Meanwhile the emperor in Paris had been organizing a fresh army for the reconquest of Prussia.
After the reconquest of the Sudan one-fourth of the cadets in the military school of Cairo were Sudanese.
At this time, however, the Almohades had triumphed in Africa and invaded the Peninsula, where they were able to check the Portuguese reconquest, although isolated bands of crusading adventurers succeeded in establishing themselves in various cities of Alemtejo.
On the one hand, the reconquest of lost territories from the Mahommedans by Christian powers had been proceeding steadily for more than a hundred years before the First Crusade; on the other hand, the position of the Eastern empire after 1071 was a clear and definite summons to the Christian West, and proved, in the event, the immediate occasion of the holy war.
The transformation of Castile from a small county in the north of what is now Old Castile into an independent monarchy, was one of the decisive events in the reconquest of Spain from the Moors.