William V (990-1029) had felt
J himself quite the equal of his Capetian contemporary and 1 had been so treated by the other monarchs of his time. Since the barons both of Languedoc and Gascony fre- | quently intermarried and fought with those of Aragon, j Catalonia, and Navarre, since the Archbishop of Christian ' Narbonne had territory on both sides of the ffaottMth- Pyrenees, and since troubadours sang in both ern Spain Provencal and Catalan, we may well interrupt for a mo- 1 ment our survey of the feudal states of France to note the I similar divisions in northern Spain as they were in the tenth
- century, leaving their subsequent expansion at the expense
of the Mohammedans in Spain for a later chapter. The I County of Barcelona represented the remains of Charle- | magne's Spanish March, and included Catalonia and Rous- I sillon, a little province destined later to figure often in j treaties of peace between French and Spanish monarchs. j Next, going west, came the tiny Kingdoms of Aragon and of Navarre. The latter, overlapping the Pyrenees like a 1 pair of saddle-bags, half French and half Spanish, was ! founded by a Gascon count with the aid of the King of the j Asturias in northwest Spain, to whom he paid homage. j Between Navarre and Aragon and Barcelona were inter- mingled several small semi-independent Moorish states. The Christians of Spain who escaped Mohammedan con- | quest were at first confined to the Asturias in the ex- I treme north, with their capital at Oviedo. Alfonso II ! (791-842) added Galicia. Then Leon, a devastated plain, which served for a time as a march between Christians and
- Moslems, was repeopled and henceforth gave its name to
'< the kingdom. Presently a new march against the Moors , was established in Castile. Returning from Spain to the remaining feudal states of France north of the Loire, we may first note in the ex- i treme west the peninsula of Brittany, forming Duchy of a separate geographical unit and distinct in its Bnttan y history from the rest of the Frankish territory. Here the influence of the Celtic clan was still felt. From 952 to 1066
