Under these circumstances it seemed as though the Spanish Christians must succumb. Fortunately for them, Yakub Almansor died four years after the battle of Alarcon. It was not till the new emir Muhammed al-Nasir had succeeded in mastering his enemies, after several bloody battles, that he again undertook a “holy war” against the Christians. But in the meantime the northern kingdoms had revived and the zealous efforts of pope and clergy had succeeded in temporarily adjusting intestine feuds.
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
[19] [Compare what the Arab historian Al Lagij 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 Rodrigoc draws a worse view of the desolation of Spain than even Isidored: “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 Albeldae calls Pelayo the son of Bermudo, and nephew of king Roderic. His origin is wrapped in much obscurity. [Burkeg 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] Marianai 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 Dunhamh says, “Not a single historian of Spain, from Bishop Sebastianf to Masdeul 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.
[25] [Previously to this he waged “the war of the Three Sanchos,” so called from the fact that he, Sancho of Castile, attacked his cousin Sancho of Navarre, who called in the aid of Sancho of Aragon; and together the latter Sanchos defeated the Castilian, in 1068.]
[26] [It is a curious fact that this warrior is known to the Spaniards by his Arab name of Cid or Saïd, that is, lord or leader, while to the Arabs he is known by his Spanish name of Campeador or “Challenger.”]
[27] [Burkeg explains the inconsistent enumerations of the kings of this period as follows:
The curious confusion arising from a twofold or threefold system of numeration of the Alfonsos of Castile and Leon in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries seems to call for some special notice. Dunhamh, Romeys and other foreign historians and chronologists, among whom the count de Mas-Latriet must ever be spoken of with the greatest respect, call Alfonso el Batallador, of Aragon, Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile, as in right of his wife Urraca; and thus call Alfonso el Imperador number VIII; and keep Alfonso III of Castile out of the Leonese or Junto numeration altogether. Thus and in other ways confusion has been introduced, and by imperfect explanation still worse confounded.
The following, it is to be hoped, is plain:
Alfonso VI of Leon was the first of the name to reign in Castile; and, as in the course of the next hundred and fifty years the two kingdoms were sometimes under the same king, though not formally united, and sometimes each with a king of its own, the plan has been generally adopted by modern Spanish writers of numbering the Alfonsos of Leon and of Castile consecutively, without regard to the kingdoms over which they reigned, taking no account of the Alfonsos of Aragon. Thus Alfonso el Sabio was Alfonso IV of Castile, and Alfonso IX of Leon, but Alfonso X of the consecutive Alfonsos, by which title he is always known. And it is by this numeration that the late king of Spain was Alfonso XII, and his present majesty is Alfonso XIII.]