The Golden One - September 28, 2019


The Visigoths and the Reconquista


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

108.699486

Word Count

616

Sentence Count

41


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Greetings and salutations from
00:00:29.800 Spain. I am in Manzanares a bit north of Madrid and I thought to take this opportunity to
00:00:36.920 give a brief introduction to the Reconquista because it's one of the most inspiring events
00:00:43.080 in history in my humble opinion. So basically in order to understand the Reconquista we have to go
00:00:49.000 back a few hundred years before it began to see the situation in the Iberian Peninsula.
00:00:55.560 And even before that we have to discuss the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe who along with other
00:01:01.720 tribes during the migration era carved out kingdoms from the crumbling western Roman Empire. That being
00:01:08.840 said it's important to point out that the Visigoths and the Romans fought on the same side in one of
00:01:13.880 the most pivotal battles in world history, the Battle of the Catalonian Plains.
00:01:19.000 Attila the Hun has begun storming through Gaul, sacking numerous towns. Fearing an attack on
00:01:29.560 northern Italy, magister militant Flavius Aesius has mustered an army in an effort to resist the
00:01:35.560 Hunnic advance. The Romans have found an unlikely ally in the form of Theodoric I, king of the Visigoths.
00:01:45.480 Intercepting Attila on the Catalonian Plains, the two sides meet in battle.
00:01:50.600 The battle was won by the Roman and Visigothic forces and soon afterwards the Visigoths began to
00:01:58.920 take over formerly western Roman territories in France and Spain
00:02:03.240 and eventually they had conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula.
00:02:11.400 Unfortunately, the Visigothic Kingdom couldn't last because the
00:02:16.200 ever-expanding Muslims came into the European scene during the 700s. They got stopped at Tours by
00:02:24.440 Charles Martel in 732 but they managed to conquer most of Spain, most of Iberia.
00:02:31.960 However, there was one last area in Spain that remained unoccupied in Asturias.
00:02:40.200 In 722, the Visigothic nobleman Pelagius won a decisive battle, the Battle of Covadonga against the
00:02:48.440 Muslim invaders. That was seen as the beginning of the Reconquista and he is seen as the founder of
00:02:54.840 the Kingdom of Asturias.
00:02:56.280 So even though it took about 800 years for the Reconquista to be complete,
00:03:06.200 the majority of land gains were won during the central part of the Middle Ages. As seen on this map,
00:03:13.320 the absolute majority of the Iberian Peninsula was reconquered by the year 1270.
00:03:20.920 And then Granada in the south, which is the deep purple in this map, held out the longest.
00:03:27.080 The Reconquista began almost immediately after the Muslims got stopped in northern Spain. And even
00:03:35.160 though it was a conflict between European Christians versus Muslim Arabs and Berbers,
00:03:40.840 the conflict was not black and white. There was plenty of infighting between both the Christian
00:03:46.440 sides and the Muslim side. So during the Middle Ages, the general trend was that the Christian kingdoms
00:03:54.120 took more and more lands back from the Muslims, but there was some setbacks as well. And again,
00:04:01.480 there was fighting between the various Christian kingdoms because they obviously wanted a larger
00:04:07.480 slice of the cake, the geographical cake, so to speak. And the same thing with the Muslims,
00:04:13.640 they also fought for power in the south.
00:04:43.960 Then of course, after the Spanish, the Iberian Peninsula was united, or at least Spain was united
00:04:50.440 completely, a golden era for Spain awaited with new territories to conquer in the new world.
00:04:58.600 And that will have to be a video for another time. I thank you kindly for watching and wish you a great day ahead.
00:05:13.640 For a while.
00:05:24.440 War of the Black Shore
00:05:26.440 I'll watch.
00:05:27.240 I'll watch.
00:05:28.280 I'll watch.
00:05:28.420 I'll see.
00:05:29.400 I'll watch.
00:05:30.880 I'll watch.
00:05:31.760 I'll see.
00:05:32.260 I've got one.
00:05:33.680 I'll watch.
00:05:34.680 How to find a human being.
00:05:36.180 You never take a woo.
00:05:37.480 I'll catch just keep a I blue.
00:05:38.400 I'll see.