The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

Cardonne estimates, at the battle of the Guadalete, the Goths at 100,000, and the Arabs at 12,000. Gibbon makes the Arabs less. Another writer says:—“It was no longer the terrible Goths, whose valour had overthrown the Roman empire, that had penetrated from the shores of the Euxine to those of the Atlantic. The youth, enervated with peace and luxury, had abandoned the exercise of arms. The chiefs, impelled by jealousy, revenge, or ambition, betrayed their monarch to those who sought his ruin.” And presently we have,—“The two armies fought long and with equal ardour. The uncertain victory was decided in favour of the Mussulmans by a horrible treason. Opas, Archbishop of Seville, collecting his vassals, joined the ranks of the Mussulmans and attacked the Christians. The Spaniards were immediately broken,” &c.

How could there be a struggle in an open country by 12,000 against 100,000, where arms and courage were equal—where both were warlike? The Goths were engaged in continual warfare between themselves; they were making incursions into France; they were at the very time masters, by recent triumphs, of the sea, and possessors until that very year, of strong places in Africa, whence they were carrying on aggressive war against the Moors! We have therefore to look for some other cause than the effeminacy of the one, and the valour of the other. Count Julian could put the Moors in possession of Ceuta, and in joining them draw all his adherents with him,—the Archbishop of Seville could quit the camp with all his followers, a fact which has no parallel, and join the invading Mussulman:—there existed, then, links between the two people not to be found in the romances of the Spanish writers, or in the phrases of Gibbon. Thus, the enterprise ceases to be a fable, and regains its just station as one of the most hardy and successful of human achievements.

In speaking of the burning, by Cortes, of his vessels on the coast of Mexico, Robertson remarks:—“Thus, by an act of magnanimity to which history offers nothing to be compared, did 500 men consent to shut themselves up in a hostile land, covered with nations numerous and unknown, and after destroying their means of retreat, remained with no other resource than their valour and their perseverance.” He forgot horses, gunpowder, and artillery. But the Spaniards in the New World only repeated the lesson they had learnt from the Moors in the Old, and the Moors only repeated what the Sicilian Agathocles had already performed in his wonderful home-thrust against Carthage. The Moorish chief, at the head of 7,000, or—as Gibbon makes them—5000 men, sent, Scipio-like, to invade the powerful and warlike peninsula (that was itself invading Africa), adopted the same expedient, and induced his more numerous followers, in face of a far greater danger, to submit to the same alternative. They burnt their vessels in the port of Gibraltar. They thus cut off their retreat, in case of a repulse, as effectually as if the whole Atlantic spread between them and their native land. The address of Tarik to his followers was,—“The enemy is before you, the sea is behind,—follow me.”

After the victory, the Moors, instead of advancing, as in a hostile country, dispersed, as after the defeat of a usurper, to take possession. One body marched upon Ecija, a strongly-fortified place; the whole population perished in the defence, or after the capture: another upon Corduba; it was surrendered by the inhabitants; the governor of the garrison, however, preferred death to submission. Another body took possession of Granada; Tarik himself marched on the capital, Toledo. All these places made separate capitulations, and preserved the exercise of their religion: they were to pay only such taxes as were paid to their kings; they were to preserve their laws, and their magistrates. The churches were generally divided between the Mussulman and the Christian. The same conditions, excepting double tribute, were granted to the cities that made the most desperate resistance. It was on a system that they acted, and not upon emergency—by a rule, and not according to circumstances or expediency.[77]

The valour of the Goths was desperate and self-devoted. The division of the churches between the two religions shows the rapidity with which conversion accompanied, or rather had prepared, their triumph. The Goths were originally but an army that entered Spain, to protect its inhabitants. When Spain afterwards recovered herself from the Saracens, she was altogether Gothic, with no trace of the old population, except in the Basque provinces, where neither the Goths had penetrated before, nor did the Saracens after. The remainder of the original—that is, the Iberian—population had, therefore, become Mussulmans.

Here was exposed the imbecility of the supposition that Islamism was propagated by the sword. It was Islamism that aided the conquests of the Saracens. Its force lay in applying the dictates of religion directly as a restraint upon the conduct of government, rendering the king, as well as his humblest vassal, equally subjects of the law.

Within a few months from the battle of Guadalete, the Moorish troops had passed beyond the Pyrenees, and were encamped at Carcassone. There the tide of victory was arrested, not by the hammer of Martel, but by orders from Damascus. It was the project of the Saracen chief to conquer France, and thence to march to the attack of the Greek empire in the rear. When the Saracens did invade France, it was after the generation of conquerors had passed away—when France was recovering from the lethargy of her Merovingian race, and when a schism had been established between Spain and the Caliphate.

The empire established by this victory is the most remarkable instance of prosperity that the world has ever seen. The town of Corduba contained 200,000 houses; in its public library there were 600,000 volumes. It had 900 public baths. On the banks of the Guadalquivir there were 12,000 villages; and such were the fruits they drew from the soil, such the profits of their industry, which furnished to the East luxuries and arms, that the public revenue of Spain in the tenth century was equal to the collective revenues of all the other kings of Europe. Twelve millions of dinars—a sum of gold which, calculating the dinar at 10s., and multiplying by ten, to give the difference of the value of gold, is equal to £60,000,000 of our present money.

Five centuries and a half later, this plain was again the theatre of great events: the Christian principalities had again regained strength, the Mussulmans expending themselves in internal wars in Spain, and between the Peninsula and Morocco. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa had taken place. St. Ferdinand had entered their capital and taken Seville, when the elevation of his son Alfonso the Sage—but in his early years designated the Brave—to the crown of Castile, gave promise of a speedy emancipation of the Peninsula, aided as he was by the valiant James of Aragon, who had successfully contested against them no less than thirty fields.

Alfonso retook from the Mussulmans, Xeres and all the surrounding towns; but, very soon absorbed in the vain expectation of becoming Emperor of Germany, and less successful than his successor, Charles V., or England’s candidate for the Spanish crown, Charles VI., he squandered the means of his subjects in a project that was hateful to them; lost the time and the occasion of following up his successes, and brought upon Spain new dangers from Africa. This was the first time that Spain appeared influencing the relations of Europe, and mingling in its councils. Squandering her treasures to sway the elections of Frankfort, and moving Africa by his intrigues in Germany, the successful competitor was Rudolph, the founder of the imperial house of Austria.