the Bay of
12
Biscay, a distance of seven hundred miles. This can be easily
understood from the fact that to the great and decisive battle
against the invading Saracens, Roderick, the king of the Visigoths,
went "sustaining on his head a diadem of pearls, incumbered with
a flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and reclining on a
litter or car of ivory, drawn by two white mules." -- Gibbon. 258
12. The remnant of the Visigoths, "a scanty band of warriors,
headed by Pelayo, probably a member of the Visigothic royal
family, found refuge in the cave of Covadonga, among the
inaccessible mountains of Asturias" in the extreme northwestern
part of the peninsula, "Their own bravery and the difficulties of
the country enabled them to hold their own; and they became the
rallying point for all who preferred a life of hardship to slavish
submission." 26 9 This little band of warriors, never subdued,
continued to hold their own, and to grow in strength and success.
Little by little they pushed back the Saracens, enlarging their
territory, and holding all that they gained. This they steadily
continued for seven hundred and eighty years, when, in A. D. 1492, the
last vestige of Mohammedan power in Spain was broken, and the
descendants of the original Visigoths once more possessed the
whole country. The present -- A. D. 1901 -- child-heir to the throne
of Spain is Alfonso XIII; and Alfonso I was the grandson of
Pelayo, the intrepid leader of that "scanty band of warriors" who
in A. D. 712 "found refuge in the cave of Covadonga among the
inaccessible mountains of Asturias."
13. The year of the final recovery of Spain from the
Mohammedan power, it will be noted, was also the very year of the
discovery of the West Indies by Columbus -- A. D. 1492. This era
of discovery and conquest opened by Columbus, and continued by
Balboa, Cortes, and others, with an intricate complication of
territorial accessions in Europe, suddenly at the beginning of the
sixteenth century elevated Spain to the place of the leading power,
and her king -- Charles I -- to the position of the greatest sovereign,
then in the world. In fifty years, however, she had begun a decline
which steadily continued till she was reduced, in 1898, to the
bounds of the original kingdom of the Visigoths in the Spanish
peninsula, with a few outlying islands.
CHAPTER III - THE SUEVI IN THE MIDDLE AGES
ON the original and permanent settlement of the Suevi, in the
Roman Empire, they occupied "the greater portion of Southern
and Western Spain; and their capital was Astorga." In the period
between the departure of the Vandals into Africa, A. D. 429, and
the coming of the Visigoths into Spain, A. D. 456, the Suevi were
"the only barbarian power left in the peninsula." -- Hodgkin. 27 1
Though in the great battle with Theodoric, the Visigoth, in 456,
they were signally defeated and their power was much weakened,
yet the distinct Suevic kingdom continued until 587, when, by the
power of Leovigild the Visigoth, it became entirely subject and
tributary to the Visigothic kingdom.
2. During the time of the occupation of the peninsula by the
Mohammedan power, 711, the Suevi, until about 1250, shared the
fate of the Visigoths. As little by little the brave descendants of the
unconquerable Pelayo pushed back the bounds of the
Mohammedan dominion, the Suevi, inhabiting the territory of
what is now Portugal and Galicia, was really the first to be freed.
Indeed Alfonso I, grandson of Pelayo, not only drove the
Mohammedans out of Galicia, but was able to advance "with his
victorious troops" as far as to the River Douro. Alfonso III,
866-910, made expeditions as far south as to Coimbra and Lisbon,
though his permanent southern boundary was still the River
Douro.
3. Ferdinand the Great, king of Leon, Castile, and Galicia,
1055-1064, and his son, in 1065, carried the boundary southward
till it included the present Portuguese province of Beira. Alfonso
VI, 1072-1109, compelled the cession of Lisbon and Santerem,
which was practically all that part of the province of Estramadura,
which lies west and north of the River Tagus. In 1086
