OVERTHROW OF THE MOSLEMS
Consequently when, after an interval of fourteen years, Muhammed renewed the struggle and took the field with vast hosts from Africa and Andalusia, he met with a powerful resistance (1211). It was not merely that the whole Spanish chivalry, headed by the members of the orders of every description, thronged to the standards of the kings of Aragon and Castile; many ultramontanes from the provinces of southern France and other districts were to be found there, who, fired by itinerant preachers, had travelled across the Pyrenees to earn a heavenly reward and earthly possessions as soldiers of God. By an ordinance of the pope, the assistance of heaven had been invoked throughout Christendom by fasts and processions. The religious excitement which at that time had gained possession of all minds, furthered the enterprise. Never before had such great hosts of warriors encountered one another in the peninsula.
In numbers, orders, and military discipline the Moslems were superior to the Christians; like the crusaders in the Holy Land, the Christian warriors in Spain, especially the free companies who had flocked thither from abroad, sullied the cause of faith by savage crimes and robbery and persecutions of the Jews in and about Toledo; and when the Saracens, having wasted their best strength during eight months before the mountain fortresses of Salvatierra, saw themselves compelled to agree to deliver up to the king of Castile the beleaguered city of Calatrava with the treasures collected there, in return for a free passage, the majority of the ultramontanes withdrew in anger, because the Spanish princes would not allow the retreating enemy to be waylaid in defiance of the promise given. Fanaticism had hardened their hearts and stifled the sentiments of honour and humanity. But in spite of the defection of the foreign soldiers, the Spanish Christians won a glorious victory in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, in the Sierra Morena, when the rule of the Africans in Spain received its death-blow (1212), as described in the history of the Arabs. More than a hundred thousand corpses, amongst them that of Muhammed’s first-born, strewed the battle-field, and for long after the 16th of July was celebrated in Toledo by a great thanksgiving festival, called “the triumph of the cross.” The spoil was enormous, but the brilliant victory was stained by cruelty and rapine at the capture of the surrounding cities.[o]
FOOTNOTES
[19] [Compare what the Arab historian Al Lagi[j] said of Alfonso the Catholic: “The terrible Alfonso, the manslayer, son of the sword, killed tens of thousands of Moslems. He burned houses and dwellings, and no treaty could be made with him.” Christian historians equal this. The archbishop Rodrigo[c] draws a worse view of the desolation of Spain than even Isidore[d]: “Children are dashed on the ground, young men beheaded; their fathers fall in battle; the old men massacred, the women reserved for greater misfortune.” He tells us that “every cathedral in Spain was burned or destroyed”; that “the national substance, etc., was plundered, except what the bishops could save in the Asturias”; that “the cities which were too strong to be stormed immediately, were deluded into a surrender”; that “oaths and treaties were uniformly broken by the Arabs,” etc. Both he and Isidore may exaggerate, but the exaggeration only proves the fact.]
[20] The monk of Albelda[e] calls Pelayo the son of Bermudo, and nephew of king Roderic. His origin is wrapped in much obscurity. [Burke[g] says “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. The Arabs called him ‘Belay.’”]
[21] Mariana[i] says, that Alfonso inherited in virtue of Pelayo’s will. This is one of the assertions so common in this writer, without the shadow of a foundation. Equally unfounded is the assertion that he inherited in right of his wife, Hermesinda, though that circumstance would doubtless have some weight with the electors. His best claim was, that “in tempore Egicani et Witizani regum, princeps militiæ fuit,” according to Sebastian.[f]
[22] [“Dunham,[h] quoting Sebastian of Salamanca,[f] omnes Arabes occupatores civitatum interficiens, says placidly, ‘Such an extermination of the Mohammedan inhabitants to make room for his Christian colonists was a just retribution on the heads of the followers of a sanguinary faith.’ A strange nineteenth century Christian gloss! If such things can be written in 1832, it is hardly surprising that the retributive justice practised in the mountains should have been somewhat one-sided in 750.”—Burke.[g]]
[23] [Isaiah lvii, 1-2. In a note upon this Dunham[h] says, “Not a single historian of Spain, from Bishop Sebastian[f] to Masdeu[l] and Ortiz,[m] has ventured to express his disbelief in this miracle.”]
[24] Ipsi Agareni herbam attulerunt, et crassitudinem ejus abstulerunt à ventre ejus, et ad pristinam levitatis astutiam reductus, etc.—Sampiro.[n] It is a pity the Mohammedan doctors did not leave the prescription behind them.