MEDIEVAL SPAIN
THE FOUNDERS OF MODERN SPAIN--THE KINGDOMS OF THE ASTURIAS AND OF
LEON--THE DEFEAT AT RONCESVALLES--THE CID CAMPEADOR
The Crescent had conquered, but the Cross endured. The refuge of the
latter was in the Asturias, There--eight or ten years after the death of
the last of the Gothic kings--Pelayo, one of the early heroes of Spanish
history, was reigning over refugees from Moslem rule. It was these
refugees who laid the foundation of modern Spain, and it is related that
in their fastness at Covadonga, thirty of them, with Pelayo at their
head, actually routed, if they did not destroy, an entire army of four
hundred thousand Moslem besiegers.
The story is of course mythological, but the good fortune of Pelayo did
much to kindle the national spirit by which ultimately Spain was
conquered for the Spaniards, and thus the story, if critically false,
becomes metaphorically true.
* * * * *
Nor [says Burke] do the Arabs seem to have made any attempt to retrieve
or avenge the fortunes of the day. Well satisfied, no doubt, with their
unopposed dominion over the rich plains of the genial south country,
they were willing to abandon the bleak and inhospitable mountains to
their wild inhabitants and the emboldened refugees whom they sheltered.
Be the reason what it may, Pelayo seems to have had peace all the days
of his life after his victory at Covadonga in 718. Prudently confining
his attention to the development of his little kingdom, he reigned, it
is said, for nineteen years at Cangas, and, dying in 737, was peacefully
succeeded by his son Favila.
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.
Meanwhile, in the recesses of the Pyrenees, a second Christian kingdom,
that of Navarre, had been founded by Garcias Iniguez, which, together
with Catalonia and Aragon, Charlemagne a little later (778) entered and
subdued. In repassing the Pyrenees, however, the Navarrese, led by
Fortun Garcias, fell upon the Frankish troops and cut to pieces the
rearguard, and even, it is said, the main body of the army.
How far the Spanish Christians were aided, as it has been stated they
were, by the Moors, it is impossible to discover. The fact of such an
alliance, in itself sufficiently improbable, is quite unnecessary to
explain the ever-famous defeat at Roncesvalles.
Nor can we speak with much greater confidence of the prowess or even of
the existence of the equally famous Roland, in the ranks of the invading
or evading army; or of that of the no less celebrated Bernardo del
Carpio in the ranks of the pursuers.
Taillefer, who sang the song of Roland upon the battlefield of Hastings,
and Terouldes, whose thirteenth century epic suggested the poems of
Pulci, of Boiardo, and of greatest Ariosto, all these have made Roland
one of the favorite heroes of the Middle Ages. But in the story, as it
is told in the Spanish ballads, it is Bernardo del Carpio, the nephew of
the chaste but pusillanimous Alfonso, who is the true hero of
Roncesvalles, and who not only repulsed the host of Charlemagne, but
caught up the invulnerable Roland in his arms, and squeezed him to death
before his army. No carpet knight or courtier was Bernardo, but a true
Cantabrian mountaineer.
In 790 Alfonso II., the great-grandson of the great Pelayo, then king of
Oviedo, repulsed the Mussulman army with great slaughter, and abolished
the ignominious tribute of one hundred virgins, an annual tribute paid
to the Muhammadan ruler, fifty virgins being of noble and fifty of base
or ignoble birth. From this circumstance is derived, by some historians,
his surname of the Chaste; attributed by others to his having made a
solemn vow of virginity, and observed it, even in marriage. This vow,
and the austere temper in which it probably originated, had considerable
influence over Alfonso’s life. He so deeply resented his sister Ximena’s
private marriage with a subject, the Count of Saldanha, that he shut her
up in a convent; and putting out her husband’s eyes, sentenced him to
perpetual imprisonment.
The royal line of Navarre or Sobrarve was at this time extinct, Ximenes
Garcias, the grandson of Fortun Garcias, having died without children.
The nobles availed themselves of the opportunity to establish the famous
code entitled “Los Fueros de Sobrarve”--the laws of Sobrarve--which
subsequently became the groundwork of the liberties of Aragon. Navarre
was soon afterward recovered by the Moors, and Sobrarve included in the
Spanish March.
Alfonso ruled upward of fifty years. Incessant wars now followed between
the followers of the Cross and the Crescent, and a frenzy for martyrdom
on the part of the Christians had to be repressed by a Christian
archbishop at the solemn request of the Cadis.
Garcia of Oviedo died without children shortly after his accession; when
his brother Ordoño II. reunited the whole of his father’s dominions. He
transferred the seat of government to Leon, and altered the title of
King of Oviedo into that of King of Leon.
This Ordoño abandoned the peaceful policy of his greater father, and
undertook many expeditions with varying and uncertain success against
the Arabs. He plundered Merida in 917, and routed the Berbers in
Southern Spain in 918. Yet three years later, at Val de Junqueras (921),
near Pamplona, the Christians suffered disastrous defeat. The usual
rebellion at home was appeased by the treacherous execution or murder of
no less than four counts of Castile in 922, and was followed by the
king’s death in 923.
Of Fruela II. (923-925), Alfonso IV. (925-930), and Ramiro II.
(930-950), little need be said, but that they lived and reigned as kings
of Leon.
To Ramiro, however, is due, at least, the honor of an authentic victory
over the Moslem forces of the great Caliph, Abdur Rahman an Nasir (939),
at Simancas, and afterward in the same year at Alhandega.
Ramiro, after the usual rebellion, abdicated, in 950, in favor of his
son Ordoño--who had married Urraca, daughter of the principal rebel of
the day, Fernan Gonzalez, count of Castile--and who succeeded his father
as Ordoño III.
But decapitation was a far more certain way of suppressing rebellion
than matrimony; and Fernan Gonzalez lived to intrigue against his
daughter and her royal husband in favor of Sancho, a younger brother of
the king. Ordoño, however, held his own against his brother, and
revenged himself on his father-in-law, by repudiating his wife; who,
with her personal and family grievances, was promptly _acquired_ by
Sancho, who succeeded, on his brother’s death, to the crown of which he
had failed to possess himself by force. But even as a legitimate
sovereign, Sancho, surnamed the Fat, was not allowed to reign in peace.
He was driven from his kingdom by that most versatile rebel, Count
Fernan Gonzalez, and sought refuge at the court of his uncle Garcia of
Navarre at Pamplona. Thence, in company with Garcia, and his mother
Theuda, he journeyed to the court of the Caliph at Cordova, where the
distinguished visitors were received with great show of welcome by Abdur
Rahman at Az Zahra; and where Hasdai, the Jew, the most celebrated
physician of the day, succeeded in completely curing Sancho of the
distressing malady--a morbid and painful corpulency--which incapacitated
him from the active discharge of his royal duties.
The study and practice of medicine were alike disregarded by the rude
dwellers in Leon; but the Cordovan doctor, surpassing in his success, if
not in his skill, the most celebrated physicians of the present day,
contrived to reduce the king’s overgrown bulk to normal proportions,
and restored him to his former activity and vigor, both of body and
mind. Nor was the skill of Hasdai confined to the practice of medicine.
An accomplished diplomatist, he negotiated a treaty with his Christian
patient, by which Sancho bound himself to give up ten frontier
fortresses to the Caliph, on his restoration to the crown of Leon, while
Don Garcia and Dona Theuda undertook to invade Castile in order to
divert the attention of the common foe, the ever-ready Fernan Gonzalez.
In due time Sancho, no longer the fat, but the hale, returned to Leon at
the head of a Moslem army, placed at his disposal by his noble host at
Cordova, drove out the usurper, Ordoño the Bad, and reigned in peace in
his Christian dominions. The visit of this dispossessed Ordoño to the
court of the Caliph Hakam at Cordova, in 962, is an interesting specimen
of the international politics or policy of his age and country.
As Sancho had recovered his throne, by the aid of Abdur Rahman, so
Ordoño sought to dethrone him and make good his own pretensions by the
aid of Hakam. The Caliph, already harassed by Fernan Gonzalez, and
doubting the honesty of King Sancho, was not ill-pleased to have another
pretender in hand, and Ordoño was invited to Cordova, and received by
Hakam in the palace at Az Zahra with the utmost pomp and display. The
Leonese prince craved in humble language the assistance of the Moslem,
and professed himself his devoted friend, ally, and vassal; and he was
permitted to remain at the Court of Hakam, to await the issue of events
in the north. Some few days afterward a treaty was solemnly signed
between the Caliph and the Pretender, and once more the glories of Az
Zahra were displayed to the eyes of the astonished barbarian from Leon.
Nor did the fame of these splendid ceremonies fail to reach Sancho in
the northwest; and his spirit of independence was considerably cooled by
the prospect of a Moslem army, headed by his cousin Ordoño, making its
appearance before his ill-defended frontiers. The maneuver was
sufficiently familiar; and the reigning monarch lost no time in
disassociating himself from the hostile proceedings of Fernan Gonzalez;
and sending an important embassy to Hakam at Cordova, to assure him of
his unwavering loyalty, he hastened to announce his readiness to carry
out to the letter all the provisions of his recent treaty with the
Caliph. Hakam was satisfied. Ordoño languished disregarded at Cordova,
despised alike by Moslem and Christian, but unharmed and in safety as
the guest of the Arab. Sancho reigned in peace until 967, when he was
poisoned by the rebel count of the day, Sanchez of Galicia. His son, who
was known as Ramiro III., an unwise and incapable monarch, reigned at
Leon from 967 to 982, without extending the possessions or the influence
of the Christians in Spain; and Bermudo II., who usurped the throne, was
no match for the fiery Almanzor, who ravaged his kingdom, took
possession of his capital, and compelled the Christian Court to take
refuge in the wild mountains of the Asturias, and once more to pay
tribute to the Moslem at Cordova.
Bermudo died in 999; and on the death of Almanzor, three years later,
the Christian fortunes under the young Alfonso V., who had succeeded his
father Bermudo, at the age of only five, began to mend. Cordova was
given up to anarchy. The Moslem troops retired from Northern Spain.
Leon became once more the abode of the king and his court, and though
Alfonso gave his sister in marriage to Mohammed, an Emir or Vali of
Toledo, he extended his Christian dominion in more than one foray
against the declining power of the Moslem.
Alfonso V., who is known in Spanish history as the Restorer of Leon,
sought to consolidate his own power, as he certainly exalted that of his
clergy, by the summoning of a Council, after the manner of the
Visigothic Councils of Toledo. The Council met at the city of Leon on
the 1st of August, 1020, in the Cathedral Church of St. Mary. The king
and his queen Elvira presided, and all the bishops and the principal
abbots and nobles of the kingdom took their seats in the assembly. And
if there was no Leander, nor Isidore, nor Julian to impose his will upon
king or council, the interests of the Church were not entirely
overlooked. Of the fifty-eight decrees and canons of this Council, the
first seventeen relate exclusively to matters ecclesiastical, the next
twenty are laws for the government of the kingdom, the remaining
thirty-one are municipal ordinances for the city of Leon.
But Alfonso V. was not exempted from the usual rebellions, and
marriages, and assassinations, and executions, which constituted the
politics of the day. Garcia, the last Count of Castile, was
treacherously slain in 1026; and Alfonso was himself more honorably
killed in an attack upon a Moslem town in Lusitania in 1027.
The life of Fernan Gonzalez, the Warwick of medieval Spain, is almost as
much overlaid with romantic legends as that of Roderic or Roland. The
lives and deeds of his ancestors, and the origin of his ever-celebrated
County of Castile, are involved in the utmost confusion and obscurity;
but Fernan Gonzalez himself is at least a historical personage. He
married Sancha, daughter of Sancho Abarca of Navarre, and their son,
Garcia Fernandez, succeeded him as hereditary Count of Castile.
As early as the year 905, Sancho, a Christian chief of whose ancestors
and predecessors much has been written, much surmised, and nothing is
certainly known, was king or ruler of the little border state of
Navarre. A prudent as well as a warlike sovereign, he fortified his
capital city of Pamplona, and when his son, in alliance with Ordoño II.
of Leon, was defeated by the Moslems at Val de Junquera, the Navarrese
not only made good their retreat to that celebrated fortress, but
succeeded in course of a short time in driving the Moslems out of their
country. The grandson of this successful general was Sancho El Mayor--or
the Great--the most powerful of the Christian princes in Spain
(970-1035). Besides Navarre and Sobrarve he held the lordship of Aragon;
in 1026, in right of his wife, Muña Elvira, he became king or count of
Castile; while his successful interference in the affairs of Leon made
him virtual master of all Christian Spain outside the limits of the
quasi Frankish county of Catalonia.
Sancho the Great died in 1035, when his territories were divided,
according to his will, among his four sons; and from this time forth the
history of Navarre, so far as it is not included in the history of
Aragon, of Castile, and of France, is a confused and dreary record of
family quarrels, of plots and assassinations, of uncertain alliances, of
broken treaties. The marriage of the Princess Berengaria with Richard I.
of England, in 1191, failed to secure for Sancho V. the influence that
he had hoped to secure: and with Sancho VI., who died in 1234, the male
line of the house of Sancho Iniguez or Inigo, the founder of Navarre,
was extinct. A French prince was chosen by the Navarrese to rule over
them. And from the death of Sancho VI., in 1234, to the death of Charles
the Bad, in 1387--one hundred and fifty years--the history of Navarre is
that of France.
Bermudo III., who succeeded, on the death of his father, Alfonso V., in
1027, as king of Leon, was at once attacked by his powerful neighbors,
and the little States were distracted by family quarrels and civil war
until the death of Bermudo in battle, in 1037, when the male line of the
house of Leon became extinct.
On the death of Bermudo III. in 1037, Ferdinand I., king of Castile, the
second son of Sancho the Great, succeeded to the kingdom of Leon, and
became, after over twenty years of civil war (1058), the most powerful
monarch in all Spain. The Moslems offered but an uncertain and
half-hearted resistance to his arms. For while the Christians were
growing strong, the Moslem empire was already declining to its fall. And
the decay of the Caliphate of Cordova, and the internal dissensions of
the Arabs, enabled Ferdinand not only to recover all the territory that
had been conquered by Almanzor, but to pursue the disheartened Moslem as
far as Valencia, Toledo, and Coimbra. Ferdinand confirmed the Fueros of
Alfonso V., and summoned a council at Coyanza (Valencia de Don Juan),
over which, with his Queen Sancha, he presided in 1050. All the bishops
and abbots, together with a certain number of lay nobles thus assembled
_ad restaurationem nostræ Christianitatis_, proceeded to make decrees or
canons, after the manner of the Councils of Toledo, of which the first
seven were devoted to matters ecclesiastical, and the remainder
connected with the civil government of the country. With territories
thus recovered and augmented, with cities restored and fortified,
Ferdinand determined to excel all his Christian predecessors, and to
emulate the noble example of the Arab, by enriching his dominion, not
with treasures of art or literature, with schools, with palaces, with
manuscripts--but with the bones of as many martyrs as he could collect.
An army was raised for this sacred purpose, and the country of the Moors
was once more invaded and harried by the Christian arms. Ibn Obeid of
Seville, learning the objects of the invasion, offered Ferdinand every
facility for research in his city; and a solemn commission of bishops
and nobles were admitted within the walls to seek the body of Justus,
one of the martyrs of Diocletian. But in spite of all the diligence of
the Christians, and all the goodwill of the Arabs, the sacred remains
could nowhere be found. At length the spirit of Saint Isidore removed
the difficulty by appearing miraculously before the Commission, and
offering his own bones in the place of those of Justus, which were
destined, said he, to remain untouched at Seville. The Commission was
satisfied. And the body of the great Metropolitan, “fragrant with
balsamic odors,” was immediately removed to the Church of St. John the
Baptist at Leon--to the great satisfaction of both Christians and Moors,
in 1063.
It was on the occasion of the return of these blessed relics to the
Christian capital that Ferdinand proclaimed the future division of his
kingdom. For after all the success that had attended the Union of the
dominions of Leon and Castile under the sole authority of Ferdinand, who
rather perhaps for his sanctity than for his wisdom had earned the title
of the Great, the king made the same grievous mistake that his father
had done before him, in dividing his united territories at his death
(1065) among his sons and daughters. To Sancho, the eldest son, he left
the kingdom of Castile; to Alfonso, Leon and the Asturias; to Garcia,
Galicia; to his younger daughter, Elvira, the town and district of Toro,
and to her elder sister Urraca the famous border city of Zamora, the
most debatable land in all Spain, and a strange heritage for a young
lady. Thus Castile and Leon were once more separated; and the usual
civil wars and family intrigues naturally followed. Alfonso, though not
at first the most successful, survived all his rivals, and was at length
proclaimed king of Leon and Castile.
But the successes and glories of Alfonso VI., such as they were, are
overshadowed by the prowess of a Castilian hero, whose exploits form one
of the most favorite chapters in the national history of Spain--the
Christian knight with the Moslem title--Ruy Diaz, THE CID.
Two years before William of Normandy landed at Hastings, a Castilian
knight, a youth who had already won for himself the proud title of The
Challenger, from his reckless bravery and his success in single combat,
is found leading the royal armies of Sancho of Castile against the
enemy. The knight was Ruy Diaz de Bivar. The enemy was Alfonso VI. of
Leon, the brother of Sancho, who was endeavoring to reunite the
inheritance divided by his father, in the good old medieval fashion in
Spain.
Of noble birth and parentage, a Castilian of the Castilians, Roderic or
Ruy Diaz was born at Bivar, near Burgos, about the year 1040. His
position in the army of Sancho was that of Alferez, in title the
Standard-bearer, in effect the major-general or second in command, if
not commander-in-chief of the king’s army.
For seven years Alfonso of Leon and Sancho of Castile had been at war,
each seeking to destroy the other; and at length at Golpejara, near
Carrion, on the eve of what promised to be a decisive battle, a solemn
engagement was entered into by the brothers that whichever of the two
was worsted in the encounter should resign his kingdom to the other
without further bloodshed. The Castilians, in spite of Sancho and his
famous Champion, were defeated at Golpejara; and Alfonso of Leon,
foolishly trusting his brother’s word, took no heed to improve his
victory, and his unsuspecting army was overwhelmed the next day by the
Castilian troops under Ruy Diaz de Bivar, the author of this exceedingly
characteristic, if not entirely authentic piece of treachery.
It is scarcely surprising that the Cid was not trusted by Alfonso of
Leon, when he, in his turn, succeeded to the crown of Castile. But for
the moment Alfonso was not only deprived of his throne and of his
liberty by his more successful brother, but he was compelled to
purchase his life by a promise to enter the monastery of Sahagun.
Disregarding this vow, and making good his escape to Toledo, the royal
refugee was received with the usual hospitality of the Arab by El Mamun,
the Moslem ruler of the city, who sheltered and entertained him, as he
himself admitted, “like a son.”
Sancho meanwhile had turned his arms against his brother Garcia, whom he
dispossessed of his territories; against his sister Elvira, who met with
a similar fate, and, lastly, against his sister Urraca, who withstood
him boldly in her city of Zamora. And not only did this time-honored
fortress resist the attack of Sancho and his wily major-general, but the
king was slain outside the walls of the city by one of his sister’s
knights. Alfonso thus not only recovered his own kingdom of Leon, but,
swearing perpetual friendship with El Mamun of Toledo, he was elected
king of Castile by the Commons assembled at Burgos; and the defeated
refugee of 1071 found himself, in less than two years, the greatest
prince in Christian Spain; Alfonso the Sixth of Leon and of Castile.
Yet the legend runs that Alfonso was compelled to undergo the indignity
of a public examination, and a triple oath before the knights and nobles
assembled at Burgos, to the effect that he had had no share in the
murder of King Sancho; and the oath was administered by Ruy Diaz of
Bivar, the companion in arms of the Castilian king, sometime the
faithless enemy of Carrion, but now the acknowledged leader of the
Castilian nobility.
Alfonso of Leon may have forgiven the treachery in the field, but he
never forgot the insult in the Council. He restrained his indignation,
however, and was even induced by reasons of State to grant to the bold
Castilian lord the hand of his cousin Ximena in marriage, and to intrust
him with the command of an expedition into Andalusia. But the royal
favor was of brief duration; and in 1081 we find that Roderic, partly
owing to the intrigues of Garcia Ordonez, and partly to the enduring
enmity of the king, was banished from the Christian dominions.
Of all the petty sovereignties that came into existence on the breaking
up of the Ommeyad Caliphate of Cordova, that of Moctadir, the chief of
the Ben-i-hud of Saragossa, was the most powerful in Northern or Central
Spain; and at the Moslem court of Saragossa, Ruy Diaz, with his fame and
his followers, was warmly welcomed (1081) by Moctadir as a Said or
Cid--a lord or leader of the Arabs. He had been driven out of Castile by
Alfonso. He found a home and honorable command at Saragossa. So long as
he could make war upon his neighbors, all countries were alike to
Roderic of Bivar. Nor was it long before his prowess brought honor and
profit to Moctadir, or, rather, to his son and successor, Motamin.
Ramon Berenguer III., count of Barcelona, was engaged, like other
Christian princes of his time, in chronic warfare with his Moslem
neighbors; and Motamin, with his Castilian Cid, marching against the
Catalans, defeated the Christians with great slaughter at Almenara, near
Lerida, and brought Ramon Berenguer a prisoner to Saragossa (1081),
where the victorious Cid was loaded with presents by the grateful
Motamin, and invested with an authority in the kingdom subordinate only
to that of the king himself. Two years later (1083) an expedition was
undertaken by the Moslems, under Roderic, against their Christian
neighbors in Aragon. King Sancho Ramirez was completely defeated by the
Castilian champion, who returned once more to Saragossa loaded with
booty and renown. In 1084 the Cid seems to have paid a friendly visit to
the court of Alfonso VI. But although he was apparently well received,
he suspected treachery, and, returning to the court of the Moslem, once
more took service under the delighted Motamin. His next campaign,
undertaken in the following year, was not against any Christian power,
but against the hostile Moslems of northern Valencia, and was crowned
with the usual success. Motamin died in 1085, but the Cid remained in
the service of his son and successor, Mostain, fighting against
Christian and Moslem as occasion offered, partly for the King of
Saragossa, but chiefly for the personal advantage of Ruy Diaz of Bivar.
A stranger national hero it is hard to imagine! Nor were his subsequent
proceedings in any degree less strange.
Al Mamun, the host and protector of Alfonso VI., had died in 1075,
leaving, his grandson, Cadir, to succeed him as sovereign of Toledo.
Abdulaziz, the viceroy of the subject city of Valencia, took advantage
of the weakness of the young prince to declare himself independent, and
placing himself under the protection of the Christians, undertook to pay
a large subsidy to Alfonso VI. in return for his recognition and
support. The subsidy was punctually paid, and, in spite of a present of
no less than a hundred thousand pieces of gold handed over by Moctadir
of Saragossa to Alfonso as the price of Valencia, Abdulaziz retained his
hold of the city until his death in 1085. On this, numerous pretenders
to the government immediately arose, including Moctadir of Saragossa, a
purchaser for value, and the two sons of Abdulaziz; while Alfonso took
advantage of the confusion that ensued to persuade Cadir to surrender
Toledo, much coveted by the Christian king, and to accept, or, more
exactly, to retain, for himself the sovereignty of Valencia, under the
humiliating protection of Castile. Alfonso cared nothing that Toledo was
the inheritance of his youthful ally, the home of his old protector,
when he himself was a hunted refugee. He cared nothing that the
Valencians were hostile to Cadir, and that powerful neighbors were
prepared to dispute his possession. He cared nothing that Moctadir, who
had actually purchased the city from Alfonso himself, was on the way to
make good his claim. A treaty was forced upon Cadir by which Toledo was
surrendered to Alfonso VI. (1085), and the Christian king was bound to
place and maintain the unhappy prince in possession of his own
subordinate city of Valencia.
Toledo thus became the capital of Christian Spain; and the evicted
sovereign, escorted by a large force of Castilian troops under Alvar
Fanez, made his sad and solemn entry into Valencia, despised at once by
the citizens of Toledo, whom he had abandoned to the Christian
sovereign, and by the citizens of Valencia, where his power was
maintained by Christian lances. And costly indeed was this Christian
maintenance. Six hundred pieces of gold is said to have been the daily
allowance of the army of Castilian mercenaries; and the taxes that were
necessitated by their presence only added to the unpopularity of the
government. Many of Cadir’s Moslem subjects fled from the city; and
their place was taken by his Christian supporters or pensioners, whose
rapacity was, if possible, exceeded by their cruelty. But the coming of
the Almoravides gave a new turn to the fortunes of the city. Alvar Fanez
and his knights were recalled by Alfonso, and after the defeat of the
Christians at Zalaca, in October, 1086, Cadir found himself threatened
with immediate expulsion by his own citizens, supported by Mondhir of
Lerida, the uncle of Mostain of Saragossa. In this difficulty he once
more sought the protection of Christian lances, and applied for aid to
the Cid, who immediately advanced on Valencia.
An intriguer, at all times and places, Roderic promised his support to
Cadir in return for admission within the walls. He entered into a formal
treaty with Mostain that the city should be his, if all the booty were
handed over to the Campeador; and he sent envoys to Alfonso to assure
him that in all these forays and alliances he thought only of the
advantage of Christendom and the honor of Castile. Mondhir, overawed by
the appearance of the allied army from Saragossa, hastily retired from
before Valencia, where Mostain and his Christian Said were welcomed as
deliverers by Cadir.
But although the Cid imposed a tribute upon the unhappy Valencians, he
failed to give over the city to Mostain, and assuring Cadir of his
constant support, as long as a monthly allowance of ten thousand golden
dinars was punctually paid, he withdrew himself from the remonstrances
of the disappointed Mostain--to whom he continued to protest his
continued devotion--on the plea of a necessary visit to his Christian
sovereign in Castile, to explain or excuse his position, and to engage
some Castilian troops for his army. Mostain, during his absence,
perceiving that he could not count upon so versatile and so ambitious a
Said in the matter of the handing over of Valencia, entered into an
alliance with his old enemy, Ramon Berenguer, of Barcelona; and the
Catalans had actually laid siege to the city when the return of the Cid
induced them to abandon their trenches and retire to Barcelona.
If the Cid was a hero of romance, he did not wield his sword without the
most magnificent remuneration. At this period of his career (1089-92),
in addition to the eighty thousand golden pieces received from Ramon
Berenguer, he is said to have drawn fifty thousand from the son of
Mondhir, one hundred and twenty thousand from Cadir of Valencia, ten
thousand from Albarracin, ten thousand from Alpuente, six thousand from
Murviedro, six thousand from Segorbe, four thousand from Jerica, and
three thousand from Almenara.
With such an amount of personal tribute, the Cid cannot, says Lafuente,
have been greatly inconvenienced by the action of Alfonso VI. in
despoiling him of his estates. Supporting his army of seven thousand
chosen followers on the rich booty acquired in his daily forays upon
Eastern Spain, from Saragossa to Alicante; regardless of Christian
rights, but the special scourge of the Moslems; no longer a Saragossan
general, but a private adventurer, the Cid could afford to quarrel at
once with Mostain and with Alfonso, and to defy the combined forces of
Mondhir and Ramon Berenguer.
The rivalry between the Cid and the Catalan was ever fierce in Eastern
Spain. The opposing armies met at Tebar del Pinar in 1090, and although
the Cid was wounded in the battle, his army was completely successful.
Mondhir fled from the field; and Ramon Berenguer was once more a
prisoner in the hands of Roderic. Nor was the Christian count released
from a confinement more harsh than was generous or necessary until he
had given good security for the payment of the enormous ransom of eighty
thousand marks of gold.
It is not easy, nor would it be fruitful, to follow the various
movements of the Cid at this period of his career. His quarrels and his
intrigues with Alfonso of Castile, with Cadir of Valencia, with the
various parties at the court of Saragossa, with Ramon Berenguer at
Barcelona, and even with the Genoese and Pisans, are neither easy nor
interesting to follow. But his principal objective was the rich city of
Valencia. Alfonso of Leon, ever jealous of his great and most
independent subject, resolved to thwart him in his design; and having
secured the co-operation of the Pisans and Genoese, who had arrived with
a fleet of four hundred vessels to assist the Cid, the king took
advantage of the absence of his rival on some foray to the north of
Saragossa to advance upon Valencia, and to push forward his operations
to the very walls of the city. Ruy Diaz riposted after his fashion.
Leaving the Valencians to make good the defense of their own city, he
carried fire and sword into Alfonso’s peaceful dominions of Najera and
Calahorra, destroying all the towns, burning all the crops, slaughtering
the Christian inhabitants; and razing the important city of Logrono to
the ground. This savagery was completely successful, and met with no
reproach. The Cid is one of those fortunate heroes to whom all things
are permitted. His excesses are forgotten; his independence admired; his
boldness and his success are alone remembered. Alfonso, thus rudely
summoned to the north of the Peninsula, abruptly raised the siege of
Valencia.
Nor was the king’s action at Valencia without a favorable influence upon
the fortunes of the Cid. Far from wresting the city from the grasp of
Roderic, Alfonso had rather precipitated the crisis which was ultimately
to lead to his triumphal entry as the independent ruler of the city.
Cadir was murdered by a hostile faction within the walls; and the Cid,
advancing with his usual prudence, spent some time in possessing himself
of the suburbs and the approaches to the city, before the siege was
commenced in good earnest, in July, 1093.
The operations were carried on in the most ferocious fashion by the
attacking force. Roderic burned his prisoners alive from day to day
within the sight of the walls, or caused them to be torn in pieces by
his dogs under the very eyes of their fellow-townsmen.
The blockaded city was soon a prey to the utmost horrors of famine.
Negotiation was fruitless. Succor came not. Neither Christian nor
Moslem, neither Alfonso the Castilian, nor Yusuf the Almoravide, nor
Mostain of Saragossa, appearing to defend or to relieve the city,
Valencia capitulated on the 15th of June, 1094.
The Moslem commander, Ibn Jahaf, was burned alive. The Moslem
inhabitants were treated with scant consideration, and the Cid, as might
have been supposed, proclaimed himself sovereign of Valencia,
independent of either Christian Alfonso or Moorish Mostain; and at
Valencia he lived and reigned until the day of his death, but five
years afterward, in 1099. His rule was often threatened by the
Almoravides; but as long as the champion lived they could effect no
entry within the walls of his city.
For full three years after his death, moreover, his widow Ximena, and
his cousin Alvar Fanez, maintained a precarious sovereignty at Valencia.
At length, unsupported by Alfonso of Leon, and unable to stand alone in
the midst of the Moslems, they retired to Burgos, carrying with them the
body of the Cid embalmed in precious spices, borne, as of old, on his
faithful steed Babieca, to its last resting place in Castile. Valencia
was immediately occupied by the Almoravides, and became once more a
Moslem stronghold; nor did it finally pass into Christian hands until it
was taken by James the First of Aragon in 1238. The Cid was buried in
the Monastery of Cardena, near Burgos; and the body of his heroic wife,
Dona Ximena, who died in 1104, was laid by his side in the tomb.
The legend of the marriage of the Cid’s daughters with the Infantes of
Carrion, of their desertion, and of the vengeance of the Cid upon their
unworthy husbands, is undoubtedly an invention of the Castilian
minstrels.
The legend of the death of the Cid’s son at the battle of Consuegra is
certainly fallacious. There is no evidence that a son was ever born to
him at all. But he had undoubtedly two daughters, one of whom,
Christina, married Ramiro, Infante of Navarre, and the other, Maria,
became the countess of Ramon Berenguer III. of Barcelona. The issue of
Ramon Berenguer III. was a daughter who died childless, but a
granddaughter of Ramiro of Navarre married Sancho III. of Castile,
whose son, Alfonso VIII., was the grandfather both of St. Ferdinand and
of St. Louis. And thus in a double stream, through the royal houses of
Spain and of France, the blood of the Cid is found to flow in the veins
of his Majesty Alfonso XIII., the reigning king of Spain.
To understand or appreciate the position that is occupied by the Cid in
Spanish history is at the present day supremely difficult. A medieval
condottiere in the service of the Moslem, when he was not fighting to
fill his own coffers with perfect impartiality against Moor or
Christian: banished as a traitor by his Castilian sovereign, and
constantly leading the forces of the Infidel against Aragon, against
Catalonia, and even against Castile, he has become the national hero of
Spain. Warring against the Moslem of Valencia, whom he pitilessly
despoiled, with the aid of the Moslem of Saragossa, whose cause he
cynically betrayed, while he yet owned a nominal allegiance to Alfonso
of Castile, whose territories he was pitilessly ravaging; retaining
conquered Valencia for his personal and private advantage, in despite of
Moslem or Christian kings, he has become the type of Christian loyalty
and Christian chivalry in Europe. Avaricious, faithless, cruel and bold,
a true soldier of fortune, the Cid still maintains a reputation which is
one of the enigmas of history.
The three favorites of medieval Spanish romance, says Senor Lafuente,
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 theory is both ingenious and just, yet it by no means solves the
difficulty. Ruy Diaz of Bivar, who was one of the proudest nobles of
Castile, can scarcely be said to have sprung from the people, nor do we
clearly perceive why his long service under Moslem kings, even though he
was a rebel against his own sovereign, should have endeared him to the
Christian Spaniards, however independent or however democratic. Yet we
may learn at least from the character of the hero, ideal though it be,
that the medieval Castilians were no bigots, and that they were slaves
neither to their kings nor to their clergy.
The people of Aragon no doubt held their king in a more distinctly
constitutional subjection. No Castilian chief-justice was found to call
the sovereign to order: no Privilege of Union legalized a popular war in
defense of popular liberties. But Roderic took the place of the
justiciary in legend, if not in history, when he administered the oath
to Alfonso at Burgos; and he invested himself with the privilege of
warring against an aggressive king, when he routed Alfonso’s forces, and
burned his cities, to requite him for his attack upon Valencia.
It is this rebellious boldness which contributed no doubt very largely
to endear the Cid to his contemporaries. It is one of the most constant
characteristics of his career; one of the features that is portrayed
with equal clearness by the chroniclers and the ballad-makers of Spain.
For the Cid is essentially a popular hero. His legendary presentment is
a kind of poetic protest against arbitrary regal power. The Cid ballads
are a pæan of triumphant democracy. The ideal Cid no doubt was evolved
in the course of the twelfth century; and by the end of the fifteenth
century, when the rule of kings and priests had become harder and
heavier in Spain, an enslaved people looked back with an envious
national pride to the Castilian hero who personified the freedom of
bygone days.
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.[3] 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 neighbors 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,[4] could never have been the hero of a nation of bigots.
The degenerate Visigoths from the time of Reccared the Catholic to the
time of Roderic the Vanquished could never have produced a Cid. Yet,
even in the dark days of Erwig and Egica, there was found a Julian, who
boldly maintained the national independence against the pretensions of
the Pope of Rome. For a thousand years after the landing of St.
Paul--if, indeed, he ever landed upon the coast--the Spanish Church was,
perhaps, the most independent in Europe. The royal submission to the
Papal authority, first by Sancho I. of Aragon, in 1071, and afterward by
Alfonso VI. of Leon, in 1085, in the matter of the Romish Ritual, was
distinctly unpopular. Peter II. found no lack of recruits for the army
that he led against the Papal troops in Languedoc, and King James I.,
the most popular of the kings of Aragon, cut out the tongue of a
meddlesome bishop who had presumed to interfere in his private affairs
(1246). It was not until the Inquisition was forced upon United Spain by
Isabella the Catholic, and the national lust for the plunder of
strangers was aroused by the destruction of Granada, that the Spaniard
became a destroyer of heretics. It was not until the spoliation and the
banishment of Jews and Moriscos, and the opening of a new world of
heathen treasure on the discovery of America, that the Castilian, who
had always been independent himself, became intolerant of the
independence of others. Then, indeed, he added the cruelty of the priest
to the cruelty of the soldier, and wrapping himself in the cloak of a
proud and uncompromising national orthodoxy, became the most ferocious
bigot in two unhappy worlds.
But in the beginning it was not so. And if the Cid could possibly have
been annoyed by Torquemada, his knights would have hanged the Inquisitor
upon the nearest tree. No priests’ man, in good sooth, was Roderic of
Bivar, nor, save in that he was a brave and determined soldier, had the
great Castilian Free Lance anything in common with the more conventional
heroes of United Spain.
If history affords no reasonable explanation of his unrivaled renown
beyond that which has already been suggested, we find but little in the
early poetry to assist us. The Cid ballads impress us “more by their
number than their light.” They are neither very interesting in
themselves, nor are they even very suggestive. Only thirty-seven ballads
are considered by Huber to be older than the sixteenth century. “La
plupart de ces romances,” says M. Dozy, “accusent leur origine moderne”;
and, according to Mr. Ormsby, they do but little toward the illustration
of the Cid, either as a picturesque hero of romance or as a
characteristic feature of medieval history.
The great French dramatist scarcely touches the true history of his
hero. The scene of the play is laid at Seville, where no Christian king
set his foot for a hundred and fifty years after the death of Roderic.
The title which he accepted from his employer, Mostain of Saragossa, is
said to have been granted by Alfonso of Leon, after the capture of two
imaginary Moorish kings, unknown to history, in an impossible battle on
the banks of the Guadalquivir, which was never seen by the Cid. The
whole action of the play turns upon the moral and psychological
difficulties arising from the purely legendary incident of the killing
of Chimene’s father by her lover, avenging an insult offered to his own
sire, and of the somewhat artificial indignation of the lady, until she
is appeased by a slaughter of Moors. Corneille’s drama abounds in noble
sentiments expressed in most admirable verse; but it does not assist us
to understand the character of the Cid, nor the reasons of his
popularity in his own or in any other country. But certain at least it
is that from the earliest times the story of his life and his career
took a strong hold upon the popular imagination in Spain, and his
virtues and his vices, little as they may seem to us to warrant the
popular admiration, were understood and appreciated in the age in which
he lived, an age of force and fraud, of domestic treason and foreign
treachery, when religion preached little but battle and murder, and
patriotism was but a pretext for plunder and rapine. Admired thus, even
in his lifetime, as a gallant soldier, an independent chieftain, and an
ever successful general, fearless, dexterous, and strong, his free
career became a favorite theme with the jongleurs and troubadours of the
next generation; and from the Cid of history was evolved a Cid of
legendary song.
It is most difficult at the present day to know exactly where serious
history ends and where poetry and legend begin. Yet the Cid as
represented to us by M. Dozy, one of the most acute of modern
investigators of historic truth, is not so very different from the Cid
represented by Southey, or even by earlier and less critical poets, but
that we may form a reasonable estimate, from what is common to both
history and tradition, of what manner of man he was. The Cid of the
twelfth century legends, indeed, though he may be more marvelous, is by
no means more moral than the Cid of history. It was reserved for the
superior refinement of succeeding generations, and more especially for
the anonymous author of the poem of the thirteenth century to evolve a
hero of a gentler and nobler mold; a creature conforming to a higher
ideal of knightly perfection. From this time forward we have a glorified
Cid, whose adventures are no more historically false, perhaps, than
those of the unscrupulous and magnificent Paladin of the legends and
romances of the twelfth century, but whose character possesses all the
dignity and all the glory with which he could be invested by a generous
medieval imagination. And it is this refined and idealized hero;
idealized, yet most real; refined, yet eminently human, that has been
worshiped by nineteen generations of Spaniards as the national hero of
Spain.
Ruy Diaz--as he lived and died--was probably no worse a man than any of
his neighbors. Far better than many of them he was, and undoubtedly
bolder and stronger, more capable, more adroit, and more successful.
Seven of the Christian princes of Spain at this period fell in battle
warring against their own near relations, or were murdered by their
hands in cold blood. Garcia of Castile was slain by the sword of the
Velas. Bermudo III. of Leon and Garcia Sanchez of Navarre died fighting
against their brother, Ferdinand of Castile. Sancho II. of Castile was
assassinated by order of his sister Urraca, besieged by him in her city
of Zamora. Among the Christian kings of the century immediately before
him, Garcia of Galicia was strangled in prison by the hands of his
brothers, Sancho and Alfonso; Sancho Garcia of Navarre was assassinated
by his brother Ramon, at Peñalva; Ramon Berenguer II. of Barcelona died
by the dagger of his brother Berenguer Ramon; Sancho the Fat, in 967,
was poisoned at a friendly repast by Gonzalo Sanchez; Ruy Velasquez of
Castile, in 986, murdered his seven nephews, the unfortunate Infantes de
Lara; Sancho of Castile, in 1010, poisoned his mother, who had
endeavored to poison him. At the wedding festivities at Leon, in 1026,
Garcia, Count of Castile, was assassinated at the church door, and the
murderers were promptly burned alive by his friends; Garcia of Navarre,
in 1030, as an incident in a family dispute about a horse, accused his
mother of adultery. Such was the standard of the eleventh century in the
north of the Peninsula.
To judge the Cid, even as we now know him, according to any code of
modern ethics, is supremely unreasonable. To be sure, even now, that 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 vigor 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 gold pieces; 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 medieval Spain.