Chapter 35: Vengeance
With Gil’s need to head to Toledo for the coronation, someone must head south to defend the newly taken city of Fes.
Duarte and an army cobbled together from Seville and Granada cross into Africa, almost immediately coming upon a large Aragonese army threatening both Fes and Marrakesh.
Duarte’s army heads forward, meeting Suero’s on the edge of a hill. As the infantry lines smash into each other, Duarte sends his jinettes and feudal knights around both edges.
The Portuguese cavalry quickly knife through the Aragonese archers behind their infantry lines. Suero himself charges the Portuguese knights, as Duarte throws himself and his own guards directly into the center of the enemy lines.
Suero is soon killed, and without any cavalry support, the Aragonese infantry are surrounded and routed.
Duarte’s victory relieves pressure on the city of Fes, enabling Gil and his army to head for Toledo. Duarte and his army take up the protection of the city, and the area remains quiet for several years.
Soon after Gil heads north, he learns that longtime governor Andre Osorio has died. Having supported Marcio for his entire life, Andre’s stable governing will be sorely missed.
In 1285, Gil and his army finally arrive in the capital. As he enters Toledo, thousands of citizens pour out of their homes and shops to watch him ride toward the castle. The coronation takes place early in the morning on June 3rd. Gil receives the crown from the Archbishop of Seville. The Archbishop’s role is entirely ceremonial, as the Church has no real say in who next becomes King, beyond certifying the last King’s will, which names his heir.
Still, Portugal is a bastion of Christianity, and nearly every Portuguese citizen closely follows the commands of the Pope and all his officials in Portugal. Not surprisingly, there is widespread support for Gil, from the people, the troops, and the Church.
After he is crowned, King Gil has to remain in the capital to deal with issues at the court. Bogged down with bureaucratic matters, he is unable to reinforce either the northern or southern fronts. In 1286, without Gil’s army for support, there is no way to defend Marrakesh from a large Aragonese army that slips by Fes to the south and heads for the southern city.
The army quickly marches south and besieges Gaspar’s garrison in Marrakesh, just as three large Aragonese armies arrive out of nowhere to threaten Barcelona. They are the remnants of Aragonese forces that were sent north and east from Barcelona before the city was taken by Portugal. Having marched hundreds of miles back toward their base, they find it occupied by their hated enemies, the Portuguese.
Pero and his garrison are besieged until Alexandre Amaral and Zaragoza’s entire garrison arrive to lift the siege. Pero and his garrison take advantage and march on the closest Aragonese army, with Alexandre and his army offering reinforcements.
Pero and his army meet the enemy in bright daylight in early summer. Pero raises Tizona, sunlight glinting off its impeccably sharp edge, and urges his men forward. Always hasty to fight, Pero refuses to wait for Alexandre’s army to arrive.
Dozens of feudal knights and Knights of Santiago line up, ready for battle.
The two armies move together, infantry leading the way. Suddenly, the enemy general, Salvador de Mansilla, charges forward at the head of his army.
Salvador’s guards begin to push the Portuguese infantry backwards, the Aragonese horses trampling Portuguese beneath their hooves. Pero and his own guards surge forward, cutting right through their own men to reach the enemy general.
Eventually, Pero and his knights help separate Salvador from his infantry. While the two armies’ infantry lines face off once again, a sea of Portuguese knights surround the Aragonese general.
Salvador, cut off from the rest of his army, is soon killed. Pero and his knights turn and charge the rear of the Aragonese lines. The entire enemy army is destroyed. Alexandre and his army don’t even get a chance to join the battle. Of course, Pero executes all the prisoners.
Duarte’s brother Sancho takes an army from Seville, Granada, and Cordoba south to help fight the Aragonese. Salvador Gonçalves and Vasco Cruz head east from Burgos to help Pero.
Vasco and his wife Leonor have a daughter who they also name Leonor. Prince Pero and his new wife Adelaide also have a daughter (Angelina), leading many to hope that he will yet have a son.
Duarte’s other brother Lopo marries Urraca Sousa, the stunning daughter of a local baron. Urraca rebuffs Lopo’s advances for more than a year before finally agreeing to marry him. Lopo convinces her with his assertions that he will one day be brother to a king.
The current brother to the king, Prince Pero, is furious at the Aragonese armies north of Barcelona. The thought of enemy troops in Portuguese territory infuriates him (as do most things). Prince Pero and the Barcelona garrison head north into the wilderness, seeking the remaining Aragonese armies. In 1288, Pero finds them.
Vastly outnumbered, Pero and his army attack anyway. Unfortunately, Pero’s army is pinched, with one of the enemy armies directly in front, and one out to the right side.
The enemy armies each march forward steadily. With no way to handle one army at a time, Pero must fight both simultaneously. With a huge disadvantage in numbers, the task is a difficult one.
Pero waits while he thinks about his options. There aren’t many. Suddenly, he shouts to his signalman. The young knight waves his signal banners in a complex pattern. A few seconds later, 60 feudal knights and 13 Knights of Santiago peel off and head east in an attempt to delay the reinforcing army, while the main Portuguese force faces off against the main Aragonese army.
Set upon by the fast-moving knights, several units of crossbowmen in the reinforcing Aragonese army rout immediately. However, the sword militia dig in and fight back.
Pero has little time to consider the consequences, as his main force has reached the main enemy army. All the feudal knights left in Pero’s main army charge the Aragonese merchant cavalry militia. The main infantry lines meet.
Courageous and foolhardy, even in his 60s, Pero charges straight into the center of the enemy line. Seeing that the center was held by mercenaries, he and his guards almost immediately rout the enemy macemen. However, they are bogged down in row upon row of Aragonese spearmen.
Frankish knights on Portugal’s right side skirt the infantry lines and charge directly into Portuguese Basque archers, devastating them. With that section’s knights all off taking on the reinforcing Aragonese, there is no support to protect the archers.
However, those 73 knights have essentially destroyed the entire 700-man reinforcing army. Meanwhile, the other Portuguese knights have destroyed all of the Aragonese cavalry and now turn into the enemy infantry line. The Frankish mercenary knights are only too happy to withdraw, and the main Aragonese army is eventually crushed.
Prince Pero continues to earn his nickname as “the Merciless,” as he puts nearly 700 men to the sword.
Pero and his army are trapped in Papal territory, far north of the border line, with Sicilian and Papal forces blocking his return to Barcelona.
Sancho heads for Gibraltar, but Gaspar is on his own in Marrakesh. Sancho is unlikely to arrive in time.
King Gil, angry at Aragon’s continued attacks, sends most of his veterans from Toledo to Seville. There, Sancho and Duarte’s brother Lopo takes command of them and begins to follow after his older brother.
The next year finds a shift in the relations of several of Portugal’s neighbors. England and Norway begin fighting along their mutual border, igniting a huge war between the two eminent powers in central Europe.
Then, with all Aragonese armies finally out of his newfound territory in Toulouse, the Pope signs a truce with Aragon. Gil and Pero both realize that their chance to strike back against Aragon without angering the Pope is fading.
On his trek against the Aragonese forces, Pero has become afflicted with pneumonia. Despite his ill health, he orders his army to board the Portuguese fleet just off the coast. Gil expect that he will return to Barcelona, but his younger brother remains impetuous.
Pero orders the fleet to the island of Palma, the only remaining Aragonese territory outside of Africa. Pero and his army land, encountering only token resistance. They soon discover that the new King of Aragon, Millan the Wise, is garrisoning the city alone. With Portugal’s navy controlling the entire western Mediterranean, there is no way for the King to head for the main Aragonese lands in Africa.
When Pero lands, he attacks a small force of Aragonese troops under the command of Tomas Silva, and the King’s forces are drawn in, as well as those of a medium sized reinforcing army.
During the battle, Pero’s army steamrolls each Aragonese army in turn, with the enemy fleeing back to the city.
With the city nearly defenseless, Pero prepares his attack. The Portuguese fleet admiral sends word that several passing merchant ships bring news that Pero will not like: the Pope has reconciled Aragon, making an further attacks against them illegal in the eyes of the Church.
Predictably, Pero ignores the news and assaults the city anyway, easily taking it and killing King Millan. Then, just for sheer sport, he sacks the city.
The Pope is not pleased.
Later that same year, the long awaited attack on Marrakesh comes.
Though he is slightly outnumbered, Gaspar is a cunning general. His pride demands that he hold the city.
However, Gaspar did not count on the Aragonese bringing mangonels and catapults with them. The siege engines begin to rock the castle walls with giant boulders thrown hundreds of yards.
After hours and hours of bombardment, the Aragonese knock a huge hole in the wall. Their jinettes follow straight into the gap.
The Portuguese spear militia brace themselves, trying desperately to hold against the enemy cavalry.
The defenders race to block the hole in the wall, while more than a thousand Aragonese rush to enter the city.
Two units of Aragonese javelinmen try to climb the walls with ladders but are easily repulsed by defenders. Gaspar sends his jinettes out of the gate to pepper the enemy’s flanks with javelins. The Aragonese become stuck in a tight bottleneck at the wall, with men in the ranks behind pushing their own men forward into the defenders.
A javelin strikes the enemy general in the back of his shoulder, driving him forward onto the point of a spear. With their general dead, the Aragonese try to rout, but Gaspar throws his entire force at them. Several hundred survivors flee, and Gaspar, uncharacteristically, releases a few hundred more. They flee hundreds of miles back to their city in the east in only a few weeks.
In 1290, a Portuguese Cardinal is elected Pope, breaking a string of three English Popes in a row. Gil and Pero hope to pressure him to support continued war against Aragon. It works, as the Pope loathes the Aragonese. Still, he is not happy with Portuguese aggression against their Christian neighbors.
Freed from having to rescue Marrakesh, Sancho and his army head east toward Aragonese territory. Lopo takes over control of Fes, and Duarte heads east as well. The three brothers, eventually immortalized as “the Adamastors” in fourteenth century Portuguese poems, are determined to destroy Aragon.
In 1292, the brothers’ young niece Luisa Gonçalves marries Pero de Matos, a mild-mannered local nobleman.
Rui Meira discovers the new Aragonese king, Snori the Wise, trapped near Pamplona. Convinced he must be the last of the Aragonese remnants, Rui takes a small part of Pamplona’s garrison and chases him down. Fleeing, the King is captured. Rui offers to ransom him to the Aragonese forces in Africa, but they again refuse, and yet another Aragonese king dies at the hands of the Portuguese.
Then Portugal finds its Brutus.
Re: [SS 6.3 AAR] The Rise of Portugal (Updated 2/8: Chapter 31)
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I would personnaly go for total war... 
