A Short History of Spain

Pelayo and the Cave of Covadonga--Alfonso I.--Berbers and Arabs at War on African Coast--War Extends to Spain--The Omeyyad Khalifs Superseded by the Abbasides--Abd-er-Rahman--Om...

Rough Cradle of a Spanish Nationality in the Asturias--Alfonso III. and His Hidalgos and Dons--Guerrilla Warfare with Moors--Jealousies and Strife between Christian Kingdoms--Ci...

European Conditions in Thirteenth Century--Visigoth Kings Recover Their Land--Its Changed Conditions--Effect of Arab Civilization upon Spanish Nation--Fernando III.--Spain Draws...

Perpetual Civil War between Spanish States--Castile and Aragon Absorb the Others and in Conflict for Supremacy--Pedro the Cruel--The "Black Prince" His Champion against Aragon--...

Death of Juan II.--Enrique IV.--Isabella--Her Marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon--Isabella Crowned Queen of Castile--Ferdinand, King of Aragon--The Two Crowns United--Characteris...

Columbus and Isabella--Isabella's Private Griefs--Her Death--Charles, King under a Regency--Charles Elected Emperor of Germany--Spain during His Reign--Cruelties in the East and...

Philip III.--Rebellion of the Moriscos--Last of the Moors Conveyed to African Coast--Don Quixote--Philip IV.--Louis XIV. Marries Spanish Infanta--A Diminishing Kingdom--Carlos I...

New European Conditions--Louis XIV.--War of the "Spanish Succession"--Marlborough Checks Louis at Blenheim--Archduke Abandons Sovereignty in Spain--Peace of Utrecht--Further Dis...

A Dismantled Kingdom--Spanish-American Colonies--England and France at War over American Boundaries--Spain the Ally of France--Loss of Some of Her West India Islands, and Captur...

Liberal Sentiment Developing--Constitution of 1812--Ferdinand VI. and Reactionary Measures--Revolt of all the Spanish-American Colonies--The Holy Alliance--The Monroe Doctrine--...

Birth of an Insurgent Party in Cuba--Ten Years' War--Impossible Reforms Promised--Revolution Started by José Marti, 1895--Attitude of the American Government--General Weyler's M...

After finishing this rare bit of handiwork nature seems to have thrown up a great ragged wall, stretching from sea to sea, to protect it; and the Pyrenees have stood for ages a...

The Greeks are said to have been in the Iberian peninsula long before the fall of Troy, where they came with a fleet from Zante, in the Ionian Sea, and in memory of that place,...

The Carthaginian occupation of Spain had not extended much beyond the coast, and had been rather in the nature of a commercial alliance with a few cities. Now Hamilcar determine...

As nature delights in adorning the crevices of crumbling ruins with mosses and graceful lichens, so literature has busied itself with these historic ruins; and Cervantes has mad...

In the history of nations there is one fact which again and again with startling uniformity repeats itself. The rough, strong races from the north menace, and at last rudely dom...

The story of Ulfilas, who Christianized the pagan Goths in the last half of the fourth century, is really the first chapter not alone in the history of Gothic civilization but i...

Toledo, the capital of the Visigoth Kings, is the city about which cluster the richest memories of Spain in her heroic age. When Leovigild removed his capital there from Seville...

The Visigoth kingdom, which had stood for three centuries, had passed its meridian. It had created a magnificent background for historic Spain, and a heritage which would be the...

Tarik and his twelve thousand Berbers,[A] or Moors, had at one stroke won the Spanish Peninsula. The banner of the Prophet waved over every one of the ancient and famous cities...

But, at the early period we are considering, the "Christian kingdom" was composed of a handful of men and women who had fled from the Moslems to the mountains of the Asturias. I...

Charlemagne was at this time building up his colossal empire. His Christian soul was mightily stirred by seeing an infidel kingdom set up in Andalusia; and when, in 777, the Sar...

The tide which had flowed over southern Spain was a singular mixture of religious fervor, of brutish humanity, and refinements of wisdom and wickedness. No stranger and more com...

In the north there was developing another and very different power. The descendants of the Visigoth Kings, making common cause with the rough mountaineers, had shared all their...

A great change had been wrought in Europe. The Crusades had opened a channel through which flowed from the East reviving streams of ancient knowledge and culture over the arid w...

There were other reasons beside the growing peacefulness of the Spaniards why Granada was left to develop in comparative security for two centuries. It was impossible that adjac...

Juan II., the son of the young Catherine and the boy prince of the Asturias, died in 1454, and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King of Castile. When, after some years, Henry...

The reduction of Granada had required eleven years, and had drained the kingdom of all its resources. It is not strange that Isabella should have had no time to listen seriously...

Philip established his capital at Madrid, and commenced the Palace of the Escurial, nineteen miles distant, which stands to-day as his monument. His coronation was celebrated by...

The history of the century after the death of Philip II. is one of rapid decline; with no longer a powerful master-mind to hold the state together. Every year saw the court at M...

The last century had wrought great changes in European conditions. "The Holy Roman Empire," after a thirty-years' war with Protestantism, was shattered, and the Emperor of Germa...

But the fate of Spain was not now in the hands of her Kings. Were they good or evil she was destined henceforth to drift in the currents of _circumstance_, that sternest of mast...

The decade between 1804 and 1814 had been very barren in external benefits to Spain, with her King held in "honorable captivity" in France, and the obscure Joseph abjectly striv...

The "Salic law" had been one of the Gothic traditions of ancient Spain, and had with few exceptions been in force until 1789; when Carlos IV. issued a "Pragmatic Sanction," esta...

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the foreign dominions of Spain, although reduced, were still a vast and imperial possession. The colonial territory over which Alfonso...