Exactly! Cause the French are not Spanish. Never underestimate them 
Actually, the Spanish have possibly let the fox into the henhouse...
Actually, the Spanish have possibly let the fox into the henhouse...
Essays on Toulouse
- Thread starter Elias Tarfarius
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Has Jimenez managed to loose the crown of Aragon?
Impressive... And I felt bad when I took it from his head :rofl:
Impressive... And I felt bad when I took it from his head :rofl:
The First Battle of Zaragoza - 9 March, 1078
Yusuf al-Mu'tamin, Emir of Zaragoza, had not become the most powerful Muslim prince north of the Ebro by being a fool. Though usually outnumbered, his armies won enough victories to have kept both Navarra and Catalonia at bey for almost two decades. The Emir figured the matter would be no different with the Frankish crusader, eventhough they outnumbered his forces by over 2,000 men. He engaged them in guerrilla warfare as soon as they entered the territory, but Duke William made this harder by dividing his army into three very maneuverable columns. The Emir finally offered battle when the columns threatened to converge on his capital in early March. On the 9th, the armies arrayed themselves on both sides of the valley leading to the gates of Zaragoza. Duke William organized his men in three lines (a tactic he developed during the invasion of England); the archers in the front rank, his plentiful men at arms in the middle, and the knights and light horse in the rear and flanks. Seeing that the Franks did not deign to advance, Emir Yusuf brought his smaller army forward. Two companies of mounted skirmishers were sent to annoy the Frankish flanks while he advanced with his own archers, heavy infantry, and cavalry in one body in hopes of breaking through the center. The Emir's plan slowly backfired as his men came under a hail of arrows from the Duke's archers, then the knights on the flanks charged and destroyed his light cavalry. Duke William then lead his men at arms in a full charge on the Emir's main body of troops, the knights under Michels and Raymond coming at him from each side. While the Emir and his bodyguards fought to the death, the majority of the Muslim army melted in the face of the double envelopment. Yet, they did not escape, as Raymond of Toulouse and his men broke off from the battle to follow the routers all the way to the gates of the city two miles away. In one battle, the most powerful Muslim prince (or prince in general) in Northern Spain had been crushed.
The Aftermath of First Zaragoza
The Aftermath of Second Zaragoza
Mohammad, Sheik of the rich province of Calatayud, desiring to inherit the mantle of his late overlord, made the same faulty assumptions as Emir Yusuf. The result was a similarly spectacular defeat for him on the 19th of May, during an effort to relieve the beleaguered citadel of Zaragoza. In the meantime, King Philip I, realizing his own blunder, made peace with England and declared his full support for crusade in Hispania. Count Adhémar of Limousin was the first non-Provencal to join the crusade, arriving with 1,400 men in July, just before the Sheik of Calatayud made one last attempt to save Zaragoza.
Latif, Marshal of the Shiek, came with a strong force to relieve Zaragoza (28 July), but only gave, in the end, another crown of laurels to Duke William and his crusaders
Two splendid miscalculations on the behalf of your opponents. Can only mean good things....
i love the fact that both Bishop Adhemar and Raymond are in Spain instead of Syria! Is anyone marching towards the Levant and the official crusade?I wish you the best of luck, I read the whole AAR and it reads like an excellent history book.
And now for Prime Minister's questions... ie response to your lovely comments
@Fulcrumvale - Me too. They are much easier to execute and they end when you want them to, not five years after you've made completely destroyed the opposition.
@Kurt_Steiner - Spain does have good harbours.
@RGB - Yup. Anyway, in RL, crusades to Egypt never had a good success rate.
@JimboIX - Augustus can play along with Fatima's flirtations for now, but he will not loose focus, I think.
@thrashing mad - Pope Alexander's speech is one of the medieval versions of Urban's actual speech at Clermont in 1095 (with a few edits for length by yours truly). Got it from the Medieval Sourcebook, lots of great period texts there. Just google it.
@RGB - Only time will tell if the French can take advantage of Spanish laxity... or rather whenever Augustus gets around to writing an essay on that.
@Kurt_Steiner - Yeah, Navarra annexed Aragon just after the English war and shortly before their war with Zaragoza, about 1074 I guess. Strange enough, that usually happens in my French games, and Navarra soon also get Catalonia to become a vassal.
@Ladislav - Indeed, but Raymond and the rest will head east soon enough. As of now, only Leon and her vassals have decided to follow the Papal call and invade Egypt. King Henry has already taken Alexandria itself by this point, but another king is about to join the march east as well. A king that needs to favor of the Papacy badly after years of "investiture struggle." I think you can guess who that would be.
Update coming...
ET
@Fulcrumvale - Me too. They are much easier to execute and they end when you want them to, not five years after you've made completely destroyed the opposition.
@Kurt_Steiner - Spain does have good harbours.
@RGB - Yup. Anyway, in RL, crusades to Egypt never had a good success rate.
@JimboIX - Augustus can play along with Fatima's flirtations for now, but he will not loose focus, I think.
@thrashing mad - Pope Alexander's speech is one of the medieval versions of Urban's actual speech at Clermont in 1095 (with a few edits for length by yours truly). Got it from the Medieval Sourcebook, lots of great period texts there. Just google it.
@RGB - Only time will tell if the French can take advantage of Spanish laxity... or rather whenever Augustus gets around to writing an essay on that.
@Kurt_Steiner - Yeah, Navarra annexed Aragon just after the English war and shortly before their war with Zaragoza, about 1074 I guess. Strange enough, that usually happens in my French games, and Navarra soon also get Catalonia to become a vassal.
@Ladislav - Indeed, but Raymond and the rest will head east soon enough.
As of now, only Leon and her vassals have decided to follow the Papal call and invade Egypt. King Henry has already taken Alexandria itself by this point, but another king is about to join the march east as well. A king that needs to favor of the Papacy badly after years of "investiture struggle." I think you can guess who that would be. Update coming...
ET
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Chronicle of Raymond of Toulouse said:
Zaragoza fell at the end of July, and Duke William advanced upon the seat of the meddlesome Sheik of Calatayud. There, the opposing armies fought and maneuvered for two days until the Sheik offered to resolve everything with a battle of champions. Duke William agreed, sending his brother Raymond against the Muslim champion Uthman Al-Aqsa ("The Rock"). The two men fought for two hours, unable to dismount or seriously wounded the other, until Raymond sliced Al-Aqsa in half as he made a charge at the tired knight. Sheik Mohammad, forgetting his promise, fled to his castle, one of the three strongest in northern Spain at the time, and decided he could wait out the crusaders.
His plan bore fruit in early September when Adhémar of Limousin, proclaiming he had accomplished his vows, made peace with the Sheik, receiving 21,000 byzants for immediately leaving Spain. The Provencal lords weren't really sorry to see him go as they wished more loot for only themselves as well as the fact that the King's army was soon to arrive (at the time they had just entered Jaca), 3,500 strong under Archbishop William (Guido) of Rheims.
Meanwhile, Abd al-Malik finally launched the long awaited offensive against the Christian states of north that autumn. Surprisingly, his first target was not the Frankish crusade or even Ramon of Catalonia, but instead the independent Duchy of Braganza, in northern modern-day Portugal. When, the Christians brought more troops to the field than excepted, Cordoba called upon the North African Kingdom of Hammadid for fresh, battle-hardened Berber reinforcements.
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The Franks can only benefit from the Muslims attacking anyone but, especially if they want to move their forces to the other side of the peninsula for no good reason. The Berbers might prove problematic however.
The battle is growing... let's see how it ends... beware the Catalan botifarra... :rofl:
Duke William and the Crusaders enter Calatayud, 14th century manuscript
The Fall of Cordoba by James Richmond said:
On the Feast of the Three King's (6th of January), 1079, the citadel of Calatayud finally surrendered to the crusader army, and William of Toulouse made a name for himself throughout Iberia by his kind treatment of the defeated after entering the city. He even forgave the wily Sheik Mohammad, who died soon after of battle wounds, promising to take care of the former ruler's family and household.
The war, however, was not over and it even expanded. Count Adhémar, though he had promised to leave Spain, instead entered the province of Tarragona, the last holding of the Emirate of Zaragoza, in order to gain at least something out of this crusade. He further made an ally of Sheik of Albarracin, former vassal of Zaragoza, and together the two defeated the forces of the Emir (at the time, the four year old son of the late Yusuf) on the 24th of February. They laid siege to the city, jubilant over the prospect of dividing the loot between the two hosts, but Duke William intervened in these plans.
Incensed at news of the greed of Adhémar and his unholy alliance, William marched in matter of a couple of weeks to Tarragona and took command of the siege. Count Adhémar raged, but both royal and papal envoys present supported William as leader of the armies and only he, unless otherwise commanded by the King of France or the Holy Father, had sole right to take and dispose of captured cities, lands, and booty. As it happened the city fell just four days after the arrival of William and his armies (20th of March). The Duke's first act was to bury the body of his brother Raymond (who had died of his wounds from earlier battle and fever a week before) within the walls of the former mosque. The citizens were again surprised to receive the same chivalrous treatment that Calatayud had gotten. One chronicler put it this way; "Though they [the people of the cities] were apostates after the order of Mohamet, the Duke saw no reason to chastise them, as they were as innocent babes, not knowing the true faith. Thus, he bade his knights to let them alone and do only good, so that the land would know peace."
The infamous Emperor Henry IV
Yet, while Spain north of the Ebro settled under the peaceful, but strong hand of the Duke of Provence, the rest of world was still on the march. After crushing Christian armies at Coimbra in January, Abd al-Malik swept northward in Galicia. King Enrique I of Leon finally got word of these tidings and attained a truce with the Fatimid Sultan, al-Mustansir, which allowed him to keep Alexandria. The Pope was displeased, as it had seemed that the total conquest of Egypt might have been at hand. The man who offered to continue the conquest, however, was the most unlikely in all Christendom, Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. In order to "atone" for his sins and perhaps gain Papal approval at last for his meddling in Italian affairs, Henry set sail for Egypt in July. Meanwhile to the south, Robert Guiscard continued an aggressive series of wars for control of Sicily, defeating the various Muslim factions of the island at will in his own, much less gentlemanly, crusade.
William of Toulouse was not inactive in this time and the last quarter of the year saw his plans bare fruit. The success of Cordoba could not be ignored, but William was in no condition personally intervene. He was made privy by the advisers or the late Sheik Mohammed to the rivalries of the various Muslims city-states, especially the hatred that the Emir of Toledo bore for Cordoba and its proud Governor. The Duke spurred the Emir through secret correspondence to rise up against the Governor while Cordoba was so engaged in the north. The Emir took the bait and launched his surprise attack in October, defeating a Cordoba host at Sevilla and then Alcacer do Sal five days later.
Capping it all, after gaining the blessing of the King and the Pope, William proclaimed Zaragoza a "Duchy of the Kingdom of the Franks," on the 9th of December. The power that came with this upset the balance in northern, Christian Spain firmly in favor of William and his leige, to the total displeasure of Count Ramon I Berenguer and King Sancho of Navarra.
Wow, Raymond dead. Adhemar fighting in Spain, I think the image of the first crusade is already very different from the historical.
Publish a map when you get the chance and peace is made in Iberia. Would be great to see it. Cheers
Publish a map when you get the chance and peace is made in Iberia. Would be great to see it. Cheers
A nice string of near continguous titles. William will have to capitalize on them soon- he should eb the strongest vassal of the Franks, and soon not a vassal at all. The King of Navarre certainly could not challenge him.