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the use of a great and united people. The same obligations, 
and the same privileges, were communicated to the nations 
of the Spanish monarchy; and the conquerors, insensibly 
renouncing the Teutonic idiom, submitted to the restraints 
of freedom. The merit of this impartial policy was en¬ 
hanced by the situation of Spain, under the reign of the Visi¬ 
goths. The provincials were long separated from their 
Arian masters, by the irreconcileable difference of religion. 
After the conversion of Recared had removed the prejudices 
of the Catholics, the coasts, both of the ocean and Mediter¬ 
ranean, were still possessed by the Eastern emperors, who 
secretly excited a discontented people to reject the yoke of 
the barbarians, and to assert the name and dignity of Roman 
citizens. 
The Gothic princes continued to reign over a considerable 
part of Spain till the beginning of the 8th century, when 
their empire was overthrown by the Saracens. During 
this period, they had entirely expelled the eastern emperors 
from what they possessed in Spain, and even made con¬ 
siderable conquests in Barbary; but towards the end of the 
7th century the Saracens overran all that part of the world ; 
and having soon possessed themselves of the Gothic domi¬ 
nions in Barbary, they made a descent upon Spain about 
the year 711 or 712. The king of the Goths at that time 
was called Roderic, who by his bad conduct had occasioned 
great disaffection among his subjects. He therefore deter¬ 
mined to put all to the issue of a battle. The two armies 
met in a plain near Xeres in Andalusia. The Goths were 
defeated with excessive slaughter, and their king himself was 
supposed to have have perished in the battle. 
By this battle the Moors in a short time rendered them¬ 
selves masters of almost all Spain. The poor remains of the 
Goths were obliged to retire into the mountainous parts of 
Asturias, Burgos, and Biscay: the inhabitants of Arragon, 
Catalonia, and Navarre, chose for the most part to withdraw 
into France. In 718, however, the power of the Goths be¬ 
gan again to revive under Don Pelagius or Pelayo, a prince 
of the royal blood, who headed those that had retired to the 
mountains after the fatal battle of Xeres. The place where 
he first laid the foundation of his government was in the 
Asturias, in the province of Liebana, about nine leagues in 
length and four in breadth. This is the most inland part 
of the country, full of mountains enormously high, and so 
much fortified by nature, that its inhabitants are capable of 
resisting almost any number of invaders. Alakor the Saracen 
governor was no sooner informed of this revival of the Gothic 
kingdom, than he sent a powerful army, under the com¬ 
mand of one Alcbaman, to crush Don Pelagius before he 
had time to establish his power. The king did not think 
proper to venture a general engagement in the open field ; 
but taking post with part of his troops in a cavern in a 
very high mountain, he concealed the rest among precipices, 
giving orders to them to fall upon the enemy as soon as they 
should perceive him attacked by them. These orders were 
punctually executed, though indeed Don Pelagius himself 
had repulsed his enemies, but not without a miracle, as the 
Spanish historians pretend. The slaughter was dreadful; 
for the troops who lay in ambuscade joining the rest, and 
rolling down huge stones from the mountains upon the 
Moors (the name by which the Saracens were known in 
Spain), no fewer than 124,000 of these unhappy people 
perished in one day. The remainder fled till they were 
stopped by a river, and beginning to coast it, part of a 
mountain suddenly fell down, stopped up the channel of 
the river, and either crushed or drowned, by the sudden 
rising of the water, almost every one of that vast army. 
The Moors made a second attempt against Don Pelagius. 
In consequence of which, they lost all the Asturias, and 
never dared to enter the lists with Pelagius afterwards. 
They then directed their force against France, where they 
hoped for more plunder. Into this country they poured in 
prodigious multitudes; but were utterly defeated, in 732, 
by Charles Martel, with the loss of 300,000 men, as the 
historians of those times relate. 
Don Pelagius died in 737 ; and soon after his death such 
\ I N. 
intestine divisions broke out among the Moors, as greatly- 
favoured the increase of the Christian power. In 745, Don 
Alphonso the Catholic, son-in-law to Pelagius, in conjunc¬ 
tion with his brother Froila, passed the mountains, and fell 
upon the northern part of Gallicia; and meeting with little 
resistance, recovered almost the whole of that province in a 
single campaign. Next year he invaded the plains ot Leon 
and Castile; and reduced Astorgas, Leon, Saldagna, Montes 
de Oca, Amaya, Alava, and all the country at the foot of the 
mountains. The year following he pushed his conquests 
as far as the borders of Portugal, and in the next campaign 
he ravaged the country as far as Castile. Finding he was 
unable to defend the flat country which he had conquered, 
he laid the whole of it waste, obliged the Christians to retire 
to the mountains, and carried off all the Moors tor slaves. 
Thus secured by a desert frontier, he met with no interrup¬ 
tion for some years; during which time, he allowed his sub¬ 
jects gradually to occupy part of the flat country, and to 
rebuild Leon and Astorgas, which he had demolished. He 
died in 758, and was succeeded by his son Don Froila. In 
his time Abdoulrahman, the khaliff’s viceroy in Spain, 
threw off the yoke, and rendered himself independent, 
fixing the seat of his government at Cordova. Froila en¬ 
countered the Moors with such success, that 54,000 of them 
were killed on the spot, and their general taken prisoner. 
Soon after he built the city of Ovieda, which he made the 
capital of his dominions, in order to be in a better condition 
to defend the flat country. 
In the year 850 the power of the Saracens received another 
blow by the rise of the kingdom of Navarre. This king¬ 
dom, we are told, took its origin from an accidental meeting 
of gentlemen, to the number of 600, at the tomb of an 
hermit named John, who had died among the Pyrenees. 
At this place, where they had met on account of the supposed 
sanctity of the deceased, they took occasion to converse on 
the cruelty of the Moors, the miseries to which the country 
was exposed, and the glory that would result from throwing 
off their yoke; which, they supposed, might easily be done, 
by reason of the strength of their country. On mature de¬ 
liberation, the project was approved; one Don Garcias 
Ximenes was appointed king, as being of illustrious birth, 
and looked upon as a person of great abilities. He reco¬ 
vered Ainsa, one of the principal towns of the country, out 
of the hands of the infidels, and his successor Don Garcias 
Inigas extended his territories as far as Biscay ; however, 
the Moors still possessed Portugal, Murcia, Andalusia, Va¬ 
lencia, Granada, Tortosa, with the interior part of the coun¬ 
try as far as the mountains of Castile and Zaragoza. Their 
internal dissensions, which revived after the death of Ab¬ 
doulrahman, contributed greatly to reduce the power of the 
infidels in general. In 778, Charles the Great being invited 
by some discontented Moorish governors, entered Spain 
with two great armies; one passing through Catalonia, and 
the other through Navarre, where he pushed his conquests as 
far as the Ebro. On his return he was attacked and defeated 
by the Moors; though this did not hinder him from keeping 
possession of all those places he had already reduced. At 
this time he seems to have been master of Navarre : how¬ 
ever, in 831, Count Azner, revolting from Pepin, son to the 
emperor Louis, asserted the independency of Navarre; but 
the sovereigns did not assume the title of kings till the time 
of Don Garcias, who began to reign in 857. 
In the mean time, the kingdom founded by Don Pelagius, 
now called the kingdom of Leon and Oviedo, continued to 
increase rapidly in strength. In 921, however, they gained 
a great victory over the united forces of Navarre and Leon, 
by which the whole force of the Christians in Spain must 
have been entirely broken, had not the victors conducted 
their affairs so wretchedly, that they suffered themselves to 
be almost entirely cut in pieces by the remains of the 
Christian army. In short, the Christians became at length 
so terrible to the Moors, that it is probable they could not 
long have kept their footing in Spain, had not a great gene¬ 
ral, named Mohammed Ebn Amr Almanzor, appeared, in 
979, to support their sinking cause. Tins man was visir to 
