My principal authorities have been the autobiography of Jayme I., the Chronicle of Muntaner, Desclot, Zurita, and the histories of Dameto and Mut, edited by Bover. My thanks are due for much courtesy and assistance from the Count of Montenegro, H.M. Consul Don Bartolomè Bosch y Cerda, and Señor Albareda of the Grand Hotel at Palma, and to Mr. Gilbert Ogilvy for having kindly made sketches for me of the memorial chair at Alfavia.
The story of Minorca necessarily embraces an account of the several British occupations, and of some of the operations of the British fleet with Minorca as a base.
September 1908.
CHAPTER I
Of King Jayme I. of Aragon and how he resolved to conquer Majorca and drive out the Moors
Majorca has a very interesting history under its Aragonese princes, and a history which has been well told by those princes themselves and by a loyal vassal who was a diligent seeker after truth. But to understand it we must turn first to the gorges of the Pyrenees and the ports of Catalonia.
By the middle of the eighth century the Moors had overcome Spain up to the Pyrenees, and established their rule and their religion in all parts of the country. But there they had to stop. They could not subdue the mountaineers of Asturias and the Basque provinces. Strong in their almost inaccessible valleys in the southern slopes of the Pyrenees, the ancestors of the nobles of Aragon also held their Moslem enemies at bay. Wild as those valleys were, they were beautiful and productive. Evergreen oaks clothed the lower slopes, succeeded by pine forests, and still higher up are the bushes and trees of box so characteristic of the Pyrenees. The mountaineers had their flocks and herds, crops of barley and oats, and abundance of timber. But there was a long struggle before them.
The little kingdom of Navarre was founded by Garcia Jimenes as early as 758, and Louis, the son of Charlemagne, drove the Moors out of Barcelona and established a Christian country there about fifty years afterwards. At length the kingdom of Aragon was founded by Ramiro I., a son of the King of Navarre, and Buesca was taken from the Moors and became the first capital of Aragon. Then the great Alonso, surnamed ‘El Batallador,’ having firmly established his power in the plains, drove the Moors out of Zaragoza in 1118, which was thenceforth the capital of Aragon.
The marriage of Petronilla, the heiress of Aragon, with Raymond Berenger, the Count of Barcelona, raised the kingdom to a position of importance among the nations of the Middle Ages. The Counts of Barcelona during three centuries had ruled over a maritime people of great energy. These rulers were, for the most part, capable men, whether in war or peace. The Berengers were great warriors. It is related that the first of the family passed his hand, covered with blood, down the face of his golden shield after a battle, and ever afterwards the arms of Barcelona, granted by the Emperor Charles the Bald in 873 and eventually adopted by Aragon, were or four pales gules.1 The old arms of Aragon were a cross of St. George between four Moors’ heads. They were quartered with those of Barcelona after the union; but latterly those of the Counts of Barcelona only were used. Sicily was per saltire the arms of Aragon (Barcelona) above and below, imperial eagles dexter and sinister. As rulers of a maritime and commercial people, the Counts were not found wanting. Count Raymond, called the ‘Old,’ gave the Catalans a code of laws and began the cathedral at Barcelona, and his successors fostered the rising importance of Catalan enterprise.
Aragon, like England, was a constitutional monarchy, with the ‘Fueros de Sobrarbe’ as its Magna Charta. The King could do nothing, in peace or war, without the counsel of the nobles, called ‘Ricos Hombres,’2 and there was a court of appeal in the ‘Justicia Mayor.’ The Parliament was composed of the ‘Ricos Hombres’ and the ‘Syndicos’ of the towns. Next in rank to the ‘Ricos Hombres’ were the ‘Infançones,’ equivalent to ‘Hidalgos’ in Castille. The prefix ‘En’ was used in Aragon as equivalent to ‘Don’ in Castille. The Catalan language, allied to the Provençal, was spoken by the people, and written by lawyers, chroniclers, and troubadours. It was extended to Valencia and the Balearic Isles, and claims great antiquity. It was the language of an enterprising commercial people, and was well adapted to be a vehicle for romantic and national songs.
The exact identity of duration of the two dynasties of Plantagenets and Aragonese sovereigns invites comparison. The heiress Petronilla was the contemporary of our Empress Maud; and Ferdinand, the last male of his race, was the contemporary of our last Plantagenet, Richard III. They were neighbours, the Pyrenees only separating Gascony of the Plantagenets from Aragon and Catalonia. They were cousins through Eleanor of Provence. They were more than cousins, for Raymond, the husband of Petronilla, chose our Henry II. for the guardian of his children, and the greatest of our kings, Edward I., was the trusted umpire selected by Pedro III. of Aragon, and the intended father-in-law of his son. Both families were composed of remarkable men, renowned for chivalry, bravery, and, in more instances than was the case in most dynasties, for wisdom as rulers.
Pedro II. of Aragon reigned from 1196 to 1213. He and his cousin En Nuño de Sans fought at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa side by side with the kings of Castille and Navarre. It was the great conflict which finally settled the preponderance of Christians over Moors. After that famous victory the expulsion of the latter was only a question of time. Pedro married the heiress of Montpellier and became the Lord of that barony, as well as of Roussillon and Cerdaña. This brought him in contact with Simon de Montfort; and the King of Aragon appears to have made an agreement with Simon by which he gave his only son Jayme to be brought up at Carcassonne with a view to his eventual marriage with a daughter of De Montfort. Afterwards a war broke out between Aragon and Carcassonne, and Pedro was slain in a battle near the castle of Muret.
The heir of Aragon was at Carcassonne, in the power of his father’s enemy, and was only six years of age. He was born on February 8, 1208. Simon de Montfort at first refused to give him up; but, owing to the intervention of the Pope, he was restored to his subjects, and arrived at Montpellier in safety with his cousin Ramon Berenguer of Provence, who was the same age. This companion of Jayme was the future grandfather of Edward I. of England.
Jayme I. of Aragon, surnamed the Conqueror, was among the greatest sovereigns in an age of great sovereigns, the age of Edward I. of England, of St. Louis of France, of St. Fernando of Castille, of Frederick II. of Germany. Accepted by his Parliament and guarded by his nobles during his minority, Jayme entered upon his duties as ruler of a free people with every advantage. His person is described by Desclot. He was very tall—over six feet—with broad shoulders, small waist, and well-proportioned limbs. He had a fair rosy complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair. He was strong and active, very expert in all exercises on foot or horseback, valiant and well-practised in arms. He was courteous and affable to all classes of people, and he was as merciful as he was brave. There is one charming incident which throws a very pleasant light on his character. It is related in his own journal. His tent had been pitched in one place for a considerable time, and when the camp was moving it was found that a swallow had built its nest between the tent-poles. The King ordered that the tent was to remain pitched and guarded until the young swallows could fly, saying that the mother-bird had put herself under his protection, and that he could not disappoint her. Jayme, when a boy, was married to a princess of Castilla and had a son by her named Alonso, who died young. But the mother of his other children was Violante, daughter of King Andrew of Hungary and sister of St. Isabel.
The first great enterprise undertaken by King Jayme was the expulsion of the Moors from the Balearic Islands, which they had possessed for five hundred years.
Majorca, with its satellites Minorca and Iviça, forms a very fine possession. The largest of the islands, with its fifty miles of extent and area covering 1,300 square miles, is nearly square, with its two large bays of Palma and Alcudia on either side and a projection to the south-west; but the grace and beauty of its outline should have saved it from being called a ‘quadrilateral trapezoid.’ A fine range of mountains, mainly of Jurassic limestone