Cordova was sacked. The Caliph was imprisoned; rebellions, poisonings, crucifixions, civil war, bigotry and skepticism, the insolence of wealth, the insolence of power, a Mahdi and a Wahdi, Christian alliance, Berber domination, Slav mutineers, African interference, puppet princes, all these things vexed the Spanish Moslems for thirty disastrous years; while a number of weak but independent sovereignties arose on the ruins of the great Caliphate of the West.
The confused annals of the last thirty years of the rule of the Ommeyades are mere records of blood and of shame, a pitiful story of departed greatness.
On the death of Hisham II., the Romulus Augustulus of Imperial Cordova, Moslem Spain was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, Malaga, Algeciras, Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Badajoz, Saragossa, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Murcia, Almeria, and Granada. And each of these cities and kingdoms made unceasing war one upon another.
From the death of Hisham, if not from the death of Almanzor, the centre of interest in the history of Spain is shifted from Cordova to Castile.
CHAPTER III
MEDIEVAL SPAIN
THE FOUNDERS OF MODERN SPAIN—THE KINGDOMS OF THE ASTURIAS AND OF LEON—THE DEFEAT AT RONCESVALLES—THE CID CAMPEADOR
The Crescent had conquered, but the Cross endured. The refuge of the latter was in the Asturias, There—eight or ten years after the death of the last of the Gothic kings—Pelayo, one of the early heroes of Spanish history, was reigning over refugees from Moslem rule. It was these refugees who laid the foundation of modern Spain, and it is related that in their fastness at Covadonga, thirty of them, with Pelayo at their head, actually routed, if they did not destroy, an entire army of four hundred thousand Moslem besiegers.
The story is of course mythological, but the good fortune of Pelayo did much to kindle the national spirit by which ultimately Spain was conquered for the Spaniards, and thus the story, if critically false, becomes metaphorically true.
Nor [says Burke] do the Arabs seem to have made any attempt to retrieve or avenge the fortunes of the day. Well satisfied, no doubt, with their unopposed dominion over the rich plains of the genial south country, they were willing to abandon the bleak and inhospitable mountains to their wild inhabitants and the emboldened refugees whom they sheltered. Be the reason what it may, Pelayo seems to have had peace all the days of his life after his victory at Covadonga in 718. Prudently confining his attention to the development of his little kingdom, he reigned, it is said, for nineteen years at Cangas, and, dying in 737, was peacefully succeeded by his son Favila.
Pelayo, no doubt, was but a robber chieftain, a petty mountain prince, and the legends of his royal descent are of later date, and of obviously spurious manufacture; but Pelayo needs no tinsel to adorn his crown. He was the founder of the Spanish monarchy.