Meanwhile, in the recesses of the Pyrenees, a second Christian kingdom, that of Navarre, had been founded by Garcias Iniguez, which, together with Catalonia and Aragon, Charlemagne a little later (778) entered and subdued. In repassing the Pyrenees, however, the Navarrese, led by Fortun Garcias, fell upon the Frankish troops and cut to pieces the rearguard, and even, it is said, the main body of the army.
How far the Spanish Christians were aided, as it has been stated they were, by the Moors, it is impossible to discover. The fact of such an alliance, in itself sufficiently improbable, is quite unnecessary to explain the ever-famous defeat at Roncesvalles.
Nor can we speak with much greater confidence of the prowess or even of the existence of the equally famous Roland, in the ranks of the invading or evading army; or of that of the no less celebrated Bernardo del Carpio in the ranks of the pursuers.
Taillefer, who sang the song of Roland upon the battlefield of Hastings, and Terouldes, whose thirteenth century epic suggested the poems of Pulci, of Boiardo, and of greatest Ariosto, all these have made Roland one of the favorite heroes of the Middle Ages. But in the story, as it is told in the Spanish ballads, it is Bernardo del Carpio, the nephew of the chaste but pusillanimous Alfonso, who is the true hero of Roncesvalles, and who not only repulsed the host of Charlemagne, but caught up the invulnerable Roland in his arms, and squeezed him to death before his army. No carpet knight or courtier was Bernardo, but a true Cantabrian mountaineer.
In 790 Alfonso II., the great-grandson of the great Pelayo, then king of Oviedo, repulsed the Mussulman army with great slaughter, and abolished the ignominious tribute of one hundred virgins, an annual tribute paid to the Muhammadan ruler, fifty virgins being of noble and fifty of base or ignoble birth. From this circumstance is derived, by some historians, his surname of the Chaste; attributed by others to his having made a solemn vow of virginity, and observed it, even in marriage. This vow, and the austere temper in which it probably originated, had considerable influence over Alfonso’s life. He so deeply resented his sister Ximena’s private marriage with a subject, the Count of Saldanha, that he shut her up in a convent; and putting out her husband’s eyes, sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment.
The royal line of Navarre or Sobrarve was at this time extinct, Ximenes Garcias, the grandson of Fortun Garcias, having died without children. The nobles availed themselves of the opportunity to establish the famous code entitled “Los Fueros de Sobrarve”—the laws of Sobrarve—which subsequently became the groundwork of the liberties of Aragon. Navarre was soon afterward recovered by the Moors, and Sobrarve included in the Spanish March.
Alfonso ruled upward of fifty years. Incessant wars now followed between the followers of the Cross and the Crescent, and a frenzy for martyrdom on the part of the Christians had to be repressed by a Christian archbishop at the solemn request of the Cadis.
Garcia of Oviedo died without children shortly after his accession; when his brother Ordoño II. reunited the whole of his father’s dominions. He transferred the seat of government to Leon, and altered the title of King of Oviedo into that of King of Leon.
This Ordoño abandoned the peaceful policy of his greater father, and undertook many expeditions with varying and uncertain success against the Arabs. He plundered Merida in 917, and routed the Berbers in Southern Spain in 918. Yet three years later, at Val de Junqueras (921), near Pamplona, the Christians suffered disastrous defeat. The usual rebellion at home was appeased by the treacherous execution or murder of no less than four counts of Castile in 922, and was followed by the king’s death in 923.
Of Fruela II. (923-925), Alfonso IV. (925-930), and Ramiro II. (930-950), little need be said, but that they lived and reigned as kings of Leon.