King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family, and War by Miguel Gómez Damian Smith and Kyle C. Lincoln

Author:Miguel Gómez, Damian Smith, and Kyle C. Lincoln
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

ALFONSO VIII AND THE BATTLE OF LAS NAVAS DE TOLOSA

Miguel Gómez

As the sun set over the Sierra Morena on the evening of Monday, July 16, 1212, the fifty-six-year-old Alfonso VIII, king of Castile and Toledo, rode back to his camp on the Mesa del Rey above the fields of Las Navas de Tolosa, where his army, alongside those of his fellow monarchs Peter II of Aragon and Sancho VII of Navarre, had just routed the forces of the Almohad Caliph Muhammad al-Nāṣir. Alfonso himself had led the charge of his reserve cavalry that turned the tide of the battle and shattered the Almohad forces, but it had been a near-run contest. Alfonso’s attack came at a moment when the Christian lines appeared to have been wavering. In one of the most dramatic scenes in any of the many accounts of the battle, Archbishop Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada reported that the king, upon seeing his men breaking, turned to him and said “Archbishop, you and I are going to die here.” Rodrigo, ever the confident counselor, replied, “Not at all, rather here you will overcome your enemies.”1 The archbishop’s confidence was well-placed. Alfonso “ordered his standard bearer to spur his horse and ride quickly up the hill where the heart of the battle was, and he did so at once. When the Christians came up, the Moors thought that new waves had come upon them and fell back, overcome by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.”2 In his letter to Pope Innocent III, Alfonso remarked, “Following them [the defeated Almohad soldiers] until night, we killed more in the rout than in the battle itself.”3 The old king must have been both exhausted and exhilarated at the end of what was undoubtedly the most momentous day of his long reign.

The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, and the campaign which preceded the Christian victory, is certainly the most famous event of Alfonso VIII’s lengthy fifty-six years on the Castilian throne.4 It was recorded far and wide in chronicles and histories across Europe, and became in time a semi-legendary episode of immense importance in the collective memory of Christian Spain.5 The battle serves as the climax (and most detailed part) of Archbishop Rodrigo’s history, De Rebus Hispanie, and was the lens through which he magnified the reputation of Alfonso VIII. The king himself celebrated the victory in all of his chancery documents issued during the last two years of his life.6

Of course, the significance, decisiveness, and impact of the battle were exaggerated, both by the contemporary Castilians and by generations of subsequent historians. The losses sustained that day were not the cause of the long-term instability of the Almohad Empire, nor did victory secure for the Christian kingdoms their accelerating conquest of the peninsula, which was in fact the result of centuries-long demographic and economic developments. But even if the battle did not represent a sudden turning point in Iberian history, it certainly appeared, to the king and his contemporaries, to mark the high point of his reign.

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