Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 203
camped with his powerful army just outside the town. A Saracen by the name of Sadaba
snuck into his tent and killed him. It is said that the assassin used a blade inserted
through the eye notch of the king’s face helmet and then ran out through the camp
crying that the king was dead. Without a leader, his army was easily repulsed by El Cid.
Twenty years later, Ramiro’s son, Sancho Ramirez, took back the town of Graus and
turned it over to the monastery of San Victorian.
Ramiro’s death at the hands of a Moor allied to his Christian brother reverberated
through his Cluniac Monk friends all the way to the pope. Pope Alexander II had been
elected to the papacy with the help of these monks and decided to rouse all southern
Christendom to the defense of Ramiro’s cause. Starting in 1061, he had been lobbying
for the formation of an armed expedition across the Pyrenees. He now organized Italian
and French Christian knights to help Spain battle the Islamic invaders. A powerful army
of European knights marched through the mountain passes and devastated, sacked
and debauched the Moorish territories of Zaragoza. It is said that in the town of
Barbastro alone they killed more than 50,000 Moors.
One of the Christian leaders of the expeditionary force, a French nobleman known as
The Bon Normand (Guillaume de Montreuil), in the service of the Pope, carried away as
his booty five hundred young Moslem women and enough furniture, clothing and jewelry
to entice other soldiers of fortune to join future similar ventures. This expedition was the
prelude of the real crusades that were organized 34 years later.
When invaded by the Frenchmen, Moctadir expected Ferdinand to come to his aid, but
no Castilian came to help him. Thus, Moctadir broke their alliance and in 1065
Ferdinand attacked him, pushing his troops all the way to Valencia, but he died of ill
health during the campaign. Ferdinand’s eldest son and the Cid’s mentor, Sancho,
became the king of Castile. El Cid became his commander in chief. For the next seven
years El Cid helped Sancho unify Leon, Asturias and Galicia under Castilian control in a
series of fratricidal wars. In the battle of Golpejera Sancho took his brother Alfonso VI of
Leon, prisoner. However, Alfonso escaped to the Moorish kingdom of Toledo where he
remained until Sancho was killed in 1072. Alfonso then returned as overlord of the
united kingdoms. Despite suspicion that the returning king, in alliance with Sancho’s
sister Urraca, were the authors of the assassination, El Cid accepted the sworn
statement of Alfonso that he was innocent and swore his allegiance to the new king of
Asturias, Leon and Castile. To ensure future loyalties, Ximane Rodriguez, from the
castle of Gormas at the frontier with the Moors, daughter of the Count of Oviedo, Diego
Rodriguez, and niece of Alfonso VI, was given in marriage to El Cid.
In the next eight years El Cid won many battles against Saracens and Christians for his
new king, sometimes perhaps even against Alfonso’s secret wishes, for the monarch
wanted to keep the Moorish Emirs fighting against each other and apparently didn’t
want a clear victor. El Cid had powerful enemies among other Christian noblemen who
were jealous of his prowess. Eventually they contrived to sever his vassalage with the
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