The Project Gutenberg EBook of Spain and Her Colonies (World's Best Histories), by Archibald Wilberforce This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Spain and Her Colonies (World's Best Histories) Compiled from the Best Authorities Author: Archibald Wilberforce Release Date: July 30, 2020 [EBook #62786] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPAIN AND HER COLONIES *** Produced by D A Alexander, Chuck Greif, Natrona County Public Library System, in Casper, Wyoming, for generously donating the books in this project to PG and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Contents. Map of Spain and Portugal Chronological Tables (etext transcriber's note: The various spellings of Spanish words and names have not been corrected or normalized.) ALFONSO XIII., KING OF SPAIN THE WORLD’S BEST HISTORIES SPAIN AND HER COLONIES COMPILED FROM THE BEST AUTHORITIES BY ARCHIBALD WILBERFORCE WITH FRONTISPIECE THE CO-OPERATIVE PUBLICATION SOCIETY NEW YORK AND LONDON SPAIN AND HER COLONIES CONTENTS CHAPTER I Spain in Antiquity 7 CHAPTER II The Caliphate of Cordova 16 {1} {2} {3} CHAPTER III Medieval Spain 30 CHAPTER IV Moorish Spain 61 CHAPTER V The Inquisition 83 CHAPTER VI Their Catholic Majesties 100 CHAPTER VII United Spain 140 CHAPTER VIII Modern Spain 162 CHAPTER IX Colonial Spain 206 CHAPTER X The Fall of an Empire 225 CHAPTER XI The Philippines 251 CHAPTER XII The Hispano-American War 320 CHAPTER XIII Spanish Art, Literature, and Sport 351 I. Painting and Architecture 351 II. Spanish Literature 370 III. Sport 379 Appendix 393 THE HISTORY OF SPAIN CHAPTER I S P A I N I N A N T I Q U I T Y THE FIRST LAWS AND THE FIRST INVADERS—GREEKS, PHŒNICIANS, ROMANS AND GOTHS Hispania was the name by which the Romans called the peninsula which is made up of Spain and Portugal. The origin of the name is disputed. To the Greeks the country was known as Hesperia—the Land of the Setting Sun. According to Mariana,[1] Spain is called after its founder, Hispanus, a son or grandson of Hercules. But, for reasons hereinafter related, better authorities derive it from the Phœnician Span. There is a legend which Mariana recites, to the effect that the primal laws of Spain were written in verse, and framed six thousand years before the beginning of Time. To medieval makers of chronicles, Tubal, fifth son of Japhet, was the first to set foot on its shore. But earlier historians, ignorant of Noah’s descendant, and, it may be, better informed, hold that after the episodes connected with the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts, guided by Hercules, sailed the seas and loitered a while in Spain, where they were joined by refugees escaping from the totter and fall of Troy. Black was their national color. It has been retained in the mantillas of to-day. After the Greek adventurers came the Phœnicians. The latter, a peaceful people, born traders, as are all of Semitic origin, founded a colony at Gaddir (Cadiz). In a remoter era they had established themselves at Canaan, where they built Bylos, Sidon and Tyre. From Tyre emigrants moved to Africa. Their headquarters was Kartha-Hadath, literally Newtown, that Carthage in whose ruins Marius was to weep. The Phœnicians, as has been noted, were a peaceful people. Under a burning sun their younger brothers developed into tigers. They had the storm for ally. They ravaged the coast like whirlwinds. They took Sicily, then Sardinia. Presently there was a quarrel at Gaddir. It {4} {5} {6} {7} {8} was only natural that the Phœnicians should ask aid of their relatives. The Carthaginians responded, and, finding the country to their taste, took possession of it on their own account. To the Romans, with whom already they had crossed swords, they said nothing of this new possession. It seemed wiser to leave it unmentioned than to guard it with protecting, yet disclosive, treaties. More than once they scuttled their triremes—suspicious sails were following them to its shore. From this vigilance the name of Spain is derived. In Punic, Span signifies hidden. The hiding of Spain was possible when the Romans were still in the nursery. But when the Romans grew up, when they had conquered Greece, and all of Italy was theirs, their enterprises developed. Up to this time the two nations had been almost allies. At once they were open rivals. It was a question between them as to whom the world should belong. The arguments on this subject, known as the Punic Wars, were three in number. The first resulted in a loss of Sicily and Sardinia. In the second, Spain went. In the third, Carthage was razed to the ground. It was with the conquest of Sagentum—a conquest not achieved until the surviving inhabitants of that beleaguered city had committed suicide—that annexation began. Then, slowly, at one time advancing, at another retreating, now defeated, now defeating, the Romans promenaded their eagles down the coast. Scipio came and watched the self-destruction of the Numantians, as Hannibal had watched the Sagentums fall. Pompey, boasting that he had made the Republic mistress of a thousand towns, came too; and after him Cæsar, who, long before, as simple quæstor, had wept at Cadiz because of Alexander, who at his age had conquered the world —Cæsar, his face blanched with tireless debauches, came back and gave the land its coup de grace. In this fashion, with an unhealed wound in every province, Spain crawled down to Augustus’s feet. A toga was thrown over her. When it was withdrawn the wounds had healed. She was a Roman province, the most flourishing, perhaps, and surely the most fair. The fusion of the two peoples was immediate. The native soldiery were sent off to bleed in the four corners of the globe, to that Ultima Thule where the Britons lived and which it took years to reach, or nearer home in Gaul, or else far to the north among the Teuton States; and, in the absence of an element which might have turned ugly, the Romans found it easy work to open school. They had always been partial to Greek learning, and they inculcated it on the slightest pretext. They imported their borrowed Pantheon, their local Hercules, all the metamorphosed and irritable gods, and with becoming liberality added to them those divinities whom their adopted children most revered. It was in this way that the fusion of the two races came about. When Augustus assumed the purple, throughout the entire peninsula Latin was generally in use. It was not of the purest, to be sure. It had been beaten in with the sword, the accent was rough and the construction bristled with barbarisms; but still it was Latin, and needed only a generation of sandpaper to become polished and refined. But perhaps the least recognized factor in the fusion of the two peoples was a growing and common taste for polite literature. Such as the Romans possessed was, like their architecture, their science, philosophy and religion, borrowed outright from the Greeks. They were hungry for new ideas. These the Spaniards undertook to provide. They had descended from a race whose fabulous laws were written in verse, and something of that legendary inspiration must have accompanied them through ages of preceding strife, for suddenly Boetica was peopled with poets. In connection with this it may be noted that, apart from the crop of Augustan rhymsters and essayists, almost everything in the way of literature which Rome subsequently produced is the work of Spaniards. Lucan and the Senecas were Boeticans—Martial, Florus, Quintillian, Pomponius Mila were all of that race. J’en passe et des meilleurs. The Romans, trained by the Greeks, were, it is true, the teachers. Under their heavy hand the young Andalusians lost their way among the clouds of Aristophanes, just as we have done ourselves; they spouted the Tityre tu, and the arma virum, they followed the Odyssey and learned that, in ages as remote to them as they are to us, Ulysses had visited their coast. Indeed the Romans did what they could, and if their pupils surpassed them it was owing to the lack-luster of their own imaginations. But the education of backward Spain was not limited to Greek poets and Augustan bores. Lessons in drawing were given, not as an extra, but as part of the ordinary curriculum. The sciences, too, were taught, the blackboard was brought into use, and Euclid—another Greek—was expounded on the very soil that under newer conquerors was to produce the charms and seductions of Algebra. Added to this, industry was not neglected. The Romans got from them not poets alone, but woolens, calicoes, and barbers too, emperors even. Trajan was an Andalou, so was Hadrian, and so also was that sceptered misanthrope Marcus Aurelius. As for arms, it is written in blood that the Romans would have no others than those which came from Spain. The plebs dressed themselves there. Strabo says that all the ready-made clothing came from Tarragona. From Malaga, which in a fair wind was but six days’ sail from the Tiber’s mouth, came potted herring, fat, black grapes that stained the chin, and wax yellow as amber. From Cadiz came the rarest purple, wine headier than Falernian, honey sweeter than that of Hymettus, and jars of pale, transparent oil. To Iviça the Romans sent their togas; there was a baphia there, a dyeing establishment, which, to be simply charming, needed but the signboard Morituri te salutamus. And from the banks of the Betis there came for the lupanars girls with the Orient in their eyes, and lips that said “Drink me.” In this pleasant fashion Rome, after conquering Spain, sat down to banquet on her products. The Imperial City then was not unlike a professional pugilist who is unable to find a worthy opponent; possible rivals had been slugged into subjection. Perhaps she was weary, too. However great the future of a combatant may be, there comes an hour when contention palls and peace has charms. In any event, Rome at that time was more occupied in assimilating her dominions than in extending the wonders of her sway. And it was during this caprice that Spain found her fifty races fused in one. On the distant throne was a procession of despots, terribly tyrannical, yet doing what good they could. In return for flowers, fruits and pretty girls, they gave roads, aqueducts, arenas, games and vice. Claud introduced new fashions; Nero, the saturnalia. Each of the emperors did what he was able, even to Hadrian, who increased the number of Jews. It was during his reign that were felt the first tremors of that cataclysm in which antiquity was to disappear. Rome was so thoroughly mistress of the world that to master her Nature had to produce new races. The parturitions, as we know, were successful. Already the blue victorious eyes of Vandal and of Goth were peering down at Rome; already they had whispered together, and over the hydromel had drunk to her fall. The Goths were a wonderful people. When they first appear in history their hair was tossed and tangled by the salt winds of the Baltic. Later, when in tattered furs they issued from the fens of the Danube, they startled the hardiest warriors of the world, the descendants of that nursling of the gaunt she-wolf. Little by little from vagabond herders they consolidated first into tribes, then into a nation, finally into an army that beat at the gates of Rome. There they loitered a moment, a century at most. When they receded again with plunder and with slaves they left an emperor behind. Soon they were more turbulent than ever. They swept over antiquity like a {9} {10} {11} {12} {13} tide, their waves subsiding only to rise anew. And just as the earth was oscillating beneath their weight, from the steppes of Tartary issued cyclones of Huns. Where they passed, the plains remained forever bare. In the shock of their onslaught the empire of the Goths was sundered. Some of them, the Ostrogoths, went back to their cattle, others, the Visigoths, went down to have another word with Rome. It was then that their cousins the Vandals got their fingers on her throat and frightened the world with her cries. In the strain of incessant shrieks the Imperial City fell. From out the ruins a mitered prelate dragged a throne. Paganism had been strangled; antiquity was dead; new creeds and new races were refurbishing the world. Among the latter the Goths still prowled. In the advance through the centuries, in the journey from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, in the friction with the Attic refinement which the Romans had acquired, the Goths left some of their barbarism on the road—not much, however. Historians have it that when they took possession of Spain they manifested a love of art, a desire for culture, and that they affected the manners and usages of polite society. But historians are privileged liars. The majority of those who have treated the subject admired the Goths because they fancied them Christians, and in the admiration they placed them in flattering contrast to their predecessors who were pagans, and to their successors who were Muhammadans. As a matter of fact—one that is amply attested in local chronicles—they were coarse, illiterate and stupid as carps; moreover, they were not Christians, they were Arians, and they were Arians precisely as they were Goths—they were born so. To the dogma of the Trinity and the consubstantiability or non-consubstantiability of Jesus the Christ they were as ignorant as of the formation of the earth. Throughout Europe at that time not a thread of light was discernible. The dark ages had begun. In the general obscurity the Goths were not a bit more brilliant than their neighbors. Under their hand civilization disappeared; in return they gave the Spanish nothing but gutturals and a taste for chicanery. In ninety and nine cases, the specimens of architecture which cheap-trippers admire as due to them are of Saracen workmanship. The monuments which they did erect are not disproportioned perhaps; yet, whatever the casuist may affirm, there is still a margin between the commonplace and the beautiful. In brief, to the Visigoths the world owes less than nothing. They let Andalusia retrograde for three hundred years, and delayed the discovery and development of America. Previous to their coming Cadiz had been a famous seaport. The Romans called it The Ship of Stone. Its sons had been immemorial explorers. The presentiment of another land across the sea was theirs by intuition. They were constantly extending their expeditions. They were in love with the sunset, they sailed as near it as they could, returned for more provisions, and sailed again; nearer, and ever nearer that way. To the Church the theory of the antipodes was an abominable heresy. It was taught that the earth was a flat parallelogram, its extremities walled by mountains that supported the skies. Lactance was particularly vehement on this point, so too was St. Jerome. Vergilius in asserting the contrary threw Christendom into indignant convulsions. It may be remembered that the most serious obstacle which Columbus subsequently encountered lay in the decisions of the Fathers. Now Cadiz had been more or less converted before the advent of the Visigoths, but it had not for that reason put aside its habits and customs. It continued to be essentially maritime; but when the Visigoths came, navigation languished, the Ship of Stone no longer turned to the west, it foundered in a sea of ignorance which was then undiked, and the possible discovery of America was indefinitely postponed. By way of compensation, the Visigoths framed a code of laws the spirit of which still survives, and which is serviceable in showing that the framers possessed two distinct traits, a love of agriculture and a hatred of Jews. Traits which are significant when it is understood that it was through agriculture they were supported and through the Jews they were overthrown. It was the Jews that beckoned the Berbers and their masters the Arabs—the Moors, as those Arabs were called who had deserted the deserts for the African Riviera. CHAPTER II T H E C A L I P H A T E O F C O R D O VA THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS—CORDOVA IN THE MIDDLE AGES—THE GLORIES OF AZ ZAHRA—THE RISE OF ALMANZOR It was in 712 that Spain, after remaining for nearly three centuries in the possession of the Visigoths, fell under the yoke of the Saracens. For some time past, from a palace at Tandjah (Tangiers), a Mussulman emir had been eyeing the strip of blue water which alone separated him from that Andalusia which, like the other parts of this world and all of the next, had been promised to the followers of Muhammad. The invasion that ensued was singularly pacific. The enthusiasm which distinguished the youthful period of Muhammadism might account for the conquest which followed, even if we could not assign additional causes—the factions into which the Goths had become divided, the resentment of disappointed pretenders to the throne, the provocations of one Count Julian, whose daughter, seduced by Roderic, the last of the Gothic kings, caused him, it is said, to urge the Moors to come over. It is more surprising that a remnant of this ancient monarchy should not only have preserved its national liberty and name in the northern mountains, but waged for some centuries a successful, and generally an offensive, warfare against the conquerors, till the balance was completely turned in its favor and the Moors were compelled to maintain almost as obstinate and protracted a contest for a small portion of the peninsula. But the Arabian monarchs of Cordova found in their success and imagined security a pretext for indolence; even in the cultivation of science and contemplation of the magnificent architecture of their mosques and palaces they forgot their poor but daring enemies in the Asturias; while, according to the nature of despotism, the fruits of wisdom or bravery in one generation were lost in the follies and effeminacy of the next. Their kingdom was dismembered by successful rebels, who formed the states of Toledo, Huesca, Saragossa, and others less eminent; and these, in their own mutual contests, not only relaxed their natural enmity toward the Christian princes, but sometimes sought their alliance. Be that as it may, of all who had entered Spain, whether Greek, Phœnician, Vandal or Goth, the Moors were the most tolerant. The worship of God was undisturbed. The temples were not only preserved, new ones were built. In every town they entered, presto! a mosque and a school, and mosques and schools that were entrancing as song. On the banks of the Betis, renamed the Great River, Al-Ouad-al-Kebyr (Guadalquivir), twelve hundred villages bloomed like roses in June. From three hundred thousand filigreed pulpits the glory of Allah, and of Muhammad his prophet, was daily proclaimed. They were superb fellows, these Moors. In earlier ages the restless Bedouins, their ancestors, were rather fierce, and when the degenerate Sabaism they professed was put aside for the lessons of Muhammad, they were not only fierce, they were fanatic as well. {14} {15} {16} {17} {18} A drop of blood shed for Allah, equaled, they were taught, whole months of fasting and of prayer. Thereafter, they preached with the scimiter. But in time, that great emollient, they grew less dogmatic. In the ninth century the court of Haroûn al Raschid was a free academy in which all the arts were cultivated and enjoyed. Under the Moors, Cordova surpassed Bagdad. In the tenth century it was the most beautiful and most civilized city of Europe. Concerning it Burke, in his “History of Spain”—a work to which we are much indebted—writes as follows: There was the Caliph’s Palace of Flowers, his Palace of Contentment, his Palace of Lovers, and, most beautiful of all, the Palace of Damascus. Rich and poor met in the Mezquita, the noblest place of worship then standing in Europe, with its twelve hundred marble columns, and its twenty brazen doors; the vast interior resplendent with porphyry and jasper and many-colored precious stones, the walls glittering with harmonious mosaics, the air perfumed with incense, the courtyards leafy with groves of orange trees—showing apples of gold in pictures of silver. Throughout the city, there were fountains, basins, baths, with cold water brought from the neighboring mountains, already carried in the leaden pipes that are the highest triumph of the modern plumber. But more wonderful even than Cordova itself was the suburb and palace of Az Zahra. For five-and-twenty years the Caliph Abdur Rahman devoted to the building of this royal fancy one-third of the revenues of the State; and the work, on his death, was piously continued by his son, who devoted the first fifteen years of his reign to its completion. For forty years ten thousand workmen are said to have toiled day by day, and the record of the refinement as well as the magnificence of the structure, as it approached completion, almost passes belief. It is said that in a moment of exaltation the Caliph gave orders for the removal of the great mountain at whose foot the fairy city was built, as the dark shade of the forests that covered its sides overshadowed the gilded palace of his creation. Convinced of the impossibility of his enterprise, An Nasir was content that all the oaks and beech trees that grew on the mountain side should be rooted up; and that fig trees, and almonds, and pomegranates should be planted in their place; and thus the very hills and forests of Az Zahra were decked with blossom and beauty. Travelers from distant lands, men of all ranks and professions, princes, embassadors, merchants, pilgrims, theologians and poets, all agreed that they had never seen in the course of their travels anything that could be compared with Az Zahra, and that no imagination, however fertile, could have formed an idea of its beauties. Of this marvelous creation of Art and Fancy not one stone remains upon another—not a vestige to mark the spot on which it stood; and it is hard to reconstruct from the dry records of Arab historians the fairy edifice of which we are told no words could paint the magnificence. According to these authors the inclosing wall of the palace was four thousand feet in length from east to west, and two thousand two hundred feet from north to south. The greater part of this space was occupied by gardens, with their marble fountains, kiosks and ornaments of various kinds, not inferior in beauty to the more strictly architectural parts of the building. Four thousand three hundred columns of the rarest and most precious marbles supported the roof of the palace; of these some were brought from Africa, some from Rome, and many were presented by the Emperor at Constantinople to Abdur Rahman. The halls were paved with marble, disposed in a thousand varied patterns. The walls were of the same material, and ornamented with friezes of the most brilliant colors. The ceilings, constructed of cedar, were enriched with gilding on an azure ground, with damasked work and interlacing designs. Everything, in short, that the wealth and resources of the Caliph could command was lavished on this favorite retreat, and all that the art of Constantinople and Bagdad could contribute to aid the taste and executive skill of the Spanish Arabs was enlisted to make it the most perfect work of its age. Did this palace of Zahra now remain to us, says Mr. Fergusson, we could afford to despise the Alhambra and all the other works of the declining ages of Moorish art. It was here that Abdur Rahman and Nasir received Sancho the Fat, and Theuda, queen of Navarre, the envoys from Charles the Simple of France, and the embassadors from the Emperor Constantine at Constantinople. The reception of these imperial visitors is said to have been one of the most magnificent ceremonies of that magnificent court. The orator who had been at first intrusted with the speech of ceremonial greeting was actually struck dumb by the grandeur of the scene, and his place was taken by a less impressionable rhetorician. Nor was it only material splendor that was to be found at Cordova. At a time when Christian Europe was steeped in ignorance and barbarism, in superstition and prejudice, every branch of science was studied under the favor and protection of the Ommeyad Caliphs. Medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry, poetry, the arts, philosophy, literature, all flourished at the court and city of Cordova. Agriculture was cultivated with a perfection, both theoretical and practical, which is apparent from the works of contemporary Arab writers. The Silo, so lately introduced into England as a valuable agricultural novelty, is not only the invention of the Arabs, but the very name is Arabic, as is that of the Azequia and of the Noria of modern Spain. Both the second and the third Abdur Rahman were passionately fond of gardening and tree-planting; and seeds, roots and cuttings were brought from all parts of the world and acclimatized in the gardens at Cordova. A pomegranate of peculiar excellence, the Safari, which was introduced by the second Abdur Rahman from Damascus, still maintains its superiority, and is known in Spain to the present day as the Granada Zafari. Thus, in small things as in great, the Arabs of Cordova stood immeasurably above every other people or any other government in Europe. Yet their influence unhappily was but small. They surpassed, but they did not lead. The very greatness of their superiority rendered their example fruitless. Medieval chivalry, indeed, was largely the result of their influence in Spain. But chivalry as an institution had itself decayed long before a new-born Europe had attained to the material and moral perfection of the great Emirs of Cordova. Their political organization was unadapted to the needs or the aspirations of Western Europe, and contained within itself the elements, not of development, but of decay. Their civilization perished, and left no heirs behind it—and its place knows it no more. The reign of Hakam II., the son and successor of the great Caliph, was tranquil, prosperous and honorable, the golden age of Arab literature in Spain. The king was above all things a student, living the life almost of a recluse in his splendid retreat at Az Zahra, and concerning himself rather with the collection of books for his celebrated library at Cordova than with the cares of State and the excitements of war. He sent agents to every city in the East to buy rare manuscripts and bring them back to Cordova. When he could {18} {19} {20} {21} {22} not acquire originals he procured copies, and every book was carefully catalogued and worthily lodged. Hakam not only built libraries, but, unlike many modern collectors, he is said to have read and even to have annotated the books that they contained; but as their number exceeded four hundred thousand, he must have been a remarkably rapid student. The peaceful disposition of the new Caliph emboldened his Christian neighbors and tributaries to disregard the old treaties and to assert their independence of Cordova. But the armies of Hakam were able to make his rights respected, and the treaties were reaffirmed and observed. Many were the embassies that were received at Cordova from rival Christian chiefs; and Sancho of Leon, Fernan Gonzalez of Castile, Garcia of Navarre, Rodrigo Velasquez of Galicia, and finally Ordoño the Bad, Pretender to the crown of Leon, were all represented at the court of Az Zahra. The reign of this royal scholar was peaceful and prosperous; but kingly power tends to decline in libraries, and when Hakam ceased to build and to annotate, and his kingdom devolved upon his son, the royal authority passed not into the hands of the young Hisham, who was only nine years of age at the time of his father’s death, but into those of the Sultana Sobeyra and of her favorite, Ibn- abu-amir, who is known to later generations by the proud title of Almanzor.[2] Ibn-abu-amir began his career as a poor student at the University of Cordova. Of respectable birth and parentage, filled with noble ambition, born for empire and command, the youth became a court scribe, and, attracting the attention of the all-powerful Sobeyra by the charm of his manner and his nobility of bearing, he soon rose to power and distinction in the palace; and as Master of the Mint, and afterward as Commander of the City Guard, he found means to render himself indispensable, as he had always been agreeable, to the harem. Nor was the young courtier less acceptable to the Caliph. Intrusted by him on a critical occasion with the supremely difficult mission of comptrolling the expenditure of the army in Africa, where the general-in-chief had proved over-prodigal or over-rapacious, Ibn-abu-amir acquitted himself with such extraordinary skill and tact that he won the respect and admiration, not only of the Caliph whose treasury he protected, but of the general whose extravagance he checked, and even of the common soldiers of the army, who are not usually drawn to a civilian superintendent, or to a reforming treasury official from headquarters. The expenses were curtailed; but the campaign was successful, and the victorious general and the yet more victorious Cadi shared on equal terms the honor of a triumphal entry into the capital. On the death of Hakam, in September, 976, Ibn-abu-amir showed no less than his usual tact and vigor in suppressing a palace intrigue and placing the young Hisham on the throne of his father. The Caliph was but twelve years of age, and his powerful guardian, supported by the harem, beloved by the people, and feared by the vanquished conspirators, took upon himself the entire administration of the kingdom, repealed some obnoxious taxes, reformed the organization of the army, and sought to confirm and establish his power by a war against his neighbors in the north. The peace which had so long prevailed between Moor and Christian was thus rudely broken, and the Moslem once more carried his arms across the northern frontier. The campaign was eminently successful. Ibn-abu- amir, who contrived not only to vanquish his enemies but to please his friends, became at once the master of the palace and of the army. The inevitable critic was found to say that the victor was a diplomatist and a lawyer rather than a great general; but he was certainly a great leader of men, and if he was at any time unskilled in the conduct of a battle, he owned from the first that higher skill of knowing whom to trust with command. Nor was he less remarkable for his true military virtue of constant clemency to the vanquished. In two years after the death of Hakam, Almanzor had attained the position of the greatest of the maires du palais of early France, and he ruled all Muhammadan Spain in the name of young Hisham, whose throne he forbore to occupy and whose person was safe in his custody. But if Almanzor was not a dilettante like Abdur Rahman II., nor a collector of MSS. like Hakam, he was no vulgar fighter like the early kings of Leon or of Navarre. A library of books accompanied him in all his campaigns; literature, science, and the arts were munificently patronized at court; a university or high school was established at Cordova, where the great mosque was enlarged for the accommodation of an increasing number of worshipers. Yet in one thing did he show his weakness. He could afford to have no enemies. Though the idol of the army, the lover of the queen, the prefect of the city, the guardian of the person of the Caliph, Almanzor yet found it necessary to conciliate the theologians; and the theologians were only conciliated by the delivery of the great library of Hakam into the hands of the Ulema. The shelves were ransacked for works on astrology and magic, on natural philosophy, and the forbidden sciences, and after an inquisition as formal and as thorough and probably no more intelligent than that which was conducted by the curate and the barber in the house of Don Quixote, tens of thousands of priceless volumes were publicly committed to the flames. Nor did Almanzor neglect the more practical or more direct means of maintaining his power. The army was filled with bold recruits from Africa, and renegades from the Christian provinces of the north. The organization and equipment of the regiments was constantly improved; and the troops were ever loyal to their civilian benefactor. Ghalib, the Commander-in-chief, having sought to overthrow the supreme administrator of the kingdom, was vanquished and slain in battle (981). The Caliph was practically a prisoner in his own palace, and was encouraged by his guardian and his friends, both in the harem and in the mosque, to devote himself entirely to a religious life, and abandon the administration of his kingdom to the Hájib, who now, feeling himself entirely secure at home, turned his arms once more against the Christians on the northern frontiers; and it was on his return to Cordova, after his greeted with the well- known title of Almanzor. In 984 he compelled Bermudo II. of Leon to become his tributary. In 985 he turned his attention to Catalonia, and after a brief but brilliant campaign he made himself master of Barcelona. Two years later (987), Bermudo having dismissed his Moslem guards and thrown off his allegiance to Cordova, Almanzor marched into the northwest, and after sacking Coimbra, overran Leon, entirely destroyed the capital city, and compelled the Christian king to take refuge in the wild fastnesses of the Asturias. Meanwhile, at Cordova, the power of Almanzor became year by year more complete. Victorious in Africa as well as in Spain, this heaven-born general was as skillful in the council chamber as be was in the field. The iron hand was ever clad in a silken glove. His ambition was content with the substance of power, and with the gradual assumption [Image unavailble.] {23} {24} {25} {26} [View larger size map.] [View largest size map.] of any external show of supreme authority in the State. In 991 he abandoned the office and title of Hajib to his son, Abdul Malik. In 992 his seal took the place of that of the monarch on all documents of State. In 993 he assumed the royal cognomen of Mowayad. Two years later he arrogated to himself alone the title of Said; and in 996 he ventured a step further, and assumed the title of Malik Karim, or king. But in 996 Almanzor was at length confronted by a rival. Sobeyra, the Navarrese Sultana, once his mistress, was now his deadly enemy, and she had determined that the queen, and not the minister, should reign supreme in the palace. Almanzor was to be destroyed. Hakam, a feeble and effeminate youth, was easily won over by the harem, who urged him to show the strength that he was so far from possessing, by espousing the cause of his mother against his guardian. The queen was assured of victory. The treasury was at the disposal of the conspirators. A military rival was secretly summoned from Africa. The minister was banished from the royal presence. The palace was already jubilant. But the palace reckoned without Almanzor. Making his way into Hakam’s chamber, more charming, more persuasive, more resolute than ever, Almanzor prevailed upon the Caliph not only to restore him to his confidence, but to empower him, by a solemn instrument under the royal sign-manual, to assume the government of the kingdom. Sobeyra, defeated but unharmed by her victorious and generous rival, retired to a cloister; and Almanzor, contemptuously leaving to one of his lieutenants the task of vanquishing his subsidized rival in Africa, set forth upon the most memorable of all his many expeditions against Christian Spain (July 3, 997). Making his way, at the head of an army, through Lusitania into far away Galicia, he took Corunna, and destroyed the great Christian church and city of Santiago de Compostella, the most sacred spot in all Spain, and sent the famous bells which had called so many Christian pilgrims to prayer and praise to be converted into lamps to illuminate the Moslem worshipers in the mosque at Cordova. Five years later, in 1002, after an uncertain battle, Almanzor died in harness, if not actually in the ranks, bowed down by mortal disease, unhurt by the arm of the enemy. The relief of the Christians at his death was unspeakable; and is well expressed, says Mr. Poole, in the simple comment of the Monkish annalist, “In 1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in Hell.” In force of character, in power of persuasion, in tact, in vigor, in that capacity for command that is only found in noble natures, Almanzor has no rival among the Regents of Spain. His rise is a romance; his power a marvel; his justice a proverb. He was a brilliant financier; a successful favorite; a liberal patron; a stern disciplinarian; a heaven-born courtier; an accomplished general; and no one of the great commanders of Spain, not Gonsalvo de Aguilar himself, was more uniformly successful in the field than this lawyer’s clerk of Cordova. Hisham, in confinement at Az Zahra, was still the titular Caliph of the West, but Almanzor was succeeded as commander-in-chief and virtual ruler of the country by his favorite son, his companion-in-arms, and the hero of an African campaign, Abdul Malik Almudaffar, the Hajib of 991. But the glory of Cordova had departed. Abdul Malik indeed ruled in his father’s place for six years. But on his death, in 1008, he was succeeded by his half-brother, Abdur Rahman, who, as the son of a Christian princess, was mistrusted both by the palace and by the people; and the country became a prey to anarchy. Cordova was sacked. The Caliph was imprisoned; rebellions, poisonings, crucifixions, civil war, bigotry and skepticism, the insolence of wealth, the insolence of power, a Mahdi and a Wahdi, Christian alliance, Berber domination, Slav mutineers, African interference, puppet princes, all these things vexed the Spanish Moslems for thirty disastrous years; while a number of weak but independent sovereignties arose on the ruins of the great Caliphate of the West. The confused annals of the last thirty years of the rule of the Ommeyades are mere records of blood and of shame, a pitiful story of departed greatness. On the death of Hisham II., the Romulus Augustulus of Imperial Cordova, Moslem Spain was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, Malaga, Algeciras, Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Badajoz, Saragossa, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Murcia, Almeria, and Granada. And each of these cities and kingdoms made unceasing war one upon another. From the death of Hisham, if not from the death of Almanzor, the centre of interest in the history of Spain is shifted from Cordova to Castile. CHAPTER III M E D I E VA L S P A I N THE FOUNDERS OF MODERN SPAIN—THE KINGDOMS OF THE ASTURIAS AND OF LEON—THE DEFEAT AT RONCESVALLES—THE CID CAMPEADOR The Crescent had conquered, but the Cross endured. The refuge of the latter was in the Asturias, There—eight or ten years after the death of the last of the Gothic kings—Pelayo, one of the early heroes of Spanish history, was reigning over refugees from Moslem rule. It was these refugees who laid the foundation of modern Spain, and it is related that in their fastness at Covadonga, thirty of them, with Pelayo at their head, actually routed, if they did not destroy, an entire army of four hundred thousand Moslem besiegers. The story is of course mythological, but the good fortune of Pelayo did much to kindle the national spirit by which ultimately Spain was conquered for the Spaniards, and thus the story, if critically false, becomes metaphorically true. Nor [says Burke] do the Arabs seem to have made any attempt to retrieve or avenge the fortunes of the day. Well satisfied, no doubt, with their unopposed dominion over the rich plains of the genial south country, they were willing to abandon the bleak and {27} {28} {29} {30} {31} inhospitable mountains to their wild inhabitants and the emboldened refugees whom they sheltered. Be the reason what it may, Pelayo seems to have had peace all the days of his life after his victory at Covadonga in 718. Prudently confining his attention to the development of his little kingdom, he reigned, it is said, for nineteen years at Cangas, and, dying in 737, was peacefully succeeded by his son Favila. Pelayo, no doubt, was but a robber chieftain, a petty mountain prince, and the legends of his royal descent are of later date, and of obviously spurious manufacture; but Pelayo needs no tinsel to adorn his crown. He was the founder of the Spanish monarchy. Meanwhile, in the recesses of the Pyrenees, a second Christian kingdom, that of Navarre, had been founded by Garcias Iniguez, which, together with Catalonia and Aragon, Charlemagne a little later (778) entered and subdued. In repassing the Pyrenees, however, the Navarrese, led by Fortun Garcias, fell upon the Frankish troops and cut to pieces the rearguard, and even, it is said, the main body of the army. How far the Spanish Christians were aided, as it has been stated they were, by the Moors, it is impossible to discover. The fact of such an alliance, in itself sufficiently improbable, is quite unnecessary to explain the ever-famous defeat at Roncesvalles. Nor can we speak with much greater confidence of the prowess or even of the existence of the equally famous Roland, in the ranks of the invading or evading army; or of that of the no less celebrated Bernardo del Carpio in the ranks of the pursuers. Taillefer, who sang the song of Roland upon the battlefield of Hastings, and Terouldes, whose thirteenth century epic suggested the poems of Pulci, of Boiardo, and of greatest Ariosto, all these have made Roland one of the favorite heroes of the Middle Ages. But in the story, as it is told in the Spanish ballads, it is Bernardo del Carpio, the nephew of the chaste but pusillanimous Alfonso, who is the true hero of Roncesvalles, and who not only repulsed the host of Charlemagne, but caught up the invulnerable Roland in his arms, and squeezed him to death before his army. No carpet knight or courtier was Bernardo, but a true Cantabrian mountaineer. In 790 Alfonso II., the great-grandson of the great Pelayo, then king of Oviedo, repulsed the Mussulman army with great slaughter, and abolished the ignominious tribute of one hundred virgins, an annual tribute paid to the Muhammadan ruler, fifty virgins being of noble and fifty of base or ignoble birth. From this circumstance is derived, by some historians, his surname of the Chaste; attributed by others to his having made a solemn vow of virginity, and observed it, even in marriage. This vow, and the austere temper in which it probably originated, had considerable influence over Alfonso’s life. He so deeply resented his sister Ximena’s private marriage with a subject, the Count of Saldanha, that he shut her up in a convent; and putting out her husband’s eyes, sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment. The royal line of Navarre or Sobrarve was at this time extinct, Ximenes Garcias, the grandson of Fortun Garcias, having died without children. The nobles availed themselves of the opportunity to establish the famous code entitled “Los Fueros de Sobrarve”— the laws of Sobrarve—which subsequently became the groundwork of the liberties of Aragon. Navarre was soon afterward recovered by the Moors, and Sobrarve included in the Spanish March. Alfonso ruled upward of fifty years. Incessant wars now followed between the followers of the Cross and the Crescent, and a frenzy for martyrdom on the part of the Christians had to be repressed by a Christian archbishop at the solemn request of the Cadis. Garcia of Oviedo died without children shortly after his accession; when his brother Ordoño II. reunited the whole of his father’s dominions. He transferred the seat of government to Leon, and altered the title of King of Oviedo into that of King of Leon. This Ordoño abandoned the peaceful policy of his greater father, and undertook many expeditions with varying and uncertain success against the Arabs. He plundered Merida in 917, and routed the Berbers in Southern Spain in 918. Yet three years later, at Val de Junqueras (921), near Pamplona, the Christians suffered disastrous defeat. The usual rebellion at home was appeased by the treacherous execution or murder of no less than four counts of Castile in 922, and was followed by the king’s death in 923. Of Fruela II. (923-925), Alfonso IV. (925-930), and Ramiro II. (930-950), little need be said, but that they lived and reigned as kings of Leon. To Ramiro, however, is due, at least, the honor of an authentic victory over the Moslem forces of the great Caliph, Abdur Rahman an Nasir (939), at Simancas, and afterward in the same year at Alhandega. Ramiro, after the usual rebellion, abdicated, in 950, in favor of his son Ordoño—who had married Urraca, daughter of the principal rebel of the day, Fernan Gonzalez, count of Castile—and who succeeded his father as Ordoño III. But decapitation was a far more certain way of suppressing rebellion than matrimony; and Fernan Gonzalez lived to intrigue against his daughter and her royal husband in favor of Sancho, a younger brother of the king. Ordoño, however, held his own against his brother, and revenged himself on his father-in-law, by repudiating his wife; who, with her personal and family grievances, was promptly acquired by Sancho, who succeeded, on his brother’s death, to the crown of which he had failed to possess himself by force. But even as a legitimate sovereign, Sancho, surnamed the Fat, was not allowed to reign in peace. He was driven from his kingdom by that most versatile rebel, Count Fernan Gonzalez, and sought refuge at the court of his uncle Garcia of Navarre at Pamplona. Thence, in company with Garcia, and his mother Theuda, he journeyed to the court of the Caliph at Cordova, where the distinguished visitors were received with great show of welcome by Abdur Rahman at Az Zahra; and where Hasdai, the Jew, the most celebrated physician of the day, succeeded in completely curing Sancho of the distressing malady—a morbid and painful corpulency— which incapacitated him from the active discharge of his royal duties. The study and practice of medicine were alike disregarded by the rude dwellers in Leon; but the Cordovan doctor, surpassing in his success, if not in his skill, the most celebrated physicians of the present day, contrived to reduce the king’s overgrown bulk to normal proportions, and restored him to his former activity and vigor, both of body and mind. Nor was the skill of Hasdai confined to the practice of medicine. An accomplished diplomatist, he negotiated a treaty with his Christian patient, by which Sancho bound himself to give up ten frontier fortresses to the Caliph, on his restoration to the crown of Leon, while Don Garcia and Dona Theuda undertook to invade Castile in order to divert the attention of the common foe, the ever-ready Fernan Gonzalez. In due time Sancho, no longer the fat, but the hale, returned to Leon at the head of a Moslem army, placed at his disposal by his noble host at Cordova, drove out the usurper, Ordoño the Bad, and reigned in peace in his Christian dominions. The visit of this dispossessed Ordoño to the court of the Caliph Hakam at Cordova, in 962, is an interesting specimen of the international politics or {32} {33} {34} {35} policy of his age and country. As Sancho had recovered his throne, by the aid of Abdur Rahman, so Ordoño sought to dethrone him and make good his own pretensions by the aid of Hakam. The Caliph, already harassed by Fernan Gonzalez, and doubting the honesty of King Sancho, was not ill-pleased to have another pretender in hand, and Ordoño was invited to Cordova, and received by Hakam in the palace at Az Zahra with the utmost pomp and display. The Leonese prince craved in humble language the assistance of the Moslem, and professed himself his devoted friend, ally, and vassal; and he was permitted to remain at the Court of Hakam, to await the issue of events in the north. Some few days afterward a treaty was solemnly signed between the Caliph and the Pretender, and once more the glories of Az Zahra were displayed to the eyes of the astonished barbarian from Leon. Nor did the fame of these splendid ceremonies fail to reach Sancho in the northwest; and his spirit of independence was considerably cooled by the prospect of a Moslem army, headed by his cousin Ordoño, making its appearance before his ill-defended frontiers. The maneuver was sufficiently familiar; and the reigning monarch lost no time in disassociating himself from the hostile proceedings of Fernan Gonzalez; and sending an important embassy to Hakam at Cordova, to assure him of his unwavering loyalty, he hastened to announce his readiness to carry out to the letter all the provisions of his recent treaty with the Caliph. Hakam was satisfied. Ordoño languished disregarded at Cordova, despised alike by Moslem and Christian, but unharmed and in safety as the guest of the Arab. Sancho reigned in peace until 967, when he was poisoned by the rebel count of the day, Sanchez of Galicia. His son, who was known as Ramiro III., an unwise and incapable monarch, reigned at Leon from 967 to 982, without extending the possessions or the influence of the Christians in Spain; and Bermudo II., who usurped the throne, was no match for the fiery Almanzor, who ravaged his kingdom, took possession of his capital, and compell...