conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to Hassan, governor of
Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of forty thousand
men, was consecrated to the important service. In the vicissitudes of
war, the interior provinces had been alternately won and lost by the
Saracens. But the sea-coast still remained in the hands of the Greeks;
the predecessors of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications of
Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited by the
fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan, were bolder and more
fortunate: he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and
the mention of scaling-ladders may justify the suspicion that he
anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations of a
regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the
appearance of the Christian succors. The prÊfect and patrician John, a
general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces
of the Eastern empire; they were joined by the ships and soldiers of
Sicily, and a powerful reenforcement of Goths was obtained from the
fears and religion of the Spanish monarch. The weight of the confederate
navy broke the chain that guarded the entrance of the harbor; the Arabs
retired to Cairoan, or Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens
hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the
dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa was irrecoverably lost; the
zeal and resentment of the commander of the faithful prepared in
the ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and
the patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and
fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in the
neighborhood of Utica: the Greeks and Goths were again defeated; and
their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan, who had
invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp. Whatever yet
remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the colony of Dido
and CÊsar lay desolate above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a
twentieth, of the old circumference was repeopled by the first of the
Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the second
capital of the West was represented by a mosch, a college without
students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of five hundred
peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the arrogance of the
Punic senators. Even that paltry village was swept away by the Spaniards
whom Charles the Fifth had stationed in the fortress of the Goletta. The
ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be unknown if
some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the
inquisitive traveller.
The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were not yet masters of the
country. In the interior provinces the Moors or _Berbers_, so feeble
under the first CÊsars, so formidable to the Byzantine princes,
maintained a disorderly resistance to the religion and power of the
successors of Mahomet. Under the standard of their queen Cahina, the
independent tribes acquired some degree of union and discipline; and as
the Moors respected in their females the character of a prophetess,
they attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar to their own. The
veteran bands of Hassan were inadequate to the defence of Africa: the
conquests of an age were lost in a single day; and the Arabian chief,
overwhelmed by the torrent, retired to the confines of Egypt, and
expected, five years, the promised succors of the caliph. After the
retreat of the Saracens, the victorious prophetess assembled the Moorish
chiefs, and recommended a measure of strange and savage policy.
"Our cities," said she, "and the gold and silver which they contain,
perpetually attract the arms of the Arabs. These vile metals are not
the objects of our ambition; we content ourselves with the simple
productions of the earth. Let us destroy these cities; let us bury in
their ruins those pernicious treasures; and when the avarice of our foes
shall be destitute of temptation, perhaps they will cease to disturb
the tranquillity of a warlike people." The proposal was accepted with
unanimous applause. From Tangier to Tripoli, the buildings, or at least
the fortifications, were demolished, the fruit-trees were cut down, the
means of subsistence were extirpated, a fertile and populous garden was
changed into a desert, and the historians of a more recent period could
discern the frequent traces of the prosperity and devastation of their
ancestors. Such is the tale of the modern Arabians. Yet I strongly
suspect that their ignorance of antiquity, the love of the marvellous,
and the fashion of extolling the philosophy of Barbarians, has induced
them to describe, as one voluntary act, the calamities of three hundred
years since the first fury of the Donatists and Vandals. In the progress
of the revolt, Cahina had most probably contributed her share of
destruction; and the alarm of universal ruin might terrify and alienate
the cities that had reluctantly yielded to her unworthy yoke. They
no longer hoped, perhaps they no longer wished, the return of their
Byzantine sovereigns: their present servitude was not alleviated by the
benefits of order and justice; and the most zealous Catholic must prefer
the imperfect truths of the Koran to the blind and rude idolatry of the
Moors. The general of the Saracens was again received as the savior of
the province: the friends of civil society conspired against the savages
of the land; and the royal prophetess was slain, in the first battle,
which overturned the baseless fabric of her superstition and empire.
The same spirit revived under the successor of Hassan: it was finally
quelled by the activity of Musa and his two sons; but the number of the
rebels may be presumed from that of three hundred thousand captives;
sixty thousand of whom, the caliph's fifth, were sold for the profit
of the public treasury. Thirty thousand of the Barbarian youth were
enlisted in the troops; and the pious labors of Musa, to inculcate the
knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the Africans to obey the
apostle of God and the commander of the faithful. In their climate and
government, their diet and habitation, the wandering Moors resembled the
Bedoweens of the desert. With the religion they were proud to adopt the
language, name, and origin, of Arabs: the blood of the strangers and
natives was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic,
the same nation might seem to be diffused over the sandy plains of
Asia and Africa. Yet I will not deny that fifty thousand tents of pure
Arabians might be transported over the Nile, and scattered through the
Libyan desert: and I am not ignorant that five of the Moorish tribes
still retain their _barbarous_ idiom, with the appellation and character
of _white_ Africans.
V. In the progress of conquest from the north and south, the Goths
and the Saracens encountered each other on the confines of Europe and
Africa. In the opinion of the latter, the difference of religion is a
reasonable ground of enmity and warfare.
As early as the time of Othman, their piratical squadrons had ravaged
the coast of Andalusia; nor had they forgotten the relief of Carthage by
the Gothic succors. In that age, as well as in the present, the kings
of Spain were possessed of the fortress of Ceuta; one of the columns of
Hercules, which is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar
or point of Europe. A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting to
the African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed
from the walls of Ceuta, by the vigilance and courage of Count Julian,
the general of the Goths. From his disappointment and perplexity,
Musa was relieved by an unexpected message of the Christian chief,
who offered his place, his person, and his sword, to the successors of
Mahomet, and solicited the disgraceful honor of introducing their arms
into the heart of Spain. If we inquire into the cause of his treachery,
the Spaniards will repeat the popular story of his daughter Cava; of
a virgin who was seduced, or ravished, by her sovereign; of a father
who sacrificed his religion and country to the thirst of revenge. The
passions of princes have often been licentious and destructive; but
this well-known tale, romantic in itself, is indifferently supported by
external evidence; and the history of Spain will suggest some motive of
interest and policy more congenial to the breast of a veteran statesman.
After the decease or deposition of Witiza, his two sons were supplanted
by the ambition of Roderic, a noble Goth, whose father, the duke or
governor of a province, had fallen a victim to the preceding tyranny.
The monarchy was still elective; but the sons of Witiza, educated on
the steps of the throne, were impatient of a private station. Their
resentment was the more dangerous, as it was varnished with the
dissimulation of courts: their followers were excited by the remembrance
of favors and the promise of a revolution; and their uncle Oppas,
archbishop of Toledo and Seville, was the first person in the church,
and the second in the state. It is probable that Julian was involved in
the disgrace of the unsuccessful faction; that he had little to hope and
much to fear from the new reign; and that the imprudent king could
not forget or forgive the injuries which Roderic and his family had
sustained. The merit and influence of the count rendered him a useful
or formidable subject: his estates were ample, his followers bold and
numerous; and it was too fatally shown, that, by his Andalusian and
Mauritanian commands, he held in his hand the keys of the Spanish
monarchy. Too feeble, however, to meet his sovereign in arms, he sought
the aid of a foreign power; and his rash invitation of the Moors and
Arabs produced the calamities of eight hundred years. In his epistles,
or in a personal interview, he revealed the wealth and nakedness of
his country; the weakness of an unpopular prince; the degeneracy of an
effeminate people. The Goths were no longer the victorious Barbarians,
who had humbled the pride of Rome, despoiled the queen of nations, and
penetrated from the Danube to the Atlantic Ocean. Secluded from the
world by the PyrenÊan mountains, the successors of Alaric had slumbered
in a long peace: the walls of the cities were mouldered into dust: the
youth had abandoned the exercise of arms; and the presumption of their
ancient renown would expose them in a field of battle to the first
assault of the invaders. The ambitious Saracen was fired by the ease
and importance of the attempt; but the execution was delayed till he had
consulted the commander of the faithful; and his messenger returned with
the permission of Walid to annex the unknown kingdoms of the West to the
religion and throne of the caliphs. In his residence of Tangier, Musa,
with secrecy and caution, continued his correspondence and hastened his
preparations. But the remorse of the conspirators was soothed by the
fallacious assurance that he should content himself with the glory and
spoil, without aspiring to establish the Moslems beyond the sea that
separates Africa from Europe.
Before Musa would trust an army of the faithful to the traitors and
infidels of a foreign land, he made a less dangerous trial of their
strength and veracity. One hundred Arabs, and four hundred Africans,
passed over, in four vessels, from Tangier or Ceuta: the place of their
descent on the opposite shore of the strait is marked by the name of
Tarif their chief; and the date of this memorable event is fixed to the
month of Ramadan, of the ninety-first year of the Hegira, to the month
of July, seven hundred and forty-eight years from the Spanish Êra of
CÊsar, seven hundred and ten after the birth of Christ. From their first
station, they marched eighteen miles through a hilly country to the
castle and town of Julian: on which (it is still called Algezire) they
bestowed the name of the Green Island, from a verdant cape that advances
into the sea. Their hospitable entertainment, the Christians who joined
their standard, their inroad into a fertile and unguarded province, the
richness of their spoil, and the safety of their return, announced to
their brethren and the most favorable omens of victory. In the ensuing
spring, five thousand veterans and volunteers were embarked under the
command of Tarik, a dauntless and skilful soldier, who surpassed the
expectation of his chief; and the necessary transports were provided
by the industry of their too faithful ally. The Saracens landed at
the pillar or point of Europe; the corrupt and familiar appellation of
Gibraltar (_Gebel al Tarik_) describes the mountain of Tarik; and
the intrenchments of his camp were the first outline of those
fortifications, which, in the hands of our countrymen, have resisted the
art and power of the house of Bourbon. The adjacent governors informed
the court of Toledo of the descent and progress of the Arabs; and the
defeat of his lieutenant Edeco, who had been commanded to seize and bind
the presumptuous strangers, admonished Roderic of the magnitude of the
danger. At the royal summons, the dukes and counts, the bishops and
nobles of the Gothic monarchy, assembled at the head of their followers;
and the title of King of the Romans, which is employed by an Arabic
historian, may be excused by the close affinity of language, religion,
and manners, between the nations of Spain. His army consisted of ninety
or a hundred thousand men; a formidable power, if their fidelity and
discipline had been adequate to their numbers. The troops of Tarik
had been augmented to twelve thousand Saracens; but the Christian
malecontents were attracted by the influence of Julian, and a crowd of
Africans most greedily tasted the temporal blessings of the Koran. In
the neighborhood of Cadiz, the town of Xeres has been illustrated by the
encounter which determined the fate of the kingdom; the stream of the
Guadalete, which falls into the bay, divided the two camps, and marked
the advancing and retreating skirmishes of three successive and bloody
days. On the fourth day, the two armies joined a more serious and
decisive issue; but Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his
unworthy successor, sustaining on his head a diadem of pearls,
encumbered with a flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and
reclining on a litter or car of ivory drawn by two white mules.
Notwithstanding the valor of the Saracens, they fainted under the
weight of multitudes, and the plain of Xeres was overspread with
sixteen thousand of their dead bodies. "My brethren," said Tarik to
his surviving companions, "the enemy is before you, the sea is behind;
whither would ye fly? Follow your genera: I am resolved either to lose
my life, or to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans." Besides
the resource of despair, he confided in the secret correspondence and
nocturnal interviews of Count Julian with the sons and the brother of
Witiza. The two princes and the archbishop of Toledo occupied the
most important post: their well-timed defection broke the ranks of the
Christians; each warrior was prompted by fear or suspicion to consult
his personal safety; and the remains of the Gothic army were scattered
or destroyed in the flight and pursuit of the three following days.
Amidst the general disorder, Roderic started from his car, and mounted
Orelia, the fleetest of his horses; but he escaped from a soldier's
death to perish more ignobly in the waters of the Btis or Guadalquivir.
His diadem, his robes, and his courser, were found on the bank; but
as the body of the Gothic prince was lost in the waves, the pride and
ignorance of the caliph must have been gratified with some meaner head,
which was exposed in triumph before the palace of Damascus. "And such,"
continues a valiant historian of the Arabs, "is the fate of those kings
who withdraw themselves from a field of battle."
Count Julian had plunged so deep into guilt and infamy, that his only
hope was in the ruin of his country. After the battle of Xeres, he
recommended the most effectual measures to the victorious Saracen. "The
king of the Goths is slain; their princes have fled before you, the army
is routed, the nation is astonished. Secure with sufficient detachments
the cities of Btica; but in person, and without delay, march to the
royal city of Toledo, and allow not the distracted Christians either
time or tranquillity for the election of a new monarch." Tarik listened
to his advice. A Roman captive and proselyte, who had been enfranchised
by the caliph himself, assaulted Cordova with seven hundred horse: he
swam the river, surprised the town, and drove the Christians into the
great church, where they defended themselves above three months. Another
detachment reduced the sea-coast of Btica, which in the last period of
the Moorish power has comprised in a narrow space the populous kingdom
of Grenada. The march of Tarik from the Btis to the Tagus was directed
through the Sierra Morena, that separates Andalusia and Castille, till
he appeared in arms under the walls of Toledo. The most zealous of the
Catholics had escaped with the relics of their saints; and if the
gates were shut, it was only till the victor had subscribed a fair and
reasonable capitulation. The voluntary exiles were allowed to depart
with their effects; seven churches were appropriated to the Christian
worship; the archbishop and his clergy were at liberty to exercise their
functions, the monks to practise or neglect their penance; and the Goths
and Romans were left in all civil and criminal cases to the subordinate
jurisdiction of their own laws and magistrates. But if the justice of
Tarik protected the Christians, his gratitude and policy rewarded the
Jews, to whose secret or open aid he was indebted for his most important
acquisitions. Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had often
pressed the alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast nation
embraced the moment of revenge: the comparison of their past and present
state was the pledge of their fidelity; and the alliance between the
disciples of Moses and of Mahomet was maintained till the final Êra
of their common expulsion. From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian
leader spread his conquests to the north, over the modern realms of
Castille and Leon; but it is needless to enumerate the cities that
yielded on his approach, or again to describe the table of emerald,
transported from the East by the Romans, acquired by the Goths among the
spoils of Rome, and presented by the Arabs to the throne of Damascus.
Beyond the Asturian mountains, the maritime town of Gijon was the
term of the lieutenant of Musa, who had performed, with the speed of a
traveller, his victorious march, of seven hundred miles, from the rock
of Gibraltar to the Bay of Biscay. The failure of land compelled him
to retreat; and he was recalled to Toledo, to excuse his presumption
of subduing a kingdom in the absence of his general. Spain, which, in a
more savage and disorderly state, had resisted, two hundred years,
the arms of the Romans, was overrun in a few months by those of the
Saracens; and such was the eagerness of submission and treaty, that
the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only chief who fell, without
conditions, a prisoner into their hands. The cause of the Goths had been
irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres; and, in the national dismay,
each part of the monarchy declined a contest with the antagonist who
had vanquished the united strength of the whole. That strength had
been wasted by two successive seasons of famine and pestilence; and
the governors, who were impatient to surrender, might exaggerate the
difficulty of collecting the provisions of a siege. To disarm the
Christians, superstition likewise contributed her terrors: and the
subtle Arab encouraged the report of dreams, omens, and prophecies,
and of the portraits of the destined conquerors of Spain, that were
discovered on breaking open an apartment of the royal palace. Yet a
spark of the vital flame was still alive: some invincible fugitives
preferred a life of poverty and freedom in the Asturian valleys; the
hardy mountaineers repulsed the slaves of the caliph; and the sword of
Pelagius has been transformed into the sceptre of the Catholic kings.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.--Part IX.
On the intelligence of this rapid success, the applause of Musa
degenerated into envy; and he began, not to complain, but to fear, that
Tarik would leave him nothing to subdue. At the head of ten thousand
Arabs and eight thousand Africans, he passed over in person from
Mauritania to Spain: the first of his companions were the noblest of
the Koreish; his eldest son was left in the command of Africa; the
three younger brethren were of an age and spirit to second the boldest
enterprises of their father. At his landing in Algezire, he was
respectfully entertained by Count Julian, who stifled his inward
remorse, and testified, both in words and actions, that the victory of
the Arabs had not impaired his attachment to their cause. Some enemies
yet remained for the sword of Musa. The tardy repentance of the Goths
had compared their own numbers and those of the invaders; the cities
from which the march of Tarik had declined considered themselves as
impregnable; and the bravest patriots defended the fortifications of
Seville and Merida. They were successively besieged and reduced by the
labor of Musa, who transported his camp from the Btis to the Anas, from
the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana. When he beheld the works of Roman
magnificence, the bridge, the aqueducts, the triumphal arches, and the
theatre, of the ancient metropolis of Lusitania, "I should imagine,"
said he to his four companions, "that the human race must have united
their art and power in the foundation of this city: happy is the man
who shall become its master!" He aspired to that happiness, but the
_Emeritans_ sustained on this occasion the honor of their descent from
the veteran legionaries of Augustus Disdaining the confinement of their
walls, they gave battle to the Arabs on the plain; but an ambuscade
rising from the shelter of a quarry, or a ruin, chastised their
indiscretion, and intercepted their return. The wooden turrets of
assault were rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart; but the defence
of Merida was obstinate and long; and the _castle of the martyrs_ was a
perpetual testimony of the losses of the Moslems. The constancy of the
besieged was at length subdued by famine and despair; and the prudent
victor disguised his impatience under the names of clemency and esteem.
The alternative of exile or tribute was allowed; the churches were
divided between the two religions; and the wealth of those who had
fallen in the siege, or retired to Gallicia, was confiscated as the
reward of the faithful. In the midway between Merida and Toledo, the
lieutenant of Musa saluted the vicegerent of the caliph, and conducted
him to the palace of the Gothic kings. Their first interview was cold
and formal: a rigid account was exacted of the treasures of Spain: the
character of Tarik was exposed to suspicion and obloquy; and the hero
was imprisoned, reviled, and ignominiously scourged by the hand, or the
command, of Musa. Yet so strict was the discipline, so pure the zeal,
or so tame the spirit, of the primitive Moslems, that, after this public
indignity, Tarik could serve and be trusted in the reduction of
the Tarragonest province. A mosch was erected at Saragossa, by the
liberality of the Koreish: the port of Barcelona was opened to the
vessels of Syria; and the Goths were pursued beyond the PyrenÊan
mountains into their Gallic province of Septimania or Languedoc. In the
church of St. Mary at Carcassone, Musa found, but it is improbable that
he left, seven equestrian statues of massy silver; and from his _ter_
or column of Narbonne, he returned on his footsteps to the Gallician and
Lusitanian shores of the ocean. During the absence of the father, his
son Abdelaziz chastised the insurgents of Seville, and reduced, from
Malaga to Valentia, the sea-coast of the Mediterranean: his original
treaty with the discreet and valiant Theodemir will represent the
manners and policy of the times. "_The conditions of peace agreed
and sworn between Abdelaziz, the son of Musa, the son of Nassir, and
Theodemir prince of the Goths_. In the name of the most merciful God,
Abdelaziz makes peace on these conditions: _that_ Theodemir shall not be
disturbed in his principality; nor any injury be offered to the life
or property, the wives and children, the religion and temples, of the
Christians: _that_ Theodemir shall freely deliver his seven cities,
Orihuela, Valentola, Alicanti Mola, Vacasora, Bigerra, (now Bejar,)
Ora, (or Opta,) and Lorca: _that_ he shall not assist or entertain the
enemies of the caliph, but shall faithfully communicate his knowledge
of their hostile designs: _that_ himself, and each of the Gothic nobles,
shall annually pay one piece of gold, four measures of wheat, as many of
barley, with a certain proportion of honey, oil, and vinegar; and
that each of their vassals shall be taxed at one moiety of the said
imposition. Given the fourth of Regeb, in the year of the Hegira
ninety-four, and subscribed with the names of four Mussulman witnesses."
Theodemir and his subjects were treated with uncommon lenity; but the
rate of tribute appears to have fluctuated from a tenth to a fifth,
according to the submission or obstinacy of the Christians. In this
revolution, many partial calamities were inflicted by the carnal or
religious passions of the enthusiasts: some churches were profaned by
the new worship: some relics or images were confounded with idols: the
rebels were put to the sword; and one town (an obscure place between
Cordova and Seville) was razed to its foundations. Yet if we compare the
invasion of Spain by the Goths, or its recovery by the kings of Castile
and Arragon, we must applaud the moderation and discipline of the
Arabian conquerors.