Spain and the Spaniards

Contents

TER. PA6WB .

I. Its Early History 7

II. Romans and Visigoths 21

II. Romans And Visigoths

The plans of Hannibal had miscarried and the Romans were not only triumphant at home, but abroad, in Spain and in Africa. Not many years passed by ere the Iberian peninsula, which had hitherto nourished the barbarian Celts and their allies, had furnished troops and material for war to Carthage, had sent silver and gold to Tyre and mercenaries into Italy, became in reality as well as in name a Roman province. Under various consuls, or proconsuls, it was governed from Rome, and was soon divided into Hither and Farther Spain. It was about this time, probably, that the peninsula became known as Espana or Hispania, which has been moderized or rather anglicized, into its present name of Spain. But, M T hile the Romans had ousted their African enemies, yet there remained for them great work to do. That they did it, that they gradually imposed upon the conquered peoples their language and their customs, that they built bridges and roads, cities and theaters — erected those imperish-' able monuments that no other people could have created in so short a time — all Spain, even at the present time, attests.

Their first great labor was the overcoming of the native Celtiberians, who, as brave and warlike as ever, and quondam allies of the Carthaginians, were hard to conquer. Those of the ccast fled to the interior, where they intrenched themselves among the hills and mountains, and for many years defied the efforts of the Roman armies to subjugate them. A hundred Celtiberian towns, it is chronicled, were taken and romanized by the three Gracchi — the. elder, and after him his two sons. Defeats came to the Romans, at intervals, as for instance when their army under Mummius was overwhelmed by the Lusitanians, who w r ere for years in rebellion.

The most serious of these uprisings against Roman authority was that of these barbarous Lusitanians, dwellers mainly in that portion of the Iberian peninsula now known as Portugal. Under the rude and simple, though valiant and courteous shepherd-chieftain, Viriathus, who, from a friend of the Romans, had been driven to become their most implacable enemy, through their own treachery and failure to perform their promises by treaty, the natives were often led to victory and held for years their enemies at bay.

It is a strange commentary on the repetitions of history that his defection was brought about through circumstances similar to those which precipitated the latest rebellion in Cuba in 1878. In this case, as in that of Spain when dealing with Cuba, a foreign power was seeking to treat with rebellious natives who resisted the imposition of their authority. Driven to treat, at last, the Cubans (as may be recalled, at the end of their "ten-years'-war"), signed a treaty with the Spaniards, by which their practical autonomy was to be secured, This treaty, how T ever, the Spanish Cortes refused to acknowledge, and thus the Cubans gained nothing through their concessions, and were eventually driven into the last uprising, which had so disastrous an ending for the Spaniards. Viriathus stipulated with the Roman generals for the independence of the Lusitanians, and in good faith surrendered ; but the treaty was rejected by the Roman senate and he was again driven to take up arms in defense of his country and principles. His revolt lasted practically from the year 147 to 134 B.C., and was only brought to a close by his assassination at the hands of reputed friends and the fall of Numantia, where the scenes of Saguntum were in effect repeated, all the garrison and inhabitants falling by famine and in battle.

Before this Celtiberian city of Numantia the Romans had gathered nearly all their armies, comprising in the end more than sixty thousand men, and commanded by one of their greatest generals, Scipio the Younger, or Africanus Minor, who had entirely destroyed African Carthage, twelve years before, and now followed the same course with Numantia.

All the great names famous in Rome during the height of its glory were inscribed on the scroll of Spain's history during those troublous times: The Gracchi, the three Scipios, learned Cato, Junius Brutus, and later Metellus, Pompey, and great Caesar. All these gained imperishable laurels in Spain, even if they did not receive their training at arms there. Thus the distant province became a field in which Rome tried the temper of her soldiers.

About the beginning of the first century before Christ the Romans sustained great losses through the defection of one of their own soldiers, the brave but misguided Quintus Sertorius. He had served under the veteran Marius and taken prominent part in the fractional quarrels which divided and weakened Rome at that time of her highest empire and w T hich caused ultimate defeat to her armies. Sertorius was driven by Sully to Spain, where he made friends with the Lusitanians. Among them he gained great power, being worshipped almost as a demigod. His chief accessory to gain the superstitious reverence of his followers was a white fawn, which went with him everywhere and to w 7 hich was ascribed supernatural virtues, especially in divination. But at all events, Sertorius did not depend wholly upon supernatural aids. for his victories, being like the great Napoleon of centuries later, a firm believer in the efficacy of sturdy battalions.

He held out against some of Rome's greatest generals, and kept his people in revolt for many years, until finally a young man named Pompey was sent out to conquer him. He was also treated to defeat by the sturdy veteran. But again, as in the case of Viriathus, the base assassin's aid w T as invoked, and Sertorius fell a victim to treachery at a banquet prepared in his honor, and his enemy triumphed. Pompey succeeded in pacifying the revolted Lusitaniane, marching from victory to victory, and when he returned to Rome was hailed with acclaim and accorded a ''triumph."

Nor was Pompey the last great Roman to win undying fame in the province of Spain, for the man who became later his deadly rival and enemy acquired not only fame, but fortune, as proconsul of Hispania ulterior; no less than Caesar, of immortal memory. The century was but half -completed ere the latter met and defeated the legates of Pompey, in Spain, the year before he caused the final downfall of his stubborn rival atPharsalia; and four years later Caesar rose to complete supremacy by winning the great battle over Pompey's sons, in which one of them was slain, at Munda, near the city of Ropian foundation, Cordova, which subsequently became famous as a capital of the Moors.

With his vast capability for the management of affairs of magnitude, Caesar soon reduced order out of the chaotic conditions in Spain, and started the country upon a career of prosperity which lasted, with but few intermissions, for the next four centuries. Roman Spain became the grandest province of the empire, the chosen abode of wealth and literature, and in the ensuing years men were born there who have left more than an ephemeral impression upon the times in which they lived. At the Roman city of Italica, which is now a mass of ruins, near Seville, were born Hadrian and Trajan; of a Spanish family came Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus; and Spain also boasts the names of such as the two Senecas, Lucan, Martial, and others.

The Romans ruled Spain for about six hundred years,

VH • I

26 1WMAKS AND VISIGOTHS.

and on the whole wisely and well; the long peace was so nearly unbroken, during nearly four centuries, that nothing of importance occurs to chronicle.

Spain became civilized, even Romanized, her barbarian tongues being succeeded by a bastard Roman or Latin, which subsequently became modified by the Gothic, thus giving rise, in the course of years, to a speech entirely peculiar to Spain itself. This was accomplished by the inflow of a flood of Goths, who afterward came to be the ruling people; as we will proceed to relate.

An invasion of the Franks, about a.d. 236, disturbed Spain somewhat, but w T as of little importance, jave as the precursor of what was to come. In the latter part of the fourth century Italy was overrun by hordes of barbarians, who, in the early part of the fifth century, became a menace to the nation. In the year 408 Rome itself was threatened by Alaric, who appeared at its gates and demanded tribute of gold, silver, silks and slaves. This was given him, but he later returned, sacked the imperial city and left it humiliated. With the hand of the barbarian at her throat, Rome could give but little aid to Spain in repelling the hordes of Alani, Suevi and Vandals, which about this time swept over the Pyrenees into her northern provinces and stopped not in their devastating flight until they had swept the country from northern border to southern coast. The Vandals passed over into Africa, where they founded a short-lived empire, but they left behind memories of excesses and ravage that have lasted till the present day.

Alaric, conqueror of Rome, died and left his migrant and vagrant horde to the care of one Athaulf, who led his followers from Italy into Gaul, first, however, making love to and marrying by fprce the .beautiful sister of the Emperor Honorius, who by some means had been captured and was held a prisoner. That she was not a willing wife to Athaulf, appears from her subsequent history ; for she was sought by a former lover, taken away from her husband and back to Rome, where she became mother of one high in the annals of fame in future years, the Emperor Valentinian.

The Visigoths, as they were called, to distinguish them from the eastern, or Ostrogoths, were able and virile, even if barbarians, and early fell under the influences of the Latin religion, the Arian branch of it, to which they clung consistently for a long period. In order to get rid of them, Rome allowed them to settle in some of the southern provinces of Gaul, and it was while there that they performed her a great service in acting as a bulwark against the overwhelming floods of Suevi and Vandals; in the year 428 participating in a defeat sustained by the Roman army, inflicted by Genseric the Vandal. The Visigothic kingdom was then ruled over by King Theodoric, who was assisted at that great victory by the allied Goths and Romans, by which the southward-sweeping scourge of Huns was arrested and overthrown. The king lost his life in the conflict and was succeeded by a son of the same name, and he gg BOMAXS AXD VISIGOTHS.

by his brother, Evaric, under whom Roman authority was cast off and defied and Spain made into a Visigothic kingdom. His successor, Alaric II., established his capital at Toledo, according to some writers, where for the first time we find the Visigoths permanently settled.

Toledo, the "Toledoth" of the Jews, is said by them to have been founded by their ancestors who left Palestine in the days of the great Nebuchadnezzar. It comes into Spanish history as early at least as about 200 B.C., when it was taken by the Romans, and even then was a large and populous city.

Situated on a commanding promontory above the golden Tagus, it contains almost imperishable relics of the Romans, Goths, Jews, Moors and Christians, the various buildings on its hills telling of their origin, like geologic strata. The impression a visitor to Toledo receives to-day is that it is a Gothic city, yet its finest architecture is Moorish, except for the cathedral, which is Gothic — though not built by the early Goths. In fact, the Goths and Visigoths have left very few permanent memorials of their presence here, nor in any other part of Spain. The grand old bridge spanning the Tagus is a Romano-Gothic, and there are some buildings bearing the impress of that style of architecture.

Here in Toledo the Goths, after many years of wandering, maintained their capital, and here reigned the long line of kings, to the number of thirty and more. Very few of whom, it is said, ever died a peaceful death. As rigid Aryans, the Goths were at first celebrated, but finally, through the constant pressure of the Roman bishops, they came to profess the more modern doctrine. One of the most vigorous of the Gothic rulers, King Leovigild, was such an uncompromising Aryan that he put to death his youngest son for adopting the religion of his French wife and becoming a Catholic, while a brother, Recared, stood by unmoved and saw the deed performed. Yet it was not long after, according to the chronicles, that this same Recared, after he had succeeded to the throne, on the death of his father, turned Catholic himself, and persecuted his Aryan subjects relentlessly.

Of the many rulers who lived in Toledo, few are worthy of particular mention. This one, Recared, was the means of turning all the nation from Aryanism to Catholicism, and has the reputation of being the first of that long line of bigoted kings, beginning with himself, in the sixth century, and ending not until the passing away of Ferdinand VII., in the nineteenth — a line which has consistently supported the acts of inquisitors and destroyers of heretics. He attempted the expulsion of the Jews, and relented only when they, too, promised to conform to the rules of the new religion.

That the line and names of kings are more or less fictional is proved by the uncertainty surrounding the deeds and eventual disappearance of the very last to reign, King Roderick. To this day, indeed, all Spain is divided as to the guilt or innocence of this king, who was accused by his enemies of having committed a dastardly act, . Perhaps the most picturesque figure of them all is old King Wamba, who was elected to reign over the people while engaged in tending his flocks as a simple shepherd. He protested in vain that he did not want to ascend the throne, but was compelled against his will; and he became such a terror to crime and criminals that he was soon invited to step down and out. By this time, however, having had a taste of royalty, he likfcd it so well that he w r ould not resign; so some conspirators one day administered a dose of medicine that threw him into a deep sleep, during which he was stripped of bis kingly robes and garbed in a monk's cowl and cloak. This had been done at the jnstance of the ecclesiastics, who desired a person of their own choosing on the throne; and as it was a law of the land that a monk once garbed should always w r ear the cowl, there was nothing for King Wamba to do but accept his fate and retire to a cloister.

Whatever is true in these Gothic chronicles, at least there is evident the hand of the priest and the bishop; at this time began that interference in affairs of state by so-called "holy" men, which continued to the time of Isabella and Ferdinand, and beyond. It was one Erwic, who, according to tradition, gave Wamba the soporific draught that proved so disastrous to his ambitions^ and who, after the latter had retired to a monastery near Burgos, ascended the throne, which he all along had coveted. Instigated by the Bishop of Toledo, ho enacted oppressive laws against the Jews, who were driven almost to open rebellion. His successor, Egica, who was also his son-in-law, took issue with some of

ROMANS AND VI8IQ0TH8. 31

the clergy on account of a lack of courtesy on their part toward the throne, and banished the primate of Spain, Sisbert, who had conspired to assassinate the royal family. This shows the lax condition of things at the capital, and the constant friction between the ecclesiastics and the rulers, which latter the ecclesiastics apparently set up and pulled down at their pleasure.

In the last years of Egica's reign a law was enacted by the ecclesiastical council of Toledo which declared the virtual enslavement of all the Spanish Jews and their distribution among the Christian families of the kingdom. This was the last straw that broke the back of the long-suffering Jews in Spain ; it was probably the one act necessary to precipitate that long-impending avalanche of Moslems from Africa, which so soon fell and engulfed all Spain. Contrasting their own condition with that of their co-religionists in Africa, subject to the Moslems, and the similarity of their faith to th^t of the Mahomet's followers, there is little doubt that the oppressed sons of Israel not only conspired with those of their faith across the Mediterranean, but actually invited the Arabs to come over and possess the country. This is a most natural assumption, at all events; but the actual invasion of Spain by the Moslem Arabs, which soon occurred, has been ascribed to the thoughtless and criminal acts of the last Gothic king, Roderick, the successor to Witica, who came after Egica. The real reason that the hapless Roderick was made a scapegoat for all the misfortunes of Gothic Spain may be found, it has been stated, in his opposition to the ecclesiastics, in their temporal rather than their spiritual affairs. If not a friend of the persecuted Jews, at least he was not actively their enemy; he was given to the working of reforms within the kingdom and the church which many viewed with apprehension, and he was overfond of luxurious living.

Looking off from the fortified walls of Toledo, and down toward the roaring river Tagus, one may still see the ruins of what are called the Baths of Florinda, where, tradition tells us, the beautiful daughter of Count Julian was bathing when King Roderick saw her and became enamored of her charms. Another story has it that he first saw her playing with some female companions in his own palace, whither she had been invited by his wife. Whichever story be told, it has as its motive the guilty intercourse of King Roderick and the fair Florinda, daughter of Count Julian, an attendant upon his court. Count Julian was alcalde of Ceuta, on the African side of the Strait, and held in a measure the fate of Spain in his hands. The Moslems were then in possession of all the African coast as far west to the westward as the point opposite Gibraltar, and were doubtless preparing for an invasion, when the time should seem propitious, of the Christian land across the Strait. The Moslem comma^der^ fierce old Tarik, was one day approached by Count Julian with the proposition to conduct him and his army to the country of their desires and to assist him in conquering the Christian hosts. His offer was accepted, and after the Moslems had spied out the country, they

ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS.

sent over a great force, which was opposed by a still greater one under King Roderick. They met on or near the banks of the Rio Guadalete, at the plain of Xeres, the Christian army one hundred thousand strong, but containing a host of traitors within its ranks, led by Bishop Oppas, a brother of the former King Witica, and the latter's two sons, as well as Count Julian and his followers. At the appointed moment, and when the battle raged at its fiercest, they all broke and went over to the enemy, with the result that the Goths were most disastrously defeated and the Moslems triumphant on every side. King Roderick was last seen fleeing the field mounted on a milk-white charger, and his golden sandals are said to have been found among the reeds on the river bank; but he was never after found alive, and is supposed to have perished. But, while authentic history is silent respecting his fate, yet song and legend have celebrated this unfortunate Roderick, the last king of the Goths.

The hosts of Don Kodrigo were scattered in dismay, When lost was the eighth battle, nor heart nor hope had they ; He, when he saw the field was lost, and all his hope was flown, He turned him from his flying host, and took his way alone.

His horse was bleeding, blind, and lame — he could no farther go ; Dismounted, without path or aim, the king stepped to and fro; It was a sight of pity to look on Roderick, For, sore a thirst, and hungry, he staggered faint and sick.

'' He looked for the brave captains that led the hosts of Spain, But all were fled except the dead, and who could count the

slain?

Where'er his eye could wander, all bloody was the plain, And, while thus he said, the tears he shed ran down his cheeks

like rain :

1 Last night I was the King of Spain — to-day no king am I ; Last night fair castles held my train — to-night where shall

I lie?

Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee — To-night not one I call mine own ; not one pertains to me.

4 Oh, luckless, luckless was the hour, and cursed was the day, When I was born to have the power of this great seignory ! Unhappy me, that I should see the sun go down to-night ! O Death, why now so slow art thou, why fearest thou to smite?' "

THE MAHOMETANS m SPAIN. 35

III. The Mahometans In Spain

The soil of Spain had been ploughed by the native Iberians, surveyed by the Phoenicians, harrowed by the Goths and Romans ; but its harvests were to be gathered by the Mahometans. From the north coast of Africa, out of the wilds of the "mysterious continent," came those people who were to change the aspect of all Spain, who were to impose a new religion upon its inhabitants, and cause the country to blossom with an Oriental architecture.

They are certainly deserving of a few words of explanation, before we leave behind us the native races and follow in the train of these new arrivals. "The ancients," says a celebrated French author, "have left us no trustworthy documents upon those people who first settled the north coast of Africa. According to Sallust, this territory was first inhabited by two native races, the Getules and the Libyans; but later the former united with the Medes and Persians and from the fusion of these two elements (one autochthon and the other Asiatic) sprang the Numidians, represented at the present day by the indigenous natives, or the so-called Berbers.

" This tradition from the annals of the Numidian kings easily account for facts that are being proven to-day. The dark type would represent the descendants of the Numidians, while the fair type, which is not so numerous, and is found more especially in Morocco, would represent the posterity of the armies of the Medes and Persians. Tradition is also preserved of a Semitic invasion from Canaan, supporting which is the fact that the Berbers have always had more affinity with the Semitic race and the Canaanites than the Aryans.

"If we compare the native Berbers with the Touareges (or wild Bedouins) it is easily seen that a relationship exists between them; they speak the same language, and their written characters are precisely the same as those in the rare inscriptions found in the mountains of Algeria and called Lybic. The origin of the Touareges is evidently Oriental, probably from the Arabian peninsula on the borders of the Red Sea. Other invasions, either from Spain or from the Mediterranean coast, have without doubt co-operated in the formation of this Algerian people, the Berbers; but this ethnic contingent had not, before the Arabian conquest, furnished an element important enough to modify any o^the essential traits in the characteristic physiognomy of the primitive populations of Algiers.

"From the finding of megalithic monuments in Spain similar to those found in North Africa, some writers have supposed an Aryan invasion through Europe, across the Strait of Gibraltar, after the death of Hercules; but this is not so probable as the invasion along the African coast. An invasion of Iberians (from Spain) is not very certain; and as to the Greeks — they did not reach so far as Algeria even. The first people, then, in historic times who came here to settle were the Phoenicians; but they came (at first, at all events) merely for trade, and had no perceptible effect upon the native types. It was quite the opposite with the Moslem conquest; for from the first the Arabs imposed their religon and their language upon the greater number of the inhabitants. In the plains, indeed, their influence was such that it soon became impossible to distinguish the victors from the vanquished. The mountaineers resisted longer, but finally became zealous converts to Islamism.

"But, in consequence of their invasion of Spain, and the struggles of all kind they had to undergo, it was not long before the Arabs themselves disappeared from Algiers. Another invasion, however, took place in the eleventh century, and after having ravaged the country, the greater part of the3e tribes settled in the southeastern part of Algeria, near the frontiers of Morocco, where they are now installed. A few even went into the interior of Morocco and helped by their arms to establish the dynasty which is reigning there to-day. The Arab Berbers speak an Arab dialect, which contains but very few native words. And as a rule, the farther one goes into the desert, the purer he will find the Arabic spoken by the people. The Arab Berbers are revengeful, courageous, honest among themselves, and of a very warlike nature, seizing upon the most trivial

H| pretext to take up arms and make a razzia, or pillaging excursion, into a neighboring territory."

These are the representatives to-day of the fierce warriors who united with the Arabs in their invasion of Spain, in the early years of the eighth century.

Let us now glance at the home and customs of the Arabs themselves, who initiated that invasion and who made an indelible impression not only upon Spain, but upon North Africa as well. The Arabs, who previous to the rise of Mahomet, were hardly coherent enough to be recognized as a national entity, and who were in their religion merely pagans or nature worshippers, like the Iberians, within one hundred years after the "hegira," or flight of their prophet, overran Persia, Syria, North Africa and the southwestern portion of Europe. We have seen that the Gothic or Spanish Jews were more favorable to the Moslems than to the Goths or Christians. This arose from their racial connection with the Arabs, both being Semitic, and from the points of similarity in their religion. Mahometanism, as is well known, is based upon our own Holy Writ, the Koran, in many parts, being a mere transcription of the Bible. Mecca was substituted later for Jerusalem, but Mahomet adopted nearly all the Jewish prophets in a body, the list comprising Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, etc., to whom was added Mahomet, of course. Islamism insists upon a belief in God, in angels, in the prophets — of whom Mahomet is chief — in the Koran, and in predestination or fatalism. The chief distinction being that while

Christianity is a religion of love (as preached by Christ), the religion of Mahomet is one of the sword. At least, it became so, and during his life, at that; and was particularly acceptable to the fierce sons of the desert among whom he dwelt.

After the death of Mahomet there were two rival candidates for his mantle. Ali, his cousin and son-inlaw, husband of Fatima; and Abu Bekr, father of Ayesha, his favorite wife, and who was finally elected Caliph, or Commander of the Faithful. The numerous sects and schisms date from this division ; but still, an army of conquest was sent into Syria and took the city of Damascus, to which the caliphate was removed in 673. Another army was sent into Egypt, which took Cairo and Alexandria. North Africa to the west of Egypt at that time was known under its Roman names of Numidia, Tingitania and Mauritania, and to this vast region collectively comprised in those provinces a trusted general was appointed named Musa or Moses. His armies quickly reduced the Berbers to subjection and they flocked by thousands to his banner and his mosques, which were soon established, with their kibbah or holy niche toward Mecca; at the opposite end the minaret, from a balcony of which the muezzin sent forth the call to prayer. During the first years of the eighth century, Islamism, under Al Walid, Caliph of Damascus, "was established from the banks of the Ganges to the Atlantic surges."

Musa was created Emir of Africa and the supreme commander of all the Moslems of the west. Serving under him were his six stalwart sons, one whom took Tangier (called Tingis by the Romans, and by the Arabs Tan j ah). Command of the army at this point was given to an Arab chieftain named Tarik Ibu Zeyad Ibu Abdillah, whom, as he had lost an eye in battle, his soldiers (who were devoted to him) called "Tarik the One-eyed," or El Tuerto, for short. This was the redoubtable general w r ho commanded the first small force sent over across the Strait, from Ceuta to Gibraltar — from the African to the Spanish "Pillar of Hercules," in fact — to spy out the fair land of Spain. Meanwhile the bulk of the Arab- Berber army was gathering at Tangier. "For more than three-quarters of a century soldiers, and the sons of soldiers, conquerors and the sons of conquerors, they were burning for yet greater conquests."