The Battle of Salado, 1340: how Portugal helped stop the last Moroccan invasion

Alfonso XI of Castile got up before dawn. He had confessed before setting out, but he confessed again, and Gil de Albornoz, Archbishop of Toledo, said Mass for him and gave him communion. Most of the army did the same. Then the knights armed themselves and their horses and rode out of the camp at the Peña del Ciervo, a hill outside Tarifa, with the crusade banner sent by the Pope carried beside the royal standard.2 sources

Below them ran the Salado, a small stream with several fords. Beyond it, on the hills towards Tarifa, stood the tents of Abu al-Hasan, sultan of the Marinids of Fez, and a little apart, near the sierra, the camp of Yusuf I, king of Granada. Their horsemen were already waiting at the fords.2 sources

The Castilian king took the right, along the shore, towards the sultan. On the left, close to the hills, rode his father-in-law, Afonso IV of Portugal, with his own knights and the Castilian troops lent to him, heading for the king of Granada. By the evening of 30 October 1340 both Muslim rulers were in flight, and Abu al-Hasan crossed back to Africa that night.3 sources

Spanish historians call the long struggle for the ports on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar the “Battle of the Strait”. It ran from the second half of the thirteenth century to 1344, and it was about who held Tarifa, Algeciras and Gibraltar. Whoever held them controlled the shortest crossing between Morocco and Andalusia.2 sources

Castile took Tarifa on 14 October 1292 and held it through a Marinid siege in 1294. In 1333 Abu al-Hasan's son Abu Malik crossed with an army and took Gibraltar, which left Tarifa as Castile's only foothold on the Strait. In October 1339 Abu Malik was killed near Alcalá de los Gazules, and his father prepared to cross in person.2 sources

This time the aim was conquest. The Castilian chronicle says the sultan's council advised him to besiege Tarifa, then Jerez, and then pitch his tents before Seville, and that he had already promised the towns and lordships of Spain to his followers.1 source

Castile's plan was to stop the crossing at sea. On 8 April 1340 the Marinid fleet under Muhammad ibn Ali al-Azafi caught the Castilian admiral, Alfonso Jofre Tenorio, at the anchorage of Getares, near Algeciras. Ibn Khaldun, the North African historian, says that sixteen ships came from the Hafsid rulers of Tunis and that the fleet gathered at Ceuta numbered about a hundred.2 sources

The Castilian chronicle says few of Tenorio's 33 galleys followed him into the fight. Moroccan sailors boarded his flagship three times. Tenorio held the standard with one arm and fought with the other until his leg was cut and an iron bar thrown from a ship above killed him; his head was cut off. The chronicle says only five galleys were saved. The historian Roberto Muñoz Bolaños reckons that about half of the 33 got away.2 sources

In Ceuta the captured galleys were paraded with the heads of Christian dead, and poets recited verses for the sultan. Alfonso XI heard the news at midnight on the eve of Palm Sunday. With the Strait open, he understood, the king of Morocco could now bring over as many men as he wished.2 sources

He went looking for ships. Genoa agreed to send fifteen galleys at 800 gold florins a month each, though they arrived only after the battle, and Aragon armed twelve once Castile lent it three months' pay. Through Queen Maria he asked her father for the Portuguese fleet. It came up the Guadalquivir to Seville under Manuel Pessanha, Portugal's Genoese admiral, and his son Carlos, both recently released from a Castilian prison, but they would go no further than Cádiz.3 sources

Over the summer the Marinid army crossed. Abu al-Hasan laid siege to Tarifa on 23 September with more than twenty siege engines brought from Africa, and Yusuf I of Granada joined him. The engines battered the walls day and night. The defenders, commanded by Juan Alfonso de Benavides, beat back assaults and made night sorties, while a reorganised Christian fleet in the Strait cut the sultan's supply line.3 sources

Alfonso XI's queen, Maria, was the daughter of Afonso IV of Portugal. She was not the woman he loved. The Castilian chronicle says that in 1329, having had no child by the queen, the king took as his mistress Leonor de Guzmán, a rich and noble widow of Seville, and by 1340 Leonor held first place at court and Maria had been pushed aside.2 sources

Portugal and Castile had fought a war in the late 1330s, and Pope Benedict XII, in Avignon, worked to end it. The peace that followed freed the prisoners held on both sides. Alfonso XI also let Constanza Manuel, daughter of the great Castilian noble Juan Manuel, travel to Portugal to marry Afonso IV's heir, Pedro; the chronicle says he agreed because he needed Portugal's help.2 sources

With Tarifa under siege and some of his council advising him to give the town up, Alfonso XI decided to fight. He sent letters to Aragon, and he asked Maria to go to her father and tell him that Castile could not face so many Moors alone, and that if Castile fell, Portugal could not defend itself either. She left Seville and rode for Portugal as fast as she could.2 sources

Rui de Pina's chronicle of Afonso IV, written long afterwards and printed in 1653, adds the details Portuguese readers remember. Maria went first on pilgrimage to Terena, then to Évora, where her parents came out to meet her, and there she made her plea “with great humility and many tears”. Some of the king's councillors advised him not to rush off in person. He promised to go himself.2 sources

The two kings had not seen each other since before their war. They met at Juromenha on the Guadiana, where Afonso IV crossed the swollen river by boat with his son Pedro to greet his son-in-law. Afonso IV then hurried to Seville with the first men who reached him, arriving four days after Alfonso XI.1 source

Before leaving Seville, Alfonso XI held a muster: 8,000 horsemen and up to 12,000 foot. He had pawned the jewels of his treasury and could feed the army for only fifteen days, on money borrowed in Seville. The Portuguese had about 1,000 knights, because most of Afonso IV's men had not yet arrived. A tablet in Évora cathedral records that Évora alone sent 100 knights and 1,000 foot soldiers.2 sources

The Muslim figures in Christian sources are fantasies. The Castilian chronicle says 70,000 horsemen and 400,000 foot crossed with the sultan, and on the eve of the battle a Moor who came over to the Christian camp spoke of more than 53,000 horsemen and 700,000 foot for both Muslim armies. The Gran Crónica gives 45,000 and 600,000. Musa II, king of Tlemcen and a contemporary of the sultan, wrote that Abu al-Hasan's army exceeded 60,000 fighting men, a number Muñoz Bolaños finds far more reasonable.2 sources

On the night before the battle, Alfonso XI sent about 1,000 horse and 4,000 foot along the beach to slip into Tarifa. They fought their way past the 3,000 Marinid horsemen guarding the crossing, losing three men. The Castilian chronicle says the guards then told the sultan that no Christians had got through. Ibn Khaldun says that, afraid of his anger, they admitted only to a small troop.3 sources

In the morning the Castilian vanguard stopped at the stream. Juan Manuel, one of its leaders, refused to cross, and when his standard-bearer tried, he struck him with his mace. Two brothers, Garcilaso de la Vega and Gonzalo Ruiz, crossed instead at what the chronicle calls “a very narrow bridge”, probably a ford in Segura González's view. They had about 800 horsemen against more than 2,500 Moors, and nearly lost their men before help came.3 sources

Part of the vanguard then crossed and charged straight up the hill to the sultan's camp, where the force from Tarifa was attacking from the other side. Fatima, daughter of the ruler of Tunis and Abu al-Hasan's most honoured wife, was killed in the camp with other women of his household. Meanwhile Alfonso XI, left with few men when his own standard went on too far, was caught in the valley. An arrow struck the front of his saddle.2 sources

Archbishop Gil de Albornoz grabbed his reins and told him not to put Castile and León at risk, because the Moors were already beaten. Reinforcements from Zamora and Córdoba reached the king, the Castilian heavy cavalry charged, and the Marinids, seeing their camp burning behind them, broke.3 sources

On the left, the Portuguese reached the Salado at about ten in the morning and crossed at a ford the Granadans had left unguarded, far from their lines. Granada's army waited for them on higher, wooded ground, cavalry in the centre and archers on the wings. The Portuguese chronicle admits the fighting went badly: three Portuguese battalions were broken and the men around the king nearly gave way.3 sources

The sources disagree about what turned it. Portuguese chronicles credit a relic of the True Cross from Marmelar, in the Alentejo, which the prior of the Hospitallers (the crusading Order of St John), Álvaro Gonçalves Pereira, had a priest carry before the army on a white mule. The Castilian chronicle credits the Castilian foot soldiers under Pero Núñez de Guzmán, who reached the Portuguese wing, and Ibn al-Khatib, a Granadan writer who was in the battle, agrees that a reserve tipped it.3 sources

The Granadan and Marinid armies fled together towards Algeciras, and the two kings chased them as far as the river Guadalmesí. Yusuf I went on to Marbella. Abu al-Hasan waited at Gibraltar until he was sure no Christian fleet was patrolling, and crossed to Africa in a galley that night. Pedro de Moncada, the Aragonese admiral, had refused to guard the Strait, and had not left his galley all day.2 sources

Many Christians stopped in the sultan's camp to loot instead of pursuing. There were gold coins, gold ingots for minting, bracelets and anklets, pearls, gold-hilted swords, silk belts and enamelled spurs. So much was smuggled out to Aragon, Navarre and Avignon that, by the chronicle's account, gold and silver lost a sixth of their value in Paris, Avignon, Valencia, Barcelona and Pamplona. Segura González suspects exaggeration.2 sources

In Seville, Alfonso XI laid out what he had recovered in a palace and invited Afonso IV to take what he liked. The Portuguese king chose some swords, saddles, bridles and spurs and refused the gold. Pressed, he accepted instead a captive prince, the son of the king of Sijilmasa and a nephew of the sultan, with other prisoners. According to the Portuguese chronicle, five captured Moorish banners were taken to Lisbon.2 sources

Pope Benedict XII had made the campaign a crusade with the bull Exultamus in te of 7 March 1340, and sent a crusade banner that arrived only days before the battle. No foreign crusaders came, apart from one Aragonese knight and two squires from Majorca, both killed in the battle. The Pope had also granted Castile a share of church revenues for the war.3 sources

Alfonso XI sent Juan Martínez de Leyva to Avignon with his own banner, the horse he had ridden, captured horses each hung with a shield and a sword, and 24 Moorish prisoners carrying 24 captured banners. Benedict XII came down from his throne, took the king's banner in his hand and began the hymn Vexilla regis. In his sermon the next day he compared the victory with King David's.2 sources

Salado did not end the fight for the Strait at once. Alfonso XI had food for four days, so he could not march on Algeciras, which the Marinids still held. In 1341 he took Alcalá la Real, a Granadan fortress a day's march from Granada itself. In May 1342 the Genoese admiral Egidio Bocanegra, commanding Castile's fleet, sank 39 Marinid galleys at the mouth of the Guadalmesí, and Portuguese galleys under Carlos Pessanha joined the blockade.3 sources

Algeciras surrendered on 25 March 1344 after a siege so long that the besiegers built themselves wooden houses. Alfonso XI let the garrison sail for Morocco. A ten-year truce followed, with Yusuf I paying 12,000 doblas a year. In 1349 Alfonso XI laid siege to Gibraltar, and he died there of the Black Death on 26 March 1350.3 sources

No Moroccan army crossed to conquer in Iberia again. For Muñoz Bolaños, Salado stopped the last attempt to invade Christian Europe from North Africa. The Marinid state began to break up from 1347, fighting in the Strait did not resume until 1406, and in 1415 Portugal crossed the other way and took Ceuta.1 source

Afonso IV is known as “the Brave”, and tradition links the name to Salado, although the historian Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa thinks it owed more to his turbulent youth and his tenacity as king. Dioceses in Portugal and Spain kept 30 October as a feast, Victoria Christianorum, some of them for six centuries. Its hymns, in a psalter at Coimbra dated between 1340 and 1360, sing of Portugal and Castile winning at Tarifa. The feast lapsed after the Second Vatican Council.1 source

In Guimarães, in the main square of the medieval town beside the church of Nossa Senhora da Oliveira, is the Padrão do Salado, a small open Gothic shrine of four pointed arches under steep gables, carved with the royal arms. It is the only monument built to commemorate the battle. Its date is not certain: Segura González says it is thought to have been built in 1340, soon after the victory, while other accounts give 1342. Nine years after it was built, a cross was set inside it, the gift of a Guimarães merchant, Pedro Esteves, who had bought it in Normandy.1 source

Camões gave the battle nineteen stanzas of the third canto of the Lusiads, 99 to 117: Maria's plea, the two kings on the plains of Tarifa, and the Portuguese routing Granada before going to help the Castilians. Stanza 118 turns to the story of Inês de Castro. Afonso IV, the hero of Salado, is remembered at least as well for consenting to the killing of Inês, his son Pedro's lover, at Coimbra. One of her killers, Diogo Lopes Pacheco, was the son of Lopo Fernandes Pacheco, who had fought beside the king at Salado.4 sources