Essay XXVI.: A Glance at the History of Spain.

It is independence which is ancient, despotism which is modern, as Madame de Stael has energetically said; and in these few words she has retraced our entire history, and the history of all Europe. There is no reason for separating the destiny of Spain from the common destiny; its present situation, apparently a novelty, is not a novelty to it. More than once its sun has risen upon generations of free men; and what it now displays before the eyes of astounded Europe, is little else than the restoration of an almost ruined edifice, of which the foundation still existed. If the events of this world had an equal and uniform course, Spain would always have been far in advance of France in its civil liberty. Civil war, the consequence and development of conquest, never ceased to agitate the inixed population of Gaul: by a great general disaster, the population of Spain was early united in a common fraternity, confounded in the same interest, the same sentiment, the same condition, and the same customs. In the year 712, the Arabs took possession of the whole country except a small desert on the north-west between the sea and the mountains, the sole habitation left to those who did not acknowledge the right of the conquerors over the dwelling of their ancestors. Confined in that corner of land which became a country for them all, Goths and Romans, conquerors and conquered, strangers and natives, all united by the same misfortune, forgot their ancient feuds, aversions, and distinctions: there was but one name, one law, one state, one language: all were equal in this exile.

They descended their steep mountains, and placed the limits of their dwelling in the plains; they built fortresses to insure their progress, and the name of land of castles is still preserved by two provinces, which formed in succession the frontiers of the reconquered kingdom. To assist them in these expeditions, they made an alliance with the ancient race of inhabitants of the Pyrenees, a race at all times independent, which had never yielded to the power of the Romans, whose language it never spoke, had never yielded to the ferocious valour of the Franks, whose rear-guard it had crushed at Roncesvalles, and had seen the torrent of the fanatical warriors of the East roar vainly at its feet. This union deprived the Moors towards the commencement of the twelfth century of the great cities of Sargossa and Toledo; other cities soon shared the same fate. The grandest part of the history of Spain is the political history of these cities, successively reconquered by the ancient population of the country.

The equality which reigned in the patriotic armies of the Asturias and of Léon could not perish by victory: they were perfectly free men who occupied the houses and ramparts deserted by the flight of the enemy; they were perfectly free men who became burgesses and citizens. Urban and rural property established no distinction of rank among men. Rank or personal consideration did not pass from the possessor to the domain; and no domain was able to communicate to him who obtained it as his share power over lands or men. No one could demand from another any thing besides his legitimate rights; no one could take from the hands of another the weapons they had borne together. Thus the man of the fortress and the man of the city, the lord of the manor and the peasant, equally free in their various possessions, lived as friends and not as enemies. It was not that men were better in those countries than elsewhere; it was because every thing was established there on a groundwork of primitive equality and fraternity; whilst in the neighbouring countries, the main point of revolutions on the contrary was the basis of an absolute inequality impressed on the soil by the footstep of conquest, and degraded itself little by little, yet unable to become totally effaced.

Every city re-peopled by Christians became a commune, that is to say, a sworn association under freely elected magistrates: all this sprung without an effort, without a dispute, from the simple effect of the occupation of the city. The citizens had nothing to pay beyond the civil contribution; they had no obligation beyond that of maintaining their society and defending its territory. They had to rally in times of common danger round the supreme chief of the country; each one came at the summons to place himself under the banners of his commune and leaders of his own choice. Whoever possessed a war-horse and the armour of a horseman, was exempted from this service from the contribution of war; the others paid a moderate duty: thus the population was divided in the language into horsemen and taxables; this distinction, in fact, was the only one. The influence of foreign customs added to it later rights which were not derived thence.

The chiefs, settled in vast territories for the care of the general defence, likewise founded towns by calling into an enclosure, protected by their fortresses, the Christians escaped from the Moorish country, and those who had no certain abode. Here there were treaties, contracts, and charters, which expressed the rights of the future city, and stipulated the price of land for whoever should make it his dwelling. The charter bound forever or until a new agreement, the citizens and their sons, as well as the sons of him who had founded the commune; the cities possessed round them vast portions of land which submitted to their municipal jurisdiction; their power of justice extended to the castles which received instead of granting it. There were no various ranks or servile labours for the workmen. It seemed as if all those who had reconquered their native land were sacred to one another: mutual respect, mutual pride, protected them; and the traces of this noble character are to be met with in the present day in the pride of the peasant of Castile.

The territories containing several towns, which according to the custom of the period took the name of kingdoms, possessed as their common organization the same organization as the municipal cities, elective chiefs, and a great general assembly. The dignity of supreme chief in time became hereditary by the influence of feudal customs, which were a model for all Europe.

As to the general assemblies, there is no occasion to ask at what period the representatives of the cities took their seats there. The cities were equal to the castles; the same race of men inhabited them, a race equal in every respect to the other, by its origin, customs and arms. As soon as it became necessary to take counsel, the cities gave their advice. If, in the course of time, a large number of cities were deprived of their natural right of sending deputies to the general assemblies, it was because they had themselves allowed it to fall into disuse, being satisfied with the sole independence of their internal government. The despotic power felt itself authorized by this negligence to inflict on them, in the name of prescription, perpetual incapacity. The flux and reflux of feudal successions brought kings of foreign race into Spain; they finished without scruple the work of tyranny which the evil genius of nations had already inspired to the chiefs who united the whole country under one authority. The assemblies became but a shadow before the reality of power. Yet until the middle of the seventeenth century, the cortès of Castile did not cease to bring forward their complaints in a sometimes energetic manner, or to treat as illegal the arbitrary acts of the kings; but these courageous voices were lost in the silence of all Europe; there was no longer an echo anywhere for the accents of independence.

Such was the destiny of the land reconquered by the sons of the companions of that king, a bandit (from patriotism,) to whom tradition gives the unauthentic name of Pelasgius. In the north-eastern provinces which formed the territories of Catalonia and Arragon, a country snatched by the arms of the Franks from the arms of the Saracens, some traces of that foreign deliverance always existed; the hand of the conqueror long remained impressed there; the political formulas of those countries reverence the names of serf and master, tributary and superior. Nevertheless, by the side of the hereditary dependence which they imposed on a portion of men, the laws of Arragon established for the powerful of the country a complete independence, the independence of the ancient Franks, the companions of the Karles and Chlodowigs. The formula of election of the kings, so much cited by historians, has something of the proud and harsh language which was spoken at the invasion of Gaul under the tents of Soissons or of Reims.

Spain has joined with a daring hand the broken thread of its ancient days of glory and of liberty; may no reverse crush its noble and perilous effort! Esto perpetua! this is the wish of a stranger who believes, that wherever free men are, there also are friends to mankind. The happy mother of a people united for so many centuries by the community of good and evil, of a people which has in the background no memories of civil wars, she will doubtless not see her soil dishonoured by those political proscriptions which reproduce the wars of nation against nation long after the hostile names cease to exist, and every thing seems united by the same language and the same customs. If too sharp discussions, the inevitable results of the weakness of our excited minds, for one moment trouble its repose, at least the sentiment of ancient equality, the conscience that there are no hereditary injuries or wrongs upon the head of any citizen that the Spaniard ever loved, ever respected the Spaniard, and that the misfortunes of despotism were the work of foreign hands; these calm and consoling ideas will no doubt soften the asperity of vain disputes, and the clashing of rival pretensions. Blood will never flow in the midst of these family debates; the Spaniard will at all times be the beloved brother of the Spaniard.