Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the original, some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries in the reference-lists, and vice versa.

THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

PRESCOTT

THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of
all ages: edited, with the assistance of a distinguished
board of advisers and contributors,
by
HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME X—SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

T^he Outlook Company
New York

T^he History Association
London

1905

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
New York, U. S. A.

Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

• Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
• Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
• Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
• Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
• Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
• Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.
• Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.
• Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
• Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
• Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
• Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
• Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
• Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.
• Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
• Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.
• Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
• Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
• Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
• Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.
• Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
• Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
• Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
• Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.
• Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
• Dr. John P. Peters, New York.
• Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin.
• Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
• Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
• Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
• Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
• Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
• Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.

PART XV

THE HISTORY OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

LOPEZ DE AYALA, BAKHUYZEN VAN DEN BRINK, H. BAUMGARTEN, F. DE
FONSECA BENEVIDES, G. BERGENROTH, ANDRES BERNALDEZ, ULICK
R. BURKE, E. CASTELAR, NUÑEZ DE CASTRO, PINHEIRO CHAGAS,
J. A. CONDE, W. COXE, R. DOZY, S. A. DUNHAM, FLOREZ Y
LAFUENTE, V. DE LA FUENTE, L. P. GACHARD, DAMIÃO
DE GOEZ, A. HERCULANO, A. DE HERRERA, N.
ROSSEEUW ST. HILAIRE, M. A.
S. HUME, H. C. LEA, DIOGO DE LEMOS, JUAN A. LLORENTE, R. H. MAJOR,
JUAN DE MARIANA, W. F. P. NAPIER, JOÃO P. OLIVEIRA-MARTINS,
J. ORTIZ Y SANZ, W. H. PRESCOTT, P. DE SANDOVAL, M.
SURIANO, A. DE VERTOT, GERONIMO ZURITA

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

PEDRO DE ABARCA, GIULIO ALBERONI, CRÓNICA GENERAL DE ALFONSO X,
ANNALES COMPLUTENSES, ANNALES TOLEDANOS, BARONIUS, IBN BASSAM,
M. BAUDIER, A. BAUMGARTNER, E. BÉGIN, A. BUCHOT, J. DE BURGOS,
M. M. BUSK, CESARE CANTÙ, L. G. DE CARBAJAL, F. S. CASADO,
BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS, BERMUDEZ DE CASTRO, PEDRO
CEVALLOS, F. A. DE CHÂTEAUBRIAND, V. CHERBULIEZ,
N. DE LA CLÈDE, DIEGO DE CLEMENCIN,
CABRERA DE CORDOBA,
FELIX DAHN, F. DENIS, JOHN DUNLOP, EL-LAGI, ANTONIO ENNES, E.
GARIBAY, MANUEL DE GODOY, A. GOMEZ, H. GRAETZ, F. PEREZ
DE GUZMAN, GUSTAVE HUBBARD, VICTOR A. HUBER, MODESTO
LAFUENTE, P. VAN LIMBORCH, WILLIAM LITHGOW, FERNÃO
LOPES, J. M. ORTO Y LARA, LUCIO MARINEO, M.
DE MARLIANI, J. F. DE MASDEU, J. M.
MAS-LA TRIE, LUIS DE MENEZES,
CHARLES DE MOÜY, W.
MÜLLER, JAMES C. MURPHY, CHR. G. NEUDECKE, ISIDORUS PACENSIS,
AMÉDÉE PICHOT, RUY DE PINA, ANTONIO DE PIRALA, HERNANDO
DEL PULGAR, G. T. RAYNAL, H. REYNALD, W. H. RULE,
SEBASTIANUS SALMANTICENSIS, HEINRICH SCHURTZ,
MONACHUS SILENSIS, E. SILVERCRUYS, ROBERT
SOUTHEY, H. MORSE STEPHENS, W. C. SYDNEY,
JEAN B. R. DE TESSÉ, RODERICUS XIMENES
TOLETANUS, J. M. DE TORENO, OVIEDO
Y VALDES, A. VARILLAS, H. E. WATTS,
N. W. WRAXALL, WULSA,
ZANETORNATO

Copyright, 1904
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

BOOK I
THE HISTORY OF SPAIN FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE; AND GOTHIC SWAY

[to 711 A.D.]

Few histories afford lessons of greater value than those of Spain and Portugal. They teem with proofs that independence and liberty are not less important to the wealth and political power of a country than to its happiness; that neither natural advantages nor the character of the inhabitants, neither increase of territory nor external peace and domestic tranquillity can in any measure counterbalance the destructive effects of a foreign yoke, or of a despotic government.

The Spanish peninsula, considered as a whole, combines most of the advantages of an insular, with those of a continental, position. Almost entirely surrounded by the sea, Spain is an island with regard to trade and fisheries; whilst the neck of land that connects her with France at once furnishes in the Pyrenees a mountainous barrier against that country, and preserves her from entire dependence upon winds and waves in her external relations.

In the climate, the genial warmth of the south of Europe is tempered by sea-breezes, in nearly every direction, and the fertile soil yields equally the necessaries and the luxuries of life—corn, fruit, wine, fine merino wool, and olive oil. The mountains abound in mineral treasures, and afforded in early times one of the principal supplies of gold and silver. The natives of this favoured land are brave, sober, hardy, and enterprising. Yet notwithstanding all these sources of prosperity, Spain, which in the sixteenth century startled Europe with the first fears of universal monarchy, was long the most enslaved, oppressed, ignorant, and indigent, of civilised countries.[b]

In the earliest stage of its history we find Spain occupied by a comparatively homogeneous people—the Iberians, who are related as to language; but this is probably only the result of a long, already complete development and does not at all represent the original state of the country. Unfortunately, prehistoric investigation in Spain is too far behind to offer much towards a solution of even the most pressing problems. We may assume primarily that the Pyrenean peninsula, like northern Africa, southern Europe, and western Asia, was originally settled by that short-headed, dark-haired, and light-skinned race for whom the name of Armenoids, or, from a philological standpoint, of Alarodians, has been suggested.

But the people who afterwards were called Iberian are probably nothing else than a mixture of this ancient population with the long-headed, blond race of Cro-Magnon, which came from the north and appears in France and northern Africa. For that reason alone they might be supposed to have been in Spain, situated as it is between the two, even if certain remains of their culture did not make this supposition almost a certainty. The large number of blonds which, contrary to general opinion, are found in Spain and Portugal may in the main go back to this earliest invasion of northern hordes, which was followed by two more in the course of history. Possibly the new race forced its language upon the original inhabitants and perhaps the traditions of the Iberians, which tell of the immigration of their forefathers from Gaul, refer to the invasion of this blond population. The Sicanians and Siculians in southern Italy, likewise inhabitants of territories neighbouring northern Africa, are also supposed to be related to the Iberians.[c]

Whence the Iberians came has always been, and must remain, a matter of dispute. That they, like the Celts, were a branch of the great Indo-European family, and had spread along the south of Europe from the slopes of the Caucasus, was long held as an article of faith by scholars whose opinions were worthy of respect; but more recent investigations tend somewhat to shake belief in this theory. That they were a dolichocephalic (long-headed) race of short stature and very dark complexion, with plentiful curly black hair, is certain, and they probably inhabited the whole of Spain in the neolithic age, either as successors of a still earlier race—of which it is possible that the Basques, who still form a separate people in the north of Spain and southwest of France, may be the survivors—or as the primitive inhabitants dating from the prehistoric times when Africa and Europe, and possibly also America, were joined by land. In any case, what is known of their physique seems to negative the supposition that they were of Indo-European or Aryan origin; and to find their counterpart at the present time, it is only necessary to seek the Kabyle (Kabail) tribes of the Atlas, the original inhabitants of the African coast opposite Spain, who were driven back into the mountains by successive waves of invasion. Not alone in physique do these tribes resemble what the early Iberian must have been, but in the more unchanging peculiarities of character and institutions the likeness is easily traceable to the Spaniard of to-day. The organisation of the Iberians, like that of the Atlas peoples, was clannish and tribal, and their chief characteristic was their indomitable local independence.

From the earliest dawn of history the centre of Spanish life, the unit of government, the birthplace of tradition, and the focus of patriotism have been the town. A Spaniard’s pueblo means infinitely more to him than his town means to an Englishman or a Frenchman. No master race has succeeded in welding the Kabyles, Tuaregs (Tuariks), and Berbers into a state, as the Romans did with the mixed Iberians and Celts; and in Spain, to the present day, with its numberless paper constitutions and its feverish political experiments, the pueblo keeps its practical independence of a centralised government, which has federated pueblos into provinces, but has never absorbed or entirely destroyed the primitive germ of local administration. The village granary (posito) still stands in the Spanish village, as its counterpart does in the Atlas regions; the town pasture and communal tillage land continue on both sides of the straits to testify to the close relationship of the early Iberians with the Afro-Semitic races, which included the Egyptian or Copt, the Kabyle, the Tuareg, and the Berber. The language of the Iberians has been lost, but enough of it remains on coins of the later Celtiberian period to prove that it had a common root with the Egyptian and the Saharan tongues, which extend from Senegal to Nubia on the hither side of the negro zone. With all this evidence before us we may be forgiven for doubting the correctness of the theory which ascribes a Caucasian origin to the primitive Iberian people. Long before the dawn of recorded history, while mankind was hardly emerging from the neolithic stage, a vast incursion of Celts had come from the north and poured over the western Pyrenees into Spain.[d]

THE CELTS AND CELTIBERIANS

The second invasion from the north, that of the Celts, falls in the first period of recognised history, so that we know little of how it came about or the conditions preceding it, and can only enumerate the results. It cannot even be determined if the march of the Celts upon Spain was contemporaneous with the violent incursion of Celtism into upper Italy and southern Germany, which in its further advance carried single troops as far as Asia Minor and Greece; at any rate it is probable.

The Celts introduced a new culture into the land south of the Pyrenees, which lay off from the main track, since they represent the period which as the advanced iron age followed the age of bronze. Before them agriculture was yet in its beginning; the pure-blooded Iberians for a long time afterwards held to the rough conditions of the preceding era, lived from the products of their goat-herds, on the acorns from the mountains and from the scanty grain they raised by their primitive methods of agriculture. The Celts, indeed, like most conquering nations, considered agriculture unworthy a free man, but compelled their dependents to cultivate their territory regularly and to deliver up a part of its products.

The Celtic flood inundated only a portion of the peninsula. One tribe—later called the Celtics—settled in the region about the middle Guadiana, the centre of which is the present Badajoz. The Artebrians inhabited the northwestern coast without mixing much with the native population. On the other hand a large mixed race, afterwards called the Celtiberians, grew up in what is to-day Old Castile, and brought into subjection the neighbouring Iberian tribes who were more cultured and less warlike than the dwellers in the mountains. The domination of the Celts over the whole Pyrenean peninsula is not to be thought of: not even among the Celtic tribes themselves was there unity. The genuine mountain peoples, such as the Lusitanians in the west, the Asturians, Cantabrians and Vasconians in the north, preserved complete independence. Southern Spain, where under a milder sky a certain culture had developed at an early date, was also preserved from Celtic encroachment and saw indeed more welcome strangers at its coasts—the Phœnicians, whose commercial spirit found here a glorious field for its activity. Even before their arrival the inhabitants of the country may have fashioned ornaments from the precious metal which was so abundant in their land, without valuing this treasure particularly, or expending much toil in procuring it; now for the first time, when the marvels of a foreign culture were offered them in exchange for these things, did they turn their attention to the hidden treasures of their land. But the Phœnicians were hardly the first to visit the western shores of the Mediterranean as traders and pirates; the very fact that tribes of Iberian descent had pushed as far as lower Italy points to the existence of intercourse by ships. In the same way Etruscan commerce must have touched Spain. The nurhags—those curious solid towers, which are especially frequent on the coasts of Sardinia and which must once have served as places of refuge for the people when in danger—are dumb but intelligible witnesses to the fact that the Mediterranean must have been peopled with pirates even in prehistoric times. Egypt, the only country in the world whose inhabitants at that time already kept historical records, often saw robber hordes appear on its coasts. But we know no further particulars of these ancient conditions.[c]

THE PHŒNICIAN INVASIONS

[ca. 1500-600 B.C.]

The Phœnicians, as already observed, were among the first who, attracted by the never-failing instinct of gain, directed their course to a country which promised the highest advantages to their commerce. The precise period of their entering into relations with the inhabitants is unknown. For some time their settlements, of which Gades, now Cadiz, was the first and most powerful, were confined to the coasts of Bætica, whence they supplied the natives with the traffic of Asia Minor and the shores of the Mediterranean, in exchange for the more valuable productions of the peninsula, such as gold, silver, and iron.[1] Previously to their arrival, the use of these metals was, it is said, unknown to the Celts and Iberians. At first, for the convenience of their trade and their worship the Phœnicians obtained permission to build magazines and temples: these soon expanded into villages, and the villages into fortified towns. Besides Cadiz, Malaga, Cordova, and other places of minor note were monuments of their successful enterprise, and proofs of their intention to fix their permanent abode in a country on which nature had lavished her choicest gifts. In time they penetrated into the interior, and arrived in the heart of the mountainous districts of the north, probably to superintend the operations of the mines which they had prevailed on the natives to open. Coins, medals, and ruins, attesting their continued location, have been found in most provinces of Spain, and even at Pamplona in Navarre. Almost everywhere have they left traces of their existence, not only in medallic and lapidary inscriptions, but in the religion, language, and manners of the people.

It is possible, however, that the residence of this people in Spain may have been confounded with that of the Carthaginians. The similarity in language, manners, and superstitions might naturally have diminished the distinction between the two nations, and in time destroyed it. The uncertainty which hangs over this period, and the apparent incongruity of the few dates handed down to us, with the transactions which accompany them, confirm the suspicion. The whole period, indeed, from the first settlement of the Tyrians to the wars between the rival republics of Rome and Carthage, is too conjectural to deserve the name of historical, though some few facts are seen to glimmer through the profound darkness which surrounds them.

THE GREEK COLONIES; THE CARTHAGINIAN CONQUEST

[ca. 600-227 B.C.]

The successful example of the Phœnicians stimulated the Greeks to pursue the same advantages. The Rhodians arrived on the coast of Catalonia, and founded a town, which they called Rhodia (Rosas) from the name of their island. They were followed by the Phocians, who dispossessed their countrymen of Rosas, and extended their settlements along the shores of Catalonia and Valencia. Other expeditions departed from the numerous ports of Greece, towards the same destination, but at intervals considerably distant from one another, and gave names to new establishments, some of which may be still recognised, notwithstanding the changes that time has made. It does not appear that either the Phœnicians or the Greeks aimed at domination; the towns which they founded, and continued to inhabit, were but so many commercial depots—populous indeed, but filled with peaceable citizens, whose lucrative occupations afforded them neither time nor inclination for hostilities. Not so with the Carthaginians, who joined all the avarice of merchants to all the ambition of conquerors.

The African republic had long watched with jealousy the progressive prosperity of the Tyrians, and waited for an opportunity of supplanting them. That opportunity at length arrived (480 B.C.). The avarice of these merchants had caused them to adopt measures which the high-spirited natives considered as oppressive. A dispute arose: both parties recurred to arms; and, after a short struggle, the lords of the deep were forced to give way before their martial enemies. Several of the Phœnician settlements fell into the hands of the victors, who appeared bent on rescuing their soil from these all-grasping strangers. Seeing Cadiz itself threatened, the latter implored the assistance of the Carthaginians, who had already a settlement on the little island of Iviza. The invitation was eagerly accepted; perhaps, as has been asserted, the Carthaginians had fomented the misunderstanding, and urged it to an open quarrel. However this be, they landed a considerable force on the Bætican coast; and, after a few struggles, the details of which we should vainly attempt to ascertain, they triumphed over both Phœnicians and natives, and seized on the prize they had so long coveted. Thenceforth Cadiz served as a stronghold whither they could retreat whenever danger pressed too heavily, and as an arsenal where fetters might be manufactured for the rest of Spain.

The progress of the Carthaginian arms, we are told, was irresistible; it was not, however, rapid, if any reliance is to be placed on the dates of ancient writers: the provinces of Andalusia, Granada, Murcia, Valencia, and Catalonia did not acknowledge the supremacy of the republic until, with some other provinces, they were overrun, rather than subdued, by Hamilcar, father of the great Hannibal (235 B.C.), and most of the warlike nations in the interior, especially in the mountainous districts, never afterwards bent their necks to the yoke, though the veteran armies of Africa were brought against them.

Eight years were spent by the Carthaginian general in extending and consolidating his new conquests. He had need of all his valour—and few captains had ever more—to quell the perpetual incursions of tribes glorying in their independence, and strangers to fear. For this purpose he built several fortresses (the important city of Barcelona is said to have been among the number), in which he distributed a portion of his troops to overawe the surrounding country; while, with another portion, he moved from place to place, as occasion required his presence. Probably his severity alienated the minds of the people from the domination he laboured to establish. He was checked in the career of his conquests by the Edetani and Saguntines, who openly revolted, and made vigorous preparations for their defence. He fell upon them, but neither the number of his forces nor his own bravery could succeed against men to whom the hope of freedom and of revenge gave irresistible might. Two-thirds of his army perished, and himself among the number. His son Hannibal being too young to succeed him, the administration of the Carthaginian provinces and the conduct of the war devolved, by a decree of the senate, on his son-in-law Hasdrubal, who adopted towards the natives a line of conciliation; he could be cruel when he chose; but as there is reason to believe that he aimed at an independent sovereignty, he wished to secure their support in the event of a struggle with Carthage. Punic loyalty, like Punic faith, could subsist no longer than a regard to self-advantage would permit.

[227-219 B.C.]

The city of Cartagena, which Hasdrubal founded on the modern gulf of that name, and which he furnished with an admirable harbour, was the most glorious monument of his administration. The success of his arms, the nature of his designs, roused the fears both of the Greek colonies on the coast of Catalonia and Valencia, and of several independent nations in the interior. They resolved to call in a third power, which had long regarded with jealousy the growing prosperity of Carthage. Rome eagerly embraced the cause of the discontented states (227 B.C.), probably, indeed, she had secretly fomented that discontent. She sent a deputation to Carthage, which obtained from the senate two important concessions: that the Carthaginians should not push their conquests beyond the Ebro; that they should not disturb the Saguntines and other Greek colonies. Though Hasdrubal promised to observe them, he silently collected troops, resolved to make a final effort for the entire subjugation of Spain before Rome could succour the confederates. In three years, his formidable preparations being completed, he threw off the mask, and marched against Saguntum. On his way, however, he was assassinated by the slave of a man whose master, a native prince, he had put to death.[2] The attachment of this slave to his master’s memory could be equalled only by the unshaken firmness with which he supported the incredible torments inflicted on him by the fierce Hannibal.

This famous Carthaginian was in his twenty-fifth year. He was more to be dreaded than all his predecessors united. To military talents and personal valour, perhaps unexampled in any age, he joined astonishing coolness of judgment and inflexibility of purpose. While Hasdrubal was actuated only by selfish considerations, Hannibal recognised, as the great principle of his actions, revenge—revenge against the bitter enemy of his country, and still more against the destroyers of his kindred. There is a moral grandeur in this all-engrossing purpose of Hannibal, which, notwithstanding its fell malignity, unaccountably rivets our admiration.

The young hero lost no time in extending his conquests, and amassing resources for the grand approaching struggle with the Romans. Having subdued some warlike tribes of modern Castile and Leon, and brought into full activity some rich silver mines at the foot of the Pyrenees, he marched at the head of 150,000 men against Saguntum, which he invested in due form. In vain did the Roman deputies whom the senate despatched for the purpose intimate to him that an attack on the ally of the republic would be regarded, as a declaration of war against the republic herself. He had vowed the destruction of the city. Yet, though he pressed the siege with the utmost vigour, such was the valour of the defenders that neither his mighty genius for war nor his formidable forces could reduce the place in less than nine months: it would not even then have fallen, had not famine proved a deadlier enemy than the sword. The citizens resolved that the last act of this fearful tragedy should be a suitable consummation of the preceding horrors. Having amassed all their valuable effects, and everything combustible, into one pile, and placed their wives and children around it, they issued from the gates, and plunged into the midst of the surprised enemy. The slaughter was prodigious on both sides; but, in the end, numbers and strength prevailed against weakness and desperation; the Saguntines were cut off almost to a man. No sooner was their fate known in the city than their wives, who were in expectation of the result, set fire to the pile, and cast both themselves and children into the devouring element. The city in flames soon discovered the catastrophe to the Carthaginians, who immediately entered, and put what few stragglers they could find—chiefly the aged of both sexes—to the sword.[3] Some, however, had previously secured their safety by flight. Thus perished one of the most flourishing cities of Spain, and one which will be forever memorable in the annals of mankind (219 B.C.). Its destruction hastened, if it did not occasion, the Second Punic War, as described in the history of Rome.

Hannibal mustered his forces for the invasion of Italy. The exploits of the Carthaginian hero beyond the bounds of the peninsula have been treated of in the history of Rome. While he is spreading destruction around him, and the towers of “the eternal city” themselves are tottering, our task must be to cast a hurried glance at the transactions which, after the invasion of Scipio, happened in the country he had left behind. The Carthaginian yoke is allowed on all hands to have been intolerable. The avidity with which the local governors sought pretexts for seizing on the substance of the natives; the rigour with which some of the captive tribes were made to labour in the mines; the exactions of a mercenary and haughty soldiery; the insolence of success on the one hand, and the smart of wrongs endured on the other—prepared the way to the commotions which shook all Spain to its centre, and ultimately ended in the destruction of its oppressors.[g]

THE ROMANS IN SPAIN

[219-206 B.C.]

The Romans, either alarmed by the progress of Hannibal, or becoming aware of the value of such allies as the Spaniards, now sent larger armies to their assistance, headed by their ablest generals. Spain was the theatre of the first exploits of Publius Cornelius Scipio, afterwards surnamed Africanus from his victories over the Carthaginians in Africa. In Spain, Scipio gained the hearts of the natives by his great and good qualities, not the least of these being his self-command—one instance of which has ever since been a favourite theme with painters, poets, and moralists. The charms of a beautiful captive had touched his young heart, and the laws of the age made her in every respect his slave. He respected her undefended loveliness, and restored her, in unsullied purity, to her betrothed bridegroom. In cordial co-operation with the Spaniards, Scipio finally expelled the Carthaginians from Spain in 206 B.C.

[206-45 B.C.]

The object of the Romans, in assisting the Spaniards against Carthaginian oppression, had not been the emancipation of their gallant allies. They immediately proceeded to reduce the peninsula to the condition of a Roman province, governed by their prætors. This was not easily or speedily accomplished. The natives resisted their new, as they had done their former invaders. Numantia, besieged by a second Scipio, emulated the heroism of Saguntum.[b] In vain did the inhabitants send deputations to the consul; he coolly replied that he was content to await the inevitable effects of famine. But their impatience could not await the slow effects of such a death; some took poison; some fell on their swords; some set fire to their houses and perished in the devouring flames. Thus perished all; not a living creature survived (133 B.C.).[g] The Cantabrians, who inhabited the northwestern part of the peninsula, were not even nominally subdued during the continuance of the Roman Republic. The other portions, Celtiberia in the north, Bætica in the south, and Lusitania in the west, were conquered after a long struggle, and constituted the Roman province, but remained the scenes of constantly recurring warfare. The natives revolted against the extortion and tyranny usually practised by the Roman governors of subject states; and the leaders of republican factions, when defeated everywhere else, often found in Spain abundant means of making head against the masters of the world.

Gallo-Roman Weapons

The most remarkable of the native insurrections was that organised in Lusitania by Viriathus. This extraordinary man was bred a shepherd; he turned robber, became the captain of a band of outlaws, and raising a standard to which all the disaffected flocked, he defeated several Roman armies. He was vanquished by treachery, the consul Servilius having bribed three of his followers to assassinate him in his sleep. After his murder, the rebellion, as the haughty conquerors termed every insurrection for self-defence, was speedily quelled. Spain was soon afterwards the theatre of the last struggle of the horrible civil wars with which Marius and Sulla desolated the Roman world. When Sulla had finally triumphed at Rome, Sertorius, a leader of the defeated party, fled to Spain, and there long bade defiance to the dictator’s power. He was at length vanquished by Cneius Pompeius Magnus, familiarly called Pompey the Great, and, like Viriathus, was murdered by his own treacherous partisans. Pompey, during his command in Spain, merited the good-will of the nation, which subsequently espoused his cause in his contest with Julius Cæsar. After Pompey’s death his party still held out in Spain. But Cæsar repaired thither in person; his military skill prevailed, and the province was shortly pacified.[b] As long as Rome treated the provincials merely as a conquered people the provincials remained unsubdued; but as soon as wiser and more friendly counsels generally prevailed, the Roman Spaniard grasped the hand that was extended to him, and became one of the proudest and most loyal citizens of the empire. Left to themselves, the tribes were ever divided, factious, disturbed. United under Lusitanian Viriathus or even under Roman Sertorius, they long successfully withstood the power of the republic. United under Julius and Augustus Cæsar, they became the most Roman of the provincials of Rome.

[229 B.C.-138 A.D.]

A Gallo-Roman

A great susceptibility to personal influence has ever been a striking characteristic of the Spanish people. Under the sympathetic Hasdrubal they accepted the dominion of Carthage; under the fiery Hannibal they fought, the hardiest and most loyal of his soldiers, in the Punic armies in Italy. In the early days after Saguntum, when Roman Scipio came, not as a destroyer but as a deliverer, and displayed his greater qualities of clemency and justice, the Spaniards would have compelled him to be their king. But Scipio was not always clement. The successors of Sempronius Gracchus were not always just. They were not even judicious. “For great men,” says the Spanish proverb, “great deeds are reserved.” And the coming of one of the greatest men the world has ever seen was the beginning of the end of the dark days of early Spanish history. Cæsar, indeed, marched sternly through the country at the head of his legions; nor did he stay his hand until he had reached far off Corunna, where he chastised and astonished the wild tribes of Brigantium or Finisterre; but his policy in the more settled districts was ever genial and pacific. Four times did Cæsar visit the peninsula; and the fourth time—his legions well filled with loyal and admiring Spaniards—he fought, “not for glory but for existence,” on the bloody field of Munda. And with the final triumph of the great Julius begins the peace and prosperity of Roman Spain.[j]

Disturbances, however, again broke out, and it was only under Cæsar’s successor, Augustus, that it was finally and completely subjugated, even the Cantabrians being then at last subdued. Once reduced to submission, Spain appears to have slumbered for ages in the tranquillity of servitude, under the despotic sway of the Roman emperors. It was esteemed one of the most valuable and flourishing provinces of the empire, containing, as we learn from Pliny,[h] not less than 360 cities. During her subjection to a thraldom, shared with all the then known world, Spain boasts of having given birth to the celebrated Roman poets Lucan and Martial, to the philosopher Seneca, and to two of the very few good Roman emperors, Trajan and Hadrian, as well as to many other men of distinguished character, though of somewhat inferior note.[b]

ROMAN ADMINISTRATION

[206 B.C.-161 A.D.]

It must not be supposed that the authority of the Roman officers extended at first over all the cities of the peninsula. Some cities were governed even in the last resort by their own laws; some depended immediately on the metropolis of the Roman world; some were free, and left to their ancient laws and tribunals. They were colonial, municipal, Roman, allied, tributary; and others there were which enjoyed the right of Latium. Thus the province of Tarragona contained 179 cities, of which 12 were colonial, 13 Roman, 18 enjoying the Latin law, 1 ally, and 135 tributary. Bætica had 185 cities; viz., 9 colonial, 18 municipal, 29 of the Latin law, 6 free, 3 allied, 120 tributary. Lusitania had 45; 5 colonial, 1 municipal, 3 Latin, 36 tributary.

The colonies were peopled by the citizens of Rome, chiefly by soldiers. The inhabitants of these establishments forfeited not the slightest of their privileges by their location in the provinces. The municipal cities were those which were admitted to the honour of Roman citizenship; which were in like manner exempted from the jurisdiction of the provincial governors; and the inhabitants of which could aspire to the highest dignities even in “the eternal city.” The right of Latium was less valuable: in the cities possessing it, the magistrates only were recognised as Roman citizens. The free cities (immunes) were such as the conquerors left in the undisturbed possession of their native laws and tribunals, and were not taxed towards the support of the rest of the empire. This privilege was conferred with reluctance, or rather extorted by necessity, and was always regarded with jealousy; to six Spanish cities only was it granted. The allied cities (confæderatæ) were still fewer in number, and were at first really independent, as the word implies. The tributary cities (stipendiariæ) occupied the lowest grade in the scale of civic society, and were those which chiefly supported the cumbrous frame of Roman government.

A Gallo-Roman Woman

But the distinctions between these various classes were not long maintained. By Otho many Spaniards were admitted to the rights of citizenship; by Vespasian, such of the cities as had not the privilege already were presented with the right of Latium; and by Antoninus every remaining barrier was removed, all his subjects throughout his vast empire being declared citizens of Rome: from this moment the civil constitution of that empire was of necessity uniform. The cities which obeyed the constitution of Rome were governed in a manner similar to those of Italy. Each had its municipal council or curia, the members of which (decuriones) were chosen from the principal inhabitants of the provinces. Their office, however, appears to have been unenviable, because it was in all probability gratuitous and because they were responsible for the payment of customs. Nothing need be said on its laws, as they are the same as those which governed Rome under the republic and the empire.

The military state of Spain under the Romans is a subject little understood. That a considerable number of troops for foreign wars was furnished by this important province is attested by numerous inscriptions; but, except in cases of difficulty and danger, the Roman troops in the peninsula seldom exceeded three legions—a force so inconsiderable that either the natives must have lost all desire to recover their ancient independence, or they must have become completely reconciled to the domination of their proud masters. The policy, indeed, which admitted them not only to the honour of citizenship, but to the highest dignities, civil, military, and even religious, must have been admirably adapted to insure not merely the obedience but the attachment of the conquered.

So long as the empire continued prosperous, Spain, notwithstanding the evils it was made to endure, could not but participate to a certain extent in the general prosperity. The arts of life, the most elegant no less than the useful, were taught to flourish: that architecture had reached a high degree of perfection is evident from the numerous remains of antiquity which time has spared; that agriculture was cultivated with equal success, is no less apparent from the testimony of that most excellent of judges, the naturalist Pliny. The riches of the soil, in corn, in oil, and in fruits, were almost inexhaustible; and the sheep were held even in higher estimation in those days than in the present. The vine was cultivated with so much success that the juice of the grape produced in the environs of Tarragona was pronounced equal to the best wines of Italy. These productions, with those of the mines, and the demand for native manufactures, gave rise to an extensive commerce; more extensive, indeed, than that which had existed under the Carthaginians. There was this important difference between the two conquering nations: while the African, with the characteristic selfishness of a trader, engrossed every advantage to himself, the noble-minded Roman admitted others to a free participation in those advantages.

INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY

[206 B.C.-305 A.D.]

If tradition as an authority had not long ceased to be recognised on this side the Pyrenees, the historian would have little difficulty in fixing the period of the introduction of the Christian faith into Spain. Its uninterrupted voice has named St. James the Elder as the first herald of the Gospel to the idolatrous people of that country. That the apostle traversed the peninsula, from Lusitania and Galicia to the heart of Aragon; that while at Saragossa he was honoured by a visit from the Virgin, and that by her express command he erected on the spot a church in her honour; that after his martyrdom at Jerusalem his body was brought by his disciples from Syria to Iria Flavia (now El Padron), in Galicia, and thence transferred to Compostella, to be venerated by the faithful as long as the world shall endure, no orthodox Spaniard ever doubted. With equal assurance of faith it is believed that St. Paul, in person, continued the work of his martyred fellow-disciple, and sowed the seeds of the new doctrine in Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and, above all, in Andalusia. Certain it is that Spain can adduce her martyrs as early as the second century—perhaps even in the first.

It was during the reign of the fierce Diocletian that the fires of persecution blazed with the greatest fury throughout the peninsula. It must not, however, be concealed that the crown of martyrdom was sometimes pursued with an eagerness that evidenced rather the intemperance of a mistaken zeal, than the soberness of a rational principle. The fury of persecution cooled after the death of Diocletian. During the civil wars which ravaged the empire under Maximian and Constantius Chlorus, the Christians began to breathe: Constantine followed; and, after his conversion, the church had peace from without; but within, the partisans of Athanasius and Arius clouded the horizon of her tranquillity.

[305-400 A.D.]

Of the three national councils held during the first four centuries, the first is that of Illiberis or Eliberis, a town once seated near modern Granada. It may also be termed the most interesting, as it was probably held before the conversion of Constantine, and, therefore, some years anterior to that of Nicæa: if so, it is the most ancient council, not merely of Spain, but of the Christian world, the acts of which have descended to us. That of Cæsar-Augusta (Saragossa, 380 A.D.), which was also national, consisted of only twelve bishops, and was convened for the sole purpose of condemning the heresy of Priscillian. The third, which was the first council of Toledo (400 A.D.), was attended by nineteen bishops, with a corresponding number of inferior ecclesiastics. Its first act was to admit the canons of Nicæa; especially those which relate to the ordination of priests; but it is chiefly remarkable for its symbol of faith, in which that great Catholic doctrine, the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son [filioque], is expressly asserted; a doctrine, as is well known, not formally received by the universal church before the fourth Lateran council in 1215. Its twenty canons relate to holy orders, to the chastity of virgins devoted to God, and to the continency of ecclesiastics and their widows. From these councils it does not appear that the Spanish church had yet received the dignity of primates, archbishops, or metropolitans. The bishops seem to have been equal in power, and independent of one another, the only superiority admitted arising from priority of consecration; neither is there any reason for concluding that appeals were of necessity carried to Rome, though the superior veneration attached to that see, and the superior characters of those who filled it, rendered such appeals by no means uncommon. The bishops and the clergy were elected by the people. Baptism was administered by the bishop or the presbyter, or, in their absence, by the deacon. In cases of urgent necessity, it could also be administered by a layman, provided he had not contracted a second marriage.

Ceremonial penance was a public satisfaction given to the church where the crime was more than usually scandalous; the penitent, in this case, occupied a place separated from the rest during a period proportioned to the heinousness of the offence. A penance of one year was inflicted on the player of dice, because the heathen deities were necessarily invoked in this ancient game; of two years on the subdeacon who married a third time, and on the ecclesiastic who wore a crown in imitation of the pagan priests; of three years on him who lent his apparel for the use of pagan processions; on the deacon who confessed a mortal sin before ordination, and on the parents who broke the betrothals of their children; of five years on him who married his daughter-in-law or sister-in-law, on the widow who sinned and married her accomplice; on backbiters, in however trivial an affair, of husbands or wives guilty of adultery, on single women guilty with different men, on deacons proved guilty of any capital crime previous to ordination; and on housewives who by stripes occasioned, involuntarily, the death of their slaves (if voluntarily, the penance was seven years); of ten years on the apostate or heretic on returning to the faith, on the Christian whom curiosity led to the heathen sacrifices, on all prostitutes, and on all consecrated virgins who broke their vow; of the whole life on the widow of a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, who remarried, on those who frequently violated their conjugal fidelity, and on the gentile priests who, after conversion and baptism, sacrificed to idols. Besides these regulations, the bishop had power to suspend from all intercourse with the faithful the man who sat at the table of a Jew, him who distributed satirical or libellous compositions, and him whose scandals deserved public censure.

There was one means by which the offenders just mentioned could obtain their restoration to the privileges of communion, even before the expiration of the time of penance decreed by the canons. This was, by soliciting peace from the confessors; that is, from such as had sustained persecutions and torments for the faith of Christ. The confessor gave his peace to the penitent in an instrument which he called literæ confessoriæ or pacificæ. This the penitent presented to the bishop, who immediately absolved him; and in token of his readmission to the rights of communion, gave him another instrument, literæ communicatoriæ, which secured him access to the sacramental table in whatever church he appeared. This superstitious custom was founded on the opinion that, from the abundance of their merits, the confessors could well afford a portion to such penitents as had none of their own. What a fruitful train of abuses indulgences occasioned at a much subsequent period, and how repugnant they appeared to the common sense and common justice of mankind, is well known.

Gallo-Roman Sword and Horn

On the matrimony and continency of the Spanish clergy, there has been much acrimonious disputation: one party contending that strict celibacy was obligatory on them from the apostolic times; the other, that marriage was permitted to them, under certain restrictions, no less than to laymen. One of the most singular characteristics of the early councils of Spain is the permission granted to bishops and other ecclesiastics to follow any honourable branch of commerce, but in their own districts.

Persons consecrated to God were acknowledged and protected by the early church; but monasteries were not introduced into Spain during the first four centuries. The women who took, in the hands of the bishop and before the altar, the vows of virginity; and the men who, in the same manner, subjected themselves to the obligations of continence and religious contemplation, passed their lives sometimes in their own houses, but generally in communities of two or three in the abodes of aged ecclesiastics. The former assumed the veil from their first profession, as a public sign of their calling. But lest war should be sworn before the strength of the enemy was known, the council of Saragossa decreed that no woman should utter the irrevocable vow, or assume the veil, before the age of forty years, though previous to that period chastity was strongly recommended, and its observance consecrated. Some of the provisions, especially of the first council, will appear unreasonably severe. We must, however, take into consideration the prevalence of idolatry at the beginning of the fourth century, and the anxiety of the fathers of Illiberis to preserve their flocks from the infection of paganism. The canons which regard the remarriage of the widows of ecclesiastics are sufficiently absurd. The sixty-seventh, which prohibited Christian women from keeping long-haired slaves, requires explanation. These slaves were males, generally of Gaul or Germany, and their ostensible business was to dress the hair of the rich ladies; their real one—such was the depravation of manners produced by paganism—was to gratify the licentious desires of their mistresses. But the gradual decline of heathenism, no less than the increasing influence of Christianity, purified the female mind.

[380-395 A.D.]

Like the other Christian provinces of the empire, Spain had its heresies. Omitting that of Arius—which, during the reign of Constantine and his sons, so much distracted the Christian world, and against which Osius, the bishop of Cordova, signalised himself with a zeal only inferior to that of Athanasius himself—the most remarkable was the heresy of the Priscillianists. One Mark, an Egyptian heretic, having sown the seeds of gnosticism in Gaul, passed into Spain, where the fluency of his speech, no less than the nature of his doctrine, procured him some disciples, among whom Priscillian was the most eminent. This Spaniard was rich, eloquent, subtle, enterprising, and consequently well adapted both to extend and to multiply the errors of Mark, of which he soon became the acknowledged head. He taught that marriage was an unnatural and tyrannical restraint; that pleasure was one of the great privileges of our nature; that to live according to the impulses of nature was the part no less of virtue than of wisdom. He held the Manichæan doctrine of the two great principles; and, with Sabellius, confounded the persons of the Trinity. To all this he joined the Chaldean superstition of starry influences, and the metaphysical subtleties of the Egyptians and Greeks. A multitude of women soon embraced the sensual system of this arch-heretic; their example constrained the other sex: even the clergy were at length infected by the pleasing errors; and, to crown all, two bishops of Bætica openly professed themselves the followers of Priscillian. The orthodox party beheld with alarm the progress of this detestable heresy. Finally the vindictive fury of his enemies prevailed, even more than the justice of their cause. Priscillian and his partisans were beheaded (384 A.D.).

So long as Maximus lived, the numerous adherents of Priscillian were pursued with unrelenting severity by Idatius; but soon after the death of that emperor, this turbulent prelate, whose cruelties had long revolted his episcopal brethren, was banished, and the heat of persecution began to abate. Yet Priscillianism was not extirpated; notwithstanding its renewed condemnation by the first council of Toledo, it continued to distract the church of Spain long after the accession of the Gothic dynasty.

BARBARIAN INVASIONS

From the accession of Honorius the Roman Empire existed only by sufferance. The fierce hordes of northern Europe now prepared to inundate the fertile provinces of the south, and the more powerful local governors to secure themselves an independent sovereignty. Spain was soon agitated by the spirit which spontaneously burst forth from Britain to Thrace. While Constantine, who had assumed the purple, raised England and the Gauls against the feeble successor of the Cæsars, his son Constans passed the Pyrenees to gain over the natives of the peninsula. The youth found or made adherents, and was for a time successful; but in the sequel he was compelled to return to Gaul for reinforcements. The appearance of another candidate for empire (Jovinus) distracted the attention and weakened the efforts of the kindred adventurers; and ultimately all these became successively the victims of imperial vengeance, chiefly by means of the warlike tribes whom the minister of Honorius had marched from the shores of the Baltic, to crush the new insurrections. But the policy of that minister was, if not perfidious, at least short-sighted.

[395-415 A.D.]

The barbarians whom he had thus introduced into the heart, and to whom he thus betrayed the weakness of the empire, from allies soon became masters. They looked with longing eyes on the rich plains of southern France and of Spain. At length, finding the Pyrenean barrier but negligently guarded, the Suevi, under their king Hermeric, the Alans under Atace, and the Vandals or Silingi, under Gunderic, burst through it, and poured the tide of destruction over the peninsula (409 A.D.). The ravages of these barbarians, we are told, were dreadful. Towns pillaged and burned, the country laid waste, the inhabitants massacred without distinction of age and sex, were but the beginning of evils. Famine and pestilence made awful havoc; the wild beasts, finding nothing to subsist on in their usual haunts, made war on the human species; and the latter consumed the very corpses of the dead. Nay, mothers are said to have killed their children to feed on their flesh.[4] The conquerors at length ceased from their wantonness of desolation. They found that to turn the country into a wilderness was not the best policy in men who designed it for a permanent abode. They divided it by lot: Bætica fell to the Vandals, Lusitania to the Alans, and Galicia, with a great portion of Leon and Castile, to the Suevi.

The Goths Arrive (411 A.D.)

A fourth people, more formidable than the rest combined, came to trouble the new settlers in their possessions. These were the Goths under Atawulf, (Ataulphus) whom Honorius had the address to remove from Italy, by ceding to them the fertile provinces of southern Gaul, and the peninsula. Having established the seat of his kingdom at Narbonne, where he married his imperial captive Placidia, he passed the Pyrenees, made a triumphant entry into Barcelona, and from thence undertook several expeditions against the Vandals. A conspiracy was formed against his life; and the sword of a dwarf pierced his body, as he was conspicuously watching the evolutions of his cavalry, in the courtyard of his palace at Barcelona.

Sigeric succeeded, whose ruffianly conduct instantly drew on him the detestation of the Goths. Scarcely had he put to death the six surviving children of Atawulf, and compelled the widowed Placidia to adorn his triumph by walking barefoot through the streets of Barcelona, than another conspiracy deprived him of his throne and his life. The election of the Goths now fell on Wallia, a chief every way worthy of their choice (415). His first expedition, however, against the Roman possessions in Africa was disastrous. A violent tempest destroyed his fleet, and forced him to relinquish his design. The news of this disaster soon reached Gaul, and brought Constantius, the general of Honorius, at the head of a numerous army, towards the Pyrenees. Wallia collected the remnant of his troops, and hastened to receive him. Fortunately for the Gothic king, love rather than ambition occasioned the hostile approach of Constantius. That general was more anxious to gain possession of Placidia, whose hand had been promised him by the emperor, than to effect the destruction of the king. No sooner did the two armies encamp in sight of each other, than he proposed peace on conditions too advantageous to be rejected. Wallia had only to surrender the royal widow, and promise to march against the Suevi and the other nations who held possession of the peninsula, to secure not merely the neutrality but the favour of the Romans. Placidia was restored, and peace made with the Romans.

[415-429 A.D.]

Hostilities were now vigorously commenced against the kindred barbarians. The Vandals were expelled from their habitations, and forced to seek an asylum among the Suevi of Galicia. The Alans of Lusitania were almost entirely cut off, with their king Atace: the remnant incorporated with the Vandals, and their name forever disappeared from the peninsula. The Suevi would doubtless have shared the fate of one or other of these people, had they not hastened to acknowledge themselves tributaries of Rome; they were left in undisputed possession of the country they inhabited. The pride of Honorius caused him to regard these signal successes as for his own benefit. The victor was rewarded with a portion of Languedoc and Gascony, from Toulouse to the ocean. That city he made the seat of his kingdom, where he died, two years after his glorious triumphs. From this time to the reign of Euric, the Goths remained chiefly in their new possessions, and were seldom in Spain. Though they considered themselves the rightful lords of the country, the real sovereignty rested with the Suevi and Vandals.

Under the reign of Theodoric I, Wallia’s successor, the Vandals made war on the Suevi. The latter retreated to the fastnesses of the Asturias. The Vandals forsook Galicia, and fought their way to their former settlements in Bætica, whence Wallia had expelled them. To that province they communicated their name—Vandalusia; which was subsequently changed into Andalusia.[5] There they maintained themselves, in opposition to the imperial generals. The ports of Andalusia and Granada presented them with facilities for pushing their successes on the deep. They constructed a fleet; infested the Balearic Isles; pillaged the coast of Valencia; sacked the city of Cartagena; laid waste the shores of Mauretania; and returned to Seville, where the last act of their king, Gunderic, was to despoil the opulent church of St. Vincent.[6] A new and higher career was now opened before them. The offer made them by Boniface, the African prefect, of two-thirds of that country, if they would assist him against his enemies, they joyfully accepted. Before embarking, however, they inflicted a terrible blow on their enemies, the Suevi, whom they overthrew near Merida—whom they precipitated, with their king, into the waters of the Guadiana. They then tranquilly returned to the sea coast; and, to the number of eighty thousand, passed over to Africa, in March, 429, eighteen years after their arrival in Spain.

PROGRESS OF THE GOTHIC CONQUEST

[429-469 A.D.]

The retreat of these restless barbarians did not insure tranquillity to Spain. The Suevi, under their new king, Hermeric, issued from their dark mountains, and bore down on the peaceable inhabitants of Galicia. But it was reserved for his son Richilan, to whom, in 438, he resigned his sceptre, to raise the fame of the nation to the highest pitch. He routed the Romans on the banks of the Venil, and seized on Merida and Seville.

In the meantime, Theodoric was no less occupied in humbling the Roman power in southern Gaul. While meditating hostilities against the triumphant Suevi, he was summoned to encounter the renowned Attila, king of the Huns. His well-known valour placed him at the head of the right wing of the Franks, Romans, and Goths, who combined to arrest the progress of the tremendous torrent. His death on the plains of Châlons (451) where the pride of the barbaric king was humbled, endeared him still more to his subjects, who gratefully elevated his son Torismond to the vacant throne. But the reign of the new king was brief, and his end tragic. In one year, by the hands of his two brothers, he was deprived of empire and of life, in his capital of Toulouse; and Theodoric II, the elder of the fratricides, was elected in his place.[7] The reign of this prince was diversified by alternate success and disaster. He first turned his arms against the Suevi, whom he vanquished, and made their king, Richiarius, prisoner; but being recalled to France, the army which he left in the peninsula was routed by the natives of Leon, who were indignant at the excess it committed. The whole country was now in the most miserable condition. Goths and Romans and Suevi traversed it in every direction, and everywhere left melancholy vestiges of their barbarous fury. Another fierce tribe, the Herulians, landed on the coast of Catalonia, and zealously prosecuted the same work of desolation. Then the Suevi split into two parties, which pursued each other with the most vindictive feelings, but which were always ready to combine when the natives were to be plundered, or when Goths and Romans were to be opposed.

The Spaniard was the prey of all: his labour was doomed to support the innumerable swarms which spread from the Pyrenees to the rock of Calpe, and which, like so many locusts, destroyed wherever they settled. The scourge was more than galling—it was intolerable. Native bands were at length formed in most parts of the peninsula, not merely to take vengeance on the rapacious invaders—for in that case they would have been a blessing to their country—but to plunder all who came in their way. Many of these horrors would have been averted, had Theodoric been at liberty to return in person to Spain, and finish its subjugation; but his wars with the Romans, the Burgundians, and the Franks found him for some years employment enough. At length he was assassinated, it is said, by his brother Euric, in his capital of Toulouse. One of the first acts of Euric was to despatch an army to humble the pride of the Suevi. His arms were eminently successful. The Suevi sued for and obtained peace, and were allowed to remain in undisturbed possession of Galicia, with a portion of modern Leon and Portugal, and to retain their kingly form of government. So completely were they become the vassals of the victors that during a whole century they remained in quiet subjection. We hear no more of them until the time of Leuvigild, who dealt the last blow to their national existence, and, as we shall hereafter see, incorporated them with his Gothic subjects.

[469-522 A.D.]

The Romans were less fortunate; their domination in the country was ended forever by the fall of Tarragona. They continued, indeed, to hold a few unimportant places on the coast; not because they had valour to defend them, but because Euric had no naval force to assail them from the sea. The conqueror, though master of all Spain, disdained to be confined within limits which his ambition deemed much too narrow. Rome was now tottering to her fall; and he resolved to pluck some of the most fertile provinces of Gaul from her feeble grasp. Odoacer the Mercenary, king of Italy, renounced in his favour all the Roman provinces beyond the Alps, as far as the Rhine and the ocean: and thenceforward the Goths regarded Gaul and Spain as their lawful inheritance. The victor established the seat of his empire at Arles, where he passed in tranquillity the remainder of his days. He died in that capital, (484 A.D.) after engaging his subjects to elect for their king his son Alaric. Euric was the founder of the Gothic kingdom of Spain. The extinction of the Roman sway, and the subjection of the Suevi, rendered him absolute lord of the country. The six kings, his predecessors, were rulers in Gaul, not of Spain; however they might regard its provinces as rightfully their own, they could obtain possession only by force of arms. Their conquests, however, had been partial and temporary; before Euric, the peninsula was overrun, not subdued. He was also the first legislator of his nation. The laws which he collected and committed to writing served as the foundation of the famous Gothic code, known by the name of the Forum Judicum, or Fuero Juzgo. He was a great prince; but the fratricide which is believed to have opened him the way to the crown, and the cruelty with which he persecuted the orthodox (like his predecessors, he was an Arian), are dreadful stains on his memory.

But Alaric was unable to tread in the steps of so great a prince as his father. In vain did his father-in-law Theodoric, who had just founded the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy, interpose in his behalf: the fierce Clovis marched towards Poitiers, where Alaric then lay, resolved, as he said, to expel the heretical Arians from the soil of Gaul.[8] The Visigoths, after a sharp conflict, were routed with great loss, and their king was left dead on the field. Clovis pursued his successes, and soon reduced the greater part of their possessions in the south of France, and entered victorious into their capital of Toulouse.[9] Alaric left a son; but as he was too young to be intrusted with the government, his bastard brother, Gesalric (Gensaleic) had the address to procure the elective crown. But the king of the Ostrogoths invested Gaul, overthrew the Franks, who were pressing the siege of Carcassonne, and forced Gesalric to seek for safety in Barcelona. The humbled Clovis was glad to sue for peace from the formidable Theodoric, who united the two kingdoms of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths under his own sceptre. To Theudes, one of his ablest generals, he intrusted the administration of the country and the guardianship of his grandson. Theodoric resigned the sceptre of Spain to his grandson, on that prince’s arriving at a suitable age. Theudes now retired into private life.

[522-554 A.D.]

Amalaric was the first Gothic king who established his court in Spain, in the city of Seville. To Athalaric, the successor of Theodoric, he ceded that portion of France which lies between the Rhone and the Alps, and received in return his father’s treasures, which Theodoric had removed from Carcassonne to Ravenna: in the rest of Gothic Gaul, with all Spain, he was solemnly confirmed by Athalaric. To secure his possessions in Gaul against the formidable Franks, Amalaric demanded and obtained the hand of Clotilda, the sister of the royal sons of Clovis. But the union was unfortunate. The king was a violent partisan of Arius; the queen as obstinate a professor of orthodoxy: at first each attempted to convert the other; but finding their efforts ineffectual, the one was filled with rage, the other with contempt. Childebert marched against his brother-in-law; the result was fatal to Amalaric, who fell by the swords of the Franks, whether on the field of battle, as Procopius[o] asserts, or afterwards as he was seeking sanctuary in a church, must forever remain undecided. The battle in question appears to have been fought, not in Gothic Gaul, but in Catalonia. Childebert returned to France with his sister and the immense treasures which he had seized in the Arian churches.

With Amalaric ended the royal line of the mighty Alaric. Theudes was unanimously elected to the vacant throne (531). He appears to have been engaged in hostilities for some years with the vindictive or ambitious sons of Clovis. Gothic Gaul he was compelled to abandon to its fate, but he vigorously defended his peninsular dominions, which were invaded and laid waste by Childebert and Clotaire. Elated with his successes, the victorious Theudes passed the straits of Gibraltar, and laid siege to Ceuta, then in possession of the imperial troops. The place was invested with vigour; and this recent conquest of Belisarius would soon have passed to the Visigoths or the Vandals, but for the pious scruples of the king. Though an Arian, he revered the Sabbath; on which he not only refrained from hostile operations, but with his soldiers was occupied in public worship. Less strict than their foe, the besieged issued from the walls, fell on the Goths at the hour of prayer, and committed on them a carnage so horrible that the king had some difficulty to escape. He did not long survive this disaster. An assassin contrived to penetrate into the recesses of his palace, and with a poniard to deprive him of life. Before he expired, he is said to have ordered that the murderer should not be punished, as in his death he recognised the hand of heaven, which thus chastised him for a similar crime he had himself committed many years before. He left behind him the character of a just, a valiant, and an able ruler, who secured to his kingdom the blessings of internal peace by avoiding all invidious preference of his own religious sect, and treating the orthodox with as much favour as his Arian brethren.

Of the next two princes who successively swayed the Gothic sceptre, very little is known. The former, Theudisela, who had been the general of Theudes, and had acquired considerable fame in the war with the Franks, was a monster of licentiousness. This second Sardanapalus had scarcely reigned eighteen months before his destruction was effected by his enraged nobles. He was supping with them one evening in his palace at Seville, when the lights were suddenly extinguished, and a dozen swords entered his body. He was succeeded by Agila, whose reign was one continued series of commotions. Many cities refused to recognise his election. He marched to chastise them, but was vanquished and ultimately slain by his own soldiers after being defeated by Atanagild, a Gothic noble (554).

Toledo

[554-567 A.D.]

Scarcely had Atanagild obtained the throne, the great object of his wishes, when he discovered how fatally his ambition had blinded him. The troops of Justinian, his imperial ally, had no intention of leaving the country. From their fortresses in the Carthaginian province they defied his power to expel them. Nor were his successors more fortunate; the unwelcome intruders remained until they were insensibly incorporated with Gothic inhabitants. This prince is more famous from the misfortunes of his two daughters than from his own deeds. The one he married to Sigebert king of Metz, the other to Chilperic king of Soissons. The latter, Galeswintha, Galsvinda, or Gosvinda, was murdered by order of her husband—no doubt at the instigation of his mistress, Fredegund. In Spain the memory of her sister Brunehild, is held in the highest reverence: in France, it is branded with infamy. The persecutions which after her husband’s death she sustained from the unprincipled Fredegund, and the ferocious Chilperic, and her tragical end, many years afterwards, by the command of Clotaire, are events which belong to the history of France rather than that of Spain. Into the question of her guilt or innocence no inquiry need be instituted here: there are authorities enough to be consulted on both sides; and in both abundant reason may be found to lament the influence of national prejudice, which can blind the wise and exasperate the good.[10]

During the reign of Atanagild, the Suevi, who had abandoned paganism for the errors of Arius, in the time of their king Rechiarius, about a century before, were converted to the orthodox faith. Though subject to the Goths, they had still preserved, as before observed, their kingly form of government. Theodomir, their present monarch, and his court solemnly abjured Arianism, were rebaptised, and admitted into the bosom of the church. After a peaceful, just, and useful reign of near fourteen years, and an interregnum of five months, occasioned by want of unanimity among the electors, the party of Narbonne in Gothic Gaul succeeded in raising Liuva [Leuva or Leova] to the throne. He contented himself with Gothic Gaul; and, in the second year of his reign, he confided to his brother Leuvigild (Leovigild) the sovereignty of Spain. Of Liuva no more is known except that he died in three years from his election, leaving his brother sole ruler of the kingdom.

LEUVIGILD AND ERMENIGILD

[567-583 A.D.]

The reign of Leuvigild is more interesting than that of his predecessors. His arms were triumphant in every direction. The soldiers of the empire were again compelled to take refuge in their fortresses on the coast; and the fierce inhabitants of Biscay, Alava, and even Cantabria, to surrender at discretion. But the most painful, if not the most formidable of his enemies, he found in his eldest son Ermenigild. Yet few sons had ever more reason for filial gratitude. By an affectionate father, on his marriage with the princess Ingunda, daughter of the famous Brunehild and of Sigebert (which was celebrated in Toledo in 582) he had been associated in the royal dignity, and in every other respect treated with the utmost liberality. But Ingunda was orthodox, and Gosvinda, the second wife of Leuvigild, a professor of the Arian sect. The two queens could not long agree: the two husbands, finding that their palace was scandalised by disgraceful scenes, agreed to have separate courts: while the elder remained at Toledo, the younger established his court at Seville, which in splendour was little inferior to that of Leuvigild.

Ermenigild had not long been established in his new palace before he abjured Arianism, and embraced the Catholic religion. His conversion was chiefly the work of his consort, who had acquired great ascendency over him. Leuvigild declared that the crown of the Goths should never adorn the brow of an apostate. It is difficult to say which of the two first drew the sword in this unnatural warfare; but there is probability for throwing the guilt on the son. When no hope of resistance remained the rebel betook himself to a church, whence he implored pardon from his justly incensed father. The king promised to spare his life, if he would leave the sanctuary. By the persuasion of his brother Recared, who appears to have acted throughout in a manner highly creditable both as son and brother, he came out; and, with all the outward signs of repentance, threw himself at the feet of the king. The latter raised him, kissed him, and wept. For some time the father struggled with the king. At length he ordered that the rebel should be despoiled of the royal ornaments, and exiled to Valencia, thenceforward to live as a private individual.

Had all ended here, the justice of Leuvigild would have been approved by posterity, and the rebel would never have been lauded for virtues which he did not possess. But Ermenigild had scarcely arrived at his place of exile, when he again pursued his guilty plots against his country and king. He again connected himself with the Greeks, the most faithless and most formidable enemies to the repose of Spain; instigated the natives to rebellion; and, at the head of this combined force, made an irruption into Estremadura. The indignation of Leuvigild may well be conceived. Having collected a veteran body of troops, he opened another melancholy campaign against the arch-rebel; he was delivered—or he fell—into their hands, and thrown into the dungeons of a prison in Tarragona. Leuvigild despatched several confidential messengers to the prince, promising, it is said, not only pardon but a restoration to royal favour, if he would return to the Arian faith. With a constancy which certainly does him honour, Ermenigild alike disregarded promises and threats, and declared his unalterable resolution of living and dying in the Catholic communion. Then it was that Leuvigild, in a fit of ungovernable fury, gave orders for the execution of the youth. The order was but too promptly obeyed: the ministers of vengeance hastened to the dungeon, and a hatchet cleft the head of the prince of the Goths.

[583-584 A.D.]

That the crimes of Ermenigild deserved death, no one can attempt to deny; but nature shudders when a parent, in however just a cause, becomes the executioner of his child: no excuse can shield Leuvigild from the execration of posterity. But neither will historic truth permit the victim to be called a martyr. But what are we to think of St. Ermenigild[11]—what of the daring impiety which could invest a weak and wicked youth with attributes little less than divine? By the breviary of the Spanish church, and one or two ancient chroniclers, we are told that the dungeon of the saint, on the night of his execution, was illuminated with celestial light; that angels hovered over the corpse, and celebrated his martyrdom with holy songs! Then as to the miracles wrought by his intercession—omitting all mention of those which are said to have occurred during the darkness of the Middle Ages—a darkness in Spain “that might be felt”—what are we to say of Morales,’[u] a writer who, so late as the close of the sixteenth century, gravely tells us that in his behalf a signal miracle has been performed through the instrumentality of this precious saint?[12] Even the judicious Masdeu,[r] at the close of the eighteenth century, could not, or perhaps dared not, divest himself of the pitiful prejudices of his country’s faith.

After the news of Ermenigild’s death, the brothers of Ingunda armed in the cause of their widowed sister. At the same time the Suevi showed a disposition to be restless, and prepared to descend from the mountains of Galicia, on the plains of central Spain. Nothing could exceed the promptitude with which Leuvigild met these threatening disasters. While he himself marched to subdue his rebellious vassals, whose nationality he had long resolved to destroy, he despatched his son Recared into Gaul to oppose the Franks. Both expeditions were eminently successful. All Galicia submitted, and a final period was put to the domination of the Suevi, 177 years after their arrival in Spain. In the latter expedition, Recared, after various successes, expelled the invaders from Gothic Gaul. The great Leuvigild was now undisputed master of the peninsula, with the exception of some maritime fortresses still held by the Greeks. Unfortunately, however, for his fame, he stained the lustre of a splendid reign by persecuting the orthodox or Catholic party. He is the first of the Visigoth kings[13] represented on ancient coins, with the royal diadem on his brow. But his riches were not wholly expended in idle pomp. The city of Recopolis, which he founded in Celtiberia, in honour of his son Recared, was a monument of his patriotism. Such, also, were the improvements which he introduced into the national legislation.

[586-589 A.D.]

Leuvigild died in 586. A year before his death, he associated his son in his royal dignity. His greatest glory, in a Spaniard’s eye, is his suspected conversion to the Catholic faith a few days before his death. If the alleged change were less disputable, we should hear no more of his defects; they would be carefully covered by the veil of orthodoxy.

RECARED I AND CATHOLICISM

On the death of his father, Recared I was unanimously acknowledged sole king of the Goths. In about a year after his accession, this prince conceived the hardy project of reclaiming his subjects from heresy. Time and patience, as well as a prudent dexterity, were indispensable towards the success of his project. By inviting his Catholic and Arian prelates to dispute in his presence, and by assuming the appearance of perfect impartiality between them, he laid the foundation of the change he meditated.

His next was a bolder step, though in perfect accordance with his new policy: he restored to the Catholic churches the treasures of which they had been deprived by his predecessors, and secured to the more indigent ones a considerable augmentation of revenue. When he saw his preparations sufficiently matured, he assembled his nobles and clergy at Toledo (May 8th, 587), to discuss his proposal. Having prevailed on the assembly to pass three consecutive days in fasting and prayer, he opened the business of the meeting in an elaborate speech. He submitted that, if unity of religion could be restored, an end would be put to the troubles which had so long agitated the kingdom. Lastly, he caused an instrument to be read, containing his abjuration of Arianism, and the confession of his belief in the co-equality of the Three Persons, and in the authority of the Catholic and apostolic church; and entreated all who were present to follow his example. When he and his queen had solemnly signed the act of confession, most of the prelates and nobles in the assembly hastened to do the same. The Catholic faith was thus declared the religion of the state. Spaniard, Sueve, and Goth were thus joined in one communion; and a canon was drawn up at the suggestion of St. Leander and the king, and with the full concurrence of the several members present, that henceforth no person should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper who should not previously recite the symbol of belief, as sanctioned by the council of Constantinople.

[589-621 A.D.]

Scarcely had the Gothic monarch effected the conversion of his subjects, when he was called to defend those of southern Gaul against Gontram, king of the Franks (589). Near Carcassonne they were utterly routed, and their camp seized by the general of Recared, nine thousand of their number being left dead on the field. Not less signal was his success over the Basques, who, with their characteristic restlessness, had long harassed the neighbouring provinces. The imperialists, too, he humbled, and compelled them to seek refuge in their fortresses. The rest of this monarch’s reign was a continual effort to promote the happiness of his people: his administration was beyond example prosperous; and he enjoyed to an unrivalled extent their confidence and affection. It has been truly said of him that there arose no war in which he was not victorious; no rebellion which he did not crush; no conspiracy which he did not discover. In his last illness this king was devout enough, according to St. Isidore,[p] the contemporary bishop of Seville, to make a public confession of his sins, in conformity with the practice of the primitive church. He died in 601.

PETTY MONARCHS (601-672 A.D.)

Of the eleven succeeding sovereigns little is known, and that little is not very interesting. In general their reigns were brief, and their actions unimportant; so that we have the less reason to regret the scantiness of our historic materials. Liuva II, the eldest son and successor of Recared, ere two years were passed, was assassinated by the same Witteric whom his father’s clemency had pardoned. Witteric had little reason to congratulate himself on his success. In his wars he was uniformly unfortunate; and in his family he was not more to be envied. In the seventh year of his reign he was murdered at his own table, and his body buried without honour.

Gundemar, the next king (610), was more fortunate in his warlike enterprises. He triumphed over the Basques and the imperialists. He had one advantage—an advantage not always enjoyed by the Visigoth monarchs of Spain—that of dying a natural death. Sisibut (Sisebert) was much superior. His successes over both the Basques and the imperialists were more signal: they were also more solid, since he reduced and retained several fortresses belonging to the latter; those which lay near the straits of Gibraltar were lost to them forever. But he deserves greater praise for his humanity than for his valour or skill in war. He wept over the wounds of his prisoners; and, with his own money, often redeemed such as were taken by his soldiers. Whenever a town was sacked, he ordered it to be proclaimed that the enemies who, even when the contest was hopeless, should reach his quarters and claim his protection, should escape with both life and liberty. Such an expedient is indicative enough both of his own admirable clemency and of the blood-thirsty disposition of his Goths, who were accustomed indiscriminately to massacre every living thing that fell in their way.

Strange that this prince, who was thus indulgent to his very enemies, should so rigorously have persecuted his Jewish subjects! He published an edict which left them no alternative but baptism or scourges and utter destitution. Eighty thousand of the poor wretches submitted to the rite; a great number escaped into France; such as remained and were obstinate in their faith were treated with great cruelty. At length, however, the church wisely desisted from this execrable policy. It was accordingly ordained by the fourth council of Toledo that the holy sacraments should no longer be administered to such as were unwilling to receive them. In other respects Sisibut was a wise and patriotic monarch. The construction of a fleet for the purpose not only of the country’s defence, but of making his subjects acquainted with maritime affairs, was, in a Gothic king, a magnificent thought. He is also believed to have surrounded the city of Evora with fortifications. He died in 621. His son, Recared II, reigned only three months.

[621-673 A.D.]

Suintila, the next in succession, is represented as a strange compound of great and vicious qualities; at least his life exhibited, at two different periods, a strange contrast with itself. On the one side he had the glory of effecting what his predecessors had attempted in vain—he reduced all the fortresses held by the imperialists, and forever ended their influence in the peninsula: he was thus the first Gothic monarch of all Spain. With equal success he quelled the commotions of the Basques. His triumphs changed him: the hours which he had formerly devoted to the happiness of his people were now passed in sensuality. He became cruel. What still more exasperated the Goths, so tenacious of their original equality, and so jealous of their sovereign’s prerogatives, was his conferring on his son Recared the title of king, and thereby laying the foundation of hereditary monarchy. Seeing the universal dissatisfaction inspired by this once popular ruler, one Sisenando, a noble Goth, planned his deposition. The Goths deposed their king, and proclaimed Sisenando the successor (631). The fourth council of Toledo (assembled in 633), after passing some canons for the better discipline of the church, entered fully into his views by excommunicating Suintila, the wife, children, and brother of that monarch.

On the death of this monarch the choice of the Goths fell on Chintella (Chintila), who, in conformity with the regulation just mentioned, convoked the prelates at Toledo to confirm his election. These fathers issued another decree, that in future no one should be nominated as king who was not of noble blood and of Gothic descent; all candidates, too, were subjected to excommunication who should endeavour to attain their end by unlawful means. In another council (the sixth of Toledo), held about eighteen months afterwards, the third canon obliged all future kings to swear, not only that they would not suffer the exercise of any other religion than the Catholic, but that they would rigorously enforce the laws against all dissidents, especially “that accursed people,” the Jews. Tulga, who was elected in 640, was also a model of the peaceful virtues. The aged and inflexible Cindasuinto (Chindaswind), who ascended the throne in 642, associated with him in the royal dignity his son Recesuinto (Receswind), and on his death in 653 that prince remained in secure possession of the crown. The piety of this monarch made him the favourite of the church; the readiness with which he sanctioned a law that the wealth acquired by future kings should be transmitted, not to their children or heirs, but to their successors, rendered him no less that of the nation.

THE REIGN OF WAMBA

[673-677 A.D.]

After the death of Recesuinto in 672, the eyes of the Gothic electors were turned on Wamba, whose wisdom and virtues were well known to the whole nation. But this excellent man, who had filled some of the most honourable posts in the monarchy, and had found little happiness in greatness, was little inclined to accept the proffered dignity. He alleged his advanced age, and his consequent incapacity to undertake duties requiring such labour and activity. Prayers and tears were vainly employed to move him. At length, one of the dukes of the palace placed a poniard at his breast, and bade him choose between the sepulchre and a throne. Such a choice was no longer difficult, and Wamba reigned.

If Wamba, as there is reason to believe, had been induced to refuse the crown chiefly from an apprehension of popular levity, his prudent foresight was verified by the event. The Basques revolted, and their example was instantly followed by the inhabitants of Gothic Gaul. The evil was increased by the bigotry of the king; he issued a decree, banishing all Jews who refused to be baptised: these exasperated exiles flocked to Nîmes, whose count, Hilderic, had drawn many nobles and prelates into the rebellion. The cause of the monarch appeared hopeless, when Duke Paul, a Greek by nation, and consequently wily and unprincipled, who had been despatched at the head of an army to suppress the commotion beyond the Pyrenees, prevailed on his troops to join the malcontents, and on several important fortresses to open their gates to him. Even Barcelona and Narbonne were detached from their fidelity to the king.

In the meantime the artful Greek had prevailed on the Goths of Gaul to proclaim him king. The prudent Wamba, after the successful issue of the Cantabrian war, marched towards Catalonia. On the confines of that province, he divided his forces into three considerable bodies; of which, while one was conveyed by sea, the other two proceeded towards the Pyrenees by two different routes. Barcelona submitted almost without resistance; Gerona offered none; two of his generals speedily reduced the fortress of Clausina, on the site of the modern Clusas, and made Hilderic and Ranosind prisoners. The victorious king now marched on Narbonne, in the hope of ending the war by the reduction of that capital, and the seizure of the rebel. But Paul, whose self-confidence seemed to have greatly abated, had precipitately retired to Nîmes, leaving the defence of Narbonne to Duke Wittimer. He surrendered, and, with his companions, was publicly scourged as a rebel.

A Spanish Flagellant

The reduction of Narbonne was followed by that of other strong places in the neighbourhood. No time was now lost in marching against Nîmes, where Paul was entrenched with his bravest troops. The assault was delivered with fury, and was as furiously repelled. Eventually the walls were surmounted: the struggle on the summit was terrible, but short; it was renewed in the streets, but the sword of the Goths still pursued its destructive career. Wamba now entered triumphantly into Nîmes, by the pardoned inhabitants of which he was received with unfeigned gratitude. By his command Paul, with the other leading rebels, was dragged, by the hair of the head, from the vaults of the amphitheatre. The judges of the tribunal voted for the death of the most guilty; but the merciful monarch satisfied himself with condemning them to wear shaven crowns, and to a religious confinement within the walls of Toledo. Having pacified the whole of Gothic Gaul; having deposed some governors, and created others; having repaired the towns which had been injured, and banished the Jews, Wamba returned to his capital.

[677-680 A.D.]

After those glorious exploits, Wamba applied his undivided cares to the interests of his subjects. By cultivating the arts of peace, by bettering the temporal condition of the people, by encouraging the clergy to greater diligence, by strengthening the walls of Toledo, and by causing justice to be administered with mercy, he secured the confidence of his kingdom. The bases of his character seem to have been incorruptible integrity, an ardent zeal for his country’s good, and a rare union of moderation with firmness. He was also unrivalled for prudence; he provided for everything. Foreseeing the enterprises to which the fanatic ambition of the Saracens would inevitably impel them, he prepared a fleet for the defence of the coast. He had soon to congratulate himself on his prophetic caution. About the year 677, a fleet of 170 barques, filled with these barbarians, passed the straits of Gibraltar, and attempted to land: they were assailed, dispersed, or taken by the ships of the king, whose vigour long kept the Mussulmans in awe. Though masters of nearly all northern Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, they wisely respected for many years the territories of the Goths. Had Wamba been succeeded by monarchs of equal prudence and activity, the scourge of Saracenic domination, the greatest, perhaps, that ever afflicted any people, would probably have been forever averted from Spain.

But neither the virtues nor the abilities of Wamba, it is said, could exempt him from the fate common to so many of the Visigothic kings—from domestic treason. If that fate, however, be common in kind, it differs widely in manner, in the present instance. On Sunday, October 14th, 680, the king fell into a state of insensibility, and seemed to be deprived of life. As no doubt appeared to be entertained by his servants that he was dying, in conformity with the custom of his times, his head was hastily shaven, and he was enveloped in a penitential habit; in other words, he was transformed from a layman into a member of the monastic profession. Though he recovered in about twenty-four hours, his doom was everlastingly sealed: though his profession had been involuntary, and even forced on him while in a lifeless state, the obligation was not the less imperative. Disqualified thus strangely from enjoying the honours and from participating in the duties of public life, he retired to the monastery of Pampliega, near Burgos, where he passed the remainder of his days.

Such are the facts of this strange occurrence. The only difficulty is to determine whether the suspension of the vital powers in Wamba was a natural or a previously contrived event. Two chroniclers of the ninth century (Sebastian[v] of Salamanca, and the anonymous monk of Albelda[w]) assert that the indisposition or trance of Wamba, and his consequent tonsure, were the work of Ervigius, a nephew of King Cindasuinto, who had long aspired to the throne. He administered, say they, a draught to the monarch, which he considered potent enough to destroy reason, if not life itself; and in the lethargy which followed the monastic penitence was imposed, whether by his contrivance, or through the piety of the royal attendants, is doubtful. But what reliance is to be placed on the testimony of these chroniclers, who wrote so long after the event? Not a hint is given of this treason in the work of the contemporary prelate St. Julian,[x] nor in the acts of the twelfth council of Toledo, assembled after the retirement of Wamba, nor in the epitome of Isidore of Badajoz,[z] who wrote about seventy years after the time; in short, there is no contemporary authority whatever for fixing so deep a stain on the character of Ervigius. On the contrary, the three instruments which he produced on his accession were acknowledged to be authentic: the first, which was signed by the great officers of the palace, stated the fact of the tonsure and habit being imposed; the second, which was signed by Wamba himself, contained his renunciation of the crown in favour of Ervigius; and the third was an injunction addressed by that monarch to the metropolitan of Toledo to proceed with the coronation of his appointed successor.

On the other hand, it may be contended with some appearance of reason that the silence of St. Julian and of the fathers of the council is sufficiently explicable: neither would wish to draw on themselves the vengeance of the reigning king by giving utterance to their suspicions. And as to the three instruments so carefully adduced, does not that very care imply an apprehension on the part of him who took it that his proceedings would be narrowly watched, his motives, perhaps, called in question? Would innocence, which, like charity, never judges harshly, or suspects, have taken such pains to furnish evidence so connected and elaborate? Undue anxiety has often shot beyond its mark. Then the subsequent conduct of Ervigius, which, as we shall soon see, is censurable for something worse than imprudence, must naturally confirm the suspicions of such as incline to the opinion of his guilt. On such a subject, however, where certainty can never be expected, the wise will hesitate to decide, and the good to condemn.[14]

ERVIGIUS AND ERGICA

[680-687 A.D.]

Having summoned a council at Toledo, the twelfth held in that city (680), Ervigius had little difficulty in persuading the fathers to acknowledge the authenticity of the three instruments he produced; and, consequently, his claim to the Visigothic crown. They even showed a blind devotion to his will in other respects, not very honourable to their characters, nor respectful to the memory of an excellent prince. But, with all his wily contrivances, Ervigius had the mortification to see the bulk of the people still attached to their late sovereign. To make that sovereign appear tyrannical, and to attach to his interests all who now justly suffered for their participation in the rebellion of Paul, he summoned the thirteenth council of Toledo, and requested the assembled prelates to reverse the salutary measures of his predecessor. Accordingly, the first canon restored to their ranks, possessions, and rights, all who had ever taken arms against Wamba. Even yet Ervigius was apprehensive. He sent for Ergica, the nephew[15] of Wamba; and offered that prince the hand of his daughter, with the succession to the throne, on the condition that the latter would swear to protect his family when he should be no more. The proposal was eagerly accepted; the marriage was solemnised; and, on the death of Ervigius, the crown of the Goths fell on the brows of the son-in-law.

Gratitude is not always the virtue of princes. Scarcely was Ergica in possession of the envied dignity, than he showed his hostility to the memory of his benefactor. Resolving to use the same weapons as had been employed by that king, he convoked the fifteenth council of Toledo to aid his views of vengeance; he represented to the fathers the oath which he had taken to protect the family of Ervigius, and how difficult it was to be observed amidst the general complaints of his people against the rapacity of that family. The supple ecclesiastics, who had long lost sight of the independence of their vocation, and were become the mere ministers of the monarch (in fact, the bishops were, ex officio, ministers of the crown, in a state which has been truly called theocratic), immediately declared that an unjust oath was not binding; and that the king might punish or reward any of his subjects, the relatives of Ervigius among the rest, as justice or equity dictated. In consequence of this decree, Ergica is said to have punished with severity the enemies of Wamba and his house—in other words, the partisans of Ervigius; and even to have repudiated his wife, thus dissolving the only remaining bond which connected him with the rival family.

[687-709 A.D.]

In the sixth year of his reign Ergica was afflicted with a rebellion, which spread into Gothic Gaul. He had also engagements with the Franks—probably connected with the conspiracy of Sisebert; but in none did he obtain any advantage. A more formidable conspiracy was discovered the following year. Notwithstanding the severity of the penal laws against their nation, many Jews, though outwardly Christians, were retained in the peninsula by the attractions of a lucrative commerce; but their souls groaned within them under the oppressions they were made to endure; and they were naturally eager to engage in any undertaking which promised them toleration and revenge. On the present occasion they were said to have secretly conspired with their brethren of Africa; perhaps, too, with the Saracens, on whose arms they had long prayed for success. To avert the threatened explosion, the king convened the seventeenth council of Toledo, which decreed severe penalties against the guilty. The eighth canon (de Judæorum damnatione) not only reduced to perpetual slavery all the baptised Jews—and Spain had long suffered no other—who relapsed, or who conspired against the state, but ordered that, at seven years of age, their children should be taken from them, and educated under the direction of approved Christians.[16] In 698 this king associated with him his son Witiza, and caused that prince to be recognised as his successor. Witiza, to whom Galicia was confided, established his court at Tuy; and thenceforth, to the death of Ergica, the coins of the kingdom bore two royal heads, with the motto Concordia Regni. The father died at Toledo in 702, leaving behind him a doubtful reputation.[17]

WITIZA (702-709 A.D.)

Of Witiza we know little that is certain, but much that is apocryphal. Over his character, his actions, and even his death, there rests a cloud of uncertainty which will probably never be removed. It is, however, agreed that in the beginning of his reign he evinced many great qualities; that he redressed many grievances inflicted by his father; that he restored their possessions and liberty to many who had been unjustly deprived of both; and that he remitted the heavy arrears of taxes due at his accession—nay, that, to prevent the possibility of their being collected, he caused the books in which the names of the defaulters were contained to be publicly burned. On the other hand, we are told that he was addicted to the greatest luxury; that he took many concubines, with whom he lived openly, in defiance of church remonstrances; that in the indulgence of his brutal appetite he spared neither the high nor the low, neither wife nor maiden; and that, to stifle complaint, he published an edict by which he allowed all his subjects, ecclesiastics no less than laymen, as many concubines as they could obtain.

All this, however startling and improbable, may possibly be true. Though not a word of it is to be found in the continuator of Joannis Biclarensis,[ff] nor in the contemporary historian Isidorus Pacensis,[z] the brevity of those writers, who do no more than chronicle, in the most meagre terms, a few of the more striking facts, may perhaps account for the omission. The vices too of Witiza are mentioned by the monk of Moissiac,[hh] who wrote about one hundred years after the destruction of Spain, and are alluded to by Sebastian of Salamanca,[v] who finished his chronicle towards the close of the ninth century.[g]

The history of Witiza’s reputation is a model of the gentle art of blackening a character, especially in the interests of a religious cause, which can command the progressive aid of generations. Paquis[gg] tells the story briefly, noting that “the further the historians are from the time of Witiza, the more detailed become their recitals, and the more severe their reprobation.” A century after his death the foreign and anonymous writer of the Chronicle of Moissiac[hh] says that he was addicted to extreme luxury. Nearly a century more, and the Spanish Sebastian of Salamanca[v] broke out more strongly: “Witiza plunged into odious debauches, lived in a cloud of women and concubines, and finally to escape the censures of the priests dissolved the assemblies of the bishops and braved the canons of the church; he even ordered the bishops and priests to marry. His impieties caused the ruin of the Goths.”

Another chronicler[w] of the same time omits mention of the orgies and the attack on the church, but accuses Witiza of killing the father of the great Pelayo and of pursuing the famous hero himself. Two centuries more, and the monk of Silos[ii] adds that Witiza put out the eyes of a prince of whom he was jealous. Yet again two centuries, and Lucas Tudensis[jj] discovers that, in addition to previously recorded crimes, Witiza, fearing rebellion, disarmed every subject and tore down the walls of every city but three; and that he chased from Toledo the bishop Julian to place there his own son Oppas, besides mutilating the son of King Cindasuinto. In fact, there was no Bishop Julian at that time; Oppas was not Witiza’s son; and the son of Cindasuinto, of whom Witiza was said to be jealous, must have been over eighty years old at the time, even imagining him to have been the son.

About this time Roderic Ximenes,[kk] finding the old chronicles praising Witiza as virtuous and the later condemning him as vicious, combined the two by representing Witiza’s character as undergoing sudden degeneration from its high beginnings. This patchwork mantle was long worn by Witiza in the later histories of Morales,[u] Mariana,[q] Ferreras,[aa] and Aschbach.[ll] More recent authorities have, however, inclined to discard the evil side of Witiza’s reputation as a mere fiction of later writers who hated him because he spared the Jews and resisted the church in some things.

As a picturesque example of how closely allied to fiction is the development of supposed history, the story of Witiza is of value. There is much uncertainty as to his end. There seems to have been a rebellion, and the power seems to have been divided with Roderic, who was called the son of King Cindasuinto, but was more probably a descendant. The story was told that Roderic finally, with the aid of Greek allies, captured Witiza and put out his eyes; but of this the contemporary Isidorus Pacensis[z] says no word. We can only be sure that Roderic reigned supreme in 709. So fabulous is the fame of this Roderic, “the last of the Goths,” that some historians have been tempted to deny that he ever existed at all. Dahn[mm] calls him an historical phantom; and even less credence is given to the famous romance of the lovely Florinda, to whose virtues he showed no mercy, and whose father in revenge called in the Arabs from Africa to the rich conquest lying at their very feet. This romance, though so little credible, is so closely allied with the Moslem conquest of Spain, that it may well be briefly told, especially as there is nothing impossible or improbable in the main incidents, once the story is rid of its miraculous fairy-story accretions, such as the enchanted tower of Hercules, where Roderic found inscriptions prophesying the coming Arab storm.[a]

THE FABLE OF RODERIC AND FLORINDA (709-711 A.D.)

[709-711 A.D.]

Among the ladies of King Roderic’s court, say the later chronicles of Spain, there was one of uncommon beauty, named Florinda or La Cava, the daughter or wife of one Doyllar or Don Illan, or Don Julian. She had the misfortune to please the king; but as her virtue was equal to her loveliness, she indignantly rejected his overtures. But kings, and least of all Gothic kings, were not to be repulsed with impunity; and Roderic accomplished by force what he could not do by persuasion. The lady dissimulated her deadly hatred until she had an opportunity of communicating her dishonour to her father, then absent against the Moors.

All on fire at the indignity done his child and house, the count resolved on a revenge with which the whole earth should ring. He entered into a compact with the misbelievers, engaging to put them in possession of the whole country, if they would wash away his dishonour in the blood of the foul ravisher. He wrapped his purpose in great secrecy until he had rescued his daughter from the clutches of the king: he himself fetched her from the court of Toledo, and behaved to Roderic with so much courtesy that no one could suspect he knew of his wrong, much less that he was about so fatally to avenge it. On his return to Ceuta, the seat of his government, he found the Moors prepared for the expedition: he openly joined them, accompanied the infidel general to Gibraltar, and thus commenced the famous struggle which was to end in the subjugation of a great nation.

The whole story of Florinda is evidently a romance—probably of Arabic invention—similar to the many thousand others which formed the amusement of the people in the Middle Ages. It is first mentioned by the monk of Silos,[ii] who wrote about four hundred years after the Mohammedan invasion. No doubt, however, can be entertained that Count Julian was among the most influential and active of the conspirators who called the Arabs into Spain.

The chivalric Romance of Don Roderic[nn]—about as good an authority as the monk of Silos on such a subject—gives us a minute account of the amour, its progress, and termination. From the whole conversation, as given by this anonymous novelist, Roderic might be justified in believing that the scruples of La Cava were not insuperable[18]—that, in fact, she was willing in heart, but coy through maiden bashfulness. Even at last, when she might have so easily alarmed the palace, she was silent through fear of her cries reaching the ears of the queen. Count Julian’s daughter is made a model of virtue by Southey, and Roderic himself is represented as scarcely inferior.

VISIGOTHIC CIVILISATION

[415-711 A.D.]

The government of the Visigoths was, in appearance, an absolute monarchy; yet the power of the chief was so restrained in its exercise by the controlling influence of the prelates, that it might, with equal propriety, be termed a theocracy. In the infancy of their office, the Gothic kings were no less controlled by their nobles; they were, in fact, but primi inter pares; they had no royal descent, no hereditary honours, nor, indeed, much transmitted wealth, with which to captivate or influence their rude companions. Every fierce chieftain considered himself as good as his king, and might become one himself. His titles were high-sounding: “Your Glory” was the most usual; though the epithets of Pious, Conquering, etc., were often added. Recared was the first of the Visigothic kings distinguished by the name of Flavius. Whether he assumed it after the imperial family of that name, or from its reputed Gothic signification, is unknown; but it continued to adorn the titles of his successors. His father was also the first who surrounded the throne with regal state, and whose effigy bore the impress of a crowned head. The successors of that monarch improved on his magnificence: robes of purple, thrones of silver, sceptres and crowns of gold, distinguished them still more from the time of Cindasuinto.

Soon after the establishment of the Visigothic monarchy at Toledo, the power of the crown seems to have been bounded by two restrictions only: (1) The king could not condemn without legal trial, but he had power to soften the rigour of severe justice or entirely absolve the delinquents brought before his tribunals; (2) the second restriction related to the decrees of king, which were received as binding during his life; but which had no force in perpetuity, unless sanctioned at the same time by the signatures of the bishops and barons in council assembled. In other respects he was unshackled. He could make war or peace at pleasure; he could issue proclamations which had the force of law, subject to the restriction just mentioned; he commanded in the field, and presided in the court of justice. The jurisdiction of the king was not confined to affairs purely temporal. He could issue general regulations relating to the maintenance of discipline, or the interests of religion. He could preside in tribunals of appeal, even in affairs purely ecclesiastical. The king nominated to all vacant bishoprics, and even translated from one see to another; but this prerogative was very gradually acquired. The fourth and last ecclesiastical prerogative of the king was that of convoking national councils, and of confirming them by his authority. He was thus, in the widest sense, in a degree unknown among other Catholic nations, the protector of the church. In consequence, the bishops became courtiers, and generally submissive to the royal will; and even the fathers of the Toledan councils were swayed by fear, or by the hope of gaining favour.

In other respects the king was invested by the laws with much outward reverence. Whoever conspired against his life was punished with death; or if the capital penalty was remitted, the delinquent was blinded, shaven, and doomed to perpetual confinement. He who even affronted the king was, if rich, mulcted in half his possessions; if poor, he remained at the monarch’s disposal. Whoever defamed the character of a dead king, was punished with fifty stripes. Yet, with all this studied respect, no monarchs were ever so unfortunate as those of the Visigoths—none whose empire, liberty, or even life, was so insecure. From Atawulf to Roderic, the greater number were assassinated or deposed.

We cannot fail to be struck with the national pride of the Goths: they alone were styled nobiles, while the rest of the community were viliores. Under the latter humiliating term were included not merely servi and liberti, or slaves or freedmen, but even the ingenui, or free-born, whatever might be their wealth or consideration; and, to preserve the privileged caste uncontaminated, marriages were rigorously forbidden between the victors and the vanquished, until Recesuinto abolished the prohibition. Not only was the slave who presumed to marry a free woman put to death, but the free woman, who either married or sinned with a slave, was burned at the stake with him. Again, the relative importance of the three classes, nobles, freemen, and slaves, was carefully graduated by the laws. For the same crime a greater punishment was awarded to the second than the first, and to the third than the second. If from the civil we pass to the military state of the country, we shall find that the Goths were one vast nation of soldiers, the words soldier and man being considered almost as synonymous. The obligation of service was imperative on all freemen; nor were the sons of the king admitted to his table until they had made their essay in arms. Slaves were also admitted to join the levies, since every owner was required to take with him to the field one-tenth of the number he possessed. All Goths capable of bearing arms, whether lay or clerical, were subject to military duty; and heavy were the penalties with which he was visited who absented or hid himself to escape the conscription.

Matrimony, the last of the sacraments mentioned in the Visigothic canons, was considered of unrivalled importance among a people so tenacious of their privileges, and so jealous of the purity of their blood. As before observed, marriages between the victors and the vanquished were rigorously prohibited, until Recesuinto repealed the obnoxious law. The damsel could not give her hand to anyone, unless he were not merely approved, but selected for her, by her parents; or, if an orphan, by her natural guardians; and, if she married contrary to their wishes, she not only forfeited all right to her share of her future prosperity, but both she and her husband became slaves—the slaves of the man for whom her relatives had intended her. The dowry was given by the bridegroom, not by the guardians of the bride, and was carefully preserved by them. The impediments to matrimony were numerous. (1) The male was always to have the advantage of years over the female. (2) He or she who had been betrothed to anyone could not marry another before the expiration of two years; if this prohibition was disregarded, slavery was the doom of both. (3) He who forced a woman could not marry her. (4) If a Christian married a Hebrew, both were banished to different places. (5) The monastic orders, public or devotional penitents, virgins veiled and vowed, were naturally excluded from this sacrament; so also were kindred to the sixth degree.

A married couple could at any time separate by mutual agreement; but they could not return to each other, much less remarry. It was only in case of adultery, or when the husband committed the most abominable of sins, or when he wished his wife to commit adultery, that the vinculum matrimonii was declared forever dissolved, and she was at liberty to marry another man. Adultery was reputed so enormous a crime among the Visigoths, that the person who committed it became the slave of the injured partner. If a husband caught his wife in flagrante delicto, he could, with perfect impunity, destroy both her and her paramour—a permission of which a modern Spaniard would not be slow to avail himself. When the actual guilt was not witnessed, every means, not excepting tortures, were used to arrive at its knowledge.

HARDSHIPS OF THE JEWS

Under the Goths, Spain was no more exempt from heresies than she had been under the Romans. The first is that of Nestorius, respecting the mysterious union of the divine and human natures in Christ; but it was speedily repressed. The Manichæans and Priscillianists were not more successful; both Arians and Catholics united in banishing them: extirpation was reserved for later times. After the accession of Recared, when the Catholic religion became the only one in Spain, severe penalties were decreed against all who presumed to differ from the established faith. In the reign of Chintella, and in a council held at Toledo (the sixth), a decree was made that thenceforth none but Catholics should be allowed to remain in the country; and all succeeding kings were to swear that the Jews, the only misbelievers remaining, should not be tolerated.

By a subsequent law this odious intolerance was more clearly and fatally defined. Under the penalty of confiscation of property and perpetual banishment, it prohibited all men, of whatever condition, whether natives or resident foreigners, ever to call in question, either in public or private, the holy Catholic and apostolic faith, the evangelic institutions, the definitions of the fathers, the decrees of the church, whether ancient or recent, the sacraments, or anything whatever which that church held as holy. After these decrees the poor Jews could expect little mercy; they had never, indeed, enjoyed much security since the Roman domination. Sisibut, Sisenando, Chintella, Cindasuinto, Recesuinto, Wamba, and Ervigius were the most eager rivals in the race of persecution. They decreed that the Jews should be baptised; that such as were baptised should not be allowed to have Christian servants; that they should observe Easter Sunday according to the Christian rite; that they should respect the matrimonial impediments already noticed; that they should eat whatever Christians ate, however solemnly forbidden in their own law; that they should neither read nor receive into their houses any book contrary to the Christian religion; that they should not be admissible to any civil offices; that their evidence should not be received in a court of justice, unless ample testimony were borne to their moral habits; that when travelling they should make their confession of faith, and exhibit an episcopal passport at every town they entered; that they should spend every Sunday in company with Christians, who should then witness their devotions; and that they should always be present whenever the catechism was repeated or expounded.

But as, in spite of all these tyrannical measures, the sincerity, if not the conduct of the forced converts, was naturally suspicious, two successive confessions of faith, expressed in the most awful terms, were framed for them. In these confessions they were compelled to swear, in the most solemn and public manner, by the great Incommunicable Name and Attributes, that they utterly abhorred, and from their souls forever renounced, all the rites, ceremonies, customs, and solemnities they had previously respected and observed; that they would thenceforward live in the most holy faith of Christ, their Creator and Redeemer; that they would observe all the rites of God’s church, and shun even the most distant form of intercourse with Jews. This oppressed nation was, in the sequel, righteously revenged. Who can blame the readiness with which they received the Mohammedans, and the zeal with which they endeavoured to overthrow the most accursed government that ever existed in Europe.[g]

BURKE’S ESTIMATE OF GOTHIC RULE

Spain, with its fertile soil, its varied climate, its noble rivers, its extensive seaboard, its inexhaustible mines, and its hardy and frugal population, was the richest inheritance of the Gothic race. Yet, after three centuries of undisputed enjoyment, their rule was overthrown at once and forever by a handful of marauders from Africa. The Goth had neglected all his opportunities, despised all his advantages, heeded no warnings. He had been weighed in the balance and found wanting; and his kingdom was taken from him—for he had shown himself unfit for power.

Of all the various systems of government that have been attempted on this earth, theocracy, or more properly hierocracy, is undoubtedly one of the very worst. And in all circumstances and conditions where the priest and the confessor usurp the authority that properly belongs to the magistrate and to the man, disaster is the inevitable result. From the death of Recared to the death of Roderic, the government of Spain was a theocracy, tempered by revolution. At the opening of the eighth century, Spain had no industry, no commerce, no arms. Not even letters had survived. For the Catholic church discouraged, if it did not actually prohibit, the study of polite literature. Virgil and Homer, Tacitus and Livy, were pagans and atheists, and their works were unprofitable and impious. The study of natural science or of medicine, the development of manufactures or of industry, the cultivation of the arts—these were equally unedifying to the devout Catholic. That sublime manifestation of “poetry in stone,” so strangely called Gothic architecture, is not only not Visigothic, but it was unknown in Spain for over four hundred years after the destruction of the Goths. And although the great province is still covered with the glorious remains of Roman constructive art, there is scarcely found trace or fragment of the rude architecture of the Visigoths to tell of their dominion in the peninsula.

When Atawulf first crossed the Pyrenees at the head of the Visigoths, Latin was already the language of the Roman diocese. When Roderic threw away his crown on the banks of the Guadalete, Latin was still the language of the Visigothic kingdom. The Goth had been absorbed by the Roman. But a nation without a national language is doomed; a state without a state language is dead. Latin was the mother-tongue of the Romish church of Spain; but the Visigothic state was speechless. The kingdom, like Wamba, had been shorn and habited by the ecclesiastical power, and the kingdom, like the king, disappeared at the touch of the aggressor.[j]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Aristotle shows more credulity than philosophy when he makes the Phœnicians acquire at Tarifa (then Tartessus) a quantity of silver so prodigious that the ships could not carry it; and says that their anchors and commonest implements were of the same metal. The exaggeration only proves, perhaps, the abundance of silver in the country.

[2] Polybius[e] says that he was murdered one night in his tent by a certain Gaul, in revenge of some private injury. The variation in the account is exceedingly slight.

[3] For an interesting account of this siege, the reader is referred to Livy.[f] It is improbable, however, that the destruction was so universal as is affirmed. Polybius[g] says it was stormed and plundered; but he makes no mention of the conflagration or the self-immolation.

[4] [“Matres quoque necatis vel actis per se natorum suorum sint pastæ corporibus,” according to old Idatius,[i] but this statement always accompanies stories of famine.]

[5] [The etymology of this name has been disputed, some claiming with Casiri[k] and Gibbon[l] that it comes from the Arabic Hondalusia, “the region of the West”; but Condé,[m] Hume,[d] Burke[j] and the general majority prefer the Vandalusian theory.]

[6] Of course the death of Gunderic was the work of the offended saint. He was struck dead on the threshold, says one account; he died after securing the plunder, says another. Both agree that he was carried away by the devil. Idatius[i] says: “Gundericus Rex Vandalorum, capta Hispali, cum impie elatus manus in ecclesiam civitatis ipsius extendisset, mox Dei judicio dæmone correptus, interiit.”

[7] Jordanes[y] extends the reign of Torismond to more than three years; the authority of the bishop Idatius[i], who was a contemporary, is to be preferred. From the same prelate the death of the king appears not to have been wholly unprovoked: he had probably meditated as much towards his brothers, who seem to have acted from self-defence. “Thorismo rex Gothorum spirans hostilia in Theodorico et Frederico patribus jugulatur,” are the meagre words of Idiatus. Of this catastrophe Jordanes[y] gives a different account.

[8] [This has been called a “fifth century crusade” and “the first religious war of Europe.”]

[9] [The single combat between Alaric and Clovis, the miraculous fall of the walls of Angoulême, and other circumstances related by Gregory of Tours[n] render his authority in these wars of little weight in any case, unless supported by other testimony, as that of Procopius[o] and St. Isidore.[p] Burke[j] calls this battle “the foundation of the Frankish Kingdom of France and the origin of the Gothic Kingdom of Spain.”]

[10] See Mariana[q] and above all, Masdeu,[r] who base their defence on the praises bestowed on the princess by her contemporaries, as Gregory of Tours,[n] and on the silence of contemporary writers as to the crimes reported to have been committed by her. Both charity and chivalry would induce us to take part with the Spanish historians in favour of a lady, did they not attempt to conceal her real frailties (of crimes she was probably guiltless), and raise a weak, in some respects an imprudent woman into a saint. That she was undeserving the severe censures of Baronius[x] is more than probable; but we must agree with Montesquieu[f] that the queen, daughter, sister, and mother of so many kings would never have been permitted to sustain the torments she did, had she not forfeited, in some way or other, the favour of a whole nation.

[11] Ermenigild was not canonised until the pontificate of Sixtus V, towards the close of the sixteenth century. One of his bones is preserved as a holy relic in the church of Saragossa.

[12] Morales,[u] fell, he says, into the water at Port St. Martin, enveloped in his cloak. As he could not swim, he called on God and “his glorious saint” for his soul’s salvation, being hopeless of bodily safety. He had sunk twice, when a sailor from an adjoining vessel stretched out a pole on which he laid hold, and was thereby extricated from death. On measuring the pole afterwards, he found it so short that it could not reach the water! No doubt the saint had lengthened it, and when its service was done, permitted it to regain its natural dimension. He assures us that he could enumerate many mercies vouchsafed to him “through the intercession of this holy prince.” In honour of his patron this author has a poem in Latin hexameters, equal in extent to a book of the Æneid.

[13] [Yet Burke[j] says, “If Recared is called the first of the Catholics, Leuvigild may fairly be styled the last of the Visigoths in Spain.”]

[14] [Among modern historians few feel any doubt of the guilt of Ervigius or Erwig. Among those who believe he administered the sleeping draught may be named Mariana,[q] Ferreras,[aa] Hume,[d] and Burke.[j] But the caution expressed above by Dunham[g] and by Masdeu[r] should modify the certainty of opinion.]

[15] [Dunham[g] says the “brother,” but he is generally called the nephew.]

[16] [The unending torments the Jews endured in Spain are described in detail in the work of Amador de los Ríos.[bb]]

[17] [Some writers, among whom are the respectable names of Flórez[cc] and Cardinal Lorenzana,[dd] fix the death of Ergica in 700. Mariana[q] and Masdeu,[r] with better reason, give 701. The difference wholly rests on the Interpretation of the Roman numerals in the Visigothic chronicle of Wulsa,[ee] No. 34.]

[18] [Burke[j] notes that in Arabic La Caba or La Cava would suggest a woman of evil life.]

CHAPTER II. THE TIME OF MOSLEM DOMINATION

[711-1214 A.D.]

“They come! they come! I see the groaning land

White with the turbans of each Arab horde:

Swart Zara joins her misbelieving band,

Allah and Mahomet their battle word,

The choice they yield, the Koran or the sword.

See how the Christians rush to arms amain!

In yonder shout the voice of conflict roar’d;

The shadowy hosts are closing on the plain.

Now God and Saint Jago strike for the good cause of Spain!

“By heaven, the Moors prevail! the Christians yield!

Their coward leader gives for flight the sign!

Their sceptred craven mounts to quit the field—

‘Is not yon steed Orelia?’—‘Yes, ’tis mine!

But never was she turn’d from battle line.’

Lo! where the recreant spurs o’er stock and stone!—

‘Curses pursue the slave, and wrath divine!

Rivers engulf him!’—‘Hush!’ in shuddering tone

The prelate said; ‘Rash prince, yon vision’d form’s thine own.’

“Just then a torrent cross’d the flier’s course;

The dangerous ford the kingly likeness tried,

But the deep eddies whelm’d both man and horse,

Swept like benighted peasant down the tide.”

—Scott, The Vision of Don Roderic.

The young Arab power was at the door of Spain before the degenerate Goths were half awake to their danger. They had hardly shaken off their slumbers before they were prisoners or fugitives from the house they had ruled for almost exactly three centuries. Roderic and his sixty thousand men fought madly for three days at Xeres near the junction of the Guadalete and Guadalquivir, but when the brave king himself lost courage and fled—if indeed he fled—the whole race took panic with him. The end of Roderic is lost in a tangle of fable and tradition. Scott has embalmed the legend as quoted above, and Southey in his poem, The Last of the Goths, has built him a splendid mausoleum; but all that history can say is that his crown and sceptre were found on the bank of the stream and that his kingdom was as completely disembodied as its empty emblems. And now, as Hume[b] says, “The purely Gothic element in Spain was withered up as if by fire.”

[711-755 A.D.]

The story of the Moslem conquest has been already told in the fifth chapter of the history of the Arabs, in the eighth volume of this work. To that the reader is referred for the details of the invasion. The original Spanish people who had been regarded by the Goths as an inferior race unworthy of marriage, though the restriction was withdrawn shortly before the Moslems came, and the Jews, treated by the Goths as a cursed pest whom it was a virtue to torment—both welcomed the new-comers. They were rewarded with a gentleness of tolerance and a growth of intellectuality and commerce that lead one to question if the Arab domination of Europe would have been indeed the horror it is usually imagined; and if the repulse Charles Martel gave the Saracens at Tours in 732 were really the benefit to civilisation that we are wont to imagine it.

A Mohammedan Chief

The chapter on Arab civilisation in the eighth volume argues that the Arabians gave to Spain a glory and a culture of the most brilliant type, extending from the restoration of Greek letters to the awakening of modern science and commerce of the most splendid sort. When at length they were cast out of Spain, the reaction against them was itself the effort of an intolerant, tyrannous, and blood-thirsty religious system, which even in its triumph at the time of Ferdinand and Isabella distinguished itself by the greatest blot on human civilisation, the Inquisition, and by cruelties that spread zealously round the world to the enslavement and torture, often the annihilation of remote and innocent races.

It would be so easy to adduce evidence that the Christian powers have done more harm to civilisation than the Moslem, that perhaps it would be wiser to omit bigoted self-gratulations on the failure of Arab ambitions in Europe, and be content with an impartial and non-dogmatic recital of a conflict in which Europeans and Africans fought with a common greed of power and masked primeval instincts under the names of religion and patriotism. The aims of both were checked as much by internal dissensions and treacheries as by any united opposition, and in neither Christian nor Arab politics is there much food for pride in humanity. Leaving the reader to find in the previously mentioned history of the Arabs the account of Moslem rule, misrule, and feud in the regions they conquered, we may turn to the equally sordid and selfish, and at times equally lofty and heroic story of the Christians, who found refuge in rocky fastnesses and there grew slowly and painfully to a new life and a large hope.

They had much to complain of from Arab cruelty to those who would not accept the alternatives of “Koran or tribute,” but war was especially brutal in the Middle Age, and the Christians did not fail to revenge their maltreated women and children on the non-combatants of the other side. The pity one instinctively feels at the sufferings of the Christians is somewhat stifled on realising that the same sufferings had been or would speedily be visited on the Mohammedans or on other Christians at the first opportunity. The examples of clemency which are now the commonplaces, the demands of warfare, were at that time so rare and amazing that they might almost be said to be always due to the eccentricity of the conqueror. But to take up the story of the Christian Reconquista:

Roderic was miscalled “the last of the Goths,” for there were two Gothic rulers to succeed him. In the southeast Theodomir made peace with the Arabs; reigned as a vassal; and was succeeded in 743 by the Gothic Atanagild, whose realm was absorbed by Abd ar-Rahman in 755. In the northwest was Pelayo, who made a great name on small capital.[a]

THE ASTURIAS AND LEON UNDER PELAYO (718 A.D.)

[718 A.D.]

The more zealous or more independent Christians, who, after the triumphs of Tarik and Musa, were dissatisfied with the submission of Theodomir, gradually forsook their habitations in the south to seek a more secure asylum amidst the northern mountains of their country. They knew that in the same hills the sacred fire of liberty had been preserved, in defiance of Carthaginian, or Roman, or Goth; and they felt that to them was now confided the duty of reviving its expiring embers.

At first, indeed, the number which resorted to these solitudes was few, and actuated by the mere hope of individual safety: but as the Mohammedan excesses became more frequent and intolerable; as neither prompt submission, nor the solemnity of treaties could guarantee the unhappy natives from plunder,[19] persecution, and destruction; and, consequently, as the number of refugees increased, the possibility of a combined defence on a larger scale, and even of laying the foundation of an infant state, was eagerly indulged. The care of the sacred relics, which, on the reduction of Toledo, were carefully conveyed to these mountain fastnesses, the presence not only of prelates, but of nobles descended from the blood of the Goths, and the necessity of self-preservation, united these refugees in an indissoluble bond. But they could do nothing without a head: they proceeded to elect one; and their unanimous suffrages fell on Pelayo, said by Sebastian of Salamanca[f] to be the son of Favila, duke of Cantabria, belonging to the royal house of Cindasuinto.[20]

At the time this unequivocal demonstration of defiance was made by the Christians, Al-Haur, the Mohammedan governor, was in Gaul; but one of his generals, Al-Khaman, accompanied, as we are informed, by the renegade archbishop Oppas, and obedient to his orders, assembled a considerable force, and hastened into the Asturias, to crush the rising insurrection. Arriving at the foot of the Asturian mountains without obstacle, the Arabian general did not hesitate to plunge into the defiles: passing along the valley of Cangas de Onis he came to the foot of Mount Auseva, near the river Sella. On the heights of Covadonga, and in the cavern of St. Mary, the small but resolute band of Pelayo was concealed, waiting for the attack. Loath to run the risk of one where the advantage of position was so much in favour of the Christians, Al-Khaman is said to have despatched Oppas to Pelayo, representing to that prince the inutility of resistance, and the advantage of instant submission. The refusal of the Asturian, who well knew his position, and what stout hearts he commanded, was followed by the ascent of the Arabs up the steep acclivity. But to their consternation huge rocks and stones came thundering down on their dense ranks, by which they were precipitated into the narrow valley below. The destruction did not end here: it met those who attempted to ascend the opposite acclivity. Thousands were crushed beneath the vast fragments; and the rest would speedily have shared the same fate, had they not precipitately fled by the way they had advanced. The confusion attending this retrograde movement was turned to good account by the Christians, who now issued from their hiding-places, and inflicted a terrific loss on the fugitives. The extent of that loss we should vainly attempt to estimate; but that it was great may be learned from the very admission of the vanquished.[h]

The brilliance of Pelayo’s success naturally inspired the old chroniclers to a belief in divine interposition, and the account of this battle by Sebastian of Salamanca is too vivid an example of history, as it was written by the churchmen, to be omitted.[a]

SEBASTIAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF COVADONGA (718 A.D.)

And when Pelayo knew the approach of the Arabs, he betook himself to a cave, which is called the cave of Santa Maria, and immediately posted his army around it. And Oppas, the bishop, approaching him, thus said: “Brother, thou art not ignorant how, when all Spain was under the rule of the Goths, and when all her armies were joined together, she was unable to cope with the Ismailites: how much less will be thy power to defend thyself here in such a strait? Now listen to my advice: relinquish all thoughts of resistance; that, being in peace with the Arabs, thou mayst enjoy much prosperity, and preserve whatever thou didst or dost possess.” And Pelayo replied, “I will neither have the Arabs for friends, nor will I submit to their dominion. Thou dost not perceive that the church of God is like unto the moon; now it decreases, and now it regains its former magnitude. And we trust in God’s mercy that from this very hill which thou beholdest, salvation may arise for Spain, and the Gothic army be renewed; so that in us may be fulfilled the saying of the prophet, ‘I will visit their iniquities with a rod, and their sins with stripes; but my pity will I not withdraw from them.’ Wherefore, though we have undergone a righteous judgment, we yet believe that there will descend grace from on high for the restoration of our church, our nation, and kingdom. We fear not; we utterly despise this multitude of pagans.”

Then the wicked bishop returned to the enemy, and said: “Hasten and fight; for by the sword only shall ye have peace with this man.” Immediately they handle their weapons, and begin the battle: the engines are raised, the missiles fitted to the sling; the swords shine, the spears glitter, and the arrows are sent forth. But the weapons of the Lord were not wanting; for as the stones were shot from the slings and engines, and reached the temple of Holy Mary, ever a virgin, they were miraculously driven back on those who sent them, and killed a multitude of the Chaldeans. And as the Lord doth not number the spears, but giveth the victory to whom he pleaseth, so when the faithful left the cave to join in the battle, the Chaldeans forthwith fled, being divided into two bodies. And Bishop Oppas was soon taken, and Al-Khaman slain; in the same place were also slain 124,000 of the Chaldeans. Sixty-three thousand who remained alive ascended the top of Mount Auseva, and hastily descended by a precipice, which is usually called Amosa, to the territory of the Liebanians. But neither did these escape the Lord’s vengeance; for when they reached the banks of the Deva, near a heritage called Casegadia, that part of the hill which overhung the river suddenly gave way,—manifestly through God’s judgment,—forced the sixty-three thousand Chaldeans into the river, and covered them all. So that, even at this day, when the channel is swollen by the winter torrents, and the banks are overflown, vestiges of arms and human bones are clearly to be seen. Do not esteem this a vain or false miracle, but remember that He who thus covered the Arabs, the persecutors of God’s church, with such a vast mountain heap, is the same who plunged the Egyptians into the Red Sea while pursuing Israel.[f]

Sebastian further adds that 375,000 Moors took refuge in France from the divine vengeance. His generosity with his numerals equals his liberality with miracles, but is more confusing. The result of the battle, however, was most definite. Al-Khaman and his colleague Suleiman were both killed.[a]

[718-739 A.D.]

Oppas, too, is said to have been taken prisoner, and justly put to death for his treachery. This was splendid success; but it was almost equalled by the defeat of Manuza. This chief, who was then governor of a northern city, hearing of the disastrous defeat of his countrymen, and apprehensive that the enemy would soon be upon him, ordered his troops to retreat; but he was overtaken, defeated, and slain by the Asturian hero. These memorable events fixed the destiny of the infant kingdom; they were the first of a succession of triumphs which, though sometimes tardy, and often neutralised by accident, ended in the final expulsion of the invaders from the peninsula. The Asturias were now left in the undisturbed possession of the Christians, nor were the Mohammedans for some years in any disposition to assail their formidable neighbours.

The remainder of Pelayo’s reign is unknown: it was probably passed in peace. He died in 737, and was buried in the church of St. Eulalia, at Cangas de Onis. Of Favila, the son and successor of Pelayo, nothing is known beyond his brief reign and tragical death. In 739, he was killed by a boar while hunting near the church of the Holy Cross, which he had founded.

ALFONSO THE CATHOLIC (739-757 A.D.)

[739-757 A.D.]

Alfonso I, surnamed the Catholic, a son-in-law of Pelayo, descended, we are told, from Leuvigild, was the next prince on whom the suffrages of the Asturians fell: not that Favila left no children; but they were doubtless of tender age, and therefore unfitted for bearing so heavy a burden as the duties of monarchy in times so critical.[21] Besides, among these rude mountaineers, hereditary right seems to have been as much unknown as among their Gothic fathers; the crown, however, was always confined to the same family, and the election was generally sure to fall on the next prince in succession, provided he was not disqualified for the dignity either by age, or impotence of body or of mind.

Though no record remains of Alfonso’s battles with the Arabs, it is certain that he must have been victor in several; for he made ample additions to his territories. Lugo, Orense, and Tuy, in Galicia; Braga, Oporto, Viseu, and Chaves, in Lusitania; Leon, Astorga, Simancas, Zamora, Salamanca, and Ledesma, in the kingdom of Leon; Avila, Sepulveda, Segovia, Osma, Corunna del Condé, Lara, and Saldaña, in Castile—these, and many other places of less note, were reduced by him. It appears, however, that he acted with cruelty towards the Mohammedan inhabitants, whom he exterminated to make room for his Christian colonists.[22] Biscay, too, and Navarre, obeyed Alfonso; so that his kingdom extended from the western shores of Galicia into Aragon, and from the Cantabrian Sea to the southern boundary of the Tierra de Campos; that is, over about one-fourth of all Spain. To account for the rapidity and extent of these conquests—conquests, however, which for the most part were frequently lost and regained in succeeding wars,—the reader has only to remember the civil dissensions of Mohammedan Spain some years prior to the accession of the caliph Abd ar-Rahman.

But Alfonso was not merely a conqueror: the colonies which he established, the towns which he founded or restored, the churches which he built or repaired, are justly adduced as signal monuments of his patriotism and religious zeal. Hence the appellation of “Catholic”—an appellation which continues at the present day. His end happened in 757.[h]

In the chronicle of Alfonso the reign of the first Alfonso is treated with great reverence and his death thus described:

“In the nineteenth year of the reign of Alfonso the Catholic, of the era 791, of the Incarnation of our Lord 753, of the empire of Constantine 15, and of the Alarabes since Muhammed was their king, 132, it befel that King Alfonso, having populated such places as he saw he could maintain, and laboured ever to serve God as far as in him lay, and to maintain his kingdom in peace and justice, fell sick and died, and rendered his soul to God, and at the hour of his death voices were heard in the air singing, ‘The righteous perisheth and no man layeth it to heart, and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace.’[23] And King Alfonso was buried with great pomp in the town of Cangas with his wife Doña Hermesinda, in the church of Santa Maria of that town.”[k]

ALFONSO THE CHASTE AND BERNARDO DEL CARPIO

[757-866 A.D.]

Fruela I (757-768) Alfonso’s son, made Oviedo his capital. To strengthen his position, endangered by the civil distractions of his reign, he obtained his recognition as king of the Asturias and Oviedo from the caliph of Cordova in exchange for an annual tribute. He was very pious, but killed his own brother, and his difficulties were ended only by his assassination. Four usurpers, Aurelio, Silo, Mauregato, and Bermudo I. followed one another on his throne and continued to pay the tribute to Cordova, coupled, the legend says, with the yearly present of one hundred virgins. Alfonso II, called the Chaste, is credited with putting an end to this humiliating relation to Cordova. He was the son of Fruela I and began his reign in 791 by vigorously repulsing a Moorish invasion. He added to the kingdom on the southern frontier, but his relations with Charlemagne constitute the chief interest of his reign. He is said to have offered to make the Frankish monarch his heir, in return for the latter’s assistance against the Moors, and Louis le Débonnaire, Charlemagne’s son, twice led an army into Spain, which conquered the “Spanish Mark.” But Alfonso’s promise to Charlemagne was disapproved by the nobles; whereupon (so the Spanish writers affirm), a quarrel ensued between the Franks and the Spaniards of Oviedo. With this quarrel they connect the great battle of Roncesvalles, where Charlemagne’s forces under his nephew Roland were defeated and Roland was slain. But this battle is assigned by Arab writers to 778 A.D., thirteen years before the accession of Alfonso.[a]

Of the legendary slaughter, of the heroism of Roland, of the valour of Bernardo del Carpio, of the hundred and one stories which have been embroidered upon the simple happening of this mountain ambuscade, no account can be given here; but at least one important fact comes out of the legend, namely, that Spaniards of all sorts and races, though divided enough to be constantly fighting among themselves, had now, for the first time in their history, the early promptings of the nationality of soil, as apart from that of faith or tribal connection, sufficiently strong to permit of a coalition against a foreigner as such. This feeling was again demonstrated a few years later (797), when Alfonso II, encouraged by his successful raids against the Moors in the south, bethought him to beg the aid of Charlemagne to establish himself in his new conquest, even as tributary of the Frankish emperor. But this the Spanish-Gothic nobles would not endure, and incontinently locked up their king in a monastery until he promised that no foreigner should ever be allowed to interfere in struggles on the soil of Spain.[b]

Alfonso the Chaste was succeeded in 842 by Ramiro I, son of King Bermudo. His election was disputed but he put down this as other rebellions. He repelled the Norse invaders, who then ravaged the Moslem coast. His alleged victories over the Saracens are not recorded by Arab historians. In 850 his son Ordoño I succeeded him. He won a battle at Clavijo—the great victory at the same place credited to his father being pure legend. He unintentionally aided the Moslems by defeating the Arab rebel Musa, but also drove off the hungry Norse pirates and was a famous builder of cities and castles. When he died in 866 he left the whole region from Salamanca to the Bay of Biscay to his eldest son.

Alfonso III, who was then only eighteen and was driven from the throne for a time, showed his native vigour by re-establishing himself against his enemies, though his pacificatory schemes to end the rebellions of Navarre ended in the eventual loss of that realm to Spain.[a]

ALFONSO THE GREAT

[866-914 A.D.]

But Alfonso’s victories over the Mohammedans almost atoned for his imprudent policy with regard to Navarre—if, indeed, that policy was not the compulsory result of circumstances. He removed the boundary of his dominions from the Douro to the Guadiana, and the territories thus acquired were possessed by his successors above a century, until the time of the great Almansor. From 870 to 901, his contests with the enemy—whether with the wickedness of the kings of Cordova or their rebellious vassals, who aimed at independence—were one continued series of successes. His last exploit at this period was the destruction, in the battle of Zamora, of a formidable army, led by the rebel Kalib of Toledo, whose ally, Abul-Kassim, fell on the field.

Mohammedan Sword and Shield

But this great prince, if glorious in his contests with the natural enemy, was unable to contend with his rebellious barons, headed by his still more rebellious son Garcia. At the prospect of a civil war, the king no longer wished to uphold his rights. Having convoked an assembly at Bordes, in the Asturias, in 910, he solemnly renounced the crown in favour of Don Garcia, who passed at once from a prison to a throne. To his second son, Ordoño, he granted the government of Galicia; and another, Fruela, he confirmed in that of Oviedo. These concessions were, doubtless, extorted from him—a fact that does not speak much for the firmness of his domestic administration; he appears, like many other princes of his country, to have been great chiefly in the field of battle.

Alfonso did not long survive his abdication. Having paid a visit to the shrine of Santiago in Galicia, on his return to Astorga he solicited permission and adequate forces from his son to make a final irruption into the Mohammedan territories. Both were granted; and in laying waste the possessions of the enemy, he had the consolation of reflecting that he had done great service to the church, and left another signal remembrance of his valour before his departure. He died at Zamora, at the close of the year 910; leaving behind him the reputation of one of the most valiant, magnanimous, and pious sovereigns that Spain ever produced.

ALFONSO’S SUCCESSORS

[914-950 A.D.]

Of Garcia, the successor of Alfonso III, little more is known than that he transferred the seat of sovereignty from Oviedo to Leon; made a successful irruption into the territories of the misbelievers; and died in 914. The nobles and bishops of the kingdom—henceforth called the kingdom of Leon—having met, according to custom, for the purpose of nominating a successor, placed the royal crown on the head of Ordoño, brother of the deceased Garcia. Ordoño II, under the reigns both of his father and brother, had distinguished himself against the Mohammedans; and he resolved that no one should say his head was weakened by a crown. In 917 he advanced towards the Guadiana, stormed the town of Alhange, which is above Merida, put the garrison to the sword, made the women and children captives, and gained abundant spoil. With the wealth thus acquired he founded the magnificent cathedral of Leon. In a subsequent expedition he ruined Talavera, and defeated a Mohammedan army near its walls. Indignant at these disasters, Abd ar-Rahman III assembled a powerful army, not only from all parts of Mohammedan Spain, but from Africa; but this immense host was also defeated, under the walls of San Pedro de Gormaz. In a subsequent battle, however, which appears to have been fought the same year in Galicia, victory declared for neither party. Nearly three years afterwards (in 921), Ordoño was entirely defeated in the battle of Val-de-Junquera, whither he had advanced to aid the king of Navarre. He took his revenge for this disaster by an irruption into Andalusia, which he laid waste from the Navas de Tolosa to within a day’s journey of Cordova. Soon after his return to Leon, the king committed a rigorous but treacherous act of justice. Four counts of Castile, whom he suspected of disaffection, were put to death. Ordoño died in 923, immediately after his third marriage with a princess of Navarre.

Fruela II, brother of Ordoño, was elected in preference to the children of the deceased king. Alfonso IV, who succeeded in 925, in preference to the sons of Fruela II, is represented as a prince more addicted to piety than to ambition. In the sixth year of his reign, he renounced the vanities of the world, resigned the sceptre into the hands of his brother Ramiro, and retired into the monastery of Sahagun. The following year, however, he forsook his cell, and, with a considerable force, hastened to Leon to reclaim the throne. His brother compelled him to surrender, and again consigned him to his monastery, with three princes (the sons of Fruela II) his counsellors. In accordance with the laws of the Visigoths, the punishment of death was commuted to all four by the loss of their eyes. Alfonso survived his misfortune about two years and a half.