terminated with the slaughter of King Roderic and
the flower of his nobility, was fought in the sum-
mer of 711, on a plain washed by the Guadalete
near Xerez, about two leagues distant from Cadiz.[1]
The Goths appear never to have afterwards rallied
under one head, but their broken detachments
made many a gallant stand in such strong positions
as were afforded throughout the kingdom; so that
nearly three years elapsed before the final achievement of the conquest. The policy of the conquerors, after making the requisite allowance for the evils necessarily attending such an invasion,[2]
- ↑ The laborious diligence of Masdeu may be thought to have settted the epoch, about which so much learned dust has been raised. The fourteenth volume of his "Historia Critica de Espa{{subst:n~}}a y de la Cultura Espailola (Madrid, 1783- 1805,) contains an accurate table, by which the minutest dates of the Mahometan lunar year are adjusted by those of the Christian era. The fall of Roderio on the field of battle is attested by both the domestic chroniclers of that period, as well as by the Saracens. (Incerti Auctoris Additio ad Joannem Biclarensem, apud Florez, España Sagrada, tom. vi. p. 430.—Isidori Pacensis Episcopi Chronicon, apud Florez, España Sagrada, tom. viii. p. 290.) The tales of the ivory and marble chariot, of the gallant steed Orelia and magnificent vestments of Roderic, discovered after the fight on the banks of the Guadalete, of his probable escape and subsequent seclusion among the mountains of Portugal, which have been thought worthy of Spanish history, have found a much more appropriate place in their romantic national ballads, as well as in the more elaborate productions of Scott and Southey.
- ↑ "Whatever curses," says an eyewitness, whose meagre diction is quickened on this occasion into something like sublimity, "whatever curses were denounced by the prophets of old against Jerusalem, whatever fell upon ancient
not the pen of a Bede or an Eginhart to describe the memorable catastrophe. But the few and meagre touches of the contemporary chroniclers have left ample scope for conjectural history, which has been most industriously improved.The reports, according to Conde, (Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. p. 36,) greedily circulated among the Saracens, of the magnificence and general prosperity of the Gothic monarchy, may sufficiently account for its invasion by an enemy flushed with uninterrupted conquests, and whose fanatical ambition was well illustrated by one of their own generals, who, on reaching the western extremity of Africa, plunged his horse into the Atlantic, and sighed for other shores on which to plant the banners of Islam. See Cardonne, Histoire de I'Afrique et de I'Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, (Paris, 1765,) tom. i. p. 37.
