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How to End a Crusade: Techniques for Making Peace in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia

How to End a Crusade: Techniques for Making Peace in the Thirteenth-Century Kingdom of Valencia

By Robert I. Burns

Military Affairs, Vol.35 (1971)

Introduction: James the Conqueror, king of confederated Arago-Catalonia, waged a stubborn piecemeal crusade from 1232 to 1245 against the Islamic regions of Eastern Spain. He spent much of the next 30 years defending his conquests against rebellion and invasion, a labor continued by his son, King Peter the Great. Roughly the size of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem or of today’s Israel, the kingdom of Valencia comprised a fertile ribbon of coastland, hemmed by highlands and at places by imposing mountainous country, sown with major cities, buzzing with foreign commerce, and armored by fifty castles and innumerable tower outposts.

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