Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/591

Rh Period of the small kingdoms, unions, separations and reunions ; the sons of Alphonso III. having rebelled, and forced a division of the kingdom near the close of the king’s reign:—

The counts of Castile began, as a body, and not as a line of chiefs in the reign of Alphonso the Chaste (789–842). They strove for independence from the first, and when one count had replaced several they achieved it.

The early history of Navarre has been overlaid with fable, and with pure falsification, largely the work of the Benedictines of San Juan de la Pefia near Huesca. Their object was to prove the foundation of their house by a king of Navarre, Aragon and Sobrarbe, in the 9th century. They were helped by the patriotism of the Aragonese, who wished to give their kingdom an antiquity equal to that of Leon. Hence much pure invention, bolstered up by forgery of charters, falsification of genuine ones, and construction of imaginary pedigrees.

Historic kingdom of Aragon:—

In the last years of the 8th and beginning of the 9th century, Charlemagne and Louis the Pius began conquering the north-east of Spain, which the Arabs had occupied as early as 713. By 811 the Franks had conquered as far as Tortosa and Tarragona. The territory gained was called the Marca Hispanica, and was governed by counts of Roussillon, Ampurias, Besaltu, Barcelona, Cerdena, Pallars and Urgell. They became independent during the decadence of the Carolingians. The supremacy was acquired gradually by the