The Moors in Spain

by Stanley Lane-Poole

Witiza had been deposed by Roderick, a prince who seems to have begun his reign well, but who presently succumbed to the temptations of wealth and power. His selfish pleasure-loving disposition set fire to the combustible materials that surrounded him and that needed but a spark to explode and destroy his kingdom. It was then the custom among the princes of the State to send their children to the court, to be trained in whatever appertained to good breeding and polite conduct. Among others, Count Julian, the governor of Ceuta, sent his daughter Florinda to Roderick's court at Toledo to be educated among the queen's waiting women. The maiden was very beautiful, and the king, forgetful of his honour, which bound him to protect her as he would his own daughter, put her to shame.[2] The dishonour was the greater, since Julian's wife was a daughter of Witiza, and the royal blood of the Goths had thus been insulted in the person of Florinda. In her distress the young girl wrote to her father, and, summoning a trusty page, bade him, if he hoped for knightly honour or lady's favour, to speed with all haste, night and day, over land and sea, till he placed the letter in Count Julian's hand.

Julian had no reason to love King Roderick; his own connection with the deposed and probably murdered King Witiza forbade fellowship with the usurper; and his daughter's dishonour fanned his smouldering rancour to a blaze of vengeful fury. He had so far successfully resisted the attacks of the Arabs; but now he resolved no longer to defend the kingdom of his daughter's destroyer. The Saracens should have Spain if they would, and he was ready to show them the way. Full of a passion for revenge, Julian hastened to the Court of Roderick, where he so skilfully disguised his mind that the king, who felt some remorse and trusted that Florinda had kept the secret, heaped honours upon him, took his counsel in everything relating to the defence of the kingdom, and even by his treacherous advice sent the best horses and arms in Spain to the south under Julian's command, to be ready against the infidel invaders. Count Julian departed from Toledo in the highest favour of the king, taking his daughter with him. Roderick's parting request was that the Count would send him some special kind of hawks, which he needed for hunting; Julian made answer, that he would bring him such hawks as he had never in his life seen before, and with this covert hint of the coming of the Arabs he went back to Ceuta.

As soon as he had returned, he paid a visit to Mūsa, the son of Noseyr, the Arab governor of North Africa, with whom his troops had many times crossed swords, and he told him that war was now over between them—henceforth they must be friends. Then he filled the ears of the Arab general with stories of the beauty and richness of Spain, of its rivers and pastures, vines and olives, its splendid cities and palaces, and the treasures of the Goths: it was a land flowing with milk and honey, he said, and Mūsa had only to go over and take it. Julian himself would show him the way, and lend him the ships. The Arab was a cautious general, however; this inviting proposal, he considered, might cover a treacherous ambuscade; so he sent messengers to his master the Khalif at Damascus, to ask for instructions, and meantime contented himself with sending a small body of five hundred men, under Tarīf, in 710, to make a raid, in Julian's four ships, upon the coast of Andalusia. The Arabs had not yet become used to the navigation of the Mediterranean, and Mūsa was unwilling to expose more than an insignificant part of his army to the perils of the deep.

Tarīf returned in July, having successfully accomplished his mission. He had landed at the place which still bears his name, Tarīfa, had plundered Algeciras, and seen enough to assure him that Count Julian's tale of the defenceless state of Spain was true, and that his own loyalty to the invaders was to be depended upon. Still Mūsa was not disposed to venture much upon the new conquest. The Khalif of Damascus had enjoined him on no account to risk the whole Moslem army in unknown dangers, and had only authorized small foraying expeditions. Still, encouraged by Tarīf's success, Mūsa resolved upon a somewhat larger venture. In 711, learning that Roderick was busy in the north of his dominions, where, there was a rising of the Basques, Mūsa despatched one of his generals, the Moor Tārik, with 7,000 troops, most of whom were also Moors,[3] to make another raid upon Andalusia. The raid carried him further than he expected. Tārik landed at the lion's rock, which has ever since borne his name, Gebal-Tarik, Gibraltar, and after capturing Carteya, advanced inland. He had not proceeded far when he perceived the whole force of the Goths under Roderick advancing to encounter him. The two armies met on the banks of a little river, called by the Saracens the Wady Bekka, near the Guadalete, which runs into the Straits by Cape Trafalgar.

The legend runs that some time before this, as King Roderick was seated on his throne in the ancient city of Toledo, two old men entered the audience chamber. They were arrayed in white robes of ancient make, and their girdles were adorned with the signs of the Zodiac and hung with innumerable keys. "Know, O king," said they, "that in days of yore, when Hercules had set up his pillars at the ocean strait, he erected a strong tower near to this ancient city of Toledo, and shut up within it a magical spell, secured by a ponderous iron gate with locks of steel; and he ordained that every new king should set a fresh lock to the portal, and foretold woe and destruction to him who should seek to unravel the mystery of the tower. Now, we and our ancestors have kept the door of the tower from the days of Hercules even to this hour; and though there have been kings who have sought to discover the secret, their end has ever been death or sore amazement. None ever penetrated beyond the threshold. Now, O king, we come to beg thee to affix thy lock upon the enchanted tower, as all the kings before thee have done." Whereupon the aged men departed.

But Roderick, when he had thought of all they had said, became filled with a burning desire to enter the enchanted tower, and despite the warnings of his bishops and counsellors, who told him again that none had ever entered the tower alive, and that even great Cæsar had not dared to attempt the entrance—

Nor shall it ever ope, old records say,

Save to a king, the last of all his line,

What time his empire totters to decay,

And treason digs, beneath, her fatal mine,

And high above, impends avenging wrath Divine—