Fron A. D. 476. to A. D. 768. Under the Papal sanction. A. D. 751. History. his decision, which was obviously dictated by the interests of the Holy See, was more favourable to its future pretensions of a dispensing power over the temporal Thrones of the earth, than to the general cause of Royal and hereditary right. He pronounced in favour of Pepin: That having considered the whole circumstances of the case, he was satisfied that he who held the reigns of government should also bear the title of King. This judgment was received by the Frankish Nobles as a sufficient release from their oath of allegiance to the last Royal descendant of Clovis; and the sacred authority of the Church removed every scruple from the minds of a devout people against the depo sition of the Merovingian line. The feeble Childeric III. was consigned to a Monastery; Pepin was placed on his Throne by the acclamations of a National Assembly of the Franks; and to give the more solemnity to his coronation and sanctity to his person, a Papal Legate anointed and consecrated him after the manner of the Kings of Israel. This was the first very memorable adoption, in the Barbarian Kingdoms, of a ceremony which has ever since been preserved at the coronation of the French Sovereigns, and imitated in all the other Monarchies of modern Europe.* Extinction of the Merovingian dy nasty. Feign of Pepin, the first Carlovingian King. A. D. 751. to A. D. 768 A. D. 754. to A. D. 756. With what interest the first of the Carlovingian Sovereigns redeemed his obligations to the Roman See, and repaid the services of Zachary to his successor Stephen, we have already seen in the Italian Annals. The continued bad faith of Astolpho the Lombard King, his impatience at the disgraceful Treaty which Pepin had forced upon him, and his renewed oppression of the Papacy, roused the powerful Monarch of the Franks, at the supplication of Stephen, again to cross the Alps for the deliverance of Rome. His second expedition was equally triumphant with the first, and His trium- distinguished by a severer chastisement of the Lombard phant expe- and a more important aggrandizement of the Papal ditions into Italy. power. He easily drove the restless but comparatively impotent Monarch of the Lombards from his recent conquests; besieged him in his Capital of Pavia; and compelled him, as the humiliating atonement for his aggravated attacks upon the Holy See, to relinquish the Provinces forming the Exarchate of Ravenna, which he had so lately torn from the Greek Empire. These fruits of his expedition, the French King formally bechate from stowed upon the successors of St. Peter; and the memorable donation of Pepin, which, in the nomenclature of modern Geography, comprehends the Province of Romagna and the March of Ancona, is the authentic foundation of the Papal Sovereignty over those States.† The all-powerful interference of Pepin in the Papal cause foreboded the approaching subjugation of Italy to the Frankish sceptre; and the subsequent success of that Monarch in other undertakings, equally prepared the extended supremacy of his Empire. On its Eastern frontiers he quelled and severely punished the revolt of the tributary Saxons and Sclavonians; and, on the West and South he consolidated his immediate dominion by re-annexing the great dependent Province of Aquitaine, and compelling the Duke of Bavaria to swear the allegiance of a subject, to the French Crown. He wrests the Exar the Lom. bard Mo narchy, and bestows it on the Holy See. A. D. 756. Contin. Fredegarii, c. 110-117. Eginhartus, Annales ab initio ad A. D. 750. The Annals of Eginhart, the Secretary, son-inlaw, and biographer of Charlemagne, (if, indeed, they are really his production,) commence with the reign of Pepin. Anastasius, in vitá Stephani III, as before quoted. Eginhartus, Annales, ad A. d. 756, &c. A. D. to A. D. 768. His death. A. D. 768. SPAIN. A. D. 476. to A. D. 755. During the three centuries embraced in the present Chapter, the Annals of Italy and of the Frankish Monarchy, if for the most part uninteresting in their immediate character, and often disgusting in their details, are at least diversified by the quick series of conquest and revolution, and important in their permanent influence upon the general polity and aspect of European Society. For they illustrate the gradual consolidation of the Barbarian, upon the ruins of the Roman, institutions; the rise of the Papal power; and the formation of the great Frankish or Carlovingian Empire, which at length overshadowed the West, and prepared the establishment of the Feudal system. The vicissitudes of the Ostrogothic, the Lombard, and the Frankish nations in Italy, France, and Germany, are accordingly too various in themselves and too complicated in their results to have been embraced and dismissed in a single view: but the fortunes of the Visigothic race in Spain during the same period are contained, and inay Monarchy be sufficiently expressed, in one great event, which of the Visisuddenly overthrew their monotonous dominion. Our goths. retrospect to their Annals from the Vth to the VIIIth century,-from the settlement of their Monarchy in Spain until its subversion by the Saracen conquest of the Peninsula-will, therefore, naturally be as rapid as our materials for the subject are meagre, valueless, and uncircumstantial. the Western When Odoacer completed the destruction of the Its state at Western Empire, the Visigothic Throne was filled by the Fail of Euric, the grandson of the great Alaric. The new Empire. Sovereign of Rome is declared to have propitiated his friendship by formally resigning to him the Provinces of Gaul and Spain,† which were neither left for the imaginary reversion of the Imperial authority to bestow, nor for the real power of Odoacer to withhold. At that juncture, indeed, the Visigothic Monarchy had attained the meridian point of its grandeur and strength. From his Capital of Toulouse, Euric reigned with a Reign of paramount or immediate authority over the whole of Euric in Spain and the greater part of Gaul. In the hands of France and Spain. an active, warlike, and powerful Prince, the Visigothic sceptre promised to extend over the greater part of Europe, when the accident of Euric's premature death His death and the succession of his infant son Alaric, revealed the first symptom of decay in the vigour of his Monarchy and the energies of his nation. The long minority of Alaric, the hatred of the Catholic Provincials of Gaul for their Arian masters, and the dissensions among the Goths themselves, threw the cause of their Monarchy into a very unequal balance against the arms and the machinations of Clovis. It has already been shown Loss of that the defeat and death of Alaric delivered the Visi- Aquitain gothic dominions in Gaul an easy prey to the Catholic King of the Franks; and that the powerful interpo Contin. Fredegarii, c. 117-130. Eginhartus, Annales, ▲. D. 756-768. t Procopius, De Bello Gothico, lib. i. c. 12. Vide supra, p. 286. A. D. 485. A. D. 507. History. sition of Theodoric the Great alone saved a little remnant of their possessions to the North of the Pyre: nees, and perhaps the whole Kingdom of Spain itself, from subjection to the sword of Clovis.* From A. D. 476. to A. D. 755. The seat of the Mor After this loss of the great Province of Aquitaine, the Visigothic Monarchy may, in a general sense, be said to have been restricted to Spain, and its seat of Government was transferred from Toulouse to Toledo. We have seen that, by the marriage of one of his daughters with Alaric, Theodoric the Great had become the natural protector of the Visigothic Crown, and the guardian of his infant grandson, Amalaric. While the garchy transferred Regency of Theodoric united the two kindred nations to Spain. of the Gothic stock, History has scarcely preserved a trace of the domestic fortunes of the Spanish Kingdom; nor, when the death of that great Monarch again separated the Annals of the two nations in Italy and Spain and bequeathed the Visigothic sceptre to Amalaric,† does the subsequent reign of that Prince present any thing worthy of arresting our attention. A. D. 526. L'interest Anaals. Spain. From A. D. 476. to A. D. 755. though far less interesting than that of the Frankish and Lombard Kingdoms which expanded into the Feudal system, may seem to demand a passing notice. Its chief distinction from them was in the still greater influence arrogated by the Clergy in temporal affairs. The Visigothic Prelates are admitted in some degree to have deserved this superior power.* While the Prelates of the Frankish Empire had degenerated into fighting and hunting Barbarians, the Visigothic Bishops respected themselves and were respected by the Public; and the regular discipline which they maintained in their Church had some beneficial though imperfect effects upon the peace of the Kingdom. The spiritual Convocation, or National Council, of the Clergy appear Immense to have had a concurrent power with the Nobles and great power of the functionaries of the State, if not also the initiative voice, Clergy. in temporal legislation; and many salutary laws of the Visigothic Code owed their enactment to this mixture of Barbarian freedom and Ecclesiastical policy in the General Assembly of the Noble and Episcopal Orders. The election to the Crown, and the subsequent control of the Royal administration, were vested in the united choice of the Bishops and Palatines, and preserved in the privileges of a powerful Aristocracy; and, after the failure of the Royal line of Alaric, the succession was still limited to the pure and noble blood of the Goths.† We may add a fact to this summary which has escaped the great authority from whom we are borrowing, that, though revolution, cruelty, and anarchy disturbed the series of the Visigothic, perhaps as thickly as of the Merovingian Kings, the unity of the State was never broken by the mischievous custom of Regal partitions; and the laws and the internal polity of the Spanish Monarchy were on the whole far more equable and uniform, and probably better administered, than those of the Frankish Empire. This obscure and unimportant character of the Visiing charac- gothic Annals extends over their whole duration. ter of the From the accession of Amalaric to the overthrow of the Vigothic Monarchy in the person of its last Sovereign Roderic, we are required to survey a dreary waste of nearly two centuries, barren alike in events either of intrinsic interest or foreign value. Through the thick darkness which shrouds all this period, we may indeed faintly discern the confusion and crimes of Barbarian revolutions; the disorders of a Regal succession, which was rather elective in the noble blood of the Goths than absolutely hereditary; endless Civil wars and disputed pretensions to the Throne; the usual assassinations and atrocities which defiled all the Palaces of Europe with blood and violence during the same Ages; and, above all, the fierce bigotry of Religious persecution, which even already seemed to have fore-marked the Peninsula for its chosen and durable theatre. But these domestic vicissitudes of the Visigothic Monarchy exercised no influence upon the contemporary affairs of other nations, and are totally undeserving of record in themselves. Isolated from the rest of the world by the Pyrenean barrier and the Ocean, the Visigoths, after they were confined to their Spanish settlements and the narrow March of Septimania, appear for two hundred years to have maintained little intercourse with the other people of Europe. The Principality of the Suevi in Gallicia, which had long survived the first shock of the Visigothic arms, was not entirely subjugated and incorporated into the Monarchy by Leovogild, until near the close of the VIth century; and, about thirty years later, Sisebert, another of the most able and warlike of the Visigothic Kings, by tearing from the Eastern Empire the few maritime possessions which it had hitherto preserved in Spain on the Mediterranean and Ocean, completed the consolidation of the Monarchy. At Consolida- this epoch-the beginning of the VIIth century-the Visigothic of the dominion of the Visigothic Sovereigns of Spain had attained its greatest height; it embraced the whole Peninsula, with the Gaulish frontier, and even extended in the opposite direction beyond the Pillars of Hercules over some part of Mauritania.‡ A. D. 580. power in Spain. A. D. 611. vil Consti tion of the Monarchy. The Civil Constitution of the Visigothic Monarchy, * Vide supra, p. 287. + Isidor. Chron. Goth. p. 721. Mariana, Hist. de Rebus Hispaniæ, lib. vi. c. 1—6. To this favourable exercise of Ecclesiastical influence Religious must be darkly contrasted the horrid spectacle of the persecution Religious persecution, which it was employed to excite and aggravate. The Visigoths, at the epoch of their conquest of the Peninsula, and for above a century afterwards, like most of the Barbarian nations, professed the Arian Heresy; the descendants of the Arianism of Roman Provincials of Spain adhered to the Orthodox the VisiCreed; and this diversity of Religion was sufficient to goths. produce and perpetuate the worst excesses of a furious bigotry. The cruelties to which the Arian Bishops stimulated their Monarchs against the subject Catholics, the sudden conversion of the Visigothic Court and Clergy to the oppressed Faith, and the proscription to which the Arian opinions were in turn exposed, are events belonging rather to Ecclesiastical than Political History. Two circumstances, however, in the Annals of the Visigothic Church deserve mention in this place for their connection with the temporal affairs of the Monarchy. In the reign of Leovogild, the Re- Reign of ligious divisions of the State produced a furious Civil Leovogild. war, in which the rebels were led by his own son, Hermenegild. That young Prince had espoused a daughter of one of the Merovingian Kings; and the shameful violence to which the Religious constancy of his Catholic From A. D. 476. to A. D. 755. Conversion History. bride was exposed, by the bigotry of his stepmother, was followed by his own conversion from Arianism and revolt against the Royal and paternal authority. The disaffected Catholics supported his cause; and it was not until after a long and sanguinary struggle that their rebellion was subdued. Hermenegild himself fell into the hands of his parent, and his repeated treasons justly forfeited his claim to the mercy with which and revolt of he was at first treated: though even his aggravated his son Her- guilt can scarcely excuse the ultimate and unnatural menegild. severity of a father, who pronounced the alternative of his son's death or return to the Arian profession. He sealed the sincerity of his conversion to the Catholic Faith with his blood; and the Romish Church has canonized his memory, and perpetuated one of her gloomiest legends in the martyrdom of St. Hermenegild.* A. D. 578. to A. D. 594. Martyrdom of Herme negild. A. D. 585. This shocking tragedy clouded the glory and happipiness of a reign, which had otherwise been distinguished as the brightest in the Annals of the Visigothic Monarchy of Spain. But, by what must appear an Conversion unaccountable change of opinion, unless we attribute of the Visi- a strong revulsion of popular sympathy to the fate and goths. the cause of Hermenegild, the Arian Clergy and nation within a few years voluntarily adopted the Creed which Recared, they had strenuously proscribed. Recared, the brother the first Ca- of the martyr, had embraced the same Faith: but with tholic King. more timidity, or prudence, or filial reverence, he avoided to disturb the last days, and perhaps to aggravate the remorse, of his unhappy parent; and it was not until Leovogild had sunk into the grave, that the new King avowed himself a Catholic, and invited his people to share his conversion. Notwithstanding a Notwithstanding a conspiracy and a partial revolt, which he quelled, Recared at once succeeded in his purpose; a general Council of the Arian Prelates and Nobles yielded to his exhortations; and the mass of the Visigothic nation strangely hastened to abjure in one hour the Heresy to which they had clung for two centuries.† A. D. 586. Persecution A. D. 612. to A. D. 7.10. The second circumstance to which we have referred, of the Jews. in the connection between the Ecclesiastical and Political Annals of the Visigoths, was the persecution of the Jews. That unhappy race had settled in great numbers in Spain long before the epoch of the Visigothic conquests; and the wealth which their industry had gradually accumulated seems to have offered the first temptation to oppress and ruin them. The Canons of the Visigothic Councils, during almost the whole of the VIIth century, are filled with traces of the spoliation, the tortures, and the misery of every kind, by which the Jews were punished for the exercise, and compelled to the abjuration, of their Faith; and these merciless enactments but too closely anticipated, if they did not first suggest, the detestable spirit of the more modern Inquisition. By Sisebert, near an hundred thousand of the Jews were compelled, on pain of death, to receive the sacrament of Baptism; Chintilla, one of his successors, decreed the banishment of the whole race; and it was only a refinement of avarice and cruelty that rescinded the sentence, to detain the victims of repeated confiscation and persecution within the grasp of their tyrants. The political effects of Persecution are in' all Ages nearly the same; and the detestation which the Jews cherished against their Christian oppressors, naturally impelled them to become the secret but Mariana, Hist. de Rebus Hisp. lib. v. c. 12-14. + Ibid. lib. v. c. 14, 15. active auxiliaries of the Saracens in the overthrow of the Gothic Monarchy of Spain.* Spain. From A. D. 476. to A. D. 755. Fall of the That memorable event, however, was immediately produced or precipitated by intestine disunion among the Visigoths themselves; and the Mohammedan conquest of the Peninsula was first invited by the treason of a Christian Chieftain. At the opening of the eighth century, the successors of Mohammed had extended the empire of their Religion and nation to the Western Visigothic limits of Africa; and the victorious career of Mousa, power. the Lieutenant of the Caliph Walid, was only arrested by the walls of the Visigothic fortress of Ceuta, in Mauritania, and the bravery of its Governor, Count Julian. The motives which suddenly converted the Its probabl gallant defence of that Nobleman into a traitorous alli- causes. ance with the infidel enemy, are involved in much real obscurity; and a suspicious tale of Romance † is all that remains to supply the want of better Historical materials for the barbarous annals of a troubled and calamitous epoch. It was the dishonour of Count Julian's daughter by his Sovereign Roderic, according to the legend, which provoked the treason and suggested the fatal revenge of the Chieftain. But this story is scarcely sustained by the few authentic facts of the Saracen conquest which have descended to us; and the distracted state of the Visigothic Monarchy, which at Intestine the time was torn by the feuds of the Clergy and Nobles, dissensions. and divided in allegiance between the reigning Sovereign and the sons of the last King, Witika, may jus tify the suspicion, that the introduction of the Saracens was less the work of one man and the vengeance of his private wrongs, than the desperate project of an ambitious and broken faction. The crimes of Witika had provoked the revolt of his Reign of subjects; and on his deposition, Roderic, the represen- Roderic, tative of one of the most illustrious Houses of the Gothic lineage, had been raised to the Throne. In the insolence of his Regal fortunes, Roderic might forget the practice of former virtue, the duties of his office, and the fate of his licentious predecessor. He is accused of having wasted his talents in debauchery: it is only certain that, whether through his vices, or their restless turbulence and factious spirit, a portion of the Gothic Clergy and Nobles had become disaffected and estranged Disaffectio from his Government. Encouraged by this temper of of the Nothe Aristocracy, the sons of Witika secretly asserted their bles. title to the Crown; their uncle Oppas, the Ecclesiastical Primate of the Kingdom, favoured their pretensions; and it is probable that Count Julian had entered into the same cause, and incurred the disgrace and danger of an abortive conspiracy. But, whatever were his political fears and disgusts, or his private. injuries, the station which the Count occupied in the Monarchy gave him but too ready a means for the accomplishment of his policy or vengeance. His extensive domains, his high rank, and his numerous retainers made nim a powerful leader; and the government both of the Southern Provinces of the Kingdom and its African dependencies enabled him to betray the keys of the Peninsula to the formidable enemies who Treason were already at its gates. To the Lieutenant of the Count J Caliph, he exposed the wealth and the weakness of his lian, R A. D. rasion of the Saracens A. D. 710. Battle of Xeres. A. D. 711. Death of Roeric. Fired with ambition at the prospect of so splendid and easy a conquest, Mousa delayed only for the permission of the Caliph to undertake the enterprise; and an experimental descent of a few hundred Mohammedans on the Spanish coast having sufficiently confirmed the report of the traitor, and proved the defenceless condition of the Kingdom, a more serious invasion was repeated in the following summer. In transports provided by the Gothic Count, and at the head of only seven thousand Arabians and Moors, (or Africans,) Tarik, an intrepid Saracen, crossed the strait between the ancient Pillars of Hercules, and pitched his first camp in Spain, on the rock which owes its modern appellation of Gibraltar* to his name. Conducted by Count Julian and his followers, and reinforced from Africa, the Saracens were rapidly successful; and the defeat of a Gothic army under Edico, roused Roderic himself from his dream of indolent security to the opposite error of a presumptuous rashness. His summons to the national defence was obeyed by the Nobles and Clergy of the Gothic Monarchy at the head of near one hundred thousand followers: but the numbers of this disorderly host, unpractised in arms and divided by treason, were feebly opposed to the firm array of twenty thousand veteran Arabians and Moors, breathing a common spirit of fanaticism, and flushed with the promise of an opulent realm. The temerity of the Gothic King staked the fortune of the Monarchy on a single battle; and on the banks of the Gaudalete, near the town of Xeres, the Christian and Mohammedan armies met in the memorable and sanguinary encounter, which was to deliver the fairest portion of Spain to the dominion of the Arabs for eight hundred years. Notwithstanding the decay of their national vigour, and the evils of their disunion, the Goths still fought with some remains of a spirit worthy of their ancient renown; and the event was for several days adverse to the Saracens, until the treachery of the Archbishop Oppas, who, with his nephews, suddenly drew off his troops from the Christian line and charged his astonished countrymen, spread dismay through their ranks, and produced irretrievable disorder, a general flight, and a tremendous carnage. Roderic himself escaped from the field only to perish in the waters of the Guadilquivir; his fall involved the immediate ruin of the Monarchy; and the long series of the Visigothic Kings of Spain terminates with his death. Before the panic-stricken and disunited Christians had leisure to collect their scattered strength, or recover their broken spirit from the fatal field of Xeres, Tarik had rapidly advanced to the Gothic Capital of Toledo; received the submission of its inhabitants; and, by seizing that seat of the Monarchy, prevented any attempt to fill the vacant Throne. The surrender of es the Capital was imitated by every city in the Saracen Menar line of march; and in a few months Tarik triumphantly hy. Total subversion of Gebel Tarik, or the mountain of Tarik-the ancient Mount Caipe. Such, in opposition to the romantic imaginings of the Spanish rers, is the unvarnished relation of Roderic's death in the best Arabian Historians, Biblioth. Arabico-Hispana, vol. ii. p. 327. Spain. From A. D. 476. to Ꭺ. Ꭰ overran the whole length of the Peninsula from South to North, and extended the Musulman conquests from the rock of Gibraltar to the bay of Biscay. So rapid was the career of Tarik that, when Mousa, whose jealousy was unworthily excited by the glory which his officer had acquired, hastened to supplant him by landing with a fresh army in Spain, there remained little more for him to accomplish than the reduction of Conquest of the cities which had lain out of the route of his precur- the Peninsor. Of these, Seville and Merida alone resisted with sula by the obstinacy before they submitted to the common lot of Saracens. capitulation; and in less than three years from their first A. D. descent, the Arabians had securely established the long dominion of their race and their Religion in Spain. 755. 713. upon, the Christians. The fate of the mass of the subjugated nation, and Fate of the the settlement of the Musulman conquerors in their conquered new possessions, will each claim a brief notice, and population. may be comprehended in the same rapid view. After the first excesses of warfare were over, the Saracens treated their new subjects with remarkable lenity: the Christians were permitted to enjoy the undisturbed exercise of their Religion and laws; the tribute which the conquerors imposed, did not, except where the resist- Toleration ance had been obstinate, exceed the usual taxes of the granted to, Visigothic Kings; and there can be no doubt that the and tribute general fertility and wealth of the Spanish Provinces, imposed and the prosperity, happiness, and numbers of the people, were largely improved and multiplied under the beneficent rule of their Arabian Lords. The toleration, which was only permitted to the Christians, was measured with a more abundant and cordial spirit to the shown to the Jewish population of Spain. That oppressed and Jews. persecuted race had hailed the Saracen invasion as the glad signal of deliverance and revenge. They had, both in secret, and afterwards more openly, rendered the conquerors most important services during the prosecution of the enterprise; and they were rewarded by the gratitude of the Mohammedans with almost every immunity and privilege which they could possibly desire. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Jews enjoyed in the Moorish Provinces of Spain the happiest seats any where permitted to them; and the bonds of fidelity and protection between them and their Musulman masters remained unbroken until the final ruin of the Arabian Monarchies. Favour Christian The alliance between the invaders and the traitorous Faith kept faction of the Goths, which had introduced them into with the the Kingdom, was probably less sincere: but it does traitors. not appear that the Saracens violated their faith even towards the instruments whose baseness they must have despised. Of the fate of Count Julian himself, indeed, History has preserved no authentic trace; and the natural hope that he did not escape the retribution which his crime had deserved, has been indulged only in the romantic creations of a Poetical justice. But it is known that the sons of Witika were invested by the Saracens in their private and patrimonial estates; even their subsequent family disputes were equitably adjusted before the impartial tribunal of the Caliphs; and the Gothic origin of their descendants was gradually mingled, by intermarriage, with the noblest blood of Arabia. But it was not possible that the violence of con- Settlement quest could equally respect the rights of the whole of the AraChristian population. The numerous bodies of the bians and Moors. victorious Saracens, who seated themselves in the Peninsula, until, by colonization or conversion, they overspread the Spanish Provinces with a Musulman From A. D. 476. to A. D. 755. History. people, must originally have been established in their lands at the expense of Christian proprietors; and though the manner in which the spoliation was conducted is not recorded, it cannot be doubted that many of the Goths must have been violently dispossessed of their lands. It may be conjectured that the confiscated estates of those numerous adherents of the unfortunate Roderic, who had fallen in the defence of their Country, or who preferred an honourable resistance or exile to an ignominious submission beneath the Infidel yoke, afforded a great means of provision for the Saracen colonists. But the numbers of the original conquerors were perpetually reinforced by hordes of fresh adventurers from the various regions of Asia and Africa who arrived under the command of the successive Lieutenants of the Caliphs; and the distinction of their races in the Spanish Cities and Provinces was long cherished by the pride of their descendants. The Asiatic bands of Palestine, of Emesa, and of Damascus, were seated at MedinaSidonia, at Seville, and at Cordova; the Gothic Capital of Toledo was occupied, and the central Provinces were thinly overspread, with Tribes of Persian and Arabian birth; and the beautiful region of Grenada, the longest preserved and the most precious gem in the Spanish Empire of the Arabs, was assigned to a numerous colony, who boasted a peculiar descent from the purest and noblest blood of their native deserts. The crowd of Africans, who had followed the standards of Mousa and his successors from Mauritania and Egypt, were scattered over the surface of the Peninsula, and might be distinguished on its opposite shores, in the Provinces of Portugal and in Murcia: but, by a curious caprice of fortune, the Moors of Africa, the proselytes, the subjects, and the inferior companions of the Saracens, have been suffered to embrace in their familiar name the whole Arabian population of Spain.* The subsequent Annals of Spain under the dominion of the Arabians belong, according to our plan, rather to the Mohammedan than the Christian division of PoliSilent revi- tical History. But the slow revival of a Christian Monarchy in the Peninsula is a portion of our present subject. After the fall of the Gothic Kingdom, great Monarchy in Asturias: numbers of the inhabitants from the Eastern Provinces under Pe- fled into France: but a few of the hardier spirits, who layo. embraced the nobler alternative of resistance, had retired into the lofty mountains of Asturias; and a small inland district in the most inaccessible part of those natural fastnesses, became the cradle of the modern Monarchy of Spain. Pelagius, or Pelayo, a Goth of noble, or perhaps even of Royal blood, who is said to have rallied the poor remnant of the national army after the battle of Xeres, became the leader of these fugitives in the North, and the founder of a new Christian Kingdom: but nothing can be more obscure and uncertain than the first foundation of the little State which was gradually to expand into the Monarchy of val of the Christian : A. D. 718. to A. D. 734. The original, or at least earliest, authorities for the History of the Saracen conquest of Spain, are contained in the Arabic writers, copied into the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana of Casiri, vol. ii. passim from p. 31 to 331; and in the Chronicles of King Alphonso III. of Leon, (Pagi, Critica, vol. iii.) and of Roderic of Toledo, ad c. 9. See also the more modern text of Mariana, Hist. de Rebus Hispania, lib vi. c. 19 ad fin. Among our English Historians the subject has been adorned by the labours of Gibbon, c. 51; and of Mills, History of Muhammedanism, 2d Edit. p. 109-116, an elegant specimen of learning and condensation. Leon and Castile. Tradition has justly consecrated the invincible constancy and patriotism of the handful of brave men, who, amidst the wreck of their national fortunes, still disdained a base submission to the Saracen yoke; and who chose rather to assert, at the point of their good swords, a life of poverty and freedom in the barren mountains of Asturias, than to share the wealthy servitude of their degenerate Countrymen. But Pelayo and his followers were, it is probable, in the outset, enabled chiefly to maintain their independence by the obscurity of their retreat and the neglect of the conquerors. Seven years elapsed between the battle of Xeres and the date assigned by the Spanish Chroniclers to the first encounter between the Sar cens and the Asturian Christians; and even the story of the expedition despatched by the Caliph's Lieutenant, Alakor, against their reviving State, and of the tremendous overthrow given by Pelayo to his numerous army in the mountains, is disfigured and exaggerated by the Monkish Legends, into the miraculous destruction of one hundred thousand of the Infidels. Spain. From A. D. 476. to A. D. 755. sensions of If we credit, in any degree, the magnitude of this and Favoured a subsequent defeat which Pelayo is declared to have by the disinflicted on the Saracens, it must seem very inconsist- the Arabs. ent with the sagacious policy which tempered the fanaticism of the Mohammedans in those Ages, that they should have turned aside from the task of reducing an enemy already so dangerous in the heart of their Spanish Empire, to undertake the more distant and arduous conquest of France. It is far more probable that the shock which their power sustained from the arms of Charles Martel in that disastrous expedition, the declining vigour of the Caliphate itself, and the dissensions among the Spanish Arabians, which immediately preceded its triple division in Asia, Africa, and Spain, all conspired to favour the silent and neglected growth of the Christian State in the Asturias: which in its origin could scarcely have sustained an open and regular struggle against the undivided force of the Saracen conquerors. We have little knowledge of the interual Germ of the condition of the North of Spain in that dark and trou- Christian blous era: but it was perhaps the same dissensions Kingdoms of the Moorish Governors, that cherished the first germs of two other free Christian States in the Pyrenean mountains, which afterwards swelled into the Kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre. The increase of the Asturian Alfonso I., State is more distinctly marked. After the interme- King of Asdiate rule of Favila, the sword or sceptre of Pelayo turias. descended to his son-in-law, Alfonso I., the real founder, perhaps, of the Asturian Monarchy; who, availing himself of the internal distractions of the Moors, broke A. D from his mountains into Gallicia, reconquered that 758. Province, and consolidated the strength and compact- Triple diviness of his Kingdom. It was during his reign that sion of the Spain, by the dismemberment of the great Saracen Caliphate. Empire, afforded the splendid seat for an independent AbdalrahCaliphate, and the revival of an Ommiadan dynasty in man, first Caliph of the West, under Abdalrahman: but at this epoch we Spain. may conveniently postpone both the Christian and A. D. Mahommedan Annals of the Peninsula, for a future consideration.* The revival of the Christian Monarchy, and the Arabian Annals of Spain from the conquest to the triple division of the Caliphate, must be gleaned from Roderic Toletan, Hist. Arab. c. x.—xviii. Chron. Alphonsi Regis, et Hib. Arab. Hisp, ub. suprà ; and Mariana, lib. vii. c. 1, 2. of Aragon and Na varre. A. D. 739. to 755. |