Читать книгу Spain and Her Colonies - Archibald Wilberforce - Страница 6

Toledo thus became the capital of Christian Spain; and the evicted sovereign, escorted by a large force of Castilian troops under Alvar Fanez, made his sad and solemn entry into Valencia, despised at once by the citizens of Toledo, whom he had abandoned to the Christian sovereign, and by the citizens of Valencia, where his power was maintained by Christian lances. And costly indeed was this Christian maintenance. Six hundred pieces of gold is said to have been the daily allowance of the army of Castilian mercenaries; and the taxes that were necessitated by their presence only added to the unpopularity of the government. Many of Cadir’s Moslem subjects fled from the city; and their place was taken by his Christian supporters or pensioners, whose rapacity was, if possible, exceeded by their cruelty. But the coming of the Almoravides gave a new turn to the fortunes of the city. Alvar Fanez and his knights were recalled by Alfonso, and after the defeat of the Christians at Zalaca, in October, 1086, Cadir found himself threatened with immediate expulsion by his own citizens, supported by Mondhir of Lerida, the uncle of Mostain of Saragossa. In this difficulty he once more sought the protection of Christian lances, and applied for aid to the Cid, who immediately advanced on Valencia.

An intriguer, at all times and places, Roderic promised his support to Cadir in return for admission within the walls. He entered into a formal treaty with Mostain that the city should be his, if all the booty were handed over to the Campeador; and he sent envoys to Alfonso to assure him that in all these forays and alliances he thought only of the advantage of Christendom and the honor of Castile. Mondhir, overawed by the appearance of the allied army from Saragossa, hastily retired from before Valencia, where Mostain and his Christian Said were welcomed as deliverers by Cadir.

But although the Cid imposed a tribute upon the unhappy Valencians, he failed to give over the city to Mostain, and assuring Cadir of his constant support, as long as a monthly allowance of ten thousand golden dinars was punctually paid, he withdrew himself from the remonstrances of the disappointed Mostain—to whom he continued to protest his continued devotion—on the plea of a necessary visit to his Christian sovereign in Castile, to explain or excuse his position, and to engage some Castilian troops for his army. Mostain, during his absence, perceiving that he could not count upon so versatile and so ambitious a Said in the matter of the handing over of Valencia, entered into an alliance with his old enemy, Ramon Berenguer, of Barcelona; and the Catalans had actually laid siege to the city when the return of the Cid induced them to abandon their trenches and retire to Barcelona.

If the Cid was a hero of romance, he did not wield his sword without the most magnificent remuneration. At this period of his career (1089-92), in addition to the eighty thousand golden pieces received from Ramon Berenguer, he is said to have drawn fifty thousand from the son of Mondhir, one hundred and twenty thousand from Cadir of Valencia, ten thousand from Albarracin, ten thousand from Alpuente, six thousand from Murviedro, six thousand from Segorbe, four thousand from Jerica, and three thousand from Almenara.

With such an amount of personal tribute, the Cid cannot, says Lafuente, have been greatly inconvenienced by the action of Alfonso VI. in despoiling him of his estates. Supporting his army of seven thousand chosen followers on the rich booty acquired in his daily forays upon Eastern Spain, from Saragossa to Alicante; regardless of Christian rights, but the special scourge of the Moslems; no longer a Saragossan general, but a private adventurer, the Cid could afford to quarrel at once with Mostain and with Alfonso, and to defy the combined forces of Mondhir and Ramon Berenguer.

The rivalry between the Cid and the Catalan was ever fierce in Eastern Spain. The opposing armies met at Tebar del Pinar in 1090, and although the Cid was wounded in the battle, his army was completely successful. Mondhir fled from the field; and Ramon Berenguer was once more a prisoner in the hands of Roderic. Nor was the Christian count released from a confinement more harsh than was generous or necessary until he had given good security for the payment of the enormous ransom of eighty thousand marks of gold.

It is not easy, nor would it be fruitful, to follow the various movements of the Cid at this period of his career. His quarrels and his intrigues with Alfonso of Castile, with Cadir of Valencia, with the various parties at the court of Saragossa, with Ramon Berenguer at Barcelona, and even with the Genoese and Pisans, are neither easy nor interesting to follow. But his principal objective was the rich city of Valencia. Alfonso of Leon, ever jealous of his great and most independent subject, resolved to thwart him in his design; and having secured the co-operation of the Pisans and Genoese, who had arrived with a fleet of four hundred vessels to assist the Cid, the king took advantage of the absence of his rival on some foray to the north of Saragossa to advance upon Valencia, and to push forward his operations to the very walls of the city. Ruy Diaz riposted after his fashion.

Leaving the Valencians to make good the defense of their own city, he carried fire and sword into Alfonso’s peaceful dominions of Najera and Calahorra, destroying all the towns, burning all the crops, slaughtering the Christian inhabitants; and razing the important city of Logrono to the ground. This savagery was completely successful, and met with no reproach. The Cid is one of those fortunate heroes to whom all things are permitted. His excesses are forgotten; his independence admired; his boldness and his success are alone remembered. Alfonso, thus rudely summoned to the north of the Peninsula, abruptly raised the siege of Valencia.

Nor was the king’s action at Valencia without a favorable influence upon the fortunes of the Cid. Far from wresting the city from the grasp of Roderic, Alfonso had rather precipitated the crisis which was ultimately to lead to his triumphal entry as the independent ruler of the city. Cadir was murdered by a hostile faction within the walls; and the Cid, advancing with his usual prudence, spent some time in possessing himself of the suburbs and the approaches to the city, before the siege was commenced in good earnest, in July, 1093.

The operations were carried on in the most ferocious fashion by the attacking force. Roderic burned his prisoners alive from day to day within the sight of the walls, or caused them to be torn in pieces by his dogs under the very eyes of their fellow-townsmen.

The blockaded city was soon a prey to the utmost horrors of famine. Negotiation was fruitless. Succor came not. Neither Christian nor Moslem, neither Alfonso the Castilian, nor Yusuf the Almoravide, nor Mostain of Saragossa, appearing to defend or to relieve the city, Valencia capitulated on the 15th of June, 1094.

The Moslem commander, Ibn Jahaf, was burned alive. The Moslem inhabitants were treated with scant consideration, and the Cid, as might have been supposed, proclaimed himself sovereign of Valencia, independent of either Christian Alfonso or Moorish Mostain; and at Valencia he lived and reigned until the day of his death, but five years afterward, in 1099. His rule was often threatened by the Almoravides; but as long as the champion lived they could effect no entry within the walls of his city.

For full three years after his death, moreover, his widow Ximena, and his cousin Alvar Fanez, maintained a precarious sovereignty at Valencia. At length, unsupported by Alfonso of Leon, and unable to stand alone in the midst of the Moslems, they retired to Burgos, carrying with them the body of the Cid embalmed in precious spices, borne, as of old, on his faithful steed Babieca, to its last resting place in Castile. Valencia was immediately occupied by the Almoravides, and became once more a Moslem stronghold; nor did it finally pass into Christian hands until it was taken by James the First of Aragon in 1238. The Cid was buried in the Monastery of Cardena, near Burgos; and the body of his heroic wife, Dona Ximena, who died in 1104, was laid by his side in the tomb.

The legend of the marriage of the Cid’s daughters with the Infantes of Carrion, of their desertion, and of the vengeance of the Cid upon their unworthy husbands, is undoubtedly an invention of the Castilian minstrels.

The legend of the death of the Cid’s son at the battle of Consuegra is certainly fallacious. There is no evidence that a son was ever born to him at all. But he had undoubtedly two daughters, one of whom, Christina, married Ramiro, Infante of Navarre, and the other, Maria, became the countess of Ramon Berenguer III. of Barcelona. The issue of Ramon Berenguer III. was a daughter who died childless, but a granddaughter of Ramiro of Navarre married Sancho III. of Castile, whose son, Alfonso VIII., was the grandfather both of St. Ferdinand and of St. Louis. And thus in a double stream, through the royal houses of Spain and of France, the blood of the Cid is found to flow in the veins of his Majesty Alfonso XIII., the reigning king of Spain.

To understand or appreciate the position that is occupied by the Cid in Spanish history is at the present day supremely difficult. A medieval condottiere in the service of the Moslem, when he was not fighting to fill his own coffers with perfect impartiality against Moor or Christian: banished as a traitor by his Castilian sovereign, and constantly leading the forces of the Infidel against Aragon, against Catalonia, and even against Castile, he has become the national hero of Spain. Warring against the Moslem of Valencia, whom he pitilessly despoiled, with the aid of the Moslem of Saragossa, whose cause he cynically betrayed, while he yet owned a nominal allegiance to Alfonso of Castile, whose territories he was pitilessly ravaging; retaining conquered Valencia for his personal and private advantage, in despite of Moslem or Christian kings, he has become the type of Christian loyalty and Christian chivalry in Europe. Avaricious, faithless, cruel and bold, a true soldier of fortune, the Cid still maintains a reputation which is one of the enigmas of history.

The three favorites of medieval Spanish romance, says Senor Lafuente, Bernardo del Carpio, Fernan Gonzalez, and the Cid, have this at least in common, that they were all at war with their lawful sovereigns, and fought their battles independently of the crown. Hence their popularity in Spain. The Castilians of the Middle Ages were so devoted to their independence, so proud of their Fueros, such admirers of personal prowess, that they were disposed to welcome with national admiration those heroes who sprang from the people, who defied and were ill-treated by their kings.

The theory is both ingenious and just, yet it by no means solves the difficulty. Ruy Diaz of Bivar, who was one of the proudest nobles of Castile, can scarcely be said to have sprung from the people, nor do we clearly perceive why his long service under Moslem kings, even though he was a rebel against his own sovereign, should have endeared him to the Christian Spaniards, however independent or however democratic. Yet we may learn at least from the character of the hero, ideal though it be, that the medieval Castilians were no bigots, and that they were slaves neither to their kings nor to their clergy.

The people of Aragon no doubt held their king in a more distinctly constitutional subjection. No Castilian chief-justice was found to call the sovereign to order: no Privilege of Union legalized a popular war in defense of popular liberties. But Roderic took the place of the justiciary in legend, if not in history, when he administered the oath to Alfonso at Burgos; and he invested himself with the privilege of warring against an aggressive king, when he routed Alfonso’s forces, and burned his cities, to requite him for his attack upon Valencia.

It is this rebellious boldness which contributed no doubt very largely to endear the Cid to his contemporaries. It is one of the most constant characteristics of his career; one of the features that is portrayed with equal clearness by the chroniclers and the ballad-makers of Spain. For the Cid is essentially a popular hero. His legendary presentment is a kind of poetic protest against arbitrary regal power. The Cid ballads are a pæan of triumphant democracy. The ideal Cid no doubt was evolved in the course of the twelfth century; and by the end of the fifteenth century, when the rule of kings and priests had become harder and heavier in Spain, an enslaved people looked back with an envious national pride to the Castilian hero who personified the freedom of bygone days.

The Cid is the only knight-errant that has survived the polished satire of Cervantes. For his fame was neither literary nor aristocratic; but, like the early Spanish proverbs, in which it is said he took so great a delight, it was embedded deep in the hearts of the people.[3] And although the memory of his religious indifference may not have added to his popularity in the sixteenth century in Spain, it is a part of his character which must be taken into account in gauging the public opinion of earlier days.

From the close of the eighth century to the close of the fifteenth, the Spanish people, Castilians and Aragonese, were, if anything, less bigoted than the rest of Europe. The influence of their neighbors the Moors, and of their Arab toleration, could not be without its effect upon a people naturally free, independent, and self-reliant, and the Cid, who was certainly troubled with no religious scruples in the course of his varied career, and who, according to a popular legend, affronted and threatened the Pope on his throne in St Peter’s, on account of some fancied slight,[4] could never have been the hero of a nation of bigots. The degenerate Visigoths from the time of Reccared the Catholic to the time of Roderic the Vanquished could never have produced a Cid. Yet, even in the dark days of Erwig and Egica, there was found a Julian, who boldly maintained the national independence against the pretensions of the Pope of Rome. For a thousand years after the landing of St. Paul—if, indeed, he ever landed upon the coast—the Spanish Church was, perhaps, the most independent in Europe. The royal submission to the Papal authority, first by Sancho I. of Aragon, in 1071, and afterward by Alfonso VI. of Leon, in 1085, in the matter of the Romish Ritual, was distinctly unpopular. Peter II. found no lack of recruits for the army that he led against the Papal troops in Languedoc, and King James I., the most popular of the kings of Aragon, cut out the tongue of a meddlesome bishop who had presumed to interfere in his private affairs (1246). It was not until the Inquisition was forced upon United Spain by Isabella the Catholic, and the national lust for the plunder of strangers was aroused by the destruction of Granada, that the Spaniard became a destroyer of heretics. It was not until the spoliation and the banishment of Jews and Moriscos, and the opening of a new world of heathen treasure on the discovery of America, that the Castilian, who had always been independent himself, became intolerant of the independence of others. Then, indeed, he added the cruelty of the priest to the cruelty of the soldier, and wrapping himself in the cloak of a proud and uncompromising national orthodoxy, became the most ferocious bigot in two unhappy worlds.

But in the beginning it was not so. And if the Cid could possibly have been annoyed by Torquemada, his knights would have hanged the Inquisitor upon the nearest tree. No priests’ man, in good sooth, was Roderic of Bivar, nor, save in that he was a brave and determined soldier, had the great Castilian Free Lance anything in common with the more conventional heroes of United Spain.

If history affords no reasonable explanation of his unrivaled renown beyond that which has already been suggested, we find but little in the early poetry to assist us. The Cid ballads impress us “more by their number than their light.” They are neither very interesting in themselves, nor are they even very suggestive. Only thirty-seven ballads are considered by Huber to be older than the sixteenth century. “La plupart de ces romances,” says M. Dozy, “accusent leur origine moderne”; and, according to Mr. Ormsby, they do but little toward the illustration of the Cid, either as a picturesque hero of romance or as a characteristic feature of medieval history.

The great French dramatist scarcely touches the true history of his hero. The scene of the play is laid at Seville, where no Christian king set his foot for a hundred and fifty years after the death of Roderic. The title which he accepted from his employer, Mostain of Saragossa, is said to have been granted by Alfonso of Leon, after the capture of two imaginary Moorish kings, unknown to history, in an impossible battle on the banks of the Guadalquivir, which was never seen by the Cid. The whole action of the play turns upon the moral and psychological difficulties arising from the purely legendary incident of the killing of Chimene’s father by her lover, avenging an insult offered to his own sire, and of the somewhat artificial indignation of the lady, until she is appeased by a slaughter of Moors. Corneille’s drama abounds in noble sentiments expressed in most admirable verse; but it does not assist us to understand the character of the Cid, nor the reasons of his popularity in his own or in any other country. But certain at least it is that from the earliest times the story of his life and his career took a strong hold upon the popular imagination in Spain, and his virtues and his vices, little as they may seem to us to warrant the popular admiration, were understood and appreciated in the age in which he lived, an age of force and fraud, of domestic treason and foreign treachery, when religion preached little but battle and murder, and patriotism was but a pretext for plunder and rapine. Admired thus, even in his lifetime, as a gallant soldier, an independent chieftain, and an ever successful general, fearless, dexterous, and strong, his free career became a favorite theme with the jongleurs and troubadours of the next generation; and from the Cid of history was evolved a Cid of legendary song.

It is most difficult at the present day to know exactly where serious history ends and where poetry and legend begin. Yet the Cid as represented to us by M. Dozy, one of the most acute of modern investigators of historic truth, is not so very different from the Cid represented by Southey, or even by earlier and less critical poets, but that we may form a reasonable estimate, from what is common to both history and tradition, of what manner of man he was. The Cid of the twelfth century legends, indeed, though he may be more marvelous, is by no means more moral than the Cid of history. It was reserved for the superior refinement of succeeding generations, and more especially for the anonymous author of the poem of the thirteenth century to evolve a hero of a gentler and nobler mold; a creature conforming to a higher ideal of knightly perfection. From this time forward we have a glorified Cid, whose adventures are no more historically false, perhaps, than those of the unscrupulous and magnificent Paladin of the legends and romances of the twelfth century, but whose character possesses all the dignity and all the glory with which he could be invested by a generous medieval imagination. And it is this refined and idealized hero; idealized, yet most real; refined, yet eminently human, that has been worshiped by nineteen generations of Spaniards as the national hero of Spain.

Ruy Diaz—as he lived and died—was probably no worse a man than any of his neighbors. Far better than many of them he was, and undoubtedly bolder and stronger, more capable, more adroit, and more successful.

Seven of the Christian princes of Spain at this period fell in battle warring against their own near relations, or were murdered by their hands in cold blood. Garcia of Castile was slain by the sword of the Velas. Bermudo III. of Leon and Garcia Sanchez of Navarre died fighting against their brother, Ferdinand of Castile. Sancho II. of Castile was assassinated by order of his sister Urraca, besieged by him in her city of Zamora. Among the Christian kings of the century immediately before him, Garcia of Galicia was strangled in prison by the hands of his brothers, Sancho and Alfonso; Sancho Garcia of Navarre was assassinated by his brother Ramon, at Peñalva; Ramon Berenguer II. of Barcelona died by the dagger of his brother Berenguer Ramon; Sancho the Fat, in 967, was poisoned at a friendly repast by Gonzalo Sanchez; Ruy Velasquez of Castile, in 986, murdered his seven nephews, the unfortunate Infantes de Lara; Sancho of Castile, in 1010, poisoned his mother, who had endeavored to poison him. At the wedding festivities at Leon, in 1026, Garcia, Count of Castile, was assassinated at the church door, and the murderers were promptly burned alive by his friends; Garcia of Navarre, in 1030, as an incident in a family dispute about a horse, accused his mother of adultery. Such was the standard of the eleventh century in the north of the Peninsula.

To judge the Cid, even as we now know him, according to any code of modern ethics, is supremely unreasonable. To be sure, even now, that we know him as he was, is supremely presumptuous. But that Ruy Diaz was a great man, and a great leader of men, a knight who would have shocked modern poets, and a free lance who would have laughed at modern heroes, we can have no manner of doubt. That he satisfied his contemporaries and himself; that he slew Moors and Christians as occasion required, with equal vigor and absolute impartiality; that he bearded the King of Leon in his Christian council, and that he cozened the King of Saragossa at the head of his Moslem army; that he rode the best horse and brandished the best blade in Spain; that his armies never wanted for valiant soldiers, nor his coffers for gold pieces; that he lived my Lord the Challenger, the terror of every foe, and that he died rich and respected in the noble city that had fallen to his knightly spear—of all this at least we are certain; and, if the tale is displeasing to our nineteenth century refinement, we must be content to believe that it satisfied the aspirations of medieval Spain.