The Spanish historians speak of a second invasion of northwest Spain by the Franks from Aquitania in 823, and a second rout of their forces at Roncesvalles in 824, by the Basques of Navarre, assisted by some troops dispatched from Cordova by Abdur Rahman, whose alliance was sought by the Christians to the south of the Pyrenees, against their still more hated Christian foes to the north. But the whole story is usually considered to be apocryphal.1 What is more certain is that no less than two embassies were received by Abdur Rahman from the Emperor Theophilus at Constantinople, praying the aid of the Ommeyad Caliph of Cordova against the Abbaside Caliph of Bagdad, Al Mutassim (833-842), who was threatening the Empire in the East.

In the perpetual conflicts with the Christians in the north of the Peninsula, Abdur Rahman was more successful than his predecessors. Neither Alfonso nor Ramiro gained any advantage over the Moslem commanders, and the Christian kings were glad to secure the possession of their frontier provinces by the payment of an annual tribute to Cordova.

Thrice in twenty years did a Frankish army make its appearance in north-east Spain, and thrice was it driven back across the border, while a Moslem fleet assaulted and burned the suburbs, if not the city of Marseilles.

But a more savage invader appeared in this reign off the coast of Lusitania. Some Scandinavian Vikings or Northmen, with over fifty ships, suddenly descended upon the Tagus. They plundered Lisbon, and ravaging the whole of the south-west coasts of the Peninsula, they pursued their course as far as Seville, which they captured and sacked; and then making off with their spoils, they set sail, and disappeared as suddenly as they had come.

1 See Lafuente, iii., 273-275

CHAPTER XV.

SANTIAGO.

(788-910.)

I.-Alfonso the Chaste.

MAUREGATO died, after his uneventful reign, in 788; and for the fourth time the legitimate claims of Alfonso were postponed by the electors to those of a more favoured relation ; no warrior, but a Churchman, Bermudo, the brother of Aurelius. This royal deacon, for Bermudo had never attained the dignity of the priesthood,1 was of a kindly and even generous disposition, and the patient Alfonso was gratified with the subordinate, but all-important position of commander of the royal armies at the hands of his more successful rival, until, in 791, Bermudo voluntarily forsook the throne for the cloister; and Alfonso, surnamed the Chaste, at length reigned alone and supreme over the kingdom of Asturias.

The inactivity of the Christian kings, ever since the death of Alfonso the Catholic, had been accompanied by a similar indisposition for raids and forays on the part of the cultivated Moslem, Abdur Rahman. But in 794, Hisham invaded the Asturias with a considerable army, and the new Alfonso showed something of the skill and energy of his grandfather in the field. By a happy stratagem, he drove the Arabs into a mountain defile, where he fell upon them with such vigour with his little force, that a considerable portion of their army was cut to pieces. In the north-east, the Christian arms were less successful; and Narbonne was taken and plundered by the Moslems. But the Christian kingdom of the northwest grew and prospered, and the seat of government was

It was on this ground that the objection to his election, as unlawful, under the old Gothic law of Wamba's time, was overruled in the council. Ramiro of Aragon was afterwards accepted under the same extenuating circumstances,

removed by Alfonso 1 from Pravia to Oviedo, a city founded by his father Fruela, and already one of the most important centres of Christian power and Christian progress in northern Spain.

From Oviedo, Alfonso undertook at least one important expedition to the southward, and possessing himself temporarily, after the fashion of the day, of the whole country as far as to the Tagus, he entered and plundered Lisbon, before the advancing Moslems compelled him to retreat to his mountain home in Gallicia (797).

Flushed with this success, Alfonso sent envoys to Aix-laChapelle to solicit the assistance of Charlemagne; but Charles did not trust himself again to the south of the Pyrenees. The dispatch of another embassy, two years later, to the court of the Frank at Toulouse, was no more successful as regards Charlemagne, and was attended with very remarkable results as regards Alfonso. For the Spanish nobles, jealous of any possible foreign interference with their most independent kingdom, took a very decided way of manifesting their political feelings, and locked up their king in a monastery at Abelania, until he had announced his intention of having nothing more to do with Frankish alliances.2 Then, and only then, was Alfonso released. The nobles went unpunished, and nothing more was heard of Charlemagne in the Asturias.

II.—Catalonia.

In the north-east, on the other hand, the armies, if not the presence of the great Frank, played an important part in the early history of Spain. In the first year of the ninth century, a solemn assembly, or Champ de Mai, was held by Louis of Aquitaine at Toulouse; and a league of Christian lords was founded for the taking of Barcelona. In the autumn of 801, accordingly, an immense host of Christian soldiers in this early crusade marched over the slopes of the eastern Pyrenees. At first they met with but little opposition. The Moslem troops were for the most part engaged in suppressing revolts in the south; and the Franks soon made themselves masters of Gerona, Cardona, Manresa, and many other cities and fortresses as far south as Lerida, whose lofty citadel commands a rich district

1 The cathedral at Oviedo, founded by Fruela, was consecrated in 812, in the presence of Alfonso, who appointed a noble Goth, Adulphus, to be the first bishop of the capital city of the Asturias.

2 Chron. Albeld., 58,

And

in fertile Catalonia. But the most important town of the Spanish Marches, as this newly conquered territory was called by the Franks, refused to open its gates to the Christian invaders. In Barcelona, the celebrated Zaïd held chief command. Zaïd kept the town for his master at Cordova. The siege was long protracted; but no assistance was received from Hakam. From Lerida, Duke William of Toulouse had made a successful descent upon Tarragona; and a line of Christian troops from the sea to Lerida blocked the way of any relieving army that might be on its way from Cordova to Barcelona. Yet of a relieving army no tidings was heard in the beleaguered city. Messenger after messenger had been sent in vain. At length the heroic Zaïd determined to go himself. He would see Hakam; and he would return at the head of an army that should drive the Christians once more beyond the Pyrenees. The stealthy departure, the midnight ride, the turn of evil fortune at the very moment of successful evasion, the arrest of Zaïd, his exhortation to the citizens to hold the town, when his life was the price of surrender: the final treaty by which the hero was spared, and the garrison, abandoned by their sovereign, marched out of Barcelona with all the honours of war-these are some of the thousand romantic incidents of the early struggles between Christians and Moors in north-eastern Spain.

The fall of Barcelona was the signal for rejoicings all over Europe, and was especially agreeable to the new Emperor. King Louis, after a triumphal entry into the city with great military and religious pomp and splendour, invested Count Bera, a noble Goth, with the government of the city and of the Spanish Marches; and leaving a strong garrison of Franks and Spaniards under his command, retraced his victorious steps into Aquitaine. A considerable number of Christians from all parts of Spain now sought a refuge in this new Marquisate, which was soon the abiding place of a large and thriving Christian population, the ancestors of the modern Catalans, the most industrious, and the most turbulent, the richest, and the most restless of all the inhabitants of Spain.

Charlemagne died in 814, and among the various divisions of territory that took place on his death, Septimania was cut off from the kingdom of Aquitaine, and joined to the Spanish March, which was raised to the dignity of a quasi-independent Duchy or county, with its capital city at Barcelona.1

1 The Spanish March was at first known as Gothia, which, says Lafuente, became modified as follows: Gothia, Gothland, Gothlandia, Gothalania, Catalonia, Cataluña. Lafuente, iii., 88 and 198, 205-208.

In 821, Duke Bera, accused of high treason, and vanquished in trial by battle, was exiled to Rouen, and Bernard, a son of William of Toulouse, was chosen by the Emperor Louis to be his successor. The son of the exile summoned the Moslems to his assistance, and their united forces blockaded Bernard in Barcelona. But on the approach of an Imperial army from Aquitaine, this insignificant revolution melted away. Yet Christian intriguers were ever ready to call in the aid of the nearest Moslem; and the Moslem was ever near. Intrigues, indeed, were rife at the Christian courts. Bernard, the paramour of the Empress, and the reputed father of Charles the Bald, was alternately promoted and degraded by Louis. And thus the Christian power grew weaker in the Spanish Marches, and Abdur Rahman II., the son of Hakam, was able not only to recover Tarragona, but to despatch from that once Imperial port a flotilla which sacked and burned the suburbs of Marseilles.

The history of Catalonia from the time of Charlemagne to the time of the excellent Ramon Berenguer I., a period of over two hundred years, is not only uncertain, but is uninteresting to the student of the national history of Spain. Bera, the Gothic nominee of Louis le Debonnaire, who ruled from 801 to 820, was succeeded by a number of counts or dukes more or less dependent upon the successors of Charlemagne in the north, and exposed to the constant attacks of the Moslems on their southern frontier. In 852 the city of Barcelona was taken by the Moors, in whose possession it remained for twelve or thirteen years; and a period of special confusion was closed by the assumption, in 874, of the supreme power by Wilfrid the Hairy, who asserted his independence of his Carlovingian overlord, and made the county of Catalonia hereditary in his own family. In 984 the little State was overrun by the armies of Almanzor; but on the death of that Moslem conqueror in 1002, the southern invaders were finally driven out of the country; and by the year 1035, on the accession of Ramon Berenguer I., or El Viejo, the serious history of Catalonia may fairly be said to have begun.1

III.-Compostella.

Turning our attention once more to Leon, we find that the most remarkable domestic event in the annals of the little

1 Romey, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. iv., pp. 311 and 496.