The story begins with collapse. When the Umayyad invasion swept through Hispania in 711, the Visigothic kingdom that had ruled the peninsula shattered. Refugees and fighters from the south fled northward, many taking shelter in the remote Cantabrian Mountains of Asturias, where the terrain was too rugged and the population too sparse to attract immediate conquest. Among the dispossessed was a nobleman named Pelagius, son of Favila, who had served at the court of the Visigothic King Egica. In 718, the remaining Visigoths elected Pelagius as their leader and he established headquarters at Cangas de Onis. The population around him was diverse -- native Astures, Galicians, Cantabrians, Basques, and Hispano-Gothic refugees -- but they shared a common refusal to submit. Pelagius's first acts were to stop paying the jizya and to attack the small Umayyad garrisons stationed in the region.

For several years, Pelagius's rebellion was too small to worry the Umayyad rulers in Cordoba. Islamic forces were focused on campaigns across the Pyrenees into Francia, and the mountain insurgency seemed beneath serious attention. What changed the calculation was the Battle of Toulouse in July 721, where a Muslim force invading Francia suffered its first serious defeat in southwestern Europe. Reluctant to return to Cordoba with nothing but bad news, the Umayyad governor Anbasa ibn Suhaym al-Kalbi decided to crush the Asturian rebellion on his way home -- a quick victory to restore morale. He dispatched commanders Alqama and Munuza with a force that overran much of the region. According to legend, Bishop Oppas of Seville accompanied them and attempted to negotiate Pelagius's surrender. Pelagius retreated deeper into the mountains, drawing the Umayyad army into a narrow valley where a broad-fronted assault was impossible.

At Covadonga, Pelagius had chosen his ground well. His fighters lined the mountain slopes above the valley, raining arrows and stones down on the Umayyad troops funneled into the narrow passage below. At the decisive moment, Pelagius led a contingent of soldiers out from a cave where they had been concealed, striking the Umayyad column from an unexpected direction. Christian chroniclers described the slaughter as horrific; Umayyad accounts dismissed the encounter as a minor skirmish. What is undisputed is the outcome: the Umayyad commander Alqama was killed, and his surviving troops withdrew in disorder. As they retreated, villagers from across Asturias emerged with weapons and fell on the routed soldiers, killing hundreds more.

Munuza gathered the remnants and confronted Pelagius again near the modern town of Proaza. Once more Pelagius prevailed, and Munuza was killed in the fighting. With both Umayyad commanders dead, Asturias was free. Pelagius founded the Kingdom of Asturias, which became the first Christian stronghold in Muslim-held Iberia and the seed from which the Reconquista grew -- an eight-century campaign that would not end until the fall of Granada in 1492. The battle is commemorated today at the shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga, built into the mountainside above the valley where Pelagius and his fighters hid. Whether Covadonga was a major battle or a mountainside skirmish matters less than what followed from it. A nobleman in a cave, with a few hundred dispossessed fighters, created a kingdom that outlasted the caliphate that tried to erase it.