Battle of Covadonga (722 AD) and Our Lady of Covadonga

 

Pelagius (Pelayo dé Asturias) defeated Umayyad Invaders, and killed Munuza (Umayyad Governor) and Alqama 

According to texts written by Mozarabs in northern Hispania during the late ninth century, the Visigoths in 718 elected a nobleman named Pelagius (c.685–737) as their princeps, or leader. Pelagius, the first monarch of the Asturian Kingdom, son of Favila, who had been a dignitary at the court of the Visigoth King Egica (687–700), established his headquarters at Cangas de Onís, Asturias and incited an uprising against the Umayyad Saracens.

From the beginning of the Saracen invasion of Hispania, refugees and combatants from the south of the peninsula had been moving north to avoid Sharia authority. Some had taken refuge in the remote mountains of Asturias in the northwestern part of the Iberian Peninsula. There, from among the dispossessed of the south, Pelagius recruited his band of fighters. 

                Hispania under Umayyad Saracens Invasion

At the end of Visigothic rule, the assimilation of Hispano-Romans and Visigoths was occurring at a fast pace. Their nobility had begun to think of themselves as constituting one people, the gens Gothorum or the Hispani. An unknown number of them fled and took refuge in Asturias or Septimania. In Asturias they supported Pelagius's uprising, and joining with the indigenous leaders, formed a new aristocracy. The population of the mountain region consisted of native Astures, Galicians, Cantabri, Basques and other groups unassimilated into Hispano-Gothic society.

In 722, forces commanded by the Umayyad commanders Alqama and Munuza, and (according to legend) accompanied by Bishop Oppas[9] of Seville, were sent to Asturias. As Alqama overran much of the region, folklore suggests that Oppas attempted to broker the surrender of his fellow Christians, but he failed in the effort. Pelagius and his force retreated deep into the mountains of Asturias, eventually retiring into a narrow valley flanked by mountains, which was easily defensible due to the impossibility of launching a broad-fronted attack. Pelagius may have had as few as three hundred men with him. (Source: " Spain: The Northern Kingdoms and the Basques, by Roger Collins " The New Cambridge Medieval History. Ed. Rosamond McKitterick. Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.) 

Alqama eventually arrived at Covadonga, and sent forward an envoy to convince Pelagius to surrender. He refused, so Alqama ordered his best troops into the valley to fight. The Asturians shot arrows and stones from the slopes of the mountains, and then, at the climactic moment, Pelagius personally led some of his soldiers out into the valley. They had been hiding in a cave, unseen by the Saracens. The Christian accounts of the battle claim that the slaughter among the Saracens was horrific, while Umayyad accounts describe it as a mere skirmish.

Pelayo’s force was probably fewer than 500 men, but the terrain meant that a large frontal attack was impossible. On arrival, Al-Qama, the Moorish leader, sent surrender terms to Pelagius, who refused to accept them. 

Al-Qama ordered his attack and sent his elite troops into the gorge. The Asturians fired arrows from both sides of the gorge, inflicting terrible casualties on the Saracens, who were then pushed back by a sudden counterattack led by Pelayo dé Asturias. The Moors’ return fire was ineffective, and the arrows they shot upward toward their foe instead fell back and landed on their own men. As the panicked Moors retreated, they were attacked by the Asturians, whose numbers were suddenly swelled by villagers who saw that victory might be possible. Some of the surviving Moors died in an avalanche while trying to flee across the surrounding mountains, while others drowned in the fast-flowing Deva River. 

Pelagius was successful destroyed half of one hundred thousand Saracens, and Alqama himself fell in the battle and killed by Hispano-Roman Force, and his soldiers withdrew from the battlefield and retreated to South. 

In the aftermath of Pelagius's victory, the people of the conquered villages of Asturias now emerged with their weapons, and killed estimated thousands of Alqama's retreating troops. Munuza, was learning of the defeat, had organized another force, and gathered what was left of the survivors of Covadonga. At some later date, he confronted Pelagius and his now greatly augmented force, near the modern town of Proaza. Again Pelagius won, and Munuza was killed in the duel fighting, He was stabbed on his chest by Pelagius. The battle is commemorated at the shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga. (Source: The kingdom of Asturias. Origins of the Spanish nation". Collection: Biblioteca Histórica Asturiana. Silverio Cañada, Gijón, 1989 ) 

After the battle, Pelagius established his capital at nearby Cangas de Onís, ruling there until his death in 737.

How Our Lady of Covadonga appeared? 

Our Lady of Covadonga's Shrine

According to tradition, Pelagius retreated to a cave where a hermit had secreted a statue of the Virgin Mary, saved from the Saracen conquest. He prayed to the virgin for victory. In the subsequent battle the Christians made use of the natural defences. The moorish commander fell in the battle, and his soldiers fled. This victory, considered the first of the Christian reconquista of Spain, established the independence of the Kingdom of Asturias in north west Spain.

Pelayo credited the intercession of the Virgin Mary for his victory. And in recognition of this miraculous intercession, King Alfonso I, the Catholic (739-757) commanded that a monastery and chapel be built on the site in honor of Our Lady of Covadonga.

The sanctuary came to be run by Augustinian canons but was destroyed by fire on 17 October 1777. The shrine was rebuilt piecemeal, until replaced by a great Basilica that was consecrated in 1901. 

                                Basílica de Santa María la Real de Covadonga