Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (historical painting by FP van Halen, 19th century)
| date | July 16, 1212 |
|---|---|
| place | Santa Elena (Jaén) in southern Spain |
| output | Victory of the Christians |
| consequences | Defeat heralds the end of Almohad rule in Spain |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
|
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| Troop strength | |
| 12,000-14,000 | probably 22,000-30,000 |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
high |
In the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa , named after the castle of the same name in the north of today's Spanish province of Jaén on the territory of the modern municipality of La Carolina , an alliance of the kingdoms of Castile , Aragon , Portugal and Navarre under Alfonso VIII defeated on July 16, 1212 . the Moorish Almohad under Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir . In the period that followed, the Christian empires succeeded in conquering large parts of the Muslim territory on the Iberian peninsula.
prehistory
With the decline of Almoravid rule in Al-Andalus , the Christian empires in northern Spain resumed their expansion against the Muslim areas. After several battles with the Almohads, who had taken control of Al-Andalus in the 12th century, Castile suffered a heavy defeat in the battle of Alarcos in 1195 against the Almohads under Yaʿqūb al-Mansūr . Thus the Christian advances were initially stopped by the Muslims.
In 1211 caliph Muhammad an-Nasir crossed the Strait of Gibraltar with a large army , raided the Christian territories and conquered the order castle Salvatierra of the order of Calatrava . Most of the soldiers in the army came from North Africa.
Thereupon Pope Innocent III called. on a crusade and Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada of Toledo organized an alliance of the kingdoms of Portugal, León, Castile, Navarre and Aragón against the Almohads.
Formation and approach of armies
The Crusaders gathered in Toledo at the end of May. The Christian army consisted of a Castilian contingent led by Alfonso VIII, a contingent of Aragonians and Catalans led by Peter II of Aragon , a contingent of vassals of Alfonso IX. , the King of León, and a contingent of “Francos” (French crusaders ) with the prelates of Narbonne , Bordeaux and Nantes .
At the beginning of June the army headed south. The town of Calatrava la Vieja , which protected access to Al-Andalus, was soon captured. Their loss was a serious setback for the Muslim side. The city's defender, Yusuf ben Kadis, was executed on the orders of the Caliph an-Nâsir after its fall.
This victory resulted in most of the Trans-Pyrenean crusaders seeing their vows fulfilled and starting their journey home. An exception was the contingent of the Bishop of Narbonne, the Cistercian Arnold Amalrich . The followers of Amalrich were brutalized and fanatical fighters in the battles of the Albigensian Crusade , who did not understand why Alfonso VIII spared the city's Muslim population. Alfons saw the Muslims as new subjects that he needed to keep and cultivate the conquest.
On June 24, 1212, the Christian army left Toledo again. It now consisted mainly of Hispanic forces after Sancho VII , King of Navarre, had also joined the army.
The crusaders crossed the Sierra Morena on paths that were not guarded by the Moors, and thus managed to cross the Despeñaperros pass and approach the enemy camp unnoticed. On Friday, July 13th, 1212, the Christians stood in a camp on the descent, from where they saw the Almohad army. The later battlefield was about ten kilometers north of the Almohad castle of Las Navas de Tolosa in a hilly area at the southern foot of the Sierra Morena.
The standard bearer of the King of Navarre, Diego López de Haro, climbed the mountain Puerto de la Losa with the help of a local shepherd and scouted the position of the enemy army from the hill. This was a crucial advantage for the Christians during the battle.
The caliph Muhammad an-Nâsir was at the same time in his army camp, where he had a makeshift fort built for himself on a hill. His troops consisted of two equestrian contingents of voluntary Berbers and Andalusians as well as the regular troops of the Almohads. Life guards were posted around the prince's tent to protect him. The Abides , slaves armed with bows, were also part of the army .
For the next two days there were constant minor skirmishes.
The battle
After making confession and receiving communion, the Christians attacked the enemy positions on the morning of July 16, 1212.
The Castilians and the military orders formed the center. On the right they were flanked by the Navarre and the city militias of Avila , Segovia and Medina del Campo and on the left by the troops from Aragon. The Muslims had arranged their troops in three rows. In the first were fanatical but only lightly armed warriors who were likely to be sacrificed to intercept the Christian cavalry. Muhammad an-Nâsir entrenched himself with a group of heavily armed slaves who were chained near his tent.
The attack started unhappy for the Christians. While the arrows from the Moors inflicted heavy losses on the Christian troops, the light cavalry began to embrace the wings of the Christian army. Several units then began to withdraw from the battlefield.
Led by the King of Castile and the Bishop of Toledo, the Christian cavalry managed to advance into the center of the Berbers. When the kings of Aragon and Navarre saw the situation, they too began their attack on the enemy's flank.
The Christians in the center managed to get to the positions of the Almohad archers and put them down in hand-to-hand combat. The Muslim leader, Muhammad an-Nâsir, who was now personally in distress, then withdrew with his bodyguard, which caused panic in the already retreating Muslim army. They suffered devastating losses while fleeing.
As a result of the disorderly flight of the Almohads, the Christians fell into the hands of the Muslims' encampment and with it enormous spoils of war, including the caliph's standard (Pendón) . It is now on display in the monastery of Santa María de las Huelgas Reales in Burgos .
After the victory, the bishop of Toledo celebrated on the battlefield, a Te Deum , to thank God for the victory. In soon-to-be legends, the victory was attributed to the divine help of the Holy Mother of God of Rocamadour .
Troop strengths and losses
The size of the armies involved in the battle and their losses can hardly be determined precisely today due to the lack of detailed records on this aspect. King Alfonso VIII estimated the Christian army that had previously gathered in Toledo at 2,000 knights with their squires, 10,000 mounted sergeants and up to 50,000 infantry. Archbishop Rodrigo of Toledo put the Almohad army at 185,000 knights and an indeterminable mass of foot soldiers and their losses at 200,000 men. Muslim sources even report that of 600,000 Almohad fighters, only 600 survived. From a modern point of view, all these numbers are considered to be dramatically exaggerated.
According to the Reconquista historian Joseph F. O'Callaghan, the number of fighters in contemporary battles of this magnitude was often no more than 3,000 to 5,000 men on each side. The Spanish historian Martín Alvira Cabrer proposes an approximate troop strength of 3,500 to 5,500 mounted and 7,000 to 12,000 foot soldiers for the Christian army, referring to the studies of the military and medical historian Carlos Vara Thorbeck, who based his evaluation of the dimensions of the war camp 1999 came to an estimate of the total strength of the crusader army at approx. 12,000 men, which fits well with the size framework assumed by Alvira. Vara assumes the size of the Almohad army, which is very difficult to estimate, with a maximum of 22,000 men, while Alvira assumes on the basis of the chronicler's reports that it must have been at least twice as large as the Christian army. In his more recent publications, the author names a number of 25,000 to 30,000 Andalusian-Almohad fighters, the proportion of lightly armed fighters being much higher than in the Christian army of knights and the Muslim armed forces having fewer mounted and heavily armored elite soldiers. This was one of the greatest field battles of the High Middle Ages .
consequences
Muhammad an-Nâsir first fled to Baeza. However, Alfonso VIII immediately began the persecution and forced the caliph to cross to Morocco, where he died the following year.
Apart from the conquest of Baeza and the occupation of the Guadalquivir Valley by the Christians, the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa had no immediate consequences. The victory opened the way for the conquest of the southern Iberian Peninsula.
In the period that followed, the Muslims were unable to recover from this defeat, especially since the Christian victory refuted the legend of the invincibility of the Almohads. In the following decades, Al-Andalus was subjugated by Castile and Aragón: Córdoba fell in 1236, Seville in 1248 and Cádiz in 1261. Only the Nasrid rulers of Granada were able to maintain their rule until 1492, recognizing the Castilian suzerainty.
The castle of Calatrava la Nueva , near Almagro , was built with the help of Muslim prisoners of war by the Order of Calatrava between 1213 and 1217.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Martín Alvira Cabrer: Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212: idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla. Madrid 2012, p. 332
- ↑ a b Martín Alvira Cabrer: Guerra e ideología en la España medieval: cultura y actitudes históricas ante el giro de principios del siglo XIII: batallas de las Navas de Tolosa (1212) y Muret (1213). Universidad Complutense, Madrid 2000. p. 196
- ↑ See O'Callaghan: Reconquest and crusade in medieval Spain. P. 143 ff. ( Limited preview in Google Book search)
- ↑ See O'Callaghan: Reconquest and crusade in medieval Spain. P. 146 ( limited preview in Google Book search)
- ↑ Martín Alvira Cabrer: Guerra e ideología en la España medieval: cultura y actitudes históricas ante el giro de principios del siglo XIII: batallas de las Navas de Tolosa (1212) y Muret (1213). Universidad Complutense, Madrid 2000.
- ↑ p. 192.
literature
- Martín Alvira Cabrer: Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212: idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla. Sílex Ediciones, Madrid 2012. ISBN 978-84-773-7721-4 (Spanish).
- Carlos Vara Thorbeck: El lunes de las Navas. Universidad de Jaén, Jaén 1999. ISBN 978-8-4898-6992-9 . To add to individual aspects and with a foreword vers. New edition under the title: Las Navas de Tolosa: 1212, la batalla que decidió la Reconquista. Barcelona 2012. ISBN 978-8-4350-2588-1 (Spanish).
- Paolo Cau: The Hundred Greatest Battles. You changed the world. From Kadesh (1285 BC) to the present day. Kaiser, Klagenfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-7043-9018-9 .
- Francisco García Fitz: Las Navas de Tolosa. Ariel, Barcelona 2005, ISBN 84-344-6795-X (Spanish).
- Francisco García Fitz: What is Las Navas a decisive battle? In: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies , Vol. 4 (2012), Issue 1, pp. 5-9, doi : 10.1080 / 17546559.2012.677160 (English).
- Joseph F. O'Callaghan: Reconquest and crusade in medieval Spain. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia PA 2004, ISBN 0-8122-1889-2 (English).
Web links
Coordinates: 38 ° 20 ′ 34.8 " N , 3 ° 32 ′ 56.5" W.