In the mean time, Tarik had seized and occupied the ancient town of Carteja, and, fortifying himself securely, sent foraging expeditions far and wide throughout the surrounding country. These were, without exception, successful, and the rapid movements of the Arab cavalry, their seemingly invincible character, and the valuable booty they secured, not only struck terror into the astonished natives, but greatly encouraged the main body of the invading army, encamped under the shadow of Gibraltar. The emissaries and secret allies of Tarik, who swarmed in the court and camp of Roderick, lost no time in apprising him of the preparations being made for his destruction. Alarmed by the accounts he received, he despatched a messenger to Musa for reinforcements. A detachment of five thousand Berber cavalry was sent to his aid, which with the remainder of his troops amounted to twelve thousand veterans; a mere handful when compared with the army of the Goths, but composed of warriors inured to privation, accustomed to conquer, inflamed with religious zeal, and bearing a devoted and unswerving attachment to their commander.
On the morning of a beautiful July day, in the year 711, the beginning of an era most notable in the annals of Spain, the hostile armies faced each other near Lake La Janda, upon the rolling plains of Medina-Sidonia. The Moors, flushed with the uniform success which had hitherto attended their arms, relying upon the dissensions of the enemy as much as upon their own valor, and impatient for the conflict, appeared in glittering mail, wearing snowy turbans, and equipped with sword and lance; while over their shoulders was suspended the Arabian bow, whose shafts, like those of the Parthian, made the archer all the more formidable in retreat. The Moorish general, after performing the rites of his faith, addressed his soldiers in a few stirring and well-chosen words. With consummate skill, he availed himself of the strongest passions which control humanity,—avarice, military glory, the love of woman, the priceless rewards of religious constancy. He revealed to them a dream, in which the Prophet had announced that the issue of the conflict would be favorable to the adherents of Islam, and which portended the confusion of the infidel. He placed before them their desperate position, where defeat implied annihilation, and victory was the only hope. He exhorted them to banish all thought of fear, and to rely upon their courage tested upon many fields of battle. He pictured in burning language the attractions of the country and the matchless charms of the Gothic houris who inhabited it. He repeated the passages of the Koran which promised that all the martyrs who fell in battle would at once receive the reward of their devotion amidst the ineffable delights of Paradise.
Upon the other hand, the bribes, the appeals, and the threats of Roderick had brought together the entire available military power of the Gothic monarchy. The King, surrounded by his nobles and escorted by his guards, displayed all the pomp and splendor of the Orient. He was borne to the front by white mules, upon a litter of ivory richly inlaid with silver, and sheltered by a canopy of many-colored silk; a purple cloak covered his shoulders, upon his head was the royal diadem, and his robes of cloth of gold were enriched with priceless jewels. The devices of the nobles marked the order of the various divisions, and in the rear was led a train of many thousand beasts of burden whose only loads were ropes with which to bind the prisoners. The details of the battle which changed the destiny of Western Europe are unusually meagre, even for the unlettered and credulous age in which it occurred. It seems to have consisted of a series of indecisive skirmishes which lasted eight days, during which time the two armies traversed a distance of twenty miles, to the neighborhood of the modern city of Jerez de la Frontera. Here, with amazing ignorance, or with fatal disregard of the elementary rules of military tactics, the Goths took up their position with the river Guadalete in their rear. Upon the final charge of the Arabs, the treason of the former partisans of Witiza became apparent. A large body of nobles with their retainers openly deserted; a panic ensued; and the vast array took to headlong flight. Pressing forward with the shrill war-cry of the Moslem, which struck terror into the defeated Goths, the Moorish squadrons drove the enemy into the rapid waters of the Guadalete. The carnage was terrible. Exasperated by days of fighting, and haunted by the constant jeopardy of servitude and death, the soldiers of Tarik gave no quarter. The ground was heaped with corpses. The channel of the river was choked with the dead and dying, with horses, and chariots, and camp equipage, with treasures which the fugitives vainly tried to save. Of the invaders, three thousand are said to have fallen, but no computation was made of the loss of the Goths. The remnants of the army which escaped the swords of the Arabs were pursued to the very gates of the neighboring cities. Many were cut to pieces before they could reach a place of safety; and finally, satiated with blood, the conquerors found upon their hands a great number of prisoners whom the ropes which they themselves had provided now served to secure. The war-horse of Roderick covered with trappings of great value was taken, but no trace remained of the King. One of his sandals, encrusted with rubies and emeralds, was found on the bank of the river, which would seem to indicate that he perished by drowning; but his body was never recovered, and his fate is a mystery; notwithstanding that Spanish romance and monkish credulity have invested his disappearance with many extravagant legends, attested by a formidable array of ecclesiastical evidence. The booty which fell into the hands of the Moslems was incalculable. The number of horses taken was so large that the entire army was mounted, thereby adding greatly to its efficiency. The housings of these animals—whose possession among the Goths implied the enjoyment of rank and fortune—were of the costliest description; many of the finest chargers were shod with silver or gold. The Gothic nobles, rather accustomed to vie with each other in the service of their tables, the size of their retinues, and the magnificence of their equipages than in valor and military knowledge, and little dreaming of the result, had brought with them their most valuable possessions in plate and jewels. Their love of ostentation caused them to surround themselves with multitudes of slaves, whose daily broils kept the camp in a continuous uproar, and between whom and the enemy existed a secret understanding, whose effects were fearfully manifested in the hour of disaster. All of this wealth, together with the ornaments and insignia of the royal household, became the spoil of the conqueror. The fifth, which according to the law of Islam belonged to the Khalif, having been set aside, the remainder was divided on the field, amidst the tumultuous acclamations of the exultant soldiery.
The battle of the Guadalete is justly ranked with the great and decisive victories of the world. Indeed, if we consider the relative number of the combatants, the duration of the action, and the importance of its results, it has no parallel in the annals of warfare. While the intrigues of unscrupulous factions contributed largely to the success of the Arabs, the fact must not be lost sight of, that the numbers of the latter were scarcely appreciable when compared with the vast masses of their antagonists, and that they labored under the additional disadvantage of fighting in the enemy’s country. As to generalship, none could have been displayed on either side. The Moslems were little better than banditti, commanded by barbarians and renegades whose sole military experience had been acquired by predatory raids in the African Desert. The Goths, idle and effeminate in life, debilitated in body, cowardly, debased, and wholly unused to arms, were dominated by inordinate vanity and filled with contempt for their opponents. The tyranny, excesses, and arbitrary acts of Witiza having caused the exclusion of his posterity from the throne, the partisans of the latter were willing to sacrifice their country and their religion to insure the overthrow of the usurper and to satisfy their insatiable cravings for revenge.
Thus fell the enfeebled and tottering monarchy of the Goths. It had long survived its glory and its prestige. The severe political maxims of its founders, suited to the frigid regions of the Baltic, had been found incompatible with the physical and moral conditions imposed by the voluptuous climate of Bætica and Lusitania. Undermined by the vices of the nobility, by the turbulent ambition of the priesthood, by the treasonable machinations of the Jews, and by the supine indifference of the masses to any fate—provided only that it involved a change of masters— the first shock of a determined enemy swept it from the face of the earth. In its stead arose a new empire and a strange dynasty of exotic origin, foreign alike in dress, in laws, in customs, in constitution, in religion. Far from being uncongenial, the meteorological conditions of the semi-tropical Peninsula, which have insensibly determined the manners, the policy, and the fate of so many races, were eminently favorable to the highest intellectual development of its people. Through the wise and noble ambition of its rulers was established that universal culture which made Cordova the intellectual centre from whence diverged those rays of light which illumined the darkness of the mediæval world. From the genius of its statesmen, the skill of its generals, and the prowess of its armies arose that constant apprehension of impending disaster, a portentous shadow, which, hanging over Europe like the imperfectly defined outlines of a gigantic spectre, threatened for centuries the overthrow of the Seat of St. Peter, and the destruction of that system of faith which had risen upon the ruins of Pagan idolatry and superstition.
Great and wide-spread was the consternation which seized the Goths after the rout of the Guadalete. The entire resources of the kingdom had been staked and lost. The sovereign had mysteriously disappeared. In the carnage of the field, and in that which had accompanied the still more disastrous retreat, the nobility had suffered so greatly that few, if any, of its members who were eligible to the throne had survived or remained at liberty. The sacred profession of the priesthood, which had encouraged by its presence and exhortations the flagging spirits of the soldiery, had not been able to protect them from the edge of the Moorish scimetar. The hatred and fanaticism of the invaders were aroused to frenzy by the sight of the vestments and insignia of the Church, and even the most venerable prelates were massacred; for the ferocious Moslem gave no quarter to the ministers of Christianity, and disdained even the menial services of those who had denounced to eternal perdition the followers of the Prophet. The accumulated wealth of generations, which the vanity and ostentation of the palatines had exhibited at the court, on the march, and in the camp, had been swept into the coffers of the victor. The fugitives who were so fortunate as to escape took refuge in the neighboring cities; whither they were soon followed by the peasantry, who beheld with dismay the sight of their burning homes and desolated fields. In one engagement, and virtually in a single day, one of the most populous and opulent countries of Europe had succumbed to the impetuous but desultory attack of an unknown foe. For the space of two centuries, and under far less favorable circumstances, the Carthaginian and Iberian provinces of the Peninsula had successfully defied the resources and the prestige of the Roman arms. For three centuries longer, the Visigoths, relying upon the traditions and military fame of their ancestors, had protected, without difficulty, their possessions wrested from the feeble hands of the Cæsars, and had repeatedly rolled back the tide of Frankish invasion from the slopes of the Pyrenees.
With the advent of overwhelming national misfortune, there fell upon the terror-stricken people the apathy of despair. The public wretchedness was augmented by the censures of the clergy, who, with characteristic effrontery, declared the invasion to be a divine punishment for the crimes of the wicked; crimes in which they themselves had not only participated, but by their shameless conduct had obtained an infamous pre-eminence in an age of unprecedented corruption.
The Moslems under the lead of the enterprising Tarik, who displayed the talents of a skilful general in his ability to profit by every advantage, lost no time in securing the fruits of victory. From the army—now a compact and active body of cavalry—were sent in all directions detachments to cut off straggling parties of the enemy, and to capture supplies destined for the overcrowded cities already threatened with the horrors of starvation.
Tidings of the wonderful success upon the plains of Jerez soon spread far and wide through the towns and provinces of Africa. Animated by the hope of plunder and glory, the Moslems, many of them abandoning their homes and making use of every available craft to cross the strait, flocked by thousands to the standard of Tarik. The latter, after thoroughly reorganizing his new recruits, and appointing to the command officers of tried fidelity and experience, took Sidonia. The strongly fortified city of Carmona next claimed his attention. As its reduction by the slow process of a siege was out of the question with the resources at his command, resort was had to stratagem. A squadron of the retainers of Count Julian, headed by that worthy in person, and apparently pursued by a body of the enemy, appeared before the walls. Shelter was at once given the fugitives, who in the dead of night killed the sentinels and opened the gates to the enemy. Thence Tarik advanced upon Ecija, where the greater portion of the survivors of the battle of the Guadalete had taken refuge. The Goths, disdaining the protection of their defences, and nerved to despair by their situation, which involved the alternative of slavery or famine, boldly encountered the Moslems in the field. The action was hotly contested, and although the loss sustained by the invaders was greater, in proportion to the number of combatants engaged, than any suffered during the Conquest, the Goths were in the end defeated, and the city taken. Ecija swarmed with members of the monastic orders, and the nuns, who largely predominated, were famous for their beauty. The prospect of the infidel harem filled these pious virgins with horror; and they adopted the heroic expedient of mutilating their features, hoping by the sacrifice of their charms to preserve both their honor and their lives. The compassion of the Moslem freebooter, infuriated by this attempt to deprive him of his prey, was not moved by the evidences of saintly devotion; the sight of a conventual habit became the signal for outrage; death followed fast upon violence; and many hundreds of the self-mutilated spouses of Christ received the crown of martyrdom.
In the mean time, Musa had forwarded despatches to Damascus announcing the victory, but, actuated by the petty jealousy which formed such a prominent feature of his character, he carefully concealed from the Khalif the name of the successful commander. Having formed the determination to cross over to Spain and conduct the campaign in person, he sent peremptory orders to Tarik not to advance farther until he arrived. But the hero of the Guadalete, fully alive to the importance of affording the enemy no opportunity for rest and reorganization, and advised by Count Julian to march at once on Toledo, was of the opinion that the interests of his sovereign, as well as his own fortunes, would be promoted by disobedience of the commands of his superior. He therefore paraded his troops, and after enjoining them to make war only upon those actually in arms, to leave all non-combatants unmolested, and scrupulously to respect the religious prejudices of the people, set out for Cordova at the head of a numerous army. The latter city was strong and well defended, and Tarik, after nine days, seeing that the siege would probably be of long duration, left its conduct to his lieutenant, Mugayth-al-Rumi, and moved without delay upon Toledo. The governor of Cordova, who was of the royal blood of the Goths, and a brave and determined officer, inspirited by the departure of the main body of the enemy, made no question of his ability to defend the city against a force not greatly exceeding his own in numbers. But the good fortune which seemed to attend the Moslems upon every occasion did not desert them in the present emergency. Information was soon brought to Mugayth-al-Rumi of a weak point in the fortifications which might be scaled. Aided by a dark night and the noise made by a storm of hail, a detachment crossed the river under the guidance of a shepherd, and reached the place which had been indicated. A fig-tree which stood near the wall was mounted by an active soldier, who, unrolling his turban, drew up several of his comrades, who occupied the battlements without resistance; for the severity of the tempest had driven the sentries from their posts. Proceeding quietly and rapidly through the streets, the guard at the gates was surprised and cut to pieces, the army was admitted, and by daybreak the city was in the hands of the Moslems. The governor, with four hundred of the garrison, fled to the church of St. George, which stood outside the western wall, and being surrounded by a moat and supplied with water by a subterranean conduit from a spring in the neighboring mountains, offered all the obstacles of a fortress whose towers and barbicans could bid defiance to an enemy destitute of military engines and ignorant of the mode of conducting a siege. For a considerable time the Goths repulsed the attacks of the band of Mugayth-al-Rumi, until at last, after diligent search, the source of the water-supply having been discovered and the aqueduct cut, the besieged, reduced to extremity, were compelled to surrender. The majority of the garrison were permitted to join their countrymen in the North, but the officers and the governor—who was a personage of too great importance to be set at liberty—were retained in the camp of the victor.