History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. 1 (of 3)

The general topography of the Spanish Peninsula exhibits a gradual and continuous increase in altitude, beginning at the tropical plains of Andalusia and terminating in the mountain range which traverses its northern extremity from the eastern boundary of France to the Bay of Biscay. This rugged chain of mountains, some of whose peaks attain an elevation of almost ten thousand feet, throws out innumerable spurs to the north and south, which are separated by impassable gorges and gloomy ravines, occasionally relieved by valleys of limited extent but remarkable fertility. Its proximity to the ocean, whose vapors are condensed and precipitated by contact with the summit of the sierra, renders the climate of this region one of exceptional moisture, but its foggy atmosphere is not unfavorable either to the health or the longevity of man. In certain localities, rains are almost incessant, and the depths of many of its defiles are never gladdened by the genial and vivifying rays of the sun. The most untiring industry is requisite to procure the means of a meagre subsistence, and the laborious efforts of the cultivator of the soil are supplemented by the vigilance of the shepherd, whose fleeces, generally preferred to the coarse products of the loom, furnish the male population with clothing. Upon the coast entire communities obtain their livelihood by fishing; and the increased opportunities for intercourse with the world have produced noticeable modifications in the character of these people, who, while deficient in none of the manly qualities of the denizens of hill and fastness, seem less uncouth, and are possessed of a greater degree of intelligence than their brethren of the interior. The customs of these famous mountaineers, variously known as Basques, Asturians, Cantabrians, and Galicians, according to the respective localities they inhabit, have varied but little in the course of many centuries. They have ever been distinguished by simplicity of manners, sturdy honesty, unselfish hospitality, and a spirit of independence which has seldom failed to successfully assert itself against the most persistent attempts at conquest. A mysterious and unknown origin attaches to the Basques, whose strange tongue and weird traditions are supposed to connect them with the original inhabitants of the Peninsula, and who, in this isolated wilderness, have preserved the memory of one of the aboriginal races of Europe. The rugged districts lying to the westward of what is now called Biscay, the home of the Basques, were formerly inhabited by the Iberians, a branch of the Celts, which, by force of circumstances and through the necessities of self-preservation, has become fused with colonists from the southern provinces until its distinguishing features have disappeared. The well-known bravery of the defenders of this bleak and forbidding country, its poverty—which offers no allurements to either the avarice or the vanity of royal power—its ravines swept by piercing winds, and its mountains draped with perpetual clouds, long secured for it freedom from invasion. The Carthaginians never passed its borders. The Romans, under Augustus, succeeded, after infinite difficulties, in establishing over its territory a precarious authority, disputed at intervals by fierce and stubborn insurrections. It yielded a reluctant obedience to the Visigothic kings, whose notions of liberty, coarse tastes, barbaric customs, and frank demeanor were more congenial with the nature of the wild Iberian than the luxurious habits and crafty maxims of Punic and Latin civilization.

The most barren and inaccessible part of this secluded region at the time of the Moslem conquest was that embraced by the modern principality of the Asturias. A formidable barrier of lofty peaks, whose passes readily eluded the eye of the stranger, blocked the way of a hostile army. Within this wall a diversified landscape of mountain and valley presented itself, with an occasional village, whose huts, clustered upon a hill-side or straggling along some narrow ravine, indicated the presence of a settlement of shepherds or husbandmen. These dwellings, whose counterparts are to be seen to-day in the wildest districts of the Asturias and Galicia, were rude hovels constructed of stones and unhewn timbers, thatched with straw, floored with rushes, and provided with a hole in the roof to enable the smoke to escape. Their walls and ceilings were smeared with soot and grease, and every corner reeked with filth and swarmed with vermin. The owners of these habitations were, in appearance and intelligence, scarcely removed from the condition of savages. They dressed in sheepskins and the hides of wild beasts, which, unchanged, remained in one family for many generations. The salutary habit of ablution was never practised by them. Their garments were never cleansed, and were worn as long as their tattered fragments held together. Their food was composed of nutritious roots and herbs and of the products of the chase, a diet sometimes varied by vegetables, whose seeds had been imported from the south, and by a coarse bread made from the meal of chestnuts and acorns. Total ignorance of the courtesies and amenities of social life prevailed; privacy was unknown; and the peasant entered the hut of his neighbor without fear or ceremony. An independent political organization existed in each of these communities, whose isolated situation, extreme poverty, and primitive manners dispensed with the necessity for the complicated and expensive machinery of government. Old age, as among many nations in the infancy of their existence, was a title to authority and respect, and the elevation of an individual to a certain degree of power was not unusual when he had distinguished himself among his fellows for skill in hunting or valor in warfare. Christian missionaries had, centuries before, carried the precepts of the Gospel into the depths of this wilderness, and chapels and altars, where the idolatrous practices of Druidical superstition were strangely mingled with the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic ritual, attested the persistence of a faith which had existed for ages. Many of the personal habits and social customs of the Iberians, while well deserving the attention of the antiquary, were of such a nature as to preclude description. Under these manifold disadvantages were now to be laid the foundations of an empire destined to embrace the richest portions of two great continents; to extend its language, its ideas, its policy, its religion, its authority, to the extreme limits of a world as yet unknown; to humble the pride of the most renowned sovereigns of Europe; to perfect the most formidable engine for the suppression of free thought and individual liberty which the malignity of superstition has ever devised; to perform achievements and accomplish results unparalleled in the most fantastic creations of romance; and to devote to extermination entire races whose sole offence was that they had never heard of the God of their persecutors,—a people whose civilization was far inferior to their own.

The terror inspired by the approach of the Saracens, after the battle of the Guadalete, had driven great masses of fugitives to the north. Such of these as escaped the hardships of flight and the swords of their pursuers sought refuge in the most secret recesses of the Asturian mountains. They carried with them their portable property, their household gods, all the relics of the saints, all the sacred furniture of the altars, which they had been able to rescue from the sacrilegious grasp of the infidel. The refugees had forgotten alike, in the presence of universal misfortune, the long-cherished prejudices of race and the artificial distinctions of rank; and Goth, Roman, Iberian, and Basque, master and slave, mingled together upon a friendly equality. Received by the frank and hospitable mountaineers with a sympathy which was strengthened by the bond of a common religion, the unhappy fugitives became reconciled to the privations of a life which secured to them immunity from infidel oppression; and, by intimate association and intermarriage with their benefactors, formed in time a new nation, in which, however, mixture of blood and altered physical surroundings produced their inevitable effects, causing the traits of the Iberian to predominate, in a conspicuous degree, over those of the Latin and the Goth. As the rest of the Peninsula submitted to the domination of the Moors, the population of this province was largely augmented. Persecution, arising during the civil wars, still further increased immigration; deposed prelates, ruined artisans, and discontented slaves sought the companionship and aid of their fellow-sectaries; many, in apprehension of future evil, voluntarily abandoned their possessions; and the Asturias became the common refuge of all who had suffered as well as of all who were willing to renounce a life of comparative ease and dependence for the toils and privations which accompanied the enjoyment of political and religious liberty. With the advantages of freedom were also blended associations of a more sacred character. The greater number of the most celebrated shrines of a country remarkable for the virtues of its relics and the splendor of its temples had been desecrated by the invader. He had destroyed many churches. Others he had appropriated for the uses of his own religion. The piety of their ministers had, however, secreted, and borne away in safety, the most precious of those tokens of divine interposition whose efficacy had been established by the performance of countless miracles supported by the unquestionable testimony of the Fathers of the Church. Transported by reverent hands from every part of the kingdom, these consecrated objects were now collected in fastnesses impregnable to the enemies of Christ. Where, therefore, could the devout believer better hope for security and happiness than under the protection of holy souvenirs which had received the oblations and the prayers of successive generations of his ancestors? The wars and revolutions of more than a thousand years have not diminished the feeling of popular veneration attaching to these mementos of the martyrs, which, enshrined in quaint and costly reliquaries of crystal and gold, are still exhibited in the Cathedral of Oviedo.

Engrossed with the cares which necessarily attended the establishment of a new religion and the organization of a new government, the first viceroys of Spain took no notice of the embryotic state which was gradually forming in the northwestern corner of the Peninsula. Their scouting parties, which had penetrated to the borders of the Asturias, had long since acquainted them with the severity of the climate and the general sterility of the soil. No booty, save, perhaps, some sacred vessels and a few flocks of sheep, was there to tempt the avarice of the marauder. Domiciled in the genial regions of the South, whose natural advantages continually recalled the voluptuous countries of the Orient, the Moor instinctively shrank from contact with the piercing winds and blinding tempests of the mountains far more than from an encounter with the uncouth and warlike savages who defended this inhospitable land. Musa had already entered Galicia at the head of his troops when he was recalled to Damascus by the peremptory mandate of the Khalif; and foraging parties had, on different occasions, ravaged many of the settlements of the Basques; but as yet the Moslem banners had never waved along the narrow pathways leading into the Asturian solitudes, nor had the echoes of the Moorish atabal resounded from the stupendous walls which protected the surviving remnant of the Visigothic monarchy and the last hope of Christian faith and Iberian independence.

At an early period, whose exact date the uncertainty of the accounts transmitted to us renders it impossible to determine, the settlements of the coast fell into the hands of the Saracens, who fortified the town of Gijon, a place whose size might not improperly assert for it the claims of metropolitan importance. The government of this city was entrusted to one of the most distinguished officers who had served in the army of Tarik, the former Emir, Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa, who, as we have already seen, having contracted a treasonable alliance with the Duke of Aquitaine, had been pursued and put to death by the soldiers of Abdal-Rahman immediately before the latter’s invasion of France.

Their communications with the sea-coast having been thus interrupted, the Asturians, impatient of confinement, determined to secure an outlet by extending the limits of their territory upon the southern slopes of the mountains. The adventurous spirit of the mountaineers welcomed with ardor a proposal which must necessarily be attended with every circumstance of excitement and glory. Among the refugees who constituted the bulk of the population were many who had seen service in the Visigothic army, and some who were not unfamiliar with the tactics and military evolutions of the Saracens. One of the most eminent of these was Pelayus, a name associated with the most glorious traditions interwoven with the origin of the monarchy of Spain. The imagination of subsequent ecclesiastical chroniclers has exhausted itself in attempts to exalt the character and magnify the exploits of this hero. The Moorish authorities, however, while they afford but scanty details concerning him, are entitled to far more credit, as their material interests were not to be subserved by the fabrication of spurious miracles and preposterous legends. From the best accounts now attainable,—which, it must be confessed, are far from reliable,—it appears that Pelayus was of the mixed race of Goth and Latin. The Arabs invariably called him the “Roman,” an appellation they were not in the habit of conferring upon such as were of the pure blood of the Visigoths. He was of noble birth, had held an important command in the army of Roderick, and was not less esteemed for bravery and experience than for hatred of the infidel, and for the reverent humility with which he regarded everything connected with the ceremonies and the ministers of the Church. To this chieftain, with the unanimous concurrence of both refugees and natives, was now entrusted the perilous and doubtful enterprise of openly defying the Saracen power. With the caution of a veteran, and an enthusiasm worthy of a champion of the Faith, Pelayus began to assemble his forces. The peasantry, ever alive to the attractions of a military expedition, and the fugitives, whose present distress recalled the more vividly their former prosperity, their pecuniary losses, and their personal bereavements, incident to the catastrophe which had befallen the nation, answered the call to arms with equal alacrity. The army which placed itself at the disposal of the new general did not probably number two thousand men. The majority were clad in skins. But few wore armor,—antiquated suits of mail which had rusted under the pacific rule of the successors of Wamba and had survived the disasters of Merida and the Guadalete. The Iberian javelin, the sling, and the short and heavy knife of the Cantabrian peasant composed their offensive weapons. Not one in ten had ever seen a battle. Not one in a hundred could understand or appreciate the necessity for the uncomplaining patience and implicit obedience indispensable to the soldier. Yet the soaring ambition, the patriotic pride, the belief in the special protection of heaven—feelings equal to the conquest of a world—rose high in the bosoms of these savage mountaineers. Their courage was unquestionable. Their native endurance, strengthened by simple food and habitual exposure to the tempests of a severe climate and the incessant exertions of a pastoral life, was far greater than that of their enemies. To invest the cause with a religious character, and to rouse to the highest pitch the fanaticism of the soldiery, a number of priests attended, with censer and crucifix and all the sacred emblems of ecclesiastical dignity. Of such materials was composed the army whose posterity was led to victory by such captains as Gonzalvo, Cortes, and Alva, and whose penniless and exiled commander was destined to be the progenitor of a long line of illustrious sovereigns.

The original realm of Pelayus afforded no indication of the enormous dimensions to which it was destined to expand. It embraced a territory five miles long by three miles wide. Its population could not have exceeded fifteen hundred souls. Its fighting men were not more than five hundred in number. The bulk of the army was composed of Basques and Galicians, attracted by the hope of spoil, held together for the moment only by the sense of common danger; impatient of restraint; scarcely recognizing the authority of popular assemblies of their own creation; valiant in action; brutal in victory; selfish and cowardly in defeat. They were without organization, officers, suitable arms, or commissariat. Of the art of war, as practised by even semi-barbarians, they knew nothing. Their military operations were controlled by the usual stratagems of savages, the nocturnal attack, the sudden surprise, the ambuscade.

The civil system of the infant monarchy was no further advanced. The exiled subjects of Roderick still retained, in some measure, the maxims and traditions of government. The people, among whom their lot was cast and who greatly outnumbered them, had, however, little knowledge of, and no reverence for, the Visigothic Code. The duchy of Cantabria, to which the latter mainly belonged, was never more than a nominal fief of the kingdom of Toledo. The fueros, or laws, by which they had been governed through successive foreign dominations of the Peninsula were of immemorial antiquity. Their long-preserved independence had nourished in their minds sentiments of arrogance and assumed superiority which were often carried to a ridiculous extreme. These influences had no small share in the subsequent formation of the Spanish constitution.

Thus, in a desolate and barren region; insignificant in numbers; destitute of resources; ignorant of the arts of civilization; without military system or civil polity; with neither court, hierarchy, nor capital; animated by the incentives of religious zeal and inherited love of freedom, a handful of barbarians laid the foundations of the renowned empire of Spain and the Indies.

The bustle which necessarily attended the warlike preparations of Pelayus was not long in attracting the attention of the government of Cordova. Information was conveyed to Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim, the representative of the Khalif, concerning the league that had been formed between the fugitive Goths and the denizens of the Asturias, as well as of the objects of the expedition which was organizing in the northern wilderness. The Emir, whose contempt for his enemies, added to a profound ignorance of the character of the country they inhabited, induced him to underestimate the difficulties to be encountered in their subjection, did not deem it worth his while to attack them in person. He naturally thought little was to be apprehended from the irregular hostilities of a few refugees who had retired with precipitation at the approach of the Moorish cavalry, united with a horde of vagabond shepherds and hunters unaccustomed to discipline and inexperienced in warfare. In his blind depreciation of the prowess of his adversaries, Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim left out of consideration many circumstances which influenced, in a marked degree, the subsequent fortunes of the Moslem domination in Spain. Their numerical inferiority was of trifling moment in a country thoroughly familiar to its inhabitants, but hitherto unexplored by the Saracens, and whose steep and tortuous pathways afforded such facilities for resisting an intruder that points might readily be selected where a score of men could, with little effort, successfully withstand a thousand. The Emir took no account of the mists which always enshrouding the sierra often entirely obscured the landscape; of the dense forests which might so effectually conceal the ambuscade; of the sudden and destructive rise of the mountain torrents; of the dangers attendant upon the landslide and the avalanche. Nor did he appreciate the feelings which must have been inspired by the desperate situation in which the Christians were placed. They were at bay in their last stronghold. Once driven from the shelter of their friendly mountains nothing remained for them but death or slavery. Their retreat into France was cut off by the Arab column now advancing into Septimania. Their brethren throughout the Peninsula had bowed before the sceptre of the Khalif, and no assistance could be expected from them. Their patriotic ardor was excited by the proud consciousness of independence and by apprehensions of the degradation of servitude; their pious frenzy was aroused by the destruction which menaced the religion of their fathers. In their camp were the sole memorials of a monarchy whose princes had dictated terms to the Mistress of the World. Around them on every side were sacred relics which had been visited from far and wide by pilgrims, whose miraculous power in the healing of disease it was sacrilege to doubt, and which had not only brought relief to the suffering but also comfort and salvation in the hour of death. God had made them the custodians of these treasures rescued from His desecrated altars; truly He would not abandon them in time of peril. By every artifice peculiar to their craft; by all the fervid appeals of eloquence; by every promise of present and prospective advantage; and by every threat of future retribution, the prelates inflamed the zeal of their fanatical hearers. They, more than any other class, understood the gravity of the situation. While not anticipating the power which the sacerdotal order was to attain over the temporal affairs of the Peninsula in coming centuries, they were not ignorant that the result of the impending conflict involved its supremacy or their own annihilation. Thus, at the very birth of the Spanish monarchy, appears predominant the ecclesiastical power which contributed more than all other causes to its eventual decay. Taking these facts into consideration, it is evident that the conquest of the Asturias would have required an ample force conducted by an experienced commander, whose talents, however respectable, could hardly have accomplished the task in a single campaign. But the Emir, who was on the point of invading France and did not deign to delay his expedition for the purpose of chastising a band of vagrant barbarians, detached a division, under an officer named Alkamah, to reduce the Asturias to subjection and exact the payment of tribute.

The Arab general, aside from the natural impediments which obstructed the march of an army through one of the most rugged localities of Europe, experienced but little trouble in his advance. The scattered collections of hovels which he encountered were deserted. No flocks were feeding on the hill-sides. All signs of cultivation were obliterated, and everything which could afford subsistence to an enemy had been removed or destroyed. The features of the entire landscape were those of a primeval waste. Through the defiles, without resistance, and almost without the sight of a human being except his own soldiers, Alkamah penetrated to the very heart of the Asturias, lured on by the wily mountaineers to a point where his superior numbers, so far from availing him, would be a positive disadvantage, and from whence retreat would be impossible.

Upon the eastern border of the wilderness, amidst a chaos of rocks, forests, ravines, and streamlets, rises the imposing peak of Auseba. The northern side of this mountain for a hundred feet from its base presents a steep and frowning precipice closing one end of a narrow valley, and whose almost perpendicular sides are only accessible to the trained and venturesome native. A cave, in whose depths three hundred men could readily be sheltered, exists in the face of the cliff, and through the gorge beneath run the troubled waters forming the source of the river Deva. A path, completely commanded by the heights upon either side, winds through the undergrowth and gives access to the cave and its environs, in former times the resort of benighted goatherds. In this spot, admirably adapted to purposes of defence, Pelayus determined to make his final stand. All non-combatants were secreted in the forest. Ambushes were posted along the only path by which an approach was practicable. In the cavern, whose name, Covadonga, is still revered by every Asturian noble and peasant, Pelayus concealed himself with a body of men selected for their courage and the superiority of their arms. Skirmishers now appeared in the front of the Moslem army, which, with a confidence born of former success, without hesitation followed its treacherous guides into the fatal valley. No sooner was the command of Alkamah within arrow-shot of the cave than the mountaineers sprang from their hiding-places. Wild cries of defiance and expectant triumph echoed from the rocky slopes of the ravine. From every hand the projectiles of the Christians poured down upon the heads of their astonished foes. When the ammunition of the bows and slings was exhausted, the sturdy peasants rolled down great stones and trunks of trees, which crushed a score of men at a single blow. Massed together, and thrown into confusion by the unexpected attack, the Saracens could not use their weapons to advantage. Their arrows rebounded harmlessly from the rocks. The agility of their enemies and the character of the ground prevented a hand-to-hand engagement, which the inferior strength of the Christians naturally prompted them to avoid. Unable to endure the storm of missiles which was rapidly depleting their ranks, the Saracens attempted to retrace their steps. The first intimation of a desire to retreat was the signal for redoubled activity on the part of the Asturians. Pelayus and his band, issuing from the cave, fell upon the rear of the enemy. The detachments upon the flanks closed in, and the unfortunate Moslems, surrounded and almost helpless, resigned themselves to their fate. The battle became a massacre. To add to the discomfiture of the invaders, a fearful tempest, which, in a latitude whose air is always charged with moisture, often comes without warning, burst upon the valley. In a few moments the little brook had swollen into a roaring torrent. A section of the mountain-side, undermined and already tottering and crowded with terror-stricken Saracens, gave way, carrying with it hundreds of victims to be engulfed in the rushing waters. A trifling number of fugitives, aided by the darkness and the storm, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the mountaineers, but the great majority of those composing the detachment, including all of its officers, perished. The estimated loss of the Moslems varies, according to the nationality of the annalist, from three thousand to one hundred and twenty-four thousand. In this, as in all other instances where the statements of the Arab and Christian writers of that age conflict, the preference should be given to the assertions of the former. The valley of Covadonga is so restricted in extent, especially where the battle took place, that it would with difficulty afford standing room for twenty thousand combatants. The vainglorious character of the northern Spaniard, who possesses not a little of the braggadocio of his cousin, the Gascon, has incited him to grossly magnify the importance of an exploit which requires no exaggeration; and his fabulous accounts have been recorded, with extravagant additions, by the ecclesiastical historians of the Dark Ages, with whom mendacity was the rule and accuracy the exception. Absolutely controlled by the prejudices of their profession, they studiously embellished every tale which could have a tendency to promote its interests and as carefully suppressed all hostile testimony. The monkish writers, whose credulity kept pace with their love of the marvellous, conceived that the glory of the Church was in a direct ratio to the number of infidels exterminated by her champions. To this motive are to be attributed the absurd statements concerning the losses of the enemy in every victory won by the Christian arms, a pernicious habit which was confirmed by the improbability of subsequent detection arising from the universal illiteracy of the age. The thorough unreliability of these old chroniclers in this and other particulars which might directly or indirectly affect the prestige of their order is calculated to cast suspicion over their entire narratives. When we add to these gross misrepresentations their meagre and confused accounts of the most important events, their profound ignorance of the hidden motives of human actions, their superstitious prejudices, and their incapacity of appreciating, or even of understanding, the principles of historical criticism, it may readily be perceived how arduous is the task of those who attempt to bring order out of this literary chaos. To the Arab writers, however, we can turn with a much greater degree of confidence. They make no attempts to disguise the magnitude of their reverses or to diminish the glory of their enemies. No contemporaneous account of the battle of Covadonga has descended to us. It was not for a century that its paramount importance became manifest. The attention of the clergy during that turbulent period was engrossed by the doubtful fortunes of the Church, and the exactions consequent upon the changes produced by a constant succession of rulers. The affairs of the entire Mohammedan empire were in a turmoil. In the East the chiefs of desperate factions were struggling for the throne of the khalifate. Africa was the scene of perpetual insurrection, provoked and maintained by the indomitable spirit of the Berbers. The Emirs of Spain, between the intervals of civil discord, were nursing extravagant dreams of ambition,—visions of the propagation of their faith, of the acquisition of new territories, of the subjugation of infidels, of the extension of empire. The glance of the viceroys was directed beyond the bleak Asturias towards the fertile plains of Southern France. The execution of the gigantic enterprise projected by the genius of Musa occupied their thoughts, and they were ignorant or careless of the aspirations of a handful of peasants, upon the issue of whose prowess and constancy were, even now, impending the existence of their dominion and the destinies of the Peninsula.

The meagre notices of the battle of Covadonga transmitted by Moorish chroniclers indicate that it was not considered a great disaster, and that its effects upon the posterity of both Christian and Moslem could not have been dreamed of. Yet from this eventful day practically dates the beginning of the overthrow of the Arab domination, not yet firmly established in its seat of power. Then was inaugurated the consolidation of mountain tribes, soon to be followed by the union of great provinces and kingdoms under the protection of the Spanish Crown. At that time was first thoroughly demonstrated the value of harmonious co-operation among factions long arrayed against each other in mutual hostility. Thence was derived the germ of freedom, which successfully asserted its rights under the frown of royalty, and, incorporated into the constitution of Aragon, long interposed a formidable obstacle to the encroachments of arbitrary and despotic sovereigns. During that epoch, by the fusion of races, were laid the foundations of that noble and sonorous idiom, unsurpassed in simplicity of construction, in conciseness and elegance of diction, in clear and harmonious resonance. Then was manifested for the first time the adventurous and daring spirit which carried the banners of Spain beyond the Mississippi, the Andes, and the Pacific. Then was instituted the scheme of ecclesiastical policy which, perfected by a succession of able and aspiring churchmen, placed the throne of Europe’s greatest monarchy under the tutelage of the primacy of Toledo. Then originated that fierce and interminable contest—first for self-preservation, then for plunder, lastly for empire—which for a thousand years engrossed the attention of the world.

The renown acquired by Pelayus through the victory of Covadonga raised him at once from the position of general to the dignity of king. In his election the traditions of the ancient Gothic constitution were observed. The sentiments of freedom innate in the mountaineer of every land are reluctant to admit the superiority implied by the laws of hereditary descent or by the exercise of unlimited authority. The rude ceremonies by which regal prerogatives were conceded to this guerilla chieftain could not suggest to the wildest visionary the possibility of the gorgeous ceremonial of the Spanish court or of the absolute power exercised by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second. It is not improbable that the commands of Pelayus were frequently disputed by his half-savage retainers. But it may well be doubted if among all the nations which composed the vast dominions of the House of Austria could have been found an equal number of adherents more faithful in misfortune, more intrepid in danger, than those who formed the little band of the exiled hero. The immunity granted the Christians after their triumph would seem to rather imply contempt by the princes of Cordova than their discouragement or any apprehension of further misfortune. The moral effect of the victory, if imperceptible on the Arabs, produced at once most significant results in the regions bordering on the Asturias. The threatening attitude of the fishermen necessitated the evacuation of the coast, and Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa, Governor of Gijon, abandoned his charge, and, by a forced march, joined his countrymen beyond the mountains. The warlike spirit spread fast through Cantabria and Galicia, and was even felt upon the borders of what is now Leon and Castile; the Saracen colonists who had established themselves in the most fertile districts were exterminated; and the religious aspect of the struggle, which seemed to identify the cause of the insurgents with that of the Almighty, crowded the squalid hovels of the hospitable Asturians with thousands of fugitives who sought protection and liberty in the society of their friends and kinsmen.

Neither history nor tradition has ascribed to Pelayus any other military achievements than the famous one which signalized his accession to supreme power. In the retirement of his little kingdom, for the remainder of his days, he employed the security, for which he was indebted to the contempt of his enemies, in consolidating his authority; in the formation of a plan of government; in the erection of churches, shrines, and monasteries; and in encouraging among his subjects the pursuit of agriculture. His extreme devotion to the interests of the Church has obtained for his memory the grateful acknowledgment of the priesthood; while the little cross borne by him, in lieu of a standard, at Covadonga, and still preserved at Oviedo, is regarded with sentiments of peculiar reverence by the peasantry as a symbol whose miraculous powers were confirmed by the hand of God, and whose virtues were transmitted to the magnificent emblems of the Catholic hierarchy, which, the successors of the Roman eagles, sanctified in distant lands the explorations and the conquests of the Christian monarchs of the Peninsula.

The reign of Pelayus lasted thirteen years. Such were the benefits resulting from its munificence to the clergy and his justice to the people that, at his death, the sentiments of loyalty and gratitude overcame the traditions of centuries and the prejudice against hereditary descent, and Favila, his son, was permitted to succeed him by the tacitly admitted right of inheritance.

Little is known of the life of Favila excepting that it was passed in peace. Without aspirations to enlarge the circuit of his dominions, and destitute of all desire for military renown, he preferred the rude society of his companions and the excitements of the chase to the perilous and doubtful honors of warfare. Two years after his accession he was torn to pieces by a wild boar, whose fury he had rashly provoked under circumstances which admitted of no escape. He was buried by the side of his father in the church of Cangas de Onis, an insignificant hamlet not far from the battle-field of Covadonga, which was already dignified by the title of capital of the Asturias, and whose church was for many generations afterwards the pantheon of its princes.

Favila left no sons of sufficient age to assume the responsibilities of government, while the exigencies of the time demanded the services of a ruler possessed of talents and experience. The right of election was, as of old, once more asserted to the exclusion of the claims of primogeniture; and Alfonso I., son of the Duke of Cantabria and son-in-law of Pelayus, was, by common consent of the principal men of the infant nation, invested with the regal authority. The new king was a noted warrior, who had been the comrade-in-arms of Pelayus. His martial tastes and unflinching resolution were only surpassed by his zeal for the Christian faith, which acquired for him the appellation of “Catholic,” so highly prized by his descendants, and which is still the most revered title of the head of the Spanish monarchy. The duchy of Cantabria, whose ancient limits had, however, been greatly curtailed by the encroachments of the Moors and the annexations of Pelayus, became, through the exaltation of its lord, an integral part of the Asturian kingdom.

The unquenchable fires of crusade and conquest burned fiercely in the breast of Alfonso. With all the impetuosity of his nature he announced his intention of waging ceaseless war against the infidel. The condition of the provinces subject to his jurisdiction had undergone radical changes since the election of Pelayus twenty years before. The population had enormously increased, partly from natural causes, but principally through immigration promoted by the love of liberty and by the destructive revolutions instigated by the vengeance or ambition of the conquerors. Villages, whose rude but comparatively comfortable dwellings replaced the filthy cabins of former times, occupied the picturesque valleys. Chapels and monasteries dotted the mountain-sides. Public affairs were administered according to a system, crude indeed, but framed upon the model of the Visigothic constitution, whose principles were not inconsistent with both the assertion of the prerogatives of royalty and the enjoyment, in large measure, of the blessings of individual freedom. The kingly authority was, in fact, as yet merely nominal. It had been conferred by the votes of the people, and was understood to be conditional upon the observance of the laws and the maintenance of order. The power of the Asturian sovereign was at this time not greater than that of many a petty feudal chieftain of Germany, and was far inferior to that possessed by the French Mayors of the Palace.

The occasion was propitious to the realization of the ambitious designs of Alfonso. The emirate was temporarily vacant through the absence of Okbah, its head, in Africa. Anarchy, with all its nameless horrors, prevailed in every portion of the Peninsula. The territory acquired in France, whose occupation had shed so much lustre on the Moslems and whose possession was designed as the preliminary step to the subjugation of Europe, had, through the valor of the Franks and the incapacity and jealousies of the emirs, with the solitary exception of the city of Narbonne, been wrested from the conqueror. The prestige of the heretofore invincible Saracens had been lost by repeated reverses, crowned by the terrible misfortune of Poitiers. In Galicia and the Basque provinces the peasantry had delivered the greater portion of their country from the enemy and were in full sympathy with the plans and aspirations of their Asturian neighbors, although they resolutely kept aloof from political union with them and declined to acknowledge the authority of their king. The operations of Alfonso were characterized by the activity and judgment of an experienced partisan. Passing suddenly into Galicia he surprised Lugo, which had remained in the hands of the Arabs since its capture by Musa, and soon afterwards occupied the strongly fortified city of Tuy, appropriating the territory north of the river Minho by the right of conquest. Thence he penetrated into Lusitania, taking some of the principal towns of that province and extending his march to the eastward until he had overrun all of the region lying to the north of the range of mountains now known as the Sierra Guadarrama.

The annalists who have mentioned the expeditions undertaken by Alfonso I. have neglected to regulate their order of occurrence, and attribute to the movements of the King a celerity which is almost incredible. In fact, these much-vaunted conquests were nothing more than mere forays. No permanent occupation of the country was possible. The uninterrupted succession of calamities which had descended upon it had transformed a region, never renowned for great productiveness, into a desert. In the few fertile spots where the industry of the Moor had obtained a foothold the fierce squadrons of Alfonso blackened the smiling landscape with the fires of destruction and carnage. Such towns and villages as lay in their path were destroyed; the Moors were condemned to slavery; and the Christians, despite their remonstrances, were compelled to follow in the train of the invader, to accept from him homes in the mountains, and to swear fidelity to the Crown. This policy of increasing the population of his dominions by compulsory immigration possessed at least the merit of originality, and was in the end eminently successful. The reluctant colonists, whose cities had been razed and whose lands had been devastated, were deprived of all incentives to return to a region that could no longer afford them subsistence. The ties of race and the precepts of religion already united them to those whom, despite the violence they had displayed, they could not consider as enemies. Distributed judiciously in the districts most deficient in inhabitants, whose soil, in many instances, was not more sterile than that which they had formerly tilled, the new subjects of Alfonso soon became reconciled to their altered condition of life. Their numbers greatly contributed to the strength of the growing kingdom. Their traditions, prejudices, and aspirations were identical with those of the Asturians. Complete amalgamation was soon accomplished by intermarriage and by the intimacies of commercial and social intercourse.

The operations of Alfonso are, for the most part, described with even more confusion of dates and localities than that which ordinarily characterizes the historical accounts of his age. Both the love of the marvellous and the bias of superstition have combined to magnify his achievements. Nevertheless, the account of no great victory breaks the monotony of an endless recital of murder, pillage, and conflagration. In the mountains, where every ravine favored an ambuscade, the Christians were invincible, but upon the plain, even when aided by the advantage of superior numbers, they were no match for the Moorish cavalry. The vulnerable condition of the country, which suffered from the inroads of the Asturian prince, impressed him with the necessity of erecting suitable defensive works along the borders of his own dominions. He therefore established a line of castles upon the southern slope of the sierra, dividing the present provinces of Old and New Castile, which were then known under the common designation of Bardulia, and from these fortified posts the two famous provinces have derived their modern name.

The reign of Alfonso does not seem to have known the blessings of tranquillity. His expeditions were incessant, and their results almost invariably successful. The Moors universally regarded him with a fear which, far more than the profuse adulation of his monkish biographers, confirms the prevailing idea of his prowess and indicates the respect in which he was held by his enemies, whose historians conferred upon him the honorable and significant appellation of Ibnal-Saif, “The Son of the Sword.” At the time of his death he had extended the limits of his kingdom until it embraced nearly a fourth part of the entire Peninsula, reaching from upper Aragon to the Atlantic, and from the Sierra Guadarrama to the Bay of Biscay. Far to the south of the territory which acknowledged his jurisdiction, a vast region had been swept by his inroads, and remained depopulated through the very terror of his name. While his resources did not enable him to retain possession of this neutral ground, its accessibility to attack rendered it useless to the Saracens. His death, in 756, was coincident with the accession to power of the renowned House of Ommeyah, whose genius held in check for half a century the patriotic impulses of the state which public disorder and universal contempt had permitted to form under the eye of the haughty emirs, an error of policy whose fatal consequences were not even suspected until the evil was beyond all remedy.

Thus, within a few years, from an affrighted band of homeless fugitives had arisen a nation whose power had already become formidable. In the independent spirit of its assemblies, convoked to elect a sovereign, were plainly discernible traces of that constitutional liberty which subsequently acquired such importance and produced such enduring political effects in the history of Spain. The basis of the new ecclesiastical system, on the other hand, consisted in a servile obedience to Rome, and was marked by none of the conscious dignity and self-reliance peculiar to the ancient Visigothic priesthood. A series of misfortunes had broken the pride of the Church; in the desecration of its relics, in the plunder of its altars, in the confiscation of its treasures, in the insults to its prelates, the multitude saw the fearful vengeance of an offended God. The wealth of the ecclesiastical order had disappeared, and with it much of its power. Its congregations were scattered. Whenever the poverty of the devout was so great that the regular tribute could not be raised all worship was proscribed. In those localities where the indulgence of the conqueror permitted the Christian rites, there was small inducement to proselytism, as no new churches could be erected, and the conversion of a Mohammedan was a capital crime, of which both tempter and apostate were equally guilty. In the face of the overwhelming catastrophe which had overtaken the Church, it is but natural that the eyes of its ministers should be turned towards the throne of the Holy Father, whose admonitions they had unheeded and whose commands they had defied. In a crowd of ignorant and superstitious peasants the prestige attaching to ancient ecclesiastical dignity and the reverence exacted by its sacred office soon raised the clergy to an unusual degree of prominence. It was their influence which actually founded the infant state; which dictated its policy; which directed its career; which profited by its success; which tendered sympathy in the hour of adversity; which shared its glory in the hour of triumph. And, as in the beginning it was predominant, so through the long course of ages its grasp never slackened, and to its suggestions, sometimes prompted by wisdom, but often darkened by bigotry, are to be attributed the measures emanating from both the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the dynasties of Spain.

The mingling of various nationalities in the Asturias produced its inevitable ethnical result, the evolution of a race superior to each of its constituents. But with physical improvement and mental culture came many deplorable evils, merciless hatred, superstitious credulity, military insubordination, and the vices of a society indulgent to the maxims and practice of a lax morality. The remorseless butchery of infidels was encouraged as highly meritorious, and only a proper return for the calamities produced by invasion. The ferocious soldiery, whose license during the continuance of hostilities was never restrained by their commanders, were, as might be expected, not amenable to discipline or obedient to the necessary regulations of their profession in time of peace. The orders of the King were sometimes openly disobeyed; and such was the precarious nature of his authority that he not infrequently considered it more expedient to dissemble than to punish. The licentious habits of the Visigothic prelates and nobles had been carried, along with the traditions of their ancient grandeur and the mementos of their former wealth, into the rude, but hitherto comparatively pure, society of the mountains. The severity of the climate, the incessant and violent exercise demanded by their avocations, and the uncertainty of subsistence had preserved the chastity of the Asturian peasantry, who, in many other respects, were remarkable for degradation and brutality. Polygamous unions, practised with more or less concealment by the privileged classes during the reign of Pelayus, upon the accession of Alfonso became open and notorious. The innumerable captives secured by marauding expeditions afforded excellent facilities for supplying or replenishing the harems of the nobles and the clergy. The holy fathers, like their predecessors under Witiza and Roderick, were noted for their taste and appreciation of the charms of female loveliness; and the owner of a beautiful slave whose price was too high for the count was rarely dismissed, for this cause, by the bishop. A well-appointed seraglio was an indispensable appendage to the household of every secular and ecclesiastical dignitary. The example of their ancestors, and the temptations offered by the fascinations of the beautiful Moorish captives, were too powerful to be withstood. To the allurements of passion was also added the gratification resulting from the consciousness of inflicted and well-deserved retribution. The fairest of the Gothic and Roman maidens had been torn from weeping parents to fill the harems of Cordova, Cairo, and Damascus. Alfonso I., whose title, The Catholic, has been confirmed by the profuse and fulsome eulogies of the Church, was behind none of his ghostly counsellors in his polygamous inclinations; and the offspring of a connection with an infidel concubine, who received the name of Mauregato, was destined to play an important part in the annals of the Reconquest. In every form and manifestation of social life the influence of the surviving elements of the Visigothic monarchy produced important and permanent results. To anarchy succeeded political organization, imperfect it is true, but the wisdom of whose principles was repeatedly confirmed by their adaptability to the requirements of an extensive empire. The physical condition of the people was improved, and their strength, hitherto employed against each other, was now directed to the injury of a common enemy. With new aspirations and altered manners were introduced changes in the Asturian dialect, which was originally derived from the Euskarian, the idiom of the Basques. The intercourse of the various classes of society grew more refined. Law gradually supplanted government by force. Religion again exerted its beneficent and powerful sway. The ceremonial of the Visigothic court—a mixture of barbarian insolence, Roman dignity, and Byzantine pomp—was revived, and a faint image of ancient greatness was exhibited by the pride and prowess of representatives of noble families who, mindful of former ascendency and confident of future distinction, gallantly rallied round the throne.

The spirit of hero-worship, as may readily be inferred from the superstitious credulity of the mountaineers, was strong in the Asturias. Every action of the early princes is distorted by the atmosphere of mystery and exaggeration which envelops it. The idea pervading classic mythology that those whom tradition declares to have been the benefactors of mankind, who have contributed to civilization the greatest practical benefits, and from whose efforts have been derived the true enjoyments of life, are entitled, if not to absolute apotheosis, at least to exaltation as demigods, perverted by sacerdotal influence, had been bequeathed, with other Pagan beliefs and practices, by the priests of Hercules and Æsculapius to the servants of the Pope. When canonization was deemed impolitic, the life of an eminent personage was embellished with a mass of fiction, of prodigy, of fable. Some historians have not mentioned the name of Pelayus; others, on account of the untrustworthy character of the authorities, have assigned all the exploits of his reign to the domain of the mythical. A miraculous appearance of the Virgin in the cave of Covadonga inspired the Christians with hope, and announced the coming victory. A choir of angels, whose voices were distinctly heard by the attendants, soothed the dying moments of Alfonso. Such legends, invented by priestly artifice and propagated by universal approbation in an age of ignorance, have no small influence in developing the character of a nation.

Thus, in a secluded corner of the Peninsula, neglected by their friends and despised by their enemies, the founders of an empire whose states and principalities were to be lighted by the rising as well as by the setting sun erected in obscurity and distress the humble fabric of their political fortunes. The almost hopeless prospect of the struggle at its inception nerved them to despair. Aided by the obstacles interposed by nature for their defence, encouraged by the suicidal conflicts which constantly harassed the emirate, and inspired with an unshaken confidence in the protection of heaven, an insignificant band of exiles, in the short space of a quarter of a century, insensibly expanded into a people whose existence, hitherto ignored, began, when too late, to arouse the serious apprehensions of the court of Cordova. The Asturian element, as jealous of liberty as the Basques but far less intolerant, infused into the public deliberations those principles of freedom subsequently so prominent in the laws of the northern provinces; and even now, after centuries of despotism, not entirely eradicated from the Spanish constitution. It is one of the strangest of political phenomena that from such a source should have proceeded institutions that made the Inquisition possible. The imperceptible but lasting influence of the Asturians did not pass away with the prestige of the great princes of the Houses of Austria and Bourbon. The religion of the national hierarchy, organized within its borders and promulgated by its armies, still affords consolation to the devout of many lands, and the musical language, formed by a fusion of barbarous dialects, is the idiom of one-sixth of the geographical area of the habitable globe.