V
BURGOS
Burgos is the old capital of Castile.
Castile—or properly Castilla—owed its name to the great number of castles which stood on solitary hills in the midst of the plains lying to the north of the Sierra de Guaderrama; one of these castles was called Burgos.
Unlike Leon and Astorga, Burgos was not known to the Romans, but was founded by feudal noblemen in the middle ages, most likely by the Count of Castilla prior to 884 A. D., when its name first appears in history.
Situated almost in the same line and to the west of Astorga and Leon, it entered the chain of fortresses which formed the frontier between the Christian kingdoms and the Moorish dominion. At the same time it looked westwards toward the kingdom of Navarra, and managed to keep the ambitious sovereigns of Pamplona from Castilian soil.[{175}]
During the first centuries which followed upon the foundation of the village of Burgos at the foot of a prominent castle, both belonged to the feudal lords of Castile, the celebrated counts of the same name. This family of intrepid noblemen grew to be the most important in Northern Spain; vassals of the kings of Asturias, they broke out in frequent rebellion, and their doings alone fill nine of every ten pages of mediæval history.
Orduño III.—he who lost the battle of Valdejunquera against the Moors because the noblemen he had ordered to assist refrained from doing so—enticed the Count of Castile, together with other conspirators, to his palace, and had them foully murdered. So, at least, saith history.
The successor to the title was no fool. On the contrary, he was one of the greatest characters in Spanish history, hero of a hundred legends and traditions. Fernan Gonzalez was his name, and he freed Castile from owing vassalage to Asturias, for he threw off the yoke which bound him to Leon, and lived as an independent sovereign in his castle of Burgos. This is the date of Castile's first appearance in history as one[{176}] of the nuclei of Christian resistance (in the tenth century).
Nevertheless, against the military genius of Almanzor (the victorious), Fernan Gonzalez could do no more than the kings of Leon. The fate that befell Santiago, Leon, and Astorga awaited Burgos, which was utterly destroyed with the exception of the impregnable castle. After the Arab's death, hailed by the Christians with shouts of joy, and from the pulpits with the grim remark: "Almanzor mortuus est et sepultus et in inferno," the strength of Castile grew year by year, until one Conde Garcia de Castilla married one of his daughters to the King of Navarra and the other to Bermudo III. of Leon. His son, as has already been seen in a previous chapter, was killed in Leon when he went to marry Bermudo's sister Sancha. But his grandson, the recognized heir to the throne of Navarra, Fernando by name, inherited his grandfather's title and estates, even his murdered uncle's promised bride, the sister of Bermudo. At the latter's death some years later, without an heir, he inherited—or conquered—Leon and Asturias, and for the first time in history,[{177}] all the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula were united beneath one sceptre.