• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

711-994 - Asturias

It has usually been held, although the matter is in dispute, that the Visigoths resisted the invaders continuously at only one point in Spain, - in Asturias. In the mountains of Asturias there gathered various nobles of the centre and south of Spain, a number of bishops, and the remains of the defeated Christian armies, and, aided perhaps by the natives of that land, they prepared to make a stand against the Moslems. On the news of the death of Roderic they elected a certain Pelayo as his successor, and it is this king who is customarily regarded as the founder of the Spanish monarchy.

The Kingdom of Asturias was founded by the Christian Spaniards under the Gothic prince Pelayo, who fled into the mountains in the North of Spain at the time of the Saracen conquest of Spain in 711. Pelayo fixed his capital at Cangas de Onis, and is believed to have maintained amicable relations with the Moslems for a while, perhaps paying them tribute, and possibly even making a visit to Cordova. Hostilities broke out again, however, and in the year 718 Pelayo and his partisans won a victory in the valley of Covadonga. Coming as it did after several years of defeats this achievement attained to a renown which was far greater than the merits of the actual battle, and in later years legendary accounts made the combat itself assume extraordinary proportions. It has usually been taken as marking the beginning of the Christian reconquests, and it is said that Pelayo became king in consequence of the battle, when in fact he was elected several years before. The battle of Covadonga did secure eastern Asturias to the Christians, which was its immediate result. Aside from that tiny kingdom there is no proof that there were any independent Christian states in Spain, although it is probable that there were several in the other mountainous parts of the north.

This Christian kingdom flourished in spite of all the Saracen efforts to conquer it. It was at first confined to the district of Ovieda. Constant war was waged against the Saracens and Moors, and in the course of time the Christians were enabled to extend their territories southward. Alfonso I, the Catholic prince of Asturias and Pelayo's son-in-law ascended the throne in 739, conquered and annexed Galicia and parts of Leon and Castile, and assumed the title of King of Asturias.

Since the invaders respected the religion and customs of the conquered, the war of the Christian kingdom of Asturias against them did not at first have a religious or even a racial character. It was a war of the nobles and clergy for the reconquest of their landed estates and of the king for the restoration of his royal authority over the peninsula. The little Asturian kingdom was like the old Visigothic state in miniature; for example, there were the struggles between the nobility and the crown for precisely the same objects as formerly. For a century the history of Asturias reduced itself primarily to these quarrels. Nevertheless, the Moslem frontier tended to withdraw ^rom the far northwest, not that the Moslems were forced out by tl\e Christians, but possibly because their own civil wars drew them together in the centre and south, or because their numbers were not great enough to make them seek the less desirable lands in the northwest.

The only notable kings of Asturias in the century following the death of Pelayo (737) were Alfonso I "the Catholic" (739-757) and Alfonso II "the Chaste" (791-842). Both made successful campaigns against the Moslems, although their principal importance was that they brought back many Mozdrabes from the temporarily conquered regions, and these helped to populate the north. To assure his power Alfonso II sought an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, and with his son, Louis the Pious. It is this which gave rise to the legend of Bernardo del Carpio, who is said to have compelled the king to forbear making treaties with foreign rulers which lowered the dignity of the Spanish people. Some writers have found in this supposed incident (for the figure of Bernardo is a later invention) an awakening sense of nationalism, but it seems rather to reflect the traditional attitude of the nobility lest the king become too strong for them. For nearly two centuries after the death of Alfonso II, or until the fall of the Moslem caliphate, very little progress was made by the kings of Oviedo and Leon, which latter city had become the capital of the Christian kingdom in the northwest early in the tenth century.

Alfonso III, who became King of Asturias in 866, conquered all of Leon, and removed his capital to the city of Leon; and during his reign, in AD 873, Navarre became independent of Asturias, and eventually grew into a powerful kingdom. Alfonso III "the Great" (866-909) added considerably to his territories in a period of marked weakness in the caliphate, but was obliged to abdicate when his sons and even his wife joined in rebellion against him ; the kingdom was then divided among three sons, who took respectively Leon, Galicia and Lusitania, and Asturias, leaving to the king the town of Zamora alone.

For nearly two centuries after the death of Alfonso II, or until the fall of the Moslem caliphate, very little progress was made by the kings of Oviedo and Leon, which latter city had become the capital of the Christian kingdom in the northwest early in the tenth century. There was a marked opposition between the Asturian-Leonese and the Galician parts of the realm, and the Galician nobles maintained almost continuous war with the kings. Similarly the counts of the frontier often acted like petty sovereigns, or even joined with the Moslems against their own compatriots. So, too, there were contests for the throne, and neither side hesitated to call in Moslem aid.