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Updated: June 6, 2025
As to Pelayo, he lived in an age in which there were neither railways nor rifled cannon, neither steamships nor Parrott guns, neither Monitors nor greenbacks, else he and his would either have been routed out of the Asturian Mountains, or have been compelled to remain there forever.
It was a far cry from the "Cave of Covadonga" to the Moorish palace of the "Alcazar," where dwelt the pious descendant of Pelayo! The first act of Fernando III. was to convert the Mosque at Seville into a cathedral, which still stands with its Moorish bell-tower, the beautiful "Giralda."
So great was the slaughter and the loss of lives caused by this defeat, that "for centuries afterward bones and weapons were to be seen in the bed of the river when autumn's heat left the sands bare." This Pelayo was the first king of Asturias, the first king of Spain, from whom all later-date monarchs descended, though neither in a direct nor a legitimate line, be it remarked in parenthesis.
Menendez broke into a rage, and gave the order to board. The men slipped the cables, and the sullen black hulk of the "San Pelayo" drifted down upon the "Trinity." The French did not make good their defiance. Indeed, they were incapable of resistance, Ribaut with his soldiers being ashore at Fort Caroline. They cut their cables, left their anchors, made sail, and fled.
From the very beginning of the reconquest of Spain from the Arab-Moors in 718, when the brave band of refugees who had not bowed to the Saracen yoke issued from the mountains of Asturias in the extreme northwest corner of Spain, under Pelayo, with vows resting upon them "to rid the land of its infidel invaders and to advance the standard of the cross until it was everywhere victorious over the crescent," the "Expulsion of the Moors" had been the hereditary appanage of the crown of Castile and Leon, the first fruits of the reconquest.
The guide or cicerone then explains to the tourist the origin of Spanish history in the middle ages, buried in the legends, of which the following is a short extract. Pelayo, the son of Doña Luz and Duke Favila, who, as we have seen, was killed by Witiza in Tuy, fled from Toledo to the north of Spain, living among the savage inhabitants of Asturias.
Oriente. Pelayo. San Antonio. San Domingo. San Firmin. San F'sco de Paula. San Genaro. San Ildefonso. San Juan Nepomuceno. San Pablo. San Ysidro. Soberano. Terrible. There were also twelve frigates, some gun-boats, and seventy transports with troops, which were disembarked at Algesiras.
Pelayo would have inquired farther into the evils thus foretold, but the hermit rebuked his curiosity. "Seek not to know more," said he, "than heaven is pleased to reveal. Clouds and darkness cover its designs, and prophecy is never permitted to lift up but in part the veil that rests upon the future."
Of the original Pelayo, some who profess to know say that he was of the highest rank,—young, handsome, and heroic, one who had fought under Roderic at the Guadalete, had been held by the Arabs as a hostage at Cordova, and had escaped to his native hills, there to infuse new life and hope into the hearts of the fugitive group.
The quaint old chronicle of the Moor Rasis, which, though wild and fanciful in the extreme, is frequently drawn upon for early facts by Spanish historians, professes to give the birth, parentage, and whole course of fortune of Pelayo, without the least doubt or hesitation. It makes him a son of the Duke of Cantabria, and descended, both by father and mother's side, from the Gothic kings of Spain.
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