[Sidenote: [711-1214 A.D.]]
“They come! they come! I see the groaning land
White with the turbans of each Arab horde:
Swart Zara joins her misbelieving band,
Allah and Mahomet their battle word,
The choice they yield, the _Koran_ or the sword.
See how the Christians rush to arms amain!
In yonder shout the voice of conflict roar’d;
The shadowy hosts are closing on the plain.
Now God and Saint Jago strike for the good cause of Spain!
“By heaven, the Moors prevail! the Christians yield!
Their coward leader gives for flight the sign!
Their sceptred craven mounts to quit the field--
‘Is not yon steed Orelia?’--‘Yes, ’tis mine!
But never was she turn’d from battle line.’
Lo! where the recreant spurs o’er stock and stone!--
‘Curses pursue the slave, and wrath divine!
Rivers engulf him!’--‘Hush!’ in shuddering tone
The prelate said; ‘Rash prince, yon vision’d form’s thine own.’
“Just then a torrent cross’d the flier’s course;
The dangerous ford the kingly likeness tried,
But the deep eddies whelm’d both man and horse,
Swept like benighted peasant down the tide.”
--SCOTT, _The Vision of Don Roderic_.
The young Arab power was at the door of Spain before the degenerate
Goths were half awake to their danger. They had hardly shaken off their
slumbers before they were prisoners or fugitives from the house they had
ruled for almost exactly three centuries. Roderic and his sixty thousand
men fought madly for three days at Xeres near the junction of the
Guadalete and Guadalquivir, but when the brave king himself lost courage
and fled--if indeed he fled--the whole race took panic with him. The end
of Roderic is lost in a tangle of fable and tradition. Scott has embalmed
the legend as quoted above, and Southey in his poem, _The Last of the
Goths_, has built him a splendid mausoleum; but all that history can say
is that his crown and sceptre were found on the bank of the stream and
that his kingdom was as completely disembodied as its empty emblems. And
now, as Hume[b] says, “The purely Gothic element in Spain was withered up
as if by fire.”
[Sidenote: [711-755 A.D.]]
The story of the Moslem conquest has been already told in the fifth
chapter of the history of the Arabs, in the eighth volume of this
work. To that the reader is referred for the details of the invasion.
The original Spanish people who had been regarded by the Goths as an
inferior race unworthy of marriage, though the restriction was withdrawn
shortly before the Moslems came, and the Jews, treated by the Goths
as a cursed pest whom it was a virtue to torment--both welcomed the
new-comers. They were rewarded with a gentleness of tolerance and a
growth of intellectuality and commerce that lead one to question if the
Arab domination of Europe would have been indeed the horror it is usually
imagined; and if the repulse Charles Martel gave the Saracens at Tours in
732 were really the benefit to civilisation that we are wont to imagine
it.
[Illustration: A MOHAMMEDAN CHIEF]
The chapter on Arab civilisation in the eighth volume argues that the
Arabians gave to Spain a glory and a culture of the most brilliant type,
extending from the restoration of Greek letters to the awakening of
modern science and commerce of the most splendid sort. When at length
they were cast out of Spain, the reaction against them was itself
the effort of an intolerant, tyrannous, and blood-thirsty religious
system, which even in its triumph at the time of Ferdinand and Isabella
distinguished itself by the greatest blot on human civilisation, the
Inquisition, and by cruelties that spread zealously round the world
to the enslavement and torture, often the annihilation of remote and
innocent races.
It would be so easy to adduce evidence that the Christian powers have
done more harm to civilisation than the Moslem, that perhaps it would be
wiser to omit bigoted self-gratulations on the failure of Arab ambitions
in Europe, and be content with an impartial and non-dogmatic recital of
a conflict in which Europeans and Africans fought with a common greed
of power and masked primeval instincts under the names of religion and
patriotism. The aims of both were checked as much by internal dissensions
and treacheries as by any united opposition, and in neither Christian
nor Arab politics is there much food for pride in humanity. Leaving the
reader to find in the previously mentioned history of the Arabs the
account of Moslem rule, misrule, and feud in the regions they conquered,
we may turn to the equally sordid and selfish, and at times equally lofty
and heroic story of the Christians, who found refuge in rocky fastnesses
and there grew slowly and painfully to a new life and a large hope.
They had much to complain of from Arab cruelty to those who would not
accept the alternatives of “_Koran_ or tribute,” but war was especially
brutal in the Middle Age, and the Christians did not fail to revenge
their maltreated women and children on the non-combatants of the
other side. The pity one instinctively feels at the sufferings of the
Christians is somewhat stifled on realising that the same sufferings
had been or would speedily be visited on the Mohammedans or on other
Christians at the first opportunity. The examples of clemency which
are now the commonplaces, the demands of warfare, were at that time so
rare and amazing that they might almost be said to be always due to the
eccentricity of the conqueror. But to take up the story of the Christian
_Reconquista_:
Roderic was miscalled “the last of the Goths,” for there were two Gothic
rulers to succeed him. In the southeast Theodomir made peace with the
Arabs; reigned as a vassal; and was succeeded in 743 by the Gothic
Atanagild, whose realm was absorbed by Abd ar-Rahman in 755. In the
northwest was Pelayo, who made a great name on small capital.[a]
THE ASTURIAS AND LEON UNDER PELAYO (718 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [718 A.D.]]
The more zealous or more independent Christians, who, after the triumphs
of Tarik and Musa, were dissatisfied with the submission of Theodomir,
gradually forsook their habitations in the south to seek a more secure
asylum amidst the northern mountains of their country. They knew that in
the same hills the sacred fire of liberty had been preserved, in defiance
of Carthaginian, or Roman, or Goth; and they felt that to them was now
confided the duty of reviving its expiring embers.
At first, indeed, the number which resorted to these solitudes was
few, and actuated by the mere hope of individual safety: but as the
Mohammedan excesses became more frequent and intolerable; as neither
prompt submission, nor the solemnity of treaties could guarantee the
unhappy natives from plunder,[19] persecution, and destruction; and,
consequently, as the number of refugees increased, the possibility of a
combined defence on a larger scale, and even of laying the foundation
of an infant state, was eagerly indulged. The care of the sacred
relics, which, on the reduction of Toledo, were carefully conveyed to
these mountain fastnesses, the presence not only of prelates, but of
nobles descended from the blood of the Goths, and the necessity of
self-preservation, united these refugees in an indissoluble bond. But
they could do nothing without a head: they proceeded to elect one;
and their unanimous suffrages fell on Pelayo, said by Sebastian of
Salamanca[f] to be the son of Favila, duke of Cantabria, belonging to the
royal house of Cindasuinto.[20]
At the time this unequivocal demonstration of defiance was made by the
Christians, Al-Haur, the Mohammedan governor, was in Gaul; but one of his
generals, Al-Khaman, accompanied, as we are informed, by the renegade
archbishop Oppas, and obedient to his orders, assembled a considerable
force, and hastened into the Asturias, to crush the rising insurrection.
Arriving at the foot of the Asturian mountains without obstacle, the
Arabian general did not hesitate to plunge into the defiles: passing
along the valley of Cangas de Onis he came to the foot of Mount Auseva,
near the river Sella. On the heights of Covadonga, and in the cavern of
St. Mary, the small but resolute band of Pelayo was concealed, waiting
for the attack. Loath to run the risk of one where the advantage of
position was so much in favour of the Christians, Al-Khaman is said
to have despatched Oppas to Pelayo, representing to that prince the
inutility of resistance, and the advantage of instant submission. The
refusal of the Asturian, who well knew his position, and what stout
hearts he commanded, was followed by the ascent of the Arabs up the
steep acclivity. But to their consternation huge rocks and stones came
thundering down on their dense ranks, by which they were precipitated
into the narrow valley below. The destruction did not end here: it met
those who attempted to ascend the opposite acclivity. Thousands were
crushed beneath the vast fragments; and the rest would speedily have
shared the same fate, had they not precipitately fled by the way they had
advanced. The confusion attending this retrograde movement was turned to
good account by the Christians, who now issued from their hiding-places,
and inflicted a terrific loss on the fugitives. The extent of that loss
we should vainly attempt to estimate; but that it was great may be
learned from the very admission of the vanquished.[h]
The brilliance of Pelayo’s success naturally inspired the old chroniclers
to a belief in divine interposition, and the account of this battle by
Sebastian of Salamanca is too vivid an example of history, as it was
written by the churchmen, to be omitted.[a]
SEBASTIAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF COVADONGA (718 A.D.)
And when Pelayo knew the approach of the Arabs, he betook himself to a
cave, which is called the cave of Santa Maria, and immediately posted
his army around it. And Oppas, the bishop, approaching him, thus said:
“Brother, thou art not ignorant how, when all Spain was under the rule of
the Goths, and when all her armies were joined together, she was unable
to cope with the Ismailites: how much less will be thy power to defend
thyself here in such a strait? Now listen to my advice: relinquish all
thoughts of resistance; that, being in peace with the Arabs, thou mayst
enjoy much prosperity, and preserve whatever thou didst or dost possess.”
And Pelayo replied, “I will neither have the Arabs for friends, nor
will I submit to their dominion. Thou dost not perceive that the church
of God is like unto the moon; now it decreases, and now it regains its
former magnitude. And we trust in God’s mercy that from this very hill
which thou beholdest, salvation may arise for Spain, and the Gothic army
be renewed; so that in us may be fulfilled the saying of the prophet,
‘I will visit their iniquities with a rod, and their sins with stripes;
but my pity will I not withdraw from them.’ Wherefore, though we have
undergone a righteous judgment, we yet believe that there will descend
grace from on high for the restoration of our church, our nation, and
kingdom. We fear not; we utterly despise this multitude of pagans.”
Then the wicked bishop returned to the enemy, and said: “Hasten and
fight; for by the sword only shall ye have peace with this man.”
Immediately they handle their weapons, and begin the battle: the engines
are raised, the missiles fitted to the sling; the swords shine, the
spears glitter, and the arrows are sent forth. But the weapons of the
Lord were not wanting; for as the stones were shot from the slings and
engines, and reached the temple of Holy Mary, ever a virgin, they were
miraculously driven back on those who sent them, and killed a multitude
of the Chaldeans. And as the Lord doth not number the spears, but giveth
the victory to whom he pleaseth, so when the faithful left the cave to
join in the battle, the Chaldeans forthwith fled, being divided into
two bodies. And Bishop Oppas was soon taken, and Al-Khaman slain; in
the same place were also slain 124,000 of the Chaldeans. Sixty-three
thousand who remained alive ascended the top of Mount Auseva, and hastily
descended by a precipice, which is usually called Amosa, to the territory
of the Liebanians. But neither did these escape the Lord’s vengeance;
for when they reached the banks of the Deva, near a heritage called
Casegadia, that part of the hill which overhung the river suddenly gave
way,--manifestly through God’s judgment,--forced the sixty-three thousand
Chaldeans into the river, and covered them all. So that, even at this
day, when the channel is swollen by the winter torrents, and the banks
are overflown, vestiges of arms and human bones are clearly to be seen.
Do not esteem this a vain or false miracle, but remember that He who thus
covered the Arabs, the persecutors of God’s church, with such a vast
mountain heap, is the same who plunged the Egyptians into the Red Sea
while pursuing Israel.[f]
Sebastian further adds that 375,000 Moors took refuge in France from the
divine vengeance. His generosity with his numerals equals his liberality
with miracles, but is more confusing. The result of the battle, however,
was most definite. Al-Khaman and his colleague Suleiman were both
killed.[a]
[Sidenote: [718-739 A.D.]]
Oppas, too, is said to have been taken prisoner, and justly put to
death for his treachery. This was splendid success; but it was almost
equalled by the defeat of Manuza. This chief, who was then governor of a
northern city, hearing of the disastrous defeat of his countrymen, and
apprehensive that the enemy would soon be upon him, ordered his troops
to retreat; but he was overtaken, defeated, and slain by the Asturian
hero. These memorable events fixed the destiny of the infant kingdom;
they were the first of a succession of triumphs which, though sometimes
tardy, and often neutralised by accident, ended in the final expulsion
of the invaders from the peninsula. The Asturias were now left in the
undisturbed possession of the Christians, nor were the Mohammedans for
some years in any disposition to assail their formidable neighbours.
The remainder of Pelayo’s reign is unknown: it was probably passed in
peace. He died in 737, and was buried in the church of St. Eulalia, at
Cangas de Onis. Of Favila, the son and successor of Pelayo, nothing is
known beyond his brief reign and tragical death. In 739, he was killed
by a boar while hunting near the church of the Holy Cross, which he had
founded.
ALFONSO THE CATHOLIC (739-757 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [739-757 A.D.]]
Alfonso I, surnamed the Catholic, a son-in-law of Pelayo, descended,
we are told, from Leuvigild, was the next prince on whom the suffrages
of the Asturians fell: not that Favila left no children; but they were
doubtless of tender age, and therefore unfitted for bearing so heavy a
burden as the duties of monarchy in times so critical.[21] Besides, among
these rude mountaineers, hereditary right seems to have been as much
unknown as among their Gothic fathers; the crown, however, was always
confined to the same family, and the election was generally sure to fall
on the next prince in succession, provided he was not disqualified for
the dignity either by age, or impotence of body or of mind.
Though no record remains of Alfonso’s battles with the Arabs, it is
certain that he must have been victor in several; for he made ample
additions to his territories. Lugo, Orense, and Tuy, in Galicia; Braga,
Oporto, Viseu, and Chaves, in Lusitania; Leon, Astorga, Simancas, Zamora,
Salamanca, and Ledesma, in the kingdom of Leon; Avila, Sepulveda,
Segovia, Osma, Corunna del Condé, Lara, and Saldaña, in Castile--these,
and many other places of less note, were reduced by him. It appears,
however, that he acted with cruelty towards the Mohammedan inhabitants,
whom he exterminated to make room for his Christian colonists.[22]
Biscay, too, and Navarre, obeyed Alfonso; so that his kingdom extended
from the western shores of Galicia into Aragon, and from the Cantabrian
Sea to the southern boundary of the Tierra de Campos; that is, over about
one-fourth of all Spain. To account for the rapidity and extent of these
conquests--conquests, however, which for the most part were frequently
lost and regained in succeeding wars,--the reader has only to remember
the civil dissensions of Mohammedan Spain some years prior to the
accession of the caliph Abd ar-Rahman.
But Alfonso was not merely a conqueror: the colonies which he
established, the towns which he founded or restored, the churches which
he built or repaired, are justly adduced as signal monuments of his
patriotism and religious zeal. Hence the appellation of “Catholic”--an
appellation which continues at the present day. His end happened in
757.[h]
In the chronicle of Alfonso the reign of the first Alfonso is treated
with great reverence and his death thus described:
“In the nineteenth year of the reign of Alfonso the Catholic, of the era
791, of the Incarnation of our Lord 753, of the empire of Constantine 15,
and of the Alarabes since Muhammed was their king, 132, it befel that
King Alfonso, having populated such places as he saw he could maintain,
and laboured ever to serve God as far as in him lay, and to maintain
his kingdom in peace and justice, fell sick and died, and rendered his
soul to God, and at the hour of his death voices were heard in the air
singing, ‘The righteous perisheth and no man layeth it to heart, and
merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken
away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace.’[23] And King
Alfonso was buried with great pomp in the town of Cangas with his wife
Doña Hermesinda, in the church of Santa Maria of that town.”[k]
ALFONSO THE CHASTE AND BERNARDO DEL CARPIO
[Sidenote: [757-866 A.D.]]
Fruela I (757-768) Alfonso’s son, made Oviedo his capital. To strengthen
his position, endangered by the civil distractions of his reign, he
obtained his recognition as king of the Asturias and Oviedo from the
caliph of Cordova in exchange for an annual tribute. He was very pious,
but killed his own brother, and his difficulties were ended only by his
assassination. Four usurpers, Aurelio, Silo, Mauregato, and Bermudo I.
followed one another on his throne and continued to pay the tribute to
Cordova, coupled, the legend says, with the yearly present of one hundred
virgins. Alfonso II, called the Chaste, is credited with putting an end
to this humiliating relation to Cordova. He was the son of Fruela I and
began his reign in 791 by vigorously repulsing a Moorish invasion. He
added to the kingdom on the southern frontier, but his relations with
Charlemagne constitute the chief interest of his reign. He is said
to have offered to make the Frankish monarch his heir, in return for
the latter’s assistance against the Moors, and Louis le Débonnaire,
Charlemagne’s son, twice led an army into Spain, which conquered the
“Spanish Mark.” But Alfonso’s promise to Charlemagne was disapproved by
the nobles; whereupon (so the Spanish writers affirm), a quarrel ensued
between the Franks and the Spaniards of Oviedo. With this quarrel they
connect the great battle of Roncesvalles, where Charlemagne’s forces
under his nephew Roland were defeated and Roland was slain. But this
battle is assigned by Arab writers to 778 A.D., thirteen years before the
accession of Alfonso.[a]
Of the legendary slaughter, of the heroism of Roland, of the valour of
Bernardo del Carpio, of the hundred and one stories which have been
embroidered upon the simple happening of this mountain ambuscade, no
account can be given here; but at least one important fact comes out of
the legend, namely, that Spaniards of all sorts and races, though divided
enough to be constantly fighting among themselves, had now, for the first
time in their history, the early promptings of the nationality of soil,
as apart from that of faith or tribal connection, sufficiently strong
to permit of a coalition against a foreigner as such. This feeling was
again demonstrated a few years later (797), when Alfonso II, encouraged
by his successful raids against the Moors in the south, bethought him to
beg the aid of Charlemagne to establish himself in his new conquest, even
as tributary of the Frankish emperor. But this the Spanish-Gothic nobles
would not endure, and incontinently locked up their king in a monastery
until he promised that no foreigner should ever be allowed to interfere
in struggles on the soil of Spain.[b]
Alfonso the Chaste was succeeded in 842 by Ramiro I, son of King Bermudo.
His election was disputed but he put down this as other rebellions. He
repelled the Norse invaders, who then ravaged the Moslem coast. His
alleged victories over the Saracens are not recorded by Arab historians.
In 850 his son Ordoño I succeeded him. He won a battle at Clavijo--the
great victory at the same place credited to his father being pure legend.
He unintentionally aided the Moslems by defeating the Arab rebel Musa,
but also drove off the hungry Norse pirates and was a famous builder of
cities and castles. When he died in 866 he left the whole region from
Salamanca to the Bay of Biscay to his eldest son.
Alfonso III, who was then only eighteen and was driven from the throne
for a time, showed his native vigour by re-establishing himself against
his enemies, though his pacificatory schemes to end the rebellions of
Navarre ended in the eventual loss of that realm to Spain.[a]
ALFONSO THE GREAT
[Sidenote: [866-914 A.D.]]
But Alfonso’s victories over the Mohammedans almost atoned for his
imprudent policy with regard to Navarre--if, indeed, that policy was
not the compulsory result of circumstances. He removed the boundary
of his dominions from the Douro to the Guadiana, and the territories
thus acquired were possessed by his successors above a century, until
the time of the great Almansor. From 870 to 901, his contests with the
enemy--whether with the wickedness of the kings of Cordova or their
rebellious vassals, who aimed at independence--were one continued series
of successes. His last exploit at this period was the destruction, in the
battle of Zamora, of a formidable army, led by the rebel Kalib of Toledo,
whose ally, Abul-Kassim, fell on the field.
[Illustration: MOHAMMEDAN SWORD AND SHIELD]
But this great prince, if glorious in his contests with the natural
enemy, was unable to contend with his rebellious barons, headed by his
still more rebellious son Garcia. At the prospect of a civil war, the
king no longer wished to uphold his rights. Having convoked an assembly
at Bordes, in the Asturias, in 910, he solemnly renounced the crown in
favour of Don Garcia, who passed at once from a prison to a throne.
To his second son, Ordoño, he granted the government of Galicia; and
another, Fruela, he confirmed in that of Oviedo. These concessions were,
doubtless, extorted from him--a fact that does not speak much for the
firmness of his domestic administration; he appears, like many other
princes of his country, to have been great chiefly in the field of battle.
Alfonso did not long survive his abdication. Having paid a visit to the
shrine of Santiago in Galicia, on his return to Astorga he solicited
permission and adequate forces from his son to make a final irruption
into the Mohammedan territories. Both were granted; and in laying waste
the possessions of the enemy, he had the consolation of reflecting
that he had done great service to the church, and left another signal
remembrance of his valour before his departure. He died at Zamora, at the
close of the year 910; leaving behind him the reputation of one of the
most valiant, magnanimous, and pious sovereigns that Spain ever produced.
ALFONSO’S SUCCESSORS
[Sidenote: [914-950 A.D.]]
Of Garcia, the successor of Alfonso III, little more is known than that
he transferred the seat of sovereignty from Oviedo to Leon; made a
successful irruption into the territories of the misbelievers; and died
in 914. The nobles and bishops of the kingdom--henceforth called the
kingdom of Leon--having met, according to custom, for the purpose of
nominating a successor, placed the royal crown on the head of Ordoño,
brother of the deceased Garcia. Ordoño II, under the reigns both of his
father and brother, had distinguished himself against the Mohammedans;
and he resolved that no one should say his head was weakened by a crown.
In 917 he advanced towards the Guadiana, stormed the town of Alhange,
which is above Merida, put the garrison to the sword, made the women
and children captives, and gained abundant spoil. With the wealth thus
acquired he founded the magnificent cathedral of Leon. In a subsequent
expedition he ruined Talavera, and defeated a Mohammedan army near its
walls. Indignant at these disasters, Abd ar-Rahman III assembled a
powerful army, not only from all parts of Mohammedan Spain, but from
Africa; but this immense host was also defeated, under the walls of San
Pedro de Gormaz. In a subsequent battle, however, which appears to have
been fought the same year in Galicia, victory declared for neither party.
Nearly three years afterwards (in 921), Ordoño was entirely defeated in
the battle of Val-de-Junquera, whither he had advanced to aid the king
of Navarre. He took his revenge for this disaster by an irruption into
Andalusia, which he laid waste from the Navas de Tolosa to within a day’s
journey of Cordova. Soon after his return to Leon, the king committed a
rigorous but treacherous act of justice. Four counts of Castile, whom
he suspected of disaffection, were put to death. Ordoño died in 923,
immediately after his third marriage with a princess of Navarre.
Fruela II, brother of Ordoño, was elected in preference to the children
of the deceased king. Alfonso IV, who succeeded in 925, in preference
to the sons of Fruela II, is represented as a prince more addicted to
piety than to ambition. In the sixth year of his reign, he renounced the
vanities of the world, resigned the sceptre into the hands of his brother
Ramiro, and retired into the monastery of Sahagun. The following year,
however, he forsook his cell, and, with a considerable force, hastened
to Leon to reclaim the throne. His brother compelled him to surrender,
and again consigned him to his monastery, with three princes (the sons of
Fruela II) his counsellors. In accordance with the laws of the Visigoths,
the punishment of death was commuted to all four by the loss of their
eyes. Alfonso survived his misfortune about two years and a half.
Ramiro II, who ascended the throne in 930, is chiefly distinguished for
his wars with the misbelievers. He gained a considerable advantage over
Abd ar-Rahman III at Simancas. Like most of his predecessors, Ramiro had
also to struggle with internal discord. The dependent count of Castile,
Fernan Gonsalez, and one Diego Nuñez, a count also in the same province,
for reasons with which history (however communicative romance may be)
does not acquaint us, revolted against him. The king marched against
them, seized their persons, and confined them in two separate fortresses.
His displeasure was not of long duration: he suffered the counts to
resume their offices on their taking the usual oaths of obedience; and
he even married his eldest son, Ordoño, to Urraca, daughter of Fernan
Gonsalez. To that son, on the vigil of the Epiphany, in the year 950, he
resigned the crown: his growing illness convinced him that he had not
long to live; he therefore assumed the penitential garb, and passed his
few remaining days in religious retirement.
[Sidenote: [950-967 A.D.]]
Ordoño III had scarcely ascended the throne before he was troubled
by the ambitious projects of his younger brother, Don Sancho. That
prince, wishing to share the sweets of power, modestly requested that
the government of one or two provinces might be confided to him; and
on the refusal of the king, he persuaded Garcia of Navarre and the
count of Castile to espouse his interests. That Fernan Gonsalez, the
father-in-law of the rightful sovereign, whose forfeited life had been
spared by the generosity of that sovereign’s father, should thus conspire
against Ordoño, proves the infamy of his character; neither gratitude
nor oaths had any influence over this unprincipled governor. But on
this occasion treason and perjury met with deserved failure: Sancho and
the count, at the head of the Castilians and Navarrese, in vain invaded
the territories of Leon; they found Ordoño so well prepared to receive
them that they retreated without risking a single battle. Incensed at
this conduct of his vassal, the king repudiated his wife Urraca, and
immediately married Elvira, a lady connected with the chief families of
Leon. Fernan Gonsalez was now compelled to bow the knee before him. With
equal success he triumphed over the Galicians, who rebelled. He died in
955.
Sancho I, surnamed from his corpulency the Fat, now arrived at the summit
of his ambition. But by the retributive justice of heaven he was doomed
to bear, and in a still heavier degree, the burden of anxiety which he
had laid on his brother and predecessor. Aided by the restless count of
Castile, whose daughter, the divorced Urraca, he had married, Ordoño,
son of Alfonso IV, aspired to the throne. Despairing of success by open
arms, the two rebels artfully seduced the troops of Sancho from their
allegiance, and persuaded them to join the intruder. This unexpected
event deprived the king of the means of resistance, compelled him to flee
secretly for his life, and raised Ordoño IV to a precarious dignity. The
exiled Sancho sought the aid of his maternal uncle, the king of Navarre.
But instead of an army to regain his rightful possessions, he received
the consoling admonition that he ought to submit with patience to the
dispensations of heaven; and that if he could not regain his kingdom,
he might at least rid himself of his excessive corpulency, with which
he appears to have been seriously inconvenienced. As no Christian leech
could be found skilful enough to effect the change, and as the physicians
of Cordova were renowned over all Europe, he wrote to Abd ar-Rahman III
for permission to visit that capital. It was readily granted: Sancho
was courteously received and magnificently entertained by the caliph;
by the juice of certain herbs in a short time he was effectually rid of
his cumbrous mass of flesh, and restored to his former lightness and
agility.[24]
But this was not the only advantage which Sancho derived from his
residence in the court of the caliph. He so won the favour of Abd
ar-Rahman and the Moslem chiefs that they wished to restore him. At the
head of his new allies the king returned to Leon, and was everywhere
received with open arms. The tyranny of the intruder had rendered him
obnoxious; his cowardice made him contemptible to the people. In utter
hopelessness of aid from any of his former subjects, he retired into the
Mohammedan territories, where he ended his days in misery. The restored
king did not long survive his good fortune. In an expedition against
Gonsalo Sanchez, count of Galicia, who aspired to render that government
independent of Leon, he was poisoned under the mask of hospitality by
that perfidious rebel, after a troubled reign of twelve years.
As Ramiro III was only five years of age on the death of his father,
his education fell to the care of his aunt, Doña Elvira, abbess of the
convent of San Salvador, who also appears to have been regent of the
kingdom. His minority offers little that is interesting, if we except a
predatory irruption of the Normans, in 968. As Ramiro grew in years, the
qualities which he exhibited augured anything but good to his people.
He became so odious to the nation that the counts of Castile, Leon, and
Galicia threw off their allegiance to him, and proclaimed in Compostella
Prince Bermudo, grandson of Fruela II. Ramiro immediately assembled an
army, and marched against his rival, whom he encountered near Monterroso
in Galicia, in 982. The contest, though long and bloody, was indecisive;
so that both kings, afraid of renewing it, retired to their respective
courts--Ramiro to Leon, and Bermudo to Santiago. The calamities arising
from this civil strife were increased by the hostile inroads of Almansor,
the celebrated hajib of Hisham II, who now began a career of unrivalled
military splendour, and who was destined to prove the most formidable
enemy the Christians had experienced since the time of Tarik and Musa.
Fortunately, however, for the distracted state, Ramiro did not long
survive his return to Leon: his death again consolidated the regal power.
In the reign of this prince (in 970) died the famous Fernan Gonsalez,
count of Castile, whose fruitless efforts after independence have been
already noticed. His fame arises not so much from the real as from the
romantic exploits with which the fertility of fiction has invested him.
As mention has been frequently made of the counts of Castile, and as that
government is about to form a conspicuous portion of Spanish history, the
subject may be properly introduced here.
ORIGIN OF CASTILE
[Sidenote: [760-1010 A.D.]]
Ancient Cantabria, which the writers of the eighth century usually
termed Bardulia, and which, at this period, stretched from the Biscayan
Sea to the Douro, towards the close of the same century began to be
called Castella--doubtless from the numerous forts erected for the
defence of the country by Alfonso I. As the boundaries were gradually
removed towards the south, by the victories of the Christians, the same
denomination was applied to the new as well as to the former conquests,
and the whole continued subject to the same governor, who had subordinate
governors dependent on him. Of the first governors or counts, from the
period of its conquest by that prince in 760 to the reign of Ordoño I (a
full century), not even the names are mentioned in the old chroniclers;
the first we meet with is that of Count Rodrigo, who is known to have
possessed the dignity at least six years, _viz._, from 860 to 866.
Bermudo II, who, on the death of Ramiro, in 982, was acknowledged king
of Leon, had little reason to congratulate himself on his elevation,
since his reign was one of the most disastrous in the national
annals--distracted alike by domestic rebellion and foreign invasion. The
fierce Almansor laid waste the greater part of his kingdom, entered his
very capital, and forced him to seek refuge in the heart of the Asturias.
He died in 999.
Alfonso V was only five years of age on the death of his father; and
the government was consequently entrusted to a regent. That regency
is eventful, from the defeat of Almansor in 1001--a defeat which not
only occasioned the death of that hero, but which was the forerunner
of the fall of Cordova. In the dissensions which followed among the
candidates for the throne of Hisham, the Christian princes of Spain
embraced different sides, as their interests or inclinations dictated.
In 1010, Alfonso was imprudent enough to confer the hand of his sister
on Muhammed, king of Toledo--a prince who was subsequently raised to the
throne of Cordova, but was soon deposed and put to death by Hisham. As
the king of Leon grew in years, he endeavoured to repair the disasters
which had been occasioned by the hostile inroads of the Arabs: he rebuilt
and repeopled his capital, whither the seat of government was again
transferred from Oviedo. His good intentions, however, were not a little
thwarted by the rebellion of Count Sancho Garces of Castile. In 1021, Don
Sancho died: his son, Don Garcia, a mere child, succeeded him. With Don
Garcia ended the counts of Castile--which was thenceforth to be governed
by kings, and to remain more than two centuries dissevered from Leon.
Alfonso carried his arms into Portugal, and laid siege to Viseu, then
held by the Mohammedans. He was mortally wounded by an arrow from the
ramparts.
SANCHO EL MAYOR
[Sidenote: [1010-1037 A.D.]]
Like his father, Bermudo III, though already married to the infanta of
Castile, was at a tender age on his accession. Of this circumstance
advantage was unworthily taken by Sancho el Mayor, king of Navarre,
who, not satisfied with assuming the sovereignty of Castile in right
of his queen, Doña Muña Elvira, the elder sister of the queen of Leon,
and daughter of Don Garcia, the last count of Castile, made a hostile
irruption into the states of his brother-in-law. Having passed the
Pisuerga, the western boundary of Castile, he conquered as much of Leon
as lay between that river and the Cea. Peace was, however, made on the
condition that the king of Leon should confer the hand of his sister,
Doña Sancha, on Don Ferdinand, one of King Sancho’s sons. But this peace
appears to have been subsequently broken, doubtless through the ambition
of the enterprising Navarrese; for, according to the Complutensian[p] and
Toledan[q] annals, that king in 1034 possessed Astorga, and indeed most
of the country as far as Galicia. Yet what need of conquest? As Bermudo
continued childless, the wily monarch might safely cherish the hope that
the crown of Leon would devolve on the brows of his son in right of the
infanta, his daughter-in-law.
On the death of Sancho, in 1035, his ample states were thus divided: to
Garcia he left the kingdom of Navarre, the lordship of Biscay (which had
been hitherto annexed to Castile), and a part of Rioja; to Ferdinand he
bequeathed the new kingdom of Castile, and the conquests he had made
between the Pisuerga and the Cea; to Ramiro fell the states of Aragon,
which had hitherto continued a stateship as much dependent on Navarre
as Castile on Leon; to another son, Gonsalo, he left Ribagorza, with
some forts in Aragon. This policy could not fail to be followed by fatal
results. While Ramiro made war on his brother of Navarre, Ferdinand I
was summoned to the defence of the conquests which he held beyond the
Pisuerga, and which Bermudo resolved again to incorporate with the
kingdom of Leon. Aided by some auxiliary troops under his brother Garcia,
he encountered Bermudo on the banks of the Carrion. The battle, which was
fought in 1037, was sanguinary and long-continued; until the king of Leon
impatiently spurred his horse into the midst of the hostile squadrons,
and fell mortally wounded by the thrust of a lance.
With Bermudo III ended the male line of the house of Leon. This prince
deserved a better fate than that of falling by hostile hands at the
premature age of nineteen. The zeal with which he rebuilt churches and
monasteries; the valour which he exhibited against the Mohammedans of
Portugal, from whom he took several fortresses; the firmness with which,
even at that early age, he enforced the administration of justice; and
his affability of disposition, rendered him deservedly dear to his
people.[h]
THE HISTORY OF CASTILE (1037-1109 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1037-1064 A.D.]]
After this fateful battle on the Carrion, in which Bermudo fell,
Ferdinand, who had taken Bermudo’s sister to wife, seized upon the
whole of Leon and its dependencies and united them with the rest of his
dominions to form the kingdom of Castile.
His solemn coronation at Leon ushered in a new epoch in the history of
Christian Spain. To pacify the Leonese, who were profoundly aggrieved at
the loss of their supremacy, he caused an assembly of the estates to be
held at Coyanza, and there confirmed all the civil and ecclesiastical
privileges and liberties which had come down to them from earlier times,
and added others. At the same time he augmented the defensive armaments
of his dominions, with the twofold object of repressing rebellion and
making war upon the Saracens.
His elder brother, Garcia, cast envious glances at the flourishing
neighbour country, which rose steadily to greater heights of prosperity
and power under Ferdinand’s wise governance. He was mortified that his
hereditary kingdom of Navarre should be ousted from the dominant position
it had taken under his great father. He therefore laid snares in his
brother’s way and embarrassed his dominion by perpetual intrigues till at
length a fratricidal war broke out between them. The hatred he bore his
brother led Garcia to conclude an alliance with the emir of Saragossa and
Tudela. But the battle of Atapuerca (1054), not far from Burgos, decided
the struggle in Ferdinand’s favour; Garcia was slain by a lance-thrust,
the Navarrese were routed, and most of their Moorish auxiliaries killed
or taken prisoners. Ferdinand then added the district on the right bank
of the Ebro to his own dominions, and left the rest of the kingdom to the
late king’s son, Sancho III.
Having thus tranquillised his own kingdom and assured its safety, he
endeavoured to extend it southwards by making war upon the infidels. He
destroyed the fortresses in the northern provinces of what is now the
kingdom of Portugal, crossed the Douro, and took Lamego, Viseu, and other
fortified towns, under whose walls Christian and Moslem had so often
measured their strength in days gone by. These successes inflamed the
Castilians with martial ardour and religious enthusiasm and made them
eager for fresh ventures. Having first secured the consent of his knights
and nobles in an assembly of the estates, the king conquered a chain of
fortified towns on the eastern frontier of Castile which had long served
the enemy as a _point d’appui_, and then pressed forward into the heart
of the Moorish provinces. He laid the country waste, and spread terror
as far as Andalusia. The aged ruler of Seville purchased peace with rich
gifts, among which were the relics of St. Isidore, which Ferdinand buried
with great pomp at Leon in the church he had built and dedicated to the
saint.
[Illustration: THE ALHAMBRA]
Ferdinand crowned his glorious career by the conquest of the great
fortified city of Coimbra, which for six months had offered a stubborn
resistance. The soul of the monarch overflowed with martial ardour and
religious devotion. In time of peace he was to be seen devoutly kneeling
at the altar and joining in the chants of the priests. War was likewise
a religious act in his eyes. With the sword he desired to maintain the
honour of God among the infidels and win a heavenly crown for himself.
Returning stricken with disease from one of his campaigns, the pious
king had himself carried into the church of St. Isidore, where he laid
aside the insignia of royalty, and, wrapped in the garment of a penitent,
passed away in the arms of the priests, in 1065.
[Sidenote: [1064-1072 A.D.]]
At an assembly of the estates, held a few years before, he had made
arrangements for the succession and for the partition of his dominions.
According to these, Castile passed to Sancho II, his first-born son; Leon
and Asturias to Alfonso, his favourite; Galicia and the newly districts
as far the Douro to Garcia, the youngest. The cities of Zamora and Toro
he assigned to his two daughters, Urraca and Elvira, and conferred on
them the patronage of all abbeys in the kingdom. We know from the romance
of _The Cid_--who in the reigns of Ferdinand and his sons performed those
prodigies of valour which later generations celebrated in song--that
shortly after his father’s death Sancho made war upon his brothers with
the intention of seizing their dominions for himself.[25] After several
battles Alfonso and Garcia were stripped of their possessions and
compelled to flee to Toledo and Seville. All the country from the range
of the Pyrenees to the shores of the west Atlantic Ocean, which Ferdinand
had acquired partly by inheritance and partly by conquest, thus fell
under the sway of his son Sancho. Only the rocky stronghold of Zamora
still owned allegiance to the princess Urraca, and afforded a safe refuge
to the adherents of the fugitive king Alfonso and other malcontents.
[Illustration: KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF ST. IAGO]
Sancho resolved to conquer this city too, for fear it should become a
centre and bulwark of rebellion; but was treacherously murdered under its
walls by the lance of a traitor knight, Vellido Dolfo by name. His army
speedily dispersed; only a band of brave Castilians loyally kept guard
over the king’s body and bore it to the abbey of San Salvador at Oña,
where it was solemnly committed to the earth. On receiving the tidings
of his brother’s murder, Alfonso fled secretly from Toledo, where he had
been hospitably entertained, and took possession of Sancho’s kingdom.
Garcia, the younger brother, also came in haste, hoping to regain
Galicia, the share his father had bequeathed him. But Alfonso, who was
no less ambitious and unjust than the murdered Sancho, had his brother
perfidiously seized on his arrival, and kept him in captivity, loaded
with fetters, for the rest of his life.
[Sidenote: [1072-1126 A.D.]]
Alfonso VI was now master of the whole of his father’s kingdom of
Castile, Leon, and Galicia; and when his royal cousin of Navarre, a few
years later, fell a victim to conspirators, he joined the king of Aragon
in the conquest and partition of the bereaved kingdom; and after its
brief hour of glory it was long before Navarre was again counted among
independent states.
Henceforward history follows the fortunes of the two kingdoms of Castile
and Aragon, which rose upon its ruins. Side by side with them Catalonia
flourished in the east, blest with culture and prosperity, but exercising
no particular influence on the course of events; and towards the end of
the century some knightly adventurers laid the foundation of the kingdom
of Portugal in the west, the northern part of which Alfonso conferred
first on his son-in-law, Raymond of Burgundy, and then on Count Henry,
the husband of his natural daughter Theresa, as a fief of the kingdom of
Castile.
All these kingdoms turned their arms against the disunited Mohammedan
world in the centre and south of the peninsula. When once he had gained
secure possession of his kingdom, Alfonso, guided by the judicious
advice of his sister Urraca, who always retained great influence over
the brother she loved so dearly, endeavoured by the excellence of his
administration and legislation to efface the stains that had defiled his
path to the throne. He took counsel with honourable and capable men on
affairs of state, he delivered the communes from the oppressions of royal
officers and judges, abolished the burdensome turnpike toll which had
been levied on all pilgrims who visited the famous shrine of Santiago de
Compostella and had given occasion for many exactions and abuses, and by
the disuse of the Gothic liturgy established in Christian Spain the Roman
and hierarchical system of church government, which had been striving to
extend its sway over all the countries of Europe ever since the time of
Gregory VI. By the zeal of the Benedictines of Sahagun and the French
clergy whom he appointed to many important preferments in the Pyrenean
peninsula, the Spanish church was soon brought at all points under the
supremacy of Rome.
He then availed himself of dissensions which had arisen amongst Moslem
rulers to carry his arms into the heart of the Moorish states. After the
conquest of Toledo he was able to cherish the proud hope of extending
Christian rule over the whole peninsula. The arrival of the Almoravids,
however, put an end to his triumphant progress. After a long reign which
succeeding generations have ever borne in mind as a period of glory,
justice, and general prosperity, Alfonso VI died in 1109 of a broken
heart at the defeat of Ucles and the loss of his only son. His daughter
Urraca, queen of Leon and Castile, who governed the country during
her son’s minority, espoused Alfonso I, king of Aragon, as her second
husband. But instead of strengthening the unity and power of Christian
Spain, this alliance led to furious civil wars which served to strengthen
and prolong Moslem dominion.
ORIGIN AND EARLIEST HISTORY OF THE KINGDOM OF ARAGON
[Sidenote: [714-1076 A.D.]]
On the right bank of the river Noguera, which takes rise in the Pic de la
Maladetta, the loftiest summit of the Pyrenees, and flows southward along
the frontier between the districts now known as Catalonia and Aragon,
to mingle its waters with the Segre, had lain from time immemorial the
county of Ribagorza. The owners of this land, men of strong arm and
devout faith, strove with all their might to check the warlike enterprise
of the Moslem, who possessed a sure centre and stronghold in the
governorship of Saragossa.
Their family possessions were broken up by repeated partitions, but
various members of the ancient stock were scattered over the whole
country north of the Ebro and formed fresh alliances and made fresh
acquisitions by marriage and inheritance. Thus the line of the counts of
Aragon, who ruled the town of Jaca and the province of Sobrarbe, early
entered into matrimonial alliances with the family of the counts of
Ribagorza. The royal house of Navarre was also connected by marriage with
both families, and, on the extinction of the male line in both at the
end of the tenth century and the beginning of the eleventh, King Sancho,
who was in a position to enforce the claims of kinship with the sword,
took possession of Aragon, Sobrarbe, and Ribagorza, and on his death
bequeathed the province of Aragon, as has already been stated, to his
natural son Ramiro (1035).
The latter assumed the title of “king of Aragon,” and endeavoured by
fraud and force to gain a fitting extension to the territory of his
kingdom. An attempt which he made to wrest Navarre from his elder brother
Garcia was frustrated, but, on the other hand, after Gonsalo, the other
brother, had been assassinated, he succeeded in gaining possession of
his territories of Sobrarbe and Ribagorza, whether by popular election
or otherwise cannot be certain. Ramiro also took the field against the
Saracens, but the power and personal abilities of the emirs of Saragossa
(Mundhir ben Yahya and the Banu Hud) prevented him from gaining any
brilliant successes. At the same time he continued to give proof of
his piety by founding abbeys and giving gifts to the church in the
spirit of the counts before him. The abbey of San Juan de la Peña was
the most favoured sanctuary of all, and was richly endowed with lands
and revenues, privileges and liberties by the king and the nobles of
Aragon. The donation which the king had sent to Pope Alexander II when he
introduced the Roman liturgy into Aragon was declared by Gregory VII to
be a tribute due to the apostolic see.
Ramiro fell in battle against the Saracens at the siege of Grados (1063),
and his son Sancho Ramirez, a young prince full of energy, courage, and
adventurous spirit, ascended the throne. He promptly turned his arms
against the Moors. Having first wrested from them all the possessions
they held in the mountainous districts of Aragon, Sobrarbe, and
Ribagorza, he came down upon the fertile plains watered by the Cinca,
Gallego, and other tributaries of the Ebro, and after a fierce engagement
in which his ally, Count Ermengol of Urgel, lost his life (1065), took
the important city of Barbastro which, though lost again a short time
after, finally passed into the power of the Aragonese, and provided them
with a favourably situated base for subsequent conquests. Soon afterwards
King Sancho III of Navarre, the son of Garcia, was murdered at Peñalen
by a band of conspirators headed by his ambitious brother Raymond and
his sister Ermesenda (1076). As his children were not of age and the
Navarrese refused to acknowledge the fratricide as their sovereign, the
two kings Alfonso VI of Castile and Sancho Ramirez of Aragon marched into
the neighbour kingdom, put Raymond to flight and divided the country
between them; the country as far as the Ebro being united to Aragon,
and Rioja, with Najera and Calahorra and the Basque provinces of Alava,
Guipuzcoa, and Biscay falling to the share of Alfonso VI of Castile and
Leon.
[Sidenote: [1076-1109 A.D.]]
Sancho then undertook a war of revenge against the emir Ahmed Muktadir
of Saragossa, who had given shelter to the fugitive regicide Raymond.
Having first seized some favourably situated places on the Ebro he
advanced upon the city of Huesca, which, with the surrounding district,
lay like a broad wedge driven into Aragonese territory, fortified with
many strongholds and severing the north of his dominions from the south.
In a war which lasted for several years and which was marked with every
accompaniment of horror, the brave king succeeded in subjugating a large
part of this district and making a safe road to the very walls of Huesca
by a succession of skilfully planned fortifications. But he was not
destined to witness the fall of the city; he received his death-wound
in the siege from the enemy’s arrows (1094). His valiant son Pedro
carried on with vigour and energy the work which his father had begun and
urgently enjoined on him with his dying breath.
The Moslems strained every nerve to save the bulwark of their dominion
in northern Spain. The emir Ahmed Mostain led a great confederate army,
which numbered not only Almoravids but Christian auxiliaries in its
ranks, into the field against Aragon. But Pedro’s victory at Alcoraz
decided the fate of Huesca. In the very year (1096) in which western
Christendom was making ready to drive the infidels out of Jerusalem,
Huesca and all the country north of the Ebro fell into the hands of the
Christians of Spain. Henceforward the fall of Saragossa could only be a
question of time, a question which would have been decided earlier than
it was if a civil war had not broken out between Alfonso I of Aragon
(Alfonso VII of Leon) who succeeded Pedro in 1104, and his wife Queen
Urraca of Castile.[o]
Before taking up the story of the war of Urraca and Alfonso, we may
consider the exploits of the most famous warrior in Spanish history,
the Cid, whose fame was so overgrown with romance that it became the
fashion to deny that such a man ever existed in reality. But the critical
historian who has robbed us of so many traditions has restored to us the
Cid. His deeds are so typical of the period that they may claim some
liberality of space, for in the words of H. E. Watts,[r] “The history of
mediæval Spain without the Cid would be something more barren than the
Iliad without Achilles.”[a]
BURKE’S ESTIMATE OF THE CID
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1050-1099 A.D.]]
The three favourites of mediæval Spanish romance, says the Señor
Lafuente,[cc] Bernardo del Carpio, Fernan Gonzalez, and the Cid, have
this at least in common, that they were all at war with their lawful
sovereigns, and fought their battles independently of the crown. Hence
their popularity in Spain. The Castilians of the Middle Ages were so
devoted to their independence, so proud of their _fueros_, such admirers
of personal prowess, that they were disposed to welcome with national
admiration those heroes who sprang from the people, who defied and were
ill-treated by their kings.
The Cid is the only knight-errant that has survived the polished satire
of Cervantes. For his fame was neither literary nor aristocratic;
but like the early Spanish proverbs, in which it is said he took so
great a delight, it was embedded deep in the hearts of the people. And
although the memory of his religious indifference may not have added to
his popularity in the sixteenth century in Spain, it is a part of his
character which must be taken into account in gauging the public opinion
of earlier days. From the close of the eighth century to the close of the
fifteenth, the Spanish people, Castilians and Aragonese, were if anything
less bigoted than the rest of Europe. The influence of their neighbours
the Moors, and of their Arab toleration could not be without its effect
upon a people naturally free, independent, and self-reliant; and the
Cid, who was certainly troubled with no religious scruples in the course
of his varied career, and who, according to a popular legend affronted
and threatened the pope on his throne in St. Peter’s, on account of some
fancied slight, could never have been the hero of a nation of bigots.
To judge the Cid, even as we now know him, according to any code of
modern ethics, is supremely unreasonable. To be sure that, even now, we
know him as he was is supremely presumptuous. But that Ruy Diaz was a
great man, and a great leader of men, a knight who would have shocked
modern poets, and a free lance who would have laughed at modern heroes,
we can have no manner of doubt. That he satisfied his contemporaries and
himself; that he slew Moors and Christians as occasion required, with
equal vigour and absolute impartiality; that he bearded the king of Leon
in his Christian council, and that he cozened the king of Saragossa at
the head of his Moslem army; that he rode the best horse and brandished
the best blade in Spain; that his armies never wanted for valiant
soldiers, nor his coffers for goldpieces; that he lived “my lord the
challenger,” the terror of every foe, and that he died rich and respected
in the noble city that had fallen to his knightly spear--of all this at
least we are certain; and, if the tale is displeasing to our nineteenth
century refinement, we must be content to believe that it satisfied the
aspirations of mediæval Spain.[g]
THE HISTORICAL CID
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1050-1065 A.D.]]
The real existence of the Cid and the most important events in his life
have been proved by a sufficient, although not by a large number of
documents, which, being amplified by Middle Age chroniclers, have formed
the basis of later tradition. It is more or less in this traditionary
form that the Cid appears, in Spanish history.
Mariana[i] related the chief events of his life as popular tradition has
collected them from history and fable, and contented himself with adding,
“Some persons hold a large part of this account to be fabulous; I also
relate many more statements than I believe, because I do not dare to pass
over in silence what others assert, nor would I like to assert as certain
that which I doubt for reasons which compel me to do so and which others
have stated.”
Prudencio de Sandoval[u] questioned many single items and declared
whole episodes to be unhistorical. He was followed by Ferreras.[v] When
finally, in 1792, the Augustine Manuel Risco,[w] supported by the _Gesta
Roderici Campidocti_ which he had discovered, tried to rescue some part
of the old traditions, the Jesuit, Juan Francisco de Masdeu, doubted not
only the genuineness of this document but the very existence of the Cid.
The English historian Dunham[h] was even more firmly sceptical. Robert
Southey,[x] who published an English translation of the _Chronicle of the
Cid_, tried hard to steer between history and story and rescue as much as
possible of the latter.
Victor Aimé Huber[y] has the credit of being the first to distinguish
between the historical and mythical elements with great critical ability.
The material used by Huber was not materially enriched until the Dutch
orientalist R. Dozy[z] discovered in the library at Gotha, in 1844, an
Arabic account of the Cid and his most celebrated deed of arms, the
conquest of Valencia. This was found in the third volume of a history of
literature (_Zakira_) written by the Moorish author Ibn Bassam,[aa] in
the year 503 of the Hegira, according to his statement (1109 A.D.), that
is, only ten years after the death of the Cid. It is thus the oldest,
the only really contemporary account of the celebrated Spanish hero that
we possess, and is of great historical value even though written by an
enemy. The Dutch scholar was not satisfied merely to publish the text
with a French translation, but also enumerated the known sources in order
to distinguish between the historical and the more or less legendary
traits of the same and to get as historically accurate a picture as
possible of the Cid. At the same time he put entirely too much confidence
in the Arabic account, placing himself in fact on the side of the Moors.
Hence in order to get a correct idea of the Cid’s character one should
not follow Dozy blindly, but should rather consider as to how far the
Arab historian deserves credence on his own account.
[Illustration: THE CID
(From an old engraving of an alleged portrait)]
The date of the Cid’s birth is not known. However, it cannot be far
from the middle of the eleventh century, certainly not more than ten to
twenty years before the battle on the Carrion river (1037), in which
Ferdinand I of Castile conquered the allied kings of Leon and Navarre,
and Bermudo III, king of Leon, met his death. With this king, who left no
descendants, the Visigothic dynasty came to an end, that dynasty which
since Pelayo for three hundred years had carried on the struggles of
Christian Spain against the superior force of the Moors, under the most
variable circumstances, but ever with increasing success. The birth, as
well as the youth and first warlike deeds of Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, later
called the Cid,[26] fall in that brilliant period when the kingdom of
Spain first acquired a greater power by the union of Castile and Leon
and attained a certain moral supremacy over Moorish Spain. In a battle
led by the eldest son of the king Sancho, against Sancho of Navarre, the
Cid conquered a knight of Navarre in single combat and thus received the
surname Campeador, _i.e._, “Challenger.” With the death of Ferdinand I,
however (1065), the scarcely established union fell asunder. In his will
he divided his kingdom among his five children.
[Sidenote: [1065-1085 A.D.]]
Scarcely three years after his father’s death Sancho was in open fight
with his brother Alfonso at Llantado and won a temporary, though not
a decisive victory. On this occasion Rodrigo de Bivar was promoted to
be “banner-bearer,” _i.e._, “chief commander” of Sancho’s troops. The
brothers kept the peace for only three years. Eventually Sancho was
assassinated. Since there was no suitable pretendant to the throne,
the crown of Castile was finally offered to Alfonso, but only on
condition that he take a solemn oath to the effect that he was not a
party to Sancho’s death. Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar and eleven other knights
administered this oath. The king at the same time was seized with a
violent dislike towards the Campeador. Policy, however, advised him not
to indulge this for the present, but to try to attach this powerful and
influential Castilian to himself by showing him favour. He even gave him
his cousin Ximena in marriage (the 19th of July, 1074).
Alfonso sent him to the court of Mutamid, the king of Seville, to
collect the tribute due him. At the very time of his arrival Mutamid was
threatened by an attack from Abdallah, king of Granada, in whose army
were several Christian nobles, among them Count Garcia Ordoñez, a prince
of royal blood. The Campeador attacked them with his own people, and the
Sevillians defeated them and took Garcia Ordoñez and other Castilian
knights captive, although he freed them again after three days. That was
enough for his enemies, especially Garcia Ordoñez, to malign him before
Alfonso, after his return, saying that he kept a part of their presents
for himself. The earlier dislike of the king was revived, and when
Rodrigo, in 1081, on his own initiative and without permission undertook
an attack on the Moors, the king seized the occasion to banish him.
Thus the hero, with whose help the king might have been able to break
completely the power of the Moors, was banished from Christian Spain and
compelled to lead the life of a warrior chieftain or _condottiere_ and
even to seek service with the Moors themselves.
Just at this time (October, 1081) the emir Muktadir of Saragossa died,
leaving two sons, one of whom, Mutamin, received Saragossa, the other,
Mondzir, had Denia, Tortosa, and Lerida. They at once began to dispute
each other’s possessions. Mondzir allied himself with King Sancho
Ramirez of Aragon and Count Berengar of Barcelona. Mutamin won over
the Campeador to his cause and found him his surest support. Rodrigo
conducted expeditions of incredible boldness and became the terror of the
princes allied against Mutamin. The latter besieged the fortress Almenara
in overwhelming numbers and reduced it to such straits that Rodrigo
himself advised treating for peace, in order to save the garrison, but
when Mutamin insisted on holding out he repulsed the enemy in spite of
superior force and even took the count of Barcelona captive. His entry
into Saragossa was like a triumph, and the emir loaded him with honours
and presents. Nevertheless the valiant Castilian would not be bound. As
soon as an opportunity offered he tried again to approach King Alfonso.
Not until the latter, in his pride and anger, had again repulsed him, did
he continue to use his talents of generalship and his personal bravery
in the service of Mutamin. He ravaged a large part of Aragon in an
expedition lasting five days, and his attacks were executed so swiftly
that his followers were usually up and away before the alarm could even
be sounded for a repulse. He next attacked Mondzir’s possessions and
plundered large tracts of territory with the same rapidity. When Sancho
of Aragon came to assist his ally, Rodrigo defeated his troops, took
sixteen nobles and two thousand soldiers captive and returned again to
Saragossa with enormous booty. After Mutamin’s death (1085) he continued
to serve his son Mostain; but no details have been preserved of his
further warlike deeds until 1088. In that year he concluded a contract
with Mostain, the object of which was the conquest of Valencia.
[Sidenote: [1085-1094 A.D.]]
In the complicated intrigues for the ownership of the city, the Campeador
would seem, according to the account of Dozy,[z] at first to have played
a double, not to say a many-sided part. He made a secret compact with
Mostain, promising to help him get the city but reserving all booty for
himself; but when Kadir made him rich presents he excused himself to
Mostain by saying that an attack on Valencia could not be made without
declaring war on Alfonso, and Mostain himself hesitated before such
a step. At the same time he sent word to King Alfonso that he still
regarded himself as his vassal and that all his expeditions were carried
out only for the purpose of weakening the power of the Moors and of
supporting an army at their expense, which would later bring the whole
land into subjection to the king. So the latter let him keep his troops,
with which he occasionally undertook his favourite raids of conquest and
plunder. When reproached for them he declared that he did it only to
earn his living. In 1089 he went to Castile to have a personal interview
with the king. The latter received him graciously, gave him several
castles and drew up a document, deeding all the fortresses and lands he
should conquer from the Moors to him and his heirs forever. Thereupon the
Cid returned to the neighbourhood of Valencia to join his army, which
numbered seven thousand picked men.
But the Cid had another mischance with Alfonso. When the latter asked him
to take part in an expedition against the castle of Aledo, near Larca,
the Cid, through no fault of his own, arrived too late, and the king,
although he suffered no injury thereby, allowed himself to be influenced
by spiteful insinuations, deprived the brave warrior of his favour, took
away the document he had given him the year before, confiscated all
his estates, and imprisoned his wife and children. All attempts of the
offended Cid to prove his innocence were repulsed; the only concession
which the king made was to give back his wife and children. Again was
the Cid obliged to fight his own way as an independent leader, with his
own means, and to support his army by plunder. His bravery and ability
met with unusual success. Kadir of Valencia paid him annually 120,000
dinares, the lord of Alborracin 10,000, the one of Alpuente the same,
the lords of Murviedro and of Segorbe 6,000 each, of Jerica 4,000, of
Almenara 3,000. The most important deed of arms in the next period
was a brilliant victory over Berengar of Barcelona, who had attacked
him unexpectedly but was defeated and himself taken captive with five
thousand soldiers. The Cid demanded a high ransom, but set the prisoners
free before it could all be paid.
[Sidenote: [1094-1101 A.D.]]
For the sake of Alfonso he broke off the siege of Liria, which had been
progressing favourably, but an interview with the suspicious monarch
led only to new discord. The latter felt offended on account of a mere
trifle and wanted to take the Cid prisoner. When he escaped, the king,
in revenge, himself undertook an expedition against Valencia, which to a
certain extent was already in the power of the Cid. Rodrigo was deeply
offended; with the speed of lightning he hurled himself on the counties
of Najera and Calahorra, whose governor was his most implacable and
powerful enemy, Count Garcia Ordoñez, the most important man next to the
king. He committed such depredations with fire and sword in his provinces
that Alfonso was obliged to abandon the siege of Valencia to protect his
own land from Rodrigo’s plundering raids. This tragic self-destruction of
Spanish force was fortunately brought to an end again by the dissension
and strife among the Moors. While thus the inhabitants, split up into
various parties, were fighting among themselves, some expecting help
from one quarter, others from another, the Cid by a sudden attack
surrounded the city, cut off all provisions and forced it to surrender
on June 15th, 1094, because of most terrible famine. He was at first
very lenient towards the conquered, promised them a just administration,
and warned his own people to be merciful. Roderigo made Ibn Jahhaf draw
up an inventory of all his possessions and swear that he had concealed
nothing. Ibn Jahhaf took the oath and declared himself ready to die if
anyone found anything not on the list. The oath was a false one. The
deceit was soon discovered and then the Cid acted with all the severity
of the times. He caused the treacherous and perfidious royal murderer to
be burned (May or June, 1095), and with him a number of his friends and
associates; he also wanted to condemn his wife and children to death by
burning, but the Christians intervened and obtained their pardon.
Hated as Ibn Jahhaf had been before, he now became a martyr in the
eyes of the Moors. Consequently in their accounts the Cid is charged
with perfidy and cruelty. Now for the first time was the Cid fully and
completely master of this rich and powerful city, the conquest of which
was in some respects more important than that of Toledo by Alfonso.
In the eyes of the Castilians it was a deed having few parallels, the
highest and best which their much-feared warrior-hero achieved in a life
so rich in battles. Olocau and Serra, two fortified places of great
strategic importance, now fell into his hands and he thought with all
seriousness of driving the Moors out of the whole of remaining Spain.
An Arab of that time claims to have heard him say: “A Rodrigo lost this
peninsula; another Rodrigo will win it back.” The Moors themselves saw
these thoughts threateningly embodied in him, and Christian kings had to
sue for his friendship.
In 1094 he allied himself with King Pedro of Aragon in order to force
the power of the Almoravids further toward the south. At Beira, near
Candia, where a Moorish fleet could support the attack of the land army,
the Christians were hard pressed; only the heroism, personal bravery
and tact of the Cid revived their sinking confidence and led them to
victory, so that the superior force of the enemy was completely defeated
and an immeasurable booty fell into their hands. After a short rest in
Valencia he marched against Murviedro. Finally on St. John’s day, June
24th, 1098, he entered the city, celebrated the new victory with a _Te
Deum_, and commanded the laying of the foundation for a St. John’s church
in commemoration of the event. That he did not pursue selfish ends may
be gathered from the testimony of the Mohammedans themselves, who state
that his real end was to drive them out of Spain. But for the continuous
struggle he carried on for this purpose, especially for the tedious
sieges, he had to furnish his own means entirely. Even when disease and
weakness did not permit him to carry a sword himself, he did not give up
his great plan. But his followers were not so successful as he. They met
with Ibn Aisha’s army, which had just won a brilliant victory at Cuenca
over Alvar Fañez who commanded the royal army of Castile. Even the brave
warriors of the Cid, who felt the need of their old leader, succumbed to
the victorious might of the Moslems, and only a few of them returned to
Valencia.
According to the Arab accounts the Cid died in 1099 from rage and grief
at this defeat. For two years after the death of the unconquered warrior
his widow Ximena succeeded in holding the city against the repeated
attacks of the Almoravids. But in October, 1101, having decided to
abandon it, the Christians set it afire in order to spoil the Mohammedan
joy of victory. Mazdali and his army found only smoking ruins when
they entered on May 5th, 1102. The body of the Cid was brought by his
faithful wife herself and buried in the cloister of San Pedro de Cardeña
at Burgos, where she had numberless masses said for the deceased. She
outlived him only five years and was likewise buried at Burgos. His son
[?] Diego Rodriguez fell in the battle of Consuegra. Of his two daughters
one, Christina, married the infante Ramiro of Navarre, the other, Elvira,
Raymond IV (Raymond Berengar III) of Barcelona. Through her the Cid
became the ancestor of the later royal dynasty of Spain.
One hundred and thirty-six years passed before Valencia was reconquered
for Christian Spain by James I of Aragon after a difficult and tedious
siege (1238). The heroic life of the Cid, however, did not remain
unfruitful during this interval.[bb]
CHRISTIAN SPAIN IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: [1102-1118 A.D.]]
The war between Alfonso of Aragon and his wife Queen Urraca of Castile
lasted many years and was accompanied by conspiracies and partisan
warfare among the nobles, by scandals in the royal palace, by the papal
annulment of the marriage, by plunder of the treasures of the church, by
the spoliation and impoverishment of the people. Even the queen’s death
in 1126 did not immediately put an end to the war, for the two Alfonsos
(her husband, and the son of her first marriage, Alfonso Raymond) now
turned their arms against each other. Finally the clergy negotiated a
peace. The two kingdoms were separated, a compromise being effected with
regard to the disputed districts. Castile with Leon and Galicia formed
the territory of Alfonso VII (or VIII,[27] since his stepfather is also
counted amongst the Castilian kings); Aragon and Navarre were left to
king Alfonso I (1126).
The Aragonese now once more turned his arms against the Moslem; the
proud name of Batallador, “the fighter,” which his compatriots bestowed
on him, may serve as evidence of the strength and energy with which he
pushed on the struggle. [He also assumed the title of emperor.] It has
been mentioned that by the conquest of Huesca, his predecessor Pedro
had confirmed and consolidated the kingdom of Aragon. Ten years after
his death, Tudela on the Ebro was won, and formed an important base for
further conquest; but it was only when Alfonso, supported by the knights
from the southern kingdom, had conquered the Saracens in several sharp
encounters and finally, after a siege of seven months, had compelled the
surrender of the city of Saragossa, 1118, the bulwark of the Arab rule in
the northeast, that the kingdom of Aragon was able to proceed with its
political development. Saragossa, so long the seat of a Mohammedan emir,
became Alfonso’s capital. The principal mosque served henceforth for the
worship of the Saviour. The knights and nobles who had stood bravely by
the side of the king, as well as the soldiers who had gathered to his
banner from beyond the Pyrenees, were richly rewarded.
[Sidenote: [1118-1150 A.D.]]
The Moslems were deeply affected by the loss of Saragossa, the result of
their own want of unity; that they might not be entirely driven from the
territory of the Ebro they nerved themselves to a general resistance.
There was a series of sanguinary conflicts on the Segre and Ebro, and
then under their brave commander Yahya ben Gania they won by stratagem
the battle of Fraga, July, 1134, with which Alfonso ended his heroic
life. His efforts had undermined his strength, and grief at this severe
defeat did the rest. He sank on a bed of sickness from which he never
rose again.[28]
The existence of the kingdom was endangered by his death. As he was
childless he had designated the Christian orders of the knights of the
Holy Sepulchre, who had taken the most active share in the struggles
against the Saracens and who possessed lands and castles in all parts of
the peninsula, as his heirs. But this disposition was not carried into
effect.
In the “royal city” of Jaca, the Aragonese elected a brother of the dead
man for their king. This was Ramiro II (1134-1137), who had lived in a
cloister from his youth; and thus the warrior was replaced by a monk.
On the other hand the Navarrese raised to the throne Garcia IV, a scion
of their old princely house, and declared their independence of Aragon.
Indeed, the priest-king was a feeble substitute for “the fighter”;
still he secured the continued existence of Aragon. Immediately after
his accession Ramiro espoused Inez, sister of the duke of Aquitaine and
Poitou; she bore him a daughter, Petronilla, who at the age of two years
was betrothed, on the advice of the grandees, to Raymond Berengar IV [or
V] of Barcelona, or Catalonia, and when Ramiro soon after returned to the
cloister the count received the regency of Aragon till the age of the
bride should make the nuptials possible. The result of this marriage was
the lasting union of Aragon and Catalonia[29] under Alfonso II, the son
of Raymond and Petronilla.[o]
Want of space forbids us to give the details of the history of Raymond
Berengar’s dominions. The district had been conquered by the Moslems in
the eighth century, but part of it was recovered for Christianity by the
Franks and formed into a province under the name of the Spanish Mark. The
various counts soon asserted their independence, and those of Barcelona
increasing in power and importance gradually absorbed the dominions of
the rest and became masters of the whole of Catalonia.[a]
FOUNDATION OF THE SPANISH ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD
[Sidenote: [1082-1162 A.D.]]
Raymond sought to fulfil the testamentary dispositions of Alfonso by
founding a special order of knighthood, modelled on the pattern of the
Temple, “for the defence of the Western church and to oppose the Moors
in Spain,” and he bestowed on it large possessions with castles and
revenues. As a special Aragonese branch of the order of the Temple,
it was under the grand-master of Jerusalem. The large profits which
the brethren of the order might hope to derive from the spoils of the
Arabs in case of a victory were a powerful incentive to enterprises and
expeditions of conquest.
Before this, Raymond IV, Raymond’s father, a valiant warrior in the
service of Christ, had himself joined the order of the Temple and had
granted it extensive lands and rights. With the help of these, and
supported by the Catalan knighthood and the Pisans, he had fought against
the infidel with courage and success, and in a hotly contested struggle
had taken from them many towns and citadels. He had also extended his
territory in the north of the Pyrenees and had acquired the countship
of Carcassonne, Besalu, Cerdagne, etc. Raymond V was not only the heir
to these possessions which he united to Aragon; he continued the war
of conquest against the Saracens, now single-handed, now in alliance
with his brother-in-law, Alfonso VII (VIII) of Castile, who, like his
predecessor, assumed the title of “emperor of Spain” and claimed the
suzerainty over the other Christian kingdoms.
The Christians soon again succeeded in winning the upper hand of the
Moslems. It was not only that religious enthusiasm, the chivalrous
fighting spirit of the time and the prospect of knightly lands and spoil
continually attracted fresh combatants to the standard; but dissensions
and disorganisations amongst the disciples of Mohammed facilitated the
progress of their arms. One party of the Moors called in the aid of the
Castilian king. Alfonso VII did not hesitate to profit by the disorder
amongst the Mohammedans. While the Portuguese king conquered Lisbon with
the help of the crusaders, the Castilian “emperor,” in conjunction with
Raymond of Barcelona, Count William of Montpellier, and the Christian
chivalry of all the Spanish kingdoms, marched to the coast towns of
Almeria, the headquarters of the Mohammedan pirates, invested it on
the land side whilst the fleet of the Genoese and Pisans blockaded the
harbour, and after a long siege compelled it to surrender. The garrison
were put to the sword, and incalculable spoil was carried off. Raymond
Berengar fought with like success against the Moslems on the Ebro, where,
again supported by the Genoese and Pisans, he took the important city of
Tortosa, and then added the whole territory on the river to his kingdom
(1148).
Alfonso VII lived to see the hardly won town of Almeria again wrested
from Castile. On his return from a military expedition he died in the
pass of Muradal, a prince endowed with strength, intelligence, and the
love of justice, full of zeal for the Christian faith and generous to
churches and cloisters. With him the series of “emperors of Spain” comes
to an end (1157).
With the death of Alfonso VII of Castile, and that of Raymond of Aragon
and Catalonia, which followed five years later, the Christian kingdoms of
the Spanish peninsula again entered on evil times. Whilst the Mohammedan
world, united and strengthened under the rule of the Almohades, acquired
fresh power in the south and southeast, and won back much of its ancient
possessions, in the north the vigour of the attack and resistance was
broken by divisions and civil contentions.
Although the kingdom of Aragon and Catalonia passed undivided to the
young King Alfonso II, and his suzerainty extended over a great part of
Languedoc and the country of Provence which was governed by a relative
of the royal family, on the other hand, under the sons and successors
of Alfonso VII the Castilian kingdom was dismembered; for Leon with
Galicia and Asturias, and Navarre with the Basque provinces seceded
from it and started an independent political existence under their own
princes, without paying any further attention to the feudal superiority
of Castile. The results of these partitions were intestine disputes and
family quarrels which stood the Moslem in good stead.
[Sidenote: [1157-1197 A.D.]]
The divisions and weakness of Spanish Christendom would have gained a
still greater ascendency, had not the clergy admonished the knighthood
to the struggle against the infidels as a religious duty and kept alive
their zeal for the faith. They encouraged the formation of the Spanish
orders of knighthood to which the preservation of the Christian kingdoms
and the final overthrow of the Mohammedans was principally owing. Besides
the order of Calatrava which Raymond, abbot of the monastery of St. Mary
at Fitero, founded in 1158 on the model of the Templars and according
to the Cistercian rule, another brotherhood of the faith had come into
existence in the year 1156. This was subsequently called the order of
Alcantara, after its chief fortress. In Galicia the priesthood enrolled a
number of warlike robber knights in the order of St. James of Compostella
(1175), for the protection of the church of the tomb of St. James (St.
Iago) in that city, and laid on them as their most sacred duty the
obligation of escorting pilgrims thither.
It was principally the courage and religious enthusiasm of these armed
brotherhoods that prevented the Moslem from again bearing the banner
of Islam across the Ebro and Douro in the second half of the twelfth
century, when Castile was distracted by internal strife, due to the
enmity and jealousy of the two princely houses of Lara and Castro, when
the Christian kings of the various states turned their arms against each
other, when in Catalonia the confusion mounted to such a height that two
archbishops of Tarragona were murdered and Portugal and Leon lay under
ban and interdict on account of a marriage between near relatives, and
anarchy and the right of the strong hand ruled unchecked.
Since the days of the great Almansor no prince had warred against
Christian Spain with so much success as the Almohad, Abdul-Mumin, “the
commander of the faithful.” But when, against the advice of his officers,
he risked a battle at Santarem, he suffered a defeat in which he lost
his life. But his son Yakub Almansor, a prince whose virtues and great
qualities were not inferior to those of his contemporary Saladin, soon
avenged his father’s death. The Third Crusade increased fanaticism
even in the Pyrenean peninsula. Undisciplined hosts of pilgrims landed
in the west and south, marking their path by robbery and devastation,
and Christian and Saracen were spurred to fresh encounters. Roused
by a devastating raid of the archbishop of Toledo against Seville,
and by a written challenge of the Castilian king Alfonso “the noble,”
Yakub Almansor took the field with his whole army. The Christian host,
especially the numerous knights of the fraternities, both those of
the country and foreign Templars and knights of St. John, opposed him
at Alarcon and suffered a complete defeat (1195). The flower of the
Christian chivalry were left on the battle-field. Almost all New Castile,
as far as the fortress of Toledo, fell into the hands of the infidels;
the mountains and citadels of Guadarrama and the want of provisions alone
prevented the Moslems from again penetrating to the mountain districts
of Asturia. Moreover the Castilians were at war with the Leonese and it
was not until the marriage of Berengaria, the daughter of the Castilian
king, with the king of Leon that a reconciliation was effected (1197).
But, for this, king and kingdom were laid under an interdict, because the
marriage was against the church’s law on account of the relationship
of the parties, until Berengaria agreed to a divorce and returned to
Castile. Her children, however, were considered as legitimate. At the
same time Sancho of Navarre concluded an alliance with the Moorish
party of the Almohads, in the hope of obtaining the supremacy over the
Christian kingdoms by their assistance.
[Sidenote: [1197-1212 A.D.]]
Under these circumstances it seemed as though the Spanish Christians must
succumb. Fortunately for them, Yakub Almansor died four years after the
battle of Alarcon. It was not till the new emir Muhammed al-Nasir had
succeeded in mastering his enemies, after several bloody battles, that he
again undertook a “holy war” against the Christians. But in the meantime
the northern kingdoms had revived and the zealous efforts of pope and
clergy had succeeded in temporarily adjusting intestine feuds.
OVERTHROW OF THE MOSLEMS
Consequently when, after an interval of fourteen years, Muhammed
renewed the struggle and took the field with vast hosts from Africa and
Andalusia, he met with a powerful resistance (1211). It was not merely
that the whole Spanish chivalry, headed by the members of the orders
of every description, thronged to the standards of the kings of Aragon
and Castile; many _ultramontanes_ from the provinces of southern France
and other districts were to be found there, who, fired by itinerant
preachers, had travelled across the Pyrenees to earn a heavenly reward
and earthly possessions as soldiers of God. By an ordinance of the pope,
the assistance of heaven had been invoked throughout Christendom by fasts
and processions. The religious excitement which at that time had gained
possession of all minds, furthered the enterprise. Never before had such
great hosts of warriors encountered one another in the peninsula.
In numbers, orders, and military discipline the Moslems were superior
to the Christians; like the crusaders in the Holy Land, the Christian
warriors in Spain, especially the free companies who had flocked thither
from abroad, sullied the cause of faith by savage crimes and robbery and
persecutions of the Jews in and about Toledo; and when the Saracens,
having wasted their best strength during eight months before the mountain
fortresses of Salvatierra, saw themselves compelled to agree to deliver
up to the king of Castile the beleaguered city of Calatrava with the
treasures collected there, in return for a free passage, the majority of
the ultramontanes withdrew in anger, because the Spanish princes would
not allow the retreating enemy to be waylaid in defiance of the promise
given. Fanaticism had hardened their hearts and stifled the sentiments
of honour and humanity. But in spite of the defection of the foreign
soldiers, the Spanish Christians won a glorious victory in the battle of
Las Navas de Tolosa, in the Sierra Morena, when the rule of the Africans
in Spain received its death-blow (1212), as described in the history of
the Arabs. More than a hundred thousand corpses, amongst them that of
Muhammed’s first-born, strewed the battle-field, and for long after the
16th of July was celebrated in Toledo by a great thanksgiving festival,
called “the triumph of the cross.” The spoil was enormous, but the
brilliant victory was stained by cruelty and rapine at the capture of the
surrounding cities.[o]
FOOTNOTES
[19] [Compare what the Arab historian Al Lagi[j] said of Alfonso the
Catholic: “The terrible Alfonso, the manslayer, son of the sword, killed
tens of thousands of Moslems. He burned houses and dwellings, and no
treaty could be made with him.” Christian historians equal this. The
archbishop Rodrigo[c] draws a worse view of the desolation of Spain than
even Isidore[d]: “Children are dashed on the ground, young men beheaded;
their fathers fall in battle; the old men massacred, the women reserved
for greater misfortune.” He tells us that “every cathedral in Spain was
burned or destroyed”; that “the national substance, etc., was plundered,
except what the bishops could save in the Asturias”; that “the cities
which were too strong to be stormed immediately, were deluded into a
surrender”; that “oaths and treaties were uniformly broken by the Arabs,”
etc. Both he and Isidore may exaggerate, but the exaggeration only proves
the fact.]
[20] The monk of Albelda[e] calls Pelayo the son of Bermudo, and nephew
of king Roderic. His origin is wrapped in much obscurity. [Burke[g] says
“Pelayo, no doubt, was but a robber chieftain, a petty mountain prince,
and the legends of his royal descent are of later date and of obviously
spurious manufacture; but Pelayo needs no tinsel to adorn his crown. He
was the founder of the Spanish monarchy. The Arabs called him ‘Belay.’”]
[21] Mariana[i] says, that Alfonso inherited in virtue of Pelayo’s
will. This is one of the assertions so common in this writer, without
the shadow of a foundation. Equally unfounded is the assertion that he
inherited in right of his wife, Hermesinda, though that circumstance
would doubtless have some weight with the electors. His best claim was,
that “_in tempore Egicani et Witizani regum, princeps militiæ fuit_,”
according to Sebastian.[f]
[22] [“Dunham,[h] quoting Sebastian of Salamanca,[f] _omnes Arabes
occupatores civitatum interficiens_, says placidly, ‘Such an
extermination of the Mohammedan inhabitants to make room for his
Christian colonists was a just retribution on the heads of the followers
of a sanguinary faith.’ A strange nineteenth century Christian gloss!
If such things can be written in 1832, it is hardly surprising that the
retributive justice practised in the mountains should have been somewhat
one-sided in 750.”--BURKE.[g]]
[23] [Isaiah lvii, 1-2. In a note upon this Dunham[h] says, “Not a single
historian of Spain, from Bishop Sebastian[f] to Masdeu[l] and Ortiz,[m]
has ventured to express his disbelief in this miracle.”]
[24] _Ipsi Agareni herbam attulerunt, et crassitudinem ejus abstulerunt
à ventre ejus, et ad pristinam levitatis astutiam reductus_,
etc.--SAMPIRO.[n] It is a pity the Mohammedan doctors did not leave the
prescription behind them.
[25] [Previously to this he waged “the war of the Three Sanchos,” so
called from the fact that he, Sancho of Castile, attacked his cousin
Sancho of Navarre, who called in the aid of Sancho of Aragon; and
together the latter Sanchos defeated the Castilian, in 1068.]
[26] [It is a curious fact that this warrior is known to the Spaniards by
his Arab name of _Cid_ or _Saïd_, that is, lord or leader, while to the
Arabs he is known by his Spanish name of _Campeador_ or “Challenger.”]
[27] [Burke[g] explains the inconsistent enumerations of the kings of
this period as follows:
The curious confusion arising from a twofold or threefold system of
numeration of the Alfonsos of Castile and Leon in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries seems to call for some special notice. Dunham[h],
Romey[s] and other foreign historians and chronologists, among whom the
count de Mas-Latrie[t] must ever be spoken of with the greatest respect,
call Alfonso _el Batallador_, of Aragon, Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile,
as in right of his wife Urraca; and thus call Alfonso _el Imperador_
number VIII; and keep Alfonso III of Castile out of the Leonese or
_Junto_ numeration altogether. Thus and in other ways confusion has been
introduced, and by imperfect explanation still worse confounded.
The following, it is to be hoped, is plain:
Alfonso VI of Leon was the first of the name to reign in Castile; and, as
in the course of the next hundred and fifty years the two kingdoms were
sometimes under the same king, though not formally united, and sometimes
each with a king of its own, the plan has been generally adopted by
modern Spanish writers of numbering the Alfonsos of Leon and of Castile
consecutively, without regard to the kingdoms over which they reigned,
taking no account of the Alfonsos of Aragon. Thus Alfonso _el Sabio_
was Alfonso IV of Castile, and Alfonso IX of Leon, but Alfonso X of the
consecutive Alfonsos, by which title he is always known. And it is by
this numeration that the late king of Spain was Alfonso XII, and his
present majesty is Alfonso XIII.]
[28] [His ambitious assumption of the title of “emperor of Spain” was
scarcely justified by his uncertain conquests from the Almoravids and was
made ridiculous by his failure to subdue his Christian neighbours in Leon
and Castile.[g]]
[29] [Burke[g] says, “The union of Catalonia with Aragon by the marriage
of Queen Petronilla with Raymond Berengar of Barcelona in 1150, was the
foundation of the greatness of Spain.”]
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