Portuguese kings needed more revenue by the late fourteenth
century especially because of their escalating military costs. These cost
increases were mainly a consequence of developments in the technology of
warfare. Chain mail, long worn by knights, was being steadily replaced by more
expensive plate armour. Fortifications were being re-designed and strengthened
to better withstand sieges. Perhaps most important of all, the introduction and
escalating use of the crossbow amounted to a revolution in weaponry. Systematic
recruitment and training of crossbowmen (besteiros) probably began in Portugal
during the first half of the fourteenth century, but progressed slowly. The
process required complex organisation on a national scale, but was an essential
step towards the creation of a permanent royal army. Units of crossbowmen were
raised on a quota basis by the Portuguese municipalities. The archers were
recruited primarily from the sons of tradesmen, not members of the nobility or
their retainers, and they were equipped with their weapons directly by the
crown.
Though in the struggle against Juan of Castile a substantial
proportion of Joāo I’s army still consisted of feudal levies, the presence
of the crossbowmen enabled Nuno Álvares Pereira to apply one of the
most important lessons of the Hundred Years War – namely, that well-trained,
disciplined bowmen drawn up in sound defensive positions could devastate
slow-moving knights on horseback. So it had been at Crécy and Poitiers – and so it
was at Aljubarrota. On that memorable field the Portuguese army, though smaller
than that of Castile, was more coherent, better led and perhaps more advanced
on the road to modernisation. While Portugal did not retain these advantages
for long, they were nevertheless crucial in 1385, when the kingdom’s need was
greatest.
Early in the fourteenth century the still more revolutionary
powder weapons were introduced; but they were then too unreliable and therefore
slow to gain acceptance. However, by the start of the fifteenth century cannon
were proving their worth, especially in siege warfare. Under the early Avis
kings they were gradually incorporated into the nation’s arsenal. Firearms and
gunpowder were kept strictly under crown control, with a central arsenal
maintained in Lisbon. Cannon were used to great effect by both Afonso V and
later monarchs in Morocco. They were also mounted on warships.
The English also remained active in Spain, fighting against
Castile as allies of Navarre, Aragon or, in the 1380s, Portugal. In 1381-82,
for example, Edmund Langley, Earl of Cambridge, led 1,500 men-at-arms and 1,500
archers (mostly English but including Gascons and Castilian exiles) in an
invasion of Castile alongside the King of Portugal, while some 4-800 English
archers under 3 esquires were in the Portuguese army at Aljubarrota. The
largest English expedition was that of1386-87, when the Duke of Lancaster, pressing
his own claim to the throne of Castile, invaded Galicia and León
in alliance with Portugal, his forces totalling as many as 2,000 men-at-arms,
3,000 archers and perhaps 2,000 further foot-soldiers.
With so many French and English troops around it is hardly
surprising to find the Spanish states very soon beginning to emulate their
military organisation and techniques. As early as 1372, for instance, we find
King Fernando of Portugal stipulating that his vassals were in future expected
to field troops equipped either in the French or the English manner. Full
reorganisation was in hand by 1382, when both Portugal and Castile laid down
new rules for the raising and administration of their armies. Fernando entirely
abolished the Moorish military nomenclature that had been used for hundreds of years
and replaced it with the current Anglo-French terminology of his allies. The
ancient office ofalferez mor (Chief-standard-bearer), the military
commander-in-chief in the king’s absence, was abandoned and replaced instead by
a Constable (Condestabre) and a Marshal (Marichal).
Portugal, normally fielded only some 2-3,000 men-at-arms in
the 14th century, plus at the most 10-12,000 infantry. Even in the Toro campaign
as late as 1475 she put only 5,600 horse and 14,000 foot in the field, as
compared to Castile’s 4,000 men-at-arms, 8,000 jinetes (spelt with a ‘g’ in
Portugal) and 30,000 infantry in 1476.
The Military Orders
After 1275 the Orders had been gradually taken over by the
aristocracy, and then by the crown, and were subsequently stripped of much of their
wealth. In addition they were sapped of their strength by their use in the
civil wars that so racked the Iberian kingdoms; in 1354, for example, the
anti-Master of Calatrava, Pedro Estevaiiez Carpenteiro, mustered 600 lances
against Pedro the Cruel’s own appointed Master, Diego Garcia de Padilla,
brethren of Santiago, Calatrava and Alcantara fighting on both sides in the
Trastamaran conflict of the 1350s and 1360s. It is hardly surprising, then,
that one modern authority should state that ‘by 1330 all the Orders were
smaller, weaker, more dominated by the kings and nobles and less effective
against the Moslems’. By the end of this era their very independence had been
stripped from them too; in Castile the crown effectively took the Masterships
of Calatrava, Santiago and Alcantara for itself in 1487, 1493 and 1494
respectively.
Nevertheless, the Orders could still muster substantial
forces throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. Calatrava alone housed 150 freyles
caballeros (brother knights) in 1302, in addition to which the Order had 40
commanderies by the end of the 14th century and 51-56 by the beginning of the
16th. The Order’s Grand Commander and Castellan respectively raised forces of 500
cavalry and 1,200 infantry, and 1,200 cavalry and 800 infantry, against one
another in 1442, while the Master raised 400 cavalry and an unknown quantity of
infantry from the Order’s Andalusian estates alone 40 years later. Excluding
its Portuguese commanderies the Order of Santiago could field some 250 freyles
in the 14thcentury, and 400 freyles and 1,000 lances from its whole 84
commanderies by the 16th, while the Master of Alcantara was able to raise as
many as 1,500 horse and 2,500 foot in 1472. Froissart tells us that even the
Portuguese Order of Avis, of which the Mastership had been at the disposal of the
crown since 1385, had 200 brethren. In fact the numbers of each Order’s
brethren seem always to have been proportionately small, and most of the troops
they raised were actually vassals or mercenaries. Thus brethren are frequently
to be found in the role of officers commanding units of infantry or
crossbowmen, or even artillery (of which the Orders had their own). The actual
command structure of each individual Order was headed by its Master (Maestre or
Mestre). His deputy was the Grand Prior (Prior Mayor; in the Order of Calatrava
the Gran Prior came below the Clavero), after whom came the Grand Commander
(Comendador Mayor); the Castellan or Key-bearer (Clavero), assisted by a Sub-Ciavero
and a Quartermaster (Obrero); and finally the Alferez or Standard-bearer of the
Order. Organisation of individual commanderies remained as before, except that
most now only contained 4 brethren, not 12.
All this meant that well before the end of the fifteenth
century waging independent war was inexorably moving beyond the means of even
the greatest of magnates – unless they could act in unison with powerful
outside forces. Great nobles might still retain a capacity to put into the
field significant forces, but were at a growing comparative disadvantage to the
crown. This was graphically demonstrated by the downfall of the duke of
Braganc, a in 1483. From the time Joāo I became firmly established on his
throne, no Portuguese noble dared to offer a direct challenge to the king
militarily. The only exception was Pedro, the beleaguered ex-regent, who was
easily overwhelmed at Alfarrobeira in 1449. Nobles who sought to get rid of a
king were thereafter more inclined to try assassination. This helps to explain
why from the time of Afonso V monarchs and their families were usually
protected by a royal guard approximately 200 strong. In short, there is no
doubt that by the Avis era advances in the art of war strengthened the king
vis-à-vis
the nobility and contributed significantly to Portugal’s advance towards modern
statehood.
Tactics
Prior to the arrival of the English and French in the
mid-14th century, Spanish warfare depended for success on fast-moving raids and
the systematic use of siege warfare, and though pitched battles were not
exactly unknown they were certainly extremely uncommon. The Spanish therefore
lacked the training and experience to meet du Guesclin’s and the Black Prince’s
companies of veterans on anything like equal terms, and the latter consequently
had a low opinion of them. Froissart says of the Spanish: ‘It is true that they
cut a handsome figure on horseback, spur off to advantage, and fight well at
the first onset; but as soon as they have thrown 2 or 3 darts, and given a stroke
with their lances, without disconcerting the enemy, they take alarm, turn their
horses’ heads and save themselves by flight as well as they can. This game they
played at Aljubarrota.’
The reference to their throwing of darts is significant, because this was characteristic of the skirmishing style of warfare that the Spaniards had been involved in with their Moslem neighbours for centuries. It had even led to the evolution of a special troop-type-the jinete-whose light armour, low saddle, short stirrups and nimble horse put him on an equal footing with the light, javelin-armed horsemen of Granada. The role of the jinete in battle was identical to that of his Moslem counterpart-to charge towards the enemy, discharge his javelins, and wheel away again before he could reply. In addition jinetes patrolled the flanks and rear of the army and cut down fugitives. At Trancoso and Aljubarrota in 1385 and at Salamanca in 1387 the Castilians employed their jinetes to outflank the Portuguese and fall on their rear. At Najera too they were positioned on the flanks of the Franco-Castilian army, probably with a similar plan in mind, but on this occasion they proved utterly ineffective in the face of the Black Prince’s longbowmen. Their one success against the English was at Ariñez in 1367, where a large body of jinetes under Don Tello surprised Sir William Felton’s company of some 100 or 400 men-at-arms and archers on a hillside. Chandos Herald tells us how Felton himself charged them on horseback, ‘and the Castilians followed him on all sides, throwing lances and javelins at him. They killed his horse under him, but Sir William defended himself fiercely on foot, though it was of little use for he was killed in the end.’ Don Tello then turned on the rest of Felton’s company: ‘the Spaniards launched many attacks on them, pressing them hard and hurling javelins and lances and spears. And that brave band of men … charged down more than a hundred times with drawn swords and made them retreat, nor could the Castilians harm them by throwing lances and darts.’ In the end it took the French marshal d’Audrehem’s men to finish the action, these dismounting and attacking on foot once they arrived on the scene. The moral here is that although the jinetes had succeeded in pinning the English company down, it nevertheless took dismounted men-at-arms to successfully conclude the engagement, and prior to the coming of the French and English, Spanish men-at-arms were not prepared to dismount in battle. Even afterwards they dismounted only reluctantly, though it is noteworthy that the elite Order of the Sash accompanied du Guesclin’s vanguard on foot at Najera. That the Spanish nevertheless recognised the tactical potential of dismounted men-at-arms is clear from the fact that Pere IV, King of Aragon, categorically forbade his troops ever to attack Castile’s French mercenaries once they had dismounted, recommending (rather negatively) that they should keep their distance and wait until the French had remounted before attempting to attack them.
In the field Spanish troops, like those elsewhere in Europe,
drew up in 3 battles (batallas), which were divided into so many quadrillas or
squadrons, each commanded by a knight called a quadrillero. The best troops
were stationed in the centre and at the extremities of the line, and the
infantry (crossbowmen, javelinmen and slingers) were drawn up in front.
Compared to the English or French they delivered disordered charges, both on
horseback and on the rare occasions that they dismounted. The Granadines made
the most of this weakness when they actually took the Castilians on in the
field in open combat, resorting to sudden feigned or real charges by bands of yelling
horsemen whose intent was to disorder, panic or draw the enemy in disorganised
pursuit, at which the Moslems would wheel and hurl their javelins at them at
close range.
Navy
More unusually, the Portuguese crown also developed one of
the most effective fighting navies possessed by any contemporary European
monarch in this period, its only serious rival being that of Castile. The
origins of this Portuguese navy are obscure, though there are fleeting mentions
of crown warships as early as the mid-twelfth century. In 1317 King Dinis,
concerned to defend the coast and shipping from Muslim corsairs and to mount his
own offensive operations, contracted with the Genoese Manuel Pessagno to
establish a permanent galley fleet based in Lisbon. This was a far-sighted, long-term
investment, for navies even more than armies could not be created overnight.
During the next few decades, the Portuguese crown accumulated the necessary
resources and experience to sustain a permanent fleet and to begin to build up
a great naval tradition. In the fourteenth century, the navy consisted mainly
of galleys for which rowers were recruited from Portugal’s coastal communities;
but it must at times have also included various kinds of sailing ships.
The high cost and technical proficiency needed to maintain
galley squadrons meant they were a military arm which only the state could
sustain. Already in 1369 King Fernando possessed thirty-two galleys. Later,
galleys played a key role in the successful defence of Lisbon by Joāo
of Avis in 1384. Portugal also developed a capacity to move substantial
military forces by sea using sailing ships. This capacity made serious
campaigning in North Africa possible – and without it the famous Ceuta
expedition of 1415 could not have been mounted. Moreover, it was Portuguese
success in building and manning ocean-going sailing vessels that made possible
the country’s role in early Atlantic exploration.
