by the time michael turned his ponderous mind from thoughtful scenarios of a lifetime devoted to nurturing a child within a loving family environment and back to the tutorial , chad had covered the entire dark ages , during which the blight upon the land was not only brought about by foreign conquers , but also from great famines and deathly plagues ; and how countries like spain , france , and england survived their hostile aggressors to become great nations , not through forceful suppression of their enemies , but rather by religious conversion of the pagan tribes ; a system of control that would prove not only fruitless , but more an impelling rallying call for islamic raiders , who gained control of spain and the cherished holy lands in the middle east at the start of the 8th century ; which in 1096 led to the first of nine crusades , resulting in over two hundred years of bloody massacres , merciless victories , and brutal defeats , with power shifting struggles ultimately ending in abject failure for both military campaigns and in a moral hypocrisy that forever stained the offending faiths ; but the power struggles did not end in faraway lands as religious abuses , internal conflicts , and territorial disputes still reigned supreme in the homelands , with many kingdoms desperate to stabilize their nearly bankrupt economies after long costly foreign wars ; and how countries like spain would find an influx of wealth through the exploration for profitable trade routes with the discovery of the americas in the new world , making spain a dominant power in europe for the next two centuries .