~ Una Cruzada Africana ~
North Africa c. 1500-1530
"El Viejo Catalán"
Following the Treaty of Toulouse in 1504, Fernando of Aragon held his breath to see if Louis XII would honor his agreement and cease any movement - diplomatic, military, or otherwise - against Spain. Nearly two years of such waiting was finally satisfied in May of 1506, when Maximilian I von Hapsburg declared war on France in the name of restoring Imperial territorial integrity to the duchy of Milan by ousting the French interlopers who were still garrisoned there. Having witnessed the beginning of what was surely to be a long and bloody war for France, Fernando felt confident that he could turn his attention away from what he believed was Spain’s greatest threat, and focus on another one: the Ottoman Turk. There was scarcely a single Christian monarch that had been watching the Ottomans’ rapid expansion into the Balkans by land and the Mediterranean by sea without a sense of trepidation, and Fernando was no exception - his Spanish piety and, of course, his holdings in Southern Italy both fueling his concern. With the French fully occupied, Fernando began to move against the Turks, a strategy that he felt would require multiple steps. Firstly, the Western Mediterranean would have to be shut to the Turks - the imminence of the Ottoman threat to Spain proper was made alarmingly clear when the Turkish pirate Kemal Reis raided the Baleares in 1501, and therefore the fortification of Malta and Sicily and the subjugation of Tunis and Tripoli were priorities. Secondly, the Knights of St. John (at the moment holding out on the island of Rhodes) would need to be co-opted by the Crown and tasked with the maintenance and defense of Spanish possessions - they had valuable experience in anti-Islamic piracy and in fighting the Turk, and, being a crusading order, were powerfully symbolic. Thirdly, the Venetian Republic and Spanish relations with it would need to be strengthened considerably - the Venetians, with their gigantic navy and their colonies of Crete, Cyprus, and the Ionian islands were a much-need buffer. Fourthly, Aragon and Castile would need to embark on a massive expansion of their galley fleet, which would be immensely difficult without Genoese support - prompting the kingdom of Aragon to lift its embargo on Genoa in 1509. Finally, the three kingdoms of Spain would be wise to consider as their endgame the full-scale invasion of the Maghreb and the destruction of its sultanates - as long as Spain did not hold unshakeable hegemony over the Barbary Coast, its pirates would continue to terrorize Spanish coastal settlements and its cities would continue to act as a springboard for the Turks.
El Magreb c. 1500
(1 = Wattasid Morocco, 2 = Wattasid Vassals, 2a = Saadian Principality, 2b = Viceroyalty of Debdu, 2c = Principalities of Tetuán and Chefchaouen, 3 = Sultanate of Tlemcen (Zayyanids), 4 = Sultanate of Tunis (Hafsids), 5 = Sultanate of Tripoli (Hafsids), Tan = Berber tribes and minor states)
Fernando thus began a three-pronged campaign, first with an expedition to be sent to Tunis and the isle of Djerba - commanded by Gonzalo de Córdoba and supervised by Fernando - and an expedition to be sent to Orán and Mazalquivir [1] - commanded by Pedro de Navarro and supervised by Cardinal Cisneros. Cisneros’ expedition, being easier to mobilize due to its proximity, was undertaken first, in October of 1508, with Orán being captured on the 7th and Mazalquivir being captured on the 18th. La Goletta (Italian for “gullet”), the port of Tunis, would be taken on the 12th of March, 1510, with Djerba (Hispanicized as Llerva, Italianized as Gierba) finally relenting on the 13th of February, 1512. The third prong was a combined assault from these two expeditions on the cities of Algiers and Béjaia, which both fell (like the others) with only a semblance of a fight on April 2nd and April 19th, respectively, of 1512. These campaigns were expensive, and the upkeep for the needed forts and garrisons was even more expensive, but the outcome had two worthwhile elements: first, it deprived the region’s pirates of their key ports, and second, it revealed the weakness and decadence of North Africa’s ruling dynasties.
Like his mother and grandmother, Miguel I da Paz was extremely devout and possessed an uncanny amount of physical courage (in spite of his hazardous constitution), and thus had been raised reading lives of the saints and histories of Spain, spellbound also by personal accounts from old veterans of the war against Granada and the forays into North Africa. Miguel had spent his formative years amidst very important events and changes in Spanish society, all of which cemented in his mind the near-apocalyptic destiny of the realm he was to inherit and formed in him the spirit of a crusader from a bygone era. From very early in his adolescence, Miguel burned for campaigns against the Moor and the Turk, starting with the heathenry that lay at Spain’s doorstep - the Maghreb. Almost immediately after receiving the crown of Castile in 1515, Miguel set about making the preparations and reforms needed for his “African Crusade.”
Perhaps the most immediate issue were Spain’s Muslim (Mudéjar) and formerly Muslim (Morisco) populations. After the conquest of Granada, attempts at converting and assimilating these groups had proved difficult. When Hernando de Talavera, the Archbishop of Granada and supporter of a reasoned approach to conversion, was replaced in 1499 in his capacity as coordinator of missionary efforts by the Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, who favored a process that can only be described as forced conversion, the Mudéjares and Moriscos of the Alpujarra rose up in rebellion. When the revolt was finished off in 1501, Isabel of Castile opted to enforce Cisneros’ policy by force. What this left Castile with was nearly 200,000 Moriscos who were now deeply resentful of the Crown, and many of whom continued to practice crypto-Islam. As disdainful as Miguel was of heretic and heathen alike, he saw in the Moriscos an opportunity - instead of expelling the Moriscos or compelling them to abandon the last vestiges of their Arabic culture, Miguel opted for a resettlement program: any Morisco household that relinquished its lands in Castile would receive lands of three times the acreage in North Africa (primarily in the pale of Tánger and Ceuta) or a stately home and a 5-year annual stipend of 24,000 reales in any North African city in Spanish or Portuguese possession. While this seemed to the military governors to be adding powder to the keg, it was a program that worked: for instance, the number of (at least nominal) non-Portuguese Christians in Tánger rose from 300 to 1,200 from 1515 to 1525 - numbers that would be replicated elsewhere. While the Moriscos were more or less pressured into leaving their ancestral homes, they could continue to speak Arabic and wear their traditional Granadan dress if they so pleased, and the payoff was more than enough to get them back on their feet. The sudden influx of Arabic-speaking Christians also (somewhat unexpectedly) led to conversions among the native Maghrebi Arabs and Berbers which, albeit small, would remain steady. Miguel would provide a safety measure to balance this concession, declaring apostasy from the Christian faith punishable by death in 1517.
Moriscos siendo bautizados
The second issue for Miguel were the expenses for his planned conquests, as levied troops were expensive to maintain and could only campaign for part of the year. What Spain needed were military orders: soldiery that was devout and solely dedicated to the cause that could man defenses year-round. The three kingdoms of Spain had retained the military orders of its Reconquista past, but by the 16th century they had become little more than honorary societies and bureaucrat factories that owned a disproportionate amount of land - some 60 towns and around 200,000 people were included in their demesne - and Miguel therefore decided for everyone else that the Reconquista was not, in fact, over until the Moor had been dealt a final, more complete coup de grâce. After all, what true Spaniard was content to declare the score settled once he had repaid his foe in merely equal measure? On August 6th of 1517, Miguel ordered the consolidation of the military orders of which he was the grandmaster by virtue of his Portuguese, Castilian, and Aragonese kingship - that is, the Orders of Montesa, Calatrava, Santiago, Santiago de la Espada, Alcántara, Avís, and of Saint John - into “Las Órdenes Militantes de España de la Protección y Propagación de la Fe.” [2] Having requested the Bull of the Crusade (Bula de Cruzada) that same year from Pope Leo X, Miguel ordered the establishment of new headquarters for the militant orders at the newly constructed forts of Santiago de Gibraltar and San Juan de Ceuta (both names chosen by Miguel himself, an enthusiast of symbolism), and, respecting the separateness of the Portuguese throne, organized the Portuguese orders into their own branch that would operate separately. One month later, Miguel issued a formal advisory to all notarized knights of the militant orders, informing them that they were to report to their respective order convents within four weeks’ time to serve the Crown and Cross as they had vowed. Any knight who did not wish to thus serve was required to pay 20,000 reales [3] out of their own pocket (land sales would also be accepted at the discretion of the corregidor supervising the sale) and were required to pay for the education, martial training, horses and armament of two squires from the order’s lands who might doubly take said knight’s place on the field or battlement when of age. Ultimately, by 1520, this radical readjustment earned Miguel the service of nearly 1,200 knights in the field, dispersed across Spanish and Portuguese North African ports, with almost 18 million reales [4] pocketed and about 5,000 knights in training at the orders’ expense. The military orders were powerful landholders and their members permeated the upper echelons of Iberian society. Nonetheless, whatever protests came, Miguel remained confident in the near absolute authority his father and grandparents had built up for the crowns he had inherited and refused to budge. Miguel’s defense for his actions was almost charmingly straightforward: “I have the fealty of the good sir knights of the orders militant of Spain. Such orders fight the heathen. I am sending them to fight the heathen.” The resurrection of the militant orders’ crusading purpose seems to have been beneficial in a propaganda sense as well, as the number of armed lay brothers grew by roughly 700 every year for the next 10 years.
Las temidas "banderas negras" de las Órdenes Militantes
(La bandera portuguesa que refleja su sumisión a la corona portuguesa)
- “Não sofra o mouro para ver o oceano outra vez!” -
As feverish as his Catholicism was and as fantastical as his designs for North Africa might have seemed, Miguel had a shrewdness he had gained from his father and maternal grandfather, and was keenly aware of the difficulty Spain would have in shattering the Barbary states. What was perhaps Miguel’s most sensible facet was his ability to delegate - Miguel may have been bullheaded in many ways, but he knew what he was and was not capable of. When Manuel I passed away in 1520, Miguel made two such acts of delegation: designating his now 16 year old brother, Fernando of Portugal, as the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Naples [5] (as well as Duke of Guarda and Count of Sicily), and designating a certain Martim Branco de Grândola, the Count of Portimão, as the Viceroy of the Kingdom of the Algarve. Branco was relatively unknown in the Iberian peninsula before his appointment, but would prove to be a wise choice. Branco, a knight of the Order of Avís, born 1488, was of a title so minor that he might as well have been considered a commoner, but was favored by Manuel I in the king’s later years (awarding Branco Portimão as a county in 1514) for being a consistently level-headed individual, and would now serve to temper and reorganize Miguel’s more extravagant ideas. For instance, when Miguel requested the levying in Castile of 86,000 troops by 1519 (almost 8% of Castile’s recruitable male population at the time), Branco convinced him to shoot for the much more reasonable 50,000 troops, with an extra 6,000 to be deployed in rotation, by 1521.
Martim Branco de Grândola
Cavaleiro da Ordem de Avis, Senhor de Tânger,
Conde de Portimão,
Duque de Faro, e Vice-Rei do Reino do Algarve
It is believed that the reason Miguel appointed Branco where he did was due to Branco’s nephew having been kidnapped by Moroccan pirates in 1510 and never seen again. As the Viceroy of the Algarve, Branco was tasked with the administration of not only southernmost Portugal but also all of Portugal’s possessions in Africa - which was the perfect arena for him to be unsheathed, as he had long strategized according to a personal quote: “Do not suffer the Moor to see the ocean ever again.” While the young Fernando of Portugal was tasked with the fortification of Southern Italy (principally at Bari, Otranto, Naples, Siracusa, and Palermo) and the recruitment of its peasants, Branco was hard at work putting into practice a scheme to maximize the usefulness of Portugal’s Moroccan ports - maintaining garrisons of no less than 800 in each city (with 1200 in Tánger and 1500 in Ceuta), which would be rotated out 200 men at a time every 6 months. Branco knew that, despite their not insignificant cost, the Portuguese garrisons on the Moroccan coast were worth their weight in gold, as the constant mutual raiding with the locals supplied Portuguese troops with always valuable field experience as well as with an elemental hatred for Islam - one of the most important ideological fuels for Portuguese imperialism.
It had become increasingly apparent to the kingdoms of Spain over the course of the late 15th century that the ruling Wattasid dynasty of Morocco would not reverse the decay that ended their predecessors, the Marinids, and were now leaving their state in a progressively weakened state - the traditional routes of commerce had been blocked by the Spanish and Portuguese, population growth had become stagnant, intellectual life deteriorated, and infighting on both a tribal and royal level became the norm. Miguel and his advisors realized that Morocco had not been so weak since the Roman legions had sent the Mauri running, and, unless something was done quickly to take advantage of this situation, might not be so weak again - especially with the bellicose Saadian tribe accumulating power in the south and percolating into Morocco’s now incessant court intrigue. With the pieces in place, Miguel convened with the Grand Admiral of Castile, Fadrique Enríquez de Velasco, to discuss the coordination of an invasion. From this meeting it was decided that first Castile and Aragon needed to strike at the Sultanate of Tlemcen before the toppling of the Wattasids might be considered, as Tlemcen had been the most proactive in cooperating with the Ottoman Navy, and remained the largest source of piracy in the Western Mediterranean. Mustering at Almería on October 15th, 1521, 34,000 troops under the command of García Álvarez de Toledo y Zúñiga, the 3rd Duke of Alba (and a former student of none other than the late Gonzalo de Córdoba [6]), were ferried across to the port of Honaine, with 2,000 breaking off to reinforce Orán and Mazalquivir while the remainder marched to the city of Tlemcen itself. Stunned at the size of the Spanish army, the Tlemcenis scrambled to amass a response, sending out their standing army of 12,000 royal soldiers, supplemented by 24,000 Berber horsemen and irregulars. After a few days of skirmishing, the battlefield was set on October 28th, at Felaoucene, 35 kilometers from Tlemcen. The Maghrebis and Berbers were fierce fighters, but they lacked discipline, had been mobilized at too short of a notice, and had no experience against the tercio (de Toledo proved to be a competent commander as well), leaving between 9-11,000 of their troops dead or wounded on the field and another 3,000 captured, while the Spanish, in contrast, suffered 3,000 dead and wounded. Three days later, the Spanish army had encircled the city of Tlemcen, and after a two week siege, breached the city, sacked it, and razed it to the ground on November 13th. The Spanish proceeded to ravage the countryside for the next three weeks, effectively emptying a pale around Orán and Mazalquivir, which, impressively, would be filled by Moriscos and soldier grants within 5 years.
As the Treaty of Alcáçovas (which was affirmed again in the Treaty of Montehermoso) decreed that the conquest of the “kingdom of Fes” would be reserved for the Portuguese Crown, Miguel had to ensure that such a conquest occurred under the direction of Martim Branco. Branco was given his orders of battle in February of 1522: he was to continue his raids into inland Moroccan, but this time deeper and with greater impunity, and he was to organize a spearhead from Tánger to take the city of Fes. Beginning in April of 1523, Branco worked with the Portuguese naval commander Tristão da Cunha in a lightning campaign along the Moroccan coast, capturing Azamor, Safim, Mazagão, La Mamora, Aguz, and Anfa (renamed Casa Branca several decades later after its conqueror), while he tasked da Cunha’s son Nuno (given command over a force of 7,500) with securing the hinterland of Tánger and Ceuta. There were, at the moment, 6,700 available Portuguese troops in Morocco, of which only 4,000 could be diverted from their garrisons, while the Portuguese Cortes could spare, at most, 27,000 more. After Branco, the elder da Cunha, and their force of roughly 1,000 docked in Tánger in January of 1524, they were soon met by the main Portuguese contingent - 23,000 strong. This was indeed a sizeable force, but was not nearly enough for the assignment at hand. Even under a dynasty as unsteady and divided as the Wattasids, Morocco was still a fundamentally militarized society - with little other economic recourse available to its subjects, Morocco was, like its Barbary neighbors, a realm of endless raids, piracy, and tribal feuds, and, at Branco’s estimate, could still rally as many as 80,000 to counter the Portuguese. Branco’s assessment would prove correct, as the Portuguese army had only made it to Huazán [7] (on March 2nd) before they were forced to take up the defensive against some 33,000 Moroccan irregulars and horsemen under the Wattasid prince Abu al-Hasan ibn Muhammad. The Moroccans were hesitant to take on the Portuguese directly despite their numerical superiority due to the Portuguese’s high concentration of heavy horseman (courtesy of the Orders of Avis and Santiago de Espada) and arquebusiers. The Portuguese were able to repulse charge after charge, but their situation was deteriorating - the fiscal strain of keeping such a large army in the field was beginning to mount, there were rumors of Moriscos in the Portuguese ranks acting as spies, and supplies were running low thanks to devastating Berber raids on the supply lines stretching back to Tánger and Ceuta.
Despite the clause in the Treaty of Alcáçovas that prohibited Castilian or Aragonese interference, it was obvious to Miguel that his designs on North Africa would end in utter disaster if the conquest of Fes was left to the Portuguese alone. Portugal only had a recruitable male population of roughly 300,000 - many of whom were overseas, seeking their fortune in the East Indies - meaning that the loss of 30,000 of its sons would be exceedingly harmful. However, these numbers were also fortunate for Miguel in that Portugal could not, therefore, feasibly resist or want to resist the flouting of such a minor clause in exchange for military assistance. Miguel had been aware of this much needed workaround before he even sent Branco his orders, and he convened a joint session of the Portuguese and Castilian Cortes (the first of its kind) at Badajoz in early April of 1522. Approaching each Cortes separately, Miguel was able to convince them that the opportunity had arisen to smash Morocco into pieces, and that such an opportunity should, like the Reconquista of old, be taken as a fraternal effort, uniting the manpower and resources of all of Christian Spain to end the terrorizing of its shores and advance the domain of the Cross (Miguel’s accomplishment here has been chalked up to his irrepressibly enthusiastic nature). By late 1523, 24,000 Castilian troops under de Toledo had been assembled near Cádiz, where they would remain on standby until the position of the Portuguese in Morocco grew desperate enough. With Moroccan reinforcements numbering nearly 39,000 - mobilized by the resourceful Saadians - reported to be moving north to swell Abu al-Hasan’s ranks, it was decided that now was the time to act and de Toledo was ordered to rendezvous with Branco and the Portuguese on April 29th. When de Toledo’s army arrived on May 17th, the sight of the Castilian banners was said to have evoked cheers from the beleaguered Portuguese troops. The sudden appearance of the Castilians convinced Abu al-Hasan to withdraw, (hoping to more quickly link up with his incoming support force) but the Spanish leaders - in spite of their exhaustion - would not let him off so easily and ordered a general charge, which succeeded in breaking what remained of Abu-Hasan’s line and turning his careful retreat into a full rout.
The clash at Huazán must have given de Toledo and Branco a good understanding of their enemies’ deficiencies, as their next move was not to seize the now unprotected city of Fes, but rather to turn to the southwest and follow Abu-Hasan’s army, finally stopping outside the town of Mequinez. [8] Joined by the Saadi prince of Tagmadert, Abu Abdallah al-Qaim, Abu-Hasan’s army now reached numbers ranging (according to Spanish estimates) from 60,000 to as high as 100,000 - compared to the Spanish force of 52,000. However, neither the vastness of the Moroccan army nor the battle fanaticism of its warriors were enough to make up for its critical flaws - being its poor organization and equipment, its inability to fight in unison, and the indecisiveness of Abu-Hasan. When the Spanish army got enticingly close to the Moroccans and drew up into its characteristic defensive formation, the battle had already been decided. The Moroccan cavalry bled itself dry against the tercios in charge after vainglorious charge, while the Spanish jinetes rounded the hills and outflanked the Moroccans as they were attempting to encircle the Spanish infantry. With their cavalry practically dispersed and both wings of their army outmaneuvered and surrounded by the Spanish, the Moroccans were ripe for a massacre. With the conquest of Granada still in fairly recent memory, and, led by de Toledo, the hammer of Tlemcen, and Branco, scourge of the Moor, the Spanish army was in a near frenzy of crusading zeal, and offered minimal quarter. Among the Moroccan casualties was the Saadi Abu Abdallah al-Qaim, while Abu-Hasan was taken prisoner. The outcome of the battle was so one-sided that it is often credited alone with precipitating the downfall of the Wattasids and is considered one of the finest victories in Spanish history and a hallmark of the Spanish tercio’s unmatched status in the 16th century.
What followed Mequinez were a dizzying number of gains made in Morocco proper, including (of course) the capture of both Fes four weeks later and Marrakech less than 2 years later, with puppet principalities subservient to the Portuguese crown established in both cities. Portugal would also annex the rest of Tingitana as well as practically the entire western Moroccan coast (with a supple hinterland attached). Concerning the protection of these acquisitions, Morocco possessed a wealth of fortified settlements and chokepoints known as “kasbahs,” many of which were granted to the Portuguese militant orders - these kasbahs were often small cities in their own right and were much more self-sufficient than standard fortifications. The failure to repulse the Spanish led to a wholesale loss of whatever confidence remained in the Wattasids, and a riot drove them out of Fes before the Spanish even began their siege. The sudden deluge of Spanish soldiers and the removal of the highest leadership caused nothing short of a societal collapse in Morocco by 1528, with consequent famines, feuds, and other misfortunes sending thousands fleeing to the east and south. As for the the Saadi dynasty, they had lost their patriarch and were profoundly weakened for it, but would eventually regain a semblance of their footing and concentrate their power in the south, remaining in a state of hostilities with the Portuguese. The three crowns of Spain were in immense debt from this colossal undertaking, but the fact remained: troublesome Morocco, the gate by which the Moor had entered Spain so many years ago, was now broken, and its fall opened the door to the subjugation of its neighbors.
Ejemplos de kasbahs marroquíes
- Entretonto -
All the while, the always vigorous Miguel had been investing in combating court troubles, pushing for reform, and fighting another war not too far away to the south. Concurrently, the Turks, having been meanwhile busy with wars on two fronts against the Hungarians and the Mamluks, were now shifting their focus west again. Most importantly, on March 3rd of 1517, Miguel’s Queen-Consort Claude of Brittany - called “La ganada” by Miguel’s subjects as her hand in marriage was deciding clause for the Treaty of Toulouse - gave birth to Miguel’s first child, a son. It was expected for Miguel to name this boy Juan, after his deceased uncle and previous heir to Castile and Aragon, which Miguel did, but not without adding his own flair: Miguel believed that Spain was at the threshold of rebirth - both in the sense of becoming a kingdom oriented towards a great evangelization and geared to destroy Islam once and for all, and also in the sense that it was regaining the unity it had once possessed under the Visigoths and the subsequent Kingdom of Asturias - so what better second name to give the heir to All Spain and the Champion of Christendom against the Mohammedan than “Pelayo,” after the first prince of Asturias and first bulwark of the Reconquista. Juan Pelayo, the first of his name like his father, would have immense expectations placed on him by that name - all of which and more he would live up to.
El Magreb c. 1530
(1-3 = Portuguese protectorates, 1 = Principality of Fez, 2 = Principality of Morocco, 3 = Principality of Taroudant, 4-8 = Castilian/Aragonese protectorates, 4 = Lordship of Oujda, 5 = Lordship of Mostaganem, 6 = Tributary Kabyle Berbers, 7 = the Sultanate of Tunis, 8 = the Sultanate of Tripoli, 9 = Saadian emirate, Orange = Las órdenes militantes de Castilla y Aragón)
[1] OTL Mers-el-Kébir
[2] "The Orders Militant of Spain of the Protection and Propagation of the Faith"
[3] 2,500 USD
[4] 2.25 million USD
[5] The position having been vacant for two years
[6] Having died ITTL in 1517, as opposed to OTL 1515
[7] OTL Ouazzane
[8] OTL Meknes
