A Short History of Spain Part 1

A Short History of Spain.

by Mary Platt Parmele.

PREFACE.

In presenting this book to the public the author can only reiterate what she has already said in works of a similar kind: that she has tried to exclude the ma.s.s of confusing details which often make the reading of history a dreary task; and to keep closely to those facts which are vital to the unfolding of the narrative. This is done under a strong conviction that the essential facts in history are those which reveal and explain the development of a nation, rather than the incidents, more or less entertaining, which have attended such development. And also under another conviction: that a little, thoroughly comprehended, is better than much imperfectly remembered and understood.

M.P.P

NEW YORK. _June 15, 1898._

A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.

CHAPTER I.

No name is more fraught with picturesque and romantic interest than that of the "Spanish Peninsula."

After finishing this rare bit of handiwork nature seems to have thrown up a great ragged wall, stretching from sea to sea, to protect it; and the Pyrenees have stood for ages a frowning barrier, descending toward France on the northern side from gradually decreasing heights--but on the Spanish side in wild disorder, plunging down through steep chasms, ravines, and precipices--with sharp cliffs towering thousands of feet skyward, which better than standing armies protect the sunny plains below.

But the "Spanish Peninsula," at the time we are about to consider, was neither "Spanish" nor was it a "peninsula." At the dawn of history this sunny corner of Europe was known as _Iberia_, and its people as _Iberians_.

Time has effaced all positive knowledge of this aboriginal race; but they are believed to have come from the south, and to have been allied to the Libyans, who inhabited the northern coast of Africa. In fact, _Iberi_ in the Libyan tongue meant _freeman_; and _Berber_, apparently derived from that word, was the term by which all of these western peoples were known to the Ancient Egyptians.

But it is suspected that the Iberians found it an easy matter to flow into the land south of the Pyrenees, and that they needed no boats for the transit. There has always existed a tradition of the joining of the two continents, and now it is believed by geologists that an isthmus once really stretched across to the African coast at the narrowest point of the Straits, at a time when the waters of a Mediterranean gulf, and the waters flowing over the sands of Sahara, together found their outlet in the Indian Ocean.

There is also a tradition that the adventurous Phenicians, who are known to have been in Iberia as early as 1300 B.C., cut a ca.n.a.l through the narrow strip of land, and then built a bridge across the ca.n.a.l. But a bridge was a frail link by which to hold the mighty continents together. The Atlantic, glad of such an entrance to the great gulf beyond, must have rushed impetuously through, gradually widening the opening, and (may have) thus permanently severed Europe and Africa; drained the Sahara dry; transformed the Mediterranean gulf into a Mediterranean Sea; and created a "Spanish Peninsula."

How long this fair Peninsula was the undisturbed home of the Iberians no one knows. Behind the rocky ramparts of the Pyrenees they may have remained for centuries unconscious of the Aryan torrent which was flooding Western Europe as far as the British Isles. Nothing has been discovered by which we may reconstruct this prehistoric people and (perhaps) civilization. But their physical characteristics we are enabled to guess; for just as we find in Cornwall, England, lingering traces of the ancient Britons, so in the mountain fastnesses of northern Spain linger the _Basques_, who are by many supposed to be the last survivors of that mysterious primitive race.

The language of the Basques bears no resemblance to any of the Indo-European, nor indeed to any known tongue. It is so difficult, so intricate in construction, that only those who learn it in infancy can ever master it. It is said that, in Basque, "you spell Solomon, and p.r.o.nounce it Nebuchadnezzar." Its antiquity is so great that one legend calls it the "language of the angels," and another says that _Tubal_ brought it to Spain before the lingual disaster at Babel! And still another relates that the devil once tried to learn it, but that, after studying it for seven years and learning only three words, he gave it up in despair.

A language which, without literature, can so resist change, can so persist unmodified by another tongue spoken all around and about it, must have great antiquity; and there is every reason to believe that the Basque is a survival of the tongue spoken by the primitive Iberians, before the Kelts began to flow over and around the Pyrennees; and also that the physical characteristics of this people are the same as those of their ancient progenitors; small-framed, dark, with a faint suggestion of the Semitic in their swarthy faces.

We cannot say when it occurred, but at last the powerful, warlike Kelts had surmounted the barrier and were mingled with this non-Aryan people, and the resulting race thus formed was known to antiquity as the _Keltiberians_.

It is probable that the rugged Kelt easily absorbed the race of more delicate type, and made it, in religion and customs, not unlike the Keltic Aryan in Gaul. But the physical characteristics of the other and primitive race are indelibly stamped upon the Spanish people; and it is probably to the Iberian strain in the blood that may be traced the small, dark type of men which largely prevails in Spain, and to some extent also in central and southern France.

But the Keltiberians were Keltic in their religion. There are now in Spain the usual monuments found wherever Druid worship prevailed. Huge blocks of stone, especially in Cantabria and Lusitania (Portugal), standing alone or in circles, tell the story of Druidical rites, and of the worship of the ocean, the wind, and the thunder, and of the placating of the powers of nature by human sacrifices.

The mingling of the Kelts and the Iberians in varying proportions in different parts of Spain, and in some places (as among the Basques) their mingling not at all, produced that diversity of traits which distinguished the _Asturians_ in the mountain gorges from their neighbors the _Cantabrians_, and both these from the _Catalonians_ in the northeast and the _Gallicians_ on the northwest coast, and from the _Lusitanians_, where now is Portugal; and still more distinguished the _Basques_, in the rocky ravines of the Pyrenees, from each and all of the others. And yet these unlike members of one family were collectively known as Keltiberians.

While this race--hardy, temperate, brave, and superst.i.tious--was leading its primitive life upon the Iberian peninsula, while they were shooting arrows at the sky to threaten the thunder, drawing their swords against the rising tide, and prizing iron more dearly than their abundant gold and silver, because they could hammer it into hooks, and swords, and spears--there had long existed in the East a group of wonderful civilizations: the Egyptian, h.o.a.ry with age and steeped in wisdom and in wickedness; the _Chaldeans_, who, with "looks commercing with the skies," were the fathers of astronomy; the _a.s.syrians_ and _Babylonians_, with their wonderful cities of _Nineveh_ and _Babylon_, and the Phenicians, with their no less famous cities of _Sidon_ and _Tyre_. Sidon, which was the more ancient of these two, is said to have been founded by Sidon, the son of Canaan, who was the great-grandson of Noah.

Of all these nations it was the Phenicians who were the most adventurous. They were a Semitic people, Syrian in blood, and their home was a narrow strip of coast on the east of the Mediterranean, where a group of free cities was joined into a confederacy held together by a strong national spirit.

Of these cities Sidon was once the head, but in time Tyre eclipsed it in splendor, and writers, sacred and profane, have sung her glories.

These Phenicians had a genius for commerce and trade. They scented a bargain from afar, and knew how to exchange "their broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate" (I Kings xxvii. 16), their gla.s.sware and their wonderful cloths dyed in Tyrian scarlet and purple, for the spices and jewels of the East, and for the gold and silver and the ivory and the ebony of the south and west.

Their ships were coursing the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and bringing back treasures from India and searching every inlet in the Mediterranean, and finally, either through the ca.n.a.l they are said to have cut, or the straits it had made, they sailed as far as the British Isles and brought back tin.

But the gold and silver of the Iberian Peninsula were more alluring than the spices of India or the tin of Britain. So upon the Spanish coast they made permanent settlements and built cities. As early as 1100 B.C. they had founded beyond the "Pillars of Hercules," the City of _Gades_ (Cadiz), a walled and fortified town, and had taught the Keltiberians how to open and work their gold and silver mines systematically; and in exchange they brought an old civilization, with new luxuries, new ideas and customs into the lives of the simple people.

But they bestowed something far beyond this--something more enriching than silver and gold,--an alphabet,--and it is to the Phenicians that we are indebted for the alphabet now in use throughout the civilized world.

CHAPTER II.

Such an extension of power, and the acquisition of sources of wealth so boundless, excited the envy of other nations.

The Greeks are said to have been in the Iberian peninsula long before the fall of Troy, where they came with a fleet from Zante, in the Ionian Sea, and in memory of that place, called the city they founded Zacynthus, which name in time became _Saguntum_. Now they sent more expeditions and founded more cities on the Spanish coast; and the Babylonians, and the a.s.syrians, and, at a later time, the Persians and the Greeks, all took up arms against these insatiate traders.

Phenician supremacy was not easily maintained with so many jealous rivals in the field, and it was rudely shaken in 850 B.C., when

"The a.s.syrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold."

and the Phenician power was partially broken at its source in the East.

It is with thrilling interest that we read Isaiah's prophecy of the destruction of Tyre, which was written at this very time. For the Phenicians were the _Canaanites_ of Bible history, and "Hiram King of Tyre" was their king; and his "navy," which, together with Solomon's "came once in three years from _Tarshish_," was their navy; and _Tarshish_ was none other than _Tartessus_, their own province, just beyond Gibraltar on the Spanish coast. Nor is it at all improbable that Spanish gold was used to adorn the temple which the great Solomon was building. (I Kings ix., x.) Shakspere, who says all things better than anyone else, makes Oth.e.l.lo find in the fatal handkerchief "confirmation strong as proofs from holy writ." Where can be found "confirmation" stronger than these "proofs from holy writ"? And where a more magnificent picture of the luxury, the sumptuous Oriental splendor of this nation at that period, than in Ezekiel, chapters xxvii., xxviii.? What an eloquent apostrophe to Tyre--"thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, a merchant of the people, for _many isles_."--"With thy wisdom and with thine understanding thou hast gotten thee riches," and, "by thy great wisdom and by thy _traffick_ hast thou increased, and thine heart is lifted up." And then follows the terrible arraignment--"because of the iniquity of thy _traffick_."

And then the final prediction of ruin--"I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth"; "thou shalt be a terror, and _never_ shalt thou be any more." Where in any literature can we find such lurid splendor of description, and such a powerful appeal to the imagination of the reader! And where could the student of history find a more graphic and accurate picture of a vanished civilization!

In 850 B.C., the same year in which the a.s.syrians partly subjugated the Phenicians in the East, the city of Carthage was founded upon the north coast of Africa, and there commenced a movement, with that city as its center, which drew together all their scattered possessions into a Punic confederacy. This was composed of the islands of Sardinia, Corsica, part of Sicily, the Balearic Isles, and the cities and colonies upon the Spanish Peninsula and African coast. As the power of this confederacy expands, the name Phenician pa.s.ses away and that of _Carthaginian_ takes its place in history.

Carthage became a mighty city, and controlled with a strong hand the scattered empire which had been planted by the Syrian tradesmen.

Carthaginian merchants and miners were in Tartessus, and were planting cities and colonies throughout the peninsula, and a torrent of Carthaginian life was thus pouring into Spain for many hundred years, and the blood of the two races must have freely mingled.

There are memorials of this time now existing, not only in Phenician coins, medals, and ruins, but in the names of the cities. _Barcelona_, named after the powerful family of Barca in Carthage, to which Hannibal belonged. _Carthagena_, a memorial of Carthage, which meant "the city"; and even _Cordova_ is traced to its primitive form,--Kartah-duba,--meaning "an important city." While _Isabella_, the name most famous in Spanish annals, has a still greater antiquity; and was none other than Jezebel--after the beautiful daughter of the King of Sidon (the "_Zidoneans_"), who married Ahab, and lured him to his downfall. And we are told that this wicked siren whose dreadful fate Elijah foretold, was cousin to Dido, she who Virgil tells us "wept in silence" for the faithless aeneas. With what a strange thrill do we find these threads of a.s.sociation between history sacred and profane, and both mingled with the modern history of Spain.

But Phenicia, for the "iniquity of her traffick," was doomed. The roots of this old Asiatic tree had been slowly and surely perishing, while her branches in the West were expanding. In the year 332 B.C.

the siege and destruction of Tyre, predicted five hundred years before by Isaiah, was accomplished by Alexander the Great, and the words of the prophet found their complete fulfillment--that the people of Tarshish should find no city, no port, no welcome, when they came back to Syria!

But on the northern coast of the Mediterranean there was another power which was waxing, while the Carthaginian was waning. The occupation of the young Roman Republic was not trade, but conquest. A bitter enmity existed between the two nations. Rome was determined to break this grasping old Asiatic confederacy and to drive it out of Europe. The Spanish Peninsula she knew little about, but the rich islands near her own coast--they must be hers.

When, after the first Punic war (264-241 B.C.), the Carthaginians saw Sardinia and Sicily torn from them, Hamilcar, their great general, determined upon a plan of vengeance which should make of Italy a Punic province. His people were strong upon the sea, but for this war of invasion they must have an army, too. So he conceived the idea of making Spain the basis of his military operations, and recruiting an immense army from the Iberian Peninsula.

CHAPTER III.