Of the far-famed expedition of Charlemagne into Spain, little or nothing is known, though some French writers have defined the extent of his dominion in that country with the precision with which the political changes of modern times can be traced. Tradition, song, and history, unite in proving that he went into Catalonia and Arragon; but it does not seem that he established any government in those countries; and his march was rather the wild adventure of a knight than the grave purpose of kingly ambition. The Spaniards, as we have seen, claim the honour of defeating him in the valley of Ronscesvalles; but the Arabs also assert their title to the same feat of chivalry: and, still further to embarrass the matter, it has been contended, with equal plausibility, that the French under Charlemagne were worsted by the Navarrese and people of Acquitain; and thus that the French of the Adour and the Garonne defeated the French of the Seine. The land between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and called the Spanish March, was governed, some centuries before the twelfth, by the counts of Barcelona, who owned the feudal sovereignty of the kings of France. This territorial acquisition has been generally referred to the sword of Charlemagne, not, however, on sound historical proof, but rather from the practice of monkish chroniclers, of honouring that emperor with all the deeds of arms which could not accurately be ascribed to any other warrior. [Sidenote: The life of the Cid.] In the life of Count Fernan Gonsalez fiction and fact are blended beyond all power of extrication; and we must descend to the eleventh century for a genuine picture of the Spanish cavalier. No one is dearer to the proud recollections of a Spaniard than the Cid Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar: for it was by the valour of his arms that the momentous question of superiority between the two great powers in the Peninsula was decided as every Christian and Spanish heart could have wished. The honour of his chivalry is bright and pure; for to swear by his knighthood, affé de Rodrigo, is still the most solemn form of a Spaniard's asseveration. The marriage of Don Diego Laynez, a Castilian gentleman, and Donna Teresa Rodriguez, daughter of a count and governor of Asturias, was followed in the year 1026 by the birth of a son at Burgos, who was called Rodrigo Diaz, and of Bivar, from the conquest made by his father of a town two leagues north of Burgos; but he was more generally designated as the Cid, from the Asiatic title, Es Sayd, (my Lord,) which five Moorish emirs whom he conquered gave him, and which his king confirmed.[182] Indeed, from the number of his victories over the Moors, he emphatically merited this title. [Sidenote: His early ferocious heroism.]