Sisebut died in 621, and was succeeded by his son Recared II who reigned for a few months only. He was followed by Duke Swinthila, who had greatly distinguished himself as a general in the wars of Sisebut. He pursued and completed the military policy of the latter, conquering (629) the algarves, the last province in the possession of the Byzantines. Thus, with the exception of a few unimportant districts in the north, which had no regular government, such as Vasconia, the Pyrenees of Aragon, and possibly some other places in mountainous parts, whose inhabitants remained independent, the Goths at last succeeded in reducing the country to one united State. Swinthila also fought against the Vascons, and on one occasion defeated them. As a military base for his control over the district, he built the fortress of Oligitum, which some geographers take to be the same as the modern Olite, in the province of Navarre.
If Swinthila had stopped short at this point, he would certainly have retained the goodwill of his contemporaries, and the epithet of "father of the poor" applied to him by Isidore of Seville; but it is probable that Swinthila was too sure of his power when he ventured to deal with the problems of internal policy, and that his failure affected the judgments passed on him. As a matter of fact, Swinthila did nothing more than what Liuwa and Leovigild had done before him, when he shared the government of the kingdom with members of his own family, namely: — his son Recimir, his wife Theodora, and his brother Geila. Why was Swinthila not permitted to do this, seeing that it had been tolerated in the former kings? Whether he set about it with less caution than his predecessors, or shewed more severity in suppressing the conspiracies, we do not know. The fact is that he not only lost the crown in 631, whilst struggling against the party of a noble called Sisenand, who, with an army of Franks, advanced as far as Saragossa, but that the chroniclers of the period call him a wicked and sensual tyrant. He did not die in battle — his defeat was mainly due to treachery — nor did he lose his freedom. In 633, to judge from a canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo, he was still alive, but of his end we know nothing. The political problem was still unsolved; and we shall see that the kings did not abandon the intention of making the crown hereditary.
Of Sisenand, who reigned for six years, and died in 636, we know nothing more important than that he summoned the Council already referred to, which condemned Swinthila for his "evil deeds" and passed canons relating to the Jews. These canons indicate a change of policy in the clergy, which is all the more interesting, because, as we have said before, the Council had for its president Isidore of Seville. On the one hand, in agreement with the doctrine of this prelate, it censured the use of violent measures to enforce a change of religion (Canon LVII); but, on the other hand, it accepted and sanctioned those conversions which
