The Crescent and the Cross

by S. J. A. Turney

  Unfortunately, while he had put his own affairs in order and massed an army to bring across to the Iberian war zone, the Christians had at last managed to pull themselves together and ally. Seeking the Pope’s sanction for a true crusade such as had been fruitlessly called repeatedly to free Jerusalem, they managed to draw together a good, solid army. The alliance of Iberian crowns was more than they had managed since Alarcos, but with the Pope’s support, they also drew in crusaders from France and other parts of western Europe, as well as three military orders of knights: the orders of Calatrava, Santiago and the Temple. All three of these orders had very close links with the Aragonese and Castilian kings and could be relied upon to take part.

  Thus was the stage set. Al-Nasir had managed to field a force of near 30,000 men and had moved them north towards the Sierra Morena, which shielded the heart of his realm from the north. At the same time, the crusading army had gathered at Toledo under the banners of kings and bishops. It was the largest crusading army of the Reconquista, yet it still numbered perhaps half that of Al-Nasir’s force. Moreover, Al-Nasir knew that he had the advantage. The Christians were coming to him, and he could choose the ground and make them pay for their temerity. He fortified the one great pass through the mountains that lay south of Toledo, and through which the crusaders would expect to pass.

  The Christian army reached the Sierra Morena after a swift campaign that had recovered several key strongholds, including Calatrava, only to find their way across the mountains barred. That is where the plot of this book begins to come in. Accounts state that the Christian army was held up at the pass with no hope of advance. Legend tells us that after numerous failed forays, finally a local shepherd called Martin Alhaja told the Christians of a secret path through the mountains which he had marked with cow skulls on posts. The Christians used his secret way and came down close enough to the Almohad forces that they took Al-Nasir by surprise. Having crossed mountains, the army would, of course, not be in the best of positions for a battle against a superior force. Despite the numbers on paper, we can assume that the force awaiting them at Las Navas was not Al-Nasir’s full army. He had men in the pass and the mountains, and likely had them garrisoned all along the Sierra Morena.

  The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa begins. I will not go too far into the mechanics of the battle, for they are explained in the story you’ve read, with little embellishment other than the role of my principal characters in it. The forces were arrayed as I have described and the action happens more or less as it does in the text. The bannerman of the Order of Calatrava fell in the press, though Calderon’s recovery of the banner is my own addition. The ride of the kings and in particular Sancho’s breakthrough assault on the caliph’s command centre is recorded, though again Arnau’s part in it is my own addition. In fact, the most unrealistic thing, you will probably decide, is the half-buried fence of convert fanatics. But once again, this is drawn from the accounts of the battle and is not my own invention. History is full of weird facts, after all.

  Three accounts I’ve consulted over the battle vary greatly in their portrayal, which gives you some idea of the opaqueness of the facts in the historical record.

  The Moroccan historian Abdelwahid al-Marrakushi gives us just a brief description: “Alfonso drew up his army, arranged his men and launched a surprise attack on the Muslims, who were not prepared for battle. They were defeated, and a great number of the Almohads were killed.”

  Alphonso of Castile’s later letter to the Pope tells us that the army reached the Sierra Morena, that the Moors had barred the crests, and that the Christians managed to take the castle Ferral. He then tells how the Christians achieved the heights but couldn’t get down through the barred valleys and ran out of supplies up there, their advance halted. He goes on to tell how a shepherd showed them a new way across the range when they were at the end of their tether. However, his account diverges greatly from others in that he states that the army encamped near the enemy and there were small skirmishes that day. The Christians decide not to commit to battle the next day (Sunday), nor on Monday. Alphonso then describes the battle fairly succinctly, though he does rather subtly ascribe the victory to himself and tells how they pursued the fleeing enemy until sundown. This languid affair fits rather poorly with the Moorish description of a surprise attack, does it not?

  The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile tells us in verbose flurry that the Christians rose at midnight and rushed into battle, the valleys and hills not stopping them. It tells us that the army began to panic and that Alphonso of Castile spurred them on to defeat the enemy.

  There are numerous other fragments and accounts, which give us more information, and it is only by comparing the full breadth of accounts that we can form enough of a picture to depict the battle. One thing that is not mentioned in the three above fragments is the heroic charge of Sancho of Navarre and his knights which very much turned the tide. There is the overall image of the Castilian king ordering the action, though it is Sancho who emerges in Spanish history as very much the pivotal hero of the battle. The chains that held the caliph’s tent tight are said to have influenced the chains on the Navarrese flag, and a decade or so ago Navarre was honoured for Sancho’s role in the victory by the communities that were reconquered immediately as a consequence of the battle.

  Like all accounts of battles in the pre-modern era, there are political agendas in play, confusion and conflict in ‘facts’ and a healthy dose of legend. Las Navas is no exception. What we are universally told is that the casualties for the Almohads were appalling. Those for the Christians were considerably lower, though the list of casualties among the senior members of the crusading orders was high. The result of the battle could realistically have gone either way, and the panic and near withdrawal of the king of Castile almost lost the day for the Christians, though his recovery and charge with King Sancho truly turned the tide.

  It is not the action of the battle itself for which Las Navas remains important, though. More impressive and powerful struggles have dominated the Reconquista, but alongside Covadonga (722) and Granada (1492), Las Navas de Tolosa holds the distinguished place of a ‘turning point’. Covadonga marked the start of the recovery of Iberia, and Granada marked the end, but in between, in 1212, Las Navas marks the turning point of the war as a whole. Until now the border had ebbed and flowed, and there had always been the possibility that Iberia could still be completely consumed by the Moors. After Las Navas everything changes. From this moment on, though it would take centuries yet, Moorish Iberia continued to shrink until the kingdom of Granada was all that remained – before it, too, was conquered. You will perhaps now understand why I had to include Las Navas de Tolosa in the series. In fact, I have been working towards it from the very first book, sowing the seeds of crusade.

  On, then, to my playing with history. The legend of Martin Alhaja, the shepherd, who was given the name Cabeza de Vaca (“cow head”) by the king, has to have some grains of truth in it, for all that it is a legend. After all, one of the man’s supposed descendants was the noted explorer Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. I chose to expand upon the legend. From the point of view of a writer of fiction, I needed my characters to be able to tell the full story of this crusade, and without his crossing of the mountains and discovery of the Almohad army this would have been a straightforward novel of a crusading army fighting siege after siege and then a great battle. I chose to show more than just that angle, for I wanted the reader to appreciate what was waiting for the crusaders, what was at stake, and why the pass through the mountains was so important. My nod to Alhaja is that Calderon is also a Martin, and he crosses an unknown pass marked with cow skulls. Calderon’s history is also, of course, reflected in the chain of half-buried converts that guard the caliph’s compound.

  In the case of Martin, brainwashing is a strange subject. On a strictly scientific level, brainwashing is considered little more than a myth, more like a state of hypnosis than a true rewiring of the brain. Cer
tainly it appears from historical cases that those who have been said to be brainwashed were very easily brought back from that state. There is a suggestion that it works more on those who are susceptible, those with some instability already in place. Thus my Calderon, who hears voices and lives his life by them, is a prime candidate. To have him converted through the manipulation of his fears is fitting, and cases of de-programming, subjects have illustrated that similar trauma can often undo the initial damage. Calderon is something of a hub around which the story revolves.

  In defence of my portrayal of the Moors, I would try to highlight what I have already attempted to put over in the text. The relationship between Christian and Moor in Spain was a complex one. It was not universally opposing and combative like the more famous crusading front in the Middle East (though even that was not always simple or black and white). In Iberia, there had been times of tolerance and coexistence as well as times of intolerance and war. The Templars certainly often relied upon Moorish ‘slaves’ to maintain their lands, and these slaves were little more than tenant farmers. The arrival of the Almohads changes everything, for they are the Da’esh or IS of their day, bringing strict Islam at the point of a sword. As such they were the enemy of many Moors as much as they were of the Christians.

  The Franks do not fare well in my portrayal either, I know, though I have tried to make their leaders quite reasonable. This is not solely the fault of my fictional knight who takes against Arnau. He is just a prime example of the Frankish knights who joined this Spanish crusade. The Franks were so vicious and barbarous, murdering, enslaving and pillaging after the first battle of their advance, that the kings were forced to pull them in and tell them that this sort of thing was not acceptable. The simple fact was that the lands and people they were taking control of would thereafter be the subjects of the Spanish kings, and they didn’t want all the wealth and manpower of their new territory butchered and stolen by foreigners. This was not well received by the Franks who maintained the traditional attitude in war: to the victor, the spoils.

  This came to a head at another siege where the Franks were forbidden from any recurrence of their behaviour and promptly left in a huff, abandoning the crusade and returning home. A few stayed on, but not enough to be more than a footnote of the battle. I have had my fictional villain remain as part of the contingent that stayed.

  My locations are all based upon true sites, barring the caravanserai and Farraj’s house. The former is entirely my own invention for the sake of the tale. The latter is based upon the Moorish courtyard houses that can still be seen in Cordoba today, and which can also be found in Morocco. The mill by the walls still exists, having been reconstructed several times and with only part of its original structure remaining. It is now a museum. The gate through which the trio enter the city still stands and is one of the more famous sights of the city, as are the bridge and the line of five mills across the river. Salvatierra Castle now stands very ruinous, but its commanding position is impressive. Across the valley is the castle of Calatrava la Nueva, a later fortress built by the order, while Calatrava la Vieja, the one in this story, remains in ruins near Malagon. Castro Ferral can only be reached by a hike into the Sierra Morena and is now little more than a few chunks of wall. The Despeñaperros pass is an impressive gorge and, as the traveller emerges through the range to the south, on the hillside above Santa Elena and the battlefield is a museum to the battle that changed the course of Iberian history.

  With respect to the subject of duels, duelling belongs solidly to the northern European culture, rooted in Germanic and Scandinavian history, such as the Viking holmgang. It was not until the Late Medieval or Renaissance era that duels began to become de rigueur across most European countries, but there is evidence that they did happen during the High Medieval Era. In 1085, Ruiz de Mastanza won a duel to decide whether the Mozarabic or Latin rite should prevail in Toledo. The form of my duel in this tale is a little more prosaic and brutal than the ordered and dignified procedure de Mastanza experienced. That d’Orbessan survives is no accident. Vallbona continues to build an impressive array of enemies.

  Here ends the tale of one of the most important battles in Spanish history, and its part in my series. Arnau de Vallbona is no longer a young and uncertain Templar, but a full-fledged knight with his own squire. Thirteen years have now passed since he joined the Order, and there will be one book left in this series, telling the tale of the last days of the Daughter of War. Until then, adios from Arnau and from me.

  Simon Turney, April 2020

  The Knights Templar

  Daughter of War

  The Last Emir

  City of God

  The Winter Knight

  The Crescent and the Cross

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  First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Canelo

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

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  Copyright © S.J.A. Turney, 2020

  The moral right of S.J.A. Turney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781788633123

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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