VI. THE EMIRATE…

VI. THE EMIRATE

713–755

Abd-al-Aziz--His Wise Administration--His Execution ordered by the Khalif--Ayub-Ibn-Habib--His Reforms--Al-Horr--Al-Samh--His Invasion of France--His Defeat and Death--Abd-al-Rahman--Feud of the Maadites and Kahtanites--Its Disastrous Effects--Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim--His Ability--He penetrates to the Rhone and is killed--Yahya-Ibn-Salmah--Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa--Hodheyfa-Ibn -al-Awass--Al-Haytham-Ibn-Obeyd--Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah --Abd-al-Rahman--His Popularity--Proclaims the Holy War--Treason of Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa--The Emir attempts the Conquest of France--Character of Charles Martel--Battle of Poitiers--Death of Abd-al-Rahman--Abd-al-Melik--Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj--His Wisdom and Capacity--Charles Martel ravages Provence--Berber Revolt in Africa--Victory of the Rebels--Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kottam--Balj-Ibn-Beschr--Thalaba --Abu-al-Khattar--Condition of Western Europe--Unstable and Corrupt Administration of the Emirs--Importance of the Battle of Poitiers.

The principle of hereditary right, although it occupied no place in the polity of Mohammed, was denounced by the Koran, and repudiated by the Arabs of ancient times, had been, since the dynasty of the Ommeyades attained to power, to a certain extent tacitly recognized by the subjects of the khalifs. Although the latter dignity was among orthodox Mussulmans still elective, like the office of an Arab sheik, the Persian schismatics had, for some generations, accustomed themselves to consider the descendants of Ali as the only legal Successors of the Prophet, to whom had been transmitted the inalienable prerogatives of regal power and even the sacred attributes of divinity. The ambition of the sovereigns of Damascus had been occasionally gratified by the accession of their sons to the throne, a result not unfrequently accomplished by means of questionable character. When the loyalty of the nobles and the obsequious devotion of the multitude were not sufficient to enable him to attain the desired end, the Khalif did not hesitate to use bribery, threats, and even assassination, to perpetuate the coveted dignity in his family. From the monarch this natural principle--a species of hero-worship, so common as to be almost universal, and exhibiting its tendencies even in the administration of the greatest of modern republics--descended to the prominent officials of the empire and to their subordinates the walis, the governors of provinces and cities. For these reasons, the appointment by Musa of his three sons to be respectively emirs of East and West Africa and Spain was regarded by the Moslem population of those countries and by the army as the exercise of a prescriptive right which scarcely required the formal confirmation of the sovereign. Notwithstanding the ferocious and jealous temper of Suleyman, and the fact that he had heaped upon Musa injuries which were unpardonable, he, for some time, permitted the sons of the conqueror of Al-Maghreb and Andaluz to exercise without molestation the functions of their several emirates. Abd-al-Aziz, to whom had been assigned the difficult task of the political reorganization of the Peninsula,--a task which involved the erection of one system of government upon the ruins of another which had nothing in common with, and much that was hostile to, it,--entered upon his duties with all the energy and tact of an accomplished soldier and statesman. Some cities removed from the immediate influence of the conquerors had renounced their allegiance and refused the customary tribute. These were speedily reduced to submission. The convention of Musa with Theodomir, the Gothic tributary of Murcia, was solemnly ratified. Detachments under different commanders were despatched to the North and West, who carried the Moslem arms to the shores of Lusitania and the mountains of Biscay and Navarre. Castles were built for the protection of the frontiers, and garrisons of important towns placed under the command of experienced officers of tried fidelity. A Divan or Council was established. Receivers of taxes and magistrates were appointed to conduct the civil departments of the administration. Secure in the protection of their own laws and the enjoyment of their ancient religious privileges, the Mohammedan yoke was hardly felt by the Christian population, whose restrictions were confined to a show of outward respect for the institutions of their masters and the regular payment of tribute. All acts of violence and oppression were punished, and public confidence was restored. The peasants rebuilt their cottages; the labors of the agriculturist, interrupted by civil commotion and foreign encroachment, were resumed; the grass-grown thoroughfares of the cities once more echoed with the welcome sounds of traffic, and the sad traces of many successive years of warfare and devastation began to gradually disappear from the face of the Peninsula.

But, however equitable was the civil administration of Abd-al-Aziz, its beneficent effects in the eyes of both Moslems and Christians were more than neutralized by the excesses and licentious violence of his private life. In the gratification of passions strong even for an Oriental, his conduct surpassed the ordinary limits of brutal tyranny. The fairest maids and matrons of the Gothic population crowded his seraglio; and even the homes of noble Arabians were not secure from the visitations of his eunuchs. Egilona, the queen of Roderick, having fallen into his hands, became first his concubine and afterwards his wife. She was indulged in the practice of her religion, an unusual privilege for one in her position; and, by the unbounded influence she soon acquired over her husband, succeeded in sensibly alleviating the miseries of her countrymen. Her beauty, her vast wealth, which she had secured by a timely submission and the payment of tribute, and her talents, which appear to have been of no mean order, added to the ambition once more to sit upon a throne, soon made themselves felt in the affairs of government. She began to direct the policy of the Emir, to the disgust and apprehension of the members of the Divan and the officers of the army. She imprudently attempted to introduce the ceremonial of the Visigothic court, which required the prostration of all who approached the throne of the monarch; a custom repugnant as yet both to the equality and independence recommended by the precepts of the Koran and to the proud spirit of the Arab. By her advice the treaty was concluded with Theodomir, who thereby acquired for life the sovereignty of the beautiful province of Murcia. The exercise of such authority was considered by pious Moslems as boding ill to the empire of Islam when enjoyed by a woman and an infidel. The rumor spread that Abd-al-Aziz, helpless under the fatal spell of this sorceress, was meditating apostasy and aspiring to independent power. These reports, which derived some color of probability from the universal belief of the multitude, the personal popularity and well-known ambition of the Emir, and his presumed desire to avenge the wrongs of his father, were communicated to the Khalif, who determined to at once remove all danger from any designs of the sons of Musa. Orders were accordingly despatched to five of the principal officers of the army of occupation in Spain to put Abd-al-Aziz to death. The first who opened and read the commands of the Khalif was Habib-Ibn-Obeidah, an old and valued friend of the family of Musa. His distress may be imagined; but the order was peremptory, and the ties of friendship, the sentiments of gratitude, the reminiscences of social intimacy, were not to be considered by the devout Moslem when was interposed the imperious mandate of the Successor of the Prophet of God. Having consulted with each other, the executioners, who feared the vengeance of the army, devoted as it was to its chief, determined to kill Abd-al-Aziz while at his devotions. It was the custom of the Emir to pass much of his time at a summer palace in the suburbs of Seville, attached to which was a private mosque. Here, while upon his knees reciting the morning prayer, he was attacked and despatched without resistance. His body was buried in the court of the palace, and his head--a sanguinary proof of the obedience of his assassins--was sent in a box filled with camphor to Suleyman at Damascus. Thus perished one of the most distinguished captains of the age, whose talents and dexterity promised a rapid solution of the difficult questions of policy which confronted the new rulers of Spain, and whose gentle and considerate treatment of the vanquished--conspicuous amidst the repulsive asperity of barbarian manners--proved his destruction. A few weeks elapsed, and his brethren, the emirs of Africa, followed him by the hand of the executioner. The fate of his unfortunate consort, Egilona, is unknown. In common with King Roderick and his conqueror Tarik, with Count Julian and the sons of Witiza, her future, after a remarkable career, passes into oblivion. It is not a little singular that so many of the most conspicuous personages of their time should all, one after another, without any apparent reason, have been thus abruptly dismissed by the chroniclers of the age.

The Khalif, in his haste to destroy the family of Musa, had neglected to designate a successor to Abd-al-Aziz, and Spain remained for a short time without a governor. Realizing the dangers of a protracted interregnum among the heterogeneous elements of which the inhabitants of the Peninsula were composed, a number of the Moslems most eminent in rank and influence assembled, and, in accordance with the ancient custom of the Desert, elected Ayub-Ibn-Habib provisional Emir. Ayub was a captain of age and experience and the cousin of Abd-al-Aziz. His first act was to remove the seat of government from Seville to Cordova, on account of the more advantageous location of the latter city, destined to remain during the domination of the conquerors the Mecca of the Occident, the literary centre of the Middle Ages, the school of polite manners, the home of science and the arts; to be regarded with awe by every Moslem, with affectionate veneration by every scholar, and with mingled feelings of wonder and apprehension by the turbulent barbarians of Western Europe. For greater convenience in collecting the revenue and restraining the indigenous population, the country had been divided into numerous districts, governed by walis, inferior officials responsible to the Emir. The lives of these magistrates, passed amidst the turmoil of revolution, the sack of cities, and the slaughter of infidels, rendered them but ill qualified to administer the affairs of a nation in time of peace. The acts of cruelty and extortion perpetrated by these petty tyrants, far removed from the eye of the court, had become an intolerable grievance. It devolved on Ayub to investigate their official conduct, and many of them were deposed and punished. The new Emir travelled through his dominions, correcting abuses, building fortresses, repairing the decaying walls of cities, encouraging the development and cultivation of fields long since abandoned by the farmer, redressing grievances without distinction of creed or nationality, and by every means promoting the welfare of his grateful subjects. In those provinces which had been depopulated, he established colonies of immigrants and adventurers from Africa and the East. In others, where the Christians preponderated, he settled numbers of Jews and Moslems, whose presence might curb the enthusiasm and check the aspirations of the implacable enemies of the Mohammedan faith. The watch-towers which crowned the summits of the Pyrenees and defended the passes leading to Narbonnese Gaul--that region of mystery which the imperfect geography of the Arab had designated the Great Land, and the imagination of the Oriental had peopled with giants and fabulous monsters--were strengthened and garrisoned with troops whose activity and vigilance had been tested in many a scene of toil and danger. Scarcely had the administration of Ayub been fairly established, before the vindictive spirit of the Khalif demanded his removal. Mohammed-Ibn-Yezid, Emir of Africa, was ordered to deprive of office all members of the tribe of Lakhm, to which Musa had belonged, and Al-Horr-Ibn-Abd-al-Rahman was invested with the precarious dignity of Viceroy of the Peninsula. Four hundred representatives of the proudest of the Arabian nobility, whom zeal for the faith, the love of adventure, or the hope of renown had attracted to the shores of Africa, accompanied him; warriors, many of whose descendants were destined to attain to distinction in every rank of civil and military life--even to the royal dignity itself--and to become the most prominent members of the Moslem aristocracy of Spain.

From the beginning, the arbitrary measures of the Emir carried distress and anxiety into every town and hamlet of the country. His rapacity knew no bounds. Under pretext of a deficiency in the collection of tribute, the officials charged with that duty were imprisoned and put to the torture. In the infliction of punishment no distinction of religious belief was recognized; Moslem and Christian alike felt the heavy hand of the tyrant; and even the oldest and most renowned officers of the army, veterans who had served in Syria and Africa, the companions of Tarik and Musa, were not exempt from the exactions of his insatiable avarice. So intolerable did these oppressions become, that the cause of Islam was seriously endangered; proselytism ceased; no official, however high in rank, was secure in the possession of liberty, property, and life; and the unfortunate Jews and Christians were exposed to all the evils of the most cruel persecution. As the Emir of Africa evinced a remarkable apathy when the removal of Al-Horr was demanded by the outraged people of Spain, application was made to the Khalif Omar in person, who at once deposed the offensive governor, and appointed as his successor Al-Samh, the general commanding the army of the northern frontier. This appointment did credit to the discernment of the Khalif, for it proved eminently wise and judicious. The first efforts of Al-Samh were directed to the correction of irregularities in the administration of the revenue. Formerly the large cities, where was naturally collected the most of the wealth of the kingdom and hence the bulk of property liable to taxation, had been required to contribute only one-tenth of their income towards the expenses of government, while the villages and the cultivated lands had been assessed at one-fifth. This inequality was due originally to a desire to favor the Jews, whose love of traffic had induced them to establish themselves in the principal towns, offering, as the latter did, better facilities for the encouragement of commerce and the rapid accumulation of property. In addition to this much-needed reform, the able viceroy collected the bands of Moors and Berbers,--whose nomadic habits and predatory instincts, inherited from a long line of ancestors, had resisted former attempts at colonization,--settled them upon unoccupied lands, and, by every possible inducement, tried to impress upon the minds of these savage warriors the importance and the superior advantages of civilization. He caused a census to be taken of all the inhabitants of the Peninsula, and with it sent to Damascus elaborate tables of statistics, in which were carefully described the various towns, the topography of the coast, the situation of the harbors, the wealth of the country, the nature of its products, the volume of its commerce, and the extent of its mineral and agricultural resources. The restoration of the magnificent bridge of Cordova, constructed in the reign of Augustus, is of itself an enduring monument to his fame. But the energies of Al-Samh were not expended solely in the monotonous but beneficial avocations of peace. As the friend and associate of Tarik he had seen service on many a stoutly contested field, and now, when his dominions were tranquil and prosperous, he received, with the exultation of an ardent believer, the order of the Khalif to carry the Holy War beyond the Pyrenees.

The province of Narbonnese Gaul, once a part of the Visigothic empire, and hitherto protected from the incursions of its dangerous neighbors by the lofty mountain rampart which formed its southern boundary, continued to cherish the traditions and to observe the customs of its ancient rulers. It embraced the greater portion of modern Languedoc, that smiling region which, watered by the Rhone, the Garonne, and their numerous tributaries, had, through the fertility of its soil and the advantages of its semi-tropical climate, early attracted the attention of the adventurous colonists of Greece and Italy. The high state of civilization to which this region attained, and its progress in the arts, are manifested by the architectural remains which still adorn its cities,--remains which, in elegance of design and imposing magnificence, are unequalled by even the far-famed ruins of the Eternal City. No structures in any country illustrate so thoroughly the taste and genius of classic times as the arch of Orange, the Pont du Gard, the temples and the amphitheatre of Nîmes, whose graceful proportions and wonderful state of preservation never fail to elicit the enthusiastic admiration of the traveller. The inhabitants also have retained, through the vicissitudes of centuries of warfare and foreign domination, the traits and features of their classic ancestry. In the vainglorious pride of the Provençal and his neighbor the Gascon are traceable the haughty demeanor of the Roman patrician; while the women of Arles, in their symmetry of form, their faultless profiles, and their statuesque grace, recall the beauties of the age of Pericles.

This territory was known to the Goths by the name of Septimania, from the seven principal cities, Narbonne, Nîmes, Agde, Lodève, Maguelonne, Béziers, and Carcassonne, included within its borders, and was still governed by the maxims of the Gothic polity which formerly prevailed in the Peninsula. Although divided into a number of little principalities, whose chieftains promiscuously indulged their propensities to rapine without fear of the intervention of any superior power, it had for years preserved the appearance of a disunited but independent state. In the North, the anarchy accompanying the bloody struggles of the princes of the Merovingian dynasty, which preceded the foundation of the empire of Pepin and Charlemagne, removed, for the time, all danger of encroachment from that quarter. But the Gothic nobles, since the battle of the Guadalete, had cast glances of anxiety and dismay upon the distant summits of the Pyrenees. Innumerable refugees from Spain had sought safety among their Gallic kinsmen, and the tales which they related of the excesses of the invaders lost nothing in their recital by these terror-stricken fugitives. Too feeble of themselves to entertain hopes of successful resistance, the Goths suspended for a time their hereditary quarrels, and, to avoid the impending ruin, acknowledged the sovereignty of Eudes, the powerful Duke of Aquitaine.

Al-Samh, having completed his preparations, emerged from the mountain passes at the head of a formidable army. After a siege of a month, Narbonne, the capital of Septimania, surrendered to the Moslems, who obtained from the churches and convents an immense booty, most of which had been deposited by fugitive Spanish prelates in those sanctuaries as places of inviolable security. Almost without a blow, the fortresses of Béziers, Maguelonne, and Carcassonne accepted the liberal conditions of Mohammedan vassalage. The flying squadrons of Arab cavalry now spread ruin and alarm over the beautiful valley of the Garonne. So attractive was the country and so lax the discipline, that it was with some difficulty the Emir succeeded in collecting the scattering detachments of his army, which had wandered far in search of plunder; and, resuming his march, he at length invested the important city of Toulouse, the capital of Aquitaine. The siege was pushed with vigor, and the inhabitants, reduced to extremity, were already meditating a surrender, when the Duke approached with a force greatly superior to that of the Moslems. The latter, disheartened at the sight of such an overwhelming multitude, were disposed to retreat, when the Emir, actuated by a spirit worthy of the ancient heroes of Islam, roused their flagging courage by an eloquent harangue, in which he artfully suggested both the prizes of victory and the promises of the Faith. As the two hosts ranged themselves in martial array, the priests distributed among the Franks small pieces of sponge which had received the blessing of the Pope; amulets more serviceable, it appeared, than the thickest armor, for we are assured by the veracious chroniclers of the age that not a Christian soldier who carried one of these valuable relics lost his life in the battle. The contest was long and obstinate; the Moslems performed prodigies of valor; but they had lost the religious fervor which had so often rendered their arms invincible; and anxiety for the safety of their spoils had greater influence upon them than the security of their conquest or the propagation of their religion. The issue long remained doubtful; but the Emir having exposed himself too rashly fell pierced by a lance; and his army, completely routed, retired from the field with the loss of two-thirds of its number. Abd-al-Rahman-al-Ghafeki, an officer of high rank and distinguished reputation, was invested with the temporary command by his associates, and conducted the shattered remnant of the Moslems to Narbonne. Intent on plundering the treasures of the enemy’s camp, which contained the bulk of the portable wealth of Septimania, the Franks could not be induced to reap the full advantages of victory. The retreat was conducted with consummate skill, for the peasantry, aroused by the news of the disaster, swarmed in vast numbers around the retreating Moslems, who were often compelled to cut their way through the dense and ever increasing masses, which immediately closed in and harassed their rear.

This was the first serious reverse which had befallen the hitherto invincible arms of Islam. The tide had begun to turn, and the implacable enmity cultivated for centuries between the two contending nations of Arabia--which neither the precepts of a congenial form of faith, nor military fame, nor uninterrupted conquest, nor the possession of fabulous wealth, nor the enjoyment of the fairest portions of the globe could eradicate--was now to exhibit to the world the splendid weakness of the Successors of Mohammed. A glance at the origin and progress of this barbarian feud, which survived the impetuous ardor of proselytism, and had nourished for ages its hereditary vindictiveness, and, arising in distant Asia, was destined to be revived with undiminished violence upon the plains of Aragon and Andalusia, is essential to a proper understanding of the causes to which are to be attributed the downfall of the Moslem Empire of the West.

As already mentioned, irreconcilable hostility had existed from time immemorial between the inhabitants of Northern and Southern Arabia. Due to a difference of origin, and probably based upon invasion and conquest in a prehistoric age, this race-prejudice had been aggravated by a feeling of mutual hatred and contempt, derived from the different avocations of the people of Yemen and those of the Hedjaz, the peaceful merchants and the lawless rovers of the Desert. The Maadites, to whom the Meccans belonged, were shepherds and brigands. They prided themselves upon being the aristocracy of Arabia; and the thrifty and industrious dwellers of the South, the Kahtanites, who saw nothing degrading in the tillage of their fields, in the care of their valuable date plantations, and in the profits of commerce, could, in the consciousness of superior wealth and culture, readily endure the scorn of their neighbors, whose gains were obtained by overreaching their guests, by extortions from pilgrims to the Kaaba, and by sharing in the plunder of caravans. The Medinese, whose origin was partly Jewish, whose pursuits were sedentary, and whose affiliations connected them with the trading communities of Yemen, were classed with the Kahtanites by the children of Maad. From this mutual antagonism the religion of Mohammed received its greatest impulse and the power which enabled it to overturn all its adversaries; and from it, also, are to be traced the misfortunes which befell the empire of Islam even before it was firmly established; which made every country and province in its wide dominions the scene of civil strife and bloodshed; which profaned with insult and violence the shrines of the most holy temples; which annihilated whole dynasties by the hand of the assassin; and which, far more potent than the iron hand of Charles Martel and the valor of the Franks, lost by a single stroke the sceptre of Europe. Hence arose the disputes which terminated in the murder of Othman and its terrible retribution, the sack of the Holy Cities; the intrigues and controversies which resulted from the election of Ali; the death of Hosein; the insurrections of the fanatical reformers of Persia; the proscription of the Ommeyades; the perpetual disorders which distracted the Emirate of Africa. In Spain also, whither had resorted so many of the fugitives of Medina and their Syrian conquerors, the smouldering embers of national prejudice and religious discord were rekindled. The most sacred ties of nationality, of religion, or of kindred were powerless to counteract this deep-rooted antipathy, which seems inherent in the two divisions of the Arab race. The most noble incentives to patriotism, the pride of victory, the alluring prospects of commercial greatness, of literary distinction, of boundless dominion, were ignored in the hope of humiliating a rival faction and of gratifying a ruthless spirit of revenge. At different times--such is the strange inconsistency of human nature--the Maadites became voluntary dependents of the kings of Yemen and Hira. In an age of remote antiquity, the Himyarite dialect spoken in the South had been supplanted by the more polished idiom of the Hedjaz.

The intensity and duration of the hatred existing between Maadite and Yemenite are inconceivable by the mind of one of Caucasian blood, and are without precedent, even in the East. It affected the policy of nations; it determined the fate of empires; it menaced the stability of long-established articles of faith; it invaded the family, corrupting the instincts of filial reverence, and betraying the sacred confidences of domestic life. Upon pretexts so frivolous as hardly to justify a quarrel between individuals, nations were plunged into all the calamities of civil war. A difference affecting the construction of a point of religious discipline was sufficient to assemble a horde of fanatics, and devote whole provinces to devastation and massacre. A petty act of trespass--the detaching of a vine-leaf, the theft of a melon--provoked the most cruel retaliation upon the community to which the culprit belonged. The Maadite, inheriting the haughty spirit of the Bedouin marauder, despised his ancestors if there was in their veins a single drop of the blood of Kahtan; and, on the other hand, under corresponding conditions of relationship, the Yemenite refused to pray even for his mother if she was allied to the Maadites, whom he stigmatized as a race of barbarians and slaves. And yet these were divisions of the same people; with similar tastes and manners; identical in dress and personal aspect; speaking the same tongue; worshipping at the same altars; fighting under the same banners; frequently united by intermarriage; actuated by the same ambitions; zealous for the attainment of the same ends. The investigation of this anomaly, an ethnical peculiarity so remarkable in its tenacity of prejudice, and which, enduring for more than twenty-five hundred years, the most powerful motives and aspirations of the mind have failed to abrogate, presents one of the most interesting problems in the history of humanity.

In the train of Musa had followed hundreds of the former inhabitants of Medina, who carried with them bitter memories of ruined homes and slaughtered kinsmen. The impression made by these enthusiastic devotees--defenders of the sepulchre of the Prophet, and eloquent with the traditions of the Holy City--upon the savage tribes of Africa was far more deep and permanent than that of the homilies of Musa delivered under the shadow of the scimetar. Their bearing was more affable, their treatment of the conquered more lenient, their popularity far more decided, than that of the haughty descendants of the Koreish. With the memory of inexpiable wrong was cherished an implacable spirit of vengeance. The name of Syrian, associated with infidelity, sacrilege, lust, and massacre, was odious to the pious believer of the Hedjaz. His soul revolted at the tales of ungodly revels which disgraced the polished and voluptuous court of Damascus. The riotous banquets, the lascivious dances, the silken vestments, the midnight orgies, and above all the blasphemous jests of satirical poets, struck with horror the abstemious and scrupulous precisians of Medina and Aden. The Ommeyade noble was looked upon by them as worse than an apostate; a being whose status was inferior to that of either Pagan, Jew, or Christian. The feelings of the descendants of the proud aristocracy of Mecca towards their adversaries were scarcely less bitter. They remembered with contempt the obscure origin and plebeian avocations of the first adherents of the Prophet. Their minds were inflamed with rage when they recalled the murder of the inoffensive Othman, whose blood-stained garments, mute but potent witnesses of his sufferings, had hung for many months in the Great Mosque of Damascus. With indignation was repeated the story of the cowardly attempt against the life of Muavia, and of the poisoned thrust which brought him to an untimely end. With but few exceptions, the Emirs of Spain were stanch adherents of the line of the Ommeyades, and never failed to discriminate against the obnoxious Medinese and their posterity. The latter retaliated by secret treachery; by open rebellion; by defeating vast schemes of policy before they were matured; by encouraging the dangerous encroachments of the Asturian mountaineers. This sectional strife early disclosed itself in the face of the enemy by fomenting the quarrel between Tarik and Musa. It thwarted the plans of the great Arab general, whose enterprising genius and towering ambition aimed at the subjugation and conversion of Europe. It armed the hands which struck down in the sanctuary the wise and capable Abd-al-Aziz. It retarded the progress of Abd-al-Rahman, filled his camp with brawls and confusion, increased the insubordination of his troops, and gave time for the recall of the barbarian hosts of Charles Martel from the confines of Gaul and Germany. In the Arabian population the Yemenite faction largely preponderated, especially in Eastern and Western Spain, which were almost exclusively settled by its adherents. In consequence of their numerical superiority and political importance, they claimed, certainly with some appearance of justice, the right to be governed by an emir whose views and sympathies were in accordance with their own. The court of Damascus, thoroughly cognizant of the uncertain hold it maintained upon a distant and wealthy province, inhabited by a turbulent rabble whose animosity towards the family of the Ommeyades was thinly disguised by lukewarm professions of loyalty and occasional remittances of tribute, had the sagacity to humor its prejudices, and to appoint to the Spanish Emirate governors of the dominant party. In the course of forty years, but three of the rulers of Spain out of twenty traced their origin to the detested posterity of Maad. This politic course preserved in its allegiance the wealthy provinces of the Peninsula, until the influence of the Yemenites and the Berbers was hopelessly weakened by the civil wars preceding the foundation of the Western Khalifate. The effects of the latter, by the serious disturbances they promoted and the consequent injury inflicted upon the integrity of the Mohammedan empire, had awakened the hopes and revived the faltering courage of the terrified nations of Christendom.

There is perhaps no recorded instance of a feud so obscure in its origin, so anomalous in its conditions, so momentous in its consequences, as this rancorous antagonism of the two divisions of the Arabian people. It illustrates more clearly than an entire commentary could do, the inflexibility of purpose, a trait conspicuous in the Bedouin, which could sacrifice all the advantages and pleasures of life, all the hopes of eternity, to the destruction of an hereditary foe. For centuries, in an isolated and arid country of Asia, certain hordes of barbarians, ignorant of the arts, careless of luxury, proud, intrepid, and independent, had pursued each other with unrelenting hostility. With the advent of a Prophet bringing a new revelation, the most potent influences which can affect humanity are brought to bear upon the nation. A whole people emigrates; is in time united with many conquered races; appreciates and accepts the priceless benefits of civilization; becomes pre-eminent in science, in letters, in all the arts of war and government, in all the happy and beneficent pursuits of peace. But amidst this prosperity and grandeur the hereditary feuds of the Desert remained unreconciled. Neither the denunciations of the Koran nor the fear of future punishment were able to more than temporarily arrest this fatal enmity. Islam was in a few generations filled with dangerous schismatics, whose tribal prejudice was, more than devotion to any dogma, the secret of their menacing attitude towards the khalifate. The mockery and sacrilege of the princes of Damascus, scions of the ancient persecutors of Mohammed, were caused by equally base, selfish, and unpatriotic motives. And the people of Medina, without whose timely aid--induced, it is not to be forgotten, by this perpetual feud between Kahtanite and Maadite---Islam could never have survived, were doomed henceforth to a career of uninterrupted misfortune. Their city, which had sheltered the Prophet in his adversity, and had received his blessing, was sacked and laid waste; and in the sacred mosque which covered his remains were stabled the horses of the Syrian cavalry. The unhappy exiles, pursued in every land by the impositions and cruelty of the tyrants of Syria, were, despite their frequent efforts to throw off the yoke, finally cowed into submission. In the long series of rulers, from Sad-Ibn-Obada, surnamed The Perfect, the champion of Medina, whose election as the first of the Khalifs the overbearing insolence of the Koreish was scarcely able to prevent, to the effeminate Boabdil, his lineal descendant, the conduct of the Defenders of the Prophet is marked by errors of judgment, by want of tact, by defiance of law, and by ill-timed enterprises prolific of disaster. No city, however, has placed a deeper impress upon the history of nations and the cause of civilization, since the immortal age of Athens, than Medina. Its influence, although often of a negative character, while it was the support of Islam in its period of weakness, was a serious impediment in its day of power. The benefits it conferred upon a handful of struggling proselytes were more than counterbalanced by the discord it promoted in the camps and councils of Irac, Syria, Africa, and Spain.

The census taken by Al-Samh had disclosed the vast preponderance of Christians who still adhered to their ancient faith, and the fears of the Khalif Yezid were aroused by the presence of so many hostile sectaries in the heart of his empire. To obviate this evil, and to assure the future permanence of Moslem supremacy, he devised a scheme which indicates a degree of worldly wisdom and political acuteness rare in the councils of that age. He proposed that the Christian population of Spain and Septimania be deported and settled in the provinces of Africa and Syria, and the territory thus vacated be colonized with faithful Mussulmans. Thus Spain would have become thoroughly Mohammedan, and the establishment of armed garrisons in Gaul would have been supplemented by the aid of a brave and active peasantry, affording an invaluable initial point for the extension of the Moslem arms in the north and east of Europe. But this was by no means the greatest advantage of this bold and original stroke of statesmanship. The penetrating eye of Yezid had already discerned the dangerous character of the mountaineers of the Asturias, who had preserved the traditions and inherited the valor of the founders of the Gothic monarchy. The removal of this threatening element was equivalent to its extirpation, and would probably have preserved for an indefinite period the Moslem empire of Spain in its original integrity. The province of Septimania, supported by the powerful armies of a united and homogeneous nation, could then have defied the desultory assaults of the Franks. The exiles, scattered in distant lands, must by force, or through inducements of material advantage, have gradually become amalgamated with their masters; their children would have professed the prevailing faith; and the progenitors of that dynasty whose policy controlled the destinies of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have disappeared from the knowledge of man. The severity of this project, dictated partly by religious zeal, but principally by political acumen, would have been excessive, yet its beneficial effects upon the fortunes of Islam must have been incalculable. But the mind of Al-Samh, incapable of appreciating the paramount importance of the enterprise, despising the Goths of the sierras as savages, and, like the majority of his countrymen, underestimating their resolution and capacity for warfare, induced him to discourage the plan of the Khalif, by representing that it was unnecessary, on account of the daily increasing numbers of converts to the doctrines of the Koran. The successful inauguration of a similar policy by Cromwell in Ireland nine hundred years afterwards, whose completion, fortunately for the rebellious natives, was defeated by his death, demonstrates the extraordinary sagacity of the sovereign of Damascus in devising a measure of statecraft whose execution portended such important consequences to modern society, and which has, for the most part, escaped the notice of the historians of the Moorish empire. Before departing upon his unfortunate expedition, Al-Samh had left Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim, one of his most trusty lieutenants, in charge of the affairs of the Peninsula. The latter, learning of the rout of Toulouse, without delay sent a large body of troops to the North to cover the retreat of the defeated army; a precaution rendered unnecessary by the generalship of Abd-al-Rahman, who was now recognized as emir, the choice of his comrades being soon afterwards confirmed by the Viceroy of Africa. The Christians of Gothic Gaul and the Asturias, greatly elated by the disaster which had befallen their enemies, soon manifested greater hostility than ever, and it required all the firmness and prudence of Abd-al-Rahman to restrain them. The insurrection which began to threaten the power of the Moslems in the trans-Pyrenean province was, however, crushed before it became formidable; the mountaineers were driven back into their strongholds; the suspended tribute was collected, and an increased contribution was levied upon such communities as had distinguished themselves by an obstinate resistance.

Although the idol of his soldiers, Abd-al-Rahman was not a favorite with the great officials of the government. They admired his prowess, and were not disposed to depreciate his talents, but they hated him on account of his popularity, for which he was mainly indebted to his lavish donations to the troops. It was his custom, as soon as the royal fifth had been set apart, to abandon the remainder of the spoil to the army, a course so unusual as to provoke the remonstrances of his friends, while it elicited the applause and secured the undying attachment of the soldiery. Application was made by the malcontents to the Viceroy of Africa, Baschar-Ibn-Hantala, for the removal of Abd-al-Rahman, under the pretext that the Moslem cause was becoming endangered through the prevalence of luxury introduced by his unprecedented munificence. The charges were pressed with such vigor that they prevailed, and Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim was raised to the emirate. Abd-al-Rahman--such was the confidence of his opponents in his integrity and patriotism--was reinstated in the government of Eastern Spain, which he had held previous to the battle of Toulouse. With the submission and piety of a faithful Moslem, he congratulated his successor, swore fealty to him, and retired without a murmur to reassume a subordinate position in a kingdom which he had ruled with absolute power. Anbasah soon displayed by active and salutary measures his fitness for his high office. The administration had become to some extent demoralized by the easy temper and prodigal liberality of Abd-al-Rahman, and Anbasah’s first care was to remodel the fiscal department and adopt a new and more exact apportionment of taxation. Carefully avoiding any appearance of injustice to the tributary Christians, he divided among the immigrants--who now, in larger numbers than ever before, poured into Spain from Africa and the East--the lands which were unoccupied, and had hitherto served as pastures to the nomadic Berbers, whose traditions and habits discouraged the selection of any permanent habitation. While inflexibly just to the loyal and obedient, Anbasah punished all attempts at insurrection with a rigor akin to ferocity. Some districts in the province of Tarragona having revolted on account of real or fancied grievances, the Emir razed their fortifications, crucified the leaders, and imposed upon the inhabitants a double tax, both as a punishment and a warning. In order to keep alive the respect for the Moslem name, he sent frequent expeditions into Gaul, whose operations, conducted upon a limited scale, were mainly confined to the destruction of property and the seizure of captives.

The Jewish population of the Peninsula, relieved from the vexatious laws of the Goths and greatly increased in wealth and numbers by foreign accessions, had already risen to exalted rank in the social and political scale under the favorable auspices of Mohammedan rule. It enjoyed the highest consideration with the Arabs, whose success had been so largely due to its friendly co-operation. This community, endowed with the hereditary thrift of the race, rich beyond all former experience, still ardently devoted to a religion endeared by centuries of persecution, and by the deeply grounded hope of future spiritual and temporal sovereignty, was now startled by the report that the Messiah, whose advent they had so long and so patiently awaited, had appeared in the East. The highly imaginative temperament of the Oriental, and the phenomenal success of the founders of religious systems in that quarter of the world, had been productive of the rise of many designing fanatics, all claiming the gifts of prophecy and miracle, and all secure of a numerous following in an age fertile in impostors. In this instance, the Hebrew prophet, whose name was Zonaria, had established his abode in Syria; and thither in multitudes the Spanish Jews, abandoning their homes and carrying only their valuables, journeyed, without questioning the genuineness of their information or reflecting upon the results of their blind credulity. No sooner were the pilgrims across the strait, than the crafty Emir, declaring their estates forfeited by abandonment, confiscated the latter, which included some of the finest mansions and most productive lands in the Peninsula. This fanatical contagion extended even into Gaul, and the Jewish colonists of that region hastened to join their Spanish brethren in their pilgrimage of folly, only to realize, when too late, that they had lost their worldly possessions without the compensating advantage of a celestial inheritance.

Having regulated the civil affairs of his government to his satisfaction, the eyes of Anbasah now turned towards the North, where lay the tempting prize of France, coveted by every emir since the time of Musa. The prestige of the Arabs had been materially impaired by the serious reverse they had sustained before Toulouse. The first encounter with the fiery warriors of the South whom fear had pictured as incarnate demons, and whose prowess was said to be invincible, had divested the foes of Christianity of many of the terrors which exaggerated rumor had imparted to them. Of the numerous fortified places in Septimania which had once seemed to be pledges of a permanent Mohammedan settlement, the city of Narbonne alone remained. Its massive walls had easily resisted the ill-directed efforts of a barbarian enemy, unprovided with military engines, and unaccustomed to the protracted and monotonous service implied by a siege, while its vicinity to the sea rendered a reduction by blockade impracticable. Thus, protected by the natural advantages of its location and by the courage of its garrison, Narbonne presented the anomaly of an isolated stronghold in the midst of the enemy’s country. Traversing the mountainous passes without difficulty the Emir took Carcassonne, a city which had hitherto enjoyed immunity from capture; and by this bold stroke so intimidated the inhabitants, that the whole of Septimania at once, and without further resistance, returned to its allegiance to the Khalif. No retribution was exacted for past disloyalty, as Anbasah was too politic not to appreciate the value of clemency in a province held by such a precarious tenure; the people were left as before to the untrammelled exercise of their worship; but the unpaid tribute was rigorously collected, and a large number of hostages, chosen from the noblest families of the Goths, were sent to Spain.

The Moslem army, proceeding along the coast as far as the Rhone, turned towards the interior, and ascended the valley of the river, ravaging its settlements with fire and sword. Advancing to Lyons, it took that city, and thence directing its course into Burgundy, it stormed and pillaged the town of Autun. Hitherto the invaders had encountered no organized opposition, but a hastily collected militia now began to harass their march, encumbered as they were with a prodigious booty; and, in a skirmish in which the peasantry displayed an unusual amount of daring, Anbasah, having rashly exposed himself, was mortally wounded. The dying Emir bequeathed his authority to Odrah-Ibn-Abdallah, an appointment distasteful to the members of the Divan; and, in accordance with their demands, the Viceroy of Africa designated Yahya-Ibn-Salmah as the successor of Anbasah. The austere and inflexible spirit of this commander, his keen sense of justice, and his determination to enforce the strictest discipline among the soldiery, made him everywhere unpopular. The pliant Viceroy of Africa was once more appealed to, and such was his subserviency to the clamors of the discontented chieftains that not only was Yahya-Ibn-Salmah removed, but within a few months his two successors, Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa and Hodheyfa-Ibn-al-Ahwass, were appointed and deposed. Finally the Khalif himself sent to Al-Haytham-Ibn-Obeyd the royal commission as his representative. This official was a Syrian by birth, and inherited all the bitter prejudices of his faction which had been fostered by the pride and insolence of the triumphant Ommeyades. Merciless by nature, fierce and rapacious, Al-Haytham spared neither Moslem nor Christian. Especially was his animosity directed towards the descendants of the Companions of Mohammed, and their proselytes and adherents, the Berbers. The complaints now lodged with the Viceroy of Africa were unheeded, as the offensive governor had received his appointment directly from the hands of the Commander of the Faithful. In their extremity, the victims of Al-Haytham preferred charges before the Divan of Damascus; and the Khalif Hischem, convinced that the Emir was exceeding his authority, appointed one of the most distinguished personages of his court, Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah, as special envoy to investigate the administration of Al-Haytham, and to depose and punish him if, in his judgment, the well-being of Islam and the interests of good government demanded it. Arriving incognito at Cordova, the plenipotentiary of the Khalif, without difficulty or delay, obtained the necessary evidence of the guilt of the unworthy official. Then, exhibiting his commission, he publicly stripped the latter of the insignia of his rank, and, having shaved his head, had him paraded through the city upon an ass, amidst the jeers and insults of the people he had robbed and persecuted. All his property was confiscated, and Mohammed made amends as far as possible by bestowing upon the surviving victims of the disgraced Emir the immense treasures he had amassed during a reign of indiscriminate extortion. Then placing Al-Haytham in irons he sent him under guard to Africa. Two months sufficed to redress the grievances which had threatened a revolution--to recompense the plundered, to liberate the imprisoned, to console the tortured, to expel from their places the cruel subordinates of the oppressor; and, having elicited the approbation and received the blessings of all classes, including the hereditary enemies of his tribe, Mohammed departed for Syria, after conferring the viceregal authority upon the renowned captain Abd-al-Rahman, who thus a second time ascended the throne of the Emirate of the West.

Of noble birth and distinguished reputation, Abd-al-Rahman united to the eminent qualities of a successful ruler and general all the insufferable arrogance of the Arab race. Connected by ties of the closest friendship with one of the sons of the Khalif, Omar-al-Khattah, he had received from him many particulars regarding the life and habits of Mohammed, and this intimacy contributed to increase the feeling of superiority, not unmingled with contempt, with which he regarded the horde of barbarian proselytes attracted to his banner rather by thirst for plunder than from religious zeal. His generosity endeared him to the soldiery, but his inflexible sense of right alienated the powerful officials of the Divan enriched by years of unmolested peculation. The knowledge of his Syrian origin, constantly evinced by a marked partiality for his countrymen, at once aroused the secret hostility of the crowd of turbulent adventurers who, collected from every district of Africa and Asia, composed his subjects, and who, destitute of loyalty, religion, principle, or gratitude, regarded an Arab as their natural enemy, an heterogeneous assemblage wherein the Berber element, dominated by the rankling prejudices of the Yemenites, their spiritual guides, greatly preponderated.

Visiting, in turn, the different provinces subject to his rule, Abd-al-Rahman confirmed the good dispositions of his predecessor, the plenipotentiary Mohammed-Ibn-Abdallah, and corrected such abuses as had escaped the attention of the latter. In some instances, the injustice of the walis had wantonly deprived the Christians of their houses of worship, in defiance of the agreement permitting them to celebrate their rites without molestation; in others, their rapacity had connived at the erection of new churches, prohibited by the provisions of former treaties, and in absolute contravention of Mohammedan law. This evil of late years had become so general that scarcely a community in the Peninsula was exempt from it. Through the care and firmness of the Emir the confiscated churches were restored to their congregations; the new edifices were razed to the ground; the bribes which had purchased the indulgence of the walis were surrendered to the public treasury; and the corrupt officials paid the penalty of their malfeasance with scourging and imprisonment.

His reforms completed, and secure in the apparent submission and attachment of his subjects, Abd-al-Rahman now turned his attention to the prosecution of a design which, in spite of fearful reverses in the past and of unknown dangers impending in the future, had long been the cherished object of his ambition--the conquest of France. As the representative of the Khalif, and consequently vested with both spiritual and temporal power, he had caused to be proclaimed from the pulpit of every mosque visited by him in his progress, the obligation of all faithful Moslems to avenge the deaths of the martyrs fallen in former invasions, and to add to the empire of Islam the rich and productive territory of Europe.

Fully aware of the vast difficulties which would necessarily attend such an undertaking, and enlightened by his former experience, Abd-al-Rahman resolved to provide, as far as possible, against any contingency that might arise from too hasty preparation, or an inferiority in numbers, sent messengers to almost every country acknowledging the authority of the Khalif, to proclaim the Djihad, or Holy War, and to solicit the pecuniary aid of all devout and liberal believers. The call was promptly answered. The riches of the East and West poured in a constant stream into the treasury of Cordova. Wealthy merchants sent their gold; female devotees their jewels; even the beggar was anxious to contribute his pittance for the advancement of the Faith and the confusion of the infidel. From neighboring lands, and from the remotest confines of the Mohammedan world alike, from Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Al-Maghreb, and Persia, military adventurers, soldiers of fortune, desperate fanatics, half-naked savages from Mauritania, the proud and ferocious tribesmen of the Desert, astonished the inhabitants of the cities of Andalusia with their multitudes, their tumultuous and unintelligible cries, and their fierce enthusiasm. The entire force of the Hispano-Arab army, disciplined by many a scene of foreign and internecine conflict, was marshalled for the coming crusade, which, unlike those expeditions which had preceded it, aimed not merely at the spoliation of cities and the enslavement of their inhabitants, but at the permanent occupation and settlement of the country from the Pyrenees to the frontier of Germany, from the Rhætian Alps to the ocean.

The several walis had been ordered to assemble with their forces at a designated rendezvous on the northern border of the Peninsula. This district, which included the mountain passes and the fortresses defending them, was then under the command of Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa, a native of Africa, who had, for a few months, enjoyed and abused the power of the emirate, and whom the generous policy of Abd-al-Rahman had retained in this important post, bestowed upon the African chieftain after his deposition. A man of violent passions and without principle, Othman was, however, not deficient in those talents which confer distinction upon soldiers of fortune. Of obscure birth and low associations, he had, by sheer force of character and daring, won the confidence of the Viceroy of Africa, who had conferred upon him the government of Spain; a position from which he was barred by the unwritten law of the Conquest, which discouraged the aspirations of individuals of his nationality. Deeply chagrined that he had not been reinstated in the office whose delights he had scarcely tasted, and devoured by envy, whose bitterness was increased by the antipathies of a party of which he was the acknowledged head, Othman determined to revenge his fancied wrongs, and to secure for himself the advantages of independent sovereignty. His influence extended even to the Ebro, to the north and east of which stream the Berbers, who were devoted to him, had established themselves in great numbers. At that time the condition of the redoubtable Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine, had become desperate. He had long waged a doubtful war with the Franks, whose superior strength rendered his ultimate subjection certain. Upon the south, he was menaced by the encroachments of the marauding Arabs, whose expeditions kept his dominions in perpetual turmoil. Thus placed between two fires, he readily hearkened to the overtures of Othman, who proposed an alliance to be cemented by the marriage of the wali with the daughter of the Gothic noble. A treaty was made and ratified; the damsel--who was not compelled to renounce her faith--was delivered to her father’s new ally; and the latter returned to his government, resolving to baffle by diplomacy the design of his master, and, if that were found impossible, confident that the strength of his mountain defences was sufficient to defy all the power of the emirate. To the orders of Abd-al-Rahman to attend him with his troops he returned evasive replies, pleading the engagement he had entered into, and his obligation to observe it. His repeated commands being ignored, and the patience of the army to advance growing uncontrollable, Abd-al-Rahman secretly despatched a squadron of light horsemen, under Gedhi-Ibn-Zeyan, a Syrian officer, with directions to bring in the refractory wali dead or alive. Pressing forward with the utmost diligence, the troopers came suddenly upon Othman, at Castrum Liviæ, before he was even aware of the intentions of the Emir. He had barely time to take refuge with a few attendants and his bride in the neighboring mountains, before his enemies entered the town and, without halting, spurred on through the rugged defiles in hot pursuit. Overtaken near a brook where the party had stopped from fatigue, the rebel escort was killed or put to flight; the Gothic princess was taken; and Othman paid the forfeit of his treason with his life. The enterprising Gedhi cast at the feet of Abd-al-Rahman the head of the traitor as the proof of his success; and the captive, whose wondrous beauty charmed the eyes of all who saw her, was sent to grace the royal harem at Damascus.

And now, the gateways of the Pyrenees being open, the mighty host of Moslems poured through, like an inundation, upon the sunny fields of France. No reliable basis is available by which we can even approach to an accurate estimate of its numbers. Considering the publicity given to the crusade, the different sources whence the foreign recruits were drawn, the regular army of the Emir, and the bodies of cavalry furnished by the Viceroys of Africa and Egypt, it would seem that the invading army must have amounted to at least a hundred thousand men. Assembled without order, and wholly intolerant of discipline, the mutual jealousy and haughty independence of its unruly elements greatly impaired its efficiency. The members of each tribe mustered around their chieftain, who enjoyed but a precarious authority; while the obedience which all professed to the representative of the majesty of the Khalif was observed only so long as his commands did not clash with their wishes or run counter to the indulgence of their passions and inherited prejudices.

Meanwhile, the rumor of the approaching peril, exaggerated by distance, had spread consternation through every Christian community. It recalled the disastrous times of barbarian conquest, when the ferocious hordes of Goths and Huns swept with ruin and death the fairest provinces of the Roman Empire. Throughout the Orient, in the lands which acknowledged the supremacy of the Successor of Mohammed, the pious Moslem awaited, with confidence not unmingled with a feeling of exultation, tidings of the anticipated triumph of his brethren. The eyes of the entire world were turned in expectancy to the spot where must speedily be tested the respective prowess of the North and South; to the struggle which would forever determine the future of Europe, and decide without appeal the fate of Christianity. Onward, resistlessly, pitilessly, rolled the devastating flood of invasion. The Duke of Aquitaine had bravely met his enemies on the very slopes of the mountain barrier, but all his efforts were powerless to stay their progress. Cities were reduced to ashes and their inhabitants driven into slavery. The pastures were swept clean of their flocks; the blooming hill-sides and fertile valleys of the Garonne were transformed into scenes of desolation. Bordeaux, the populous and wealthy emporium of Aquitaine, paid for a short and ineffectual resistance with the plunder of its treasures, the massacre of its citizens, and its total destruction by fire. The Moorish army, encumbered with thousands of captives and the booty of an entire province, crossed the Garonne with difficulty, and resumed its slow and straggling march towards the interior. Upon the banks of the Dordogne Eudes had marshalled his followers to contest its passage. A fierce battle ensued; the Christians, overwhelmed by numbers, were surrounded and cut to pieces; and the carnage was so horrible as to excite the pity of the rude historians of an age prolific in violence and bloodshed. The conquest of Aquitaine achieved, the Emir moved on to Poitiers, and after ravaging the suburbs of that city, where stood the famous Church of St. Hilary, which was utterly destroyed, planted the white standard of the Ommeyades before its walls. That country, whose hostile factions were subsequently reconciled and consolidated by the genius of Charlemagne, and which is known to us as France, was, during the seventh century, in a state of frightful anarchy. In the South, the important province of Septimania had formerly acknowledged the supremacy of the Visigoths, and after the overthrow of their empire had enjoyed a nominal independence. Aquitaine was subject to its dukes, who maintained an unequal contest with the growing powers of the North and the insatiable ambition of the Saracens. Towards the East, the petty lord of Austrasia was involved in perpetual intrigues and hostilities with his turbulent neighbors, the princes of Neustria and Burgundy. In the year 638, with the death of the renowned Dagobert, whose dominions extended to the Danube, disappeared the last vestige of independence and authority possessed by the monarchs of the Merovingian dynasty. Henceforth the regal power was vested in, and practically exercised by, the bold and able mayors of the palace, the prime ministers of the rois fainéants, who, through indifference or compulsion, were apparently contented with the titles and glittering baubles of royalty. The superior talents of the priest were industriously employed in enriching his church or his abbey, and the zeal and fears of the devout co-operating with the avarice of the clergy, the sacred edifices became depositories of treasures which dazzled the eyes of the greedy freebooters of Abd-al-Rahman with their magnificence and value. No sovereign in Europe could boast of such wealth as had been accumulated through the lavish generosity of pilgrims and penitents by the shrines of St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Martin of Tours. The ecclesiastics habitually represented themselves as the treasurers of heaven, the chosen intermediaries with the saints; and the most costly gift was scarcely considered an equivalent for a hasty blessing or a relic of more than doubtful authenticity, graciously bestowed upon the humble and delighted contributor to clerical rapacity and monkish imposture.

The manly vigor inherited from a barbarian ancestry, developed and strengthened by military exercises, had formed of the Franks a nation of heroes. Their gigantic forms, encased in mail, enabled them to resist assaults which must have overwhelmed mortals of less ponderous build. A phlegmatic temperament, joined to a devotion to their lords which never questioned the justice of their commands, imparted to them steadiness and inflexible constancy in the field. Their naturally ferocious aspect was increased by grotesque helmets of towering height, and by the skins of wild beasts which draped their massive shoulders, while their weapons were of a size and weight that the demigods of old alone might wield. Such were the warriors to whose valor were now committed the destinies of the Christian world. The throne of the Franks was then occupied by Thierry IV., one of a series of royal phantoms, who had been exalted to this nominal dignity by a certain mayor of the palace named Charles, the natural son of Pepin d’Heristal, Duke of Austrasia. It was the policy of these officials, necessarily men of talent, whose abilities had raised them to prominence, and who controlled the empire of the state, to bestow the crown upon princely youths purposely familiarized with vice, that every noble aspiration might be stifled and every patriotic impulse repressed in the indulgence of the most wanton and effeminate luxury. The profligate habits of these sovereigns, which shortened their reigns, account for their number and rapid succession in the annals of France.

The chroniclers of the eighth and ninth centuries, garrulous upon the martyrdom of saints and the performance of miracles, have scarcely mentioned the achievements of the most remarkable personage of his time. Their well-known enmity to his name, associated with the appropriation of church property, although employed for the preservation of Christendom, has had, no doubt, much to do with this contemptuous silence. Pepin, using the privilege sanctioned by the depraved manners of the age, lived in concubinage with Alpäide, the mother of Charles, whose social position was yet so little inferior to that of a matrimonial alliance that she is often spoken of as a second wife. An austere prelate, Lambert by name, who occupied the See of Maestricht, with a boldness and zeal unusual in the complaisant churchmen of the eighth century, saw fit to publicly rebuke Pepin for this unlawful connection, and, with studied insult, rejected the hospitality which the kindness of the Mayor of the Palace had tendered him. Offended by this exhibition of ill-breeding and independence, the brother of the lady procured the murder of the bishop, who was forthwith canonized, and is still prominent among the most efficient intercessors of the Roman Catholic calendar. The murderers, careless alike of the anathemas of the Church and of the process of the law, remained unpunished; while the populace of Liege, where the bishop was a favorite, erected a chapel to the memory of the fearless ecclesiastic. The whole occurrence affords a curious and striking commentary on the immorality, lawlessness, and peculiar domestic habits of the Middle Ages in France.

Tradition has ascribed to Charles the assassination of his brother Grimwald, with whom he was to have shared his paternal inheritance; and the absence of any other known motive, the avowed hostility of his father, who imprisoned him, as well as the significant silence of the historians--evidently trembling under the stern rule of the Mayor of the Palace--give considerable probability to this hypothesis. Although disinherited, the attachment of the people was such that he was, immediately after the death of Pepin, rescued from a dungeon and raised to the dukedom. Succeeding events justified the wisdom of this measure. The address of Charles allayed the civil dissensions of the Franks; his valor and military genius awed and restrained the restless barbarians of Germany. Although unquestionably the preserver of Christianity, he is more than suspected of having been an idolater, his title, Martel, having been traced by antiquaries to the hammer of Thor, the emblem of the war-god of Scandinavia. He had no reverence for the Church, no belief in its doctrines, no consideration for its possessions, no regard for its ministers. He seized reliquaries and sacred vessels destined for communion with God, and coined them into money to pay the expenses of his campaigns. He despoiled the clergy of their lands and partitioned them among his followers. The most eminent of his captains he invested with the offices of bishops, after expelling the rightful incumbents in order to the better retain control of their confiscated estates. This sacrilegious policy, while it exasperated the priesthood, endeared him to his soldiers who were the recipients of his bounty; but the wrath of the ecclesiastical order was not appeased even by his inestimable services to its cause. Anathematized by popes and councils, legends inspired by monkish credulity and hatred have solemnly asserted that his soul had been repeatedly seen by holy men surrounded by demons in the depths of hell.

Of the personal characteristics, habits, and domestic life of Charles Martel we know absolutely nothing. Equally silent is history as to the regulations of his capital, the constitution of his court, the rules of his military tactics, the principles of his government, the names of his councillors. The bitterness of ecclesiastical prejudice while it has cursed his memory has not been able to tarnish his renown. Historical justice has given him the full measure of credit due to his exploits, whose importance was not appreciated by his contemporaries, and has accorded him a high rank among the great military commanders of the world. Accustomed to arms from childhood, Charles had passed the greater portion of his life in camps. He had conquered Neustria, intimidated Burgundy, and had, in many successful expeditions against the formidable barbarians of the Rhine, left bloody evidences of his prowess as far as the banks of the Elbe and the Danube. He had laid claim to the suzerainty of Aquitaine in the name of the royal figure-head under whose authority he prosecuted his conquests; and Eudes had hitherto regarded his demonstrations with even greater fear and aversion than the periodical forays of the Saracens. Now, however, the crestfallen Duke of Aquitaine sought the presence of his ancient foe, did homage to him, and implored his aid. The practised eye and keen intellect of Charles discerned at once the serious nature of the impending danger, and with characteristic promptitude sought to avert it. His soldiers, living only in camps and always under arms, were ready to march at a moment’s notice. Soon a great army was assembled, and, amidst the deafening shouts of the soldiery, the general of the Franks, confident of the superiority of his followers in endurance and discipline, advanced to meet the enemy. The latter, discouraged by the bold front presented by the inhabitants of Poitiers, who had been nerved to desperation by the memorable example of Bordeaux, had, in the mean time, raised the siege, and were marching towards Tours, attracted by the fame of the vast wealth of the Church and Abbey of St. Martin. Upon an immense plain between the two cities the rival hosts confronted each other. This same region, the centre of France, still cherished the remembrance of a former contest in which, centuries before, the Goths and Burgundians under command of Ætius had avenged the wrongs of Europe upon the innumerable hordes of Attila. Of good augury and a harbinger of success was this former victory regarded by the stalwart warriors of the North, now summoned a second time to check the progress of the barbarian flood of the Orient. Widely different in race, in language, in personal appearance, in religion, in military evolutions and in arms, each secretly dreading the result of the inevitable conflict and each unwilling to retire, for seven days the two armies remained without engaging, but constantly drawn up in battle array. Finally, unable to longer restrain the impetuosity of the Arabs, Abd-al-Rahman gave orders for the attack. With loud cries the light squadrons of Moorish cavalry, followed pell-mell by the vast mob of foot soldiers, hurled themselves upon the solid, steel-clad files of the Franks. But the latter stood firm--like a “wall of ice,” in the quaint language of the ancient chronicler--the darts and arrows of the Saracens struck harmlessly upon helmet and cuirass, while the heavy swords and maces of the men-at-arms of Charles made frightful havoc among the half-naked bodies of their assailants. Night put an end to the battle, and the Franks, for the moment relieved from an ordeal which they had sustained with a courage worthy of their reputation, invoking the aid of their saints, yet not without misgivings for the morrow, slept upon their arms. At dawn the conflict was renewed with equal ardor and varying success until the afternoon, when a division of cavalry under the Duke of Aquitaine succeeded in turning the flank of the enemy, and began to pillage his camp. As the tidings of this misfortune spread through the ranks of the Moslems, large numbers deserted their standards and turned back to recover their booty, far more valuable in their estimation than even their own safety or the triumph of their cause. Great confusion resulted; the retreat became general; the Franks redoubled their efforts; and Abd-al-Rahman, endeavoring to rally his disheartened followers, fell pierced with a hundred wounds. That night, aided by the darkness, the Saracens silently withdrew, leaving their tents and heavy baggage behind. Charles, fearful of ambuscades, and having acquired great respect for the prowess of his adversaries, whose overwhelming numbers, enabling them to attack him in both front and rear, had seriously thinned his ranks, declined the pursuit, and with the spoils abandoned by the Saracens returned to his capital.

The Arabs have left us no account of the losses sustained in this battle. The mendacious monks, however, to whom by reason of their knowledge of letters was necessarily entrusted the task of recording the events of the time, have computed the loss of the invaders at three hundred and seventy-five thousand, probably thrice the number of all the combatants engaged; while that of the Franks is regarded as too insignificant to be mentioned. The very fact that Charles was disinclined to take advantage of the condition of his enemies loaded with plunder, deprived of their commander, and dejected by defeat, shows of itself that his army must have greatly suffered. The principal accounts that we possess of this battle, whose transcendent importance is recognized by every student of history, bear unmistakable evidence of the ecclesiastical partiality under whose influence they were composed. Monkish writers have exhausted their prolific imagination in recounting the miraculous intervention of the saints and the prowess of the champions of the Cross, which insured the preservation of Christianity. The Arabs, however, usually accurate and minute even in the relation of their misfortunes, have not paid the attention to this great event which its effect upon their fortunes would seem to warrant. Many ignore it altogether. Others pass it by with a few words. Some refer to it, not as a stubbornly contested engagement, but as a rout provoked by the disorders of an unwieldy multitude, inflamed with fanaticism, divided by faction, impatient of discipline. From such meagre and discordant materials must be constructed the narrative of one of the most momentous occurrences in the history of the world.

An account of the crushing defeat of Poitiers having been communicated to the Viceroy of Africa, he appointed Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kattan, an officer of the African army, Emir of Spain, and, presenting him with his commission, urgently exhorted him to avenge the reverse which had befallen the Moslem arms. The martial spirit of this commander, in whom the lapse of fourscore and ten years had not sensibly impaired the vigor of his mind or the activity of his body, was roused to enthusiasm by the prospect of an encounter with the idolaters of the North. Detained for a time in Cordova by the disturbances resulting from the disorganization of all branches of the government, he attempted, at the head of the remains of the defeated army and a reinforcement which had accompanied him from Africa, to thread the dangerous passes of the Pyrenees. But the time was ill-chosen; the rainy season was at hand; and the Saracens, hemmed in by impassable torrents, fell an easy prey to the missiles of an enterprising enemy. The march became a series of harassing skirmishes; and it was with the greatest difficulty that the Emir was enabled to extricate the remainder of his troops from the snare into which his want of caution had conducted them. Disgusted with the miscarriage of the expedition from whose results so much had been expected, Obeydallah, Viceroy of Africa, promptly deposed Abd-al-Melik, and nominated his own brother, Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj, to the vacant position. A martinet in severity and routine, Okbah enjoyed also a well-founded reputation for justice and integrity. He soon became the terror of the corrupt and tyrannical officials who infested the administration. He removed such as had been prominent for cruelty, fraud, or incompetency. To all who were guilty of peculation, or of even indirectly reflecting upon the honor and dignity of the Khalif, he was inexorable. With a view to insuring the safety of the highways, he formed a mounted police, the Kaschefs, in which may be traced the germ of the Hermandad of the fifteenth century and the modern Gendarmes and Civil Guards of France and Spain. From this institution, extended to the frontiers of Moslem territory as far as the Rhone, was derived the military organization of the Ribat--the prototype of the knightly orders of Calatrava, Alcantara, and Santiago, which played so conspicuous a part in the Reconquest. Okbah established a court in every village, so that all honest citizens might enjoy the protection of the law. His fostering care also provided each community with a school sustained by a special tax levied for that purpose. Devout to an almost fanatical degree, he erected a mosque whenever the necessities of the people seemed to demand it, and, thoroughly alive to the advantages of a religious education, he attached to every place of worship a minister who might instruct the ignorant in the doctrines of the Koran and the duties of a faithful Mussulman. He repressed with an iron hand the ferocious spirit of the vagrant tribes of Berbers, whose kinsmen in Africa had, in many battles, formerly experienced the effects of his valor and discipline. By equalizing the taxation borne by different communities, he secured the gratitude of districts which had hitherto been oppressed by grievous impositions, rendered still more intolerable by the rapacity of unprincipled governors. No period in the history of the emirate was distinguished by such important and radical reforms as that included in the administration of Okbah-Ibn-al-Hejaj.

The Berbers, having engaged in one of their periodical revolts in Africa, Obeydallah, unable to make headway against them, sent a despatch requiring the immediate attendance of Okbah. The latter, at the head of a body of cavalry, crossed the strait, and, after a decisive battle, put the rebels to flight. His services were found so indispensable by the Viceroy that he kept him near his person in the capacity of councillor for four years, while he still enjoyed the title and emoluments of governor of Spain. In the meantime, the greatest disorders prevailed in the Peninsula. The salutary reforms which had employed the leisure and exercised the abilities of the prudent Viceroy were swept away; the old order of things was renewed; and the provinces of the emirate were disgraced by the revival of feuds, by the oppression of the weak, by the neglect of agriculture, by unchecked indulgence in peculation, and by the universal prevalence of anarchy and bloodshed.

The dread of Charles Martel and the ruthless barbarians under his command was wide-spread throughout the provinces of Southern France. Their excesses appeared the more horrible when contrasted with the tolerant and equitable rule of the Saracens who garrisoned the towns of Septimania. The Provençal, whose voluptuous habits led him to avoid the hardships of the camp, and whose religious ideas, little infected with bigotry, saw nothing repulsive in the law of Islam, determined to seek the aid of his swarthy neighbors of the South. As Charles had already ravaged the estates of Maurontius, Duke of Marseilles, only desisting when recalled by a revolt of the Saxons, that powerful noble, whose authority extended over the greater part of Provence, in anticipation of his return, entered into negotiations with Yusuf-Ibn-Abd-al-Rahman, wali of Narbonne; a treaty was concluded, by the terms of which the Arabs were invited to assume the suzerainty of Provence, many towns were ceded to them, and the counts rendered homage to the Moslem governor, who, in order to discharge his portion of the obligation and afford protection to his new subjects, assembled his forces upon the line of the northern frontier. It was at this time that Okbah was summoned to quell the rebellion of the Berbers just as he was upon the point of advancing to secure, by a powerful reinforcement, this valuable addition to his dominions.

Early in the year 737, Charles, having intimidated his enemies and secured a temporary peace, made preparations for an active campaign in Provence. Driving the Arabs out of Lyons, he advanced to the city of Avignon, whose natural position was recognized by both Franks and Saracens not only as a place of extraordinary strength but as the key of the valley of the Rhone. Experience and contact with their more civilized neighbors, the Italians, had instructed the Franks in the use of military engines; and, notwithstanding the desperate resistance of the Arab garrison, ably seconded by the inhabitants, Avignon was taken by storm. The population was butchered without mercy, and Charles, having completely glutted his vengeance by burning the city, left it a heap of smoking ruins.

Having been delayed by the stubborn opposition of Avignon, and urged by the clamors of his followers who thirsted for the rich spoils of Septimania, the Frankish general, leaving the fortified town of Arles in his rear, marched directly upon Narbonne. Thoroughly appreciating the political and military importance of this stronghold, the capital of their possessions in France, the Arabs had spared neither labor nor expense to render it impregnable. The city was invested and the siege pressed with vigor, but the fortifications defied the efforts of the besiegers and little progress was made towards its reduction. An expedition sent to reinforce it, making the approach by sea and attempting to ascend the river Aude, was foiled by the vigilance of Charles; the boats were stopped by palisades planted in the bed of the stream; the Saracens, harassed by the enemy’s archers, were despatched with arrows or drowned in the swamps; and, of a considerable force, a small detachment alone succeeded in cutting its way through the lines of the besiegers and entering the city. The temper of the Franks was not proof, however, against the undaunted resolution of the Arab garrison. Unable to restrain the growing impatience of his undisciplined levies, Charles reluctantly abandoned the siege and endeavored to indemnify himself for his disappointment by the infliction of all the unspeakable atrocities of barbarian warfare upon the territory accessible to his arms. Over the beautiful plains of Provence and Languedoc, adorned with structures which recalled the palmiest days of Athenian and Roman genius, and whose population was the most polished of Western Europe, swept the fierce cavalry of the Alps and the Rhine. Agde, Maguelonne, and Béziers were sacked. The city of Nîmes, whose marvellous relics of antiquity are still the delight of the student and the antiquary, provoked the indignation of the invader by these marks of her intellectual superiority and former greatness. Her walls were razed; her churches plundered; her most eminent citizens carried away as hostages; her most splendid architectural monuments delivered to the flames. The massive arches of the Roman amphitheatre defied, however, the puny efforts of the enraged barbarian; but their blackened stones still exhibit the traces of fire, an enduring seal of the impotent malice of Charles Martel impressed in the middle of the eighth century.

In this memorable invasion the Arab colonists do not seem to have suffered so much as the indigenous population, which had long before incurred the enmity of the Franks. The ecclesiastical order met with scant courtesy at the hands of the idolaters. Despising the terrors of anathema and excommunication, Charles did not hesitate to appropriate the wealth of the Church wherever he could find it. Having inflicted all the damage possible upon the subjects and allies of the Khalif in Provence, the Franks, loaded with booty and driving before them a vast multitude of captives chained together in couples, returned in triumph to their homes.

This occupation of the Franks proved to be but temporary. The garrisons left in the towns whose walls were intact were insufficient to overawe the populace exasperated by the outrages it had just sustained. The Duke of Marseilles, seconded by the wali of Arles, easily regained control of the country around Avignon. But the return of Charles during the following year with his ally Liutprand, King of the Lombards, and a large army, not only recovered the lost territory but took Arles, hitherto exempt from capture, and drove the Saracens beyond the Rhone, which river for the future became their eastern boundary, a limit they were destined never again to pass.

The absence of Okbah encouraged the spirit of rebellion, ever rife in the Peninsula. He had hardly returned before the arts of intrigue and the discontent of the populace raised up a formidable rival to his authority. Abd-al-Melik-Ibn-Kattan, who had formerly been Emir, now usurped that office. In the civil war which followed, the fortunes of Abd-al-Melik soon received a powerful impulse by the death of his competitor at Carcassonne.

We now turn to the coast of Africa, a region which from first to last has exerted an extraordinary and always sinister influence over the destinies of the Mohammedan empire in Europe. The intractable character of the Berbers, and their aversion to the restraints of law and the habits of civilized life, had defied the efforts of the ablest soldiers and negotiators to control them. In consequence, the dominant Arab element was not disposed to conciliate savages who recognized no authority but that of force, and imposed upon them the most oppressive exactions, prompted partly by avarice and partly by tribal hatred. The impetus of Berber insurrection was communicated by contact and sympathy to the settlements of their kindred in Spain, where the spirit of insubordination under a less severe government made its outbreaks more secure, and, at the same time, more formidable. Obeydallah, the present Viceroy, was influenced by these feelings of scorn even more than a majority of his countrymen. A true Arab, educated in the best schools of Syria, of energetic character and bigoted impulses, he regarded the untamable tribesmen of Africa as below the rank of slaves. While collector of the revenue in Egypt he had provoked a rebellion of the Copts on account of an arbitrary increase of taxes, levied solely because the tributaries were infidels. Under his rule the lot of the Berbers became harder than ever. Their flocks, which constituted their principal wealth, were wantonly slaughtered to provide wool for the couches of the luxurious nobility of Damascus. Their women were seized, to be exposed in the slave-markets of Cairo and Antioch. Their tributes were doubled at the caprice of the governor, in whose eyes the life of a misbeliever was of no more consideration than that of a wild beast, for, being enjoyed under protest, it could be forfeited at the will of his superior. Day by day the grievances of the Berbers became more unendurable, and the thirst for liberty and vengeance kept pace with the ever-increasing abuses which had provoked it. At first the tribes, while professedly Mussulman, in reality remained idolaters, fetich-worshippers, the pliant tools of conjurers and charlatans. Over the whole nation a priesthood--by snake-charming, by the interpretation of omens, by spurious miracles, by the arts of sorcery--had acquired unbounded influence; and the names of these impostors, canonized after death, were believed to have more power to avert misfortune than the invocation of the Almighty. In time, however, the zealous labors of exiled Medinese and Persian non-conformists had supplanted the grosser forms of this superstition by a religion whose fervor was hardly equalled by that displayed by the most fanatical Companion of Mohammed. The scoffing and polished Arabs of Syria, of whom the Viceroy was a prominent example, Pagan by birth and infidel in belief and practice, were sedulously represented as the enemies of Heaven and the hereditary revilers of the Prophet, whom it was a duty to destroy. These revolutionary sentiments, received in Africa with applause, were diffused through Spain by the tide of immigration, in which country, as elsewhere, they were destined soon to produce the most important political results. The Berbers, wrought up to a pitch of ungovernable fury, now only awaited a suitable opportunity to inaugurate the most formidable revolt which had ever menaced the Mohammedan government of Africa. In the year 740 an increased contribution was demanded of the inhabitants of Tangier, whose relations with the savages of the neighboring mountains had prevented the conversion of the former to Islam. A division of the army was absent in Sicily, and the Berbers, perceiving their advantage, rose everywhere against their oppressors. They stormed Tangier, expelled the garrisons of the sea-coast cities, elected a sovereign, and defeated in rapid succession every force sent against them. The pride and resentment of the Khalif Hischem at last impelled him to despatch a great army against his rebellious subjects. It numbered seventy thousand, and was commanded by a distinguished Syrian officer, Balj-Ibn-Beshr, who was ordered to put to death without mercy every rebel who might fall into his hands and to indulge the troops in all the license of indiscriminate pillage. Marching towards the west, the Syrian general encountered the Berbers on the plain of Mulwiyah. The naked bodies and inferior weapons of the insurgents provoked the contempt of the soldiers of the Khalif, who expected an easy victory; but the resistless impulse of the barbarians supplied the want of arms and discipline, and the Syrians were routed with the loss of two-thirds of their number. Some ten thousand horsemen, under command of Balj, cut their way through the enemy and took refuge in Ceuta. The Berbers, aware of the impossibility of reducing that place, ravaged the neighborhood for miles around, and, having blockaded the town on all sides, the Syrians, unable to escape or to obtain provisions, were threatened with a lingering death by famine.

Abd-al-Melik, Emir of Spain, was a native of Medina. Half a century before he had been prominent in the Arab army at the battle of Harra, the bloody prelude to the sack of the Holy City and the enslavement and exile of its citizens. To him, in vain, did the Syrian general apply for vessels in which to cross the strait. The Arab chieftain, bearing upon his body many scars inflicted by the spears of Yezid’s troopers and who had seen his family and his neighbors massacred before his face, now exulted in the prospect of an unhoped-for revenge; and, for the complete accomplishment of his purpose, he issued stringent orders against supplying the unfortunate Syrians with supplies. The sympathy of Zeyad-Ibn-Amru, a wealthy resident of Cordova, was aroused by the account of their sufferings, and he imprudently fitted out two vessels for their relief; which act of insubordination having been communicated to the Emir, he ordered Zeyad to be imprisoned, and, having put out his eyes, impaled him, in company with a dog, a mark of ignominy inflicted only on the worst of criminals.

The news of the decisive victory obtained by the Berbers over the army of the Khalif was received with pride and rejoicing by all of their countrymen in Spain. The efforts of the missionaries, aided by the fiery zeal of their proselytes, had infused into the population of the North, composed largely of African colonists, a spirit of fanaticism which threatened to carry everything before it. In a moment the Berbers of Aragon, Galicia, and Estremadura sprang to arms. Uniting their forces they elected officers; then, organized in three divisions, they prepared to dispute the authority of the Emir in the strongholds of his power. One body marched upon Cordova, another invested Toledo, and the third directed its course towards Algeziras, with designs upon the fleet, by whose aid they expected to massacre the Syrians in Ceuta and to collect a body of colonists sufficient to destroy the haughty Arab aristocracy of the Peninsula and found an independent kingdom, Berber in nationality, schismatic and precisian in religion.

And now were again exhibited the singular inconsistencies and remarkable effects of the fatal antagonism of race. The critical condition of Abd-al-Melik compelled him to implore the support of his Syrian foes, whom he hated with far more bitterness than he did his rebellious subjects, and who were also thoroughly cognizant of his feelings towards them as well as of the political necessity which prompted his advances. A treaty was executed, by whose terms the Syrians were to be transported into Spain and pledged their assistance to crush the rebellion, and, after this had been accomplished, the Emir agreed to land them in Africa upon a territory which acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Khalif. Hostages selected from their principal officers were delivered by the half-famished refugees, and they embarked for Andalusia, where the policy of the government and the sympathy of the people supplied them with food, clothing, and arms, and their drooping spirits soon revived. These experienced soldiers, united with the forces of Abd-al-Melik, attacked and routed with ease, one after another, the three Berber armies. All of the plunder which the latter had collected fell into their hands, in addition to that secured by expeditions into the now undefended country of their enemies. His apprehensions concerning the Berbers having been removed, Abd-al-Melik now became anxious to relieve his dominions of the presence of allies whose success rendered them formidable. But the allurements of soil and climate had made the Syrians reluctant to abandon the beautiful land of Andaluz,--the region where they had accumulated so much wealth, the scene where their efforts had been crowned with so much glory. Disputes arose between their leader and the Emir concerning the interpretation of the treaty; the Syrian general, conscious of his power, lost no opportunity to provoke the fiery temper of Abd-al-Melik; and, at last, taking advantage of a favorable occasion, he expelled the latter from his capital. Balj, elected to the viceroyalty by his command, proceeded at once to extend and confirm his newly acquired authority. The hostages confined near Algeziras were released, and their accounts of harsh treatment enraged their companions, who recalled their own sufferings and the inhumanity of Abd-al-Melik during their blockade in Ceuta. With loud cries they demanded the death of the Emir. The efforts of their officers to stem the torrent were futile; a mob dragged the venerable prince from his palace, and, taking him to the bridge outside the city of Cordova, crucified him between a dog and a hog, animals whose contact is suggestive of horrible impurity to a Mussulman and whose very names are epithets of vileness and contempt. Thus perished ignominiously this stout old soldier, who could boast of the purest blood of the Koreish; who had witnessed the wonderful changes of three eventful generations; who had seen service under the standard of Islam in Arabia, Egypt, Al-Maghreb, France, and Spain; who had bravely defended the tomb of the Prophet at Medina, and had confronted with equal resolution the mail-clad squadrons of Charles upon the banks of the Rhone; who had twice administered in troublous times the affairs of the Peninsula; and who now, long past that age when men seek retirement from the cares of public life, still active and vigorous, was sacrificed, through his own imprudence, to the irreconcilable hatred of tribal antagonism. An act of such atrocity, without considering the prominence of the victim, the nationality of the participants, or the degree of provocation, was, independent of its moral aspect, highly impolitic and most prejudicial to the interests of the revolutionists. The Syrians became practically isolated in a foreign country. The sons of Abd-al-Melik, who held important commands in the North, assembled a great army. Reinforcements were furnished by the governor of Narbonne, and the fickle Berbers joined in considerable numbers the ranks of their former adversaries.

At a little village called Aqua-Portera, not far from Cordova, the Arabs and Berbers attacked the foreigners, who had enlisted as their auxiliaries a number of criminals and outlaws. In the battle which followed the latter were victorious, but lost their general Balj, who fell in a single combat with the governor of Narbonne. The Syrians, whose choice was immediately confirmed by the Khalif, elected as his successor, Thalaba-Ibn-Salamah, a monster whose name was afterwards stained with acts of incredible infamy. His inhumanity was proverbial. His troops gave no quarter. The wives and children of his opponents, whose liberty even the most violent of his party had respected, were enslaved. Other victims he had previously exposed at auction before the gates of Cordova, under circumstances of the grossest cruelty and humiliation. The most illustrious of these were nobles of the party of Medina. By an exquisite refinement of insult he caused them to be disposed of to the lowest, instead of the highest, bidder, and even bartered publicly for impure and filthy animals the descendants of the friends of Mohammed, members of the proudest families of the aristocracy of Arabia. But the atrocities of Thalaba had already alienated many of the adherents of his own party as well as terrified those of the opposite faction, who had no mercy to expect at the hands of a leader who neither observed the laws of war nor respected the faith of treaties. Upon the application of these citizens, most of them men of high rank and influential character, the Viceroy of Africa sent Abu-al-Khattar to supersede the sanguinary Thalaba. He arrived just in time to rescue the unhappy Berbers, many of them Moslems, who were already ranged in order for systematic massacre. His power was soon felt; and by banishing the leaders of the insurgents; by granting a general amnesty; by an ample distribution of unsettled territory; and by conferring upon the truculent strangers a portion of the public revenues, an unusual degree of peace and security was soon assured to the entire Peninsula. In accordance with a policy adopted many years before, the various colonists were assigned to districts which bore some resemblance, in their general features, to the land of their nativity, a plan which offered the additional advantage of separating these turbulent spirits from each other, thus rendering mutual co-operation difficult, if not impossible, in any enterprise affecting the safety or permanence of the central power.

The first months of the administration of Abu-al-Khattar were distinguished by a degree of forbearance and charity unusual amidst the disorder which now prevailed in every province of the Moslem empire. But his partisans had wrongs to avenge, and the Emir had not the moral courage to resist the importunate demands of his kindred. An unjust judicial decision provoked reproach; insult led to bloodshed; the fiery Maadites rushed to arms; and once more the Peninsula assumed its ordinary aspect of political convulsion and civil war. Al-Samil and Thalaba, two captains of distinction, obtained the supremacy; the Emir was imprisoned, then rescued, and, after several ineffectual attempts to regain his authority, put to death. Having overpowered its adversary, the triumphant Maadite faction gratified its revengeful impulses to the utmost by plunder, torture, and assassination. At length the condition of affairs becoming intolerable, and no prospect existing of relief from the East, where the candidates of rival tribes contended for the tempting prize of the khalifate, a council of officers was convoked, and Yusuf-Abd-al-Rahman-al-Fehri was unanimously chosen governor of Spain.

This commander had, by many years of faithful service in France, by strict impartiality in his decisions, and by a bravery remarkable among a people with whom the slightest sign of cowardice was an indelible disgrace, won the respect and admiration of his contemporaries. His lineage was high, his person attractive, his manners dignified and courteous. He had defended Narbonne against the power of Charles Martel, whose army, flushed with victory and animated by the presence of the great Mayor of the Palace himself, had been unable to shake his confidence or disturb his equanimity. But his eminent qualifications for the position to which he was now called did not depend upon his former services and his personal merit so much as upon the absence which had kept him from all the entanglements and intrigues of faction. Thus it was that the fiercest partisans hailed his election as a harbinger of peace and concord; a wise stroke of policy that might reconcile the antagonistic pretensions of the nobles of Damascus and Medina; curb the lawlessness of the Berbers; and restore the Emirate of the West to that tranquillity and prosperity it had at long intervals enjoyed, and of which the memory, like a half-forgotten tradition, alone remained. This illegal act of the officers was without hesitation sanctioned by the Khalif Merwan, who prudently overlooked the spirit of independence implied by its exercise on account of its evident wisdom and the imperative necessity which had dictated it.

The disorders of the unhappy Peninsula had, however, become incurable under the present conditions of government. All the skill and experience of Yusuf were exhausted in fruitless attempts at the adjustment of territorial disputes and the pacification of feuds which a generation of internecine conflict had engendered. An insurrection broke out in Septimania, a province hitherto exempt from similar disturbances. Ahmed-Ibn-Amru, wali of Seville, whom Yusuf had removed from the command of the fleet, a chief of the Koreish, whose vast estates enabled him to surpass the magnificence of the Emir himself, and an aspirant for supreme power, organized and headed a formidable conspiracy. His name was associated with the early triumphs of Islam, for he was the great-grandson of the ensign who had borne the standard of Mohammed at the battle of Bedr. Prompted by unusual audacity, which was confirmed by the possession of wealth, ability, and power, he asserted that he had received the commission of the Abbasides as Viceroy of Spain. The Asturians, emboldened by the quarrels of their foes, leaving their mountain fastnesses, began to push their incursions far to the southward. The entire country was engaged in hostilities. Every occupation but that of warfare was suspended. The herdsman was robbed of his flocks. The fertile fields were transformed into a barren waste. On all sides were the mournful tokens of misery and want; from palace and hut rose the moan of the famishing or the wail for the dead. Intercourse between the neighboring cities, alienated by hostility or fearful of marauders, ceased. The doubtful tenure of authority, dependent upon the incessant changes of administration, made it impossible for the Christians to ascertain to whom tribute was rightfully due. and this confusion of interests often subjected them to the injustice of double, and even treble, taxation. At no time in the history of Spain, since the irruption of the Goths, had such a condition of anarchy and social wretchedness prevailed; when the inspiration of a few Syrian chieftains brought the existing chaos to an end, by the introduction of a new ruler and the re-establishment of a dynasty whose princes, the tyrants of Damascus, had hitherto reflected little more than odium and derision on the Moslem name.

The history of Spain under the emirs presents a melancholy succession of tragic events arising from antipathy of race, political ambition, religious zeal, and private enmity. An extraordinary degree of instability, misrule, distrust, and avarice characterized their administration. The revolutions which constantly afflicted the Khalifate of Damascus exercised no inconsiderable influence over the viceregal capitals of Kairoan and Cordova. The Ommeyade princes of Syria lived in constant apprehension of death by violence. The methods by which they had arisen in many instances contributed to their overthrow. The assassin of yesterday often became the victim of to-day. The perpetration of every crime, the indulgence in every vice, by the Successors of the Prophet, diminished the faith and loyalty of their subjects and seriously affected the prestige and divine character believed to attach to their office. The subordinates necessarily shared the odium and ignominy of their superiors. The Emir of Spain labored under a twofold disadvantage. He held under the Viceroy of Africa, while the latter was appointed directly by the Khalif. This division of authority and responsibility was not conducive to the interests of good government, social order, or domestic tranquillity. The people of the Peninsula, subject to the caprices of a double tyranny, could not be expected to feel much reverence for the supreme potentate of their government and religion thirteen hundred miles away. With the accession of each ruler arose fresh pretexts for the exercise of every resource of extortion. The rapacity of these officials rivalled in the ingenuity of its devices and the value of its returns the exactions of the Roman proconsuls. The methods by which the majority of them maintained their power provoked universal execration. Under such political conditions, loyalty, union, and commercial prosperity were impossible. The ancient course of affairs--an order which had existed for three hundred years--had been rudely interrupted. Even under favorable auspices the foundation of a government and the reorganization of society would have been tasks fraught with many perplexities and dangers. The Visigothic empire had, it is true, been subdued, but its national spirit, its religion, and its traditions remained. The changes of Moslem governors were sudden and frequent. The average duration of an emir’s official life was exactly twenty-seven months. It required the exertion of the greatest wisdom, of the most enlightened statesmanship, to avert the calamities which must necessarily result from the collision between a heterogeneous populace subjected suddenly to the will of a still more heterogeneous mass of foreigners; to reconcile the interests of adverse factions; to appease the demands of wild barbarians unaccustomed to be denied; to decide alike profound questions of policy and frivolous disputes connected with the various gradations of ecclesiastical dignity, of hereditary rank, of military distinction, and of social precedence. The inflexibility of the Arab character, the assumed superiority of the Arab race, the unquenchable fires of tribal hatred, the necessity of maintaining the rights accorded under solemn treaties to the vanquished, enhanced a hundred-fold the difficulties which confronted the sovereign. As an inevitable consequence a chronic state of disorder prevailed. The authority of the Khalifs of Damascus was in fact but nominal, and was never invoked except to countenance revolt or to assure the obedience of those who faltered in their loyalty to the emirs, the actual rulers of Spain. But, despite these serious impediments, the genius of the Arabian people advanced rapidly in the path of civilization, while the dense and sluggish intellect of the northern barbarians, who, in their origin, were not less ignorant, remained stationary. It took Spain, under the Moslems, less than half a century to reach a point in human progress which was not attained by Italy under the popes in a thousand years. The capacity of the Arab mind to absorb, to appropriate, to invent, to develop, to improve, has no parallel in the annals of any race. The empire of the khalifs included an even greater diversity of climate and nations than that of Rome. The ties of universal brotherhood proclaimed by the Koran; the connections demanded by the requirements of an extended commerce; the intimate associations encouraged by the pilgrimage to Mecca, awakened the curiosity and enlarged, in an equal degree, the minds of the Moslems of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Yet more important than all was the effect of the almost incessant hostilities waged against the infidel. By its constantly varying events, its fascinations, its thrilling excitements, its dangers, its victories, defeats, and triumphs, war has a remarkable tendency to expand the intellectual faculties, and thereby to advance the cause of truth and promote the improvement of every branch of useful knowledge. The advantages derived from travel, experience, and conquest the Moslems brought with them into the Spanish Peninsula. Under the emirate, however, these were constantly counteracted by the ferocious and indomitable character of the Berbers. The latter did not forget the part they had taken in the Conquest. It was one of their countrymen who had led the victorious army. It was the irresistible onset of their cavalry which had pierced the Gothic lines on the Guadalete. The rapidity of their movements, the impetuosity of their attacks, had awed and subdued, in a few short months, the populous states of a mighty empire. Scarcely had they begun to enjoy the pleasures of victory before the greed of an hereditary enemy of their race snatched from their hands the well-earned fruits of their valor. Their commander was imprisoned, insulted, and disgraced. Their plunder was seized. Those who evinced a desire for a sedentary life were assigned to the bleak and sterile plains of La Mancha, Aragon, and Galicia, while the Arabs of Syria and the Hedjaz divided among themselves the glorious regions of the South, which tradition had designated as the Elysian Fields of the ancients. The arrogant disposition of these lords heaped upon their Berber vassals every outrage which malice could devise or tyranny execute. The accident of African extraction was sufficient to exclude the most accomplished and capable soldier from an office of responsibility under the Khalifate of Damascus. In Spain, as in Al-Maghreb, the fairest virgins of the Berber camps were torn from the arms of their parents to replenish the harems of the Orient. Under such circumstances, it is not strange that the acute sensibilities of a proud and independent people should have been deeply wounded by the infliction of every fresh indignity, and their disaffection endanger the stability of the new government and imperil the institutions of religion itself by fostering the violent spirit of tribal animosity, that ominous spectre which constantly haunted with its fearful presence the society of city and hamlet, and stalked grimly and in menacing silence in the very shadow of the throne.

The moral and political aspect of the Western world coincided in many particulars with that of Spain during the age of transition which preceded the establishment of the Khalifate of Cordova. Of all the states which had composed the vast fabric of the Roman Empire scarcely one was at peace with its neighbors or exempt from the calamities incident to religious discord and civil war. The scanty remains of art and learning which had escaped the fury of the barbarians had taken refuge in Constantinople, now the intellectual centre of Europe. The noble productions of the ancients had, however, been cast aside with contempt for the homilies of the Fathers, and arguments concerning the miraculous virtues of images, together with daily riots and chariot-races, engaged the attention and amused the leisure of the weak and pusillanimous Byzantine, whose character, deformed by abject vices, had long since forfeited all right to the honored name of Roman. The turbulent populace of that great city, which virtually dictated the edicts of its rulers, protected by its impregnable walls, had seen, with craven indifference, its environs plundered and its sovereignty defied by the powers of Persian, Goth, and Saracen. The genius and energy of its founder had been supplanted by the superstitions and cruelties of a succession of feeble tyrants, whose manifold crimes were now, for a short interval, redeemed by the martial talents and political virtues of Leo the Isaurian.

In Italy, the peace of society was disturbed by the iconoclastic heresy and the disorders which accompanied the foundation of a republic, commotions destined soon to provoke the interference of the Lombards and the subsequent impolitic alliance with those perfidious barbarians. The stern and uncompromising character of Gregory the Great had established the Church upon a basis so solid that the efforts of all its enemies have to this day been unable to prevail against it; and the sagacity of this distinguished pontiff had vindicated the policy of a system prompted by the inspiration of almost superhuman wisdom, sanctified by the precepts of antiquity, strengthened by the enthusiasm of its saints and martyrs, and confirmed by the prescription of centuries.

No country in Europe during the eighth century exhibited such a picture of unredeemed barbarism as Britain. The Romans had never been able to more than temporarily establish their institutions in that island. The legions with difficulty held in subjection a people whom neither force nor the arts of persuasion could make amenable to the benefits of civilized life. The cruel rites which characterized the worship of the Druids had been abolished, but the elegant mythology of Italy obtained no hold upon the minds of the degraded aborigines, who welcomed with delight the savage ceremonies which were performed around the altars of the Scandinavian Woden. Upon this uncongenial soil the refining genius of Rome left no permanent traces of its occupancy, no splendid memorials of its art and culture. The nature of the transitory impressions emanating from the possession of Britain by the masters of the world was disclosed by the crushing misfortunes which befell the empire in the fifth century. Unable to sustain the cares of government, hostile chieftains abandoned the island to all the woes of anarchy, and partisan jealousy invoked the perilous aid of the pirates of Germany, whose dominion was finally established only by a war of extermination involving both ally and foe. The obscurity of the British annals concerning the period under consideration, dense of itself, is increased by the popular acceptance of myth and legend as historic truth. The chroniclers of Western Europe, however, have made us acquainted with the national character of the Saxons. We know that in Britain the customs of the aborigines and the laws of the empire were alike abrogated; that no worship prevailed but the basest form of idolatry; that every vestige of Roman institutions was swept away; that the religion whose maxims had been proclaimed by the eloquence of Augustin was extirpated; and that the voice of faction which had evoked this barbarian tempest was silenced in the convulsions which preceded the foundation of the Saxon Heptarchy. The island, whose name is now the most familiar one known to mankind, became more mysterious than it had been in the remotest ages of antiquity; the country whose constitution is now inseparably associated with the enjoyment of the largest measure of freedom was then noted as the most advantageous market for the purchase of slaves. In the cultivated society of Constantinople, learned men believed that Britain was a region of pestilence and horrors, whither, as to a place of eternal punishment, the spirits of the Franks were ferried at midnight by a tribe of weird fishermen, who, by reason of this service, were exempted from certain burdens and enjoyed peculiar privileges. Among the luxurious ecclesiastics of Gaul, the slaves imported from Britain were greatly esteemed as being both cheap and serviceable; and the sacred office of priest or abbot was not degraded by the ownership of hapless beings in whose unnatural parents the feelings of humanity and the instincts of affection had been subordinated to the debasing passion of avarice.

The general complexion of affairs in Gaul offered a striking analogy to that prevailing in Spain at the time of the subversion of the kingdom of the Visigoths. In one respect, however, a difference more apparent than real existed; no monarch was deluded by the professed allegiance, and was at the same time constantly threatened by the treasonable plots of his subjects. A dynasty of puppet kings, restricted to a limited territory, displayed amidst every temptation to sensual indulgence the idle pomp of sovereignty. A race of hardy warriors and statesmen, ignorant of letters, experienced in arms, controlled, by the power of military enthusiasm and the superior influence of diplomatic ability, the destinies of the Frankish nation. With the exception of the clergy, whose attainments were at the best but superficial, the people were plunged into the deepest ignorance. In the regions of the North and East the influence of the idolatrous Germans and Scandinavians had retarded the progress of Christianity. Elsewhere, however, a mongrel religion, in which were incorporated the mummeries of polytheistic worship, the degrading superstitions and sanguinary rites of the Saxons, and the worst features of the Arian heresy, prevailed. This debased form of faith, which recognized neither the tolerance of Paganism nor the charity of the Gospel, satisfied the spiritual requirements of a barbarian populace. In one province idolatry was practised. In another, the principles of Christianity were in the ascendant. Not infrequently these forms of worship existed side by side; and within the sound of the cathedral bell the incense of sacrifice rose from the altars of the Teutonic deities, or the haruspex exercised his mysterious office, and, grovelling in the steaming vitals of the newly slaughtered victim, read, in the shape of the liver or the folds of the entrails, the signs of the future and the unerring decrees of fate.

Wherever the authority of the Roman Pontiff prevailed, the inclination to a monastic life predominated among all classes of society. Virgins of the wealthiest families, warriors of the greatest renown, alike voluntarily sought the retirement of the cloister, amidst the congratulations of their relatives and the applause of their companions. When the attractions of the world were too powerful to be resisted, the proudest chieftains compromised with conscience either by the donation of their serfs to the abodes consecrated to the service of God, or by the ransom and purchase of slaves to increase the lordly abbot’s imposing retinue. In the foundation of religious houses in France there existed an emulation unknown to any other country embraced in the spiritual domain of the Papacy. The fame and piety of the patron of one of these establishments was in a direct proportion to the number of recluses whom his riches or his influence was able to assemble within its walls. As a consequence, no inconsiderable portion of the population of France was devoted to a conventual life, and the number of monks congregated in a single monastery was prodigious, in many instances amounting to as many as eight hundred. The generosity and devotion of the founder of a religious community were certain to be rewarded with the coveted honor of canonization, and records of the Gallic Church during the first half of the eighth century include the names of more saints than any corresponding period in the history of Latin Christianity. Liberality to these holy institutions was esteemed not only a virtue of supreme excellence but a certain proof of orthodoxy, and their vaults enclosed treasures whose value was sedulously exaggerated by the vanity of the clergy and the credulity of the rabble. The accounts of the enormous wealth of these establishments, disseminated far and wide through the garrulity of pilgrims and travellers, by stimulating the cupidity of the Arabs and inciting them to crusade and colonization, produced a decided effect upon the political fortunes and social organization of France, and through France indirectly upon those of all Europe.

Rudeness, brutality, coarse licentiousness, affected sanctity, and barbaric splendor were the prominent characteristics of the society constituted by the nominal sovereigns and their courts, the mayors of the palace and their retainers, and the lazy ecclesiastics who swarmed in every portion of the dominions of the Merovingian princes. The will of the most powerful noble was the law of the land. Apprehension of intestine warfare and the mutual jealousy and unscrupulous ambition of the feudal lords perpetually discouraged the industry of the husbandman. A feeling of indifference pervaded the ranks of the ignorant populace, stupidly content with the pleasures of a mere animal existence. The priesthood, assiduous in the exactions of tithes, evinced a marked repugnance to contribute pecuniary aid in times of national emergency when even their own existence was imperilled. Unnatural crimes, fratricide, incest, and nameless offences against public decency were common. Concubinage was universally prevalent among the wealthy. In a practice so fatal to the purity of domestic life the clergy obtained a disgraceful pre-eminence, and in the cloistered seclusion of convents and monasteries, those apparent seats of austerity and devotion, were enacted with impunity scenes which shrank from the publicity of cities and indicated the alarming and hopeless extent of ecclesiastical depravity.

In the provinces of the South, formerly subject to the jurisdiction of the Visigoths, a greater degree of intelligence and a more polished intercourse existed, the inheritance of the ancient colonists who had bequeathed to their posterity the traditions of Roman luxury and Grecian culture. Here, upon the shores of the Mediterranean and in the valley of the Rhone, the gifts of nature were better adapted to progress in the arts; the climate was more propitious to the intellectual development of the masses. While social equality was yet strictly observed in the assemblies of the Teutons and the Franks, the pride of aristocracy here first asserted its superior claims to consideration. It was from this region, favored by its geographical position, its commercial relations, and its sympathy with the philosophical ideas and literary aspirations of the inhabitants of Moslem Spain, that was to spread the refining influence of chivalry and letters afterwards so prominently displayed in the courts of the Albigensian princes.

The unsatisfactory nature of the information afforded by the defective chronicles of the eighth century is a serious impediment to the satisfactory elucidation of events whose paramount importance has been recognized by every historian. A lamentable want of detail, and an utter absence of philosophical discrimination, are the characteristic traits of these illiterate annalists. Of the gradual unfolding of national character; of the secret motives which actuated the rude but dexterous statesmen of that epoch; of the incessant mutations of public policy; of the silent but powerful revolutions effected by the inexorable laws of nature and the failings of humanity, they tell us next to nothing. And yet no period mentioned in history has been more prolific of great events. No achievement of ancient or modern times was perfected with such rapidity or produced such decided effects upon the intellectual progress of the human race as the Mohammedan Conquest of Spain. The valor of the idolater, Charles Martel, prepared the way for the vast empire and boundless authority of Charlemagne. The zeal of his orthodox successor assured the permanence and supremacy of the Holy See. Upon the success or failure of the Moslem crusade hung, as in a balance, the political fortunes of Europe and the religious destiny of the world. The battle of Poitiers was not, as is generally asserted, a contest between the champions of two hostile forms of faith, for the army of the Franks was largely composed of Pagans, and the ranks of the invaders were filled with Berbers, Jews, and infidels. Moslem zealots, like those who had shared the bitter privations of the Prophet, who had upheld his falling banner at Ohod, who had prevailed over fearful odds commanded by the bravest generals of the Roman and Persian empires, who had witnessed the capture of Damascus and Jerusalem, were rare in that motley host of adventurers whose religion was frequently a disguise assumed for the ignoble purpose of rapine. The fierce ardor and invincible spirit of the original Mussulmans had departed. A tithe of the fiery enthusiasm which had evoked the astonishment and consternation of their early antagonists must have changed the fortunes of that eventful day.

Upon the other hand, the Franks were not inspired with zeal for the maintenance of any religious principle. Their fickle homage was paid to Zernbock and Woden, the sanguinary gods of the German forests, or to that weird priesthood which delivered its oracles from the cromlechs of Brittany. The pressing requirements of the emergency, the prospect of plunder and glory, had summoned the warriors of a hundred tribes from the banks of the Danube to the limits of Scandinavia. So little were these wild barbarians entitled to the appellation of Christians that they were, even then, under the ban of ecclesiastical displeasure, and had been loaded with anathemas for the sacrilegious use of the property of the Church to avert the danger impending over Christendom. But leaving out of consideration the motives which actuated the combatants, there can be no question as to the decisive results of the battle of Poitiers. It was one of the few great victories which, like conspicuous landmarks in the pathway of human affairs, indicate the advancement or the retardation of nations. The prospect of Mohammedan conquest had long been the terror of Europe. The Pope trembled in the Vatican. The pious devotee, as he prostrated himself before the image of his patron saint, vowed an additional penance to ward off the calamity which every day was expected to bring forth. Imagination and fear painted the Saracens as a race of incarnate fiends, whose aspect was far more frightful, whose atrocities were far more ruthless, than those of the Huns who had been routed by Ætius four hundred years before on the plains of Chalons. The lapse of twelve centuries has not sufficed to dispel this superstitious dread, and the Saracen, as a monster and a bugbear, still figures in the nursery tales and rhymes of Central France.

The Spanish Emirate includes the most obscure epoch of Moslem annals. Its events have been, for the most part, preserved only by tradition. Its chronicles are chaotic, defective, and contradictory. Its dates are confused. It abounds in anachronisms; in the confusion of localities; in the multiplication of individuals under a variety of names. The credulity and prejudice of annalists, few of whom were contemporaneous with the occurrences they profess to describe, render their statements suspicious or absolutely unworthy of belief. With such drawbacks attainment to accuracy is manifestly impracticable, and a reasonable degree of probability can alone be hoped for from the baffled and perplexed historian.

Exactly a hundred and ten years had elapsed since Mohammed fled from Mecca like a common malefactor, under sentence of execution by the leaders of his tribe, with a reward of a thousand pieces of gold upon his head, and Islam was regarded as the dream of a half-demented enthusiast. Now the name of the Prophet was revered from the Indies to the Atlantic. The new sect numbered its adherents by millions. Its arms had invariably been victorious. Its energy had surmounted every obstacle. The most venerated shrines of Christianity and the cradle of that religion,--Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, and Jerusalem,--places associated with all that is dear to the followers of our Saviour, and made sacred by miracle, legend, and tradition, were in its hands. Rome and Constantinople, the remaining great centres of Christian faith--the one destined to be attacked by the Moslems of Sicily, the other now menaced by the Moslems of Spain--trembled for their safety. Saracen fleets were already cruising in the eastern Mediterranean. The Mussulman standard had been planted on the Loire, thirty-six hundred miles distant from Mecca. In every country into which Islam had penetrated, it had found faithful allies and adherents. Religious indifference, public oppression, the burdens of feudalism, and the evils of slavery paved the way for its acceptance. The Jews opened the gates of cities. The leaders of depressed factions contributed to the ruin of their countrymen with purse and sword. Vassals and slaves apostatized by thousands. Most ominous of all, the test of spiritual truth and inspiration invariably dependent, in the estimation of the credulous, upon superiority in arms, was steadily on the side of the infidel. It is not strange, therefore, that Christian Europe looked with undisguised dismay upon the portentous advance of the Mussulman power. It is a matter of some doubt whether the doctrines of Mohammed could have obtained a permanent foothold in the frozen regions of the North. The geographical distribution of religions is largely determined by climate. Islam is essentially exotic. It has survived, but never flourished, beyond the tropics. A learned historian has advanced the hypothesis that it cannot exist in a latitude where the olive does not grow, a statement which seems to be justified by the experience of history. It is highly improbable that the dogmas and customs of the Orient would have found, under a leaden sky and amidst the chilling blasts of Holland and Germany, conditions propitious to their propagation. Important modifications must have resulted, and, with these modifications, religious and social revolution. The steadiness and prowess of the Teutonic soldiery had forever assured the safety of Europe from serious molestation by the princes of the Hispano-Arab empire. The irregular and ill-concerted attacks, which subsequently followed at long intervals, were easily repulsed. Whether the world at large was profited by the victory of Charles Martel may, in the light afforded by the brilliant results of Moslem civilization, well be questioned. It is hardly possible to conjecture what effect would have been produced upon the creeds and habits of the present age by the triumph of the Saracen power, but, in the words of an eminent writer, “the least of our evils had now been that we should have worn turbans; combed our beards instead of shaving them; have beheld a more magnificent architecture than the Grecian, while the public mind had been bounded by the arts and literature of the Moorish University of Cordova.”

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VII. FOUNDATION OF THE SPANISH MONARCHY

718–757

The Northern Provinces of Spain--Their Desolate and Forbidding Character--Climate--Population--Religion--Peculiarities of the Asturian Peasantry--Pelayus--His Birth and Antecedents--He collects an Army--Obscure Origin of the Spanish Kingdom--Extraordinary Conditions under which it was founded--Battle of Covadonga--Rout of the Arabs--Increase of the Christian Power--Favila--Alfonso I.--His Enterprise and Conquests--His Policy of Colonization--Survival of the Spirit of Liberty--Religious Abuses--State of Society--Beginning of the Struggle for Empire.

The general topography of the Spanish Peninsula exhibits a gradual and continuous increase in altitude, beginning at the tropical plains of Andalusia and terminating in the mountain range which traverses its northern extremity from the eastern boundary of France to the Bay of Biscay. This rugged chain of mountains, some of whose peaks attain an elevation of almost ten thousand feet, throws out innumerable spurs to the north and south, which are separated by impassable gorges and gloomy ravines, occasionally relieved by valleys of limited extent but remarkable fertility. Its proximity to the ocean, whose vapors are condensed and precipitated by contact with the summit of the sierra, renders the climate of this region one of exceptional moisture, but its foggy atmosphere is not unfavorable either to the health or the longevity of man. In certain localities, rains are almost incessant, and the depths of many of its defiles are never gladdened by the genial and vivifying rays of the sun. The most untiring industry is requisite to procure the means of a meagre subsistence, and the laborious efforts of the cultivator of the soil are supplemented by the vigilance of the shepherd, whose fleeces, generally preferred to the coarse products of the loom, furnish the male population with clothing. Upon the coast entire communities obtain their livelihood by fishing; and the increased opportunities for intercourse with the world have produced noticeable modifications in the character of these people, who, while deficient in none of the manly qualities of the denizens of hill and fastness, seem less uncouth, and are possessed of a greater degree of intelligence than their brethren of the interior. The customs of these famous mountaineers, variously known as Basques, Asturians, Cantabrians, and Galicians, according to the respective localities they inhabit, have varied but little in the course of many centuries. They have ever been distinguished by simplicity of manners, sturdy honesty, unselfish hospitality, and a spirit of independence which has seldom failed to successfully assert itself against the most persistent attempts at conquest. A mysterious and unknown origin attaches to the Basques, whose strange tongue and weird traditions are supposed to connect them with the original inhabitants of the Peninsula, and who, in this isolated wilderness, have preserved the memory of one of the aboriginal races of Europe. The rugged districts lying to the westward of what is now called Biscay, the home of the Basques, were formerly inhabited by the Iberians, a branch of the Celts, which, by force of circumstances and through the necessities of self-preservation, has become fused with colonists from the southern provinces until its distinguishing features have disappeared. The well-known bravery of the defenders of this bleak and forbidding country, its poverty--which offers no allurements to either the avarice or the vanity of royal power--its ravines swept by piercing winds, and its mountains draped with perpetual clouds, long secured for it freedom from invasion. The Carthaginians never passed its borders. The Romans, under Augustus, succeeded, after infinite difficulties, in establishing over its territory a precarious authority, disputed at intervals by fierce and stubborn insurrections. It yielded a reluctant obedience to the Visigothic kings, whose notions of liberty, coarse tastes, barbaric customs, and frank demeanor were more congenial with the nature of the wild Iberian than the luxurious habits and crafty maxims of Punic and Latin civilization.

The most barren and inaccessible part of this secluded region at the time of the Moslem conquest was that embraced by the modern principality of the Asturias. A formidable barrier of lofty peaks, whose passes readily eluded the eye of the stranger, blocked the way of a hostile army. Within this wall a diversified landscape of mountain and valley presented itself, with an occasional village, whose huts, clustered upon a hill-side or straggling along some narrow ravine, indicated the presence of a settlement of shepherds or husbandmen. These dwellings, whose counterparts are to be seen to-day in the wildest districts of the Asturias and Galicia, were rude hovels constructed of stones and unhewn timbers, thatched with straw, floored with rushes, and provided with a hole in the roof to enable the smoke to escape. Their walls and ceilings were smeared with soot and grease, and every corner reeked with filth and swarmed with vermin. The owners of these habitations were, in appearance and intelligence, scarcely removed from the condition of savages. They dressed in sheepskins and the hides of wild beasts, which, unchanged, remained in one family for many generations. The salutary habit of ablution was never practised by them. Their garments were never cleansed, and were worn as long as their tattered fragments held together. Their food was composed of nutritious roots and herbs and of the products of the chase, a diet sometimes varied by vegetables, whose seeds had been imported from the south, and by a coarse bread made from the meal of chestnuts and acorns. Total ignorance of the courtesies and amenities of social life prevailed; privacy was unknown; and the peasant entered the hut of his neighbor without fear or ceremony. An independent political organization existed in each of these communities, whose isolated situation, extreme poverty, and primitive manners dispensed with the necessity for the complicated and expensive machinery of government. Old age, as among many nations in the infancy of their existence, was a title to authority and respect, and the elevation of an individual to a certain degree of power was not unusual when he had distinguished himself among his fellows for skill in hunting or valor in warfare. Christian missionaries had, centuries before, carried the precepts of the Gospel into the depths of this wilderness, and chapels and altars, where the idolatrous practices of Druidical superstition were strangely mingled with the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic ritual, attested the persistence of a faith which had existed for ages. Many of the personal habits and social customs of the Iberians, while well deserving the attention of the antiquary, were of such a nature as to preclude description. Under these manifold disadvantages were now to be laid the foundations of an empire destined to embrace the richest portions of two great continents; to extend its language, its ideas, its policy, its religion, its authority, to the extreme limits of a world as yet unknown; to humble the pride of the most renowned sovereigns of Europe; to perfect the most formidable engine for the suppression of free thought and individual liberty which the malignity of superstition has ever devised; to perform achievements and accomplish results unparalleled in the most fantastic creations of romance; and to devote to extermination entire races whose sole offence was that they had never heard of the God of their persecutors,--a people whose civilization was far inferior to their own.

The terror inspired by the approach of the Saracens, after the battle of the Guadalete, had driven great masses of fugitives to the north. Such of these as escaped the hardships of flight and the swords of their pursuers sought refuge in the most secret recesses of the Asturian mountains. They carried with them their portable property, their household gods, all the relics of the saints, all the sacred furniture of the altars, which they had been able to rescue from the sacrilegious grasp of the infidel. The refugees had forgotten alike, in the presence of universal misfortune, the long-cherished prejudices of race and the artificial distinctions of rank; and Goth, Roman, Iberian, and Basque, master and slave, mingled together upon a friendly equality. Received by the frank and hospitable mountaineers with a sympathy which was strengthened by the bond of a common religion, the unhappy fugitives became reconciled to the privations of a life which secured to them immunity from infidel oppression; and, by intimate association and intermarriage with their benefactors, formed in time a new nation, in which, however, mixture of blood and altered physical surroundings produced their inevitable effects, causing the traits of the Iberian to predominate, in a conspicuous degree, over those of the Latin and the Goth. As the rest of the Peninsula submitted to the domination of the Moors, the population of this province was largely augmented. Persecution, arising during the civil wars, still further increased immigration; deposed prelates, ruined artisans, and discontented slaves sought the companionship and aid of their fellow-sectaries; many, in apprehension of future evil, voluntarily abandoned their possessions; and the Asturias became the common refuge of all who had suffered as well as of all who were willing to renounce a life of comparative ease and dependence for the toils and privations which accompanied the enjoyment of political and religious liberty. With the advantages of freedom were also blended associations of a more sacred character. The greater number of the most celebrated shrines of a country remarkable for the virtues of its relics and the splendor of its temples had been desecrated by the invader. He had destroyed many churches. Others he had appropriated for the uses of his own religion. The piety of their ministers had, however, secreted, and borne away in safety, the most precious of those tokens of divine interposition whose efficacy had been established by the performance of countless miracles supported by the unquestionable testimony of the Fathers of the Church. Transported by reverent hands from every part of the kingdom, these consecrated objects were now collected in fastnesses impregnable to the enemies of Christ. Where, therefore, could the devout believer better hope for security and happiness than under the protection of holy souvenirs which had received the oblations and the prayers of successive generations of his ancestors? The wars and revolutions of more than a thousand years have not diminished the feeling of popular veneration attaching to these mementos of the martyrs, which, enshrined in quaint and costly reliquaries of crystal and gold, are still exhibited in the Cathedral of Oviedo.

Engrossed with the cares which necessarily attended the establishment of a new religion and the organization of a new government, the first viceroys of Spain took no notice of the embryotic state which was gradually forming in the northwestern corner of the Peninsula. Their scouting parties, which had penetrated to the borders of the Asturias, had long since acquainted them with the severity of the climate and the general sterility of the soil. No booty, save, perhaps, some sacred vessels and a few flocks of sheep, was there to tempt the avarice of the marauder. Domiciled in the genial regions of the South, whose natural advantages continually recalled the voluptuous countries of the Orient, the Moor instinctively shrank from contact with the piercing winds and blinding tempests of the mountains far more than from an encounter with the uncouth and warlike savages who defended this inhospitable land. Musa had already entered Galicia at the head of his troops when he was recalled to Damascus by the peremptory mandate of the Khalif; and foraging parties had, on different occasions, ravaged many of the settlements of the Basques; but as yet the Moslem banners had never waved along the narrow pathways leading into the Asturian solitudes, nor had the echoes of the Moorish atabal resounded from the stupendous walls which protected the surviving remnant of the Visigothic monarchy and the last hope of Christian faith and Iberian independence.

At an early period, whose exact date the uncertainty of the accounts transmitted to us renders it impossible to determine, the settlements of the coast fell into the hands of the Saracens, who fortified the town of Gijon, a place whose size might not improperly assert for it the claims of metropolitan importance. The government of this city was entrusted to one of the most distinguished officers who had served in the army of Tarik, the former Emir, Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa, who, as we have already seen, having contracted a treasonable alliance with the Duke of Aquitaine, had been pursued and put to death by the soldiers of Abdal-Rahman immediately before the latter’s invasion of France.

Their communications with the sea-coast having been thus interrupted, the Asturians, impatient of confinement, determined to secure an outlet by extending the limits of their territory upon the southern slopes of the mountains. The adventurous spirit of the mountaineers welcomed with ardor a proposal which must necessarily be attended with every circumstance of excitement and glory. Among the refugees who constituted the bulk of the population were many who had seen service in the Visigothic army, and some who were not unfamiliar with the tactics and military evolutions of the Saracens. One of the most eminent of these was Pelayus, a name associated with the most glorious traditions interwoven with the origin of the monarchy of Spain. The imagination of subsequent ecclesiastical chroniclers has exhausted itself in attempts to exalt the character and magnify the exploits of this hero. The Moorish authorities, however, while they afford but scanty details concerning him, are entitled to far more credit, as their material interests were not to be subserved by the fabrication of spurious miracles and preposterous legends. From the best accounts now attainable,--which, it must be confessed, are far from reliable,--it appears that Pelayus was of the mixed race of Goth and Latin. The Arabs invariably called him the “Roman,” an appellation they were not in the habit of conferring upon such as were of the pure blood of the Visigoths. He was of noble birth, had held an important command in the army of Roderick, and was not less esteemed for bravery and experience than for hatred of the infidel, and for the reverent humility with which he regarded everything connected with the ceremonies and the ministers of the Church. To this chieftain, with the unanimous concurrence of both refugees and natives, was now entrusted the perilous and doubtful enterprise of openly defying the Saracen power. With the caution of a veteran, and an enthusiasm worthy of a champion of the Faith, Pelayus began to assemble his forces. The peasantry, ever alive to the attractions of a military expedition, and the fugitives, whose present distress recalled the more vividly their former prosperity, their pecuniary losses, and their personal bereavements, incident to the catastrophe which had befallen the nation, answered the call to arms with equal alacrity. The army which placed itself at the disposal of the new general did not probably number two thousand men. The majority were clad in skins. But few wore armor,--antiquated suits of mail which had rusted under the pacific rule of the successors of Wamba and had survived the disasters of Merida and the Guadalete. The Iberian javelin, the sling, and the short and heavy knife of the Cantabrian peasant composed their offensive weapons. Not one in ten had ever seen a battle. Not one in a hundred could understand or appreciate the necessity for the uncomplaining patience and implicit obedience indispensable to the soldier. Yet the soaring ambition, the patriotic pride, the belief in the special protection of heaven--feelings equal to the conquest of a world--rose high in the bosoms of these savage mountaineers. Their courage was unquestionable. Their native endurance, strengthened by simple food and habitual exposure to the tempests of a severe climate and the incessant exertions of a pastoral life, was far greater than that of their enemies. To invest the cause with a religious character, and to rouse to the highest pitch the fanaticism of the soldiery, a number of priests attended, with censer and crucifix and all the sacred emblems of ecclesiastical dignity. Of such materials was composed the army whose posterity was led to victory by such captains as Gonzalvo, Cortes, and Alva, and whose penniless and exiled commander was destined to be the progenitor of a long line of illustrious sovereigns.

The original realm of Pelayus afforded no indication of the enormous dimensions to which it was destined to expand. It embraced a territory five miles long by three miles wide. Its population could not have exceeded fifteen hundred souls. Its fighting men were not more than five hundred in number. The bulk of the army was composed of Basques and Galicians, attracted by the hope of spoil, held together for the moment only by the sense of common danger; impatient of restraint; scarcely recognizing the authority of popular assemblies of their own creation; valiant in action; brutal in victory; selfish and cowardly in defeat. They were without organization, officers, suitable arms, or commissariat. Of the art of war, as practised by even semi-barbarians, they knew nothing. Their military operations were controlled by the usual stratagems of savages, the nocturnal attack, the sudden surprise, the ambuscade.

The civil system of the infant monarchy was no further advanced. The exiled subjects of Roderick still retained, in some measure, the maxims and traditions of government. The people, among whom their lot was cast and who greatly outnumbered them, had, however, little knowledge of, and no reverence for, the Visigothic Code. The duchy of Cantabria, to which the latter mainly belonged, was never more than a nominal fief of the kingdom of Toledo. The fueros, or laws, by which they had been governed through successive foreign dominations of the Peninsula were of immemorial antiquity. Their long-preserved independence had nourished in their minds sentiments of arrogance and assumed superiority which were often carried to a ridiculous extreme. These influences had no small share in the subsequent formation of the Spanish constitution.

Thus, in a desolate and barren region; insignificant in numbers; destitute of resources; ignorant of the arts of civilization; without military system or civil polity; with neither court, hierarchy, nor capital; animated by the incentives of religious zeal and inherited love of freedom, a handful of barbarians laid the foundations of the renowned empire of Spain and the Indies.

The bustle which necessarily attended the warlike preparations of Pelayus was not long in attracting the attention of the government of Cordova. Information was conveyed to Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim, the representative of the Khalif, concerning the league that had been formed between the fugitive Goths and the denizens of the Asturias, as well as of the objects of the expedition which was organizing in the northern wilderness. The Emir, whose contempt for his enemies, added to a profound ignorance of the character of the country they inhabited, induced him to underestimate the difficulties to be encountered in their subjection, did not deem it worth his while to attack them in person. He naturally thought little was to be apprehended from the irregular hostilities of a few refugees who had retired with precipitation at the approach of the Moorish cavalry, united with a horde of vagabond shepherds and hunters unaccustomed to discipline and inexperienced in warfare. In his blind depreciation of the prowess of his adversaries, Anbasah-Ibn-Sohim left out of consideration many circumstances which influenced, in a marked degree, the subsequent fortunes of the Moslem domination in Spain. Their numerical inferiority was of trifling moment in a country thoroughly familiar to its inhabitants, but hitherto unexplored by the Saracens, and whose steep and tortuous pathways afforded such facilities for resisting an intruder that points might readily be selected where a score of men could, with little effort, successfully withstand a thousand. The Emir took no account of the mists which always enshrouding the sierra often entirely obscured the landscape; of the dense forests which might so effectually conceal the ambuscade; of the sudden and destructive rise of the mountain torrents; of the dangers attendant upon the landslide and the avalanche. Nor did he appreciate the feelings which must have been inspired by the desperate situation in which the Christians were placed. They were at bay in their last stronghold. Once driven from the shelter of their friendly mountains nothing remained for them but death or slavery. Their retreat into France was cut off by the Arab column now advancing into Septimania. Their brethren throughout the Peninsula had bowed before the sceptre of the Khalif, and no assistance could be expected from them. Their patriotic ardor was excited by the proud consciousness of independence and by apprehensions of the degradation of servitude; their pious frenzy was aroused by the destruction which menaced the religion of their fathers. In their camp were the sole memorials of a monarchy whose princes had dictated terms to the Mistress of the World. Around them on every side were sacred relics which had been visited from far and wide by pilgrims, whose miraculous power in the healing of disease it was sacrilege to doubt, and which had not only brought relief to the suffering but also comfort and salvation in the hour of death. God had made them the custodians of these treasures rescued from His desecrated altars; truly He would not abandon them in time of peril. By every artifice peculiar to their craft; by all the fervid appeals of eloquence; by every promise of present and prospective advantage; and by every threat of future retribution, the prelates inflamed the zeal of their fanatical hearers. They, more than any other class, understood the gravity of the situation. While not anticipating the power which the sacerdotal order was to attain over the temporal affairs of the Peninsula in coming centuries, they were not ignorant that the result of the impending conflict involved its supremacy or their own annihilation. Thus, at the very birth of the Spanish monarchy, appears predominant the ecclesiastical power which contributed more than all other causes to its eventual decay. Taking these facts into consideration, it is evident that the conquest of the Asturias would have required an ample force conducted by an experienced commander, whose talents, however respectable, could hardly have accomplished the task in a single campaign. But the Emir, who was on the point of invading France and did not deign to delay his expedition for the purpose of chastising a band of vagrant barbarians, detached a division, under an officer named Alkamah, to reduce the Asturias to subjection and exact the payment of tribute.

The Arab general, aside from the natural impediments which obstructed the march of an army through one of the most rugged localities of Europe, experienced but little trouble in his advance. The scattered collections of hovels which he encountered were deserted. No flocks were feeding on the hill-sides. All signs of cultivation were obliterated, and everything which could afford subsistence to an enemy had been removed or destroyed. The features of the entire landscape were those of a primeval waste. Through the defiles, without resistance, and almost without the sight of a human being except his own soldiers, Alkamah penetrated to the very heart of the Asturias, lured on by the wily mountaineers to a point where his superior numbers, so far from availing him, would be a positive disadvantage, and from whence retreat would be impossible.

Upon the eastern border of the wilderness, amidst a chaos of rocks, forests, ravines, and streamlets, rises the imposing peak of Auseba. The northern side of this mountain for a hundred feet from its base presents a steep and frowning precipice closing one end of a narrow valley, and whose almost perpendicular sides are only accessible to the trained and venturesome native. A cave, in whose depths three hundred men could readily be sheltered, exists in the face of the cliff, and through the gorge beneath run the troubled waters forming the source of the river Deva. A path, completely commanded by the heights upon either side, winds through the undergrowth and gives access to the cave and its environs, in former times the resort of benighted goatherds. In this spot, admirably adapted to purposes of defence, Pelayus determined to make his final stand. All non-combatants were secreted in the forest. Ambushes were posted along the only path by which an approach was practicable. In the cavern, whose name, Covadonga, is still revered by every Asturian noble and peasant, Pelayus concealed himself with a body of men selected for their courage and the superiority of their arms. Skirmishers now appeared in the front of the Moslem army, which, with a confidence born of former success, without hesitation followed its treacherous guides into the fatal valley. No sooner was the command of Alkamah within arrow-shot of the cave than the mountaineers sprang from their hiding-places. Wild cries of defiance and expectant triumph echoed from the rocky slopes of the ravine. From every hand the projectiles of the Christians poured down upon the heads of their astonished foes. When the ammunition of the bows and slings was exhausted, the sturdy peasants rolled down great stones and trunks of trees, which crushed a score of men at a single blow. Massed together, and thrown into confusion by the unexpected attack, the Saracens could not use their weapons to advantage. Their arrows rebounded harmlessly from the rocks. The agility of their enemies and the character of the ground prevented a hand-to-hand engagement, which the inferior strength of the Christians naturally prompted them to avoid. Unable to endure the storm of missiles which was rapidly depleting their ranks, the Saracens attempted to retrace their steps. The first intimation of a desire to retreat was the signal for redoubled activity on the part of the Asturians. Pelayus and his band, issuing from the cave, fell upon the rear of the enemy. The detachments upon the flanks closed in, and the unfortunate Moslems, surrounded and almost helpless, resigned themselves to their fate. The battle became a massacre. To add to the discomfiture of the invaders, a fearful tempest, which, in a latitude whose air is always charged with moisture, often comes without warning, burst upon the valley. In a few moments the little brook had swollen into a roaring torrent. A section of the mountain-side, undermined and already tottering and crowded with terror-stricken Saracens, gave way, carrying with it hundreds of victims to be engulfed in the rushing waters. A trifling number of fugitives, aided by the darkness and the storm, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the mountaineers, but the great majority of those composing the detachment, including all of its officers, perished. The estimated loss of the Moslems varies, according to the nationality of the annalist, from three thousand to one hundred and twenty-four thousand. In this, as in all other instances where the statements of the Arab and Christian writers of that age conflict, the preference should be given to the assertions of the former. The valley of Covadonga is so restricted in extent, especially where the battle took place, that it would with difficulty afford standing room for twenty thousand combatants. The vainglorious character of the northern Spaniard, who possesses not a little of the braggadocio of his cousin, the Gascon, has incited him to grossly magnify the importance of an exploit which requires no exaggeration; and his fabulous accounts have been recorded, with extravagant additions, by the ecclesiastical historians of the Dark Ages, with whom mendacity was the rule and accuracy the exception. Absolutely controlled by the prejudices of their profession, they studiously embellished every tale which could have a tendency to promote its interests and as carefully suppressed all hostile testimony. The monkish writers, whose credulity kept pace with their love of the marvellous, conceived that the glory of the Church was in a direct ratio to the number of infidels exterminated by her champions. To this motive are to be attributed the absurd statements concerning the losses of the enemy in every victory won by the Christian arms, a pernicious habit which was confirmed by the improbability of subsequent detection arising from the universal illiteracy of the age. The thorough unreliability of these old chroniclers in this and other particulars which might directly or indirectly affect the prestige of their order is calculated to cast suspicion over their entire narratives. When we add to these gross misrepresentations their meagre and confused accounts of the most important events, their profound ignorance of the hidden motives of human actions, their superstitious prejudices, and their incapacity of appreciating, or even of understanding, the principles of historical criticism, it may readily be perceived how arduous is the task of those who attempt to bring order out of this literary chaos. To the Arab writers, however, we can turn with a much greater degree of confidence. They make no attempts to disguise the magnitude of their reverses or to diminish the glory of their enemies. No contemporaneous account of the battle of Covadonga has descended to us. It was not for a century that its paramount importance became manifest. The attention of the clergy during that turbulent period was engrossed by the doubtful fortunes of the Church, and the exactions consequent upon the changes produced by a constant succession of rulers. The affairs of the entire Mohammedan empire were in a turmoil. In the East the chiefs of desperate factions were struggling for the throne of the khalifate. Africa was the scene of perpetual insurrection, provoked and maintained by the indomitable spirit of the Berbers. The Emirs of Spain, between the intervals of civil discord, were nursing extravagant dreams of ambition,--visions of the propagation of their faith, of the acquisition of new territories, of the subjugation of infidels, of the extension of empire. The glance of the viceroys was directed beyond the bleak Asturias towards the fertile plains of Southern France. The execution of the gigantic enterprise projected by the genius of Musa occupied their thoughts, and they were ignorant or careless of the aspirations of a handful of peasants, upon the issue of whose prowess and constancy were, even now, impending the existence of their dominion and the destinies of the Peninsula.

The meagre notices of the battle of Covadonga transmitted by Moorish chroniclers indicate that it was not considered a great disaster, and that its effects upon the posterity of both Christian and Moslem could not have been dreamed of. Yet from this eventful day practically dates the beginning of the overthrow of the Arab domination, not yet firmly established in its seat of power. Then was inaugurated the consolidation of mountain tribes, soon to be followed by the union of great provinces and kingdoms under the protection of the Spanish Crown. At that time was first thoroughly demonstrated the value of harmonious co-operation among factions long arrayed against each other in mutual hostility. Thence was derived the germ of freedom, which successfully asserted its rights under the frown of royalty, and, incorporated into the constitution of Aragon, long interposed a formidable obstacle to the encroachments of arbitrary and despotic sovereigns. During that epoch, by the fusion of races, were laid the foundations of that noble and sonorous idiom, unsurpassed in simplicity of construction, in conciseness and elegance of diction, in clear and harmonious resonance. Then was manifested for the first time the adventurous and daring spirit which carried the banners of Spain beyond the Mississippi, the Andes, and the Pacific. Then was instituted the scheme of ecclesiastical policy which, perfected by a succession of able and aspiring churchmen, placed the throne of Europe’s greatest monarchy under the tutelage of the primacy of Toledo. Then originated that fierce and interminable contest--first for self-preservation, then for plunder, lastly for empire--which for a thousand years engrossed the attention of the world.

The renown acquired by Pelayus through the victory of Covadonga raised him at once from the position of general to the dignity of king. In his election the traditions of the ancient Gothic constitution were observed. The sentiments of freedom innate in the mountaineer of every land are reluctant to admit the superiority implied by the laws of hereditary descent or by the exercise of unlimited authority. The rude ceremonies by which regal prerogatives were conceded to this guerilla chieftain could not suggest to the wildest visionary the possibility of the gorgeous ceremonial of the Spanish court or of the absolute power exercised by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second. It is not improbable that the commands of Pelayus were frequently disputed by his half-savage retainers. But it may well be doubted if among all the nations which composed the vast dominions of the House of Austria could have been found an equal number of adherents more faithful in misfortune, more intrepid in danger, than those who formed the little band of the exiled hero. The immunity granted the Christians after their triumph would seem to rather imply contempt by the princes of Cordova than their discouragement or any apprehension of further misfortune. The moral effect of the victory, if imperceptible on the Arabs, produced at once most significant results in the regions bordering on the Asturias. The threatening attitude of the fishermen necessitated the evacuation of the coast, and Othman-Ibn-Abu-Nesa, Governor of Gijon, abandoned his charge, and, by a forced march, joined his countrymen beyond the mountains. The warlike spirit spread fast through Cantabria and Galicia, and was even felt upon the borders of what is now Leon and Castile; the Saracen colonists who had established themselves in the most fertile districts were exterminated; and the religious aspect of the struggle, which seemed to identify the cause of the insurgents with that of the Almighty, crowded the squalid hovels of the hospitable Asturians with thousands of fugitives who sought protection and liberty in the society of their friends and kinsmen.

Neither history nor tradition has ascribed to Pelayus any other military achievements than the famous one which signalized his accession to supreme power. In the retirement of his little kingdom, for the remainder of his days, he employed the security, for which he was indebted to the contempt of his enemies, in consolidating his authority; in the formation of a plan of government; in the erection of churches, shrines, and monasteries; and in encouraging among his subjects the pursuit of agriculture. His extreme devotion to the interests of the Church has obtained for his memory the grateful acknowledgment of the priesthood; while the little cross borne by him, in lieu of a standard, at Covadonga, and still preserved at Oviedo, is regarded with sentiments of peculiar reverence by the peasantry as a symbol whose miraculous powers were confirmed by the hand of God, and whose virtues were transmitted to the magnificent emblems of the Catholic hierarchy, which, the successors of the Roman eagles, sanctified in distant lands the explorations and the conquests of the Christian monarchs of the Peninsula.

The reign of Pelayus lasted thirteen years. Such were the benefits resulting from its munificence to the clergy and his justice to the people that, at his death, the sentiments of loyalty and gratitude overcame the traditions of centuries and the prejudice against hereditary descent, and Favila, his son, was permitted to succeed him by the tacitly admitted right of inheritance.

Little is known of the life of Favila excepting that it was passed in peace. Without aspirations to enlarge the circuit of his dominions, and destitute of all desire for military renown, he preferred the rude society of his companions and the excitements of the chase to the perilous and doubtful honors of warfare. Two years after his accession he was torn to pieces by a wild boar, whose fury he had rashly provoked under circumstances which admitted of no escape. He was buried by the side of his father in the church of Cangas de Onis, an insignificant hamlet not far from the battle-field of Covadonga, which was already dignified by the title of capital of the Asturias, and whose church was for many generations afterwards the pantheon of its princes.

Favila left no sons of sufficient age to assume the responsibilities of government, while the exigencies of the time demanded the services of a ruler possessed of talents and experience. The right of election was, as of old, once more asserted to the exclusion of the claims of primogeniture; and Alfonso I., son of the Duke of Cantabria and son-in-law of Pelayus, was, by common consent of the principal men of the infant nation, invested with the regal authority. The new king was a noted warrior, who had been the comrade-in-arms of Pelayus. His martial tastes and unflinching resolution were only surpassed by his zeal for the Christian faith, which acquired for him the appellation of “Catholic,” so highly prized by his descendants, and which is still the most revered title of the head of the Spanish monarchy. The duchy of Cantabria, whose ancient limits had, however, been greatly curtailed by the encroachments of the Moors and the annexations of Pelayus, became, through the exaltation of its lord, an integral part of the Asturian kingdom.

The unquenchable fires of crusade and conquest burned fiercely in the breast of Alfonso. With all the impetuosity of his nature he announced his intention of waging ceaseless war against the infidel. The condition of the provinces subject to his jurisdiction had undergone radical changes since the election of Pelayus twenty years before. The population had enormously increased, partly from natural causes, but principally through immigration promoted by the love of liberty and by the destructive revolutions instigated by the vengeance or ambition of the conquerors. Villages, whose rude but comparatively comfortable dwellings replaced the filthy cabins of former times, occupied the picturesque valleys. Chapels and monasteries dotted the mountain-sides. Public affairs were administered according to a system, crude indeed, but framed upon the model of the Visigothic constitution, whose principles were not inconsistent with both the assertion of the prerogatives of royalty and the enjoyment, in large measure, of the blessings of individual freedom. The kingly authority was, in fact, as yet merely nominal. It had been conferred by the votes of the people, and was understood to be conditional upon the observance of the laws and the maintenance of order. The power of the Asturian sovereign was at this time not greater than that of many a petty feudal chieftain of Germany, and was far inferior to that possessed by the French Mayors of the Palace.

The occasion was propitious to the realization of the ambitious designs of Alfonso. The emirate was temporarily vacant through the absence of Okbah, its head, in Africa. Anarchy, with all its nameless horrors, prevailed in every portion of the Peninsula. The territory acquired in France, whose occupation had shed so much lustre on the Moslems and whose possession was designed as the preliminary step to the subjugation of Europe, had, through the valor of the Franks and the incapacity and jealousies of the emirs, with the solitary exception of the city of Narbonne, been wrested from the conqueror. The prestige of the heretofore invincible Saracens had been lost by repeated reverses, crowned by the terrible misfortune of Poitiers. In Galicia and the Basque provinces the peasantry had delivered the greater portion of their country from the enemy and were in full sympathy with the plans and aspirations of their Asturian neighbors, although they resolutely kept aloof from political union with them and declined to acknowledge the authority of their king. The operations of Alfonso were characterized by the activity and judgment of an experienced partisan. Passing suddenly into Galicia he surprised Lugo, which had remained in the hands of the Arabs since its capture by Musa, and soon afterwards occupied the strongly fortified city of Tuy, appropriating the territory north of the river Minho by the right of conquest. Thence he penetrated into Lusitania, taking some of the principal towns of that province and extending his march to the eastward until he had overrun all of the region lying to the north of the range of mountains now known as the Sierra Guadarrama.

The annalists who have mentioned the expeditions undertaken by Alfonso I. have neglected to regulate their order of occurrence, and attribute to the movements of the King a celerity which is almost incredible. In fact, these much-vaunted conquests were nothing more than mere forays. No permanent occupation of the country was possible. The uninterrupted succession of calamities which had descended upon it had transformed a region, never renowned for great productiveness, into a desert. In the few fertile spots where the industry of the Moor had obtained a foothold the fierce squadrons of Alfonso blackened the smiling landscape with the fires of destruction and carnage. Such towns and villages as lay in their path were destroyed; the Moors were condemned to slavery; and the Christians, despite their remonstrances, were compelled to follow in the train of the invader, to accept from him homes in the mountains, and to swear fidelity to the Crown. This policy of increasing the population of his dominions by compulsory immigration possessed at least the merit of originality, and was in the end eminently successful. The reluctant colonists, whose cities had been razed and whose lands had been devastated, were deprived of all incentives to return to a region that could no longer afford them subsistence. The ties of race and the precepts of religion already united them to those whom, despite the violence they had displayed, they could not consider as enemies. Distributed judiciously in the districts most deficient in inhabitants, whose soil, in many instances, was not more sterile than that which they had formerly tilled, the new subjects of Alfonso soon became reconciled to their altered condition of life. Their numbers greatly contributed to the strength of the growing kingdom. Their traditions, prejudices, and aspirations were identical with those of the Asturians. Complete amalgamation was soon accomplished by intermarriage and by the intimacies of commercial and social intercourse.

The operations of Alfonso are, for the most part, described with even more confusion of dates and localities than that which ordinarily characterizes the historical accounts of his age. Both the love of the marvellous and the bias of superstition have combined to magnify his achievements. Nevertheless, the account of no great victory breaks the monotony of an endless recital of murder, pillage, and conflagration. In the mountains, where every ravine favored an ambuscade, the Christians were invincible, but upon the plain, even when aided by the advantage of superior numbers, they were no match for the Moorish cavalry. The vulnerable condition of the country, which suffered from the inroads of the Asturian prince, impressed him with the necessity of erecting suitable defensive works along the borders of his own dominions. He therefore established a line of castles upon the southern slope of the sierra, dividing the present provinces of Old and New Castile, which were then known under the common designation of Bardulia, and from these fortified posts the two famous provinces have derived their modern name.

The reign of Alfonso does not seem to have known the blessings of tranquillity. His expeditions were incessant, and their results almost invariably successful. The Moors universally regarded him with a fear which, far more than the profuse adulation of his monkish biographers, confirms the prevailing idea of his prowess and indicates the respect in which he was held by his enemies, whose historians conferred upon him the honorable and significant appellation of Ibnal-Saif, “The Son of the Sword.” At the time of his death he had extended the limits of his kingdom until it embraced nearly a fourth part of the entire Peninsula, reaching from upper Aragon to the Atlantic, and from the Sierra Guadarrama to the Bay of Biscay. Far to the south of the territory which acknowledged his jurisdiction, a vast region had been swept by his inroads, and remained depopulated through the very terror of his name. While his resources did not enable him to retain possession of this neutral ground, its accessibility to attack rendered it useless to the Saracens. His death, in 756, was coincident with the accession to power of the renowned House of Ommeyah, whose genius held in check for half a century the patriotic impulses of the state which public disorder and universal contempt had permitted to form under the eye of the haughty emirs, an error of policy whose fatal consequences were not even suspected until the evil was beyond all remedy.

Thus, within a few years, from an affrighted band of homeless fugitives had arisen a nation whose power had already become formidable. In the independent spirit of its assemblies, convoked to elect a sovereign, were plainly discernible traces of that constitutional liberty which subsequently acquired such importance and produced such enduring political effects in the history of Spain. The basis of the new ecclesiastical system, on the other hand, consisted in a servile obedience to Rome, and was marked by none of the conscious dignity and self-reliance peculiar to the ancient Visigothic priesthood. A series of misfortunes had broken the pride of the Church; in the desecration of its relics, in the plunder of its altars, in the confiscation of its treasures, in the insults to its prelates, the multitude saw the fearful vengeance of an offended God. The wealth of the ecclesiastical order had disappeared, and with it much of its power. Its congregations were scattered. Whenever the poverty of the devout was so great that the regular tribute could not be raised all worship was proscribed. In those localities where the indulgence of the conqueror permitted the Christian rites, there was small inducement to proselytism, as no new churches could be erected, and the conversion of a Mohammedan was a capital crime, of which both tempter and apostate were equally guilty. In the face of the overwhelming catastrophe which had overtaken the Church, it is but natural that the eyes of its ministers should be turned towards the throne of the Holy Father, whose admonitions they had unheeded and whose commands they had defied. In a crowd of ignorant and superstitious peasants the prestige attaching to ancient ecclesiastical dignity and the reverence exacted by its sacred office soon raised the clergy to an unusual degree of prominence. It was their influence which actually founded the infant state; which dictated its policy; which directed its career; which profited by its success; which tendered sympathy in the hour of adversity; which shared its glory in the hour of triumph. And, as in the beginning it was predominant, so through the long course of ages its grasp never slackened, and to its suggestions, sometimes prompted by wisdom, but often darkened by bigotry, are to be attributed the measures emanating from both the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the dynasties of Spain.

The mingling of various nationalities in the Asturias produced its inevitable ethnical result, the evolution of a race superior to each of its constituents. But with physical improvement and mental culture came many deplorable evils, merciless hatred, superstitious credulity, military insubordination, and the vices of a society indulgent to the maxims and practice of a lax morality. The remorseless butchery of infidels was encouraged as highly meritorious, and only a proper return for the calamities produced by invasion. The ferocious soldiery, whose license during the continuance of hostilities was never restrained by their commanders, were, as might be expected, not amenable to discipline or obedient to the necessary regulations of their profession in time of peace. The orders of the King were sometimes openly disobeyed; and such was the precarious nature of his authority that he not infrequently considered it more expedient to dissemble than to punish. The licentious habits of the Visigothic prelates and nobles had been carried, along with the traditions of their ancient grandeur and the mementos of their former wealth, into the rude, but hitherto comparatively pure, society of the mountains. The severity of the climate, the incessant and violent exercise demanded by their avocations, and the uncertainty of subsistence had preserved the chastity of the Asturian peasantry, who, in many other respects, were remarkable for degradation and brutality. Polygamous unions, practised with more or less concealment by the privileged classes during the reign of Pelayus, upon the accession of Alfonso became open and notorious. The innumerable captives secured by marauding expeditions afforded excellent facilities for supplying or replenishing the harems of the nobles and the clergy. The holy fathers, like their predecessors under Witiza and Roderick, were noted for their taste and appreciation of the charms of female loveliness; and the owner of a beautiful slave whose price was too high for the count was rarely dismissed, for this cause, by the bishop. A well-appointed seraglio was an indispensable appendage to the household of every secular and ecclesiastical dignitary. The example of their ancestors, and the temptations offered by the fascinations of the beautiful Moorish captives, were too powerful to be withstood. To the allurements of passion was also added the gratification resulting from the consciousness of inflicted and well-deserved retribution. The fairest of the Gothic and Roman maidens had been torn from weeping parents to fill the harems of Cordova, Cairo, and Damascus. Alfonso I., whose title, The Catholic, has been confirmed by the profuse and fulsome eulogies of the Church, was behind none of his ghostly counsellors in his polygamous inclinations; and the offspring of a connection with an infidel concubine, who received the name of Mauregato, was destined to play an important part in the annals of the Reconquest. In every form and manifestation of social life the influence of the surviving elements of the Visigothic monarchy produced important and permanent results. To anarchy succeeded political organization, imperfect it is true, but the wisdom of whose principles was repeatedly confirmed by their adaptability to the requirements of an extensive empire. The physical condition of the people was improved, and their strength, hitherto employed against each other, was now directed to the injury of a common enemy. With new aspirations and altered manners were introduced changes in the Asturian dialect, which was originally derived from the Euskarian, the idiom of the Basques. The intercourse of the various classes of society grew more refined. Law gradually supplanted government by force. Religion again exerted its beneficent and powerful sway. The ceremonial of the Visigothic court--a mixture of barbarian insolence, Roman dignity, and Byzantine pomp--was revived, and a faint image of ancient greatness was exhibited by the pride and prowess of representatives of noble families who, mindful of former ascendency and confident of future distinction, gallantly rallied round the throne.

The spirit of hero-worship, as may readily be inferred from the superstitious credulity of the mountaineers, was strong in the Asturias. Every action of the early princes is distorted by the atmosphere of mystery and exaggeration which envelops it. The idea pervading classic mythology that those whom tradition declares to have been the benefactors of mankind, who have contributed to civilization the greatest practical benefits, and from whose efforts have been derived the true enjoyments of life, are entitled, if not to absolute apotheosis, at least to exaltation as demigods, perverted by sacerdotal influence, had been bequeathed, with other Pagan beliefs and practices, by the priests of Hercules and Æsculapius to the servants of the Pope. When canonization was deemed impolitic, the life of an eminent personage was embellished with a mass of fiction, of prodigy, of fable. Some historians have not mentioned the name of Pelayus; others, on account of the untrustworthy character of the authorities, have assigned all the exploits of his reign to the domain of the mythical. A miraculous appearance of the Virgin in the cave of Covadonga inspired the Christians with hope, and announced the coming victory. A choir of angels, whose voices were distinctly heard by the attendants, soothed the dying moments of Alfonso. Such legends, invented by priestly artifice and propagated by universal approbation in an age of ignorance, have no small influence in developing the character of a nation.

Thus, in a secluded corner of the Peninsula, neglected by their friends and despised by their enemies, the founders of an empire whose states and principalities were to be lighted by the rising as well as by the setting sun erected in obscurity and distress the humble fabric of their political fortunes. The almost hopeless prospect of the struggle at its inception nerved them to despair. Aided by the obstacles interposed by nature for their defence, encouraged by the suicidal conflicts which constantly harassed the emirate, and inspired with an unshaken confidence in the protection of heaven, an insignificant band of exiles, in the short space of a quarter of a century, insensibly expanded into a people whose existence, hitherto ignored, began, when too late, to arouse the serious apprehensions of the court of Cordova. The Asturian element, as jealous of liberty as the Basques but far less intolerant, infused into the public deliberations those principles of freedom subsequently so prominent in the laws of the northern provinces; and even now, after centuries of despotism, not entirely eradicated from the Spanish constitution. It is one of the strangest of political phenomena that from such a source should have proceeded institutions that made the Inquisition possible. The imperceptible but lasting influence of the Asturians did not pass away with the prestige of the great princes of the Houses of Austria and Bourbon. The religion of the national hierarchy, organized within its borders and promulgated by its armies, still affords consolation to the devout of many lands, and the musical language, formed by a fusion of barbarous dialects, is the idiom of one-sixth of the geographical area of the habitable globe.

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