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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster . < . '. ,._ '. "I " ..... .s: " '" ,r;,' Digitized by the Internet Archive 'f ...· \ 4,,:- .'\ in 2007 with funding from .,' "' •• 1 Microsoft Corporation J ~_ .. , I .. ~~.",; . ~\ . ~t. ~...- I '" ~ , I.: " ..;~ .'.' _~1, ) r·... .I- I_ 1'''' '~."": ,.' ;'::t'::. (':, . ~ .' ..!,," ·r ', . ,,,""-, ~ , ,I http://www.archive'.org/details/historyofspainfr01 burkiala ~~~i,: HISTORY OF SPAIN FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE DEATH OF FERDINAND THE CATHOLIC BY ULICK RALPH BURKE, M.A. SECOND EDITION EDITED, WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION, BV MARTIN A. S. HUME " EDITOR OF THE CALENDARS OF SPANISH STATE PAPERS," PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, " AUTHOR OF "SPAIN, 1479-1788," "MODERN SPAIN, 1788-1898," PHILIP II.," ETC., ETC., ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1900 GEORGE SALMON Provost of 'Trinity College, Dublin these volumes are, by special -permission, very respectfully dedicated. INTRODUCTION. THE great difficulty that besets even the most modest compiler of anything like a comprehensive History of Spain, is the difficulty of concentration of interest. The regions to be traversed are so immense and so boundless, the byways are so numerous and so inviting, that it is often hard to know which is the great central track that must be taken, if the end is ever to be reached. The development and decline of the Roman Empire, the overrunning of Europe by the Northern Barbarians, the origin of the political power of the Christian Church, the rise and fall of Mohammedanism in Western Europe, the discovery and colonisation of America; these are five of the most interesting and most important of the phases of human progress during the last two thousand years; and with each one of these the History of Spain and of the Spaniards is indissolubly connected. The origin and language of the Basques, and their identi- fication with the early Iberians, the wandering civilisation of the early Celts, the commerce and industry of Tyre and Sidon, the rise and fall of Carthage, though they are to some extent outside the History of Spain, assuredly each and all claim some share of our attention. The lives of Hannibal and of of and of are all and Scipio, Pompey Caesar, largely Spanish ; each one of them is a study in itself. For hard upon seven hundred years the fortunes of Spain are so intimately con- nected with the greatness and the decline of the Roman Re- public and of the Roman Empire, a subject of the utmost complexity of interest and of detail, that it is impossible to avoid being drawn into that most fascinating of labyrinths ; and a hundred years before the Imperial troops had left the Province, we are suddenly confronted by a new and strange viii INTRODUCTION. civilisation, on the arrival of the Goths with their German in- stitutions, their Adrian Faith, their Northern laws, their hopes of regenerating the old world their disappointment, their demoralisation and their decay. When at length, after three hundred years of tolerably straightforward progress though the country, it must be admitted, is for the most part an un- explored wilderness something like unity seems at length to be reached, the scene suddenly changes with the rapidity of a theatrical transformation, and we are carried away in a moment to farthest Araby, to wander hopelessly over- whelmed by the vast range of new interests, with a new race, a new civilisation, a new religion, and the most tremendous power that has arisen in the world during the last nineteen hundred years. The spread of Mohammedanism, whether considered as a religious or a political phenomenon, is as yet but very imper- fectly understood. The East has been contented to accept, and the West has not cared to study it. The History of Islam has yet to be written. To ascertain and set down the true story of the conquest and civilisation of the Peninsula by the and volumes would be Arab, many years many necessary ; but in a Short History of the Spanish People I have not ventured to adopt the well-known words on my title page the amount of space that may be devoted to the rise and progress, and to the decline and fall, of the Empire of the Moslem in Spain, must necessarily be small. The intrigues and the rebellions of the Alfonsos and the Sanchos are in themselves, perhaps, of no greater interest than the intrigues and the rebellions of the Yusufs and the Mohammeds against whom they contended. But out of the freebooters of Aragon and Navarre, out of the cut-throats of Leon and Castile was evolved that great nation, before whose arms the last Moslem was driven out of United Spain. The Mohammeds and the Yusufs came and went. We may admire their valour their civilisation we ; we may respect ; mourn over their destruction. But they are gone. And their history is in no wise the history of the Spanish people. To give a connected and intelligible account of the rise and progress of the various Christian kingdoms of the Penin- sula is a task of far greater difficulty than the treatment, be INTRODUCTION. ix it brief or be it full, of the splendour and the decay of the Moslem. A well-known writer has sought to evade the diffi- culty by writing, under the name of a History of Spain, seven histories of the various States that rose and fell in the Penin- sula from the eighth to the sixteenth century; so that the reader who has in the first volume arrived at the year 1681, finds himself on vol. ii. to and opening relegated 718 ; having reached 1516 by the end of this second volume, he is con- founded at finding himself beginning in vol. iii. with the his- tory of 885. A system of alternate chapters with such dissertations and digressions as appeared necessary as far as possible in chronological order, will probably be found at once more convenient and more artistic in its plan. With regard to the actual scheme of the work, however carried out, my object has been to present Spanish history, as I believe it never to have been presented before in moderate as one whole tell of limits, continuous ; to the story the and of a nation and I have growth development great ; sought to show how Trajan and Hadrian, how Martial and Theodosius the Great, how Quintilian and Prudentius, how St. Vincent and the uncanonised Hosius of Cordova were all as truly heroes as the or that for Spanish Cid Berengaria ; Averroes, all that he believed in Mohammed, was no less an Andalusian than Seneca,- that St. Leander and St. Dominic, St. Isidore and St. Raymond Lull were all the fellow countrymen of Ximenez, and that Viriatus was but the forerunner of the Great Captain. I would moreover, had I not been dissuaded therefrom by those whose opinion is of far more value than my own, have entitled my work a history of The Making of' Spain, or The Making of' the Spanish People. The limit of a sketch so con- ceived, would naturally be the accomplishment of the great national work of construction or of evolution ; but if it was the conquest of Navarre that put the finishing touch to the making of Spain, it was the death of Ferdinand the Catholic, within a year or two of this crowning act of policy, that left the United Spanish People for the first time in history, to be governed by a single sovereign.