After this fateful battle on the Carrion, in which Bermudo fell, Ferdinand, who had taken Bermudo’s sister to wife, seized upon the whole of Leon and its dependencies and united them with the rest of his dominions to form the kingdom of Castile.
His solemn coronation at Leon ushered in a new epoch in the history of Christian Spain. To pacify the Leonese, who were profoundly aggrieved at the loss of their supremacy, he caused an assembly of the estates to be held at Coyanza, and there confirmed all the civil and ecclesiastical privileges and liberties which had come down to them from earlier times, and added others. At the same time he augmented the defensive armaments of his dominions, with the twofold object of repressing rebellion and making war upon the Saracens.
His elder brother, Garcia, cast envious glances at the flourishing neighbour country, which rose steadily to greater heights of prosperity and power under Ferdinand’s wise governance. He was mortified that his hereditary kingdom of Navarre should be ousted from the dominant position it had taken under his great father. He therefore laid snares in his brother’s way and embarrassed his dominion by perpetual intrigues till at length a fratricidal war broke out between them. The hatred he bore his brother led Garcia to conclude an alliance with the emir of Saragossa and Tudela. But the battle of Atapuerca (1054), not far from Burgos, decided the struggle in Ferdinand’s favour; Garcia was slain by a lance-thrust, the Navarrese were routed, and most of their Moorish auxiliaries killed or taken prisoners. Ferdinand then added the district on the right bank of the Ebro to his own dominions, and left the rest of the kingdom to the late king’s son, Sancho III.
Having thus tranquillised his own kingdom and assured its safety, he endeavoured to extend it southwards by making war upon the infidels. He destroyed the fortresses in the northern provinces of what is now the kingdom of Portugal, crossed the Douro, and took Lamego, Viseu, and other fortified towns, under whose walls Christian and Moslem had so often measured their strength in days gone by. These successes inflamed the Castilians with martial ardour and religious enthusiasm and made them eager for fresh ventures. Having first secured the consent of his knights and nobles in an assembly of the estates, the king conquered a chain of fortified towns on the eastern frontier of Castile which had long served the enemy as a point d’appui, and then pressed forward into the heart of the Moorish provinces. He laid the country waste, and spread terror as far as Andalusia. The aged ruler of Seville purchased peace with rich gifts, among which were the relics of St. Isidore, which Ferdinand buried with great pomp at Leon in the church he had built and dedicated to the saint.
THE ALHAMBRA
Ferdinand crowned his glorious career by the conquest of the great fortified city of Coimbra, which for six months had offered a stubborn resistance. The soul of the monarch overflowed with martial ardour and religious devotion. In time of peace he was to be seen devoutly kneeling at the altar and joining in the chants of the priests. War was likewise a religious act in his eyes. With the sword he desired to maintain the honour of God among the infidels and win a heavenly crown for himself. Returning stricken with disease from one of his campaigns, the pious king had himself carried into the church of St. Isidore, where he laid aside the insignia of royalty, and, wrapped in the garment of a penitent, passed away in the arms of the priests, in 1065.
[1064-1072 A.D.]
At an assembly of the estates, held a few years before, he had made arrangements for the succession and for the partition of his dominions. According to these, Castile passed to Sancho II, his first-born son; Leon and Asturias to Alfonso, his favourite; Galicia and the newly districts as far the Douro to Garcia, the youngest. The cities of Zamora and Toro he assigned to his two daughters, Urraca and Elvira, and conferred on them the patronage of all abbeys in the kingdom. We know from the romance of The Cid—who in the reigns of Ferdinand and his sons performed those prodigies of valour which later generations celebrated in song—that shortly after his father’s death Sancho made war upon his brothers with the intention of seizing their dominions for himself.[25] After several battles Alfonso and Garcia were stripped of their possessions and compelled to flee to Toledo and Seville. All the country from the range of the Pyrenees to the shores of the west Atlantic Ocean, which Ferdinand had acquired partly by inheritance and partly by conquest, thus fell under the sway of his son Sancho. Only the rocky stronghold of Zamora still owned allegiance to the princess Urraca, and afforded a safe refuge to the adherents of the fugitive king Alfonso and other malcontents.
