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.