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Title: A Short History of Spain
Author: Mary Platt Parmele
Release Date: June 21, 2009 [EBook #29197]
Language: English
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those that are inconsistent within the document. An error in the Table
of Contents has been corrected from page 154 to page 156.]
A SHORT HISTORY OF
SPAIN
BY
MARY PLATT PARMELE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1906
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY
MARY PLATT PARMELE
COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1906, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
[Illustration: From the portrait by Titian.
Charles V.]
PREFACE.
In presenting this book to the public the author can only reiterate
what she has already said in works of a similar kind: that she has
tried to exclude the mass of confusing details which often make the
reading of history a dreary task; and to keep closely to those facts
which are vital to the unfolding of the narrative. This is done under
a strong conviction that the essential facts in history are those
which reveal and explain the development of a nation, rather than
the incidents, more or less entertaining, which have attended such
development. And also under another conviction: that a little,
thoroughly comprehended, is better than much imperfectly remembered
and understood.
M.P.P
NEW YORK. _June 15, 1898._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Ancient Iberia--The Basques--The Keltberians--The
Phenicians--Cadiz Founded, 1
CHAPTER II.
Struggle between Phenicians and Assyrians--Founding
of Carthage--Decline of Phenicia--Rise
of Roman Power--First Punic War, 9
CHAPTER III.
Hamilcar--Hannibal--Siege and Fall of Saguntum--Rome
Invades Spain--Scipio's Policy--Cadiz,
(Gades) Surrendered to the Romans--By What
Steps IBERIA Became SPAIN--Fall of Carthaginian
Power--How Spain Became a Roman
Province, 15
CHAPTER IV.
Sertorius--Story of the White Hind--Rome Fights
Her Own Battles on Spanish Soil--Battle of
Munda--Cæsar Declared Dictator--The Ides of
March--Octavius Augustus--Spain Latinized--Four
Hundred Years of Peace, 24
CHAPTER V.
Northern Races in the History of Civilization--Roman
Empire Expiring--Ataulfus--Attila and
the Huns--Theodoric--Evaric Completes Conquest
of Spanish Peninsula--Europe Teutonized--Difference
between Anglo-Saxon and
Latin Races, 30
CHAPTER VI.
Ulfilas--Arianism--The Spanish Language--Brunhilde--Leovigild--His
Son's Apostasy--Arianism
Ceases to be the Established Religion of Spain, 39
CHAPTER VII.
Toledo--Church of Santa Maria--Wamba, 45
CHAPTER VIII.
Decline of Visigoths--Roderick--Count Julian's
Treachery--Mahommedanism--Tarif--Prophecy
Found in the Enchanted Tower--Tarik--Roderick's
Defeat and Death--Moslem Empire Established in Spain, 50
CHAPTER IX.
Musa's Dream of European Conquest--Charles Martel--Characteristics
of Mahommedan Rule--Mission of the Saracen in Europe--The Germ
of a Christian Kingdom in the North of Spain, 58
CHAPTER X.
Pelayo and the Cave of Covadonga--Alfonso I.--Berbers
and Arabs at War on African Coast--War
Extends to Spain--The Omeyyad Khalifs
Superseded by the Abbasides--Abd-er-Rahman--Omeyyad
Dynasty Established at Cordova--Ineffectual
Attempt of the Abbasides to
Overthrow Abd-er-Rahman--Character of This Conqueror, 64
CHAPTER XI.
Charlemagne--Battle of Roncesvalles, 69
CHAPTER XII.
Conditions after Death of Abd-er-Rahman--Abd-er-Rahman
II.--Arab Refinements--Eulogius
and the Christian Martyrs--Abd-er-Rahman
III.--A Khalifate at Cordova--The Great
Mosque--The City of "The Fairest"--Death
of Abd-er-Rahman III., 72
CHAPTER XIII.
Rough Cradle of a Spanish Nationality in the
Asturias--Alfonso III. and His Hidalgos and
Dons--Guerrilla Warfare with Moors--Jealousies
and Strife between Christian Kingdoms--Civil
War--Almanzor--Ruin of Christian State
Seemed Imminent--Death of Almanzor--Berber
Revolt--Anarchy in Moorish State--A Khalif
Begging a Crust of Bread--Berbers Destroy Cordova--Library
Burned--City of "The Fairest"
a Ruin--Asturias--Leon and Castile United--Alfonso
VI.--The Cid--Triumph of Christians--Moors
Ask Aid of the Almoravides--Christians
Driven Back--Death of the Cid--A Dynasty of
the Almoravides--The Alhomades--The Great
Mahdi--Moorish People Become Subject to
Emperor of Morocco--His Designs upon
Europe--The Pope Proclaims a Crusade--Alhomades
Driven Out of Spain by Christians--Moorish
Kingdom Reduced to Province of Granada, 78
CHAPTER XIV.
European Conditions in Thirteenth Century--Visigoth
Kings Recover Their Land--Its
Changed Conditions--Effect of Arab Civilization
upon Spanish Nation--Fernando III.--Spain
Draws into Closer Companionship with
European States--Alfonso X.--Spain Becoming
Picturesque--The Bull-Fight--Beautiful Granada--The
Alhambra, 87
CHAPTER XV.
Perpetual Civil War between Spanish States--Castile
and Aragon Absorb the Others and in Conflict
for Supremacy--Pedro the Cruel--The
"Black Prince" His Champion against Aragon--John
of Gaunt--His Claim upon the Throne of
Castile--His Final Compromise--Political Conditions
Contrasted with Those of Other States, 94
CHAPTER XVI.
Death of Juan II.--Enrique IV.--Isabella--Her Marriage
with Ferdinand of Aragon--Isabella
Crowned Queen of Castile--Ferdinand, King of
Aragon--The Two Crowns United--Characteristics
of the Two Sovereigns--The Inquisition
Created--Jews Driven out of the Kingdom--Abdul-Hassan's
Defiance--Zahara--Family
Troubles at the Alhambra--Ayesha and Boabdil--Alhama
Captured by Ferdinand--Boabdil
Supplants His Father--Massacre of the Abencerrages--Granada
Besieged--Its Capitulation--Moorish
Rule Ended in Spain, 100
CHAPTER XVII.
Columbus and Isabella--Isabella's Private Griefs--Her
Death--Charles, King under a Regency--Charles
Elected Emperor of Germany--Spain
during His Reign--Cruelties in the East and
in the West--Vain Struggle with Protestantism--Abdication
and Death of Charles, 108
CHAPTER XVIII.
Philip II.--Union of Spain and Portugal--The Duke
of Alva in the Netherlands--War with England--Spanish
Armada Destroyed--Death of
Philip II.--Spain's Decline--Glory of the Name
"Castilian," 117
CHAPTER XIX.
Philip III.--Rebellion of the Moriscos--Last of the
Moors Conveyed to African Coast--Don Quixote--Philip
IV.--Louis XIV. Marries Spanish Infanta--A
Diminishing Kingdom--Carlos II.--First
Collision between Anglo-Saxon and
Spaniard in America--Close of Hapsburg Dynasty
in Spain, 125
CHAPTER XX.
New European Conditions--Louis XIV.--War
of the "Spanish Succession"--Marlborough
Checks Louis at Blenheim--Archduke Abandons
Sovereignty in Spain--Peace of Utrecht--Further
Dismemberment of Spain--Gibraltar
Passes to England--Bourbon Dynasty--Commences
with Philip V.--Ferdinand VI.--Carlos
III.--Expulsion of the Jesuits, 131
CHAPTER XXI.
A Dismantled Kingdom--Spanish-American Colonies--England
and France at War over American
Boundaries--Spain the Ally of France--Loss
of Some of Her West India Islands, and
Capture of Havana and Manila by British--Florida
Given in Exchange for Return of Conquered
Territory--Growing Irritation against
England--France Aids American Colonies in
War with England--Spain's Satisfaction at
Their Success--Its Effect in Peru--Revolution
in France--Rapid Rise of Napoleon--Carlos IV.
Removed and Joseph Bonaparte King--Spain
Joins Napoleon in War against England--Trafalgar--Arthur
Wellesley--Joseph Flees from His Kingdom, 137
CHAPTER XXII.
Liberal Sentiment Developing--Constitution of
1812--Ferdinand VI. and Reactionary Measures--Revolt
of all the Spanish-American
Colonies--The Holy Alliance--The Monroe
Doctrine--Revolution in Spain--Spain under
the Protectorate of the Holy Alliance--Ferdinand
Reinstated--Two Political Parties--Six
Spanish-American Colonies Freed, 144
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Salic Law and the Princess Isabella--The
Carlists--Regency of Christine--Isabella II.--Her
Expulsion from Spain--Amadeo--An Era
of Republicanism--Castelar--Alfonso XII. Recalled--His
Brief Reign and Death--Alfonso XIII., 150
CHAPTER XXIV.
Birth of an Insurgent Party in Cuba--Ten Years'
War--Impossible Reforms Promised--Revolution
Started by José Marti, 1895--Attitude of
the American Government--General Weyler's
Methods--Effect upon Sentiment in America--Destruction
of the Battle-Ship _Maine_--Verdict
of Court of Inquiry--War Declared between
Spain and America--Victories of Manila and in
Cuba--Terms of Peace--Marriage of Alfonso
XIII. and the Princess Ena, 154
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Charles V. _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Columbus at the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella 108
The Surrender of Breda 118
Philip IV. of Spain 126
Heroic Combat in the Pulpit of the Church of
St. Augustine, Saragossa, 1809 144
The Duke de la Torre sworn in as Regent before
the Cortes of 1869 152
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
CHAPTER I.
No name is more fraught with picturesque and romantic interest than
that of the "Spanish Peninsula."
After finishing this rare bit of handiwork nature seems to have thrown
up a great ragged wall, stretching from sea to sea, to protect it; and
the Pyrenees have stood for ages a frowning barrier, descending toward
France on the northern side from gradually decreasing heights--but on
the Spanish side in wild disorder, plunging down through steep chasms,
ravines, and precipices--with sharp cliffs towering thousands of feet
skyward, which better than standing armies protect the sunny plains
below.
But the "Spanish Peninsula," at the time we are about to consider,
was neither "Spanish" nor was it a "peninsula." At the dawn of history
this sunny corner of Europe was known as _Iberia_, and its people as
_Iberians_.
Time has effaced all positive knowledge of this aboriginal race; but
they are believed to have come from the south, and to have been allied
to the Libyans, who inhabited the northern coast of Africa. In fact,
_Iberi_ in the Libyan tongue meant _freeman_; and _Berber_, apparently
derived from that word, was the term by which all of these western
peoples were known to the Ancient Egyptians.
But it is suspected that the Iberians found it an easy matter to flow
into the land south of the Pyrenees, and that they needed no boats for
the transit. There has always existed a tradition of the joining
of the two continents, and now it is believed by geologists that
an isthmus once really stretched across to the African coast at
the narrowest point of the Straits, at a time when the waters of a
Mediterranean gulf, and the waters flowing over the sands of Sahara,
together found their outlet in the Indian Ocean.
There is also a tradition that the adventurous Phenicians, who are
known to have been in Iberia as early as 1300 B.C., cut a canal
through the narrow strip of land, and then built a bridge across
the canal. But a bridge was a frail link by which to hold the mighty
continents together. The Atlantic, glad of such an entrance to the
great gulf beyond, must have rushed impetuously through, gradually
widening the opening, and (may have) thus permanently severed Europe
and Africa; drained the Sahara dry; transformed the Mediterranean gulf
into a Mediterranean Sea; and created a "Spanish Peninsula."
How long this fair Peninsula was the undisturbed home of the Iberians
no one knows. Behind the rocky ramparts of the Pyrenees they may have
remained for centuries unconscious of the Aryan torrent which was
flooding Western Europe as far as the British Isles. Nothing has been
discovered by which we may reconstruct this prehistoric people and
(perhaps) civilization. But their physical characteristics we are
enabled to guess; for just as we find in Cornwall, England, lingering
traces of the ancient Britons, so in the mountain fastnesses of
northern Spain linger the _Basques_, who are by many supposed to be
the last survivors of that mysterious primitive race.
The language of the Basques bears no resemblance to any of the
Indo-European, nor indeed to any known tongue. It is so difficult, so
intricate in construction, that only those who learn it in infancy can
ever master it. It is said that, in Basque, "you spell Solomon, and
pronounce it Nebuchadnezzar." Its antiquity is so great that one
legend calls it the "language of the angels," and another says that
_Tubal_ brought it to Spain before the lingual disaster at Babel! And
still another relates that the devil once tried to learn it, but that,
after studying it for seven years and learning only three words, he
gave it up in despair.
A language which, without literature, can so resist change, can so
persist unmodified by another tongue spoken all around and about it,
must have great antiquity; and there is every reason to believe
that the Basque is a survival of the tongue spoken by the primitive
Iberians, before the Kelts began to flow over and around the
Pyrennees; and also that the physical characteristics of this people
are the same as those of their ancient progenitors; small-framed,
dark, with a faint suggestion of the Semitic in their swarthy faces.
We cannot say when it occurred, but at last the powerful, warlike
Kelts had surmounted the barrier and were mingled with this non-Aryan
people, and the resulting race thus formed was known to antiquity as
the _Keltiberians_.
It is probable that the rugged Kelt easily absorbed the race of more
delicate type, and made it, in religion and customs, not unlike the
Keltic Aryan in Gaul. But the physical characteristics of the other
and primitive race are indelibly stamped upon the Spanish people; and
it is probably to the Iberian strain in the blood that may be traced
the small, dark type of men which largely prevails in Spain, and to
some extent also in central and southern France.
But the Keltiberians were Keltic in their religion. There are now in
Spain the usual monuments found wherever Druid worship prevailed. Huge
blocks of stone, especially in Cantabria and Lusitania (Portugal),
standing alone or in circles, tell the story of Druidical rites, and
of the worship of the ocean, the wind, and the thunder, and of the
placating of the powers of nature by human sacrifices.
The mingling of the Kelts and the Iberians in varying proportions in
different parts of Spain, and in some places (as among the Basques)
their mingling not at all, produced that diversity of traits which
distinguished the _Asturians_ in the mountain gorges from their
neighbors the _Cantabrians_, and both these from the _Catalonians_ in
the northeast and the _Gallicians_ on the northwest coast, and from
the _Lusitanians_, where now is Portugal; and still more distinguished
the _Basques_, in the rocky ravines of the Pyrenees, from each and
all of the others. And yet these unlike members of one family were
collectively known as Keltiberians.
While this race--hardy, temperate, brave, and superstitious--was
leading its primitive life upon the Iberian peninsula, while they
were shooting arrows at the sky to threaten the thunder, drawing their
swords against the rising tide, and prizing iron more dearly than
their abundant gold and silver, because they could hammer it into
hooks, and swords, and spears--there had long existed in the East a
group of wonderful civilizations: the Egyptian, hoary with age and
steeped in wisdom and in wickedness; the _Chaldeans_, who, with
"looks commercing with the skies," were the fathers of astronomy;
the _Assyrians_ and _Babylonians_, with their wonderful cities of
_Nineveh_ and _Babylon_, and the Phenicians, with their no less famous
cities of _Sidon_ and _Tyre_. Sidon, which was the more ancient of
these two, is said to have been founded by Sidon, the son of Canaan,
who was the great-grandson of Noah.
Of all these nations it was the Phenicians who were the most
adventurous. They were a Semitic people, Syrian in blood, and their
home was a narrow strip of coast on the east of the Mediterranean,
where a group of free cities was joined into a confederacy held
together by a strong national spirit.
Of these cities Sidon was once the head, but in time Tyre eclipsed it
in splendor, and writers, sacred and profane, have sung her glories.
These Phenicians had a genius for commerce and trade. They scented a
bargain from afar, and knew how to exchange "their broidered work, and
fine linen, and coral, and agate" (I Kings xxvii. 16), their glassware
and their wonderful cloths dyed in Tyrian scarlet and purple, for the
spices and jewels of the East, and for the gold and silver and the
ivory and the ebony of the south and west.
Their ships were coursing the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and
bringing back treasures from India and searching every inlet in the
Mediterranean, and finally, either through the canal they are said
to have cut, or the straits it had made, they sailed as far as the
British Isles and brought back tin.
But the gold and silver of the Iberian Peninsula were more alluring
than the spices of India or the tin of Britain. So upon the Spanish
coast they made permanent settlements and built cities. As early as
1100 B.C. they had founded beyond the "Pillars of Hercules," the City
of _Gades_ (Cadiz), a walled and fortified town, and had taught
the Keltiberians how to open and work their gold and silver mines
systematically; and in exchange they brought an old civilization,
with new luxuries, new ideas and customs into the lives of the simple
people.
But they bestowed something far beyond this--something more enriching
than silver and gold,--an alphabet,--and it is to the Phenicians that
we are indebted for the alphabet now in use throughout the civilized
world.
CHAPTER II.
Such an extension of power, and the acquisition of sources of wealth
so boundless, excited the envy of other nations.
The Greeks are said to have been in the Iberian peninsula long before
the fall of Troy, where they came with a fleet from Zante, in the
Ionian Sea, and in memory of that place, called the city they founded
Zacynthus, which name in time became _Saguntum_. Now they sent more
expeditions and founded more cities on the Spanish coast; and the
Babylonians, and the Assyrians, and, at a later time, the Persians and
the Greeks, all took up arms against these insatiate traders.
Phenician supremacy was not easily maintained with so many jealous
rivals in the field, and it was rudely shaken in 850 B.C., when
"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold."
and the Phenician power was partially broken at its source in the
East.
It is with thrilling interest that we read Isaiah's prophecy of the
destruction of Tyre, which was written at this very time. For the
Phenicians were the _Canaanites_ of Bible history, and "Hiram King of
Tyre" was their king; and his "navy," which, together with Solomon's
"came once in three years from _Tarshish_," was their navy; and
_Tarshish_ was none other than _Tartessus_, their own province, just
beyond Gibraltar on the Spanish coast. Nor is it at all improbable
that Spanish gold was used to adorn the temple which the great Solomon
was building. (I Kings ix., x.) Shakspere, who says all things
better than anyone else, makes Othello find in the fatal handkerchief
"confirmation strong as proofs from holy writ." Where can be found
"confirmation" stronger than these "proofs from holy writ"? And where
a more magnificent picture of the luxury, the sumptuous Oriental
splendor of this nation at that period, than in Ezekiel, chapters
xxvii., xxviii.? What an eloquent apostrophe to Tyre--"thou that art
situate at the entry of the sea, a merchant of the people, for _many
isles_."--"With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast
gotten thee riches," and, "by thy great wisdom and by thy _traffick_
hast thou increased, and thine heart is lifted up." And then follows
the terrible arraignment--"because of the iniquity of thy _traffick_."
And then the final prediction of ruin--"I will bring thee to ashes
upon the earth"; "thou shalt be a terror, and _never_ shalt thou be
any more." Where in any literature can we find such lurid splendor
of description, and such a powerful appeal to the imagination of the
reader! And where could the student of history find a more graphic and
accurate picture of a vanished civilization!
In 850 B.C., the same year in which the Assyrians partly subjugated
the Phenicians in the East, the city of Carthage was founded upon the
north coast of Africa, and there commenced a movement, with that city
as its center, which drew together all their scattered possessions
into a Punic confederacy. This was composed of the islands of
Sardinia, Corsica, part of Sicily, the Balearic Isles, and the cities
and colonies upon the Spanish Peninsula and African coast. As the
power of this confederacy expands, the name Phenician passes away and
that of _Carthaginian_ takes its place in history.
Carthage became a mighty city, and controlled with a strong hand
the scattered empire which had been planted by the Syrian tradesmen.
Carthaginian merchants and miners were in Tartessus, and were planting
cities and colonies throughout the peninsula, and a torrent of
Carthaginian life was thus pouring into Spain for many hundred years,
and the blood of the two races must have freely mingled.
There are memorials of this time now existing, not only in Phenician
coins, medals, and ruins, but in the names of the cities. _Barcelona_,
named after the powerful family of Barca in Carthage, to which
Hannibal belonged. _Carthagena_, a memorial of Carthage, which
meant "the city"; and even _Cordova_ is traced to its primitive
form,--Kartah-duba,--meaning "an important city." While _Isabella_,
the name most famous in Spanish annals, has a still greater antiquity;
and was none other than Jezebel--after the beautiful daughter of the
King of Sidon (the "_Zidoneans_"), who married Ahab, and lured him to
his downfall. And we are told that this wicked siren whose dreadful
fate Elijah foretold, was cousin to Dido, she who Virgil tells us
"wept in silence" for the faithless Æneas. With what a strange thrill
do we find these threads of association between history sacred and
profane, and both mingled with the modern history of Spain.
But Phenicia, for the "iniquity of her traffick," was doomed. The
roots of this old Asiatic tree had been slowly and surely perishing,
while her branches in the West were expanding. In the year 332 B.C.
the siege and destruction of Tyre, predicted five hundred years before
by Isaiah, was accomplished by Alexander the Great, and the words
of the prophet found their complete fulfillment--that the people of
Tarshish should find no city, no port, no welcome, when they came back
to Syria!
But on the northern coast of the Mediterranean there was another power
which was waxing, while the Carthaginian was waning. The occupation of
the young Roman Republic was not trade, but conquest. A bitter enmity
existed between the two nations. Rome was determined to break this
grasping old Asiatic confederacy and to drive it out of Europe. The
Spanish Peninsula she knew little about, but the rich islands near her
own coast--they must be hers.
When, after the first Punic war (264-241 B.C.), the Carthaginians saw
Sardinia and Sicily torn from them, Hamilcar, their great general,
determined upon a plan of vengeance which should make of Italy a Punic
province. His people were strong upon the sea, but for this war of
invasion they must have an army, too. So he conceived the idea of
making Spain the basis of his military operations, and recruiting an
immense army from the Iberian Peninsula.
CHAPTER III.
The Carthaginian occupation of Spain had not extended much beyond the
coast, and had been rather in the nature of a commercial alliance with
a few cities. Now Hamilcar determined, by placating, and by bribes,
and if necessary by force, to take possession of the Peninsula for
his own purposes, and to make of the people a Punic nation under the
complete dominion of Carthage. So his first task was to win, or to
subdue, the Keltiberians. He built the city of New Carthage (now
Carthagena), he showed the people how to develop their immense
resources, and by promises of increased prosperity won the confidence
and sympathy of the nation, and soon had a population of millions from
which to recruit its army.
When his son Hannibal was nine years old, at his father's bidding he
placed his hand upon the altar and swore eternal enmity to Rome. The
fidelity of the boy to his oath made a great deal of history. He took
up the task when his father laid it down, inaugurated the second Punic
war (218-201 B.C.); and for forty years carried on one of the most
desperate struggles the world has ever seen; the hoary East in
struggle with the young West.
Saguntum was that ancient city in Valencia which was said to have
been founded by the Greeks long before Homer sang of Troy, or, indeed,
before Helen brought ruin upon that city. At all events its antiquity
was greater even than that of the Phenician cities in Spain, and
after being long forgotten by the Greeks it had drifted under
Roman protection. It was the only spot in Spain which acknowledged
allegiance to Rome; and for that reason was marked for destruction as
an act of defiance.
The Saguntines sent an embassy to Rome. These men made a pitiful and
passionate appeal in the Senate Chamber: "Romans, allies, friends!
help! help! Hannibal is at the gates of our city. Hannibal, the sworn
enemy of Rome. Hannibal the terrible. Hannibal who fears not the gods,
neither keeps faith with men. ["Punic faith" was a byword.] O Romans,
fathers, friends! help while there is yet time."
But they found they had a "protector" who did not protect. The
senators sent an embassy to treat with Hannibal, but no soldiers. So,
with desperate courage, the Saguntines defended their beleaguered city
for weeks, hurling javelins, thrusting their lances, and beating
down the besiegers from the walls. They had no repeating rifles nor
dynamite guns, but they had the terrible _falaric_, a shaft of fir
with an iron head a yard long, at the point of which was a mass of
burning tow, which had been dipped in pitch. When a breach was made
in the walls, the inflowing army would be met by a rain of this deadly
falaric, which was hurled with telling power and precision. Then, in
the short interval of rest this gave them, men, women, and children
swiftly repaired the broken walls before the next assault.
But at last the resourceful Hannibal abandoned his battering rams, and
with pickaxes undermined the wall, which fell with a crash. When asked
to surrender, the chief men of the city kindled a great fire in the
market-place, into which they then threw all the silver and gold in
the treasury, their own gold and silver and garments and furniture,
and then cast themselves headlong into the flames. This was their
answer.
Saguntum, which for more than a thousand years had looked from its
elevation out upon the sea, was no more, and its destruction was
one of the thrilling tragedies of ancient history. On its site there
exists to-day a town called _Mur Viedro_ (old walls), and these old
walls are the last vestige of ancient Saguntum.
In order to understand the indifference of Rome to the Spanish
Peninsula at this time, it must be remembered that Spain was then
the uttermost verge of the known world, beyond which was only a dread
waste of waters and of mystery. To the people of Tyre and of Greece,
the twin "Pillars of Hercules" had marked the limit beyond which there
was nothing; and those two columns, Gibraltar and Ceuta, with the
legend _ne plus ultra_ entwined about them, still survive, as a
symbol, in the arms of Spain and upon the Spanish coins; and what is
still more interesting to Americans, in the familiar mark ($) which
represents a dollar. (The English name for the Spanish _peso_ is
_pillar-dollar_.)
Now Rome was aroused from its apathy. It sent an army into Spain, led
by Scipio the Elder, known as Scipio Africanus. When he fell, his son,
only twenty-four years old, stood up in the Roman Forum and offered to
fill the undesired post; and, in 210 B.C., Scipio "the Younger"--and
the greater--took the command--as Livy eloquently says--"between the
tombs of his father and his uncle", who had both perished in Spain
within a month.
The chief feature of Scipio's policy was, while he was defeating
Hannibal in battles, to be undermining him with his native allies; and
to make that people realize to what hard taskmasters they had bound
themselves; and by his own manliness and courtesy and justice to win
them to his side.
He marched his army swiftly and unexpectedly upon New Carthage, the
capital and center of the whole Carthaginian movement, sent his fleet
to blockade the city, and planned his moves with such precision that
the fleet for the blockade and the army for the siege arrived before
the city on the same day.
Taken entirely by surprise. New Carthage was captured without a siege.
Not one of the inhabitants was spared, and spoil of fabulous amounts
fell to the victors.
It seems like a fairy tale--or like the story of Mexico and Peru
1800 years later--to read of 276 golden bowls which were brought to
Scipio's tent, countless vessels of silver, and 18 tons of coined and
wrought silver.
But the richest part of the prize was the 750 Spanish hostages--high
in rank of course--whom the various tribes had given in pledge of
their fidelity to Carthage. Now Scipio held these pledges, and they
were a menace and a promise. They were Roman slaves, but he could by
kindness, and by holding out the hope of emancipation, placate and
further bind to him the native people.
By an exercise of tact and clemency Scipio gained such an ascendancy
over the inhabitants, and so moved were they by this unexpected
generosity and kindness, that many would gladly have made him their
king.
But he seems to have been the "noblest Roman of them all," and when
saluted as king on one occasion he said: "Never call me king. Other
nations may revere that name, but no Roman can endure it. My soldiers
have given me a more honorable title--that of general."
Such nobility, such a display of Roman virtue, was a revelation to
these barbarians; and they felt the grandeur of the words, though they
could not quite understand them. They were won to the cause of Rome,
and formed loyal alliances with Scipio which they never broke.
In the year 206 B.C. Gades (Cadiz), the last stronghold, was
surrendered to the Romans, and the entire Spanish Peninsula had been
wrenched from the Carthaginians.
_Iberia_ was changed to _Hispania_, and fifteen years later the whole
of the Peninsula was organized into a Roman province, thenceforth
known in history, not as _Iberia_, nor yet _Hispania_; but _Spain_,
and its people as _Spaniards_.
At the end of the third Punic war (149-146 B.C.), the ruin of the
Carthaginians was complete. Hannibal had died a fugitive and a
suicide. His nation had not a single ship upon the seas, nor a foot
of territory upon the earth, and the great city of Carthage was plowed
and sowed with salt. Rome had been used by Fate to fulfill her stern
decree--"_Delenda est Carthago_."
It was really only a limited portion of the Peninsula; a fringe
of provinces upon the south and east coast, which had been under
Carthaginian and now acknowledged Roman dominion. Beyond these the
Keltiberian tribes in the center formed a sort of confederation, and
consented to certain alliances with the Romans; while beyond them,
intrenched in their own impregnable mountain fastnesses, were brave,
warlike, independent tribes, which had never known anything but
freedom, whose names even, Rome had not yet heard. The stern virtue
and nobility of Scipio proved a delusive promise. Rome had not an easy
task, and other and brutal methods were to be employed in subduing
stubborn tribes and making of the whole a Latin nation. In one of
the defiles of the Pyrenees there may now be seen the ruins of
fortifications built by Cato the Elder, not long after Scipio, which
show how early those free people in the north were made to feel the
iron heel of the master and to learn their lesson of submission.
The century which followed Scipio's conquest was one of dire
experience for Spain. A Roman army was trampling out every vestige of
freedom in provinces which had known nothing else; and more than that,
Roman diplomacy was making of their new possession a fighting ground
for the civil war which was then raging at Rome; and partisans of
Marius and of Sylla were using and slaughtering the native tribes in
their own desperate struggle. Roman rule was arrogant and oppressive,
Roman governors cruel, arbitrary, and rapacious, and the boasted
"Roman virtue" seemed to have been left in Rome, when treaties were
made only to be violated at pleasure.
CHAPTER IV.
As nature delights in adorning the crevices of crumbling ruins with
mosses and graceful lichens, so literature has busied itself with
these historic ruins; and Cervantes has made the siege of Numantia
(134 B.C.)--more terrible even than that of Saguntum--the subject of a
poem, in which he depicts the horrors of the famine.
Lira, the heroine, answers her ardent lover Mirando in high-flown
Spanish phrase, which, when summed up in plain English prose, means
that she cannot listen to his wooing, because she is so hungry--which,
in view of the fact that she has not tasted food for weeks, seems to
us not surprising!
Sertorius, whose story is told by Plutarch, affords another
picturesque subject for Corneille in one of his most famous tragedies.
This Roman was an adherent of Marius in the long struggle with Sylla,
and while upholding his cause in Spain he won to his side the people
of Lusitania (Portugal), who made him their ruler, and helped him to
fight the great army of the opposing Roman faction, part of which was
led by Pompey.
Mithridates, in Asia Minor, was also in conflict with Sylla, and sent
an embassy to Sertorius which led to a league between the two for
mutual aid, and for the defense of the cause of Marius. But senators
of his own party became jealous of the great elevation of Sertorius,
and conspired to assassinate him at a feast to which he was invited.
So ended (72 B.C.) one of the most picturesque characters and
interesting episodes in the difficult march of barbarous Spain toward
enlightenment and civilization.
Sertorius seems to have been a great administrator as well as fighter,
and must also be counted one of the civilizers of Spain. He founded a
school at Osca,--now Huesca,--where he had Roman and Greek masters for
the Spanish youth. And it is interesting to learn that there is
to-day at that city a university which bears the title "University of
Sertorius."
But it is not the valor nor the sagacity of Sertorius which made him
the favorite of poets; but the story of the White Hind, which he made
to serve him so ingeniously in establishing his authority with the
Lusitanians.
A milk-white fawn, on account of its rarity, was given him by
a peasant. He tamed her, and she became his constant companion,
unaffrighted even in the tumult of battle. He saw that the people
began to invest the little animal with supernatural qualities; so,
finally, he confided to them that she was sent to him by the Goddess
Diana, who spoke to him through her, and revealed important secrets.
Such is the story which Corneille and writers in other lands have
found so fascinating, and which an English author has made the subject
of his poem "The White Hind of Sertorius."
Another Roman civil war, more pregnant of great results, was to be
fought out in Spain. Julius Cæsar's conspiracy against the Roman
Republic, and his desperate fight with Pompey for the dictatorship,
long drenched Spanish soil with blood, and had its final culmination
(after Pompey's tragic death in Egypt) in Cæsar's victory over
Pompey's sons at Munda, in Spain, 45 B.C.
With this event, the military triumphs and the intrigues of Cæsar
had accomplished his purpose. He was declared _Imperator_, perpetual
Dictator of Rome, and religious sacrifices were decreed to him as if
he were a god. Unconscious of the chasm which was yawning at his feet
he haughtily accepted the honors and adulation of men who were at that
very moment conspiring for his death. On the fatal "Ides of March"
(44 B.C.) he was stricken in the Senate Chamber by the hands of his
friends, and the great Cæsar lay dead at the feet of Pompey's statue.
The world had reached a supreme crisis in its existence. Two
events--the most momentous it has ever known--were at hand: the birth
of a Roman Empire, which was to perish in a few centuries, after a
life of amazing splendor; and the birth of a spiritual kingdom, which
would never die!
Cæsar's nephew, Octavius Augustus, by gradual approaches reached
the goal toward which no doubt his greater uncle was moving. After
defeating Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (42 B.C.) and then after
destroying his only competitor, Antony, at Actium (31 B.C.) he assumed
the imperial purple under the name of Augustus. The title sounded
harmless, but its wearer had founded the "Roman Empire."
At last there was peace. Spain was pacified, and only here and there
did she struggle in the grasp of the Romans. Augustus, to make sure of
the permanence of this pacification, himself went to the Peninsula.
He built cities in the plains, where he compelled the stubborn
mountaineers to reside, and established military colonies in the
places they had occupied.
Saragossa was one of these cities in the plains, and its name was
"Cæsar Augusta," and many others have wandered quite as far from their
original names, which may, however, still be traced.
It is said that "the annals of the happy are brief." Let us hope
that poor Spain, so long harried by fate, was happy in the next four
hundred years, for her story can be briefly told. She seemed to have
settled into a state of eternal peace. It was a period not of external
events, but of a process--an internal process of assimilation. Spain,
in every department of its life, was becoming Latinized.
A people of rare intellectual activity had been united to the life
of Rome at the moment of her greatest intellectual elevation. Was
it strange that no Roman province ever produced so long a list of
historians, poets, philosophers, as did Southern Spain after the
Augustan conquest? When we read the list of great Roman authors who
were born in Spain--the three Senecas, one of whom, the author and
wit, opened his veins at the command of Nero (65 A.D.), and another,
the Gallio of the book of Acts; also Lucan, Martial, and Quintilian,
when we read these names native to Spain, it seems as if the source
of inspiration had removed from the banks of the Tiber to the banks of
the Guadalquivir.
Nowhere can the student of Roman antiquities find a richer field
than in Spain. And not only that, there is to-day in the manners and
customs, and in the habits of the peasantry, a pervading atmosphere of
the classic land which adopted them, which all that has occurred since
has been powerless to efface, while the language of Spain is Latin
to its core. Nor is this strange when we reflect that they were under
this powerful influence for a period as long as from Christopher
Columbus to the Spanish-American War!
CHAPTER V.
In the history of nations there is one fact which again and again with
startling uniformity repeats itself. The rough, strong races from the
north menace, and at last rudely dominate more highly civilized
but less hardy races at the South, to the ultimate benefit of both,
although with much present discomfort to the conquered race!
In Greece it was first the rude Hellenes who overran the Pelasgians.
And again, long after that, there was another descent of fierce
northern barbarians,--the Dorians from Epirus,--who, when they took
possession of the Peloponnesus and became the _Spartans_, infused that
vigorous strain without which the history of Greece might have been a
very tame affair. In the British Isles it was the Picts and Scots, who
would have done the same thing with England, perhaps, if the Angles
and Saxons had not come to the rescue, while Spain had her own Picts
and Scots in the mountain tribes of the Pyrenees. But in the fifth
century there was the most stupendous illustration of this tendency,
when all of Southern Europe was at last inundated by that northern
deluge, and the effete Roman Empire was effaced.
The process had been a gradual one; had commenced, in fact, two
centuries before the overthrow of the Roman Republic. But not
until the fourth century, after the wicked old empire had espoused
Christianity, did it become obvious that its foundations were
undermined by this flood of barbarians. In 410 A.D., when the
West-Goths, under Alaric, entered and sacked Rome, her power was
broken. The roots no longer nourished the distant extremities in
Britain and Gaul, and it was only a question of time when these, too,
should succumb to the inflowing tide.
The Ostro-Goths--or East-Goths--in Northern Italy, and the
Visigoths--or West-Goths--in Gaul, were setting up kingdoms of their
own, under a Roman protectorate. The long period of peace in Spain was
broken. The Pyrenees, with their warlike tribes, defended her for a
time; but the Suevi and the Vandals--the latter a companion tribe of
the Goths--had found an easier entrance by the sea on the east. They
flowed down toward the south, and from thence across to the northern
coast of Africa, which they colonized, leaving a memorial in Spain,
in the lovely province of Andalusia, which was named after
them--_Vandalusia_. But before the sacking of Rome a wave of the
Gothic invasion had overflowed the Pyrenees, and Northern Spain had
become a part of the Gothic kingdom in Gaul, with the city of Toulouse
as its head.
A century of contact with Roman civilization had wrought great changes
in this conquering race. They were untamed in strength, but realized
the value of the civilities of life, and of intellectual superiority;
and even strove to acquire some of the arts and accomplishments of the
race they were invading. They were not yet acknowledged entire masters
of Gaul and northern Spain. On condition of military service they had
undisputed possession of their territory, with their own king,
laws, and customs, but were nominally subjects of the Roman Emperor,
Honorius.
Their attitude toward the Romans at this period cannot better be told
than in the words of Ataulf himself (or Ataulfus, or Adolphus), whose
interesting story will be briefly related. He says:
"It was my first wish to destroy the Roman name and erect in its place
a Gothic Empire, taking to myself the place and the powers of Cæsar
Augustus. But when experience taught me that the untamable barbarism
of the Goths would not suffer them to live under the sway of law, and
that the abolition of the institutions on which the state rested would
involve the ruin of the state itself, I chose instead the glory
of renewing and maintaining by Gothic strength the fame of Rome;
preferring to go down to posterity as the restorer of that Roman power
which it was beyond my power to replace."
These are not the words of a barbarian; although by the corrupt and
courtly nobles in Rome he was considered one; but no doubt he towered
far above the barbarous host whom he helped to lead into Rome in the
year 410 A.D.
Ataulf was the brother-in-law of Alaric, and succeeded that great
leader in authority after his death (410 A.D.).
At the time of the sacking of Rome this Gothic prince fell in love
with Placidia, the sister of the Emperor Honorius; and after the
fashion of his people, carried her away as his captive; not an
unwilling one, we suspect, for we learn of her great devotion to her
brave, strong wooer, with blond hair and blue eyes. Ataulf took his
fair prize to the city of Narbonne in southern France, and made
her his Queen. But when Constantius, a disappointed Roman lover of
Placidia's, instigated Honorius to send an army against him and his
Goths, he withdrew into Spain, and established his court with its rude
splendor in the ancient city of Barcelona.
He seems to have had not an easy task between the desire to please his
haughty Roman bride and, at the same time, to repel the charge of his
people that he was becoming effeminate and Romanized; and, finally, so
jealous did they become of her influence that Ataulf was assassinated
in the presence of his wife, all his children butchered, and the proud
Placidia compelled to walk barefoot through the streets of Barcelona.
Constantius, the faithful Roman lover, came with an army and carried
back to Rome the royal widow, who married him and became the mother of
Valentinian III., who succeeded his uncle Honorius as Emperor of Rome
in 425 A.D., under the regency of Placidia during his infancy.
This romance, lying at the very root of a Gothic dynasty in Spain,
marks the earliest beginnings of a line of Visigoth kings. Ataulf's
successor removed his court to Toulouse in France, and Spain for many
years remained only an outlying province of the Gothic kingdom; her
turbulent northern tribes refusing to accept or to mingle with the
strange intruders. When driven by the Romans from their mountain
fastnesses the Basques, many of them, were at that time dispersed
through southern and central France; which accounts for the presence
of that race in France, before alluded to.
In the second half of the fifth century Attila, "the Scourge of God,"
swept down upon Europe with his Huns,--mysterious, terrible, as a fire
out of heaven, and more like an army of demons than men,--destroying
city after city, and driving the people before them, until they came
to Orléans. There they met the combined Roman and Gothic armies.
Theodoric, the Visigoth king, was killed on the battlefield. But to
him, and to the Roman general Ætius, belongs the glory of the defeat
of the Huns (451 A.D.).
It was Evaric, the son of this Theodoric, who finally completed the
conquest of the Spanish Peninsula, and with him really commences the
line of Visigoth kings in Spain, and the conversion of that country
into a Gothic empire,[A] entirely independent of Rome.
The German _Franks_, under Clovis, established their kingdom in
Gaul 481 A.D. The _Angles_ and _Saxons_ in 446 A.D. did the same in
Britain. The _Ostrogoths_ had their own kingdom in northern Italy and
southern Gaul (Burgundy). So, with the _Visigoths_ ruling in Spain,
the "northern deluge" had in the fifth century practically submerged
the whole of Europe, and above its dark waters showed only the somber
wreck of a Roman empire.
From this fusing of Roman and Teutonic races there were to arise two
types of civilization, utterly different in kind, the _Anglo-Saxon_
and the _Latin_. In one the prevailing element, after the fusing was
complete, was to be the Teutonic; in the other, the Roman. Herein lies
the difference between these two great divisions of the human family,
and this is the germinal fact in the war raging to-day between Spain
and the United States. It is a difference created not by the mastery
of arms, but by the more efficient mastery of ideas.
When the Angles and Saxons conquered Britain, after a Roman occupation
of over three hundred years, they swept it clean of Roman laws,
literature, and civilization. Untamed pagan barbarians though they
were, they had fine instincts and simple ideals of society and
government, and they cast out the corrupt old empire, root and branch.
The Visigoths in Spain, more enlightened than they, already
Christianized, and, perhaps, even superior in intelligence, were
content in the words of Ataulf--"to renew and maintain by Gothic
strength the fame of Rome." So they built upon the ruins of decaying
institutions of a corrupt civilization, a kingdom which flourished
with the enormous vitality drawn from the conquering race, which race
was in turn conquered by Roman ideals.
So, in the conflict now existing between Spain and the United States,
we see the Spaniard, the child of the Romans; valorous, picturesque,
cruel, versed in strategic arts, and with a savor of archaic
wickedness which belongs to a corrupt old age. In the American we see
the child of the simple Angles and Saxons, no less brave, but just,
and with an enthusiasm and confiding integrity which seems to endow
him with an imperishable youth.
[Footnote A: The famous Gothic code established by him still linger in
much of Spanish jurisprudence.]
CHAPTER VI.
The story of Ulfilas, who Christianized the pagan Goths in the last
half of the fourth century, is really the first chapter not alone
in the history of Gothic civilization but in that of the German and
English literatures; which, with their vast riches, had their origin
in the strange achievement of Ulfilas. He had, while a boy, been
captured by some Goths off the coast of Asia Minor, and was called by
them "_Wulf-ilas_" (little wolf). In his desire to translate the Bible
to his captors Wulf-ilas reduced the Gothic language to writing. He
had first to create an alphabet; taking twenty-two Roman letters, and
inventing two more: the letter _w_, and still another for _th_. So
while, after Constantine, the Christian religion was being adopted by
the Roman Empire, and while its simple dogmas were being discussed and
refined into a complicated and intricate system by men versed in
Greek philosophy, and then formulated by minds trained in logic and
rhetoric, the same religion was being spelled out in simple fashion
by the Goths in central Europe from the book translated for them by
Ulfilas.
All they found was that Jesus Christ was the beloved son of God and
the Saviour of the world; that he was the long-promised Messiah, and
to believe in him and to follow his teachings was salvation. They knew
nothing of the Trinity nor of any theologic subtleties, and this was
the simple faith which the Goths carried with them into the lands they
conquered.
The Romans, who had spent three centuries in burning Christians and
trying to obliterate the religion of Christ, were now its jealous
guardians. They considered this "Arianism," as it was called,
a blasphemous heresy, so shocking that they refused to call it
Christianity at all. The history of the first century of the Gothic
kingdom in Spain was therefore mainly that of the deadly strife
between Arianism and Catholicism, or orthodoxy. The Goths could not
discuss, for they were utterly unable to understand even the terms
under discussion; but they could fight and lay down their lives for
the faith which had done so much for them; and this they did freely
and fiercely.
So the simple Gothic people were bewildered by finding themselves
in the presence of a Christianity incomprehensible to them; a
complicated, highly organized social order, equally incomprehensible;
and a science and a literature of which they knew nothing. They might
struggle for a while against this tide of superiority, but one by one
they entered the fascinating portals of learning and of art, accepted
the dogmas of learned prelates, and a few generations were sufficient
to make them meek disciples of the older civilization.
The Spanish language fairly illustrates the result from this
incongruous mingling of Roman and Gothic. It is said to be a language
of Latin roots with a Teutonic grammar.
The Goths laid rough hands on the speech they consented to use, and
the smooth, sonorous Latin was strangely broken and mixed with Gothic
words and idioms; yet it became one of the most copious, flexible,
and picturesque of languages, with a literature marvelously rich and
beautiful.
In precisely the same way was the classic old ruin of a Roman state
re-enforced with a rough Gothic framework, and after centuries have
hidden the joints and the scars with mosses and verdure, we have a
picturesque and beautiful Spain!
But barbarous kings were fighting other things besides heresy. There
were rebellions to put down; there were remnants of Sueves and of
Roman power to drive out, and there were always the fierce mountain
tribes who never mingled with any conquerors, nor had ever surrendered
to anything but the Catholic faith.
There were intermarriages between the three Gothic kingdoms, in
Burgundy, Gaul, and Spain, and the history of some of these royal
families shows what wild passions still raged among the Goths, and
what atrocities were strangely mingled with ambitious projects and
religion.
Athanagild, one of the Visigoth kings, gave his daughter Brunhilde in
marriage to the King of the Franks in Gaul. The story of this terrible
Queen, stained with every crime, and accused of the death of no less
than ten kings, comes to a fitting end when, we are told, that in
her wicked old age she was tied to the tail of an unbroken horse and
dragged over the stones of Paris (600 A.D.).
At this time Leovigild (570-587), the Visigoth King, was ruling Spain
with a strong hand. He had assumed more splendor than any of his
predecessors. He had erected a magnificent throne in his palace at
Toledo, and his head, wearing the royal diadem, was placed on Spanish
coins, which may still be seen. A daughter of the terrible Brunhilde,
the Princess Ingunda, came over from France to become the wife of
Ermingild, the son of the great King Leovigild, and heir to his
throne.
All went smoothly until it was discovered that this fair Princess was
a Catholic, and was artfully plotting to win her husband over to her
faith from the faith of his fathers--Arianism.
Although Catholicism had made great inroads among their people, never
before had it invaded the royal household. And when his son declared
his intention to desert their ancient creed there commenced a terrible
conflict between father and son, which finally led to Ermingild's open
rebellion, and at last to his being beheaded by his father's order.
But this crime against nature was in vain. Arianism had reached the
limit of its life in Spain. Upon the death of Leovigild, his second
son, Recared (587-601), succeeded to the throne, and one of his first
acts was to abjure the old faith of the Gothic people, and Catholicism
became the established religion of Spain.
CHAPTER VII.
Toledo, the capital of the Visigoth Kings, is the city about which
cluster the richest memories of Spain in her heroic age. When
Leovigild removed his capital there from Seville in the sixth century,
it was already an ancient Jewish city, about which tradition had long
busied itself. To-day, as it sits on the summit of a barren hill, one
looks in vain for traces of its ancient Gothic splendor. But the spot
where now stands a beautiful cathedral is hallowed by a wonderful
legend, which Murillo made the subject of one of his great paintings.
It is said that the Apostle St. James founded on that very spot the
Church of _Santa Maria_; and that the Virgin, in recognition of
the dedication to her, descended from heaven to present its Bishop,
Ildofonso, with a marvelous chasuble. In proof of this miracle,
doubting visitors are still shown the marks of Mary's footprint upon a
stair in the chapel! However this may be, it is on this very spot that
King Recared formally abjured Arianism; and preserved in a cloister of
the cathedral may still be seen the "Consecration Stone" which reads:
that the Church of Santa Maria,--built probably on the foundation of
the older church,--was consecrated under "King Recared the Catholic,
587 A.D." It also tells of the councils of the Spanish Church held
there--at one of which councils was the famous canon which decreed
that all future Kings must swear they would show no mercy to "that
accursed people"--meaning the Jews. It was these very Jews who had
brought commercial success and created the enormous wealth of the
city, from which it was now the duty of the pious Visigoth Kings to
harry and hunt them as if they were frightened deer.
The Visigoth monarchy, although in many cases hereditary, was in fact
elective. And the student of Spanish history will not find an orderly
royal succession as in England and France. Disputes regarding the
succession were not infrequent, and sometimes there will occur an
interval with apparently no king at all, followed by another period
when there are two--one ruling in the north and another in the south.
"The King is dead--long live the King!" might do for France, but not
for Spain.
During one of these periods of uncertainty, in the latter half of the
seventh century, it is said that Leo, a holy man (afterward Pope),
was told in a dream that the man who must wear the crown was then
a laborer, living in the west, and that his name was Wamba. They
traveled in search of this man almost to the borders of Portugal, and
there they found the future candidate for the throne plowing in the
field. The messengers, bowing before the plowman, informed him that he
had been selected as King of Spain.
Wamba laughed, and said, "Yes, I shall be King of Spain when my pole
puts forth leaves."
Instantly the bare pole began to bud, and in a few moments was covered
with verdure!
In vain did Wamba protest. What could a poor man do in the face of
such a miracle, and with a Spanish Duke pressing a poniard against his
breast, and telling him to choose on the instant between a throne and
a tomb!
The unhappy Wamba suffered himself to be borne in triumph to Toledo,
and there to be crowned. And a very wise and excellent King did
he make. He seemed fully equal to the difficult demands of his
new position. A rebellion, fomented by an ambitious Duke Paul,
who gathered about his standard all the banished Jews, was a very
formidable affair. But Wamba put it down with a firm hand, and then,
when it was over, treated the conspirators and rebels with marvelous
clemency. When his reign was concluded he left a record of wisdom and
sagacity rare in those days, in any land.
His taking off the stage was as remarkable as his coming on. He fell
into a trance (October 14, 680), and after long insensibility it was
concluded that the King was dying. According to a custom of the period
Wamba's head was shaved, and he was clothed in the habit of a monk.
The meaning of this was that if he died, he would, as was fitting,
pass into the Divine presence in penitential garb. But if,
peradventure, the patient survived, he was pledged to spend the rest
of his life in that holy vocation, renouncing every worldly advantage.
So when, after a few hours, Wamba, in perfect health, opened his eyes,
he found that instead of a King he was transformed into a Monk!
Whether this was a cunning device of this philosophic King to lay
down the burdens which wearied him, and spend the rest of his days
in tranquility; or whether it was the work of the Royal Prince, who
joyfully assumed the diadem which he had so unwillingly worn, nobody
knows. But Wamba passed the remainder of his days in a monastery near
Burgos, and the ambitious Ervigius reigned as his successor.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Visigoth kingdom, which had stood for three centuries, had passed
its meridian. It had created a magnificent background for historic
Spain, and a heritage which would be the pride and glory of the
proudest nation in Europe. The Goths had come as only rude intruders
into that country; but to be descended from the Visigoth Kings was
hereafter to be the proudest boast of the Spaniard. And the man who
could make good such claim to distinction was a _Hidalgo_; or in its
original form, _hijo-de-algo_--son of somebody.
But many generations of peace had impaired the rugged strength and
softened the sinews of the nation. It was the beginning of the end
when, at the close of the seventh century, there were two rival
claimants to the throne; and while the vicious and cruel Witiza
reigned at Toledo, Roderick, the son of Theodofred, also reigned in
Andalusia. There had been a long struggle, during which it is said
that Theodofred's eyes had been put out by his victorious rival, and
his son Roderick had obtained assistance from the Greek Emperor at
Byzantium in asserting his own claims. He succeeded in driving Witiza
out of the country; and in 709,--"the last of the Goths,"--was crowned
at Toledo, King of all Spain.
But the struggle was not over; and it was about to lead to a result
which is one of the most momentous in the history, not alone of
Spain,--nor yet of Europe,--but of _Christendom_. Witiza was dead, but
his two sons, with a formidable following, were still trying to work
the ruin of Roderick. A certain Count Julian, who, on account of
his daughter Florinda, had his own wrongs to avenge, accepted the
leadership of these rebels. The power of the Visigoths had extended
across the narrow strait (cut by the Phenicians) over to the opposite
shore, where Morocco seems to be reaching out in vain endeavor to
touch the land from which she was long ago severed; and there, at
Tangiers, this arch-traitor laid his plans and matured the scheme of
revenge and treachery which had such tremendous results for Europe.
With an appearance of perfect loyalty he parted from Roderick, who
unsuspectingly asked him to bring him some hawks from Africa when he
returned. Bowing, he said: "Sire, I will bring you such hawks as never
were seen in Spain before."
For one hundred years an unprecedented wave of conquest had been
moving from Asia toward the west. Mahommedanism, which was destined to
become the scourge of Christendom, had subjected Syria, Mesopotamia,
Egypt, and northern Africa, until it reached Ceuta--the companion
Pillar to Gibraltar on the African coast.
At this point the Goths had stood, as a protecting wall beyond which
the Asiatic deluge could not flow.
Count Julian was the trusted military commander of the Gothic
garrisons in Morocco, as _Musa_, the oft-defeated Saracen leader,
knew to his cost. As this Musa was one day looking with covetous eyes
across at the Spanish Peninsula, he was suddenly surprised by a visit
from Count Julian; and still more astonished when that commander
offered to surrender to him the Gothic strongholds _Tangier_,
_Arsilla_, and _Ceuta_ in return for the assistance of the Saracen
army in the cause of Witiza's sons against Roderick.
Amazed at such colossal treason, Musa referred Count Julian to his
master the Khalif, at Damascus, who at once accepted his infamous
proposition. In Spanish legend and history this man is always
designated as _The Traitor_, as if standing alone and on a pinnacle
among the men who have betrayed their countries.
Musa, half doubting, sent a preliminary force of about five hundred
Moors under a chief named _Tarif_, to the opposite coast; and the
Moors found, as was promised, that they might range at their own will
and pleasure in that earthly paradise of Andalusia. The name of this
Mussulman chief, Tarif, was given to the spot first touched by the
feet of the Mahommedan, which was called _Tarifa_; and as Tarifa was
afterward the place where customs were collected, the word _tariff_ is
an imperishable memorial of that event. In like manner Gibraltar was
named _Gebel-al-Tarik_, (Mountain of Tarik) after the leader bearing
that name, who was sent later by Musa with a larger force; which name
has been gradually changed to its present form--Gibraltar.
Poor King Roderick, while still fighting to maintain his own right to
the crown he wore, learned with dismay that his country was invaded by
a horde of people from the African coast. Theodemir wrote to him: "So
strange is their appearance that we might take them for inhabitants of
the sky. Send me all the troops you can collect, without delay." The
hawks promised by Count Julian had arrived!
The hour of doom had sounded for the last King of the Visigoths, and
for his kingdom. There is a legend that a mysterious tower existed
near Toledo, which was built by Hercules, soon after Adam, with the
command that no king or lord of Spain should ever seek to know what it
contained; instead of that it was the duty of each King to put a new
lock upon its mysterious portal.
It is said that Roderick, perhaps in his extremity, resolved to
disobey the command, and to discover the secret hidden in the
Enchanted Tower. In a jeweled shrine in the very heart of the
structure he came at last to a coffer of silver, "right subtly
wrought," and far inside of that he reached the final mystery,--only
this,--a white cloth folded between two pieces of copper. With
trembling eagerness Roderick opened and found painted thereon men with
turbans, carrying banners, with swords strung around their necks,
and bows behind them, slung at the saddle-bow. Over these figures was
written: "When this cloth shall be opened, men appareled like these
shall conquer Spain, and be the lords thereof."
Such is the picturesque legend. Men with "turbans and banners and
swords slung about their necks," were assuredly now in Andalusia, led
by Tarik, who had literally burned his ships behind him, and then told
his followers to choose between victory or death.
The two armies faced each other at a spot near Cadiz. It is said that
Roderick, the degenerate successor of Alaric, went into battle in a
robe of white silk embroidered with gold, sitting on a car of ivory,
drawn by white mules. Tarik's men, who were fighting for victory or
Paradise, overwhelmed the Goths; Roderick, in his flight, was drowned
in the Guadalquivir, and his diadem of pearls and his embroidered robe
were sent to Damascus as trophies.
Count Julian urged that the victory be immediately followed up by Musa
before there was time for the Spaniards to rally. One after another
the cities of Toledo, Cordova, and Granada capitulated, the persecuted
Jews flocking to the new standard and aiding in the conquest of their
oppressors.
As well might one have held back the Atlantic from rushing through
that canal upon the isthmus, as to have stayed the inflowing of the
Saracens through the breach made by "the Traitor," Count Julian!
In less than two years Spain was a conquered province, rendering
allegiance to the Khalif at Damascus, and the _Moor_,--as the
followers of the Prophet in Morocco were called,--reigned in Toledo.
It was in the year 412 that Ataulfus, with his haughty bride Placidia,
had established his Court at Barcelona, and Romanized Spain became
Gothic Spain. In 711--just three centuries later--the Visigoth kingdom
had disappeared as utterly beneath the Saracen flood as had its
ill-fated King Roderick under the waters of the Guadalquivir; and
fastened upon Christian Europe was a Mahommedan empire; an empire
which all the combined powers of that continent have never since been
able entirely to dislodge. From that ill-omened day in 709, when Tarif
set foot on the Spanish coast, to this June of 1898, the Mahommedan
has been in Europe; and remains to-day, a scourge and a blight in the
territory upon which his cruel grasp still lingers.
CHAPTER IX.
Tarik and his twelve thousand Berbers,[A] or Moors, had at one stroke
won the Spanish Peninsula. The banner of the Prophet waved over every
one of the ancient and famous cities in Andalusia, and the turbaned
army had marched through the stubborn north as far as the Spanish
border. As Musa, intoxicated with success, stood at last upon the
Pyrenees, he saw before him a vision of a subjugated Europe. The
banner of the Prophet should wave from the Pyrenees to the Baltic! A
mosque should stand where St. Peter's now stands in Rome! So, step
by step, the Moslems pressed up into Gaul, and in 732 their army had
reached Tours.
It was a moment of supreme peril for Christendom. But, happily,
the Franks had what the Goths had not--a great leader. Charles
Martel,--then _Maire du Palais_, and virtually King of France, instead
of the feeble Lothair,--led his Franks into what was to be one of the
most decisive of the world's battles; a battle which would determine
whether Europe should be Christian or Mahommedan.
The tide of infidel invasion had reached its limits. The strong right
arm of Charles dealt such ponderous blows that the Moslems broke in
confusion, and this savior of Christendom was thenceforth known as
Charles Martel: "Karl of the Hammer."
After this crushing disaster at Tours the Moors realized that they
were not invincible. Their vaulting ambition did not again try to
overleap the Pyrenees; and they addressed themselves to settling
affairs in their new territory.
It has been wisely said that if the Mahommedan state had been confined
within the borders of Arabia, it would speedily have collapsed. Islam
became a world-wide religion when it clothed itself with armor, and
became a church militant. It was _conquest_ which saved the faith of
the Prophet. In its home in Asia the Empire of Mahommed was composed
of hostile tribes and clans, and as it moved westward it gathered up
Syrians, Egyptians, and the Berbers on the African coast, who, when
Morocco was reached, were known as Moors. This strange, heterogeneous
mass of humanity, all nourished from Arabia, was held together by two
things: the _Koran_ and the _sword_.
When conquest was exchanged for peaceful possession, all the
internecine jealousies, the tribal feuds, and old hatreds burst forth,
and the first fifty years of Moorish rule in Spain was a period of
internal strife and disorder--Arabs and Moors were jealously trying to
undermine each other; while the Arabs themselves were torn by factions
representing rival clans in Damascus.
But a singular clemency was shown toward the conquered Spaniards.
They were permitted to retain their own law and judges, and their own
governors administered the affairs of the districts and collected the
taxes. The rule of the conquering race bore upon the people actually
less heavily than had the old Gothic rule. Jews and Christians alike
were free to worship whom or what they pleased; but, at the same time,
great benefits were bestowed upon those who would accept the religion
of the Prophet. The slave class, which was very large and had suffered
terrible cruelties under its old masters, was treated with especial
mildness and humanity. There was a simple road to freedom opened to
every man. He had only to say, "There is one God, and Mahommed is his
Prophet," and on the instant he became a freeman!
Such gentle proselytizing as this speedily won converts, not alone
among slaves but from all classes. The pacification of Spain by the
Romans had required centuries; while only a few years sufficed to make
of the vanquished in the southern provinces, a contented and almost
happy people; not only reconciled, but even glad of the change of
masters. Never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and wisely governed as
by her Arab conquerors.
The most delicate of all problems is that of dealing with a conquered
race in its own land. That this should have been so wisely and so
skillfully handled would be incomprehensible if this had been really,
what it is always called, a Moorish conquest. But to be accurate, it
was a Moorish invasion and a Saracen conquest!
The fierce Berber Moor contributed the brute force, which was wielded
by Saracen intelligence.
The Saracens were the leaven which penetrated the whole sodden mass
of Mahommedanism. With a civilization which had been ripening for
centuries under Oriental skies,--rich in wisdom, learning, culture,
science, and in art,--they had come into Europe, infidels though they
were, to build up and not to destroy.
The Roman conquest of Spain had civilized a barbarous race. The Gothic
conquest of Romanized Spain had converted an effete civilization into
a strong semi-barbarism. Now again the Saracen had come from the East
to convert a semi-barbarism into a civilization richer than any Spain
had yet known, and, more than that, to hold up a torch of learning
and enlightenment which should illumine Europe in the days of darkness
which were at hand. Although this difference between Arab and Moor
primarily existed, they became fused, and we shall speak of them only
as Moors. But we should not lose sight of the fact that the superior
intelligence which made the Moorish kingdom magnificent was from the
land of the Prophet.
The Saracen dealt gently with the conquered Spaniard, not because his
heart was tender and kind, but because he was crafty and wise, and
knew when not to use force, in order to accomplish his ends. For
the same reason he refrained from trying to break the spirit of the
independent northern provinces, where the descendants of the old
Visigoths--the Hidalgos ("sons-of-somebody")--proudly intrenched
themselves in an attitude of defiance, making in time a clearly
defined Christian north and Moslem south, with a mountain range (the
Sierra Guadarrama) and a river (the Ebro) as the natural boundary
line of the two territories. The Moor was a child of the sun. If the
stubborn Goth chose to sulk, up among the chilly heights and on the
bleak plains of the north, he might do so, and it was little matter
if one Alfonso called himself "King of the Asturians," in that
mountain-defended and sea-girt province. The fertile plains of
Andalusia, and the banks of the Tagus and Guadalquivir, were all of
Spain the Moor wanted for the wonderful kingdom which was to be the
marvel of the Middle Ages.
[Footnote A: The old Phenician name for the North African tribes,
derived from the word Iberi.]
CHAPTER X.
But, at the early period we are considering, the "Christian kingdom"
was composed of a handful of men and women who had fled from the
Moslems to the mountains of the Asturias. Its one stronghold was the
cave of Covadonga, where Pelagius, or Pelayo, had gathered thirty men
and ten women. Here, in the dark recesses of this cave,--which was
approached through a long and narrow mountain pass, and entered by
a ladder of ninety steps,--was the germ of the future kingdoms of
Castile and Aragon, and also of the downfall of the Moor. An Arab
historian said later: "Would to God the Moslems had extinguished
that spark which was destined to consume the dominion of Islam in the
north" and, he might have added, "_in Spain._"
When Alfonso of Cantabria married the daughter of Pelayo in 751, the
cave of Covadonga no longer held the insurgent band. He roused all the
northern provinces against the Moors and gathered an army which drove
them step by step further south, until he had pushed the Christian
frontier as far as the great Sierra, so that the one-time Visigoth
capital of Toledo marked the line of the Moslem border fortresses.
Too scanty in numbers and too poor in purse to occupy the territory,
Alfonso and his army then retreated to their mountains, there to enjoy
the empty satisfaction of their conquest.
But the Moors in Andalusia had too many troubles of their own at that
time to give much heed to Alfonso I. and his rebellious band hiding
in the mountains. The Berbers and the Arabs on the African coast
were jealous and antagonistic; the one was devout, credulous, and
emotional; the other cool, crafty, and diplomatic. Suddenly the
long-slumbering hatred burst into open revolt, and the Khalif sent
thirty thousand Syrians to put down a formidable revolution in his
African dominions.
In full sympathy with their kinsmen across the sea, the Moors in Spain
began to realize that while that land had been won by twelve thousand
Berbers, led by one Berber general, that the lion's share of the
spoils had gone to the Arabs, who were carrying things with a high
hand! There were signs of a general uprising, in concert with the
revolution in Africa; and it looked as if the new territory was to be
given up to anarchy; when suddenly all was changed.
The Khalif, who was the head of all the Mahommedan empire, was
supposed to be the supreme ruler in spiritual and temporal affairs.
But as his empire extended to such vast dimensions, he was obliged to
delegate much of his temporal authority to others; so gradually it had
become somewhat like that of the Pope. He was the supreme spiritual
head, and only nominally supreme in affairs of state.
The family of _Omeyyad_ had given fourteen Khalifs to the Mahommedan
empire from 661 to 750; at which time the then reigning Omeyyad
was deposed, and the second dynasty of Khalifs commenced, called
_Abbaside_, after Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet.
Abd-er-Rahman was a Prince belonging to the deposed family of
the Omeyyads. He was the only one of his family who escaped the
exterminating fury of the Abbasides. There was no future for him
in the east, so the thoughts of the ambitious youth turned to the
west--to the newly won territory of Spain.
The coming of this last survivor of the Omeyyads to Andalusia is one
of the romances of history, and was not unlike the coming of another
young Pretender to Scotland, one thousand years later. It aroused the
same wild enthusiasm, and as if by magic an army gathered about him,
to meet the army of the Governor, Yusuf, which would resist him.
Victory declared itself for the Prince, and he entered Cordova
in triumph. Before the year had expired the dynasty of the
Omeyyads--which was to stand for three centuries--was finally
established, and its first king--Abd-er-Rahman--reigned at Cordova.
His hereditary enemies the Abbasides followed him to Spain, and found
supporters among the disaffected. But it was in vain. The Abbaside
army of invasion was utterly annihilated; and the qualities slumbering
in this son of the Khalifs may be judged when we relate that the heads
of the Abbaside leaders were put into a bag with descriptive labels
attached to their ears, and sent to the reigning Khalif as a present.
This little incident does not seem to have injured him in the
estimation of Mansur, the new Khalif, who said of him: "Wonderful
is this man! Such daring, wisdom, prudence! To throw himself into a
distant land; to profit by the jealousies of the people; to turn their
arms against one another instead of against himself; to win homage and
obedience through such difficulties; and to rule supreme--lord of all!
Of a truth there is not such another man!" Abd-er-Rahman (the Sultan,
as he was called) merited this praise. He knew when to be cruel and
when to show mercy; and how to hold scheming Arab chiefs, fierce,
jealous Berbers, and vanquished Christians, and could placate or
crucify as the conditions required.
CHAPTER XI.
Charlemagne was at this time building up his colossal empire. His
Christian soul was mightily stirred by seeing an infidel kingdom set
up in Andalusia; and when, in 777, the Saracen governor and two other
Arab chiefs appealed to him for aid against the Omeyyad usurper,
Abd-er-Rahman, he eagerly responded. His grandfather Charles Martel
had driven these infidels back over the Pyrenees; now he would drive
them out of Spain, and reclaim that land for Christianity!
His army never reached farther than Saragossa. He was recalled to
France by a revolt of the recently conquered Saxons, and the "Battle
of Roncesvalles" is the historic monument of the ill-starred attempt.
The battle in itself was insignificant. No action of such small
importance has ever been invested with such a glamour of romance,
nor the theme of so much legend and poetry. It has been called the
Thermopylæ of the Pyrenees, because of the personal valor displayed,
and the tragic death of the two great Paladins (as the twelve Peers of
Charlemagne were called) Roland and Olivier. The _Chanson de Roland_
was one of the famous ballads in the early literature of Europe, and
Roland and Olivier were to French and Spanish minstrelsy what the
knights of King Arthur were to the English.
The simple story about which so much has been written and sung is
this: As the retreating army of Charlemagne was crossing the Pyrenees,
the rear of the army under Roland and Olivier was ambuscaded in the
narrow pass of Roncesvalles by the Basques and exterminated to a man.
These Basques were the unconquerable mountain tribe of which we heard
so much in the early history of Spain. They had been on guard for
centuries, keeping the Franks back from the Pyrenees. They may have
been acting under Saracenic influence when they exterminated the
rear-guard of Charlemagne's army. But it was done, not because they
loved the Saracen, but because they had a hereditary hatred for the
Franks.
Mediæval Europe never tired of hearing of the Great Charles' lament
over his Roland: "O thou right arm of my kingdom,--defender of the
Christians,--scourge of the Saracens! How can I behold thee dead, and
not die myself! Thou art exalted to the heavenly kingdom,--and I am
left alone, a poor miserable King!"
CHAPTER XII.
The tide which had flowed over southern Spain was a singular mixture
of religious fervor, of brutish humanity, and refinements of wisdom
and wickedness. No stranger and more composite elements were ever
thrown together. Permanence and peace were impossible. Nothing but
force could hold together elements so incongruous and antagonistic. As
soon as the hand of Abd-er-Rahman I. was removed disintegration began.
Clashing races, clans, and political parties had in a few years made
such havoc that it seemed as if the Omeyyad dynasty was crumbling.
It might have been an Arab who said "he cared not who made the laws
of his country, so he could write its songs." Learning, literature,
refinements of luxury and of art had taken possession of the land,
which seemed given up to the muses. When in 822 Abd-er-Rahman II.
reigned, he did not trouble himself about the laws of his crumbling
empire. The one man in whom he delighted was _Ziryab_. What Petronius
was to Nero,[A] and Beau Brummel to George IV., that was Ziryab to
the Sultan Abd-er-Rahman II., the elegant arbiter in matters of taste.
From the dishes which should be eaten to the clothes which should
be worn, he was the supreme judge; while at the same time he knew by
heart and could "like an angel sing" one thousand songs to his adoring
Sultan.
Even the Gothic Christians were seduced by these alluring refinements.
They felt contempt for their old Latin speech and for their
literature, with the tiresome asceticism it eternally preached. The
Christian ideal had grown to be one of penance and mortification of
the flesh, and to a few ardent souls these sensuous delights were an
open highway to death eternal. _Eulogius_ became the leader of this
band of zealots. In lamenting the decadence of his people, he wrote,
"hardly one in a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and yet
they indite excellent Arabic verse!" Filled with despairing ardor this
man aroused a few kindred spirits to join him in a desperate attempt
to awaken the benumbed conscience of the Christians. They could not
get the Moslems to persecute them, but they might attain martyrdom by
cursing the Prophet; then the infidels, however reluctant, would be
compelled to behead them. This they did, and one by one perished,
to no purpose. The Gothic Christians were not conscience-stricken as
Eulogius supposed they would be, and there was no general uprising for
the Christian faith.
In 912 the threatened ruin of the dynasty was arrested by the coming
of another Abd-er-Rahman, third Sultan of that name. Rebellion was put
down, and fifty years of wise and just administration gave solidity to
the kingdom, which also then became a _Khalifate_.
The Abbaside Khalifs, after the deposition of the Omeyyads, had
removed the Khalifate from Damascus to Baghdad. But the empire
had extended too far west to revolve about that distant pivot.
Abd-er-Rahman--perhaps remembering the old feud between his family
and the Abbasides--determined to assume the spiritual headship of
the western part of the empire. And thereafter, the Mahommedan
empire--like the Roman--had two heads, an Eastern Khalif at Baghdad,
and a Western Khalif at Cordova.
While thus extending his own power the Khalif was extinguishing every
spark of rebellion in the south and driving the rebellious Christians
back in the north, and at the same time he was clothing Cordova with a
splendor which amazed and dazzled even the Eastern Princes who came
to pay court to the great Khalif. His emissaries were everywhere
collecting books for his library and treasure for his palaces. Cordova
became the abode of learning, and the nursery for science, philosophy,
and art, transplanted from Asia. The imagination and the pen of
an arab poet could not have overdrawn this wonderful city on the
Guadalquivir,--with its palaces, its gardens, and fountains,--its
50,000 houses of the aristocracy,--its 700 mosques,--and 900 public
baths,--all adorned with color and carvings and tracery beautiful as a
dream of Paradise. One hears with amazement of the great mosque,
with its 19 arcades, its pavings of silver and rich mosaics, its 1293
clustered columns, inlaid with gold and lapis-lazuli, the clusters
reaching up to the slender arches which supported the roof; the whole
of this marvelous scene lighted by countless brazen lamps made from
Christian bells, while hundreds of attendants swung censers, filling
the air with perfume.
After the ravages of a thousand years travelers stand amazed to-day
before the forest of columns which open out in endless vistas in the
splendid ruin, calling up visions of the vanished glories of Cordova
and the Great Khalif.
There is not time to tell of the city this Spanish Khalif built for
his favorite wife, "The Fairest," and which he called "Hill of the
Bride," upon which for fifteen years ten thousand men worked daily;
nor of the four thousand columns which adorned its palaces, presents
from emperors and potentates in Constantinople, Rome, and far-off
Eastern states; nor of the ivory and ebony doors, studded with jewels,
through which shone the sun, the light then falling on the lake of
quick-silver, which sent back blinding, quivering flashes into dazzled
eyes. And we are told of the thirteen thousand male servants who
ministered in this palace of delight. All this, too, at a time when
our Saxon ancestors were living in dwellings without chimneys, and
casting the bones from the table at which they feasted into the foul
straw which covered their floors; when a Gothic night had settled upon
Europe, and blotted out civilization so completely that only in a part
of Italy, and around Constantinople, did there remain a vestige of
refinement!
It is said that when the embassy from Constantinople came bearing a
letter to the Khalif, the courtier whose duty it was to read it was so
awed by all this splendor that he fainted!
And yet the owner and creator of this fabulous luxury,--Sultan and
Khalif of a dominion the greatest of his time, and with "The Fairest"
for his adored wife,--when he came to die, left a paper upon which he
had written that he could only recall fourteen days in which he had
been happy.
[Footnote A: See "Quo Vadis?"]
CHAPTER XIII.
In the north there was developing another and very different power.
The descendants of the Visigoth Kings, making common cause with the
rough mountaineers, had shared all their hardships and rigors in the
mountains of the Asturias. Inured to privation and suffering, entirely
unacquainted with luxury or even with the comforts of living, they had
grown strong, and in a century after Alfonso I. had emerged from their
mountain shelter and removed their court and capital from Oviedo to
Leon, where Alfonso III. held sway over a group of barren kingdoms,
poor, proud, but with _Hidalgos_ and _Dons_, who were keeping alive
the sacred fires of patriotism and of religion. This was the rough
cradle of a Spanish nationality.
They had their own jealousies and fierce conflicts, but all united in
a common hatred of the Moor. Though they did not yet dream of driving
him out of their land, their brave leaders, Ramiro I. and Ordoño I.
had been for years steadily defying and tormenting him with the kind
of warfare to which they gave its name--_guerrilla_--meaning "little
wars."
While the Great Khalif was consolidating his Moorish kingdom and
driving the Christians back into their mountains, the power of that
people was being weakened by internal strifes existing between the
three adjacent kingdoms--Leon, Castile, and Navarre. The headship
of Leon was for years disputed by her ambitious neighbor Castile (so
called because of the numerous fortified castles with which it was
studded), under the leadership of one Fernando, Count of Castile.
There had been the usual lapse into anarchy and weakness after the
Great Khalif's death. Andalusia always needed a master, and this she
found in _Almanzor_, who was Prime Minister to one of the Khalif's
feeble descendants. It was a sad day for the struggling kingdom in the
north when this all-subduing man took the reins in his own hands, and
left his young master to amuse himself in collecting rare manuscripts
and making Cordova more beautiful.
This Almanzor, the mightiest of the soldiers of the Crescent since
Tarik and Musa, proclaimed a war of faith against the Christians, who
were obliged to forget their local dissensions and to try with their
combined strength to save their kingdom from extermination. These were
the darkest days to which they had yet been subjected. But for the
death of Almanzor the ruin of the Christian state would have been
complete. A monkish historian thus records this welcome event: "In
1002 died Almanzor, and was buried in hell."
The death of Almanzor was the turning point in the fortunes of the two
kingdoms--that of the Moors and of the Christians.
The magnificence and the glory of the kingdom faded like the mist
before the morning sun. Never again would Cordova be called the "Bride
of Andalusia." Eight years after the death of Almanzor anarchy and
ruin reigned in that city. The gentle, studious youth who was Khalif,
was dragged with his only child to a dismal vault attached to the
great mosque; and here, in darkness and cold and damp, sat the
grandson of the first Great Khalif, his child clinging to his breast
and begging in vain for food, his wretched father pathetically
pleading with his jailers for just a crust of bread, and a candle to
relieve the awful darkness.
The brutal Berbers now had their turn. The priceless library, with its
six hundred thousand volumes, was in ashes. They were in the "City of
the Fairest." Palace after palace was ransacked, and in a few days
all that remained of its exquisite treasures of art was a heap of
blackened stones (1010). The Christians drew their broken state closer
together, and gathered themselves for a more aggressive warfare than
any yet undertaken. The time when the Moors were in the throes of
civil war was favorable. The three kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, and
Castile were in 1073 united into one "kingdom of Castile," under
Alfonso VI., who had already made great inroads upon the Moslem
territory and laid many cities under tribute. With this event, the
name _Castilian_ comes into Spanish history, and from thenceforth that
name represents all that is proudest, bravest, and most characteristic
of the part of the race which traces a direct lineage from the ancient
Visigoth Kings.
Alfonso had not misjudged his opportunity. He had traversed Spain
with his army, and bathed in the ocean in sight of the "Pillars of
Hercules." His great general Rodrigo Diaz, known as "My Cid, the
Challenger," had cut another path all the way to Valencia, where he
reigned as a sort of uncrowned king; and he will forever reign
as crowned king in the realm of romance and poetry; the perfect
embodiment of the knightly idea--the "Challenger," who, in defense
of the faith, would stand before great armies and defy them to single
combat! Whether "My Cid" ever did such mighty deeds as are ascribed to
him, no one knows. But he stands for the highest ideal of his time.
He was the "King Arthur" of Spanish history; and so valiantly did
he serve the Christian cause that the Moors were driven to a most
disastrous step. With the Cid in Valencia, with Alfonso VI. marching
a victorious army through the Moslem territory, and with Toledo, the
city of the ancient Visigoth Kings, repossessed, it looked as if,
after almost four hundred years, the Christians were about to recover
their land.
The Moors, thoroughly frightened, realizing how helpless they had
grown, resolved upon a desperate measure.
There was, on the opposite African coast, a sect of Berber fanatics,
fierce and devout, known as "saints," but which the Moors called
_Almoravides_. Fighting for the faith was their occupation. What more
fitting than to use them as a means of driving the infidel Christians
out of Moslem territory!
They came, like a cloud of locusts, and settled upon the land. Yusuf,
their general, led his men against Alfonso's Castilians October 23,
1086. Near Badajos the attack was made simultaneously in front and
rear, crushing them utterly; Alfonso barely escaping with five hundred
men. This was only the first of many other crushing defeats; the most
disheartening of which was the one in 1099, when the Cid, fighting in
alliance with Pedro, King of Aragon, was defeated near Gardia, on the
seacoast. Then the great warrior's heart broke, and he died; and we
are told he was clothed cap-à-pie in shining armor and placed upright
on his good steed Bavieca, his trusty sword in his hand--and so he
passed to his burial; his banner borne and guarded by five hundred
knights. And we are also told the Moors wonderingly watched his
departure with his knights, not suspecting that he was dead.
The object of the Moors in inviting the odious Almoravides had been
accomplished; the Christians had been driven out of Andalusia back
into their own territory; but their African auxiliaries were too well
pleased with their new abode to think of leaving it. One by one the
Moorish Princes were subdued by the men whose aid they had invoked,
until a dynasty of the Almoravides was fastened upon Spain. To the
refined Spanish Arabs contact with these savages from the desert was
a terrible scourge, and so far as they were able they withdrew into
communities by themselves, leaving these African locusts to devour
their substance and dim their glory.
But luxury was not favorable to the invaders. In another generation
their martial spirit was gone and they had become only ignorant,
sodden voluptuaries; and when the Christians once more renewed their
attacks, they failed to repel them as Yusuf had done thirty years
before.
There was another fanatical sect, beyond the Atlas range in Africa,
which had long been looking for a coming Messiah, whom they called the
_Mahdi_. They were known as the _Alhomades_. A son of a lamp-lighter
in the Mosque of Cordova one day presented himself before the
Alhomades, and announced that he was the great _Mahdi_, who was
divinely appointed to lead them, and to bring happiness to all the
earth.
The path this _Mahdi_ desired to lead them was first to Morocco, there
to subdue the Almoravides in their own land, and thence to Spain. In
a short time this entire plan was realized. The Mahdi's successor was
Emperor of Morocco, and by the year 1150 included in his dominion was
all of Mahommedan Spain! The Spanish Arabs, when they were fighting
Alfonso VI. and the "Cid," did not anticipate this disgraceful
downfall from people of their own faith. They abhorred these
Mahommedan savages, and drew together still closer for a century more
in and about their chosen refuge of Granada.
In the early part of the thirteenth century the Emperor of Morocco
made such enormous preparations for the occupation of Spain that a
larger design upon Europe became manifest. Once more Christendom was
alarmed; not since Charles Martel had the danger appeared so great.
The Pope proclaimed a Crusade, this time not into Palestine, but
Spain.
An army of volunteers from the kingdom of Portugal and from southern
France re-enforced the great armies of the Kings of Castile, Aragon,
and Navarre. The Crusaders, as they called themselves, assembled
at Toledo July 12, 1212, under the command of Alfonso IX., King of
Castile. The power of the Alhomades was broken, and they were driven
out of Spain. The once great Mahommedan Empire in that country was
reduced to the single province of Granada, where the Moors intrenched
themselves in their last stronghold. For nearly three centuries the
Crescent was yet to wave over the kingdom of Granada; but it was to
shine in only the pale light of a waning crescent, until its final
extinction in the full light of a Christian day.
CHAPTER XIV.
A great change had been wrought in Europe. The Crusades had opened a
channel through which flowed from the East reviving streams of ancient
knowledge and culture over the arid waste of mediævalism. France and
England had awakened from their long mental torpor, Paris was become
the center of an intellectual revival. In England, Roger Bacon, in his
"Opus Majus," was systematizing all existing knowledge and laying a
foundation for a more advanced science and philosophy for the people,
who had only recently extorted from their wicked King John the great
charter of their liberties.
It was just at this period, when the door had suddenly opened ushering
Europe into a new life, that the Christian cause in Spain triumphed;
and, excepting in the little kingdom of Granada, the Cross waved from
the Pyrenees to the sea. After more than four centuries of steadfast
devotion to that object, the descendants of the Visigoth Kings had
come once more into their inheritance.
They found it enriched, and clothed with a beauty of which their
ancestors could never have dreamed. These Spaniards had learned their
lesson of valor in the north, and they had learned it well. Now in the
land of the Moor, dwelling in the palaces they had built, and gazing
upon masterpieces of Arabic art and architecture which they had
left, they were to learn the subtle charm of form and color, and the
fascination which music and poetry and beauty and knowledge may
lend to life. As they drank from these Moorish fountains the rugged
warriors found them very sweet; and they discovered that there were
other pleasures in life beside fighting the Moors and nursing memories
of the Cid and their vanished heroes.
The territory of Fernando III., King of Castile (1230-52), extended
now from the Bay of Biscay to the Guadalquivir. The ancient city of
Seville was chosen as his capital. It was a far cry from the "Cave
of Covadonga" to the Moorish palace of the "Alcazar," where dwelt
the pious descendant of Pelayo! The first act of Fernando III. was
to convert the Mosque at Seville into a cathedral, which still stands
with its Moorish bell-tower, the beautiful "Giralda." There may also
be seen to-day over one of its portals a stuffed crocodile, which was
sent alive to King Ferdinand by the Sultan of Egypt. And within the
cathedral, in a silver urn with glass sides, the traveler may also
gaze to-day upon the remains of this "Saint Ferdinand" clothed in
royal robes, and with a crown upon his head.
Spain had begun to lift up her head among the other nations of Europe.
To defeat the Crescent was the highest ideal of that chivalric age.
Spain, longer than any other nation, had fought the Mahommedan. It
had been her sole occupation for four centuries, and now she had
vanquished him, and driven him into the mountains of one of her
smallest provinces, there to hide from the Spaniards as they had once
hidden from the Moors in the North. This was a passport to the
honor and respect of other Christian nations. She was Spain "the
Catholic"--the loved and favorite child of the Church--and great
monarchs in England, France, and Germany bestowed their sons and
daughters upon her kings and princes. Poor though she was in purse,
and somewhat rude yet in manners, she held up her head high in
proud consciousness of her aristocratic lineage, and her unmatched
championship of Christianity.
We realize how close had become the tie binding her to other nations
when we learn that King Fernando III. was the grandson of Queen
Eleanor of England (daughter of Henry II.), and that Louis IX. of
France, that other royal saint, was his own cousin; and also that his
wife Beatrix, whom he brought with him to Seville, was daughter of
Frederick II., Emperor of Germany.
The deep hold which Arabic life and thought had taken upon their
conquerors was shown when Alfonso X., son of Ferdinand, came to the
throne. So in love was he with learning and science that he let his
kingdom fall into utter confusion while he busied himself with a set
of astronomical tables upon which his heart was set and in holding up
to ridicule the Ptolemaic theory. If he had given less thought to
the stars, and more to the humble question as to who was to be his
successor, it would have saved much strife and suffering to those who
came after him.
While the Moslems were building up their kingdom and making of their
capital city a second and even more beautiful Cordova, there was a
partial truce with the Moors in Granada. Moors and Christians were
enemies still; the hereditary hatreds were only lulled into temporary
repose. But Christian knights who were handsome and gallant might
love and woo Moorish maidens who were beautiful; and, as a writer
has intimated, love became the business and war the pastime of the
Spaniard in Andalusia. Spain was unconsciously inbibing the soft,
sensuous charm of the civilization she was exterminating; and the
peculiar rhythm of Spanish music, and the subtle picturesqueness
which makes the Spanish people unique among the other Latin nations
of Europe, came, not from her Gothic, nor her Roman, nor her Phenician
ancestry, but from the plains of Arabia; and the guitar and the dance
and the castanet, and the charm and the coquetry of her women, are
echoes from that far-off land of poetry and romance. Not so the
bull-fight! Would you trace to its source that pleasant pastime, you
must not go to the East; the Oriental was cruel to man, but not to
beast. He would have abhorred such a form of amusement, for the origin
of which we must look to the barbarous Kelt; or perhaps, as is more
probable, to the mysterious Iberians, since among the Latin peoples
of Europe bull-fighting is found in Spain alone. Well was it for Spain
that her rough, untutored ancestors were kept hiding in the mountains
for centuries, while that brilliant Oriental race planted their
Peninsula thick with the germs of high thinking and beautiful living.
As the spider, after his glistening habitation has been destroyed by
some ruthless footstep, goes patiently to work to rebuild it, so the
Moor in Granada, with his imperishable instinct for beauty, was making
of his little kingdom the most beautiful spot in Europe. The city of
Granada was lovelier than Cordova; its Alhambra more enchanting than
had been the palaces in the "City of the Fairest." This citadel,
which is fortress and palace in one, still stands like the Acropolis,
looking out upon the plain from its lofty elevation. Volumes have been
written about its labyrinthine halls and corridors and courts, and the
amazing richness of decoration, which still survives--an inexhaustible
mine for artists and a shrine for lovers of the beautiful. But Granada
cultivated other things besides the art of beauty. Nowhere in Europe
was there in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such advanced
thinking, and a knowledge so akin to our own to-day, as within the
borders of that Moorish kingdom.
CHAPTER XV.
There were other reasons beside the growing peacefulness of the
Spaniards why Granada was left to develop in comparative security for
two centuries. It was impossible that adjacent ambitious kingdoms,
such as Navarre, Castile, Aragon, Leon, and Portugal, with indefinite
and disputed boundaries, and, on account of intermarriages between the
kingdoms, with indefinite and disputed successions, should ever be at
peace. In the perpetual strife and warfare which prevailed on
account of royal European alliances, the fate of foreign princes and
princesses were often involved, and hence European states stood ready
to take a hand.
Castile and Aragon had gradually absorbed the smaller states,
excepting Portugal on the one side and Navarre on the other. The
history of Spain at this time is a history of the struggles of these
two states for supremacy. The most eventful as well as the most lurid
period of this prolonged civil war was while Pedro the Cruel was
king of Castile, 1350-69. This Spanish Nero, when sixteen years old,
commenced his reign by the murder of his mother. A catalogue of his
crimes is impossible. Enough to say that assassination was his remedy,
and means of escape, from every entanglement in which his treacheries
involved him. It was the unhappy fate of Blanche de Bourbon, sister of
Charles V., King of France, to marry this King of Castile, and when
he refused to live with her and had her removed from his palace the
Alcazar to a fortress, and finally poisoned her, the French King
determined to avenge the insult to his royal house. He allied himself
with the King of Aragon to destroy Pedro, with whom the King of Aragon
was of course at war.
Edward, the "Black Prince," was then brilliantly invading France and
extending the kingdom of his father Edward III. He was the kinsman of
Pedro, and when appealed to by his cousin for aid in protecting
his kingdom from the King of Aragon and his French allies, Edward
gallantly consented to help him; and in the spring of 1367, for
the second time, a splendid army advanced through the Pass at
Roncesvalles, and a great battle, worthy of a better cause, was fought
and won.
So this most atrocious king--perhaps excepting Richard III. of
England, whom he resembled--had for his champion the victor of Cressy
and Poictiers. He was restored to his throne, which had been usurped
by his brother Enrique (or Henry), but in a personal encounter with
Enrique soon after (which was artfully brought about by the famous
Breton knight, Bertrand du Guesclin), he met a deserved fate (1369).
Constanza, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, had been married to John
of Gaunt (Duke of Lancester), brother of the Black Prince and son of
Edward III. As Constanza was the great-grandmother of Isabella I. of
Spain, so in the veins of that revered Queen there flowed the blood of
the Plantagenets, as well as that of Pedro the Cruel!
Because of the number of doubtful pretenders always existing in
Spain, disputes about the royal succession also always existed. Such
a dispute now led to a long war with Portugal, where King Fernando had
really the most valid hereditary claim to the throne made vacant by
Pedro's death. If his right had been acknowledged, Portugal and Spain
would now be united; Isabella would have remained only a poor and
devout princess, and would never have had the power to win a continent
for the world. So impossible is it to remove one of the links forged
by fate, that we dare not regret even so monstrous a reign as that of
Pedro the Cruel!
Enrique's right to the vacant throne of his brother had two
disputants. Besides the King of Portugal, John of Gaunt, who had
married the lady Constanza,--by virtue of her rights as daughter of
Pedro,--claimed the crown of Castile. This Plantagenet was actually
proclaimed King of Castile and Leon (1386). For twenty-five years
he vainly strove to come into his kingdom as sovereign; but finally
compromised by giving his young daughter Catherine to the boy "Prince
of Asturias," the heir to the throne. He was obliged to content
himself by thus securing to his child the long-coveted prize. And it
was this Catherine, who at fourteen was betrothed to a boy of nine,
who was the grandmother of Isabella, Queen of Castile.
When such was the private history of those highest in the land we can
only imagine what must have been that of the rest. Feudalism, which
was a part of Spain's Gothic inheritance, had always made that
country one of its strongholds, and chivalry had nowhere else found
so congenial a soil. There was no great artisan class, as in France,
creating a powerful "bourgeoisie"; no "guilds," or simple "burghers,"
as in Germany, stubbornly standing for their rights; no "boroughs"
and "town meetings," where the people were sternly guarding their
liberties, as in England.
The history of other nations is that of the struggles of the common
people against the tyranny of kings and rulers. If there were any
"common people" in Spain, they were so effaced that history makes no
mention of them. We hear only of kings and great barons and
glorious knights; and their wonderful deeds and their valor and
prowess--excepting in the wars with the Moors--were always over
boundary-lines and successions, or personal quarrels more or less
disgraceful, with never a single high purpose or a principle involved.
It was all a gay, ambitious pageant, adorned by a mantle of chivalry,
and made sacred by the banner of the Cross. In the history of no other
European country do we see a great state develop under despotism so
unredeemed by wholesome ideals, and so unmitigated and unrestrained by
gentle human impulses.
CHAPTER XVI.
Juan II., the son of the young Catherine and the boy prince of the
Asturias, died in 1454, and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King of
Castile. When, after some years, Henry was without children, and
with health very infirm, his young sister Isabella unexpectedly found
herself the acknowledged heir to the throne of Castile. She suddenly
became a very important young person. The old King of Portugal was a
suitor for her hand, and a brother of the King of England, and also a
brother of the King of France, were striving for the same honor. But
Isabella had very decided views of her own. Her hero was the young
Ferdinand of Aragon, and heir to that throne. She resisted all her
brother's efforts to coerce her, and finally took the matter into her
own hands by sending an envoy to her handsome young lover to come
to her at Valladolid, with a letter telling him they had better be
married at once.
Accompanied by a few knights disguised as merchants, Ferdinand,
pretending to be their servant, during the entire journey waited on
them at table and took care of their mules. He entered Valladolid,
where he was received by the Archbishop of Toledo, who was in the
conspiracy, and was by him conveyed to Isabella's apartments. We are
told that when he entered someone exclaimed: _Ese-es, Ese-es_ (that
is he); and the escutcheon of the descendants of that knight has ever
since borne a double _S.S._, which sounds like this exclamation.
The marriage was arranged to take place in four days. An embarrassment
then occurred of which no one had before thought. Neither of them had
any money. But someone was found who would lend them enough for
the wedding expenses, and so on the 19th of October, 1469, the
most important marriage ever yet consummated in Spain took place--a
marriage which would forever set at rest the rivalries between Castile
and Aragon, and bring honors undreamed of to a united Spain.
Isabella was fair, intelligent, accomplished, and lovely. She was
eighteen and her boy husband was a year younger. Of course her royal
brother stormed and raged. But, of course, it did no good. In five
years from that time (1474) he died, and Isabella, royally attired,
and seated on a white palfrey, proceeded to the throne prepared
for her, and was there proclaimed "Queen of Castile." At the end
of another five years, Ferdinand came into his inheritance. His
old father, Juan II., King of Aragon and Navarre, died in 1479,
and Castile, Aragon, and Navarre--all of Spain except Portugal and
Granada--had come under the double crown of Ferdinand and Isabella.
The war with Portugal still existed, and their reign began in the
midst of confusion and trouble, but it was brilliant from the outset.
Ferdinand had great abilities and an ambition which matched his
abilities. Isabella, no less ambitious than he, was more far-reaching
in her plans, and always saw more clearly than Ferdinand what was
for the true glory of Spain. With infinite tact she softened his
asperities, and disarmed his jealousy, and ruled her "dear lord," by
making him believe he ruled her.
A joint sovereignty, with a man so grasping of power and so jealous of
his own rights, required self-control and tact in no ordinary measure.
It was agreed at last that in all public acts Ferdinand's name should
precede hers; and although her sanction was necessary, his indignation
at this was abated by her promise of submission to his will. The court
of the new sovereigns was established at Seville, and they took up
their abode in that palace so filled with associations both Moorish
and Castilian--the Alcazar. From the very first Isabella's powerful
mind grappled every public question, and she gave herself heart and
soul to what she believed was her divine mission--the building up of
a great Catholic state. Isabella's devout soul was sorely troubled by
the prevalence of Judaism in her kingdom. She took counsel with her
confessor, and also with the Pope, and by their advice a religious
tribunal was established at Seville in 1483, the object of which was
to inquire of heretics whether they were willing to renounce their
faith and accept Christianity. The head of this tribunal, which was
soon followed by others in all the large cites, was a Dominican
friar called _Torquemada_. He was known as the "Inquisitor General."
Inaccessible to pity, mild in manners, humble in demeanor, yet swayed
only by a sense of duty, this strange being was so cruel that he seems
like an incarnation of the evil principle. At the tribunal in Seville
alone it is said that in thirty-six years four thousand victims were
consigned to the flames, besides the thousands more who endured living
deaths by torture, mutilation, and nameless sufferings.
Humanity shudders at the recital! And yet this monstrous tribunal was
the creation of one of the wisest and gentlest of women, who believed
no rigors could be too great to save people from eternal death! And,
in her misguided zeal, she emptied her kingdom of a people who had
helped to create its prosperity, and drove the most valuable part of
her population into France, Italy, and England, there to disseminate
the seeds of a higher culture and intelligence which they had imbibed
from contact with the Moors, who had treated them with such uniform
tolerance and gentleness.
The kingdom of Granada was now at the height of its splendor. Its
capital city was larger and richer than any city in Spain. Its army
was the best equipped of any in Europe. The Moorish king, a man of
fiery temper, thought the time had come when he might defy his enemy
by refusing to pay an annual tribute to which his father had ten years
before consented. When Ferdinand's messenger, in 1476, came to demand
the accustomed tribute, he said, "Go tell your master the kings
who pay tribute in Granada are all dead. Our mints coin nothing but
sword-blades now."
The cool and crafty Ferdinand prepared his own answer to this
challenge. The infatuated King Abdul-Hassan followed up his insult by
capturing the Christian fortress of Zahara. His temper was not at the
best at this time on account of a war raging in his own household. His
wife Ayesha was fiercely jealous of a Christian captive whom he had
also made his wife. She had become his favorite Sultana, and was
conspiring to have her own son supplant Boabdil, the son of Ayesha,
the heir to the throne. In his championship of Zoraya and her son,
Abdul-Hassan imprisoned Ayesha and Boabdil, whom he threatened to
disinherit. We are shown to-day the window in the Alhambra from which
Ayesha lowered Boabdil in a basket, telling him to come back with an
army and assert his rights. Suddenly, while absorbed by this smaller
war, news came that Alhama, their most impregnable fortress, only six
leagues from the city of Granada, had been captured by Ferdinand's
army. It was the key to Granada. Despair was in every soul. The air
was filled with wailing and lamentation. "Woe, woe is me, Alhama!"
"Ay de mi, Alhama!" Indignant with their old king, who had brought
destruction upon them, when Boabdil came with his army of followers,
they flocked about him--"El Rey Chico!" (the boy king) as they called
him. Abdul Hassan was forced to fly, and Boabdil reigned over the
expiring kingdom. It was a brief and troubled reign.
In the famous "Court of the Lions" in the Alhambra, visitors are
shown to-day the blood-stains left by the celebrated massacre of the
"Abencerrages." The Abencerrages had supported the claim of Ayesha's
rival, Zoraya; and it is said that Boabdil invited the Princes of this
clan, some thirty in number, to a friendly conference in the Alhambra,
and there had them treacherously beheaded at the fountain.
But whether this blood-stain upon his memory is as doubtful as those
upon the stones at the fountain, seems an open question.
[Illustration: From the painting by V. Brozik.
Columbus at the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella.]
So stubborn was the defense, it appeared sometimes as if the reduction
of Granada would have to be abandoned. Isabella's courage and faith
were sorely tried. But the brave Queen infused her own courage into
the flagging spirits of her husband, and kept alive the enthusiasm of
the people; and at last,--on the 2d of January, 1402,--the proud
city capitulated. Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra to
Ferdinand--the silver cross which had preceded the King throughout the
war gleamed from a high tower; and from the loftiest pinnacle of the
Alhambra waved the banners of Castile and Aragon.
The conflict which had lasted for 781 years was over. The death of
Roderick and the fall of the Goths was avenged, and Christendom, still
weeping for the loss of Constantinople, was consoled and took heart
again.
CHAPTER XVII.
The reduction of Granada had required eleven years, and had drained
the kingdom of all its resources. It is not strange that Isabella
should have had no time to listen seriously to a threadbare enthusiast
asking for money and ships for a strange adventure! To have grown old
and haggard in pressing an unsuccessful project is not a passport
to the confidence of Princes. But the gracious Queen had promised
to listen to him when the war with the Moors was concluded. So now
Columbus sought her out at Granada; and it is a strange scene which
the imagination pictures--a shabby old man pleading with a Queen in
the halls of the Alhambra for permission to lift the veil from an
unsuspected Hemisphere; artfully dwelling upon the glory of planting
the Cross in the dominions of the Great Khan! The cool, unimaginative
Ferdinand listened contemptuously; but Isabella, for once opposing the
will of her "dear lord," arose and said, "The enterprise is mine. I
undertake it for Castile." And on the 3d of August, 1492, the little
fleet of caravels sailed from the mouth of the same river whence had
once sailed the "ships of Tarshish," laden with treasure for King
Solomon and "Hiram, King of Tyre." A union with Portugal--the land
of the Lusitanians and of Sertorius--was all that was now required to
make of the Spanish Peninsula one kingdom. This Isabella planned to
accomplish by the marriage of her oldest daughter, Isabella, with the
King of Portugal. Her son John, heir to the Spanish throne, had died
suddenly just after his marriage with the daughter of Maximilian,
Emperor of Germany.
This terrible blow was swiftly followed by another, the death of her
daughter Isabella, and also that of the infant which was expected to
unite the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. The succession of Castile
and Aragon now passed to Joanna, her second daughter, who had married
Philip, Archduke of Austria and son of Maximilian, an unfortunate
child who seemed on the verge of madness.
Isabella's youngest daughter, Catherine, became the wife of Henry
VIII. of England. Happily the mother did not live to witness this
child's unhappiness; but her heart-breaking losses and domestic griefs
were greater than she could bear. The unbalanced condition of Joanna,
upon whom rested all her hopes, was undermining her health. The
results of the expedition of Columbus had exceeded the wildest dreams
of romance. Gold was pouring in from the West enough to pay for the
war with the Moors many times over, and for all wars to come. Spain,
from being the poorest, had suddenly become the richest country in
Europe; richest in wealth, in territory, and in the imperishable glory
of its discovery. But Isabella,--who had been the instrument in this
transformation,--who had built up a firm united kingdom and swept it
clean of heretics, Jews, and Moors,--was still a sad and disappointed
woman, thwarted in her dearest hopes; and on the 26th of November,
1504, she died leaving the fruits of her triumphs to a grandson six
years old.
This infant Charles was proclaimed King of Castile under the regency
of his ambitious father, the Archduke of Austria, and his insane
mother. The death of the Archduke and the incapacity of Joanna in a
few years gave to Ferdinand the control of the two kingdoms for which
he had contended and schemed, until his own death in 1516, when
the crowns of Castile and Aragon passed to his grandson, who was
proclaimed Charles I., King of Spain.
A plain, sedate youth of sixteen was called from his home in Flanders
to assume the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Silent, reserved, and
speaking the Spanish language very imperfectly, the impression
produced by the young King was very unpromising. No one suspected the
designs which were maturing under that mask; nor that this boy was
planning to grasp all the threads of diplomacy in Europe, and to be
the master of kings.
In 1517 Maximilian died, leaving a vacant throne in Germany to be
contended for by the ambitious Francis I. of France and Maximilian's
grandson, Charles.
It was a question of supremacy in Europe. So the successful aspirant
must win to himself Leo X., Henry VIII. and his great minister Wolsey,
and after that the Electors of Germany. It required consummate skill.
Francis I. was an able player. The astute Wolsey made the moves for
his master Henry VIII., keeping a watchful eye on Charles, "that young
man who looks so modest, and soars so high"; while Leo X., unconscious
of the coming Reformation, was craftily aiding this side or that as
benefit to the Church seemed to be promised.
But that "modest young man" played the strongest game. Charles was, by
the unanimous vote of the Electors, raised to the imperial throne;
and the grandson of Isabella, as Charles I. of Spain and Charles V. of
Germany, possessed more power than had been exercised by any one man
since the reign of Augustus. The territory over which he had dominion
in the New World was practically without limit. Mexico surrendered to
Cortez (1521) and Peru to Pizarro (1532); Ponce de Leon was in Florida
and de Soto on the banks of the Mississippi; while wealth, fabulous in
amount, was pouring into Spain, and from thence into Flanders.
The history of Charles belongs, in fact, more to Europe than to Spain.
No slightest tenderness seems to have existed in his cold heart for
the land of Isabella, which he seemed to regard simply as a treasury
from which to draw money for the objects to which he was really
devoted. So, in fact, Spain was governed by an absolute despot who was
Emperor of Germany, where he resided, and she visibly declined from
the strength and prosperity which had been created by the wise and
personal administration of Ferdinand and Isabella.
The Cortes, where the deputies had never been allowed the privilege
of debate, had been at its best a very imperfect expression of popular
sentiment; and now was reduced to a mere empty form. Abuses which had
been corrected under the vigilant personal administration of two able
and patriotic sovereigns returned in aggravated form. Misrule and
disorder prevailed, while their King was absorbed in the larger field
of European politics and diplomacy.
The light in which Spain shines in this, which is always accounted
her most glorious period, was that of Discovery and Conquest and the
enormous wealth coming therefrom; all of which was bestowed by that
shabby adventurer and suppliant at the Alhambra, in whom Isabella
alone believed, and who, after enriching Spain beyond its wildest
expectations, was permitted to die in poverty and neglect at
Valladolid in 1506! History has written its verdict: imperishable
renown to Columbus, Balboa, Magellan, and the navigators who dared
such perils and won so much; and eternal infamy to the men who planted
a bloodstained Cross in those distant lands. The history of the West
Indies, of Mexico, and Peru is unmatched for cruelty in the annals of
the world; and Isabella's is the only voice that was ever raised in
defense of the gentle, helpless race which was found in those lands.
The Reformation, which had commenced in Germany with the reign of
Charles V., had assumed enormous proportions. Charles, who was a bigot
with "heart as hard as hammered iron," was using with unsparing hand
the Inquisition, that engine of cruelty created by his grandmother.
And while his captains, the "conquistadors," were burning and
torturing in the West, he was burning and torturing in the East.
His entire reign was occupied in a struggle with his ambitious rival
Francis I., and another and vain struggle with the followers of
Luther.
He had married Isabel, the daughter of the King of Portugal. Philip,
his son and heir, was born in 1527. The desire of his heart was to
secure for this son the succession to the imperial throne of Germany.
To this the electors would not consent. He was defeated in the two
objects dearest to his heart: the power to bequeath this imperial
possession to Philip, and the destruction of Protestantism. So this
most powerful sovereign since the day of Charlemagne felt himself
ill-used by Fate. Weary and sick at heart, in the year 1556 he
abdicated in favor of Philip. The Netherlands was his own to bestow
upon his son, as that was an inheritance from his father, the
Archduke of Austria. So the fate of Philip does not seem to us so very
heart-breaking, as, upon the abdication of his father, he was King
of Spain, of Naples, and of Sicily; Duke of Milan; Lord of the
Netherlands and of the Indies, and of a vast portion of the American
continent stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific!
Such was the inheritance left to his son by the disappointed man
who carried his sorrows to the monastery at St. Yuste, where the
austerities and severities he practiced finally cost him his life
(1558). But let no one suppose that these penances were on account of
cruelties practiced upon his Protestant subjects! From his cloister
he wrote to the inquisitors adjuring them to show no mercy; to deliver
all to the flames, even if they should recant; and the only regret of
the dying penitent was that he had not executed Luther!
CHAPTER XVIII.
Philip established his capital at Madrid, and commenced the Palace
of the Escurial, nineteen miles distant, which stands to-day as
his monument. His coronation was celebrated by an _auto-da-fé_ at
Valladolid, which it is said "he attended with much devotion." One of
the victims, an officer of distinction, while awaiting his turn said
to him: "Sire, how can you witness such tortures?" "Were my own son in
your place I should witness it," was the reply; which was a key to the
character of the man.
[Illustration: From the painting by Velasquez.
The Surrender of Breda.]
He asserted his claim through his mother, the Princess Isabel of
Portugal, to the throne of that country, and after a stubborn contest
with the Lusitanians, the long-desired union of Spain and Portugal was
accomplished. This event was celebrated by Cervantes in a poem which
extravagantly lauds his sovereign. Henry VIII. had been succeeded in
England by Mary, daughter of his unhappy Queen, Catherine of Aragon,
who, it will be remembered, was the daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella. Mary had inherited the intense religious fervor and perhaps
the cruel instincts of her mother's family, and she quickly set about
restoring Protestant England to the Catholic faith. Philip saw in a
union with Mary and a joint sovereignty over England, such as he hoped
would follow, an immense opportunity for Spain. The marriage took
place with great splendor, and in the desire to please her handsome
husband, of whom she was very fond, she commenced the work which has
given her the title, "Bloody Mary." In vain were human torches lighted
to lure Philip from Spain, where he lingered. She did not win his
love, nor did Philip reign conjointly with his royal consort in
England. Mary died in 1558, and her Protestant sister Elizabeth,
daughter of Anne Boleyn, was Queen of England.
Philip had made up his mind that Protestantism should be exterminated
in his kingdom of the Netherlands. He could not go there himself, so
he looked about for a suitable instrument for his purpose. The Duke of
Alva was the man chosen. He was appointed Viceroy, with full authority
to carry out the pious design. Heresy must cease to exist in the
Netherlands. The arrival of Alva, clothed with such despotic powers,
and the atrocities committed by him, caused the greatest indignation
in the Netherlands. The Prince of Orange, aided by the Counts Egmont
and Horn, organized a party to resist him, and a revolution was
commenced which lasted for forty years, affording one of the blackest
chapters in the history of Europe. The name of Alva stands at the head
of the list of men who have wrought desolation and suffering in the
name of religion. The other European states protested, and Elizabeth,
in hot indignation, gave aid to the persecuted states.
Philip had contracted a marriage, after Mary's death, with the
daughter of that terrible woman Catherine de Medici, widow of Henry
II. of France, and there is much reason to believe that it was this
Duke of Alva who planned the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. There were
sinister conferences between Catherine, Philip, and Alva, and little
doubt exists that the hideous tragedy which occurred in Paris on the
night of August 24, 1572, was arranged in Madrid, and had its first
inception in the cruel breast of Alva.
There had not been much love existing before between Philip and
Elizabeth, who it is said had refused the hand of her Spanish
brother-in-law. But after her interference in the Netherlands, and
when her ships were intercepting and waylaying Spanish ships returning
with treasure from the West, and when at last the one was the accepted
champion of the Protestant, and the other of the Catholic cause, they
became avowed enemies. Philip resolved to prepare a mighty armament
for the invasion of England.
In 1587 Elizabeth sent Sir Francis Drake to reconnoiter and find out
what Philip was doing. He appeared with twenty-five vessels before
Cadiz. Having learned all he wanted, and burned a fleet of merchant
vessels, he returned to his Queen.
In May, 1588, a fleet of one hundred and thirty ships, some "the
largest that ever plowed the deep," sailed from Lisbon for the English
coast. We may form some idea to-day of what must have been the feeling
in England when this Armada, unparalleled in size, appeared in the
English Channel! If Sir Francis Drake's ships were fewer and smaller,
he could match the Spaniards in audacity. He sent eight fireships
right in among the close-lying vessels. Then, in the confusion which
followed, while they were obstructed and entangled with their own
fleet, he swiftly attacked them with such vigor that ten ships were
sunk or disabled, and the entire fleet was demoralized. Then a storm
overtook the fleeing vessels, and the winds and the waves completed
the victory. As in the Spanish report of the disaster thirty-five is
the number of ships acknowledged to be lost, we may imagine how great
was the destruction. So ended Philip's invasion of England, and the
great Spanish "Armada."
Philip II. died, 1598, in the Palace of the Escurial which he had
built, and with that event ends the story of Spain's greatness. The
period of one hundred and twenty-five years, including the reigns of
Ferdinand and Isabella, of Charles V., and of Philip II., is, in a
way, one of unmatched splendor. Spain had not like England by slow
degrees expanded into great proportions, but through strange and
perfectly fortuitous circumstances, she had, from a proud obscurity,
suddenly leaped into a position of commanding power and magnificence.
Fortune threw into her lap the greatest prize she ever had to bestow,
and at the same time gave her two sovereigns of exceptional qualities
and abilities. The story of this double reign is the romance, the
fairy tale of history. Then came the magnificent reign of Charles V.
with more gifts from fortune--the imperial crown, if not a substantial
benefit to Spain, still bringing dignity and éclat. But under this
glittering surface there had commenced even then a decline. Under
Philip II. she was still magnificent, Europe was bowing down to her,
but the decline was growing more manifest; and with the accession of
his puny son, Philip III., there was little left but a brilliant past,
which a proud and retrospective nation was going to feed upon for over
three centuries. But it takes some time for such dazzling effulgence
to disappear. The glamour of the Spanish name was going to last a
long time and picturesquely veil her decay. The memory of such an
ascendancy in Europe nourished the intense national pride of her
people. The name Castilian took on a new significance.
Nor can we wonder at their pride in the name "Castilian." Its glory
was not the capricious gift of fortune, but won by a devotion, a
constancy, and a fidelity of purpose which are unique in the history
of the world. For seven hundred years the race for which that name
stands had kept alive the national spirit, while their land was
occupied by an alien civilization. These were centuries of privation
and suffering and hardship; but never wavering in their purpose, and
by brave deeds which have filled volumes, they reclaimed their land
and drove out the Moors.
This is what gives to the name "Castilian," its proud significance.
But when degenerate Hidalgos and Grandees, debauched by wealth
and luxury, gloried in the name; when by rapacity and cruelty they
destroyed the lands their valor had won; and when the Inquisition
became their pastime and the rack and the wheel their toys--then
the name Castilian began to take on a sinister meaning. Spain's most
glorious period was not when she was converting the Indies and Mexico
and Peru into a hell, not when Charles V. was playing his great game
of diplomacy in Europe, but in that pre-Columbian era when a brave and
rugged people were keeping alive their national life in the mountains
of the Asturias. Well may Spain do honor to that time by calling the
heir to her throne the "Prince of the Asturias!"
CHAPTER XIX.
The history of the century after the death of Philip II. is one of
rapid decline; with no longer a powerful master-mind to hold the state
together. Every year saw the court at Madrid more splendid, and the
people,--that insignificant factor,--more wretched, and sinking deeper
and deeper into poverty. In fact, in spite of the fabulous wealth
which fortune had poured upon her, Spain was becoming poor. But
nowhere in Europe was royalty invested with such dignity and splendor
of ceremonial, and the ambitious Marie de Medici, widow of Henry IV.,
was glad to form alliances for her children with those of Philip
III. The "Prince of the Asturias," who was soon to become Philip
IV., married her daughter, Isabella de Bourbon, and the Infanta, his
sister, was at the same time married to the young Louis XIII., King of
France.
[Illustration: Philip IV. of Spain.
From the portrait by Velasquez.]
The remnant of the Moors who still lingered in the land were called
_Moriscos_; and under a very thin surface of submission to Christian
Spain, they nursed bitter memories and even hopes that some miracle
would some day restore them to what was really the land of their
fathers. A very severe edict, promulgated by Philip II., compelling
conformity in all respects with Christian living, and--as if that
were not a part of Christian living--forbidding _ablutions_, led to a
serious revolt. And this again led to the forcible expulsion of every
Morisco in Spain.
In 1609, by order of Philip III., the last of the Moors were conveyed
in galleys to the African coast whence they had come just nine hundred
years before.
In a narrative so drenched with tears, it is pleasant to hear of
light-hearted laughter. We are told that when the young King Philip
III. saw from his window a man striking his forehead and laughing
immoderately he said: "That man is either mad, or he is reading
'Don Quixote'"--which latter was the case. But the story written
by Cervantes did more than entertain. Chivalry had lingered in the
congenial soil of Spain long after it had disappeared in every other
part of Europe; but when in the person of Don Quixote it was made to
appear so utterly ridiculous, it was heard of no more.
Philip III., who died in 1621, was succeeded by his son Philip IV.
As in the reign of his father worthless favorites ruled, while
a profligate king squandered the money of the people in lavish
entertainments and luxuries. Much has been written about the visit of
Charles, Prince of Wales (afterward Charles I.), accompanied by the
Duke of Buckingham, at his court; whither the young Prince had come
disguised, to see the Infanta, Philip's sister, whom he thought of
making his queen. Probably she did not please him, or perhaps the
alliance with Protestant England was not acceptable to the pious
Catholic family of Philip. At all events, Henrietta, sister of
Louis XIII. of France, was his final choice; and shared his terrible
misfortunes a few years later.
A revolt of the Catalonians on the French frontier led to a difficulty
with France, which was finally adjusted by the celebrated "treaty of
the Pyrenees." In this treaty was included the marriage of the young
King Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV., the King
of Spain. The European Powers would only consent to this union upon
condition that Louis should solemnly renounce all claim to the Spanish
crown for himself and his heirs; which promise had later a somewhat
eventful history.
Seven of the United Provinces had achieved their independence during
the reign of the third Philip, who had also driven out of his kingdom
six hundred thousand Moriscos; by far the most skilled and industrious
portion of the community. And now, at the close of the reign of Philip
IV., the kingdom was further diminished by the loss of Portugal;
which, in 1664, the Lusitanians recovered, and proclaimed the Duke
of Braganza King. When we add to this the loss of much of the
Netherlands, and of the island of Jamaica, and concessions here and
there to France and to Italy, it will be obvious that a process of
contraction had soon followed that of Spain's phenomenal expansion!
During the reign of Carlos II., who succeeded his father (1665), Spain
was still further diminished by the cession to Louis XIV., in 1678, of
more provinces in the Low Countries and also of the region now known
as Alsace and Lorraine; which, it will be remembered, have in our own
time passed from the keeping of France to that of victorious Germany.
In the year 1655 the island of Jamaica was captured by an expedition
sent out by Cromwell. It was between the years 1670 and 1686 that the
Spaniard and the Anglo-Saxon had their first collision in America.
St. Augustine had been founded in 1565, and the old Spanish colony was
much disturbed in 1663, when Charles II. of England planted an English
colony in their near neighborhood (the Carolinas). During the war
between Spain and England at the time above mentioned, feeling ran
high between Florida and the Carolinas, and houses were burned and
blood was shed. Spain had felt no concern about the little English
colony planted on the bleak New England coast in 1620. Death by
exposure and starvation promised speedily to remove that. But the
settlement on the Carolinas was more serious, and at the same time
the French were planting a colony of their own at the mouth of the
Mississippi. The "lords of America" began to feel anxious about their
control of the Gulf of Mexico. The cloud was a very small one, but it
was not to be the last which would dim their skies in the West.
The one thing which gives historic importance to the reign of Carlos
II. is that it marks the close--the ignominious close--of the great
Hapsburg dynasty in Spain. And if the death of Carlos, in 1700, was a
melancholy event, it is because with it the scepter so magnificently
wielded by Ferdinand and Isabella passed to the keeping of the House
of Bourbon, whose Spanish descendants have, excepting for two brief
intervals, ruled Spain ever since.
CHAPTER XX.
The last century had wrought great changes in European conditions.
"The Holy Roman Empire," after a thirty-years' war with Protestantism,
was shattered, and the Emperor of Germany was no longer the head of
Europe. Protestant England had sternly executed Charles I., and then
in the person of James II. had swept the last of the Catholic House
of Stuart out of her kingdom. France, on the foundation laid by
Richelieu, had developed into a powerful despotism, which her King,
Louis XIV., was making magnificent at home and feared abroad.
For Spain it had been a century of steady decline, with loss of
territory, power, and prestige. No longer great in herself, she was
regarded by her ambitious neighbor, Louis XIV., as only a make-weight
in the supremacy in Europe upon which he was determined. He had been
ravaging the enfeebled German Empire, and now a friendly fate opened
a peaceful door through which he might make Spain contribute to his
greatness.
Carlos II. died (1700) without an heir. There was a vacant throne in
Spain to which--on account of Louis' marriage, years before, with the
Spanish Princess Maria Theresa--his grandson Philip had now the
most valid claim. The other claimant, Archduke Karl, son of Leopold,
Emperor of Germany, in addition to having a less direct hereditary
descent, was unacceptable to the Spanish people, who had no desire to
be ruled again by an occupant of the Imperial throne of Germany.
So, as Louis wished it, and the Spanish people also wished it, there
was only one obstacle to his design; that was a promise made at the
time of his marriage that he would never claim that throne for himself
or his heirs. But when the Pope, after "prayerful deliberation,"
absolved him from that promise the way was clear. This grandson, just
seventeen years old, was proclaimed Philip V., King of Spain, and
Louis in the fullness of his heart exclaimed, "The Pyrenees have
ceased to exist!"
Perhaps it would have been better for the King if he had not made that
dramatic exclamation. A man who could remove mountains to make a path
for his ambitions might also drain seas! England took warning. She had
been quietly bearing his insults for a long time, and not till he had
impertinently threatened to place upon her throne the Pretender, the
exiled son of James II., had she joined the coalition against the
French King. But now she sent more armies, and a great captain
to re-enforce Prince Eugene, who was fighting this battle for the
Archduke Karl and for Europe.
But Louis had reached the summit. He was to go no higher than he had
climbed when he uttered that vain boast. Philip V. was acknowledged
King in 1702, and in 1704 _Blenheim_ had been fought and won by
Marlborough, and the decline of the _Grand Monarque_ had commenced.
The war against him by a combined Europe now became the war of the
"Spanish Succession." England and Holland united with Emperor Leopold
to curb his limitless ambition. The purpose of the war of the "Spanish
Succession" was, ostensibly, to place the Austrian Archduke upon the
throne of Spain; its real purpose was to check the alarming ascendancy
of Louis XIV. in Europe.
It lasted for years, the poor young King and Queen being driven
from one city to another, while the Austrian Archduke was at Madrid
striving to reign over a people who would not recognize him.
Spain was being made the sport of three nations in pursuance of their
own ambitious ends. Her land was being ravaged by foreign armies,
recruited from three of her own disaffected provinces; while a young
King with whom she was well satisfied was peremptorily ordered to
make way for one Austria, England, and Holland preferred. It was
a humiliating proof of the decline in national spirit, and the old
Castilian pride must have sorely degenerated for such things to be
possible.
Finally, after Louis XIV. had once more given solemn oath that the
crowns of France and Spain should never be united, the "Peace of
Utrecht" was signed (1713). But the provisions of the treaty were
momentous for Spain. She was at one stroke of the pen stripped of half
her possessions in Europe. Philip V. was acknowledged King of Spain
and the Indies. But Sicily, with its regal title, was ceded to the
Duke of Savoy; Milan, Naples, Sardinia, and the Netherlands went to
Karl, now Emperor Charles VI. of Germany; while Minorca and Gibraltar
passed to the keeping of England.
No one felt unmixed satisfaction, except perhaps England. The Archduke
had failed to get his throne, and to wear the double crown like
Charles V. Louis had carried his point. He had succeeded in keeping
the kingdom for his grandson. But that kingdom was dismembered, and
had shrunk to insignificant proportions in Europe, while England, most
fortunate of all, had carried off the key to the Mediterranean. That
little rocky promontory of Gibraltar was potentially of more value
than all the rest!
Such was the beginning of the dynasty of the Bourbon in Spain. Philip
was succeeded, upon his death in 1746, by his son Ferdinand VI., who
also died, in 1759, and was succeeded by his brother, Philip's second
son, who was known as Carlos III. When we try to praise these princes
of the wretched Bourbon line, it is by mention of the evil they have
refrained from doing rather than the good they have done. So Carlos
III. is said to have done less harm to Spain than his predecessors. He
established libraries and academies of science and of arts, and
ruled like a kind-hearted gentleman, without the vices of his recent
predecessors. His severity toward the Jesuits and their forcible
expulsion from Spain, in 1767, are said to have been caused by
personal resentment on account of some slanderous rumors regarding his
birth, which were traced to them.
CHAPTER XXI.
But the fate of Spain was not now in the hands of her Kings. Were they
good or evil she was destined henceforth to drift in the currents of
_circumstance_, that sternest of masters, to whom her Kings as well
as her people would be obliged helplessly to bow. All that she now
possessed outside the borders of her own kingdom was the West Indies,
her colonies in America, North and South, and the Philippines,
that archipelago of a thousand isles in the southern Pacific, where
Magellan was slain by the savage inhabitants after he had discovered
it (1520).
Mexico and Peru had proved to be inexhaustible sources of wealth, and
when the gold and silver diminished, the Viceroys in these and the
other colonies could compel the people to wring rich products out of
the soil, enough to supply Spain's necessities. The inhabitants of
these colonies, composed of the aboriginal races with an admixture of
Spanish, had been treated as slaves and drudges for so many centuries
that they never dreamed of resistance, nor questioned the justice of a
fate which condemned them always to toil for Spain.
In the North the feeble colony planted in 1620 had expanded into
thirteen vigorous English colonies. France, too, had been colonizing
in America, and had drawn her frontier line from the mouth of the
Mississippi to Canada. In 1755 a collision occurred between England
and France over their American boundaries. By the year 1759, France
had lost Quebec and every one of her strongholds, and she formed an
alliance with Spain in a last effort to save her vanishing possessions
in America.
Spain's punishment for this interference was swift. England promptly
dispatched ships to Havana and to the Philippines; and when we read of
the Anglo-Saxon capturing Havana and the adjacent islands on one side
of the globe, and the City of Manila and fourteen of the Philippines
on the other, in the midsummer of 1762, it has a slightly familiar
sound. And when the old record further says, the "conquest in the West
Indies cost many precious lives, more of whom were destroyed by the
climate than by the enemy," and still again, "the capture of Manila
was conducted with marvelous celerity and judgment," we begin to
wonder whether we are reading the dispatches of the Associated Press
in 1898, or history!
In the treaty which followed these victories, upon condition of
England's returning Havana, and all the conquered territory excepting
a portion of the West India Islands, Spain ceded to her the peninsula
of Florida; while France, who was obliged to give to England all her
territory east of the Mississippi, gave to Spain in return for her
services the city of New Orleans, and all her territory west of the
great river. This territory was retroceded to France by Spain in the
year 1800, by the "Treaty of Madrid," and in 1803 was purchased by
America from Napoleon, under the title of "Louisiana."
There was a growing irritation in the Spanish heart against England.
She was crowding Spain out of North America, had insinuated herself
into the West India Islands, and she was mistress of Gibraltar. So
it was with no little satisfaction that they saw her involved in a
serious quarrel with her American colonies, at a time when a stubborn
and incompetent Hanoverian King was doing his best to destroy her.
The hour seemed auspicious for recovering Gibraltar, and also to drive
England out of the West Indies. The alliance with France had become a
permanent one, and was known as a _family compact_ between the Bourbon
cousins Louis XV. and Carlos III. France had at this time rather
distracting conditions at home; but she was thirsting for revenge at
the loss of her rich American possessions, and besides, a sentimental
interest in the brave people who had proclaimed their independence
from the mother country, and were fighting to maintain it, began to
manifest itself. It was fanned, no doubt, by a desire for England's
humiliation; but it assumed a form too chivalric and too generous for
Americans ever to discredit by unfriendly analysis of motive. Spain
cared little for the cause of the colonies; but she was quite willing
to help them by worrying and diverting the energies of England. So
she invested Gibraltar. A garrison of only a handful of men astonished
Europe by the bravery of its defense. Gibraltar was not taken by
the Bourbon allies, neither were the English driven out of the West
Indies. But it was a satisfaction to Spain to see her humbled by her
victorious colonies!
So Carlos III. had indirectly assisted in the establishment of a
republic on the confines of his Mexican Empire; apparently unconscious
of the contagion in the word _independence_. But he quickly learned
this to his sorrow. The story of the revolted and freed colonies sped
on the wings of the wind. And in Peru a brave descendant of the Incas
arose as a Deliverer. He led sixty thousand men into a vain fight for
liberty. Of course the effort failed, but a spirit had been awakened
which might be smothered, but never extinguished.
Carlos III. died in 1788 and was succeeded by his son Carlos IV.
During the miserable reign of this miserable King, France caught the
infection from the free institutions in America. The Republic she had
helped to create was fatal to monarchy in her own land. A revolution
accompanied by unparalleled horrors swept away the whole tyrannous
system of centuries and left the country a trembling wreck--but free.
The dream of a republic was brief. Napoleon gathered the imperfectly
organized government into his own hands, then by successive and rapid
steps arose to Imperial power. France was an Empire, and adoringly
submitted to the man who swiftly made her great and feared in Europe.
She had another Charlemagne, who was bringing to his feet Kings and
Princes, and annexing half of Europe to his empire!
Spain, all unconscious of his designs, and perhaps thinking this
invincible man might help her to get back Gibraltar and to drive the
English out of the West Indies, joined him in 1804 in a war against
Great Britain; and the following year the combined fleets of France
and Spain were annihilated by Lord Nelson off Cape Trafalgar. Family
dissensions in the Spanish royal household at this time were opportune
for Napoleon's designs. Carlos and his son Ferdinand were engaged
in an unseemly quarrel. Carlos appealed to Napoleon regarding the
treasonable conduct and threats of his son. Nothing could have better
suited the purposes of the Emperor. The fox had been invited to
be umpire! French troops poured into Spain. Carlos, under protest,
resigned in favor of his son, who was proclaimed Ferdinand VII.
(1807). The young King was then invited to meet the Emperor for
consultation at Bayonne. He found himself a prisoner in France, and to
Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor, was transferred the Crown of
Spain.
The nation seemed paralyzed by the swiftness and the audacity of these
overturnings. But soon popular indignation found expression. Juntas
were formed. The one at Seville, calling itself the Supreme Junta,
proclaimed an alliance with Great Britain; its purpose being the
expulsion of the French from their kingdom.
Spain was in a state of chaos. Joseph was not without Spanish
adherents, and there was no leader, no legitimate head to give
constitutional stamp to the acts of the protesting people, who without
the usual formalities convoked the Cortes. But while they were groping
after reforms, and while Lord Wellington was driving back the French,
Napoleon had met his reverse at Moscow, and a "War of Liberation" had
commenced in Germany.
The grasp upon the Spanish throne relaxed. The captive King had
permission to return, and the reign of Joseph was ended by his
ignominious flight from the kingdom, with one gold-piece in his pocket
(1814).
CHAPTER XXII.
The decade between 1804 and 1814 had been very barren in external
benefits to Spain, with her King held in "honorable captivity" in
France, and the obscure Joseph abjectly striving to please not his
subjects, but his august brother Napoleon. But in this time of chaos,
when there was no Bourbon King, no long-established despotism to
stifle popular sentiment, the unsuspected fact developed that Spain
had caught the infection of freedom.
[Illustration: From the painting by C. Alvarez Dumont.
Heroic Combat in the Pulpit of the Church of St.
Augustine, Saragossa, 1809.]
When, as we have seen, the Cortes assumed all the functions of a
government, that body (in 1812) drew up a new Constitution for Spain.
So completely did this remodel the whole administration, that the most
despotic monarchy in Europe was transformed into the one most severely
limited.
Great was the surprise of Ferdinand VII. when, in 1814, he came to the
throne of his ejected father Carlos IV., to find himself called upon
to reign under a Constitution which made Spain almost as free as a
republic. He promulgated a decree declaring the Cortes illegal and
rescinding all its acts, the Constitution of 1812 included. Then when
he had re-established the Inquisition, which had been abolished by the
Cortes, when he had publicly burned the impertinent Constitution,
and quenched conspiracies here and there, he settled himself for a
comfortable reign after the good old arbitrary fashion.
The Napoleonic empire having been effaced by a combined Europe,
Ferdinand's Bourbon cousins were in the same way restoring the
excellent methods of their fathers in France.
But there was a spirit in the air which was not favorable to the peace
of Kings. On the American coast there stood "Liberty Enlightening the
World!" A growing, prosperous republic was a shining example of what
might be done by a brave resistance to oppression and a determined
spirit of independence.
The pestilential leaven of freedom had been at work while monarchies
slept in security. Ferdinand discovered that not only was there a
seditious sentiment in his own kingdom, but every one of his American
colonies was in open rebellion, and some were even daring to set up
free governments in imitation of the United States.
Not only was Ferdinand's sovereignty threatened, but the very
principle of monarchy itself was endangered.
Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed themselves into a league for the
preservation of what they were pleased to call "The Divine Right of
Kings." It was the attack upon this sacred principle, which was the
germ of all this mischievous talk about freedom. They called their
league "The Holy Alliance," and what they proposed to do was to _stamp
out free institutions in the germ_.
In pursuance of this purpose, in 1819 there appeared at Cadiz a large
fleet, assembled for the subjugation of Spanish America.
But there was an Anglo-Saxon America, which had a preponderating
influence in that land now; and there was also an Anglo-Saxon race in
Europe which had its own views about the "Divine Right of Kings," and
also concerning the mission of the "Holy Alliance."
The right of three European Powers to restore to Spain her revolted
colonies in America was denied by President Monroe; not upon the
ground of Spain's inhumanity, and the inherent right of the colonies
to an independence which they might achieve. Such was the nature
of England's protest, through her Minister Canning. But President
Monroe's contention rested on a much broader ground. In a message
delivered in 1823 he uttered these words: "European Powers must
not extend their political systems to any portion of the American
continent." The meaning of this was that _America has been won for
freedom_; and no European Power will be permitted to establish a
monarchy, nor to coerce in any way, nor to suppress inclinations
toward freedom, in any part of the Western Hemisphere. This is the
"Monroe Doctrine"; a doctrine which, although so startling in 1832,
had in 1896 become so firmly imbedded in the minds of the people, that
Congress decided it to be a vital principle of American policy.
But there was another and more serious obstacle in the way of the
proposed plan for subjugating the Spanish-American colonies. The army
assembled by the Holy Alliance at Cadiz was an offense to the people
who had seen their Constitution burned and their hopes of a freer
government destroyed. Officers and troops refused to embark, and
joined a concourse of disaffected people at Cadiz. A smothered popular
sentiment burst forth into a series of insurrections throughout Spain,
and the astonished Ferdinand was compelled, in 1820, to acknowledge
the Constitution of 1812. This was not upholding the principle of the
"Divine Right of Kings"! So, under the direction of the Holy Alliance,
a French army of one hundred thousand men moved into Spain, took
possession of her capital, and for two years administered her affairs
under a regency, and then reinstated Ferdinand, leaving a French army
of occupation.
In this contest two distinct political parties had developed--the
Liberal party and the party of Absolutism. As Ferdinand VII. became
the choice of the Liberals, and his brother Don Carlos of the party
of Absolutism, we must infer either that it was a Liberalism of a very
mild type, or that Ferdinand's views had been modified since the
"Holy Alliance" took his kingdom into its own keeping. But his brother
Carlos was the adored of the Absolutists, and a plot was made to
compel Ferdinand to abdicate in his favor. This was the first of the
Carlist plots, which, with little intermission, and always in the
interest of despotism and bigotry, have menaced the safety and
well-being of Spain ever since. From the year 1825 to 1898 there has
been always a Don Carlos to trouble the political waters in that land.
So the mission of the "Holy Alliance" had failed. Instead of
rehabilitating the sacred principle of the "Divine Right of Kings,"
they saw a powerful liberal party established in a kingdom which was
the very stronghold of despotism. And instead of stamping out free
institutions, six Spanish-American colonies had been recognized as
free and independent states (1826). Spain had for three centuries
ruled the richest and the fairest land on the earth. She had shown
herself utterly undeserving of the opportunity, and unfit for the
responsibilities imposed by a great colonial empire. She had sown
the wind and now she reaped the whirlwind. She did not own a foot of
territory on the continent she had discovered!
CHAPTER XXIII.
In 1833 King Ferdinand VII. died, leaving one child, the Princess
Isabella, who was three years old. Here was the opportunity for the
adherents of Don Carlos.
The "Salic law" had been one of the Gothic traditions of ancient
Spain, and had with few exceptions been in force until 1789; when
Carlos IV. issued a "Pragmatic Sanction," establishing the succession
through the female as well as the male line; and on April 6, 1830,
King Ferdinand confirmed this decree; so, when Isabella was born,
October 10, 1830, she was heiress to the throne, _unless_ her
ambitious uncle, Don Carlos, could set aside the decree abrogating the
old Salic law, and reign as Carlos IV.
In the three years before his brother's death he had laid his plans
for the coming crisis. Isabella was proclaimed Queen under the regency
of her depraved mother Christina. The extreme of the Catholic party,
and of the reactionary or absolutist party, flocked about the Carlist
standard; while the party of the infant Queen was the rallying point
for the liberal and progressive sentiment in the kingdom; and her
cause had the support of the new reform government of Louis Philippe
in France, and of lovers of freedom elsewhere.
The party of the Queen triumphed. But the Carlists survived; and, like
the Bourbons in France, have ever since in times of political peril
been a serious element to be reckoned with.
During the infancy of the Queen, Spain was the prey of unceasing
party dissensions; Don Carlos again and again trying to overthrow
her government, and again and again being driven a fugitive over the
Pyrenees; while the Queen Regent, who was secretly married to her
Chamberlain, the son of a tobacconist in Madrid, was bringing disgrace
and odium upon the Liberal party which she was supposed to lead.
In 1843 the Cortes declared that the Queen had attained her majority.
Her disgraced mother was driven out of the country and Isabella II.
ascended her throne. Isabella had a younger sister, Maria Louisa, and
in 1846 the double marriage of these two children was celebrated with
great splendor at Madrid. The Queen was married to her cousin Don
Francisco d'Assisi, and her sister to the Duke de Montpensier, fifth
son of Louis Philippe.
[Illustration: From the painting by J. Siguenza y Chavarrieta.
The Duke de la Torre sworn in as Regent before the
Cortes of 1869.]
If, upon the birth of Liberalism in Spain, that kingdom could have
been governed by a wise and competent sovereign, the concluding
chapters of this narrative might have been very different. No time
could have been less favorable for a radical change in policy than the
period during which Isabella II. was Queen of Spain. Personally she
was all that a woman and a Queen should not be. With apparently not an
exalted desire or ambition for her country, this depraved daughter
of a depraved mother pursued her downward course until 1868, when the
nation would bear no more. A revolution broke out. Isabella, with her
three children, fled to France and there was once more a vacant throne
in Spain.
The hopes of the Carlists ran high. But the Cortes came to an
unexpected decision. They would have no Spanish Bourbon, be he Carlist
or Liberal. The reigning dynasty in Italy was at this moment the
adored of the Liberals in Europe. So they offered the Crown to Amadeo,
second son of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy. Three years were quite
sufficient for this experiment. The young Amadeo was as glad to take
off his crown and to leave his kingdom, as the people were to have him
do so. He abdicated in 1873.
The Liberal party had been regretting their loss of opportunity in
1870. France had passed through many political phases in the last few
years, and the present French Republic had just come into existence.
Again Spain caught the contagion from her neighbor, and Spanish
Liberalism became _Spanish Republicanism_.
When Castelar, that patriotic and sagacious statesman, friend of
Garibaldi, of Mazzini, and of Kossuth, led this movement, many
hopefully believed the political millennium was at hand, when Spain
was about to join the brotherhood of Republics! But something more
than a great leader is needed to create a Republic. The magic of
Castelar's eloquence, the purity of his character, and the force of
his convictions were powerless to hold in stable union the conflicting
elements with which he had to deal. The Carlists were scheming, and
the Cortes was driven to an immediate decision.
The fugitive Queen Isabella had with her in exile a young son Alfonso,
seventeen years of age. Alfonso was invited to return upon the sole
condition that his mother should be excluded from his kingdom. An
insurrection which was being fomented by Don Carlos II. led to this
action of the Cortes, which was perhaps the wisest possible under the
circumstances. The young Prince of the legitimate Bourbon line was
proclaimed King Alfonso XII. in 1874.
A romantic marriage with his cousin Mercedes, daughter of the Duke de
Montpensier, to whom he was deeply attached, speedily took place. Only
five months later Mercedes died and was laid in the gloomy Escurial.
A marriage was then arranged with Christina, an Austrian Archduchess,
who was brought to Madrid, and there was another marriage celebrated
with much splendor. The infant daughter, who was born a few years
later, was named Mercedes; a loving tribute to the adored young Queen
he had lost, which did credit as much to Christina as to Alfonso.
The hard school of exile had, no doubt, been an advantage to Alfonso;
and at the outset of his reign he won the confidence of the Liberals
by saying "he wished them to understand he was the first Republican in
Europe; and when they were tired of him they had only to tell him so,
and he would leave as quickly as Amadeo had done." There was not time
to test the sincerity of these assurances. Alfonso XII. died in 1885,
and joined Mercedes and his long line of predecessors in the Escurial.
Five months later his son was born, and the throne which had been
filled by the little Mercedes passed to the boy who was proclaimed
Alfonso XIII. of Spain, under the Regency of his mother Queen
Christina.
CHAPTER XXIV.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the foreign dominions of
Spain, although reduced, were still a vast and imperial possession.
The colonial territory over which Alfonso XIII. was to have
sovereignty at the close of that century, consisted of the
Philippines, the richest of the East Indies; Cuba, the richest of the
West Indies; Porto Rico, and a few outlying groups of islands of no
great value.
Nowhere had the Constitution of 1812 awakened more hope than in Cuba;
and from the setting aside of that instrument by Ferdinand VI. dates
the existence of an insurgent party in that beautiful but most unhappy
island. Ages of spoliation and cruelty and wrong had done their work.
The iron of oppression had entered into the soul of the Cuban. There
was a deep exasperation which refused to be calmed. From thenceforth
annexation to the United States, or else a "_Cuba Libre_," was the
determined, and even desperate aim.
After a ten-years' war, 1868-78, the people yielded to what proved a
delusive promise of home-rule. How could Spain bestow upon her colony
what she did not possess herself? When in 1881 she tried to pacify
Cuba by permitting that island to send six Senators to sit in the
Spanish Cortes, it was a phantom of a phantom. There was no outlet
for the national will in Spain itself. Her Cortes was _not_ a national
assembly, and its members were _not_ the choice of the people. How
much less must they be so then in Cuba, where they were only men
of straw selected by the home government, for the purpose of
defeating--not expressing--the popular will? The emptiness of this
gift was soon discovered. Then came a shorter conflict, which was only
a prelude to the last.
A handful of ragged revolutionists, ignorant of the arts of war,
commenced the final struggle for liberty on February 24, 1895, under
the leadership of José Marti. At the end of two years a poorly armed
band of guerrilla soldiers had waged a successful contest against
235,000 well-equipped troops, supported by a militia and a navy, and
maintained by supplies from Spain; had adopted a Constitution, and
were asking for recognition as a free Republic. The Spanish commander
Martinez Campos was superseded by General Weyler (1895), and a new
and severer method was inaugurated in dealing with the stubborn
revolutionists, but with no better success than before. In August,
1897, an insurrection broke out anew in the Philippines, and Spain was
in despair.
America calmly resisted all appeals for annexation or for intervention
in Cuba. Sympathy for Cuban patriots was strong in the hearts of the
people, but the American Government steadfastly maintained an attitude
of strict neutrality and impartiality, and with unexampled patience
saw a commerce amounting annually to one hundred millions of
dollars wiped out of existence, her citizens reduced to want by the
destruction of their property,--some of them lying in Spanish dungeons
subjected to barbarities which were worthy of the Turkish Janizaries;
our fleets used as a coastguard and a police, in the protection of
Spanish interests, and more intolerable than all else, our hearts
wrung by cries of anguish at our very doors!
But when General Weyler inaugurated a system for the deliberate
starvation of thirty thousand "Reconcentrados," an innocent peasantry
driven from their homes and herded in cities, there to perish, the
limit of patience was reached. It was this touch of human pity--this
last and intolerable strain upon our sympathies--which turned the
scale.
While a profound feeling of indignation was prevailing on account of
these revolting crimes against humanity, the battleship _Maine_ was,
by request of Consul General Lee at that place, dispatched to the
harbor of Havana to guard American citizens and interests. The sullen
reception of the _Maine_ was followed on February 15, 1898, by a
tragedy which shocked the world. Whether the destruction of that ship
and the death of 266 brave men was from internal or external causes
was a very critical question. It was submitted to a court of inquiry
which, after long deliberation, rendered the decision that the cause
was--_external_.
It looked dark for lovers of peace! President McKinley exhausted all
the resources of diplomacy before he abandoned hope of a peaceful
adjustment which would at the same time compel justice to the Cuban
people. But on April 25, 1898, it was declared that war existed
between Spain and America.
Less than a week after this declaration, in the early morning of
May 1, a victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila was achieved by
Commodore Dewey, which made him virtual master of the Philippines;
and just two months later, July 1 and 2 were made memorable by two
engagements in the West Indies, resulting, the one in the defeat of
the Spanish land forces at San Juan, and the other in the complete
annihilation of Admiral Cervera's fleet in the Bay of Santiago de
Cuba--misfortunes so overwhelming that overtures for peace were
quickly received at Washington from Madrid; and the Spanish-American
War was over.
The colonial empire of Spain was at an end. The kingdom over which
Alfonso XIII. was soon to reign had at a stroke lost the Spanish
Indies in the West, and the Philippines in the far East. To America
was confided the destiny of these widely separated possessions, Porto
Rico being permanently ceded to the United States; while, according to
the avowed purpose at the outset of the war, Cuba and the islands in
the Pacific, as soon as fitted for self-government, were to be given
into their own keeping; a promise which in the case of Cuba has
already been redeemed, all possible haste being made to prepare the
Philippines for a similar responsibility and destiny.
The quickness with which cordial relations have been re-established
between Spain and the United States is most gratifying; and too much
praise cannot be bestowed upon that proud, high-spirited people, who
have accepted the results of the war in a spirit so admirable. In the
loss of her American colonies, Spain has been paying a debt contracted
in the days of her dazzling splendor--the time of the great Charles
and of Philip II.,--a kind of indebtedness which in the case of
nations is never forgiven, but must be paid to the uttermost farthing.
If history teaches anything, it is that the nations which have been
cruel and unjust sooner or later must "drink the cup of the Lord's
fury," just as surely as did the Assyrians of old. Another thing
which is quite as obvious is that the nations of the earth to-day must
accept the ideals of the advancing tide of modern civilization, or
perish! A people whose national festival is a bull-fight, has still
something to learn. Much of mediævalism still lingers in the methods
and ideals of Spain. In the time of her opulence and splendor these
methods and ideals were hers. So she believes in them and clings to
them still. She has been the victim of a vicious political system, to
which an intensely proud, patriotic, and brave people have believed
they must be loyal.
In no other land--as we have seen--is the national spirit so strong.
Certainly nowhere else has it ever been subjected to such strain and
survived. And this intense loyalty, this overwhelming pride of race,
this magnificent valor, have all been summoned to uphold a poor,
perishing, vicious political system.
But the _Zeitgeist_ is contagious. And at no time has its influence
in this conservative kingdom been so apparent as since the
Spanish-American War; soon after this was over, Alfonso ascended the
throne of his fathers. The important question of his marriage after
long consideration was decided by himself, when he selected an English
Princess, niece of Edward VII., for his future Queen. The Princess
Ena is the daughter of Princess Beatrice,--youngest child of Queen
Victoria,--and Prince Henry of Battenberg, who was killed some years
ago during one of the Kaffir wars in South Africa. A royal marriage
uniting Protestant England and Catholic Spain would at one time
have cost a throne and perhaps a head; and the cordiality, and even
enthusiasm, with which this union has been greeted in England shows
what seas of prejudice have been sailed through and what continents
of sectarian differences have been left behind; proving that the
_Zeitgeist_ has been busy in England as well as in Spain.
The royal marriage of these two children--(the King having just passed
his twentieth birthday)--attended by the traditional formalities, and
a revival of almost mediæval splendor, took place at Madrid, June 1,
1906. The many romantic features attending the courtship of the
boy King and his English girl-bride invested the occasion with a
picturesque interest for the whole world. And yet--impossible as it
would have seemed--there existed some one degenerate enough to convert
it into a ghastly tragedy. While returning to the royal palace over
flower-strewn streets, after the conclusion of the marriage ceremony,
a bomb concealed in a bouquet was thrown from an upper window, hitting
the royal coach at which it was directly aimed. The young King and
Queen escaped as if by a miracle from the wreck; and the destruction
intended for them bore death and mutilation to scores of innocent
people in no wise connected with the Government; and Madrid, at the
moment of her supreme rejoicing, was converted into a blood-stained,
mourning city.
Never did anarchistic methods seem so utterly divorced from
intelligence as in this last attempt at regicide. If it had succeeded,
an infant-nephew would have been King of Spain, with a long regency,
perhaps, of some well-seasoned Castilian of the old school!
There was an incident in connection with this marriage which deeply
touches the American heart. The special envoy, bearing a letter of
congratulation to the King from President Roosevelt, was received
with a warmth and consideration far exceeding what was required by
diplomatic usage, and the stars and stripes helping to adorn Madrid
for the great festival gave assurance that Spain and the United States
are really friends again.
LIST OF VISIGOTH KINGS.
A.D.
Ataulfus, 411-415
Wallia, 415-420
Theodored, 420-451
Thorismund, 451-452
Theodoric I. (Defeated Attila), 452-466
Evaric (Completed Gothic Conquest in Spain), 466-483
Alaric, 483-506
Gesaleic, 506-511
Theodoric II., 511-522
Amalaric, 522-531
Theudis, 531-548
Theudisel, 548-549
Agilan, 549-554
Athanagild I., 554-567
Liuva I., 567-570
Leovigild, 570-587
Recared I., 587-601
Liuva II., 601-603
Witteric, 603-610
Gundemar, 610-612
Sisebert, 612-621
Recared II. (3 months).
Swintila, 621-631
Sisenand, 631-636
Chintila, 636-640
Tulga, 640-642
Chindaswind, 642-649
Receswind, 649-672
Wamba, 672-680
Ervigius, 680-687
Egica (son of Wamba), 687-701
Witiza, 701-709
Roderick, 700-711
Theodomir, } Kings without a kingdom { 711-743
Athanagild II.,} { 743-755
KINGS OF THE ASTURIAS AND LEON.
A.D.
Pelayo (of Royal Gothic birth), 718
Favila (son of above), 737
Alfonso I. (son-in-law of Pelayo), 739
Fruela I. (son of Alfonso), 757
Aurelio, 768
Mauregato, 774
Bermudo I., 788
Alfonso II., 791
Ramiro I., 842
Ordoño I., 850
Alfonso III., 866
Garcia, 910
Ordoño II., 914
Fruela II., 923
Alfonso IV., 925
Ramiro II., 930
Ordoño III., 950
Sancho I., 955
Ramiro III., 967
Bermudo II., 982
Alfonso V., 999
Bermudo III., 1027
Fernando I. (also King of Castile), 1037
Alfonso VI., 1065
Urraca, 1109
Alfonso VII. (also King of Castile), 1126
Fernando II., 1157
Alfonso IX. (Aided Conquest of Moors), 1188
Fernando III., 1230
LEON AND CASTILE UNITED.
Alfonso X. (_el sabio_), 1252
Sancho IV., 1284
Fernando IV., 1295
Alfonso XI., 1312
Pedro I. (_el cruel_), 1350
Enrique II., 1369
Juan I., 1379
Enrique IV., 1454
Isabel I. (married to Fernando II.
of Aragon), 1474
CASTILE AND ARAGON UNITED.
Carlos I. (Charles I. Elected
Charles V. of Germany, 1519), 1516
Philip II., 1556
Philip III., 1593
Philip IV., 1621
Carlos II., 1665
HOUSE OF BOURBON.
Philip V., 1700
Fernando VI., 1746
Carlos III., 1759
Carlos IV., 1788
Ferdinand VII., 1799
Joseph Bonaparte, 1806
Ferdinand VII. (reinstated), 1814
Isabella II. (dethroned, 1868), 1843
Alfonso XII., 1874
Alfonso XIII., 1885
INDEX
Abbasides, 66, 67
Abd-el-Rahman I, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72
Abd-el-Rahman II, 72, 73, 74
Abd-el-Rahman III, 74
Abdul Hassan, 105, 106
Acropolis, 92
Actium, 27
Æneas, 12
Ætius, 36
Ahab, 12
Alaric, 31
Alcázar, 89
Alexander, 13
Alfonso I, 63, 64, 65, 78
Alfonso III, 78
Alfonso VI, 81, 82
Alfonso IX, 86
Alfonso X, 90
Alfonso XII, 154, 155, 156, 160
Alfonso XIII, 144, 148, 150, 155, 162
Alhambra, 92, 106, 107
Alhama, 106
Almanzor, 79, 80, 86
Almoravides, 83, 84
Alsace, 129
Andalusian, 32, 61, 67, 79, 80
Antony, 27
Arabia, 91
Aragon, 64
Arianism, 40, 46
Armada, 121
Arthur, 70, 82
Assyrian, 7
Asturias, 6, 63, 64, 78, 81, 125
Ataulf, 32
Austria, Archduke of, 110
Ayasha, 105
Babel, 4
Babylonian, 7
Bacon, Roger, 87
Badajos, 83
Baghdad, 74, 75
Balboa, 114
Balearic, 11
Barcelona, 12
Basques, 36, 70
Battenberg, 162
Beatrice, 162
Berber, 2, 58, 65, 81, 83
Bertrand du Guesclin, 96
Black Prince, 95
Blanche de Bourbon, 95
Blenheim, 133
Boabdil, 105, 106, 107
Bourbon, 130
Braganza, Duke de, 128
Brummel, 73
Brunhilde, 42
Brutus, 27
Cadiz, 8, 21, 55, 120
Cæsar, 26, 27
Canaan, 7
Canada, 138, 139
Canning, 147
Cantabrian, 56, 64, 127
Carlists, 149
Carlos II, 128, 130, 131, 132
Carlos III, 135, 136, 141
Carlos IV, 142
Carolinas, 129
Carthage, 10, 12
Carthagena, 15
Castelar, 153
Castile, 64, 79, 81, 94, 100, 101, 109
Castilian, 81, 123
Catalonian, 6
Catherine, 109, 118
Catherine de' Medici, 119
Cato, the Elder, 22
Cervantes, 24, 126
Cervera, 160
Ceuta, 18
Chaldean Civilization, 6
Chanson de Roland, 70
Charlemagne, 69, 70, 142
Charles Martel, 58, 69, 86
Charles I, 131
Charles II, 129
Charles V, 95, 110, 112, 122, 123
Chivalry, 126
Christina, 150
Christina, Hapsburg, 154
Cid, 82, 83, 85, 88
Clovis, 36
Columbus, 29, 109, 114
Constantinople, 107
Constantius, 34
Constanza, 96
Constitution, 144, 145, 148, 149
Corneille, 24, 26
Cortes, 112, 113, 144, 145, 147
Cortez, 112
Count Julian, 52-56
Court of the Lions, 106
Covadonga, 64, 88
Crusade, 86, 87
Damascus, 60, 74
Delenda est Carthago, 21
De Soto, 112
Dictator, 27
Dido, 12
Don Quixote, 126
Don Carlos, 159
Drake, Sir Francis, 120
Edward III, 96
Egmont, 119
Egyptian Civilization, 6
Eleanor, Queen, 90
Elizabeth, 120
Ena, Princess, 162
Enrique III, 96, 97
Enrique IV, 97
Errigius, 73, 74
Escurial, 117, 121, 154, 155
Eugene, Prince, 133
Eulogius, 73, 74
Evaric, 36
Ezekiel, 10
Ferdinand I, 100, 101, 105, 107, 111, 130
Ferdinand VI, 135
Ferdinand VII, 142
Fernando I, 79
Flanders, 112
Florida, 121, 129
Francis I, 111, 114
Francis d'Assisi, 152
Frederick II, 90
Gallicians, 6
Garibaldi, 153
George IV, 73
Gibraltar, 18, 135, 139, 141, 142
Granada, 85, 86, 92, 100, 101, 104
Guadalquivir, 73
Hamilcar, 14, 15
Hannibal, 12
Hapsburg, 130
Havana, 138
Henrietta, 127
Henry II, 119
Henry VIII, 109, 111, 117
Hidalgo, 50, 63, 78, 123
Hiram, 10, 109
Hispania, 21
Holy Alliance, 146, 147, 148, 149
Honorius, 34
Horn, 119
Huesca, 25
Huns, 36
Iberia, 2, 6
Ides of March, 27
Ionian, 9
Isabella I, 12, 96, 100, 102, 108, 109, 110, 130
Isabella II, 150, 151, 152
Isabella de Bourbon, 125
Isabel of Portugal, 114
Isaiah, 13
Islam, 59, 64
Jamaica, 128, 129
James II, 131, 132
Janizaries, 158
Jesuits, 136
Jezebel, 12
Joanna, 109, 110
John of Gaunt, 96, 97
José Marti, 157
Joseph Bonaparte, 143
Juan II, 100, 102
Juntas, 143
Karl, Archduke of Austria, 132, 133
Kelts, 4
Keltiberians, 5, 15, 22
Khalif, 65, 66, 75-77
Koran, 60
Kossuth, 151
Lee, 159
Leo X, 111
Leon, 79, 81, 94
Leopold, 132
Leovigild, 43
Lira, 24
Lorraine, 129
Louis IX, 90
Louis XIII, 125
Louis XIV, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134
Louis XV, 140
Louisiana, 139
Lucan, 29
Luther, 114, 116
Madrid, Treaty of, 139
Magellan, 114
Mahdi, 85
Maine, 159
Manila, 138, 160
Maria Theresa, 127, 132
Marie de' Medici, 125
Marius, 23, 24
Marlborough, 133
Martian, 29
Martinez Campos, 158
Mary Tudor, 117, 118
Maximilian, 109, 111
Mazzini, 153
Mercedes, 154
Mexico, 20, 112, 137
Milan, 135
Minorca, 135
Mississippi, 138
Mithridates, 25
Monroe, 147
Moor, 56
Moriscos, 126, 128
Moscow, 143
Montpensier, Duke de, 152, 154
Munda, 26
Murillo, 52
Mur-Viedo, 16
Musa, 52
Naples, 135
Napoleon, 139, 142
Navarre, 79, 94
Nelson, 142
Ne plus ultra, 18
Nero, 29, 73
Netherlands, 115, 119, 120, 128, 135
New Orleans, 139
Nineveh, 7
Noah, 7
Numantia, 24
Octavius Augustus, 23
Olivier, 70
Omeyads, 66, 67, 72, 74
Opus Majus, 87
Ordoño I, 79
Osca, 25
Ostrogoths, 36
Paladins, 70
Pedro, 83, 95
Pelagius, 64
Pelasgians, 30, 88
Peru, 20, 112, 137
Petronius, 73
Phenicia, 91
Philip II, 161
Philip III, 125, 126, 127
Philip IV, 127, 128
Philip V, 33, 134, 133
Philippi, 27
Philippines, 137, 138, 156, 158, 160
Pillars of Hercules, 18, 82
Pizzarro, 112
Placidia, 33
Plutarch, 24
Pompey, 25, 26
Ponce de Leon, 112
Portugal, 94, 102, 109
Pragmatic Sanction, 151
Pretender, 132
Protestantism, 115, 118, 119
Punic, 11, 14, 16
Quebec, 138
Quintilian, 29
Ramiro I, 79
Recared, 46
Reconcentrados, 159
Reformation, 114
Richelieu, 131
Roderick, 51, 54, 56, 107
Roland, 70, 71
Rome, 13
Roncesvalles, 13
Saguntum, 9, 16
Sahara, 2
Salic Law, 150
Saracen, 61, 62, 63
Santiago de Cuba, 160
Sardinia, 11, 14, 135
Scipio, 19, 22
Seneca, 29
Seville, 88, 89
Sidon, 7, 12
Spanish Succession, War of, 33
Spartans, 30
St. Augustine, 129
St. Bartholomew, 119
Stuart, House of, 131
Suevi, 31
Sylla, 23, 24
Syrian, 7
Tarif, 53
Tarshish, 10, 13
Toledo, 45, 65
Torquemada, 103
Trafalgar, 142
Troy, 9
Tubal, 4
Tyre, 7, 13
Ulfilas, 39
Utrecht, Peace of, 134
Valladolid, 100, 101, 104, 117
Vandals, 30
Visigoths, 36
Wamba, 47
Wellington, 143
Weyler, 158
White Hind, 26
Witiza, 50, 51
Yusuf, 67
Zante, 9
Zarynthus, 9
Zeitgeist, 162, 163
Ziryab, 73
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