Spain is rich in her heroes, both of romance and chivalry. The Spaniard will not acknowledge that the Moor was, for a moment, left in tranquil possession of his conquest; and he points to a hero, named Pelayo, as collecting the remnants of the Christians in the mountains of Asturias, immediately after the general triumph of the Moorish arms. He resisted the Moors till his three hundred followers dwindled to thirty. His enemies then left him to perish, for hitherto his food had only been honey, found in the crevices of the rocks. But, in after times, the folly of this disdain was seen; for these thirty men were the nucleus round which the scattered Spaniards collected.[181] [Sidenote: Bernardo del Carpio.] Truth does not cast many gleams on Bernardo del Carpio, the next in time and rank of Spanish knights. If we may credit the historians of his country, it was he who nourished, in the Asturias, the plant of national liberty; for when Alfonso the Chaste would have made the land over which he ruled part of the dominions of Charlemagne, the nobility, headed by Bernardo, repelled the invader, and annihilated the French peerage at Fontarabbia. Much of this, perhaps the whole, is the mere dreaming of national pride, not deserving regard: but when I find mingled with the story the assertion that Bernardo gained the alliance of some of the Moors, and that, in after parts of his life, he fought also under Moorish banners, I accept these circumstances as valuable, and consider them as indications of general principles and manners, whoever may be the hero of the tale. [Sidenote: Charlemagne's expedition into Spain.]