But whoever founded Avila, it afterwards became the seat of a Roman colony which is mentioned by Ptolemy. It has always been of strategic importance, being at the entrance to the Guadarrama Mountains and the Castiles. When Roderick, the last of the Goths, brought destruction on the land by his folly, Avila was one of the first places seized by the Moors. This was in 714. After being repeatedly taken and lost, Don Sancho of Castile finally took it in 992, and the Moors never regained possession of it. But there were not Christians
enough to repeople it, and it remained desolate eighty-nine years. St. Ferdinand found it uninhabited when he came from the conquest of Seville. Alonso VI. finally commissioned his son-in-law, Count Raymond of Burgundy, to rebuild and fortify it.
Alonso VI. had already taken the city of Toledo and made peace with the Moors, but the latter, intent on ruling over the whole of the Peninsula, soon became unmindful of the treaty. In this new crisis many foreign knights hastened to acquire fresh renown in this land of a perpetual crusade. Among the most renowned were Henry of Lorraine; Raymond de St. Gilles, Count of Toulouse; and Raymond, son of Guillaume Tête-Hardie of Burgundy, and brother of Pope Calixtus II. They contributed so much to the triumph of the cross that Alonso gave them his three daughters in marriage. Urraca (the name of a delicious pear in Spain) fell to the lot of Raymond of Burgundy, with Galicia for her portion, and to him was entrusted the task of rebuilding Avila, the more formidable because it required numerous outposts and a continual struggle with the Moors. The flower of Spanish knighthood came to his aid, and the king granted great privileges to all who would establish themselves in the city. Hewers of wood, stone-cutters, masons, and artificers of all kinds came from Biscay, Galicia, and Leon. The king sent the Moors taken in battle to aid in the work. The bishop in pontificals, accompanied by a long train of clergy, blessed the outlines traced for the walls, stopping to make special exorcisms at the spaces for the ten gates, that the great enemy of the human race might never obtain entrance
into the city. The walls were built out of the ruins left successively behind by the Moors, the Goths, and the Romans, to say nothing of Hercules. As an old chronicler remarks, had they been obliged to hew out and bring hither all the materials, no king would have been able to build such walls. They are forty-two feet high and twelve feet thick. The so-called towers are rather solid circular buttresses that add to their strength. These walls were begun May 3, 1090. Eight hundred men were employed in the work, which was completed in nine years. They proved an effectual barrier against the Saracen; the crescent never floated from those towers. How proud the people are of them is shown by the lines at the head of this sketch:
“Behold the superb walls that surround and crown thee, victorious in so many assaults! Each battlement deserves a crown in reward for thy glorious triumphs!”
It was thus this daughter of Hercules rose from the grave where she had lain seemingly dead so many years. Houses sprang up as by enchantment, and were peopled so rapidly that in 1093 there were about thirty thousand inhabitants. The city thus rebuilt and defended by its incomparable knights merited the name often given it from that time by the old chroniclers, Avila de los Caballeros.
One of these cavaliers, Zurraquin Sancho, the honor and glory of knighthood, was captain of the country forces around Avila. One day, while riding over his estate with a single attendant to examine his herds, he spied a band of Moors returning from a foray into Christian lands, dragging several Spanish peasants after them in chains. As
soon as Zurraquin was perceived, the captives cried to him for deliverance. Whereupon, mindful of his knightly vows to relieve the distressed, he rode boldly up, though but slightly armed, and offered to ransom his countrymen. The Moors would not consent, and the knight prudently withdrew. But, as soon as he was out of sight, he alighted to tighten the girths of his steed, which he then remounted and spurred on by a different path. In a short time he came again upon the Moors, and crying “Santiago!” as with the voice of twenty men, he suddenly dashed into their midst, laying about him right and left so lustily that, taken unawares, they were thrown into confusion, and, supposing themselves attacked by a considerable force, fled for their lives, leaving two of their number wounded, and one dead on the field. Zurraquin unbound the captives, who had also been left behind, and sent them away with the injunction to be silent concerning his exploit.
A few days after, these peasants came to Avila in search of their benefactor, bringing with them twelve fat swine and a large flock of hens. Regardless of his parting admonition, they stopped on the Square of San Pedro, and related how he had delivered them single-handed against threescore infidels. The whole city soon resounded with so brave a deed, and Zurraquin was declared a peerless knight. The women also took up his praises and sang songs in his honor to the sound of the tambourine:
“Cantan de Oliveros, e cantan de Roldan,