Battle of Covadonga

Traditionally, the Battle of Covadonga mark the beginning of the “Reconquista” of Spain by the Christian kings. Having taken place at one moved back time, it is difficult to make the share of the truth, of invented and of enjolivé in the various versions.

According to the tradition

It is established by texts of the end of the 9th century, written by Mozarabe S taken refuge in the north of the Iberian peninsula: Chronic Mozarabs. According to these texts, noble Visigoths elects like caudillo (captain) Pelayo (Peeling) (born in 681, elected in 718, died in 737), wire of Favila, a former dignitary of the court of the king Egica (687-700), which fixes its capital at Cangas de Onís and takes the head of a rising against the Moslems.

At the beginning of the Moslem invasion , some resistant coming from Tolède and the south of the peninsula seeks to escape the Islamic authority. They take refuge in this lost area of the mountains asturiennes, where the emigrants can be able to hide. It is there that Pelayo organizes the rebellion. He is heard by the asturiens and convenes an assembly which recognizes it for chief, thus conforming to the traditions of the Visigoths, whose sovereigns were elected. In 718 it decides to be withdrawn from the payment of the tribute and to be caught of them with the small garrisons Berbères established in the country.

During several years, it does not seem that this rebellion was taken with serious by the new Masters of the Spain who reign with Cordoue. The events which proceed in these distant valleys - without much economic interest nor strategic for the Musulmans - pass unperceived. The Islamic forces very whole are absorbed by their raids in Narbonnaise and Gaulle. Also do not have they troops to come to end from the revolt. Of as much less than in July 721, an Arab chief named Anbasa ibn Suhaym Al-Kalbi is put in escape in front of Toulouse, “theater of the first serious disaster of Islam in Occident”. Anbasa is not less named emir and estimates by it that a punitive forwarding against the rebellion asturienne can provide him an easy success, able to return courage to its demoralized troops.

It thus orders, in 722, of subduing rising. Forces ordered by the Berber Al-Kama and Mounouça, accompanied by Apertures, bishop of Seville and brother of Witiza, are sent in North. Apertures tries, in vain, to negotiate the rendering of its co-religionists.

The chronic Christian women describe a quota of 180.000 men concerning the manpower of the task force buckwheat placed under the command of Al Qama; though the emir Ambasa followed on right account the importance of the events being held in the Iberian peninsula, these manpower mirific largely exceed the real number; indeed to enlarge these figures makes it possible to increase the glory obtained by such a victory.

Pelayo which provides that it cannot hold head in open country with the troops of the “Sarrasins” is withdrawn with its own forces in the throats of Covadonga, with the foot of the Pics of Europe, area impregnable where it is easy to resist higher enemies of number. In this hidden site, it attracts the forces ordered by Al-Kama. As soon as that the Moslems penetrated in the throats of Covadonga, a group of rebels asturiens their cut the retirement, Pelayo could thus overcome the troops Moors, made unable to operate because of the exiguity of the places. Al-Kama is killed in the battle.

The miracle of Cosgaya

Deprived of their chief, any cut retirement and incompetents to join their bases, the overcome Moslem troops, pursued by the mountain dwellers asturiens, then begin a long operation of escape through mounts and valleys. During two days and two nights, they cross five collars, located between 1200 and 1500 meters. Seeking to leave this inextricable labyrinth in which the resistant ones attracted, they will cover nearly fifty kilometers to foot, unceasingly in hillock with the skirmishes and the guets-apens, which are the resource first troops of guerilla.

Arrivals close to Cosgaya, whereas they walk on on escarpée bank of the Deva river, it occurs a landslide or a crumbling, and the survivors of the rout of Covadonga are carried with masses of rocks and ground and are absorbed in the floods. Such is the dramatic end of this forwarding intended to punish the rebellion asturienne. Useless to say that this providential crumbling is allotted soon to a miraculous intervention.

But it is not interdict to think that the miracle was largely favoured by the men, and that the rebellious mountain dwellers took an active share there. It seems in any case that the Moslems were not likely any to escape their prosecutors. The way that they followed led them indeed to the valley of Liébana, where the populations would not have let them penetrate.

For the first time, the Christians of Spain gain a victory over the Moslems. Very marginal that it is, this battle marks, with the eyes of the Spaniards, the birth of resistance and the beginnings of the Reconquête. Covadonga becomes a symbol, called to erase the humiliation of Guadalete. A thin gleam of hope returns courage to the Christians submitted to the Islamic occupants. This destruction of an army of Islam, in 722, is exactly a century after the Hégire, could not miss striking the spirits, which transfer a prophetic event there. Peeling, first king of Asturies independent, became the natural chief of the Christians against the invader. They tightened the rows at its sides, testing the feeling to be “the small remainder of the God's people” promised with the hello.

From now on, from the Christian reinforcements were going to arrive unceasingly in the form of new quotas of refugees of the south, emigrating towards north to escape oppression and to find independence. Because the defeat of a Moslem quota with Covadonga - which passes unperceived in the Arab chronicles - represents for the Christians the possibility of perpetuating the fiction of the survival of the “people of Goths”, as the Chronicle of Alphonse III expresses it Large the (born in 836, king of Asturies in 866 and died in 911.)

Allotting its victory to the protection of the Virgin, Pelayo makes raise a furnace bridge in its honor in the cave del Auseba which was used as shelter with his. The cave takes the name of Cova Dominica, the cave of Notre-Dame, who, by deterioration, will become Covadonga.

According to the Moslem chroniclers

Pelayo tries well to organize resistance but to the head of “thirty wild asses” which cannot, to in no case, to present a real threat for the Moslem capacity. This forwarding is presented like a total success; the rebels are punished and the whole of Asturies is reconquered.

See too

Internal bonds

Royaume of Asturies
Reconquista
other battles paid by the hagiographic tradition: Clavijo

External bonds

chart of situation
Seen air of the Basilica of Covadonga
the Basilica
the Cave of Covadonga
royal Site of Covagonda - Asturies (Cangas de Onís) (perpetuating the legend)

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