General View—Transition from the Old to the New Civilization—Historical Sketch of Spain—Spanish Character—Spanish Society—Prominent Features of the Age—Domestic Matters—The New World—Comparative Civilizations and Savagisms—Earliest Voyages of Discovery.
How stood this ever changing world four hundred years ago? Already Asia was prematurely old. Ships skirted Africa; but, save the northern seaboard, to all but heaven the continent was as dark as its stolid inhabitants. America was in swaddlings, knowing not its own existence, and known of none. Europe was an aged youth, bearing the world-disturbing torch which still shed a dim, fitful light and malignant odor.
Societies were held together by loyalty to civil and ecclesiastical rulers; not by that coöperation which springs from the common interests of the people. Unhallowed were all things real; divine the unsubstantial and potential. Beyond the stars were laid out spiritual cities, and under foot the hollow ground was dismal with the groans of the departed. Regions of the world outlying the known, were tenanted by sea-monsters, dragons, and hobgoblins. European commerce crept forth from walled towns and battlemented buildings, and peradventure, escaping the dangers of the land, hugged the shore in open boats, resting by night, and trembling amid-ships by day. Learning was chiefly confined to the clergy. Feudalism as a system was dead, but its evils remained. Innumerable burdens were heaped upon the people by the dominant classes who gave them little protection in return. Upon the most frivolous pretexts the fruits of their industry were seized and appropriated by their masters. It was a praiseworthy performance for a hundred thousand men to meet and slay each other to gratify the whim of a state minister or a king's concubine. Then came a change, and by reason of their revised Ptolemies, their antipodal soundings, and new geographies, their magnetic needles, printing machines, and men-killing implements, learning began to revive, and the people began in some faint degree to think for themselves.
Under the shifting sands of progress truth incubates, and the hatched ideas fashion for themselves a great mind in which they may find lodgment; fashion for themselves a tongue by which to speak; fashion for themselves a lever by which to move the world.
The epoch of which I speak rested upon the confines of two civilizations, the old and the new. It was a transition period from the dim twilight of the dark age to the brightness of modern thought; from an age of unquestioning faith to one of curiosity and scepticism. It was a period of concretions and crystallizations, following one of many rarefactions; religion was embracing science; astrology was merging into astronomy; magic into physics; alchemy into chemistry. Saltpetre was superseding steel in warfare; feudalism having fulfilled its purpose was being displaced by monarchical power; intercourse was springing up between nations, and international laws were being made. Even the material universe and the realms of space were enlarging with the enlargement of mind. Two worlds were about that time unveiled to Spain, an oriental and an occidental; by the capture of Constantinople ancient Greek and Latin learning was emancipated, and the Christian religion became settled as the faith of Europe; while toward the west, the mists of the ages lifted from the ocean, and, as if emerging from primeval waters, a fair new continent ripe for a thousand industries stood revealed.
This was progress indeed, and the mind, bursting its mediæval fetters, stood forth and took a new survey. With the dawn of the sixteenth century there appeared a universal awakening throughout Christendom. Slumbering civilization, roused by the heavy tread of marching events, turned from royal prison-houses of learning, and beheld with wonder and delight the unfolding of these new mysteries. The dust and cobwebs of the past, which had so long dimmed the imagination, were disturbed by an aggressive spirit of inquiry. The report of exploding fallacies reverberated throughout Europe; and as the smoke cleared away, and light broke in through the obscurity, there fell as it were scales from the eyes of the learned, and man gazed upon his fellow-man with new and strange emotions. For centuries men's minds had been chained to the traditions of the past; thought had traveled as in a treadmill; philosophy had advanced with the face turned backward; knight-errantry had been the highest type of manhood, and Christianity, like its founder, had been made to bear the sins of the many. While its friends claimed for it all the virtues of mankind, its enemies charged it with all the vices. The first efforts of scholastics in their exposition of these new appearances was to square the accumulative information of the day with the subtleties of the schools and the doctrines and dogmas of the past. The source of all knowledge and the foundation of all science were claimed to be in the holy scriptures and in the tenets of the church. Any conception, or invention, or discovery that might pass unscathed these two touchstones was denominated truth, though human reason could not grasp it. Likewise, any stray fact which by these tests failed satisfactorily to account for itself, was pronounced false, though human reason declared it true.
I do not mean to say that all darkness and nescience were swept away in a breath, or that knowledge fell suddenly on mankind like an inspiration; it was enough for some few to learn for the first time of such a thing as ignorance. Although the change was real and decisive, and the mind in its attempt to fathom new phenomena was effectually lured from the mystic pages of antiquity, there yet remained enough and to spare of ignorance and credulity. Searchers after the truth yet saw as through a glass darkly; the clearer vision of face to face could be attained only by slow degrees, and often the very attempt to scale the prison-house walls plunged the aspirant after higher culture yet deeper into the ditch; but that there were any searchings at all was no small advance. Shackles were stricken off, but the untutored intellect as yet knew not the use of liberty; a new light was flashed in upon the mental vision, but the sudden glare was for the moment bewildering, and not until centuries after was the significance of this transitional epoch fully manifest. It may be possible to exaggerate the importance of this awakening; yet how exaggerate the value to western Europe of Greek literature and the revival of classic learning, of the invention of printing, or the influence for good or evil on Spain of her New World discoveries?
Rightly to understand the condition of education in Spain in the fifteenth century, we must remember that mental training and not the acquisition of knowledge was the object of education, and as the object to be attained differed greatly from that which we are now seeking, so the result was proportionately different. The tendency of education in the fifteenth century was toward a more determined reliance and belief in authority and in revelation; the tendency of education in the nineteenth century is toward inquiry and scepticism. As to the comparative value of these results there are of course many differences of opinion, and I shall not discuss them here. We may be sure, however, that in whatsoever direction human mind is trained by other human mind, there is ever present and underlying all activities inexorable progress, an eternal unfolding into ever fairer proportions of all that is best and noblest in mankind.
Our history dates from Spain, at the time when Castile and Aragon were the dominant power of Europe. Before entering upon the doings, or passing judgment upon the character, of those whose fortunes it is the purpose of this work to follow into the forests of the New World, let us glance at the origin of the Spaniards, examine the cradle of their civilization, and see out of what conditions a people so unlike any on the globe to-day were evolved.
Far back as tradition and theory can reach, the Iberians, possibly of Turanian stock, followed their rude vocations, hunting, fishing, fighting; guarded on one side by the Pyrenees, and on the others by the sea. Next, in an epoch to whose date no approximation is now possible, the Celts came down on Spain, the first wave of that Aryan sea destined to submerge all Europe. Under the Celtiberians, the fierce and powerful compound race now formed by the union of Iberian and Celt, broken indeed into various tribes but with analogous customs and tongues, Spain first became known to the civilized world. Then came the commercial and colonizing Phœnician and planted a settlement at Cádiz. After them the Carthaginians landed on the eastern shore of the Peninsula and founded Carthago Nova, now Cartagena. The power of the Carthaginians in Spain was broken by the Scipios, in the second Punic war, toward the close of the third century b. c.; and yet, says Ticknor, "they have left in the population and language of Spain, traces which have never been wholly obliterated."
The Romans, after driving out the Carthaginians, attacked the interior Celtiberians, who fought them hard and long; but the latter being finally subjugated, all Hispania, save perhaps the rugged north-west, was divided into Roman provinces, and in them the language and institutions of Rome were established. Forced from their hereditary feuds by the iron hand of their conquerors, the Celtiberians rapidly increased in wealth and numbers, and of their prosperity the Empire was not slow to make avail. From the fertile fields of Spain flowed vast quantities of cerealia into the granary of Rome. The gold and silver of their metal-veined sierras the enslaved Spaniards were forced to produce, as they in succeeding ages wrung from the natives of the New World the same unjust service. The introduction of Christianity, about the middle of the third century, brought upon the adherents of this religion the most cruel persecutions; which, however, instead of destroying it but rooted it the more firmly. Some say, indeed, that Saint Paul preached at Saragossa, and planted a church there; however this may be, it was not until the conversion of Constantine that Christianity became the dominant religion of the Peninsula.
The fifth century opens with the dissolution of the empire of the Romans, for the barbarians are upon them. Over the Pyrenees, in awful deluge, sweep Suevi, Alani, Vandals, and Silingi. The Suevi, in a. d. 409, take possession of the north-west, now Galicia; the Alani seize Lusitania, to-day Portugal; and the Vandals and Silingi settle Vandalusia, or Andalusia, the latter tribe occupying Seville. Blighted by this barbaric whirlwind, civilization droops; the arts and sciences introduced by the Romans fall into disgrace; the churlish conquerors will have none of them; and the culture of ancient Greece and Rome, turning toward its original seat, flees the inhospitable west and takes refuge in the capital of the eastern empire, which thereafter becomes the depository of the wrecks of classic learning. In their dilemma the Romanized indigenes call to their help the less uncouth Visigoths. In 427 the Vandals pass into Africa. Between 455 and 584 the Visigoths conquer the Romans and subjugate the Suevi; so that now their kingdom stretches from the bank of the Loire to Gibraltar. Thus to the Latin is added the Gothic element; the Latin language, corrupted as it had become, gains upon, or rather for the most part holds its original advantage over the Gothic tongue, and becomes the basis of the modern Castilian, with such grammatical simplifications as the northern taste renders necessary.
Still the great Peninsula seethes and bubbles like a caldron over the furnace-fires of its progressional unrest. Two centuries of contentions between states, and between kings and nobles, aggravated by the usual convulsions incident to elective monarchies, suffice to bring upon them a new foe. The crescent of Islam, resting on Mecca and threatening at once the Bosporus and the Pillars of Hercules, flames suddenly out at its western horn over fated Spain. At Algeciras, near Gibraltar, in 711, in great force, the Mauritanian Arabs, or Moors, effect a landing, invited thither by Count Julian, commander of Andalusia, in revenge for the violation of his daughter by Rodrigo, last of the Gothic kings. Routing the Visigoths in the battle of Jerez de la Frontera, in five swift years the Saracens are masters of all save the mountainous north-west; and penetrating Aquitania, the kingdom of the Franks is prevented from falling into their hands only by the decisive victory won by Charles Martel at Tours in 732. An emirate under the caliphate of Bagdad is established at Córdova, and multitudes of Syrian and Egyptian Mahometans flock to Spain. Thus pressed, to the rugged mountains of Asturias, under Pelayo, one of their national heroes, flee such Christians as will not submit. There the wreck of the Visigothic kingdom takes refuge; there stubborn patriots rally and nurse their nationality betimes in the caves of the Pyrenees, waiting opportunity to deliver their country from the yoke of the hated Infidel. In 755 Abdurrahman, the last caliph of the dynasty of Ommiades, having escaped the massacre of Damascus, wrests Spain from the hands of the Abbassides and founds the caliphate of Córdova, which then formed one of the four great divisions of the Prophet's dominions. Moorish kings now take the place of Moorish emirs, and thus is governed Córdova till 1238, and Granada till 1492.
Meanwhile the Mahometans ruled mildly and well. The native Christians living among them kept their religion, churches, and clergy, as well as their laws and tribunals except in cases involving capital punishment, or where a Mahometan was a party in the suit. The usual consequences of race-contact followed; over wide tracts Arabic became the common language, and so remained even after Moslem power had fallen. As late as the fourteenth century public acts in many parts of Spain were written in Arabic. As the result of this intermixture, there was the linguistic medley called lingua franca, a composite of Arabic, Gothic, Latin, Hebrew, and Gallic, with the Romance, or corrupted Latin of Spain, united with the Limousin, the language of the gay science spoken in Languedoc and Provence, as a base. Out of this came the Castilian, which after undergoing various modifications settled into the Spanish language, leaving it substantially in its present form, though refined and polished by subsequent centuries of civilization. It was not, however, until near the reign of Alfonso X., 1252-1282, long after the Christians had emerged from the mountains and had mingled with the reconquered indigenes, that the Castilian became perfectly established as a written, settled, and polite language. Nor were the consequences of Arabic occupation confined to language; they tinged the whole life of the nation.
The Spaniards who under Pelayo had taken refuge in the mountains of Asturias, in 716 founded a small government called the kingdom of Oviedo. There the seeds of liberty, trampled by adversity, took root, and from the patriot soil arose a nation that spread its branches wide over the land. Gradually the Christian kingdoms enlarged. First Galicia, then, two hundred years later, Leon and Castile were added to the little empire. The latter part of the tenth century the kingdoms of Leon, Castile, and Navarre, held the northern extremity of the Peninsula, while all the rest was under the dominion of the caliphate of Córdova.
And now, emerged from the mountain fastnesses whither they had fled before this southern swarm of turbaned Infidels, the sturdy Christians press heavily on their foe. Inch by inch, each step counting a century, they fight their way from the Pyrenees back to Granada. Assuming the title of caliph, Abdurrahman III. defeats the Christians at Zamora on the Douro, but is in turn repulsed, in 938, at Simancas. In vain the Mahometans call to their aid the Almoravides of Morocco; their race upon the Peninsula is run. As portions of the country are wrested from them, lands are awarded to notable Christian leaders, who at intervals pause in their holy crusade, and fall to warring on each other; and by these intestine brawls more Christian blood is spilt than by all the cimiters of the Saracens. At such times the Infidels might turn and make the Christians an easy prey; but centuries of opulence, and, except along their northern border, of inaction, have sapped their strength and left them nerveless. It is the old story alike of peoples, sects, and individuals; discipline, begotten by necessity, engenders strength, which fattened by luxury swells to weakness.
The beginning of the eleventh century finds the Christians occupying about half the Peninsula, that is to say the kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal. Leon was but another name for the kingdom of Oviedo, or Asturias, the birthplace of Spanish nationality. Castile—Roman, castella; Arabic, ardo-l-koláa, land of castles, so called from the castillos, or forts, built there—though destined eventually to absorb all the kingdoms of the Peninsula, was at first a republic, consisting of a few small towns or fortified castles, which had united for mutual protection from both Mahometans and contentious Christian brethren. In 1037 Leon was united by Ferdinand I., called the Great, to Castile; and from its central position, and the strength arising from perpetual vigilance, the new kingdom gradually widened and added to its dominions, until eventually all the kingdoms of the Peninsula were united under the banner of Castile. Navarre belonged to a French count, whose successor drove the Saracens from the territory adjacent on the south-west, and founded the kingdom of Aragon.
In 1085 the Cid, a Castilian chieftain, born at Búrgos, and famous in poetry, romance, and war, seized Toledo, and overran Valencia; in 1118 Alfonso of Aragon wrested Saragossa from the Moors. Portugal, hitherto a province of Castile, assumed the title of kingdom in 1139. Finally the four kingdoms of the north, together with Portugal, formed a league against the Infidels, and in a great battle fought in the Sierra Morena, near Tolosa, in 1212, Mahometan power in Spain was effectually broken. In this decisive engagement the Christian confederates were commanded by Alfonso III. of Castile, who never rested till the followers of the Prophet were driven from the central plateau. To the kingdom of Castile, Ferdinand III., 1217-1252, annexed Jaen, Córdova, and Seville, which with difficulty were held by his son Alfonso X., surnamed the Wise—a better scholar than soldier, as we see. Alfonso XI. was succeeded by Pedro el Cruel, who died in 1369.
A succession of singularly brilliant events, culminating in the empire of Charles V., brought Spain, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, to the front rank among European powers. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, which in 1479 united the crowns of Aragon and Castile; the conquest of Granada in 1492, terminating eight centuries of almost continuous warfare; the discovery of America the same year; the annexation of Naples in 1503, and of Navarre in 1512, after the union of Spain and the Netherlands in the marriage of Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, with Philip the Fair, son of the Emperor Maximilian I., and father of Charles V., all coming in quick succession, form a train of important incidents unparalleled in the history of nations. Before the death of Philip II. in 1598, the empire of Spain extended to every part of the globe—Portugal, conquered by the duke of Alva in 1580; Sicily and Sardinia, Artois and Franche Comté, the Balearic and Canary islands; in Africa—Melilla, Ceuta, Oran, and Tunis; in Asia—the Moluccas and the Philippine Islands, together with several settlements elsewhere; beside a large part of the two Americas, which alone comprised about one fifth of the world.
But nations like men must die. The full measure of prosperity had been meted out to Spain, and now she must lay it down—such is the inexorable law of progress. It was the very irony of autocracy, that one man should rule half the world! Spain's pyramid of greatness, which assumed such lofty proportions during the reign of their Catholic Majesties, culminated during the reigns of their immediate successors. A long line of ambitious and able princes had raised the empire to a giddy height; but with an illiterate and non-progressive populace, no sooner did the rulers become incompetent than the nation fell in pieces. In the height of his grandeur Spain's grandest monarch surfeited of success and abdicated; and with the death of his son Philip the glory of the empire departed. Then might her epitaph be written—Nine centuries of steady growth—a long and lusty youth, more than falls to the lot of most nations—and in three brief centuries more she rose, and ripened, and rotted.
It is not with death, however, but life, we have to do. Intellectual sparks were lighting up the dark corners of the earth, and a series of brilliant epochs began with the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella—modern Golden Ages they might be called. The golden age of Spain, dating from 1474 to 1516, was followed by Germany's golden age, which was during the reign of Charles V., 1519-1558. Then came England with the reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603; then France under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., 1640-1740; Russia under Peter the Great, 1672-1725; and Prussia under Frederick the Great, 1740-1786. During this time European civilization was bursting its narrow confines and encircling the hitherto unknown world in every direction.
The Spaniards we would know and judge. We shall judge them, even though we know them not. We love to judge our fellows, and to think how much better are we than they. Little attention we give it, though it is a self-evident proposition, that to judge a people by any other standard than that to which they have been taught to conform is to do them great injustice. If we may believe psychology, thought, in its higher phases, develops only with the development of language; the conceptions of the mind can not rise much higher than forms of speech will enable it to express. Apply this postulate to the measure of character, and the corollary is, that to interpret fairly, we must restrict our imagination to such ideas, our mind to such beliefs, and our tongue to such formulas as belong to those we judge. This, however, is no easy matter. In the present age of intellectual progress and changing activity, when old delusions are being rapidly dispelled by science, and new discoveries are constantly opening new channels to distinction, it is almost impossible to place ourselves within the narrow limits of mediæval restrictions, in which thought and opinion were not allowed to germinate, but were passed unchanged from one generation to another. "It often happens," as John Stuart Mill remarks, "that the universal belief of one age of mankind—a belief from which no one was, nor, without an extra effort of genius or courage, could at that time be, free—becomes so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible." Not only were the Church dogmas of the Middle Age accepted as truth, but at that time to hold opinions antagonistic to established creeds was seldom so much as deemed possible.
From the foregoing premises it clearly follows, that rightly to measure the character of those who carried European civilization into the wilds of America, we must, in so far as we may, divest ourselves of the present, and enter into the spirit of their times. We must fix in our minds the precise epoch in the history of human progress to which the discovery of this New World belongs. We must roll up four brilliant centuries of the scroll of science, cloud nine tenths of the world in obscurity, throw a spell upon the ocean; then wall the imagination within the confines of this narrow horizon and conceive the effect. We must know something, not alone of national polities and the attitude of kings, but we must enter the society of individuals, and study the impulses of the people. We must call up the inscrutable past, surround ourselves with those influences that give the stamp to character and the color to creed. We must familiarize ourselves with scenes familiar to the people we discuss; we must walk their streets, look through their eyes, think their thoughts; we must personate them and practically construe them. We should fill our breast with the aspirations that impelled them, our imagination with the fears that restrained them, and feel those subtle forces which for generations had been developing intellect and moulding opinion. We should dare even to gain access to their domestic and religious penetralia, to invade the sanctity of the hearth and altar, to sound the hidden chords of domestic life, to walk softly through vaulted aisles and convent corridors, bending the ear to catch the whisperings of the confessional; we should enter with the monk his cloister-cell, with the gallant the presence of his lady-love, and learn whence the significance and whither the tendency of their strange conceits. If, at the outset, with the political position, we also thus firmly grasp their inner social life, much that were otherwise enigmatical or suspicious appears in a clearer light; and we can then behold their chivalrous but cruel deeds with the same charity in which we hope posterity may shroud our own enormities. Thus only may we be led to understand the various processes by which this phase of civilization was evolved.
The configuration and climate of the Peninsula assist in giving variety to the character of its inhabitants. The interior is one vast table-land, higher than any other plateau in Europe, being from two to three thousand feet above the level of the sea. On either side precipitous mountain ranges interpose between the table-land and the shores, and through these numerous streams thread their way. The table-land is for the most part dry and treeless, hot in summer and cold in winter; Asturias is wet and wooded; the valleys of the Guadalquivir, Douro, Ebro, Tagus, and other rivers, are in places quite fertile. In the southern provinces of Andalusia and Murcia, autumn and winter are mild and pleasant, and spring is surpassingly lovely; but the solano which during summer blows from the heated plains of Africa is intolerable to any but the acclimated. From the snow-clad Pyrenees the piercing blasts of winter sweep over Leon, Castile, and Estremadura, at the north protracting the long winter and making cold and humid the spring, and arrive at the middle provinces stripped of their moisture, but not of their raw unwelcome chilliness.
During the eleven convulsive centuries preceding our epoch we have seen mix and agglutinate the several ingredients of Spanish character—Iberian, Celt, Phœnician; Roman, Goth, and Moor, all contributing their quota. Christian, Infidel, and Jew, with their loves and hates, season the mass; and thus society becomes an olla podrida, and Spain presents the anomalous race of the world.
In different provinces different race-elements preponderate, that of Rome tincturing the whole more strongly than any other. Under analysis these several social ingredients may be easily detected. By comparison with Strabo, Arnold traces many of the social characteristics of the Spaniards back to the Iberians. "The grave dress, the temperance and sobriety, the unyielding spirit, the extreme indolence, the perverseness in guerilla warfare, and the remarkable absence of the highest military qualities ascribed by the Greek and Roman writers," he affirms, "are all more or less characteristic of the Spaniards of modern times. The courtesy and gallantry of the Spaniard to women has also come down to him from his Iberian ancestors."
So in the volatile, dark-haired Celt, where reckless courage and indifference to human life reached their height, where quick perception and ready wit supplied the place of sober thought and logical deductions, where man was courageous and changeable, and woman was at once fickle, chaste, and passionate—in these fierce barbarians we see a multitude of traits handed by them to their descendants. Of Phœnician and Iberian influence, traces are seen in their skill in scientific mining; of Gothic, in their comparatively liberal forms of government, their attachment to military display, and in their good faith, integrity, and morality—would these latter had been a trifle more Gothic; of Roman, in their love of ecclesiastical forms, church and state loyalty, in their stately dignity and sobriety of deportment; of Arab, in their hatred of work, their love of freedom, their religious enthusiasm, their tactics in war, and in their language, poetry, art, and architecture. Some of these terms appear paradoxical, but human nature, in its ingredients, is ever paradoxical. In the Spanish language Brace discovers that the principal "terms for agriculture and science are Latin; for the Church, Latin or Greek; for arms, riding, and war, Teutonic; and for arts and plants in southern Spain, Arabic." From the north and east and south the boldest of the nations had congregated on this frontier peninsula, waiting the outburst which, after a thousand years of fermentation, broke over its western slope.
Buckle, in support of a theory referring the origin of character to physical causes, ascribes the superstition of Spain to famine and disease, to earthquakes and the awe-producing phenomena of wild scenery; their fickleness he attributes to climate, the heat and dryness in Spain interrupting labor and leading to desultory habits; their love of romance and adventure he traces to pastoral life, which prevailed to the neglect of agriculture during the Moorish invasion.
The fall of Granada left the Peninsula occupied essentially as follows: In the north and west were the descendants of Goths and Celts who, unmolested by Roman or Moor, retained in a measure their ancestral characteristics. Low of stature, thick-set and awkward, as strong and as hairy almost as bears, the men of Asturias and Galicia, of Leon and Biscay, century after century come and go, living as their fathers lived, neither better nor worse, caring nothing for Arab or Dutchman, and little even for the Spanish kings; proud as ever of Pelayo, of the mountains that cradled Spanish liberty, of their great antiquity, which they boast as greater than that of any living nation; superstitious, irritable, and impetuous, but honest, frank, and sincere; implacable as enemies, but faithful as friends. Their boast is that never have they been subdued by Moor. Their chiefs were of the ancient Gothic blood, blue blood they called it, not being tainted with Arabic like that of their darker southern neighbors; of such material were early founded the kingdoms of Leon and Castile.
On their eastern side was the kingdom of Navarre, founded by the counts of the French marches. Though at one time these two sections had been united, the usual partition of heritage had soon dismembered them. Portugal, an offshoot of Castile, was permanently separated; Aragon, founded by Navarre, became also independent. Upon the eastern seaboard the people of Catalonia and Valencia, though diluted with the Limousin element, yet retain traces of their foreign relationships. "Of the modern evidences of race in the different provinces," says Brace, "travellers tell us that in Valencia the people resemble both their Keltiberian and Carthaginian ancestors, being cunning, perfidious, vindictive, and sullen. The burning sun has tanned their skin dark and aided to form in them an excitable and nervous temperament; they have, too, the superstitious tendencies that characterize the people of a hot climate. The Valencian women are fairer than the men, and are conspicuous for their beauty of form. They wear the hair and the ornaments of the head after the old Romish style. The Catalan is rude, active and industrious, a good soldier, and fond of his independence, resembling both Kelts and Iberians in his covetous, bold, cruel, and warlike character. The Aragonese are two children of the Goths in their force of will, their attachment to constitutional liberties, and their opposition to arbitrary power."
The tall, tough, agile eastern mountaineer presents as marked a contrast to the stubby Asturian as does the sparkling Andalusian to the grave Castilian. For a long time the people of Andalusia were semi-Moorish in their character. There, where the soft air of Africa comes fresh from the Mediterranean, had dwelt the dusky, graceful Arab; worshipping Mahomet as the Castilian worshipped Christ, and regarding his Christian and Jewish neighbors with as little affection as either Jew or Christian regarded him. Scattered along the banks of the Guadalquivir, and in separate quarters of many towns of southern Spain, were bands of that anomalous race, the gypsies. Short, dark, ugly, with long, coarse, wavy hair, mixing with other men as light and darkness mix, they plied their trade of buying, stealing, and selling. During the latter part of the war they occupied themselves in bringing horses from Africa and selling them to Moors or Christians.
In the mountain fastnesses of Toledo there yet lived a remnant of Silingi stock, known as almogávares, who had never bent knee to Infidel; who, throughout the long contest which waged on every side of them, had kept green their liberty and their faith—a Christian oasis in the broad pagan desert. There, too, a broken band of the chosen Israel, now fairly launched upon their eternal wanderings, found a momentary resting-place. Before the arrival of the Visigoths, it is said, a colony of Hebrews planted themselves near Toledo, and by their industry and superior financial ability, became at length the royal bankers, and notwithstanding bitter prejudices, they rose high in influence, even to the honor of having their daughters enrolled among the king's mistresses.
Thus for a time the several parts of the Peninsula differ widely in language, manners, and institutions; but at length, by wars and political combinations, race-barriers are broken down, and opposing clanships welded by an intenser hatred for some common enemy. The south through its Mediterranean trade soonest attains eminence, but warlike Castile subsequently acquires predominance. Meanwhile the masses retain their old ways better than their leaders. The nobility, and frequenters of courts, mingling more with the world, adopt the fashions of courts, and change with their changes. The inhabitants of the border provinces feel the influences of the war comparatively little; upon the great central plateau, however, there meet and mix almost all the stocks and creeds of the then known world. Aryan and Semite; Roman, Goth, and Mauritanian; Mahometan, Christian, and Jew; planting and plucking, building up and tearing down, fattening and starving, fighting and worshipping and burning—the whole table-land of Spain turned into a battle-arena of the nations, into a world's gladiatorial show; its occupants alternately marrying and battling, Moslem with Christian, Moslem with Moslem, Christian with Christian, Christian and Moslem uniting now against Christian and now against Moslem, while the slaughter of Jew, heretic, and gypsy fills the interlude. So pass centuries; and from this alembic of nations is distilled the tall, symmetrical, black-haired, bright-eyed, sharp-featured Castilian and Estremaduran.
Out of this heterogeneous medley of opposing qualities we have now to draw general characteristics.
In demeanor the Spaniard is grave, punctilious, reserved with strangers, jealous of familiarity or encroachment on his dignity; but among his acquaintances, or with those who are ready to recognize what he conceives to be his due, he throws off restraint, and becomes an agreeable companion and a firm friend. While impatient and resentful of fancied slights, he is easily won by kindness, and is always dazzled by skill in arms and personal valor.
In disposition he is serious almost to melancholy, firm to stubbornness, imperturbable, lethargic, inert, moody; yet when roused there breaks forth the deepest enthusiasm and the most ungovernable passion. So punctilious is his sense of honor, so zealous and truthful is he in his friendships, so affectionate and humane in all his private relations, that at one time the term Spanish gentleman was synonymous with everything just, generous, and high-minded throughout Europe. In intellect he is contemplative rather than profound, apt in emergencies, but lacking breadth and depth. In habits he is temperate and frugal, easily satisfied, indolent. To live without work is his ideal of enjoyment. Dissoluteness and intemperance can not be ranked among his vices, nor do travellers place hospitality in his list of virtues. There is no such word as rowdy in his vocabulary. Turbulent from imposition he may be, and after injury vengeful; but brawler, disturber of peace and social order, he is not. Though taciturn, he is deep in feeling; in his love of country he is provincial rather than national. Though hard to be driven he is easily led; acting collectively, officially, he is given to venality, when personally thrown upon his honor he is scrupulous and trusty.
In manners the Spaniard is proverbial for high breeding, courtesy, and decorum. Whether beggar or courtier, his politeness seldom deserts him. "Dios guarde á usted," May God protect you; "Vaya usted con Dios, caballero," God be with you, sir; are the usual valedictions. In reply to the importunities of a beggar the cavalier exclaims, "Perdone usted, por Dios, hermano," For the love of God excuse me, my brother. To the highest noble and to the meanest peasant the greeting is the same. Sedate, sober-minded, reserved, the Spaniard is but the modified result of his several exemplars. "All Spaniards," remarks Ford, "are prodigal to each other in cheap names and titles of honor; thus even beggars address each other as señor y caballero, lord and knight. The most coveted style is excelencia, your excellency." Nicknames are common. No one rises to distinction without carrying with him one or more appellations significant of the skill or occupation of his early days.
The Castilian has less ingenuity in mechanics, less skill in trade, less taste, less delicacy of perception, than the Italian, but far more pride, firmness, and courage; a more solemn demeanor, and a stronger sense of honor.
Every Spaniard of whatever class considers himself a caballero, a well-born and Christian gentleman, the superior of most, the equal of any, the inferior of none. Profuse in proffers of kindness, he is no less slow to fulfil them than to accept favors from others. He is very vain; vain of personal appearance, vain of his ancestry, his breeding; vain of his ignorance and superstition; proud of many things he should be ashamed of, and ashamed of nothing. Thieving was never prominent as a national vice. As a rule Spaniards are too proud to steal; the impulse of wounded affection or injured pride nerves the arm that strikes, oftener than the desire for plunder.
The old German cosmographer Sebastian Munster quaintly writes, Basel, 1553: "The Spaniards have good heads, but with all their studying they learn but little, for after having half learned a thing they think themselves very wise, and in their talk try to show much learning which they do not possess." Comparing them with the French, the same chronicler says: "The Frenchmen are taller, but the Spaniards more hardy. In war, the Spaniards are deliberate, and the French, impetuous. The French are great babblers, but the Spaniards can well keep a secret. The French are joyous and light of thought; they like to live well; but the Spaniards are melancholy, serious, and not given to carousing. The French receive their guests friendlily and treat them well, but the Spaniards are cross to strangers, so that one must go from house to house in search of entertainment. The cause of this is that Spaniards have travelled little, and do not like to spend their money for food."
In Castile, more than elsewhere, was seen the perfect central type, which in its earlier stages was so remarkable for practical sagacity, for an insight into causes and motives, and skill in the adaptation of means to ends. In the wars of the New World, affirms Macaulay, "where something different from ordinary strategy was required in the general, and something different from ordinary discipline of the soldier, where it was every day necessary to meet by some new expedient the varying tactics of a barbarous enemy, the Spanish adventurers, sprung from the common people, displayed a fertility of resource, and a talent for negotiation and command, to which history scarcely affords a parallel." It must be borne in mind, however, that the New World adventurer was not always a national type.
Graham declares that "the history of the expeditions which terminated in the conquest of Mexico and Peru displays, perhaps, more strikingly than any other portion of the records of the human race, what amazing exertions the spirit of man can prompt him to attempt, and sustain him to endure." And again—"The masses," says Ford, who has studied them well, "the least spoilt and the most national, stand like pillars amid ruins, and on them the edifice of Spain's greatness must be reconstructed." "All the force of Europe," exclaims Peterborough, "would not be sufficient to subdue the Castiles with the people against it."
So great is their reverence for antiquity, that they appear to live almost as much in the past as in the present. Age is synonymous with wisdom; the older the habit or opinion, the more worthy of belief it is. Innovation they abhor as dangerous; the universe of knowledge stands already revealed; there is nothing more to learn. Their premises they know to be sound, their conclusions correct, their beliefs true; what necessity then for further troubling themselves? Children in everything but teachableness, with themselves and their traditions they are content. Their education is finished. This is the most hopeless form of ignorance. Their legends they carefully preserve, old-time customs they love to practise, and they dwell with devoted enthusiasm on the exploits of their ancestors. To this day, twelve centuries after the occurrence, the peasantry of Asturias are divided between the descendants of those who aided the patriot Pelayo against the Moors, and those who did not—the latter being stigmatized as vaqueros; while the Andalusian Morisco keeps alive the story of Granada's grandeur, and dreams of Moslem warriors, of Abencerrage knights, and the restoration of former greatness. So strong is the influence of tradition and dead ancestry.
Speaking of the quality of firmness, and tenacity of purpose, says Bell, "So obstinate is the Spaniard, and in some provinces so remarkably self-willed, that the inhabitants of one part of Spain make a jest of the others on that account. Thus the obstinate Biscayan is represented as driving a nail into the wall with his head, whilst the still more obstinate Aragonian is figured in the same act and attitude, but with the point of the nail turned outward!" With the poniard at his throat, many a prostrate foe will die rather than yield, and as surely will the victor plunge in the fatal weapon if the cry for quarter be not quickly uttered. In Andalusia there was a fashion prevalent among duellists, when determined to fight their quarrel to the end, of firmly binding together, below the elbows, the left arms of the combatants; then, with knives in their right hands, they fought until one or both were dead.
Notwithstanding their excessive loyalty to their rulers, their love of antiquity and hatred of change; and notwithstanding the oppression of their princes, the condition of the lower classes in Spain at the close of the fifteenth century was far above that of the same class in any other European country. This was owing, not to any special consideration on the part of their political or ecclesiastical rulers, but to that greatest of scourges, war.
While the rulers were absorbed in conquering, and in keeping themselves from being conquered, except within the immediate battle-arena the people were left much alone. Besides, armies must have supplies, and producers were held in esteem by the military consumers.
Inequalities of power and wealth, unless arrested by extrinsic causes, ever tend to wider extremes. In Spain, the increase of wealth in the hands of priests and princes was checked by long-continued war. The products of the country must be used to feed the soldiery, and the power of the nobility must be employed against the common enemy. There was neither the time nor the opportunity to grind the people to the uttermost. Though the war bore heavily upon the working classes, it proved to them the greatest blessing; while the masses elsewhere throughout Europe were kept in a state of feudalistic serfdom, the necessity of Spain being for men rather than for beasts, elevation followed. Further than this, race-contact, and the friction attending the interminglings of courts and camps, tended in some degree towards polishing and refining society. "Since nothing makes us forget the arbitrary distinctions of rank," says Hallam, "so much as participation in any common calamity, every man who had escaped the great shipwreck of liberty and religion in the mountains of Asturias was invested with a personal dignity, which gave him value in his own eyes and those of his country. It is probably this sentiment transmitted to posterity, and gradually fixing the national character, that had produced the elevation of manner remarked by travellers in the Castilian peasant."