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The Cave Of Covadonga
by
It was a varied throng that gathered around Pelayo’s banner. Sons of the Goths and the Romans were mingled with descendants of the more ancient Celts and Iberians. Representatives of all the races that had overrun Spain were there gathered, speaking a dozen dialects, yet instinct with a single spirit. From them the modern Spaniard was to come, no longer Gothic or Roman, but a descendant of all the tribes and races that had peopled Spain. Some of them carried the swords and shields they had wielded in the battle of the Guadalete, others brought the rude weapons of the mountaineers. But among them were strong hands and stout hearts, summoned by the drums of Pelayo to the reconquest of Spain.
Word soon came to Al Horr, the new emir of Spain, that a handful of Christians were in arms in the mountains of the northwest, and he took instant steps to crush this presumptuous gathering, sending his trusty general Al Kamah with a force that seemed abundant to destroy Pelayo and his rebel band.
Warning of the approach of the Moslem foe was quickly brought to the Spanish leader, who at once left his place of assembly for the cave of Covadonga, a natural fortress in Eastern Asturia, some five miles from Caggas de Onis, which he had selected as a place strikingly adapted to a defensive stand. Here rise three mountain-peaks to a height of nearly four thousand feet, enclosing a small circular valley, across which rushes the swift Diva, a stream issuing from Mount Orandi. At the base of Mount Auseva, the western peak, rises a detached rock, one hundred and seventy feet high, projecting from the mountain in the form of an arch. At a short distance above its foot is visible the celebrated cave or grotto of Covadonga, an opening forty feet wide, twelve feet high, and extending twenty-five feet into the rock.
The river sweeps out through a narrow and rocky defile, at whose narrowest part the banks rise in precipitous walls. Down this ravine the stream rushes in rapids and cascades, at one point forming a picturesque waterfall seventy-five feet in height. Only through this straitened path can the cave be reached, and this narrow ravine and the valley within Pelayo proposed to hold with his slender and ill-armed force.
Proudly onward came the Moslem captain, full of confidence in his powerful force and despising his handful of opponents. Pelayo drew him on into the narrow river passage by a clever stratagem. He had posted a small force at the mouth of the pass, bidding them to take to flight after a discharge of arrows. His plan worked well, the seeming retreat giving assurance to the Moslems, who rushed forward in pursuit along the narrow ledge that borders the Diva, and soon emerged into the broader path that opens into the valley of Covadonga.
They had incautiously entered a cul-de-sac, in which their numbers were of no avail, and where a handful of men could hold an army at bay. A small body of the best armed of the Spaniards occupied the cave, the others being placed in ambush among the chestnut-trees that covered the heights above the Diva. All kept silent until the Moslem advance had emerged into the valley. Then the battle began, one of the most famous conflicts in the whole history of Spain, famous not for the numbers engaged, but for the issue involved. The future of Spain dwelt in the hands of that group of patriots. The fight in the valley was sharp, but one-sided. The Moslem arrows rebounded harmlessly from the rocky sides of the cave, whose entrance could be reached only by a ladder, while the Christians, hurling their missiles from their point of vantage into the crowded mass below, punished them so severely that the advance was forced back upon those that crowded the defile in the rear. Al Kamah, finding his army recoiling in dismay and confusion, and discovering too late his error, ordered a retreat; but no sooner had a reverse movement been instituted than the ambushed Christians on the heights began their deadly work, hurling huge stones and fallen trees into the defile, killing the Moslems by hundreds, and choking up the pass until flight became impossible.