Kingdom of León

“ We have seen how Pelayo gathered together the remnant of the Goths in the inaccessible caves and fastnesses of the Asturian mountains; how this remnant soon advanced beyond its early boundaries, and, taking courage from the indifference or the disunion of the Berber tribes who were quartered on the frontiers of the Mohammedan dominions, gradually recovered most of the territory north of the Sierra de Guadarrama, and there established the kingdom of Leon and the county of Castile; while the separate kingdom of Navarre arose further east, beneath the Pyrenees. ”

“ For a hundred years longer the little city by the northern hills posed from time to time as an imperial capital, but with the union of the crowns under San Fernando the headship of the kingdom passed to Burgos and Toledo. For a century more the court of the Spanish kings was in the ever-moving camps, on the ever-shifting battlefield. The claims of Leon to rank as capital were forgotten. ”

“ Leon was the name of this fortress, one of the strategical points, not only of the early Romans, but of the Arabs who conquered the country, and later of the nascent Christian kingdom of Asturias. In the tenth century, or, better still, toward the beginning of the eleventh, and after the final retreat of the Moors and their terrible general Almanzor, Leon became the recognized capital of Asturias. ”

“ Nothing is, however, less true. The noblemen and monarchs of Galicia, Leon, and Oviedo—later of Castile, Navarra, and Aragon—were so many petty lords who, fighting continually among themselves, ruled over fragments of the defeated Visigothic kingdom. At times they called in the Arab enemy—to whom in the early centuries they paid a yearly tribute—to help them against the encroachments of their brother Christians. Consequently they lacked that spirit of patriotism and of national ambition which might have justified their claims to be called monarchs or rulers of Spain. ”

“ A female descendant of his became the wife of the first Marquis of San Miguel de Aguayo, a title created in 1682 and long held by the leading men of the northeastern frontier.
Nuevo León.—A new jurisdiction was now carved out on the Gulf coast. In 1579 Luis de Carabajal, a Portuguese of Jewish extraction, secured a patent naming him governor and captain-general of the Kingdom of Nuevo León, a region extending two hundred leagues north and west from Pánuco, and delimiting Nueva Vizcaya and Nueva Galicia on the north and east. ”

“ The successful resistance offered by Asturias to the invaders had been followed by the liberation of Galicia and Leon, when Ferdinand I. of Castile (1035–1065) , by his marriage with Sancha, widow of the last king of Leon, was enabled to unite Leon and Castile in a single kingdom, with its capital at Burgos. New territories were annexed on the south, until, after the capture of Toledo in 1085, and the consequent formation of a New Castile, the kingdom comprised the whole of central Spain. ”

“ It is the old story alike of peoples, sects, and individuals; discipline, begotten by necessity, engenders strength, which fattened by luxury swells to weakness.
The beginning of the eleventh century finds the Christians occupying about half the Peninsula, that is to say the kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal. Leon was but another name for the kingdom of Oviedo, or Asturias, the birthplace of Spanish nationality. ”

“ Leon had once been a separate kingdom, and was still coupled with Castile itself in the full title of that monarchy; while Galicia, Asturias, and the three Basque provinces were inhabited by peoples of different political history, of different stock, and living under different customs. Navarre, Granada, and Portugal, although within the Iberian peninsula, were, at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella, still independent; though the first was destined to be united to Aragon, the second to Castile, and even the third was to be amalgamated for eighty critical years with the greater monarchy. ”

“ By the will of Sancho the Great of Navarre, Castile had become legally a kingdom in 1035. Ferdinand I (1035-1065) soon overwhelmed the king of León, uniting all northwestern Spain under his rule. Wars with Navarre followed until 1054, after which Ferdinand devoted himself with great religious zeal to campaigns against the Moslem taifas, making numerous conquests, and subjecting many states to the payment of tribute. Despite the lesson of his own experience he divided his realm, at death, into the three kingdoms of Castile, León, and Galicia, besides two lesser principalities. ”

“ Meanwhile, under Ramiro II., the name of the town began to be applied to the whole kingdom. It was the scene of the imprisonment of the aspiring Fernan González, Count of Castile; and by him and a Navarrese army it was besieged during the reign of Ordoño III. Under the terrible Al Mansûr, the Moslem tide swept up to the very peaks of Asturias. Leon was submerged, the city taken and burned, and Fernando II. was glad to find an asylum in the mountain fastnesses of his ancestors.
This was but a temporary check to the Christian fortunes. ”

“ Every town in the peninsula marks a forward step of the Christian, a backward step of the Moslem. Leon was outpost first, capital after. It seems to have been attacked and perhaps destroyed by the enemy during the ninth century, for we read that Ordoño I. rebuilt it. Under Alfonso III. the frontier of the nascent kingdom was carried forward to the Douro. At Leon men slept more peacefully. Alfonso, upon his abdication in 912, pursuing the policy afterwards so harmful to Spain, divided his dominions among his children. Leon was allotted to Garcia ”

“ If the Spanish princes had been less disunited, and had acted in concert against the infidels, they would have been able {99} at this period to deprive the Mussulmans of their entire dominions in the Peninsula. But these ever-contending princes had no sooner taken a Moorish city than they began to dispute among themselves about its possession.
The newly-created kingdom of Portugal, established by the military powers of Alphonso, was soon at war with that of Leon. [5] Aragon and Castile, after many bloody quarrels, united in a league against Navarre. ”

“ In 1037 Leon was united by Ferdinand I., called the Great, to Castile; and from its central position, and the strength arising from perpetual vigilance, the new kingdom gradually widened and added to its dominions, until eventually all the kingdoms of the Peninsula were united under the banner of Castile. Navarre belonged to a French count, whose successor drove the Saracens from the territory adjacent on the south-west, and founded the kingdom of Aragon.
In 1085 the Cid, a Castilian chieftain, born at Búrgos, and famous in poetry, romance, and war, seized Toledo, and overran Valencia ”

“ In institutions, Aragon proper must be distinguished, throughout this period, from the Catalonian region of the greater kingdom of Aragon. Social differences were much more marked than in León and Castile, for there was an excessively privileged feudal nobility, which had a despotic power over the servile classes; the movement for emancipation from slavery and serfdom belongs to a much later time. Lords had a right even to kill their serfs. ”

“ Advance in civilization was attended with corruption of morals.
III. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY.—Resistance to the Arabs in Spain began in the northern mountainous region of Cantabria and Asturia, which even the West Goths had not wholly subdued, although Asturia was called Gothia. Asturia, a Christian principality (732) , expanded into the kingdom called Leon (916) , of which Castile was an eastern county. East of Leon, there grew up the kingdom of Navarre, mostly on the southern, but partly on the northern side of the Pyrenees. ”

“ III. The kingdom of New Leon [Nuevo Leon [IV'-13] ] is 725 bounded east by New San Ander, north by Cogquilla, west by Biscay, and south by St. Louis and Zacataca; its greatest length north and south is 250 miles; width, east and west, 100 miles. Its population may be estimated at 30,000 souls. Its capital, Mont El Rey [Monterey] , is situated on the headwaters of Tiger river, which discharges into the gulf of Mexico. ”

“ Castile had come into being as a border province of the Asturian kingdom, governed by military counts. From the first there seems to have been a spirit of resistance to the overrule of the Asturian kings (later known as kings of Leon) . Finally, under its Count Fernan Gonzalez (who died 970) , Castile secured its independence. But whether leading a separate political existence, or united with Leon, Castile was ever jealously sensitive of any precedence [Pg 3726] claimed or exercised by its sister kingdom. ”

“ The León of to-day is a large village, a dried-up, dirty, dilapidated, depopulated, cobble-streeted village of snarling, meretricious-minded inhabitants jumbled together inside a wall that with the cathedral is the only remaining proof of former importance. Here once more was the beggar with his distressing whine, his brow of bronze, and his all too evident injuries; not numerously but constituting a large percentage of the population. In all Spain the devise of insurance companies on the fronts of buildings is more than frequent; in León there was barely a hovel without one or more. ”

“ León is essentially a manufacturing and commercial city; it has a cathedral and a theatre, the latter one of the largest and finest in the republic. The city is regularly built, with wide streets and numerous shady parks and gardens. ”

“ When once the traveler has forced himself to believe that León was not many centuries since the rich capital of a vast empire he must surely fall sad and pensive reflecting how mutable and fleeting indeed are the things of earth. ”

“ The Mexican Central gives it railway connexion with the national capital and other prominent cities of the Republic. León stands in a fertile plain on the banks of the Turbio, a tributary of the Rio Grande de Lerma, at an elevation of 5862 ft. above sea-level and in the midst of very attractive surroundings. The country about León is considered to be one of the richest cereal-producing districts of Mexico. The city itself is subject to disastrous floods, sometimes leading to loss of life as well as damage to property, as in the great flood of 1889. ”

“ And the mountain provinces of Galicia and the Asturias, of idyllic hill and dale, yet with seaports fast awakening to commercial life, look with little sympathy on the sluggish province of León that borders them.
Industrial advancement is on its gradual way in Spain, but there is not a hint of its movement in this oldest of the separate kingdoms. Zamora, Astorga, León, Salamanca, the romantic cities of the earlier days of chivalry, lie asleep; the whistle of the railways has failed to rouse them. ”

“ The road had led through a rich, level district, covered with forests of fine timber, and abounding in cultivated fields of grain. Presently clusters of spires and towers sprang from the plain, and coursing through suburbs of walled gardens, convents, and country dwellings—all gratefully reposing beneath the shade of overhanging trees—we entered the city of Leon. It includes, with the environs, a thriving population of near sixty thousand souls; delightfully situated in the heart of one of the most salubrious table-lands of the higher terraces of Mexico. ”

“ On the north-west the valley of the Sil and a series of valleys farther south, along both of which military roads have been carried from an early period, open up communication between Leon and the hill country of Galicia, which explains why this province was united to Leon even before the conquest of Portugal from the Moors. The passes across the Cantabrian Mountains in the north are tolerably numerous, and several of them are crossed by railways. ”

“ Leon, which gave its name to one of the old kingdoms of Spain before the re-conquest of the Castiles, is full of towns which recall the glories of the past, but which are of little importance in modern times. The capital (9000) is noted for its cathedral and churches, which are perhaps the purest specimens of Gothic, unmixed with Arabian art, to be found in Spain. The province is generally mountainous, especially to the north and west, and the higher lands afford excellent summer pasture for flocks from the plains, and even from Estremadura. The valley of the Esla is extremely fertile. ”

“ Antequera fails to give the date for the inauguration of this reform, but since the Council of Leon of 1020 defined the jurisdiction of the frontier counts, we know that the adelantados were substituted for these officials at some subsequent date. [2]
The nobles of Asturias, Leon, and Castile sought as best they could to maintain their independence of the king in the early centuries of Spanish history. The relations of these nobles to the monarch were semi-feudal. ”

“ The political, like the natural existence of this country, has always been precarious; her social elements, like her subterranean caverns, have always been in a state of agitation; the lava of human passions frequently bursting forth, devastating, and drenching the country with blood.
The inhabitants of Leon were, as a class, superior to any I had seen in the country; the men were robust, active, and intel{150}ligent, and the females beautiful. They seemed more nearly allied to the Castilian than any I had seen in any of the departments of Spanish America. ”