Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius preserved his independence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descendants of his followers, after some centuries, completed their struggle by the conquest of Grenada.
Roderick the Goth violated Florinda, or Caba, or Cava, daughter of Count Julian, one of his principal lieutenants. In revenge for this outrage, Julian allied himself with Musca, the Caliph's lieutenant in Africa, and countenanced the invasion of Spain by a body of Saracens and Africans commanded by Tarik, from whom Jebel Tarik, Tarik's Rock, that is, Gibraltar, is said to have been named. The issue was the defeat and death of Roderick and the Moorish occupation of Spain. A Spaniard, according to Cervantes, may call his dog, but not his daughter, Florinda. (See Vision of Don Roderick, by Sir W. Scott, stanza iv. note 5.)]
8.
No! as he speeds, he chants "Vivā el Rey!"
Stanza xlviii. line 5.
"Vivā el Rey Fernando!" Long live King Ferdinand! is the chorus of most of the Spanish patriotic songs. They are chiefly in dispraise of the old King Charles, the Queen, and the Prince of Peace. I have heard many of them: some of the airs are beautiful. Godoy, the Principe de la Paz, of an ancient but decayed family, was born at Badajoz, on the frontiers of Portugal, and was originally in the ranks of the Spanish guards; till his person attracted the queen's eyes, and raised him to the dukedom of Alcudia, etc., etc. It is to this man that the Spaniards universally impute the ruin of their country.
Manuel de Godoy (1767-1851) received the title of Principe de la Paz, Prince of the Peace, in 1795, after the Treaty of Basle, which ceded more than half St. Domingo to France. His tenure of power, as prime minister and director of the king's policy, coincided with the downfall of Spanish power, and before the commencement of the Peninsular War he was associated in the minds of the people with national corruption and national degradation. He was, moreover, directly instrumental in the betrayal of Spain to France. By the Treaty of Fontainebleau, October 27, 1807, Portugal was to be divided between the King of Etruria and Godoy as Prince of the Algarves, Portuguese America was to fall to the King of Spain, and to bring this about Napoleon's troops were to enter Spain and march directly to Lisbon. The sole outcome of the treaty was the occupation of Portugal and subsequent invasion of Spain. Before Byron had begun his pilgrimage, Godoy's public career had come to an end. During the insurrection at Aranjuez, March 17-19, 1808, when Charles IV. abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand VII., Godoy was only preserved from the fury of the populace by a timely imprisonment. In the following May, by which time Ferdinand himself was a prisoner in France, he was released at the instance of Murat, and ordered to accompany Charles to Bayonne, for the express purpose of cajoling his master into a second abdication in favour of Napoleon. The remainder of his long life was passed, first at Rome, and afterwards at Paris, in exile and dependence. The execration of Godoy, "who was really a mild, good-natured man," must, in Napier's judgment, be attributed to Spanish venom and Spanish prejudice. The betrayal of Spain was, he thinks, the outcome of Ferdinand's intrigues no less than of Godoy's unpatriotic ambition. Another and perhaps truer explanation of popular odium is to be found in his supposed atheism and well-known indifference to the rites of the Church, which many years before had attracted the attention of the Holy Office. The peasants cursed Godoy because the priests triumphed over his downfall (Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula, i. 8; Southey's Peninsular War, i. 85 note, 93, 215, 280).]
9.
Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,
Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet.
Stanza l. lines 2 and 3.
The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre.
10.
The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match.
Stanza li. line 9.
All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every defile through which I passed in my way to Seville.
11.
Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall.
Stanza lvi. line 9.
Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at Seville, she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta.
The story, as told by Southey (who seems to have derived his information from The Narrative of the Siege of Zaragoza, by Charles Richard Vaughan, M.B., 1809), is that "Augustina Zaragoza (sic), a handsome woman of the lower class, about twenty-two years of age," a vivandiere, in the course of her rounds came with provisions to a battery near the Portello gate. The gunners had all been killed, and, as the citizens held back, "Augustina sprang over the dead and dying, snatched a match from the hand of a dead artilleryman, and fired off a twenty-six pounder; then, jumping upon the gun, made a solemn vow never to quit it alive during the siege."
After the retreat of the French, "a pension was settled upon Augustina, and the daily pay of an artilleryman. She was also to wear a small shield of honour, embroidered upon the sleeve of her gown, with 'Zaragoza' inscribed upon it" (Southey's Peninsular War, ii. 14, 34).
Napier, "neither wholly believing nor absolutely denying these exploits," which he does not condescend to give in detail, remarks "that for a long time afterwards, Spain swarmed with Zaragoza heroines, clothed in half-uniforms, and theatrically loaded with weapons."
A picture of "The Defence of Saragossa," painted by Sir David Wilkie, which contained her portrait, was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1829, and was purchased by the king (Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula, i. 45; Life of Sir D. Wilkie, by John W. Mollett, 1881, p. 83). Compare, too, The Age of Bronze, vii. lines 53-56—
" ... the desperate wall
Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;
The man nerved to a spirit, and the maid
Waving her more than Amazonian blade."]
12.
The seal Love's dimpling finger hath impressed
Denotes how soft that chin which bears his touch.
Stanza lviii. lines 1 and 2.
"Sigilla in mento impressa Amoris digitulo
Vestigio demonstrant mollitudinem."
Aul. Gel.
The quotation does not occur in Aulus Gellius, but is a fragment in iambic metre from the Papia papæ περὶ ἐγκωμίων of M. Terentius Varro, cited by the grammarian Nonius Marcellus (De Comp. Doct., ii. 135, lines 19-23). Sigilla is a variant of the word in the text, laculla, a diminutive of lacuna, signifying a dimple in the chin. Lacullum is not to be found in Facciolati. (Vide Riese, Varro. Satur. Menipp. Rel., 1865, p. 164.)]
13.
Oh, thou Parnassus!