Link to Chronology
Iberia and the Levant
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Eight
The European Crisis
(1300-1450)
The Avignon Papacy, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War
Chapter IV
Spain. Portugal. The Turks.
1. Spain and Portugal
p486 ...Duty, sentiment, and interest all combined to rally the Christians of Spain to the Holy War. It was a Holy War in the full meaning of the term, for its aim was not the conversion but the massacre or expulsion of the infidels... It was not enough to be a Christian; a man must be an "old Christian," [not a Morisco] which really meant that he must be "of old Spanish stock"; so that nationality became the proof of orthodoxy, and national feeling, becoming confounded with faith, was imbued with its uncompromising spirit and its fervor.
...In 1195 the Emir Iacub Almansor won such a signal victory over Alfonso VIII of Castile at Alarcos that for a moment there seemed a danger of a general catastrophe. But the Papacy... had never lost sight of the fact that Spain constituted the right wing of Christendom in... [the Holy War.] Innocent III immediately intervened... For once, thanks to the exhortations of Rome, Aragon, Castile, Leon and Portugal combined their forces. In 1212 the battle of Navos de Tolosa avenged the disaster of Alarcos and shattered the Musulman resistance.
p487 Henceforth the advance of the Christians was irresistible and definitive. Jayme II of Aragon (1213-1276) obtained a foothold in the Belearics, and in 1238 captured Valencia. Ferdinand III of Castile captured Cordova in 1236 and Seville in 1248. Meanwhile Alfonso III of Portugal annexed the Algarves and gave the kingdom the expanse which it has retained to this day. Of all its possessions in Spain, Islam retained only the territory of Granada, and even this was subject in vassalage to Castile.
p488 ... The States of Asturias, Galicia and Leon (1230) were united to Castile, and Catalonia was combined with Aragon. Navarre, now ruled by a French dynasty, and too confined within her mountains to compete with her more fortunate neighbors, was restricted to a local existence. Portugal, inevitably oriented toward the West by her long seaboard and the course of her rivers, the Douro and the Tagus, turned her back upon the peninsula, which was divided between Castile and Aragon... What drew Aragon toward Europe and gave it, from the 14th century, a character less narrowly Spanish than that of Castile, was its situation on the shores of the Mediterranean. Owing to this situation it was encouraged to take part in the Levantine trade which was, par excellence, the important trade of the Middle Ages. Barcelona was not slow to follow in the track of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, and in the 12th century the Catalan sailors mingled with the Italians and the Provencaux in the ports of Syria and Egypt...
Aragon takes the Balearic archipelago, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and in 1443 conquers the Kingdom of Naples.
...
p490 ...The nobles, [of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal] who were essentially military, long preserved a haughty and arrogant attitude in respect of the monarchy... In order to resist this nobility of ricos hombres and hidalgos, the kings, from the beginning of the 13th century, depended on the support of the bourgeoisie. In this connection their conduct was dictated by political interests, as was that of the kings of France after Louis VII. But the alliance of the cities and the Crown was far more intimate and of far longer duration in Spain than in France... Perhaps it was on account of the greater arrogance of the nobles. What the bourgeoisie expected of the king was peace and security on the highways. In order to obtain these, they themselves formed leagues (hermandades), like the German cities, and the leagues also reinforced the judicial power of the king... Under Alfonso X the Codigo de las siete pardidas was compiled for Castile, and Jayme II of Aragon won fame as a legislator. King Denis of Portugal (1279-1325) was known as el Justo. Pedro I (1357-1367) was praised for his pitiless severity. Consequently the bourgeoisie did its utmost to support the king, as against the military nobles, in his role of guardian of the law and the public peace... the cities... obtained representation in the Cortes at a very early date. From the 13th century their deputies sat beside those of the nobles and the clergy. The dynastic quarrels which troubled Spain in the 14th century afforded the Cortes an excellent opportunity of increasing their intervention in the government, and more than once they prescribed to the kings, above all in Aragon... concessions not unlike those which were obtained from the princes of the Low Countries in the same period...
p491 [The war against the Moors of Granada was in abeyance into the 15th century,] ... On the other hand they developed their commerce and added to their wealth. Sheep began to cover the countryside, and in the trade with the North of Europe Spanish began to compete with English wool... sheep-farming began to give Castile its characteristic aspect and to enrich the nobility. There was an increasing trade with the North in Iron from Bilbao, olive oil, oranges and pomegranates. Bruge was the central market for this trade; and in the first half of the 15th century the Spanish nation was almost as strongly represented in that city as the Hansa. This economic orientation toward the North must not be overlooked; indeed, we can hardly avoid regarding it as a preparation for the dynastic alliance which in 1494 was to bind the Low Countries to Castile.
Brief account of Henry the Navigator, King of Portugal (1394-1460) and his expansion of European navigation down the west coast of Africa and leading to the discovery of the Atlantic islands and setting the stage for all that was to follow on the high seas.
p492 Thus, in the middle of the 15th century, even before the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, which was to affect the permanent union of Castile and Aragon, Spain had won a position in the world whose future possibilities no one could as yet foresee, but which prepared her for the part which she was about to play...
2. The Turks
p494 ...From the 10th century the Turks, Barbarians of Finnish origin, had been for the Caliphate of Baghdad very much what the Germans, six hundred years earlier, had been for the Roman Empire. They had invaded it, and naturally were immediately converted to its religion... The great Mongol invasion of the 13th century... drove them into the mountains of Armenia. But they soon descended from the mountains, under the leadership of Omman, and moved westwards into Asia Minor... [this is the transition from Seljuk to Ottoman Turkish history] Broussa (1326), Nicomedia, and Nicea (1330) fell into the hands of the invader. Nothing was left of the Empire's Asiatic possessions... The conquest of Europe followed immediately upon the conquest of Asia. Murad I captured Andrianople in 1352 and Philoppopoli in 1363, defeated the Serbs in 1371, drove them back into Macedonia, and entered Sofia in 1381... [the Serbs] were defeated in the bloody battle of Kossovo (June 15th, 1389)... Bajazet (1389-1403), the son of Murad, subdued Bosnia, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Thessaly. The whole Balkan peninsula, as far as the Danube, was now merely an annex of the Musulman world... [A Crusade against the Turks is defeated at Nicopolis (September 12th, 1396)]. It seemed as though Constantinople's hour had nearly come. It was delayed for fifty years by the unexpected incidence of a fresh Mongol invasion.
p495 Once again, and happily for the last time, following in the trail of Attila and Jenghis Khan, a Barbarian of genius, Tamerlane, had just released a torrent of yellow hordes. His conquests had been as overwhelming as those of the terrible destroyers to whom he was a worthy successor... The Turkish Empire was menaced. Bajazet had just laid siege to Constantinople; he raised the siege in order to hasten to the defense of Asia Minor. The two Barbarians met in 1402 at Angora, and the man whom the Europeans had been powerless to check was vanquished by the Mongols (July 20th, 1402). But Tamerlane's career was as brief as his rise had been sudden. After his death (1405) the peoples bowed under the Mongol yoke raised their heads amidst the ruins of their civilizations. Sulieman, the son of Bajazet (1402-1410), succeeded in reorganizing the debris of Turkey-in-Asia... Murad II (1421-1451) reappeared before the walls of Constantinople and recaptured Salonica... the Turkish dominion, after the battle of Varna (1444), was reestablished throughout the Balkan peninsula.
p496 This time the fate of Constantinople was inevitable... Constantine XI was a worthy last representative of the long series of Emperors who derived directly from the Roman Emperors whose title they continued to bear. On the day of the final assault. May 29th, 1453, he fell fighting against the enemy...
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