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Chapter 2 - Fighting a Battle in the Middle Ages
- Edited by Luís Adão da Fonseca, João Monteiro, Maria Cristina Pimenta
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- Book:
- Aljubarrota Battle and Its Contemporary Heritage
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 November 2020
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- 29 February 2020, pp 19-34
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Summary
ON APRIL 6, 1385, João, Master of Avis, was crowned as the tenth Portuguese monarch, therefore giving rise to a second (and brilliant) dynasty. At the same time, the legal advisor João das Regras was appointed Chancellor and Nuno Álvares Pereira was chosen to be the Constable of the kingdom. At the same time, a loan of £400,000 was granted by the Cortes to the hero who had saved Lisbon from the Castilian conquest, since it was clear that the war was far from over.
With his legitimacy greatly reinforced by the election held in Coimbra, João I then advanced northwards, and alongside his Constable, he took a series of garrisons in the district of Minho, which stubbornly held out for Juan and Beatriz—Neiva, Viana, Cerveira, Monção, Caminha, Braga, Guimarães, and Ponte de Lima. However, at Easter 1385, as we shall see in more detail later, various English vessels loaded with mercenaries docked at Lisbon, Setubal, and Porto. The old chancellor Lourenço Fogaça and the Master of Santiago had managed to unblock their contracts in England.
In response, Juan I ordered a new attack on Portugal. This time the offensive would take place on three fronts: the Castilian fleet would attack Lisbon, while a land army would once again invade Beira, and the king himself would lay siege to the Alentejan border town of Elvas. The plan was good, but operations went wrong, except for the naval operation. The incursion into Beira resulted in an absolute disaster, since the Castilian column carrying a considerable amount of loot on its return from Viseu was ambushed and slaughtered near Trancoso. This happened on May 29, 1385 and the heroes of the hour were Portuguese noblemen from the province of Beira: Gonçalo Vasques Coutinho, Martim Vasques da Cunha, João Fernandes Pacheco, and Egas Coelho, among others. All the captains in the service of Juan I perished in the fighting, with the exception of his chief cupbearer, Álvaro García de Albornoz. To make matters worse, Elvas resisted siege by the king and he was therefore forced to change plans. He concentrated a large number of troops on the Portuguese–Castilian border and, in the second week of July, entered Portugal once again with a powerful, reinvigorated army.
Chapter 5 - Casualties and the Aftermath
- Edited by Luís Adão da Fonseca, João Monteiro, Maria Cristina Pimenta
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- Book:
- Aljubarrota Battle and Its Contemporary Heritage
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 November 2020
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- 29 February 2020, pp 67-74
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THE PORTUGUESE ARMY remained in its fortified position on the battlefield for three days (according to royal letters issued on those days). On August 17, they headed to Alcobaça, around fifteen kilometres to the southwest. When they crossed the Chiqueda bridge, they found the bodies of many more Castilians that had tried to escape the battlefield. This slaughter was due to the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça (D. João de Ornelas) and his men, who were loyal to the Portuguese king. Indeed, on the day of the battle, they had sent pack-horses laden with bread and wine to the Constable to help sustain the troops during their long wait in the sun.
López de Ayala confirmed that many good gentlemen and knights died at São Jorge. He provides a list of twenty names, including noblemen, the adelantado mayor, the admiral, the two marshals, and the mayordomo mayor of Castile, in addition to “many other knights from Castile and Leon.”1 Ayala also mentions the death of some of the Portuguese that were with Juan I (such as the Master of Calatrava, brother of Nuno Álvares Pereira), and some French allies (such as Jean de Rye). The Castilian chancellor remains silent regarding deaths on the Portuguese side (which is suggestive) and confesses that, despite the disproportionate number of Castilian dead, the only reason more were not slaughtered was that many managed to flee with the Master of Alcântara's column or with king Juan I.
Fernão Lopes estimates the Castilian deaths at twenty-five hundred and presents a long list of names, including some Portuguese. He was also aware of the large number of commoners that had been killed in flight. As regards the Portuguese army, Lopes only records the deaths of thirty Portuguese foot soldiers that fled before the battle began, some men that fell during the attack on the Castilian king's dinner service, and the particular cases of Vasco Martins de Melo (killed in pursuit of Juan I), Martim Gil de Correixas, and the Anglo–Gascon leaders “Bernaldom Solla” and “Joham de Monferrara,” in addition to “other people of little account and foot soldiers, in total up to fifty.”
Chapter 3 - The Decision to Fight at Aljubarrota
- Edited by Luís Adão da Fonseca, João Monteiro, Maria Cristina Pimenta
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- Book:
- Aljubarrota Battle and Its Contemporary Heritage
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 November 2020
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- 29 February 2020, pp 35-46
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SO WHY WAS there a pitched battle at Aljubarrota? What led two royal armies to settle an old quarrel in a very short space of time, in a pitched battle that they both knew would be decisive? Why did the two monarchs not opt for a Vegetian-type strategy, which was suggested to both by many of their counsellors? To what extent can the “modified Gillingham paradigm” be applied to the specific case of São Jorge?
The Political Circumstances
Let us start by considering the situation of both parties at the start of August 1385. On the side of João I of Portugal, we have a very fragile political-military position, due to a recent and hotly disputed enthronement (at the Cortes de Coimbra) and the existence of a divided kingdom, where a great number of fortresses, particularly close to Lisbon (such as the well-protected Santarém), supported his adversary. This viewpoint was aggravated by a clear inferiority of military and financial resources, which made the political cause of the ex-Master of Avis dependent on support from England. Added to all this was the conviction that it would be difficult to withstand a Castilian attack on the capital, since Lisbon (considered the key political and military location in the kingdom) was ill-prepared to resist a new siege.
The Portuguese king had in his favour the fact that the invasion of Portugal by Juan I constituted a violation of the 1383 agreements which underwrote Leonor Teles's regency. As Suárez Fernández has shown, Juan I of Castile, a member of the House of Trastámara moved beyond the strategies of his father, Enrique II, who sought matrimonial alliances with all the ruling houses of the Iberian Peninsula, into a desire to dynastically absorb Portugal. In doing so, he acted in a premeditated way, signing agreements that he had no intention to comply with and seeking the conquest of the Lusitanian throne without respecting the treaties signed shortly before the death of King Fernando. This despite the warnings—according to the chronicler López de Ayala—which were given to him by some of his counsellors at Puebla de Montalbán.
Chapter 4 - The Decisive Battle
- Edited by Luís Adão da Fonseca, João Monteiro, Maria Cristina Pimenta
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- Book:
- Aljubarrota Battle and Its Contemporary Heritage
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 20 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 29 February 2020, pp 47-66
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LET US CONSIDER first what sources are available for reconstructing the Battle of Aljubarrota. As well as the extensive account given by the greatest Portuguese chronicler, Fernão Lopes, the work of two other important chroniclers is available—the previously cited Pero López de Ayala, chancellor of the Castilian king and eye witness at the battle; and Jean Froissart, a French chronicler, who was familiar with English military culture and author of two previously cited accounts of the battle, based upon interviews conducted at the end of 1388 and beginning of 1389 (in Orthez) and at the end of 1389 or beginning of 1390 (in Middelburg). A description of the battle forms part of the anonymous text Crónica do Condestabre, written between 1431 and 1437 and which recounts the life of Nuno Álvares Pereira. Also the Sumario de los Reyes de España, prepared by Juan Rodríguez de Cuenca, the head purveyor of Juan I's first wife and which, through a mysterious hand, added between 1456 and 1460, provides reference to the battle. Then we still have a valuable letter written in Seville on August 29, 1385, by Juan I, to the city of Murcia, in which he provides an account of what happened in the battle.
But we have physical remains too. There is a chapel on the battlefield itself, initially with the Virgin Mary and later St. George as its patron saint, which Nuno Álvares Pereira had built in 1393. This has a genuine engraved stone which announces that, on the day of the battle, the Constable's flag (i.e., the vanguard of the army) was positioned at that very spot.
Archaeological work carried out at São Jorge between 1958 and 1960 by Afonso do Paço, reassessed in 1985 by Severino Lourenço, and continued in 1999 by Helena Catarino on a different part of the terrain, supplements our knowledge. More recently, Maria Antónia Athayde Amaral, as part of the excavations prior to the extension of the Military Museum on the battlefield (now the Centre for Interpretation of the Battle of Aljubarrota), found a new ditch, located in the area which presumably corresponds to the approximate position of the Anglo-Portuguese rear-guard.
5 - The Battle of Aljubarrota (1385): A Reassessment
- Edited by Clifford J. Rogers, Kelly DeVries, John France
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- Book:
- Journal of Medieval Military History
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 March 2023
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- 19 November 2009, pp 75-103
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The Battle of Aljubarrota, which took place on 14 August 1385 near the village of São Jorge in central Portugal, some 100 km north of Lisbon, was one of the most important events in Portuguese history. It also played a significant role in the Iberian Peninsula as a whole, because it brought the kings of Portugal and Castile (both called John I) face to face, ultimately guaranteeing the independence of the small kingdom of Portugal. Furthermore, less than 30 years after the Battle of Poitiers (1356), Aljubarrota became another example of the ingenious use of the English tactical style that had been developed in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the early fourteenth century and was successfully tested by the armies of Edward III and the Black Prince in the first battles of the Hundred Years War.
Nevertheless, Aljubarrota has attracted relatively little attention from scholars. Sir Peter Russell devoted a chapter to it in a book which remains the most stimulating work on the political and diplomatic history of the Iberian Peninsula in the second half of the fourteenth century. But Russell was not a military historian, and despite his familiarity with Iberian archives and the visit he made to the battlefield, he did not have at his disposal all the relevant information about the combat. For example, an archaeological intervention that took place at the site between 1958 and 1960 (after the publication of Russell's book) uncovered a remarkable defensive system of ditches and pits (built by the Portuguese army with the help of their English allies) and a common grave containing human bones, which recent research has proved to be related to the 1385 battle. This has opened up new lines of inquiry.
For this reason, I believe that it is time to return to the Battle of Aljubarrota and reassess it in the light of this new evidence. For not only do we know the exact spot where the battle took place, but we also have a series of first-rate sources (both literary and non-literary) that converge with an accuracy rarely found in medieval military history.