LAST but not the least among the merits of SegÓvia is to be reckoned the fact that it pays some attention to its roads, for these are decidedly the best in all the central provinces. No doubt they owe something to their proximity to the Sierra de Guadarrama, which supplies them with their granite metalling, and even vouchsafes them an occasional shower. Yet there is a balance of credit to be shared among the worthy camineros,—those humble “pawns” who are posted at long intervals along the roadway (each with his donkey and his dog), diligently trimming the margins and spreading the tags of herbage over the surface of the road. The method seems somewhat original, but at least it has the merit of success; for the scraps of turf serve to catch the dews at night-time—and moisture is the chief desideratum upon every Spanish road.{257}

The wide tawny plains which spread themselves northward from SegÓvia are chequered with mighty pine-forests, the homes of solitude and shade. These rich green masses form a striking contrast to the bare red earth around them, and the pale blue of the distant mountains which show faintly upon the horizon beyond. For miles at a stretch the road burrows through these colonnades of tree-stems,—all plentifully blazed for resin, and festooned with the little earthenware pipkins in which it is collected;—and seldom indeed is either man or beast encountered to give a touch of life to the shadowy depths around. At one point we passed a venerable padre, faithfully conning his breviary as he trudged behind his mule; at another a small brown damsel lording it over a herd of gigantic kine. But the only other living creature was a large snake dusting itself in the roadway, over whom we narrowly escaped riding, for we were right upon him before we saw what he was.

Once clear of the pine-belt, the country quickly relapses into the monotony typical of the Duero vale. One may partly avoid it by taking the road to the eastward, and making straight for BÚrgos by SepÚlveda and Aranda de Duero across a region of wild and lofty moors. But of the two roads to{258} Valladolid there is little to choose between Olmedo and Medina del Campo, and we may as well follow the more direct.

It is easy to understand, as we cross these great limitless levels, in what manner the Moors were so long able to maintain their supremacy against the hardier races of the North. The whole district is an ideal battle-field for the light-armed cavalry in which their strength consisted; and to set a medieval man-at-arms, cased in full panoply, to do a hard day’s fighting under that roasting sun is a conception worthy of Perillus himself. The battles with which History concerns itself, however, are of a later age. The disconsolate little walled town of Olmedo (once one of the keys of Castile) has given its name to two desperate conflicts in the interminable civil wars which ravaged the peninsula in the middle of the fifteenth century. Here it was that Alvaro de Luna[50] gained his great victory over his confederate enemies in the reign of John II. Here, too, in the following reign, was fought a bloody fratricidal action between Henrique IV. and Alfonso, the brothers of Isabella the Catholic.

On the eve of this latter battle, Archbishop Carillo of Toledo[51] (as usual “agin the government{259}”) sent a courteous message to his special enemy, the king’s favourite, apprising him that forty knights had bound themselves by an oath to fight neither with small nor great, but only with him, the following day. Don Beltran de la Cueva, however, though he might not deserve his honours, at least knew how to wear them gallantly. He countered by remitting a full description of his horse and armour, so that the forty knights might make no mistake;—rode into battle as advertised;—and escaped unscathed. His spirit deserved no less:—perhaps even Carillo thought so. But one would like to know what became of the forty knights.

Olmedo figures also in fiction, but not in so martial a vein. Hither, in fear of his life along the road from Valladolid, fled our old friend Gil Bias—ex-assistant to Dr Sangrado—with more murders on his conscience than even that seasoned article felt quite easy under, and the avenger of blood at his heels in the shape of an enraged Biscayan. We followed the track of his agitated Hegira, but, of course, in the reverse direction, dropping gradually down to the level of the Duero by a bare and undulating road. The broad river-basin looks comparatively green and well-wooded{260} when viewed from the heights above Simancas; yet as one crosses it, it is arid enough; and the steep, flat-topped hills which bound it seem absolutely Saharan, whether looked at from above or below. The Duero itself at this point flows in a trench between crumbling yellow banks; and the village near it, where Gil Blas struck up acquaintance with the barber and the strolling actor, lingers in our memory as the scene of our most decisive victory over our enemies the dogs. Our pockets were fairly bulging with ammunition as we descended into the mÊlÉe, and whatever we missed on the volley seemed fated to catch the ricochet. Our last missile was expended absolutely at random on the sound of a dog behind us. But to judge from the yell which followed it, it was none the less effective for that.

Valladolid has the general unfinished air befitting a town that has made several unsuccessful attempts to establish itself as a Capital; and its failure to support that dignity is perhaps less surprising than the fact that it should have been cast for the rÔle. It stands upon no important river, on no commanding hill. There is hardly a village in the plain around it but might equally well have drawn a prize in the lottery which decreed its eminence.{261}

BÚRGOS Arco San Martin.
BÚRGOS
Arco San Martin.

In strategical position it is inferior to BÚrgos—to Toledo in historical prestige.

Its memories, too (even apart from Dr Sangrado), are none of the most cheerful; for it was one of the chief seats of the dreaded Inquisition, and no city save Seville can boast a blacker fame. The wretched Jews and Moors fill up the roll of the Quemadero,[52] but there were many scholars and nobles among the victims of the Plaza Mayor at Valladolid. Here died the noble San Roman, the first of the Spanish reformers. His ashes were collected by the very soldiers that guarded his pyre and were brought to London by the English Ambassador,—a foretaste of evil to come. Here it was that Don Carlos de Seso, his limbs mangled by torture and disfigured by the ghastly San Benito, paused as he passed the royal daÏs, and sternly demanded of Philip, “as one gentleman of another,” how he could have the heart to tolerate such atrocities in his domain. “I would slay mine own son were he as thou art,” was the bigot’s answer. And so, to do him justice, he would;—on even less provocation;—as a certain grave in the Escorial can testify unto this day. But surely even Philip’s conscience can not have{262} been appeased by such a rejoinder. The memory of that awful indictment must have haunted him years afterwards in the long terrible days when he was himself meeting a yet more hideous death with equally resolute fortitude.

There was one at least of the judges who sickened at his share in that day’s butchery: for when, many years afterwards, Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, himself fell under the suspicion of the Holy Office, the remorse which he felt for de Seso was imputed to him for a crime. And the spirit which such a man could inspire in his fellows may be judged from young Julian Sanchez, who suffered the same day. The flames burnt the cords which bound him, and in his agony he wrenched himself free. The friars sprang forward to hear his recantation. But Julian’s eye fell upon the heroic figure of his leader, still steadfast amid his sufferings, and with the cry, “Let me die like de Seso!” he flung himself back into the flames.

Nowhere in Europe had Protestantism nobler martyrs than the Spaniards: and numbers of them were men of eminence; for their very judges lamented that the learned men whom they had sent to confute foreign heretics were returning to preach the faith which they were commissioned to{263} destroy. But against such persecutors their cause was hopeless. Philip and Valdez were men with hands of iron.

Valladolid has many fine monuments, but they are scattered and lost among newer and less interesting surroundings. Even the old arcaded plaza is becoming deplorably modernised; and the old-world charm of Toledo and SegÓvia may here be sought in vain. The Pisuerga river (upon which the city stands) forms the eastern boundary of the Tierra de Campos, as the Esla forms the western.[53] And the scenery of the two valleys is so nearly identical that a traveller dropped unexpectedly in either might be puzzled to say which. There are the same wide basin, the same crumbling yellow cliffs, the same troglodyte villages, the same Nilotic-looking stream. The only speciality of the Pisuerga is the extreme dustiness of the roads.

DueÑas is one of the most typical little towns of the district. Perched in full sunshine on one of the bare hills that flank the valley, it looks as thoroughly baked as a pie-crust, in spite of the poplared meadows at its feet. Here Ferdinand and Isabella first started their housekeeping, on a very modest scale indeed, with scarcely enough{264} capital to guarantee to-morrow’s dinner. “Saving a crown, he had nothing else beside,” sings the Scottish lassie of her suitor in the old ballad. But the royal lovers’ crowns were still in abeyance; and the then wearer of the Castilian diadem had very different matrimonial plans for his high-spirited sister. Wherefore he, whom History remembers as the austere and politic Ferdinand, stole secretly across the hostile frontier, disguised as groom to his own attendants, at the imminent risk of a broken head; and the knot was safely tied in the cathedral at Valladolid, with the connivance of a few of Isabella’s staunchest partisans.

DUEÑAS
DUEÑAS

The little cathedral town of PalÉncia lies a little off the direct road; but it is most conveniently situated as a half-way house to BÚrgos. The cathedral is a singularly fine one, though rather ramshackle externally; and, like a true Spanish cathedral, it is crammed with works of art. The streets are all quaintly colonnaded; but we were somewhat taken aback when we were shown the entrance to the Fonda, a miserable rat-hole in a blank and dirty wall. We had expected something better of PalÉncia:—yet nothing quite so good as the delicious shady patio which we found at the end of the passage; for the hotel is{265} really an excellent one, and its true entrance is from a street at the back. On the whole, we have nothing but commendation for PalÉncia. Only we wish that the little sisterhood, “Siervas de Maria, ministras para los enfermos,”[54] would mind—not their p’s and q’s, but their m’s and n’s. A little ambiguity in the final syllable is so extremely compromising!

We quitted PalÉncia early on midsummer morning, and soon regained the BÚrgos road. The villages that lay before us were vomiting such volumes of smoke that we concluded Torquemada must be justifying its title by the celebration of an Auto-da-fÉ. But it proved to be only lime-kilns; and Torquemada is pretty enough to deserve a gentler name. Here the Pisuerga is crossed by a long crooked old bridge; and in the fields near by occurred the incident which forms the subject of Pradilla’s famous picture, when poor mad Juana, escorting her husband’s body from BÚrgos to Grenada, elected to spend the night in the open sooner than shelter the faithless corpse in a convent of nuns. An incident worthy of Lear!

Now we deserted the Pisuerga to follow the{266} Arlanzon, a greener and narrower valley, though still somewhat dreary at times. The poppies were blazing in the brilliant sunshine with a splendour that dazzled the eye. They grow best where blood has been spilled, if we are to credit old folklore; and the Arlanzon valley may well bear out the assertion, for every stage in the journey—Torquemada, Quintana del Puente, Venta del Pozo—was the scene of some fierce skirmish during Wellington’s retreat from BÚrgos in 1812. His army suffered terribly hereabouts; for the roads were wellnigh impassable in that rainy autumn, and the sulky troops broke out of all control. At one time there were twelve thousand of them all drunk together in the wine-vaults at Torquemada! The result was almost disaster. But fortunately the stock of wine was a large one, and they left enough for the French. It may be urged in extenuation that the country vintages are more heady than one would think, especially for exhausted and starving men.

BÚRGOS Hospital del Rey.
BÚRGOS
Hospital del Rey.

Our own difficulties arose not from rain but from sunshine, and the last few miles over the hilly ground were distinctly exhausting. But at these high levels even the sultriest sun is tempered by a crisp and bracing air. The traveller who starts early can{267} generally ride out the morning, and the leafy avenues of BÚrgos were our haven at mid-day.

BÚrgos shows itself off at best advantage when seen from the eastern side, but the approach from the west is not unworthy of the Capital of Old Castile. First we pass the beautiful Plateresque[55] gateway of the Hospital del Rey. Then the towers of Las Huelgas, the most famous Nunnery in Spain. The convent was founded by Alfonso VIII.,—a trespass offering after his great defeat by the Miramamolin[56] at Alarcon. And his atonement was accepted; for twenty years later he was able to hang up over the High Altar the sacred banner captured at Las Navas de Tolosa, the great victory which extinguished for ever the long domination of the Moor.

Under its folds the young Prince Edward of England knelt watching his arms on the eve of his knighthood in 1254. Here he was married—a boy bridegroom—to his girl-bride, the Princess Leonora of Castile; and hence he carried her away with him to his home in his northern{268} island, where as the “dear Queen” of the Eleanor Crosses her name is held in honour to this day.

“Laws go as Kings wish,” says the Spanish proverb; otherwise it is difficult to imagine how the nuns could have ever permitted such a shocking thing as a wedding in their own Conventual Church. When we peeped into it, the very effigies of the kings on the royal tombs were jealously shrouded—for propriety’s sake! Formerly ten thousand dollars dowry and sixteen quarterings were indispensable to the lady who wished to renounce the vanities of the world in this exclusive cloister! But now the sisterhood is sadly reduced, and takes in “paying guests,”—to wit, another sisterhood, with whom they live (it is said) in peace and amity. I mention this because an old French curÉ, who visited the convent with us, seemed to regard it as the most astounding miracle that BÚrgos had to boast.

BÚRGOS Arco Sta Maria.
BÚRGOS
Arco Sta Maria.

The main entrance to the city is formed by the magnificent Arco de Sta Maria at the head of the bridge over the Arlanzon. It was erected to propitiate Charles V. after the revolt of the Communeros; and that monarch’s effigy consequently occupies the most conspicuous niche. He is surrounded by all the local heroes of BÚrgos;—{269}Diego de Porcelos, Fundator noster, whose German son-in-law erected the Burg,—Lain Calvo, chief of the early “Judges,”—and Fernan Gonzalez, the great count who founded the kingdom of Castile. But of course the greatest of all the city demi-gods is their “Champion Chief,” my Cid Ruy Diaz of Bivar. Doubtless he would have been their patron saint if the Pope could have been induced to canonize him;—a queer type of saint perhaps;—but there are queer types in the Calendar.

“My Cid” flourished about the time of our Norman Conquest, and from his youth upward was recognised as the doughtiest warrior in Spain. He was the sword-arm (according to legend) of three successive Castilian sovereigns; and his services culminated in the conquest of Toledo, where (again according to legend) he was commander-in-chief. Afterwards he fell into disgrace;—chiefly owing to his invincible ignorance of the dogma that you ought to stop killing Moors as soon as your king has made peace with them; and Alfonso VI. arranged the difficulty by banishing him from Castile,—to kill more Moors. “My Cid” now obtained letters of marque (or their equivalent) from the Moorish King of Zaragoza, and proceeded to carve out a kingdom for himself by the conquest{270} of ValÉncia. This enterprise required money, and “My Cid” raised it from the Jews, leaving in pawn a sealed chest full of gravel, which purported to contain his family gems. Apparently he was indignant with the Hebrews because they would not accept his bare word; and it never occurred to either party that they were, in fact, accepting his bare word in the matter of the sealed chest. As a commercial transaction it seems a little bewildering; but it all came right in the end; and “My Cid” loyally redeemed his chest of gravel at full face value when ValÉncia was subdued.

At ValÉncia he reigned in great glory, reconciled to the king and victorious against all assaults of the Moors. There he made an edifying end, serenely indifferent to the gathering of the mighty host which his foes were assembling for their final effort. Thence he sallied for the last time at the head of his comrades,—a ghastly figure, stiff in death, but clad in full armour, and mounted on Bavieca, as he was wont to ride of yore; and all the Moors that beleaguered him fled at the sight of him, so that the spoil that he took at his death was more than he had ever taken in his life. Ximena, his widow, bore back his body to BÚrgos, as he had bidden her; and his bones are exhibited{271} to inquisitive strangers in the Town Hall at a peseta a head! How could the Burgalese have the heart to ravish them from his own monastery of San Pedro de Cardena, where he slept with Ximena and Bavieca, like the tough old Berseker that he was?

Of all the cities of Northern Spain, BÚrgos is probably the best known to the average tourist; but though the English language (for which one acquires a very keen ear after a month’s abstinence) may be occasionally heard in the environs of the cathedral, yet the quaint old calles and palaces are still much less visited than they deserve. Many of the latter are particularly fine examples of their class, especially the stern old Casa del Cordon, which takes its name from the great cord of St Francis, sculptured over the portal,—a common embellishment in the palaces of that date; and the more graceful Casa Miranda, built (as we may surmise) by some relative of the “prudent” Don Diego, Don Quixote’s hospitable host. This last is a lovely old building of Italian delicacy of ornament, but, now, alas! sadly mutilated and partitioned off into squalid tenements, not entirely innocent of fleas.

“It is never hot at BÚrgos,” we had been told{272} by a friendly mentor: and I can testify that it is often cold there, for the place stands high, and the mountains of la Demanda rear their snowy crests at no great distance away. Yet the local saying, “Nine months of Winter, and three of H—l”[57] is distinctly a more impartial summary, and this month was apparently one of the three. The narrow streets blazed white and scintillating under the flood of sunshine. The wayfarer edged his way gingerly along the shady margin, and picked out the narrowest point before he would venture to cross. Then, after a timid pause, he would draw a deep breath and make a bolt for it. The sun caught him in transit like the blast from the mouth of a furnace; and he scuttled gasping into shelter, and cooled off on the further side. The Spanish shade temperature may perhaps be matched on a hot day in England, but it needs the Piazza at Venice to rival the fury of the sun.

BÚRGOS Patio of the Casa de Miranda.
BÚRGOS
Patio of the Casa de Miranda.

There are, indeed, some few Salamanders who do not appear to mind it. A party of tonsured Franciscans were unconcernedly challenging it to do its worst. But most of the saner inhabitants wisely keep indoors till the evening; and whoso wishes to see BÚrgos Society taking its airing, let{273} him seat himself after dusk in front of the CafÉ Suizo upon the Espolon. Then all the beauty and fashion turn out to promenade upon a regulation hundred yards of pavement, under the eyes of their fathers and brothers, who sit sipping their coffee and anis beneath the trees. A very handsome company they are; but, alas! their hats and frocks are mostly Parisian creations. That most graceful of all head-dresses, the mantilla, is reserved for state occasions, such as High Masses and Bull-fights. “Nothing is sacred to a sapper,”—nor to a milliner, unless it is new.

There is a cathedral at BÚrgos; and we feel ourselves justified in mentioning it, because we heard it frankly admitted that it was “a vurry fine church for such a small town.” Our Amurrican Ruskin seemed to think it hardly class enough for Chicago; but in contests of this description the battle is not to the millionaire. The builder of the Escorial, for all his great possessions, knew that it was not for his craftsmen to rival the Cartuja tombs.[58]

Indeed, there is something overwhelming about the magnificence of BÚrgos. It is rather German in character, as Leon is rather French. Yet{274} though Juan de ColÓnia was a Rhinelander and Archbishop Maurice an Englishman, there is too much pure Spanish at BÚrgos to assign all the credit to them. The building ranks as one of the wonders of Europe:—a cathedral perhaps as large as Canterbury, but finished throughout with the delicate extravagance of the bijou chapel of Roslin;—which, of course, is really Spanish also, if Scotchmen will excuse my saying so.

And, moreover, the splendour of the furniture is fully in keeping with the fabric: particularly the gorgeous metal rejas,—for what other craftsmen in Europe could vie with the Spanish smiths? Riches which might deck out a whole church among us lovers of bare walls are here found packed within the compass of a single chapel; and little gems of carving and inlay are thrust aside like lumber into corners where they can be scarcely seen. The whole is a dream of magnificence unsurpassable even in Italy: yet it is the gorgeous gloom of Toledo which still springs first to the memory when we contrast our own chaste chilly churches with the opulence of the shrines of Spain.

The cathedral stands upon steeply sloping ground well above the level of the Arlanzon. A long broad flight of steps leads up from the{275} street to the south transeptal entrance; and from the pavement of the northern transept the noble staircase of Diego de SilÖe climbs up to another street level upon the further side. Beyond it and above are piled the quaint red-roofed houses, clambering tier upon tier up the flanks of the escarpment; yet for all their aspirations the bare steep mound draws clear of them, and “Dubreton’s thundering citadel” frowns alone upon the crest.

This castle has rather an unsatisfactory interest for Englishmen, for it was the obstacle which checked the advance of Wellington in his great campaign of 1812. It stands at the tip of a long tongue of high ground which runs up to the river almost at right angles; and this extreme end is separated from the rest of the ridge by a deep depression, so that it forms a sort of semi-detached hillock, shaped like a gigantic mole-hill some three hundred and fifty feet high. The castle is included within the circuit of the city walls; and the cathedral is so close beneath it that it is wonderful that it escaped destruction during the bombardment. Yet even the stained glass which once adorned the clerestory was only destroyed by the explosion which occurred the following year. The castle was once the royal residence of Castile: but{276} nothing now remains of it except a few lines of grass-grown earthworks, which are utilised as rope-walks by the peaceful Burgalese. The modern fortress is on the hill of San Miguel, on the other side of the depression.

In Wellington’s day San Miguel was merely an outwork. Its capture was a preliminary operation, and it was stormed early in the siege. With modern artillery such a coup would have been decisive. The citadel itself would have been blown over the pinnacles of the cathedral without more ado. But in those times the old line-of-battle ships fought their thirty-two pounders muzzle to muzzle, and “three or four feet between the mouths of your pistols” was considered “as good as a mile.”

Wellington was, moreover, miserably provided with artillery, and the guns of the castle were far superior to his own. His troops were endeavouring to “tear down the ramparts with their naked hands”; and the conspicuous pillar which overlooks three counties from the lonely heights of Malvern, records the fate of the young heir of Eastnor who was killed while directing the approaches. A month’s siege and five desperate assaults left the castle still unwon when the French{277} armies had gathered to relieve it: and the besiegers with muffled wheels stole away over the bridges in the night-time. The campaign which began so gloriously at Salamanca[59] had ended in another retreat.

BÚRGOS From the East.
BÚRGOS
From the East.

Yet the labour and carnage were not wasted. Joseph had neither time nor money to spend upon repairing the battered fortress, and next year the tide of war rolled back like the surge of the sea. Wellington, riding at the head of his troops across the hills from the westward, was saluted by the thunder of a terrific explosion which darkened the heavens above him and shook the ground beneath his feet. Then first, with stern elation, he recognised the presage of VitÓria. His foes had despaired of resisting him. The castle of BÚrgos was no more.{278}