The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (5 page)

He must have walked in the gardens – which still survive – amongst the orange trees that line the pools, canal and terraces. The 28-year-old was a popular recruit, ‘Young, wealthy, high born and related to the blood royal of England. He was much honoured by the King and Queen and found great favour with the fair dames about the court,’ wrote Washington Irving.

From here Edward wrote to King João (John) of Portugal apologizing for having had no time to call on him on his way through Lisbon. The King replied generously to the ‘Magnificent and puissant Count, Kinsman and Friend’, accepting his excuses but expecting to see him on his return journey.9 So it seems that Edward had previously made friends with King João, presumably when he had been there with his brother in 1472.

The current phase of the war had been running for around six years and had been triggered by the Moorish King Abul Hacan, who refused to pay his annual tribute to Spain. He proudly told the Spanish monarchs, ‘The mints of Granada coin no longer gold, but blades for scimitars and the heads of lances.’ Then to demonstrate his defiance he attacked and captured Zahara, a supposedly impregnable frontier town, and took its citizens into slavery. The outraged Spaniards demanded retaliation. A captain of 
escaladores
 (scalers of fortifications) saw the opportunity for glory and plunder and approached Don Rodrigo Ponce de León, Marquis of Cadiz, with the idea of a freelance operation against Alhama.

This citadel was deep in Moorish territory, apparently impregnable and an important commercial centre with a tax-collection office as well as the best hot baths in the kingdom, which were particularly popular with the Moorish monarch and his court. Don Rodrigo arrayed 8,000 men and marched for three days, reaching Alhama undetected. They scaled the ramparts, took the surprised fortress and restored the honour of Spain.10 It was the start of a string of Spanish successes that continued until 1482 when, over-confident, the Christian army was caught in a devastating ambush outside Loja, a key border citadel.

The Moors gained the ascendancy but then the ruler of Granada, Abul Hacan, enraged his principal wife by having an affair with a Greek girl. The row escalated to tribal fighting and led to a division of the emirate between the King and his eldest son, Boabdil. The split was hugely propitious for the Spanish and brought success against the feuding Moors. But Granada’s defence arrangements were good: a chain of castles every five miles or so, along its northern and western frontiers and the military resources of North Africa in the background, although these came at a heavy price.

The Spanish strategy for the spring campaign of 1486 was to capture the citadels guarding the northern border of Granada. So on 14 May, the army set off across the Guadalquivir plain, into the low rolling hills and then up the valleys towards the spectacular Sierras. In the mountains the edges of the army were exposed to harrying attacks by light Moorish cavalry, but they lumbered on undeterred. Diego de Valera recounted:

And the said knights departed together with the aforementioned people, and went to feed their horses at Peña de los Enamorados [Lover’s Rock]. And thence they departed in the afternoon, and at day break they were outside Loja: whither there came an English knight, a very noble man, called Lord Scales, with eighty or a hundred fighting men.

Loja was originally a Roman military city. It is perched on a rocky outcrop that rises from the steep side of a valley; the river Genil curves round it like a moat and there is a single bridge crossing. The previous attempt to capture Loja had come to grief in the mountains. Now there was a new plan: the vanguard was to make a difficult climb and take the heights above the city, while the main army was to arrive on the opposite side of the river. Edward volunteered for the vanguard but the King said there would be ‘no lack of perilous service’ in the campaign and kept him back.

The vanguard were supposed to take up their position surreptitiously, so they started clambering up the rocky escarpment towards the high ground. Coincidentally the forward pickets of the main army arrived on the plain and broke ranks to make camp. It was then that the Moors sprang their ambush. They had been waiting for such a moment. Two divisions charged out of the city, one to take the heights and roll the supposedly surprise attack back down the escarpment while the other attacked the disorganized men on the plain.

At this juncture it seems that King Ferdinand and Edward rode over a hill and saw the fighting on the plain below them. They sat on their horses watching the Moors driving the Christians off the plain.

Many Moors came out on foot and on horseback to prevent the royal camp being established and fired arrows and gunshot from the fruit groves. The fighting involved the Moors, the Englishmen and some northern mountaineers, who had come with the Dukes of Infantado and Najera...and are called Biscayners [Basques].11

Edward turned to the King and asked if he could fight in the ‘English way’. Given permission, he dismounted, ordered his trumpeter to blow the charge, probably the same call that has echoed down the ages urging English soldiers forward, then, with battle-axe in hand and his banner-man beside him, he marched forward.12 His men must have hurried to catch up and so formed a wedge behind his banner. He charged straight for the Moorish weak point, the single bridge to the city. In Prescott’s translation, Bernáldez tells the story of Edward asking:

for leave to fight in the manner of his country and dismounting from his horse, and armed with sword and battle-axe he charged forward at the Moorish host before them all, with a small company of his men, armed like himself, slashing and hacking with brave and manly hearts, killing and dismounting the enemy right and left.

He then dealt such terrible blows around him that even the hardy mountaineers of the North were filled with astonishment.

It must have been a terrific sight, the Englishmen charging forward, perhaps led by a banner emblazoned with the silver scallop of Scales, weapons and armour gleaming in the sun. Their surcoats were probably uniform, perhaps brilliant white, quartered by the scarlet cross of St George.13

There was vigorous action with arrows and gunfire:

The Castilians, seeing his charge, rushed on to support it, following on the heels of the Englishman with such valour that the Moors turned tail and fled...and the Christians mixed in with them, entered the outskirts of Loja outside the walls, which they never left or lost thereafter. The king then came in person to support his men.

They had fought their way across the flat farmland to the bridge. The river is deep and fast flowing in May but they captured the bridge and broke through the city gates. The inhabitants – women, children, goats, hens and all – must have scattered squawking as the Englishmen rampaged across the lower town which clusters on the lower slopes of the castle crag.

The fortress sits high above, 100 paces forward and 100ft (30 metres) up to the base of the walls that then rise 20–30ft (6–9 metres). Edward, in his role as the Conde de Escalas, led his men on, up scaling ladders while the defenders bombarded them with rocks from above. The 
escaladores
, the scalers of fortifications, were the English company and it was remarkable piece of organization, or luck, to find ladders for scaling at the end of a spontaneous rushing attack.

Edward took a rock in the face.14 He was knocked cold but his men surged on. Fernando del Pulgar reported:

And thus the combat lasted for around eight hours, during which, because some of the Christians were tiring and others seeing the danger of the fighting, fainted. The knights and captains, each where he was fighting, encouraged his men and by placing himself in the position of greatest danger, revived their spirits, making them set to and fight. Especially the Englishman, the Conde de Escalas with the bowmen and foot soldiers he brought, ventured into dangerous situations and places.

This is a good account of an English knight leading ordinary foot soldiers as a tactical officer. Traditionally infantry captains came from the ranks and infantry fought as a separate group without knightly officers in the ranks. If knights dismounted then they fought as a group of knights. In early or tribal armies, all ranks fought as a single unit, with the chief of the family or clan as the tactical officer, but not in civilized Europe, where status was of paramount importance. In the Middle Ages, knights and men-at-arms were grouped together to fight as a unit, either as heavy cavalry or very heavy infantry, certainly separate from common soldiers who were given their orders as a group. Indeed Alonso de Palencia – a contemporary – believed that Edward had 300 knights with him.15 However, here Edward is leading ordinary infantrymen, while his archers are presumably providing covering shots, probably in the initial stages and certainly when the walls were being scaled.

It was the Swiss who first had knights fighting in the ranks as infantry officers and this proved very effective, Charles the Bold paid the price of underestimating them and the idea spread, but it was innovative and contrary to the perception of what was correct.16 The arrival of officers to direct tactical infantry marks one of the step changes in warfare. Edward was at the forefront of military thinking, with no regard, in this instance, for traditional ways.

Both Bernáldez and Petrus Martyr, an Italian intellectual who was then ‘exchanging Muses for Mars’, reported the results:

Many Moors were killed in this encounter and some Christians as well and the English lord was struck with a stone which broke his teeth and three or four of his men were slain.

Unfortunately just as the suburbs were carried, the knight, as he was mounting a scaling ladder, received a blow from a stone which dashed out two of his front teeth and stretched him senseless on the ground.

The Conde de Las Escalas was brought back senseless to his tent where his life was saved by the extraordinary skill of the surgeons, though it was found impossible to replace his broken teeth. He lay some time under medical supervision. When he had sufficiently recovered he received a visit from the King and Queen who complimented him on his prowess and testified their sympathy for his misfortune of the missing teeth. To which he replied:

‘It is little to lose a few teeth in the service of him, who has given me all.’ He added: ‘Our Lord who reared this fabric, has only opened a window in order to discern the more readily what passes within.’

This witty response gave uncommon satisfaction to the sovereigns. The Queen, not long after, testified to her sense of the Earl’s services by a magnificent largesse.

The largesse manifested itself as, ‘twelve Andalusian horses, two beds with richly wrought hangings, coverings of cloth of gold and a quantity of fine linen together with sumptuous pavilions for himself and his suite’. It was unusual generosity from the blue-eyed Castilian monarch, who was known to be careful with her money. The inventory of the materials is in Appendix C; it totals 88,791 maravedis, over £47.17

Fernando del Pulgar tells a similar story of the King visiting Edward in his tent:

to console him for the wounds that he had received, especially for the two teeth that had been knocked from his mouth. And he told him he should be happy that his courage had lost him two teeth, which he could have lost through age or disease. And considering the place in which he had lost them, rather did they make him handsome, than deformed; and that rather did this loss increase his worth, than the wound constitute a loss for him.

The Count replied that he gave thanks to God and the glorious Virgin, to have been visited by the most powerful King in all Christendom, and that he accepted his gracious consolation for the teeth that he had lost. Although he did not consider it much to lose two teeth in the service of He who had given them all to him.

Getting hit on the head seems to have been a common hazard for brave men who scaled fortifications. Tirant Lo Blanc, the hero in a near-contemporary novel, suffers a similar misfortune when besieging a Moorish castle: ‘Tirant dismounted and led the charge, but as he reached the wall, one of the stones thrown by the defenders struck his head. His men dragged him out of the ditch.’ He was put to bed and grandees came to visit him: ‘Tirant thanked them for their generous aid, but it was hard for him to speak because his head ached. The doctors poulticed it with broth from a sheep’s head cooked in wine, and the next morning he felt much better.’ 18

History does not relate what poultice or medicine was administered to Edward, but he certainly mended. Not all the English were so lucky. De Valera reported that 20 were killed in the fighting at Loja, while Bernáldez puts the deaths at three or four. There were certainly some who were badly wounded.

Meanwhile the artillery had arrived, and six days after the capture of the suburbs the lombards19 began a bombardment. ‘A great stretch of the city’s walls’ was soon demolished. The defenders knew they were beaten and the following day they surrendered. The citadel was captured and with it came an unexpected prize, King Boabdil, the young Moorish monarch – his mother’s boy – who shared the throne so uneasily with his father.

King Ferdinand, wise in politics (his statecraft was much admired by Machiavelli), magnanimously released Boabdil and sent him back to Granada so that the internal feuding could continue in that unfortunate emirate. The surrender terms for Loja allowed the inhabitants to leave ‘with whatever they could carry of theirs...and these Moors and Mooresses wept and wailed bitterly as they went’. Also at their request, the King provided the Marquis of Cadiz and an escort to ensure they reached Granada in safety. ‘The date on which Loja was surrendered to the king was Monday 28th May of the said year of 1486...The king then moved his host and his artillery and went to lay siege to Illora.’ 20