A History of War in 100 Battles

by Richard Overy

  Barbarossa survived and fled back to Como and thence to Germany. He never again threatened the northern cities of Italy and seven years later, in the Treaty of Constance, the communes won a large measure of political independence. The battle signalled an important shift in the way medieval warfare was to develop. On their own, a body of knights, however experienced or skilled they were, could not expect their sheer power and mobility to be enough against a courageous or shrewd opponent, or one, as at Legnano, inspired by faith in their commune and their saint.

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  No. 22 BATTLE OF THE RIVER SALADO

  30 October 1340

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  Many of the battles fought between Islam and Christianity have been hailed as the decisive encounter between the two religions. Few of them can have been more decisive than the crushing defeat of the wealthy emir of Marinid Morocco, Abu al-Hasan, inflicted by King Alfonso XI of Castile and King Afonso IV of Portugal on a clear October day in 1340 in the far southwest of Spain. The Battle of Salado was blessed by the Papacy as part of a new crusade against the infidel; a relic of the True Cross was held aloft in the battle by a priest dressed in white, seated on a white mule. Abu al-Hasan put round his neck on the morning of the battle a reliquary holding a fragment of the Prophet’s clothing. He was determined to smash Christian power in Spain with a major holy war, or jihad, after decades in which the Muslim hold on southern Spain had been slowly eroded.

  A nineteenth-century coloured engraving shows the Battle of Salado in 1340 between the North African army of Abu al-Hasan and the armies of Spain and Portugal. King Alfonso XI of Castile can be seen in the centre of the picture.

  Later chronicles speak of an army of 70,000 cavalry and 400,000 to 700,000 foot soldiers massed at the Moroccan port of Ceuta to cross the straits to Algeciras, a port still in Muslim hands. The best estimate today suggests perhaps a total of 60,000. The Christian kings between them could muster 22,000 horse and foot. Contemporary opinion held that in open battle the Moroccans were difficult to defeat, but open battle is exactly what Alfonso XI sought.

  The battle at the River Salado was won against many odds, and not just the numbers on the battlefield. For years Alfonso had had to battle his own nobles, who accepted vassalage or rule from Castile with ill grace. He was forced to balance the threat from Morocco with the challenge from the vassal state of Granada, still under an Islamic ruler, Yusuf I; he had to win support from other rulers, notably from Aragon or Portugal, and this was a laborious and frustrating task. When the threat from the Marinid Empire of Morocco became evident in the late 1330s, Alfonso found himself almost entirely isolated. Only fear of a Muslim invasion persuaded Afonso IV of Portugal to reach an alliance with Alfonso, signed on 1 July 1340.

  By this time the invasion was already under way. In 1339, one of Abu al-Hasan’s sons, Abu Malik, began raiding Andalusia from his bases in Gibraltar and Algeciras. In a major skirmish in late October with Spanish knights, Abu Malik was killed. Abu al-Hasan was already preparing an expedition, but his son’s death sharpened his desire for a savage revenge against the infidel. A letter claimed to have been found after the battle, allegedly from the Sultan of Babylon (probably an Egyptian title), called on the emir to ‘smash their children against the wall; slit open the wombs of pregnant women; cut off the breasts, arms, noses, and feet of other women… Do not leave until you have destroyed Christendom from sea to sea.’ Though probably a piece of Christian propaganda, it is at least consistent with the fiery threats made by Abu al-Hasan as he prepared his campaign.

  Troops began to cross the straits in July and on 4 August 1340, Abu al-Hasan himself arrived at Algeciras. By this time Pope Benedict XII had declared a crusade and sent Alfonso the necessary banner and additional funds. Alfonso’s real difficulty was money, a problem that meant little to the wealthy Marinids. He could bring with him supplies for only a few days of fighting, and in order to pay for what he needed he had to pawn the royal jewels. On 23 September, Abu al-Hasan, now joined by Yusuf I of Granada with 7,000 cavalry, began the siege of Tarifa, the only port overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar still in Christian hands. He hoped Alfonso would rise to the challenge. A few weeks later, on 29 October, the Christian army arrived at La Peña del Ciervo (The Hill of the Deer) about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from Tarifa, intent on battle. There were 1,000 knights with the Portuguese king, while Alfonso XI counted on 8,000 knights and 12,000 foot soldiers, mostly recruited from Asturias and the Basque provinces. The number of their Moroccan enemy was much lower than the hundreds of thousands suggested by Christian accounts, but was certainly greater than the crusaders. Alfonso reduced the size of his army even more by sending 1,000 knights and 4,000 foot soldiers round the Muslim lines to reinforce the 1,000 men in Tarifa. This was to prove an inspired move.

  Abu al-Hasan drew back from the siege and arrayed his forces along the hills surrounding the port. On the morning of 30 October both sides received blessing from their clergy before moving out to face each other. On the Christian left was Afonso of Portugal, reinforced by 3,000 of Alfonso’s men; on the Portuguese flank were the foot soldiers with lances and crossbows; on the right the bulk of Alfonso’s remaining knights. The Islamic armies were drawn up with Yusuf’s Granadans on the right, the emir’s son Abu ‘Umar on the left, in front of Tarifa, and the centre commanded by Abu al-Hasan himself. Exactly what happened in the battle is not entirely clear. The Christian right began to cross a small bridge over the River Salado where they forced back the Muslim defenders. Then the bulk of Alfonso’s force smashed into the army of Abu ‘Umar, driving it uphill towards the Muslim camp. At some point the 6,000 men in Tarifa stormed out and hit the enemy in the rear, causing a panic which left the emir’s baggage train unprotected.

  While the Castilians swarmed up to the camp in pursuit of booty, Alfonso found himself temporarily supported by only a small body of troops. Abu al-Hasan tried to wheel his army around to attack the king, but soon found himself surrounded as the Castilians charged back down the hill and the force from Tarifa hit his flank. Instead of fighting for the faith, he fled with his troops, putting his honour, as one account put it, ‘under his feet’. When he arrived at Ceuta. he told his followers that he had won a great victory, but the sorry remnant of his army that returned could scarcely be concealed.

  The victorious Christians pursued the enemy for 8 kilometres (5 miles), slaughtering those they overtook, leaving a field littered with bodies, though how many is uncertain. Muslim women and children, including Abu al-Hasan’s wife, Fatima, were murdered when the camp was overrun and all its occupants killed. Only twelve ships were needed to take the survivors back to Morocco, which suggests either a large-scale massacre or that the Moroccan forces were much smaller than most medieval accounts claimed. Either way the defeat was decisive. Africa never again mounted a major invasion of Spain and Castile extended its domination over the peninsula. Algeciras fell to Alfonso four years later, leaving only Gibraltar as a Muslim outpost. Yusuf was lucky to escape, and Granada survived for a further 150 years. The colossal booty in gold and treasure captured at Salado helped to solve, at least temporarily, Alfonso’s financial embarrassments. So great was the wealth that it temporarily forced down the value of gold and silver on the Paris exchange.

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  No. 23 BATTLE OF AGINCOURT

  25 October 1415

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  Iimmortalized by Shakespeare in The Life of Henry the Fifth, the Battle of Agincourt has retained its reputation as one of the greatest feats of arms of any English army. Yet it could so easily have ended in disaster. The armies mustered by the French king, Charles VI, despite the often tense relations between the powerful nobles who commanded them, numbered an estimated 60,000 soldiers and camp followers with a core of 12–15,000 men-at-arms – trained soldiers, armoured and heavily armed, who would do most of the fighting. The English king, Henry V crowned in 1413 at the age of twenty-five, had a mixed force of perhaps fewer than 6,000 English, Welsh and Gascon soldiers,
one-fifth of them armed and mounted men-at-arms, four-fifths of them longbowmen, with little armour. They had marched hundreds of miles on little food. On paper, the gap between the two sides was vast. ‘That’s a valiant flea,’ Shakespeare has one of the French commanders utter, ‘that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.’

  Henry and his army arrived on the Normandy coast, near present-day Le Havre, in the middle of August 1415 in a vast armada of small boats. He was the leader of a bold but risky invasion for which he was completely responsible. He was related to the French royal family and wanted to mark his assumption of the English throne by claiming France as his kingdom too, and the French people as his subjects. Having experienced English depredations on many occasions in what eventually became known as the Hundred Years War, the French king wanted to negotiate, even to make concessions. But Henry was determined to exercise his claim, which meant invasion. The story goes that the French court sent him a box of tennis balls with the implication that he should confine himself to harmless games; whether true or not, Henry became determined on war at all costs, little understanding just how limited were his military means compared with the vast resources and experience of the French.

  Everything went wrong for the English army. It began by investing the small city of Harfleur on the Norman coast, which refused to submit and had to be subjected to a destructive siege. The besieging army was short of food and soon ravaged by dysentery. Some 2,000 of an already small force died or had to be shipped home. The town garrison suffered even more and on 22 September Harfleur was surrendered. Henry had initially imagined a triumphant march on Paris, but with his army now down to barely half its initial strength and many of the troops ill, his commanders would consent to nothing more than a forced march to the English enclave at Calais, whence they could return home. With the guns and siege equipment left behind at Harfleur, the king set out to cross the River Somme and on to Calais. By this time, the French had amassed a huge army and when the English approached their chosen ford across the river, they found it guarded by 6,000 men under Marshal Boucicaut. With men forced to march up to 30 kilometres (20 miles) a day and rapidly running out of food, the king gambled on finding a crossing further south. As luck would have it, two small crossings were still unguarded, though their causeways were destroyed. On 19 October, the army reached the east bank of the Somme and began a forced march towards Calais. The French army, commanded by the Dukes of Bourbon and Orléans, shadowed them and on 20 October sent a challenge to engage in battle. Since the French could easily block the route to Calais, Henry accepted.

  British actor Laurence Olivier took on the title role of Henry V in the 1944 film version of the Shakespeare play. Shakespeare depicted Henry in Henry IV as the headstrong Prince Hal. In Henry V, he has grown to become a decisive leader.

  No attack came, and the English continued north. But at the small town of Blangy, still far short of their destination, scouts spotted vast columns of French troops, like ‘an innumerable host of locusts’ crossing to block their path. In almost continuous rain, which churned the ground into treacherous mud, the two armies approached each other. On the eve of St Crispin’s Day, the English stopped at the village of Maisoncelle, while the French halted some distance to the north, flanked on each side by a thick wood. The French army had numerous knights, but a small number of archers armed with crossbows. Mounted knights were on the flanks, supported by the French guns. Behind was a motley rabble of footmen and servants. In the centre were two dense rows of dismounted men-at-arms. The French commanders were no doubt overconfident that their large host would soon dispatch Henry’s force, which was outnumbered by more than two to one, so that little thought was given to the nature of the battlefield. Henry, on the other hand, had to gamble everything on the way he set out his forces. He divided the dismounted men-at-arms into three groups, four deep, divided by parties of longbowmen, and with more archers on each side in a curved flanking position, so that arrows could be rained down both from the front and the side. The longbow could be shot with deadly effect from 300 metres (1,000 feet). To protect the archers, Henry ordered them to fix pointed wooden stakes, which he had made them cut and carry days beforehand, and which were now set at an angle to impale oncoming horsemen. Though tired and hungry, his troops rallied to Henry’s confident faith that God would favour them.

  The French strategy proved to be disastrous. Drawn up in tight ranks with a narrowing slope in front of them, bordered by two woods, they had little room for manoeuvre, while the knights jostled and argued to find a place in the front rank on the mud-soaked field. They stood where they were for three hours waiting for the English to attack. At 11 a.m., Henry decided his tired and hungry men could wait no longer. He marched them forward to within 300 metres (1,000 feet) of the enemy, the states were fixed and then the order went out to the archers, ‘Nestroque!’ (‘Now strike!’). The famous scene of the dark cloud of arrows, spectacularly replicated in the 1944 film Henry V, was almost certainly the truth. Stung by the deadly rain, the French moved forward. Their ill-conceived deployment soon became apparent. The gun crews became ensnared with the horsemen, who plunged through the heavy mud, only to become impaled on the stakes and tormented with the arrows. The men-at-arms on foot found themselves struggling through piles of armoured figures on the ground and dead or dying horses. Knights who turned back became hopelessly entangled with those coming forward; hampered by heavy armour and clinging mud, the front line was pushed over by those behind. Hundreds suffocated in the scrum. Like the Persian ships at Salamis, an abundance of numbers was no advantage in a constricted space. The archers alternated between their deadly salvos and murderous forays against knights who could not easily move or escape and who were axed or stabbed to death where they stood or lay. As the French dead piled up, two or three high, those behind were forced to fight at a growing disadvantage against the smaller numbers of English men-at-arms who still had the space to move. Seeing the massacre, the third line of mounted French hesitated to move forward. English soldiers and archers pulled the wounded or immobilized enemy into their own ranks, disarmed them and kept those whose value was evident in order to ransom them after the battle.

  An early fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript from the Chroniques of the French historian Enguerrand de Monstrelet (c.1400–53) shows two armies using the deadly longbow that proved such a decisive weapon at the Battle of Agincourt.

  It was at this point that Henry ordered his men to kill the prisoners in cold blood. He was uncertain about what the rest of the French army would do, and worried lest the numerous prisoners seize arms and attack from the rear. His men obeyed reluctantly, since they were destroying a source of future wealth for them all. The prisoners were stabbed or battered to death, or had their throats slit.

  The third line never attacked. The disaster was clear for all to see and the French king’s herald arrived to concede the battle. Henry wanted a name for it; the herald told him the nearby castle was called Agincourt, and the battle has carried the title ever since. The three hours of combat were gory and uncompromising. Though weak and hungry, Henry’s troops were tough and brutal, neither giving nor expecting quarter. The wounded were killed off or brought in to the English camp for ransom. The bodies were stripped of anything the troops could carry, leaving a muddy field littered with blood-soaked, naked corpses, including much of the flower of the French aristocracy. Figures of the French dead vary, though around 7,000 is generally accepted. Some 5,800 were finally placed in three large pits and covered over. The rest were collected for burial by their families or servants. For the French, the battle was a catastrophic defeat against an enemy that they had underrated and for whose defeat they had made inadequate preparations. Nevertheless, the English army executed a model operation given their small numbers. English casualties have been estimated at little more than 500 dead and wounded. Henry returned to a triumphant welcome in London and a legendary place in British history books.

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>   No. 24 SIEGE OF BELGRADE

  4–22 July 1456

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  The sound of a bell ringing out from Catholic churches at noon every day is a familiar reminder of the Church’s presence. Modern Europeans have largely forgotten why it happens. The bell is tolled on the order of the first Spanish pope, Callixtus III, to mark the victory of the Hungarian king, John Hunyadi, over the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II at the siege of Belgrade in the summer of 1456. Following the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans three years before, the onward march of Islam against the Christian West seemed unstoppable. When the Ottoman army of 30,000 or more arrived to besiege Belgrade, a key city on the road to Christian central Europe, it seemed unlikely that Hunyadi’s 4,000 regular soldiers could stop him. But against all the odds, an improvised force of Hungarians, Belgrade militia and crusading peasants rallied outside the city and inflicted a heavy defeat on a sultan still basking in the glory of his success at Constantinople. The bell still rings today to celebrate the salvation of Christendom from the onrush of Islam.