Fourth Siege of Gibraltar

Last updated
Fourth Siege of Gibraltar
Part of Moorish Gibraltar
4th-Siege-of-Gibraltar-map.jpg
Map of military movements in the Fourth Siege of Gibraltar
DateJune – August 1333
Location
Gibraltar
Result
  • Castilian siege lifted
  • Morocco retains control of Gibraltar
Belligerents
Bandera de la Corona de Castilla.svg Kingdom of Castile Royal Standard of Nasrid Dynasty Kingdom of Grenade.svg Emirate of Granada
Flag of Morocco 1258 1659.svg Sultanate of Morocco
Commanders and leaders
Bandera de la Corona de Castilla.svg Alfonso XI of Castile Royal Standard of Nasrid Dynasty Kingdom of Grenade.svg Muhammed IV of Granada
Flag of Morocco 1258 1659.svg Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahid

The Fourth Siege of Gibraltar, fought from June until August 1333, pitted a Christian army under King Alfonso XI of Castile against a large Moorish army led by Muhammed IV of Granada and Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahid of Fes. It followed on immediately from the Third Siege of Gibraltar, fought earlier in 1333. The siege began inauspiciously with a disastrous landing by Castilian forces on the west side of Gibraltar, before developing into a stalemate in which neither side had the strength to capture Gibraltar, nor to break out or lift the siege. Both sides faced acute shortages of food – the Gibraltar garrison was cut off from resupply, while the Castilians, deep within enemy territory, could only be resupplied via an unreliable sea route. After two months of inconclusive siege warfare, the Castilians and Moors reached a truce agreement that allowed both sides to make an honourable exit from the siege. Although the Moors managed to keep Gibraltar, the truce cost Muhammed IV his life when he was assassinated by disgruntled nobles the day after signing it.

Contents

Start of the siege

Gibraltar was ruled by the Kingdom of Castile between 1309 and 1333, after having been in Muslim hands for almost 600 years. The Marinid ruler Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman allied with his Granadan counterpart, Muhammed IV, to mount a siege of the fortified town between February–June 1333. The Castilian garrison held out for over four months but starvation forced it to capitulate only a few days before a relief force under the Castilian king, Alfonso XI, was due to arrive.

Alfonso already had a fleet in the Bay of Gibraltar under the command of Admiral Alfonso Jofre de Tenorio. His army's overland march from Jerez de la Frontera had been held up by squabbles with his nobles, whom he had to persuade to continue on after the news of Gibraltar's fall arrived on 20 June. He pointed out that the Moors would not yet have secured their position in the fortress; they would still be taking stock, repairing the damage that they had caused to the fortifications and reprovisioning the new garrison. There was no time to lose in pressing a counter-attack. [1]

The Castilians left their encampment by the Guadalete river near Jerez and marched first to Alcalá de los Gazules, taking the direct but mountainous route to Gibraltar. On 26 June they reached Castellar de la Frontera on the upper reaches of the Guadarranque river and marched down the river's left bank towards the old Roman city of Carteia at the head of the Bay of Gibraltar. [1] A 6,000-strong Moorish force from nearby Algeciras under Abd al-Malik followed them on lower ground near the coast. Alfonso stuck to the high ground of the Sierra Carbonera from which the Moors sought to lure him into an ambush as his army descended the slope towards Gibraltar. The Castilian king realised the Moors' intentions and set a trap for them in turn. He sent his rear guard directly down the slope while his cavalry, archers and lancers outflanked the Moors by working their way through the woods on the sides of the mountain. Alfonso anticipated that the Moors would seek to gain the crest, from where they would descend to attack the rear guard. His flankers would in turn occupy the newly vacated crest, sandwiching the Moors between two Castilian forces. The king's prediction of the Moors' strategy proved accurate and they were routed, losing 500 men. [2]

Despite Alfonso's orders that his men were not to pursue the retreating Moors beyond the Guadarranque, a large contingent disobeyed and pressed on to the next river, the Palmones. The Castilians nearly ran into disaster when a fresh Moorish force emerged from Algeciras but were saved by Alfonso's naval force, which rowed up the Palmones to block the Moors. As night fell, the two sides disengaged with the Moors returning to Algeciras and the Castilians encamping on the east side of the Guadarranque. [2]

Attempt to land on Gibraltar

Indiscipline was also to doom Alfonso's first attempt to assault Gibraltar. His troops were transported by Admiral Jofre's galleys to the Red Sands on the poorly fortified southern side of Gibraltar. [3] However, Alfonso's field commanders – Rui Lopez and Fernan Yañez de Meira – failed to control their troops or coordinate their landings. The first wave of Castilians were meant to cover the landing of the second wave, whereupon the entire force would take up siege positions on both sides of the town. Instead, the first wave ignored their orders and charged up the side of the Rock of Gibraltar in an attempt to reach the Moorish Castle. As the second wave was landing without cover, the Moorish garrison launched a sally and caught the Castilians landing on the beach. Many were killed there, forcing the remainder to retreat and cutting off around 1,500 men still on the upper slopes. The Moors positioned themselves to block any further landings, raining arrows on approaching boats and cavalry lined up to deal with any Castilians who made it ashore. [3] [4] Both Lopez and de Meira were killed. [5]

Alfonso now faced a severe dilemma. A persistent Levanter wind had prevented his resupply ships from entering the bay and his army now had only a day's rations left. He reluctantly agreed to his nobles' insistence that they had to withdraw to Castilian territory, abandoning the men left on the Rock, who were to "take their stand on whatever God might wish to give them." [3] However, the situation changed again only a few miles into the retreat from their base at Carteia. Accounts differ as to what happened; some say that Alfonso persuaded his nobles that it would be dishonorable to abandon the trapped men, while others say that the winds changed at the last minute and permitted the resupply vessels to enter the bay after all. Whichever happened, it is evident that the Castilians marched back to their original position to resume the assault on Gibraltar. [4]

It was decided that the same plan of attack would be used again, but more competently executed this time. More experienced commanders – Don Jaime de Jerica and the brothers Laso and Sancho de Rojas – were put in charge of a fresh assault on the Red Sands. [6] The Castilians sought to overwhelm the Moors by rushing them en masse, using every small boat at their disposal to carry soldiers, crossbowmen and even cavalry with their horses. As the crossbowmen laid down covering fire, the knights saddled up and drove the Moorish forces on the beach back within the town walls. [3] At the same time, Admiral Jofre sought to destroy the Moorish galleys anchored in Gibraltar's dockyard. His move failed, as the Moors had built a heavy roof over the dockyard to protect ships there from bombardment and had emplaced massive wooden booms across the entrance to prevent enemies from gaining access. The naval attack was beaten back with heavy loss of life, but Jofre did succeed in establishing an effective blockade of Gibraltar's sea routes. [4]

Bombardment and stalemate

The Castilians dug in around Gibraltar to lay siege from the south, from the high ground of the Upper Rock and from the isthmus to the north, where Alfonso remained with his main force. The Castilian king had hoped to retake the town in a quick counter-attack but now faced a lengthy siege. Consequently, he set about demolishing the town's fortifications with six catapults that he had brought from Seville, three of which were hoisted by ropes up from the isthmus to the Upper Rock where they could overlook the whole of the town. The Moorish Castle was heavily bombarded and seriously damaged, while Castilian Almogavars sought to undermine its structure from below. The defenders inflicted casualties by throwing stones over the parapets and burning pitch at the attackers, destroying some of the Castilian siege machines. [7]

Both sides faced harsh conditions in the siege. The Moors were being progressively starved by the Castilians, but the Castilians also had supply problems. They were deep within enemy territory and relied entirely on resupply from the sea, which was dependent on the winds and tides being right. Food was in short supply for both sides. Some Castilians tried to defect to the Moorish side but were enslaved and sold on at Algeciras for a price equivalent to an eighth of the value of a cow. [7] Matters worsened for the Castilians when the army of Muhammed IV marched towards Gibraltar with the apparent intention of relieving the besieged garrison. Alfonso pulled back his own army to the isthmus immediately north of Gibraltar and had a defensive ditch dug right across it. [8] This successfully deterred Muhammed IV from attacking, but cut the Castilians off from their supply of firewood in the hills of the Sierra Carbonera; henceforth, they had to eat their food raw. [9]

The siege now developed into a stalemate. The Moors were not strong enough to break out of Gibraltar, nor to assault the Castilians from the north across their ditch. They also did not have the naval power required to outflank the Castilians by sea or to break the naval blockade of Gibraltar, which was bringing the garrison close to starvation. [9] The Castilians did not have the strength either to storm Gibraltar or to drive away Mohammad IV's troops on the Sierra Carbonera. Alfonso XI also received the news that three powerful nobles – Juan Núñez III de Lara, Juan Alfonso de Haro and Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena – had revolted against him and were ravaging the king's own lands. [8] Both sides thus found that they had pressing reasons to reach a peace agreement.

The agreement which was eventually signed on 24 August 1333 was based on a Moorish proposal for a four-year truce and an annual tribute of 10,000 doubloons to be paid to Castile. In return, the Moors were to be allowed to purchase oil and cattle from Castilian territory, and Alfonso and his army would be given safe conduct through Moorish territory on their way home. [4] The Castilian king accepted and sealed the agreement in person with Muhammed IV at a lavish dinner in which he exchanged gifts with his Moorish counterpart. Muhammed is said to have given Alfonso a sword with gold sheath studded with emeralds, rubies and sapphires and a helmet with two rubies "the size of chestnuts" while Alfonso gave Muhammed a type of doublet. As the Castilians prepared to withdraw, Abd al-Malik's forces returned to Algeciras and Muhammed IV made preparations to go back to Granada. On the night after the peace agreement was signed, Muhammed IV was murdered by two of his nobles who were angry that the sultan had eaten with a Christian and feared that he had converted to Christianity. [9] The assassination did not prevent the Castilians from withdrawing safely but resulted in renewed hostilities for a while as the new Granadan king, Yusuf I, sought to establish his authority. [10] The inconclusive outcome of the siege meant that the struggle for control of Gibraltar remained unresolved, and Alfonso was to make another attempt to recapture it in the Fifth Siege of Gibraltar in 1349.

Related Research Articles

Battle of Río Salado Battle occurring in Spain on 30 October 1340

The Battle of Río Salado, also known as the Battle of Tarifa was a battle of the armies of King Afonso IV of Portugal and King Alfonso XI of Castile against those of Sultan Abu al-Hasan 'Ali of the Marinid dynasty and Yusuf I of Granada.

Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman Moroccan sultan (1297–1351)

Abu Al-Hasan 'Ali ibn 'Othman, was a sultan of the Marinid dynasty who reigned in Morocco between 1331 and 1348. In 1333 he captured Gibraltar from the Castilians, although a later attempt to take Tarifa in 1339 ended in fiasco. In North Africa he extended his rule over Tlemcen and Ifriqiya, which together covered the north of what is now Algeria and Tunisia. Under him the Marinid realms in the Maghreb briefly covered an area that rivaled that of the preceding Almohad Caliphate. However, he was forced to retreat due to a revolt of the Arab tribes, was shipwrecked, and lost many of his supporters. His son Abu Inan Faris seized power in Fez. Abu Al-Hasan died in exile in the High Atlas mountains.

Battle of Teba

The Battle of Teba took place in August 1330, in the valley below the fortress of Teba, now a town in the province of Málaga in Andalusia, southern Spain. The encounter occurred during the frontier campaign waged between 1327 and 1333 by Alfonso XI of Castile against Muhammed IV, Sultan of Granada.

Yusuf I of Granada Sultan of Granada

Abu al-Hajjaj Yusuf ibn Ismail, known by the regnal name al-Muayyad billah, was the seventh Nasrid ruler of the Emirate of Granada on the Iberian Peninsula. The third son of Ismail I, he was Sultan between 1333 and 1354, after his brother Muhammad IV was assassinated.

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ismail, known as Muhammad IV, was the ruler of the Emirate of Granada on the Iberian Peninsula from 1325 to 1333. He was the sixth sultan of the Nasrid dynasty, succeeding to the throne at ten years old when his father, Ismail I, was assassinated.

Battle of Algeciras (1278)

The Battle of Algeciras was a naval battle which occurred on July 25, 1278. The battle pitted the fleets of the Kingdom of Castile, commanded by the Admiral of Castile, Pedro Martínez de Fe, and the combined fleets of the Marinid dynasty and that of the Emirate of Granada, commanded by Abu Yaqub Yusuf an-Nasr. The battle was fought in the context of the Moorish naval expeditions to the Iberian Peninsula. The battle, which took place in the Strait of Gibraltar, resulted in a Muslim victory.

Siege of Algeciras (1278–79)

The Siege of Algeciras was the first of many sieges of the city by Christian forces in the lengthy period of the Spanish Reconquista. The siege, ordered by King Alfonso X of Castile also known as "el Sabio", was a fruitless military campaign initiated by the Kingdom of Castile with the objective of removing the Benimerins from Algeciras. The siege on Algeciras, then known to the Muslims as Al-Jazira Al-Khadra, was strategically important because Algeciras had been at the time the main fortress and landing place for African reinforcement troops in the Iberian Peninsula. Castile, which had a powerful armada of ships anchored in the Bay of Gibraltar to blockade such reinforcement, had a few days previously to the siege, seen that fleet obliterated by the Muslim admiral, Abu Yusuf Yaqub at the Naval Battle of Algeciras.

First Siege of Gibraltar

The First Siege of Gibraltar was a battle of the Spanish Reconquista that took place in 1309. The battle pitted the forces of the Crown of Castile under the command of Juan Núñez II de Lara and Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, against the forces of the Emirate of Granada who were under the command of Sultan Muhammed III and his brother, Abu'l-Juyush Nasr.

Fernando Gutiérrez Tello was a Spanish noble in the service of the Kingdom of Castile. He was the archdeacon of the Archdiocese of Seville from 12 April 1304 to 23 April 1323. He is best known for his command over the Castilian forces in Ferdinand IV's campaign against the Emirate of Granada in 1309 in the context of the Spanish Reconquista. Most notably, he commanded Castilian troops in the Siege of Gibraltar along with Juan Núñez II de Lara, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán and Garci López de Padilla, the Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava. Together, the group took control of the city of Gibraltar from the Moors on 12 September 1309. Gutiérrez Tello was also part of the less successful siege on Algeciras of that same year.

Moorish Gibraltar

The history of Moorish Gibraltar began with the landing of the Muslims in Hispania and the fall of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo in 711 and ended with the fall of Gibraltar to Christian hands 751 years later, in 1462, with an interregnum during the early 14th century.

The Ninth Siege of Gibraltar was a fifteen-month-long siege of the town of Gibraltar that lasted from 1466 until 1467. The siege was conducted by Juan Alonso de Guzmán, the 1st Duke of Medina Sidonia, and resulted in a takeover of the town, then belonging to the Crown of Castile. Unlike other sieges of Gibraltar, which were the result of clashes between different powers, this was a purely internal struggle between rival Castilian factions.

The Third Siege of Gibraltar was mounted between February–June 1333 by a Moorish army under the prince Abd al-Malik Abd al-Wahid of Morocco. The fortified town of Gibraltar had been held by Castile since 1309, when it had been seized from the Moorish Emirate of Granada. The attack on Gibraltar was ordered by the recently crowned Marinid ruler Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman in response to an appeal by the Nasrid ruler Muhammed IV of Granada. The onset of the siege took the Castilians by surprise. The stocks of food in Gibraltar were heavily depleted at the time due to the thievery of the town's governor, Vasco Perez de Meira, who had looted the money that was meant to have been spent on food for the garrison and to pay for the upkeep of the castle and fortifications. After over four months of siege and bombardment by Moorish catapults, the garrison and townspeople were reduced to near-starvation and surrendered to Abd al-Malik.

Abu Malik Abd al-Wahid was a son of the Marinid sultan of Morocco, Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman. Although he had lost an eye, Malik was a capable military commander and served as governor of Algeciras and the Marinids' principal general in Al Andalus. He captured Gibraltar from Castile in June 1333 and participated in his father's campaign against rebels in the Kingdom of Tlemcen the following year. He was killed by Castilian forces in 1339 after being ambushed on the way back from a raid against the Castilian-held town of Jerez de la Frontera.

Fifth Siege of Gibraltar

The Fifth Siege of Gibraltar, mounted between August 1349 and March 1350, was a second attempt by King Alfonso XI of Castile to retake the fortified town of Gibraltar. It had been held by the Moors since 1333. The siege followed years of intermittent conflict between the Christian kingdoms of Spain and the Moorish Emirate of Granada, which was supported by the Marinid sultanate of Morocco. A series of Moorish defeats and reverses had left Gibraltar as a Moorish-held enclave within Castilian territory. Its geographical isolation was compensated for by the strength of its fortifications, which had been greatly improved since 1333. Alfonso brought an army of around 20,000 men, along with his mistress and their five illegitimate children, to dig in to the north of Gibraltar for a lengthy siege. In the New Year of 1350, however, bubonic plague – the Black Death – broke out in the Castilian camp. Alfonso refused to abandon the siege but fell victim to the plague on 27 March 1350, becoming the only monarch to die of the disease.

The Sixth Siege of Gibraltar in 1411 was the only occasion on which control of Gibraltar was contested between two Islamic powers. After the failed Fifth Siege of Gibraltar in 1349–50, which ended with the death of King Alfonso XI of Castile from bubonic plague, the Kingdom of Castile was preoccupied with the Castilian Civil War and its aftermath. In 1369, Sultan Muhammed V of Granada took advantage of the Castilians' distractions and in the Siege of Algeciras (1369) he seized the city of Algeciras, on the west side of the Bay of Gibraltar, which Alfonso XI had captured in 1344. After razing it to the ground he made peace with Henry II, the winner of the civil war. The truce was renewed by Henry's successors John I and Henry III. At some point during the truces, control of Gibraltar was transferred from the Marinid dynasty of Morocco, which had held it since 1333, to the Granadans. It is not clear why this happened; it may have been as a condition of the Granadans assisting the Marinids against rebels in Morocco.

Eighth Siege of Gibraltar

The Eighth Siege of Gibraltar (1462) was a successful effort by soldiers of the Kingdom of Castile to take the fortified town of Gibraltar from the Moors of the Emirate of Granada. Capture of this position, which was weakly defended and was taken with little fighting, was strategically important in the final defeat of the Moors in Spain.

Siege of Algeciras (1342–44) Castilian siege of the Marinid Empire capital

The Siege of Algeciras (1342–44) was undertaken during the Reconquest of Spain by the Castillian forces of Alfonso XI assisted by the fleets of the Kingdom of Aragon and the Republic of Genoa. The objective was to capture the Muslim city of Al-Jazeera Al-Khadra, called Algeciras by Christians. The city was the capital and the main port of the European territory of the Marinid Empire.

Siege of Algeciras (1369)

The Siege of Algeciras (1369) was undertaken during the period of the Reconquest of Spain by Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada to reclaim the city of Al-Hadra Al-Yazirat, called Algeciras by the Christians, in the Kingdom of Castile. The siege lasted just three days, and the sultan was victorious. The Muslims thus regained a major city which had been in Castilian hands since Alfonso XI of Castile took it from the Moroccans after the long 1342-1344 siege. Ten years after the capture of the city, in 1379 the sultan of Granada decided to completely destroy the city to prevent it falling into Christian hands. It was impossible to defend the place at a time when the Muslim kings of the Iberian Peninsula had lost much of military power they enjoyed in earlier centuries.

References

  1. 1 2 Hills 1974, p. 60.
  2. 1 2 Hills 1974, p. 61.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Hills 1974, p. 62.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Jackson 1986, p. 45.
  5. ↑ Sayer 1865, p. 25.
  6. ↑ Sayer 1865, p. 26.
  7. 1 2 Hills 1974, p. 63.
  8. 1 2 Hills 1974, p. 64.
  9. 1 2 3 Hills 1974, p. 65.
  10. ↑ Hills 1974, p. 66.

Bibliography

Coordinates: 36°08′44″N5°21′28″W / 36.1456°N 5.3577°W / 36.1456; -5.3577

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.