The Monks of War

by Desmond Seward

  The brethren raided enemy territory constantly, sometimes with the king but usually by themselves. The second Master of Calatrava, Frey Fernando Escaza, was a particularly good frontiersman. On one occasion, after raiding Muradel and storming the castle of Ferral, the Moors caught up with him and he was besieged in the keep for ten days. However, the freyles galloped from Calatrava to his rescue, and he returned home in triumph with many prisoners and a great herd of cattle. Border warfare consisted mainly of razzias and skirmishes, often degenerating into mere horse-stealing and rustling. His successor, Frey Martín Pérez de Siones, an Aragonese, launched many savage expeditions. His most famous exploit took place after the Moors had captured the fortress at Almodovar and killed seventy knights. He pursued them and took 200 prisoners, promptly cutting their throats. Santiago suffered a temporary setback, losing Uclés to the Moors in 1176, but recovering it the same year, whereupon its Maestre made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to the Holy Land."11 Nor was San Julián idle, despite scanty resources. Frey Gómez gave valuable assistance to Ferdinand II of León, and the next Maestre, Benito Suárez, captured Almeida. Later, led by the Archbishop of Toledo, the Sanjulianistas carried out a particularly destructive razzia on the district between Jaén and Córdoba.

  In 1194 King Alfonso VIII of Castile challenged Caliph Yakub ibn-Yusuf to come to Spain and fight. The Almohad, a fine soldier, marched out from Marrakesh the following year with an enormous army, accompanied by a host of slave-dealers, and, crossing the straits to al-Andalus, advanced north. Alfonso hastened to meet them, but the kings of León and Navarre failed to join him, supposedly insulted by his boast that Castilian Knights could do the job alone. However, the Masters of Calatrava and Santiago, Nuño Pérez de Quiñones and Sancho Fernández de Lemos, who had sworn a pact of brotherhood, rode with him. Outnumbered, they advanced to meet the caliph.

  Spanish weapons and armour were those used throughout Europe: sword and lance, steel helmet, chain tunic and shield. Tactics were based on the single, decisive charge, though there was a tendency to wear lighter equipment and ride Arab horses. Auxiliary cavalry had little more than a lance, javelins and a knife. Infantry consisted of spearmen, slingers and archers carrying swords or axes. A rich man's arms were often jewelled and damascened in the Saracen fashion, especially the superb swords from Toledo, while Andalusian mantles were worn and some knights preferred to use Moorish scimitars.

  Almohad cavalry, Berber or Andalusian, wore mail shirts and spiked onion helmets, charging with spears held overarm or hurling javelins. Their swords were light scimitars, their shields heart-shaped, their armour often gilded or silvered, and they used lassos or hooked lances to pull opponents from the saddle. The infantry were usually Negroes with broad-bladed stabbing spears and enormous hide shields, supported by archers and slingers who could discharge lethal clay bullets from a surprising distance. Moorish horsemen frequently swamped Spanish cavalry by sheer numbers, preventing them from choosing suitable ground or assembling their elaborate formations. If the Christians did manage to launch a charge, its impact was often absorbed by a dense mass of infantry sometimes roped together.

  On 18 July 1195 Alfonso's army met the Berber horde outside the Moorish castle of Alarcos near Ciudad Real. Yakub made skilful use of his numbers and, amid shrill war-cries and the throbbing of drums, the Castilians were annihilated; 25,000 were killed or taken prisoner, among them Frey Sancho and many brethren, though the king and the Master of Calatrava escaped, hotly pursued by Berber cavalry, to the commandery of Guadalherza which they just managed to hold. Another group including some freyles tried to make a stand in a pass near La Zarzuela and were slaughtered to a man. Yakub advanced slowly north; within two years he had captured Guadalajara, Madrid, Uclés and Calatrava – whose chaplains were put to the sword and whose chapel was turned into a mosque. But he failed to take Toledo, and his triumph would prove only a temporary setback for the Christians.

  9

  THE GREAT ADVANCE

  Alarcos must have seemed an irreparable disaster, for by 1197 two Orders had lost their mother houses and most knights were dead or slaves. When Calatrava's brethren set up a new headquarters at Salvatierra nearby but well inside Moslem territory, calling themselves 'Knights of Salvatierra', they nearly succumbed to an Aragonese plot. Though Frey Nuño, a Leonese, had survived, the brethren of Alcañiz tried to secede, electing their commander, Garcia López de Moventi, as Mestre; Innocent III forced them to end this abortive schism, but Aragonese discontent still simmered, and in 1207 Maestre Ruy Díaz de Anguas was to recognize the commander of Alcañiz as his Order's special representative to the King of Aragon.1 The brotherhood was strong enough to endure both defeat and internal dissension. Islam was faced by a really effective fighting machine which knew how to fall back on prepared positions.

  Kings were learning to depend on the freyles, and even on the international Orders, though probably these could seldom put more than twenty brethren in the field. Local Templar Masters and Hospitaller Priors had to be approved by the king, who frequently appropriated revenues intended for Ultramar.2 Apart from the priory of Castile, the territorial boundaries of the caballeros de San Juan never corresponded to those of the kingdoms, the Portuguese priory including Galicia and the Navarrese northern Aragon, while Valencia was to become a separate unit under the castellan of Amposta. Though a bailiff was sometimes styled 'Grand Commander in Spain' his overall jurisdiction was only theoretical. For promotion, caravans against the Moors were reckoned equal to those served in the Holy Land.

  When the Almohads had invaded southern Portugal in 1190 and only Évora and Gualdim Paeis' Templars at Thomar held out, King Sancho I learnt a valuable lesson, afterwards erecting many commanderies on the far side of the Tagus for the brethren of St Benedict. In 1211 Afonso II was to give the town of Aviz to the fourth recorded Mestre at Évora, Fernão Rodrigues Monteiro, whose brethren became known as Knights of Aviz.3

  Meanwhile, frontier warfare continued with unflagging ferocity. The news of Salvatierra's evacuation in 1211 warned the pope that a massive Almohad offensive was imminent, and he proclaimed a crusade while Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo, preached the Holy War. Next summer a large army assembled with detachments from all Iberian kingdoms save León, the Orders contributing many squadrons. There was also a large number of French and Italian crusaders, the Archbishop of Narbonne bringing 150 knights. Everyone, including the Kings of Aragon and Navarre, placed themselves under the command of the same Alfonso who had been defeated at Alarcos. They marched out from Toledo in June 1212, Archbishop Rodrigo riding at their head, carrying his cathedral's great silver cross. On 1 July Calatrava was recaptured and restored to the brethren. Then a temporary shortage of provisions disgusted the foreign crusaders, who turned back. Weakened and discouraged, the Christian army continued its advance.

  The Moorish army, both African and Andalusian, was thought to number 460,000, and though this figure is impossibly high it must still have been enormous. The young Caliph Muhammad III ibn-Yakub, melodiously named 'Miramamolin' by the Spaniards, selected a position at Hisn al-Uqab, afterwards known as Las Navas de Tolosa, which could be approached only through a narrow mountain pass, where he hoped to ambush the Nasrani. However, on the night of 15 July the Christians forced the pass and reached open ground suitable for heavy cavalry. Next morning they assembled their battle order. The centre was commanded by King Alfonso, the right wing by Sancho VIII of Navarre, the left, which included the Orders, by Pere II of Aragon. Here the Hospitallers were led by the Prior of Castile, Frey Gutierre de Armildez, the Templars by their Castilian Master, Frey Gómez Ruiz, and Calatrava by Frey Ruy Díaz. Santiago's Master, Frey Pedro Arias, rode with the centre as the host's standard-bearer. The battle began badly. The Christians' charges were beaten back, the Moors concentrating on the centre and left, encouraged by their caliph who directed operations from a red velvet tent, wearing his ancestor's black cloak, scimitar in one hand, Koran in the other, surrounded by fak
irs and hedged by a bodyguard of gigantic Negroes linked with iron chains. When Frey Pedro was slain, Alfonso began to lose heart. The Aragonese Templarios were killed to a man and their Castilian brethren suffered ghastly losses; the freyles of Calatrava were decimated and Frey Ruy lost an arm. However, the Almohad onslaught was halted, whereupon King Sancho smashed the Africans with a final decisive charge, breaking through to the caliph's pavilion and cutting down his guard.4

  Al-Andalus was doomed, for the victory opened up the valley of the Guadalquivir, exposing the Córdoban heartland. Military Orders were the shock troops of the inevitable offensive, the Masters acting as strategic advisers. Their scouts and spy service gave them an unrivalled knowledge of the terrain and enemy fortifications. Not only did the kings use freyles as panzers, but they employed them to consolidate the advance, endowing the brethren with vast tracts of land. Before, it had been difficult to attract settlers to the south; Moorish razzias on border villages were conducted with great slaughter. To desperate peasants holding out in the village church against a rabito the brethren's arrival must have seemed like divine intervention. Colonists were protected by their patrols, while chaplains converted mudéjares.5

  Commanderies tended to be priory towns rather than isolated strongholds, the actual commandery usually being centred on a rectangular Spanish keep, or torre del homenaje, with extravagantly machicolated corner towers to facilitate arrow-fire and oil-pouring. Often there was a watchtower outside the walls, a torre alberrano, connected only by a plank bridge with the commandery, as at Zorita de los Canes (Calatrava). Chapels were always of particular magnificence, like that of Calatrava la Nueva with its great rose window. Built of stone or yellow brick, the architecture frequently reflected Moorish influence, though the commandery castle of Maqueda (Calatrava), north-west of Toledo on the road from Madrid to Extremadura, was in the French style – a square bastille with massive round towers. At Calatrava la Vieja a castle of this sort with rectangular bastions overlooked the town, flanked by the conventual buildings and another smaller fortress; the style was plain and typically Cistercian though, later, mudéjar arcades with horseshoe arches were added, while the chapel was a converted mosque. At Aviz a town grew up beside the castle and priory, which were separate in the peninsular fashion. Iberian Orders never evolved a specific pattern of domus conventualis, even if a few commanderies were fortress monasteries, like Alfama in Valencia and Osuna (Calatrava) near Seville, but usually castle and conventual buildings were separate, as at Alcañiz, a compound enclosed by a curtain-wall.

  In 1217 Alfonso of León gave Alcántara, which guards the great Roman bridge (al-Cantara – the bridge) over the Tagus near the Portuguese border, to Frey Martín Fernández de Quintana, the new Master of Calatrava; but next year Frey Martín made a pact with the Master of the Sanjulianistas, Frey Nuño Fernández, ceding the town and all possessions of Calatrava in León. San Julian, sometimes called the Order of Trujillo, was renamed Alcántara. Its second house was Magazella, also a priory-commandery. In 1218 Calatrava transferred all Portuguese properties to Aviz, preferring to consolidate its main territory, which eventually ran from Toledo to the Sierra Nevada, including La Mancha and the upper waters of the Guardiana and Guadalquivir. In 1216 the mother house was moved to Calatrava la Nueva in the Sierra de Atalayo, as Calatrava la Vieja had lost its strategic value. Here the crippled Maestre Ruy Díaz, who had abdicated on the battlefield of Las Navas, spent his last days with great saintliness.

  The freyles not only cultivated their estates with mudéjar slaves but also exploited the barren mesetas in true Cistercian style, ranching cattle, horses, goats, pigs and, in particular, sheep, all half-wild, driving them into the high sierras during the summer. They owned some of the best pastures in Spain. Directed from the commanderies, their serving brothers made excellent herdsmen, and the wool, meat and hides fetched good prices. Business became still more profitable when Merino sheep were introduced from Morocco about 1300. Spanish landowners were to copy the knights' haciendas and bring them to the New World, and so the monkish frontiersmen could claim to be the first cowboys.

  In 1217 the Spanish St Louis became King Fernando III of Castile. Fernando el Santo resembled the Frenchman in his grim orthodoxy and hatred of infidels. A Franciscan tertiary who wore a hair shirt, fasted and spent long hours in prayer, he claimed to fear the curse of a single poor Christian woman more than the anger of a whole Moorish host. But the Castilian was also a ruthless statesman and brilliant general. He saw the Reconquista as a war no less holy than the Syrian crusade, and when Louis asked him to come to Outremer, Fernando replied, 'There is no lack of Moors in my own country.' He spent the night before each battle in prayer and his character was typical of those who entered military Orders.6 As Derek Lomax observes, Ferdinand's campaigns were genuine Crusades, within the strictest definition of the term.

  1217 was also a year which saw impressive co-operation between the orders. Together, freyles of the Hospital, the Temple, Santiago and Calatrava laid siege to the Moslem city of Alcácer do Sal in southern Portugal, digging mines beneath the walls and attacking from siege towers; a fleet invested it from the river Sado. The Moors of Seville, Jaén and Badajoz attempted to relieve it, but were routed. Alcácer do Sal surrendered, to be given to the Knights of Santiago, who used it as a headquarters from which to conquer the surrounding region.

  In 1221 the Knights of Santiago agreed that in operations on the far side of the Despeñaperros pass they would fight under the leadership of the Grand Commander of Calatrava. Both orders promised to help each other if attacked by Moslems, regardless of any treaties made by the Christian king, swearing to act as one in both war and peace.

  Now that African rule in Andalusia had collapsed, taifas reappeared. The king promised the brethren new lands. They raided ceaselessly, returning with severed heads dangling from their saddles, for they had learnt Moorish ways. It was the Moslems' turn to complain of butchered women and children. By 1225 rival claimants were squabbling bloodily for the Almohad throne, and the Castilian army, whose real objective was Córdoba, raided Jaén, while the freyles of Calatrava captured Andújar. Fernando then intervened in the Almohad succession, sending an army to Morocco which gained Marrakesh for his ally, Mamoun. The king's strength was doubled by his succession to the Leonese throne in 1230. Each year he conquered more territory. In 1231 he took Trujillo with assistance from the Master of Alcántara and, though Frey Pedro Gonzalez, Master of Santiago, was killed in 1232 besieging Alcaraz, it fell to his successor.

  Next year the king faced a capable opponent at Jerez de la Frontera, Ibn Hud, Emir of Murcia: only ten Christians died in the battle, but Moors were slain by the thousand. In 1234 Fernando drove the infidels out of Ubeda, where the freyles of Calatrava and Santiago distinguished themselves. When at this time the king summoned the Master of Alcántara he came with 600 horse and 2,000 foot; his Order was growing steadily more formidable. Meanwhile the Castilians were enlarging their bridgehead near Córdoba.

  The Aragonese Reconquista was entirely separate from the Castilian struggle. The Moorish war had been neglected until the Albigensian crusade put an end to aspirations north of the Pyrenees. Then Jaume the Conqueror stormed the pirates' nest of Majorca. Minorca surrendered four years later, while Ibiza was taken by the Archbishop of Tarragona in 1235. Although the kings endowed Templars and Hospitallers generously, especially the latter's convent at Sigena, their attempts to found an Aragonese brotherhood failed dismally.* The obscure Brothers of St George of Alfama were founded in about 1200, following the Augustinian rule and sporting a white habit, but they achieved little. By 1233 a Provençal nobleman, Pere Nolasco, had organized a confraternity of 'Mercedarians' to ransom penniless Christian slaves; as these must be rescued by every means, including war, the new Order was given a military organization. Its habit was white, like all Iberian military orders, while a small shield bearing the royal arms of Aragon hung from the neck. Clerical brethren had gained control by 1317, when the Order
ceased to be military, though honorary knights continued to be appointed. In practice these Mercedarians were probably never more than supernumerary troops.

  After the defeat of Ibn Hud, King of Murcia, at Jerez in 1231, the brethren began to conquer south-western Spain in earnest. The Master of Calatrava, Frey Gonzalo Yañez, took Trujillo in 1233, while Santiago's Grand Commander of León, Frey Rodrigo Yañez, captured Medellin in 1234. Every year more Moslem towns fell to the brethren.

  In 1236 Christian troops raiding the suburbs of Córdoba discovered that it was almost undefended. Immediately the king was informed. He arrived quickly with reinforcements, including a detachment from Calatrava. The Murcian ibn-Hud tried to save the ancient capital of Abd al-Rahman and al-Mansur, but dared not face the Castilian army and rode off in despair. Fernando ordered those who would not accept the true faith to leave Córdoba, then he marched into the deserted city. He turned the mosque into a cathedral, dedicating it to the Blessed Virgin.

  Meanwhile the Aragonese were proving equally successful. King Jaume burst through the Valencian mountains in 1233, reaching the Sierra de Espadan, and was soon in front of the capital. The only brethren present were twenty Templars. After a long siege, Moorish Valencia, the city of the Cid, surrendered in September 1238, 'King Zayne' recognizing Jaume as the kingdom's ruler north of Xuxcar; but by 1253 the latter controlled the whole country. The Reconquista of the east coast was complete.

  These spectacular advances had a tactical explanation. The Almohad collapse took away the Moors' numerical superiority, so that enveloping tactics became impossible. Now the Christians used their own light cavalry to hold down the Moors and, having chosen the terrain, each charge achieved the maximum impact. Almost invariably this broke the Moorish battle-order, rolling over their small Arab horses and riding the infantry into the ground.7