In 1292, at the age of forty-two, Count Robert II of Artois returned to his county in northern France after spending much of his adult life advancing the interests of members of his family—the French royal family—in North Africa, northern Spain, and southern Italy. After he relocated to France, Robert's employees and household familiars included nine men from southern Italy and Sicily, three from northern Italy and five from northern Iberia. With the assistance of these immigrant employees Robert revolutionized his comital and household administration, began breeding war horses at his stud farm in Normandy, and constructed the most famous northern European garden park of the later Middle Ages—the park of Hesdin. The role of these immigrants in reshaping Artois provides compelling evidence that the colonizing and crusading experiences of northern Europeans led to important transformations at home.