[Illustration: ALFONSO XIII., KING OF SPAIN]
THE WORLD’S BEST HISTORIES
[Illustration]
SPAIN
AND HER COLONIES
COMPILED FROM THE BEST AUTHORITIES
BY ARCHIBALD WILBERFORCE
_WITH FRONTISPIECE_
[Illustration]
THE CO-OPERATIVE PUBLICATION SOCIETY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
SPAIN
AND HER COLONIES
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
SPAIN IN ANTIQUITY 7
CHAPTER II
THE CALIPHATE OF CORDOVA 16
CHAPTER III
MEDIEVAL SPAIN 30
CHAPTER IV
MOORISH SPAIN 61
CHAPTER V
THE INQUISITION 83
CHAPTER VI
THEIR CATHOLIC MAJESTIES 100
CHAPTER VII
UNITED SPAIN 140
CHAPTER VIII
MODERN SPAIN 162
CHAPTER IX
COLONIAL SPAIN 206
CHAPTER X
THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE 225
CHAPTER XI
THE PHILIPPINES 251
CHAPTER XII
THE HISPANO-AMERICAN WAR 320
CHAPTER XIII
SPANISH ART, LITERATURE, AND SPORT 351
I. Painting and Architecture 351
II. Spanish Literature 370
III. Sport 379
APPENDIX 393
THE HISTORY OF SPAIN
CHAPTER I
SPAIN IN ANTIQUITY
THE FIRST LAWS AND THE FIRST INVADERS--GREEKS, PHŒNICIANS, ROMANS AND
GOTHS
Hispania was the name by which the Romans called the peninsula which is
made up of Spain and Portugal. The origin of the name is disputed. To
the Greeks the country was known as Hesperia--the Land of the Setting
Sun. According to Mariana,[1] Spain is called after its founder,
Hispanus, a son or grandson of Hercules. But, for reasons hereinafter
related, better authorities derive it from the Phœnician _Span_.
There is a legend which Mariana recites, to the effect that the primal
laws of Spain were written in verse, and framed six thousand years
before the beginning of Time. To medieval makers of chronicles, Tubal,
fifth son of Japhet, was the first to set foot on its shore. But earlier
historians, ignorant of Noah’s descendant, and, it may be, better
informed, hold that after the episodes connected with the Golden Fleece,
the Argonauts, guided by Hercules, sailed the seas and loitered a while
in Spain, where they were joined by refugees escaping from the totter
and fall of Troy. Black was their national color. It has been retained
in the mantillas of to-day. After the Greek adventurers came the
Phœnicians. The latter, a peaceful people, born traders, as are all of
Semitic origin, founded a colony at Gaddir (Cadiz). In a remoter era
they had established themselves at Canaan, where they built Bylos, Sidon
and Tyre. From Tyre emigrants moved to Africa. Their headquarters was
Kartha-Hadath, literally Newtown, that Carthage in whose ruins Marius
was to weep. The Phœnicians, as has been noted, were a peaceful people.
Under a burning sun their younger brothers developed into tigers. They
had the storm for ally. They ravaged the coast like whirlwinds. They
took Sicily, then Sardinia. Presently there was a quarrel at Gaddir. It
was only natural that the Phœnicians should ask aid of their relatives.
The Carthaginians responded, and, finding the country to their taste,
took possession of it on their own account. To the Romans, with whom
already they had crossed swords, they said nothing of this new
possession. It seemed wiser to leave it unmentioned than to guard it
with protecting, yet disclosive, treaties. More than once they scuttled
their triremes--suspicious sails were following them to its shore. From
this vigilance the name of Spain is derived. In Punic, _Span_ signifies
hidden.
The hiding of Spain was possible when the Romans were still in the
nursery. But when the Romans grew up, when they had conquered Greece,
and all of Italy was theirs, their enterprises developed. Up to this
time the two nations had been almost allies. At once they were open
rivals. It was a question between them as to whom the world should
belong.
The arguments on this subject, known as the Punic Wars, were three in
number. The first resulted in a loss of Sicily and Sardinia. In the
second, Spain went. In the third, Carthage was razed to the ground.
It was with the conquest of Sagentum--a conquest not achieved until the
surviving inhabitants of that beleaguered city had committed
suicide--that annexation began. Then, slowly, at one time advancing, at
another retreating, now defeated, now defeating, the Romans promenaded
their eagles down the coast. Scipio came and watched the
self-destruction of the Numantians, as Hannibal had watched the
Sagentums fall. Pompey, boasting that he had made the Republic mistress
of a thousand towns, came too; and after him Cæsar, who, long before, as
simple quæstor, had wept at Cadiz because of Alexander, who at his age
had conquered the world--Cæsar, his face blanched with tireless
debauches, came back and gave the land its _coup de grace_. In this
fashion, with an unhealed wound in every province, Spain crawled down to
Augustus’s feet. A toga was thrown over her. When it was withdrawn the
wounds had healed. She was a Roman province, the most flourishing,
perhaps, and surely the most fair.
The fusion of the two peoples was immediate. The native soldiery were
sent off to bleed in the four corners of the globe, to that Ultima Thule
where the Britons lived and which it took years to reach, or nearer home
in Gaul, or else far to the north among the Teuton States; and, in the
absence of an element which might have turned ugly, the Romans found it
easy work to open school. They had always been partial to Greek
learning, and they inculcated it on the slightest pretext. They imported
their borrowed Pantheon, their local Hercules, all the metamorphosed and
irritable gods, and with becoming liberality added to them those
divinities whom their adopted children most revered. It was in this way
that the fusion of the two races came about. When Augustus assumed the
purple, throughout the entire peninsula Latin was generally in use. It
was not of the purest, to be sure. It had been beaten in with the sword,
the accent was rough and the construction bristled with barbarisms; but
still it was Latin, and needed only a generation of sandpaper to become
polished and refined. But perhaps the least recognized factor in the
fusion of the two peoples was a growing and common taste for polite
literature. Such as the Romans possessed was, like their architecture,
their science, philosophy and religion, borrowed outright from the
Greeks. They were hungry for new ideas. These the Spaniards undertook to
provide. They had descended from a race whose fabulous laws were written
in verse, and something of that legendary inspiration must have
accompanied them through ages of preceding strife, for suddenly Boetica
was peopled with poets. In connection with this it may be noted that,
apart from the crop of Augustan rhymsters and essayists, almost
everything in the way of literature which Rome subsequently produced is
the work of Spaniards. Lucan and the Senecas were Boeticans--Martial,
Florus, Quintillian, Pomponius Mila were all of that race. J’en passe et
des meilleurs. The Romans, trained by the Greeks, were, it is true, the
teachers. Under their heavy hand the young Andalusians lost their way
among the clouds of Aristophanes, just as we have done ourselves; they
spouted the _Tityre tu_, and the _arma virum_, they followed the Odyssey
and learned that, in ages as remote to them as they are to us, Ulysses
had visited their coast. Indeed the Romans did what they could, and if
their pupils surpassed them it was owing to the lack-luster of their own
imaginations. But the education of backward Spain was not limited to
Greek poets and Augustan bores. Lessons in drawing were given, not as an
extra, but as part of the ordinary curriculum. The sciences, too, were
taught, the blackboard was brought into use, and Euclid--another
Greek--was expounded on the very soil that under newer conquerors was to
produce the charms and seductions of Algebra. Added to this, industry
was not neglected. The Romans got from them not poets alone, but
woolens, calicoes, and barbers too, emperors even. Trajan was an
Andalou, so was Hadrian, and so also was that sceptered misanthrope
Marcus Aurelius. As for arms, it is written in blood that the Romans
would have no others than those which came from Spain. The plebs dressed
themselves there. Strabo says that all the ready-made clothing came from
Tarragona. From Malaga, which in a fair wind was but six days’ sail from
the Tiber’s mouth, came potted herring, fat, black grapes that stained
the chin, and wax yellow as amber. From Cadiz came the rarest purple,
wine headier than Falernian, honey sweeter than that of Hymettus, and
jars of pale, transparent oil. To Iviça the Romans sent their togas;
there was a baphia there, a dyeing establishment, which, to be simply
charming, needed but the signboard _Morituri te salutamus_. And from the
banks of the Betis there came for the lupanars girls with the Orient in
their eyes, and lips that said “Drink me.” In this pleasant fashion
Rome, after conquering Spain, sat down to banquet on her products. The
Imperial City then was not unlike a professional pugilist who is unable
to find a worthy opponent; possible rivals had been slugged into
subjection. Perhaps she was weary, too. However great the future of a
combatant may be, there comes an hour when contention palls and peace
has charms. In any event, Rome at that time was more occupied in
assimilating her dominions than in extending the wonders of her sway.
And it was during this caprice that Spain found her fifty races fused in
one. On the distant throne was a procession of despots, terribly
tyrannical, yet doing what good they could. In return for flowers,
fruits and pretty girls, they gave roads, aqueducts, arenas, games and
vice. Claud introduced new fashions; Nero, the saturnalia. Each of the
emperors did what he was able, even to Hadrian, who increased the number
of Jews. It was during his reign that were felt the first tremors of
that cataclysm in which antiquity was to disappear. Rome was so
thoroughly mistress of the world that to master her Nature had to
produce new races. The parturitions, as we know, were successful.
Already the blue victorious eyes of Vandal and of Goth were peering down
at Rome; already they had whispered together, and over the hydromel had
drunk to her fall.
The Goths were a wonderful people. When they first appear in history
their hair was tossed and tangled by the salt winds of the Baltic.
Later, when in tattered furs they issued from the fens of the Danube,
they startled the hardiest warriors of the world, the descendants of
that nursling of the gaunt she-wolf. Little by little from vagabond
herders they consolidated first into tribes, then into a nation, finally
into an army that beat at the gates of Rome. There they loitered a
moment, a century at most. When they receded again with plunder and with
slaves they left an emperor behind. Soon they were more turbulent than
ever. They swept over antiquity like a tide, their waves subsiding only
to rise anew. And just as the earth was oscillating beneath their
weight, from the steppes of Tartary issued cyclones of Huns. Where they
passed, the plains remained forever bare. In the shock of their
onslaught the empire of the Goths was sundered. Some of them, the
Ostrogoths, went back to their cattle, others, the Visigoths, went down
to have another word with Rome. It was then that their cousins the
Vandals got their fingers on her throat and frightened the world with
her cries. In the strain of incessant shrieks the Imperial City fell.
From out the ruins a mitered prelate dragged a throne. Paganism had been
strangled; antiquity was dead; new creeds and new races were
refurbishing the world. Among the latter the Goths still prowled. In the
advance through the centuries, in the journey from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean, in the friction with the Attic refinement which the
Romans had acquired, the Goths left some of their barbarism on the
road--not much, however. Historians have it that when they took
possession of Spain they manifested a love of art, a desire for culture,
and that they affected the manners and usages of polite society. But
historians are privileged liars. The majority of those who have treated
the subject admired the Goths because they fancied them Christians, and
in the admiration they placed them in flattering contrast to their
predecessors who were pagans, and to their successors who were
Muhammadans. As a matter of fact--one that is amply attested in local
chronicles--they were coarse, illiterate and stupid as carps; moreover,
they were not Christians, they were Arians, and they were Arians
precisely as they were Goths--they were born so. To the dogma of the
Trinity and the consubstantiability or non-consubstantiability of Jesus
the Christ they were as ignorant as of the formation of the earth.
Throughout Europe at that time not a thread of light was discernible.
The dark ages had begun. In the general obscurity the Goths were not a
bit more brilliant than their neighbors. Under their hand civilization
disappeared; in return they gave the Spanish nothing but gutturals and a
taste for chicanery. In ninety and nine cases, the specimens of
architecture which cheap-trippers admire as due to them are of Saracen
workmanship. The monuments which they did erect are not disproportioned
perhaps; yet, whatever the casuist may affirm, there is still a margin
between the commonplace and the beautiful. In brief, to the Visigoths
the world owes less than nothing. They let Andalusia retrograde for
three hundred years, and delayed the discovery and development of
America. Previous to their coming Cadiz had been a famous seaport. The
Romans called it The Ship of Stone. Its sons had been immemorial
explorers. The presentiment of another land across the sea was theirs by
intuition. They were constantly extending their expeditions. They were
in love with the sunset, they sailed as near it as they could, returned
for more provisions, and sailed again; nearer, and ever nearer that way.
To the Church the theory of the antipodes was an abominable heresy. It
was taught that the earth was a flat parallelogram, its extremities
walled by mountains that supported the skies. Lactance was particularly
vehement on this point, so too was St. Jerome. Vergilius in asserting
the contrary threw Christendom into indignant convulsions. It may be
remembered that the most serious obstacle which Columbus subsequently
encountered lay in the decisions of the Fathers. Now Cadiz had been more
or less converted before the advent of the Visigoths, but it had not for
that reason put aside its habits and customs. It continued to be
essentially maritime; but when the Visigoths came, navigation
languished, the Ship of Stone no longer turned to the west, it foundered
in a sea of ignorance which was then undiked, and the possible discovery
of America was indefinitely postponed. By way of compensation, the
Visigoths framed a code of laws the spirit of which still survives, and
which is serviceable in showing that the framers possessed two distinct
traits, a love of agriculture and a hatred of Jews. Traits which are
significant when it is understood that it was through agriculture they
were supported and through the Jews they were overthrown. It was the
Jews that beckoned the Berbers and their masters the Arabs--the Moors,
as those Arabs were called who had deserted the deserts for the African
Riviera.