Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 197
law allowed even recent converts to become free citizens, which the Emirs did not
encourage because of the consequent loss of revenue.
While the working population and the minorities, such as Jews and other serfs, were
probably better off under Moorish control than under their former Christian masters, the
leading Visigoths and Romans were not. Consequently, the noblemen took refuge in the
northern mountains, organizing themselves in many dislocated and rival feuds or small
counties. Legend says that they first met in a cave at Covadonga, in Cantabric Asturias,
and elected a king, named Pelagius (Pelayo), and swore to obey him only as long as he
respected their possessions and customs. They made their stronghold in the old Roman
city of Leon (Legion) and conducted guerrilla warfare in the countryside. By the 800s
they consolidated their power in the west, making Galicia Moor-proof. To defend
themselves better against the Moors, they also built castles, or fortifications, on their
southeast frontier, thus giving that area the name of Castile. Castile and the lands to the
south and east lying between the Moors and France were the theater of conflict. Over a
few generations the Leonese nobility became known, probably unjustifiably, as soft,
while the Castilians and Pyreneans acquired the reputation of being trained and daring
warriors.
The story of the birth of Castile as an independent kingdom goes back to sometime
between 920 and 930 A.D. Legend says that Sancho, King of Leon, and Fernan
Gonzales, Count of Castile, were hunting together. Sancho liked and took Fernan’s
horse but would not accept it as a gift, offering to pay a price that would double every
year thereafter until it was paid. Within a year after this hunt, Sancho accused Fernan of
conspiring against him and imprisoned him, but Fernan escaped. A multiyear civil war
ensued at the end of which Sancho recaptured Fernan and was about to condemn him
to death. Fernan then reminded Sancho of the horse, and Sancho, in the presence of
his noblemen, to save his honor had no choice but to pay for it. By this time the price
had become so large that he could only meet it by giving him freedom and turning
Castille into Fernan’s own kingdom.
Since the Castilian strength was not formidable enough to stop the Moors who were still
looking for more wealth to loot, Moslem expeditions went right through Castile and
began to probe southern France. At the turn of the 1 st Millennium, the Moslems had lost
their unifying leaders and were now a series of small kingdoms jealous of each other
and often at war among themselves. They initially employed Christian knights to collect
revenues from their dependent states. But soon these knights began charging a yearly
tribute for “protecting” the Moors’ client states. The result was a hodgepodge of
alliances between Christians and Moors to fight similar rival alliances for control of more
land and wealth. This intercourse of interests caused a noticeable interlacing of cultures
but not of religions, because the tax for freedom of religion was a good source of
revenue to the Saracens.
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