Spain and Her Colonies, Compiled from the Best Authorities — John Shaqi
Spain and Her Colonies, Compiled from the Best Authorities
History
Spain and Her Colonies, Compiled from the Best Authorities
Spain -- History
But Alfonso V. was not exempted from the usual rebellions, and
marriages, and assassinations, and executions, which constituted the
politics of the day. Garcia, the last Count of Castile, was
treacherously slain in 1026; and Alfonso was himself more honorably
killed in an attack upon a Moslem town in Lusitania in 1027.
The life of Fernan Gonzalez, the Warwick of medieval Spain, is almost as
much overlaid with romantic legends as that of Roderic or Roland. The
lives and deeds of his ancestors, and the origin of his ever-celebrated
County of Castile, are involved in the utmost confusion and obscurity;
but Fernan Gonzalez himself is at least a historical personage. He
married Sancha, daughter of Sancho Abarca of Navarre, and their son,
Garcia Fernandez, succeeded him as hereditary Count of Castile.
As early as the year 905, Sancho, a Christian chief of whose ancestors
and predecessors much has been written, much surmised, and nothing is
certainly known, was king or ruler of the little border state of
Navarre. A prudent as well as a warlike sovereign, he fortified his
capital city of Pamplona, and when his son, in alliance with Ordoño II.
of Leon, was defeated by the Moslems at Val de Junquera, the Navarrese
not only made good their retreat to that celebrated fortress, but
succeeded in course of a short time in driving the Moslems out of their
country. The grandson of this successful general was Sancho El Mayor--or
the Great--the most powerful of the Christian princes in Spain
(970-1035). Besides Navarre and Sobrarve he held the lordship of Aragon;
in 1026, in right of his wife, Muña Elvira, he became king or count of
Castile; while his successful interference in the affairs of Leon made
him virtual master of all Christian Spain outside the limits of the
quasi Frankish county of Catalonia.
Sancho the Great died in 1035, when his territories were divided,
according to his will, among his four sons; and from this time forth the
history of Navarre, so far as it is not included in the history of
Aragon, of Castile, and of France, is a confused and dreary record of
family quarrels, of plots and assassinations, of uncertain alliances, of
broken treaties. The marriage of the Princess Berengaria with Richard I.
of England, in 1191, failed to secure for Sancho V. the influence that
he had hoped to secure: and with Sancho VI., who died in 1234, the male
line of the house of Sancho Iniguez or Inigo, the founder of Navarre,
was extinct. A French prince was chosen by the Navarrese to rule over
them. And from the death of Sancho VI., in 1234, to the death of Charles
the Bad, in 1387--one hundred and fifty years--the history of Navarre is
that of France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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