PORTUGAL:Battle of Aljubarrota

                                                         
   The Battle of Aljubarrota was a battle fought between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile on 14 August 1385. Forces commanded by King John I of Portugal and his general Nuno Alvares Pereira, with the support of English allies, opposed the army of King John I of Portugal with its Aragonese, Italian and French allies at São Jorge, between the towns of Leiria and Alcobaca, in central Portugal. The result was a decisive victory for the Portuguese, ruling out Castilian ambitions to the Portuguese throne, ending the 1389-85 crisis and assuring John as King of Portugal.
Portuguese independence was confirmed and a new dynasty, the House of Aviz, was established. Scattered border confrontations with Castilian troops would persist until the death of John I of Castile in 1390, but these posed no real threat to the new dynasty. To celebrate his victory and acknowledge divine help, John I of Portugal ordered the construction of the monastery of Santa Maria da Vitoria na Batalha and the founding of the town of Batalha. The king, his wife Philippa of Lancaster, and several of his sons are buried in this monastery, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The initiative of starting the battle was with the Castilian side.Around six o'clock in the afternoon the Castilian army was ready for battle. According to John of Castile, in his report of the battle, his soldiers were by then very tired from the march that had started early in the morning under a blazing August sun but unknown to them,there was an ambush by the French forces.During the night and throughout the next day, as many as 5000 more Castilians were killed by the neighbouring inhabitants; according to Portuguese tradition surrounding the battle, there was a woman called Brites de Almeida, the Padeira of Aljubarrota (the baker-woman of Aljubarrota), said to be very tall and strong, and to possess six fingers on each hand, who by herself killed eight Castilian soldiers as they were hiding in her bakery in the town of Aljubarrota after the battle. This story is clouded in legend and hearsay, but the popular intervention in the massacre of Castilian troops after the battle is, nevertheless, historical and typical of battles in this period, when there was no mercy toward the defeated enemy.
On the morning of the following day, the true dimension of the battle was revealed: in the field, the bodies of Castilians were enough to dam the creeks surrounding the small hill. In face of this, the Portuguese King offered the enemy survivors an amnesty and free transit home; an official period of mourning was decreed in Castile that would last until the Christmas of 1387. The French cavalry had suffered yet another defeat (after Crécy and Poitiers) to English defensive tactics, even though they were to eventually defeat the English and unify their country in the final stages of the Hundred Years' War.
In October 1385, Nuno Álvares Pereira led a pre-emptive attack against Merida, in Castilian territory, defeating an even larger Castilian army than at Aljubarrota in the battl of Valverde, in Valverde de Merida.
Scattered border skirmishes with Castilian troops would persist for five years more until the death of John I of Castile in 1390, but posed no real threat to the Portuguese crown; recognition from Castile would arrive only in 1411 with the signing of the Treaty of Ayllon(Segovia).
This victory of Aljubarrota confirmed John of Aviz as the uncontested King of Portugal and the House of Aviz ascended to the crown of Portugal. In 1386, the closeness of relations between Portugal and England resulted in a permanent military alliance with the Treaty of Windsor , the oldest still active in existence.
John's marriage to Philippa of Lancaster in 1387 initiated the Portuguese second dynasty, and their children went on to make historically significant contributions. Duarte, or Edward of Portugal, became the eleventh King of Portugal known as "The Philosopher" and "The Eloquent", and his brother Prince Henrique, or Henry the Navigator, sponsored expeditions to Africa.
In commemoration of the Battle of Aljubarrota the Portuguese erected the Monastery of Saint Mary of the Victory (Portuguese: "Mosteiro de Santa Maria da Vitória"), one of the best original examples of Late Gothic architecture in Portugal, intermingled with the Manueline style.
In 1393 a chapel in honor of St. Mary and St. George was erected in the place where the standard of D. Nuno Alvares Pereira had been during the confrontation, allowing us to know the precise geographic location of the battle site.
In 1958, archeologist Afonso do Paço organized the first campaign of excavations, revealing the complex defensive system consisting of about 800 pits and dozens of defensive ditches and revealing one of the best preserved battlefields of the period of the Hundred Years' War.
In March 2002, under the initiative of Antonio Champalimaud, the Battle of Aljubarrota Foundation was created. The Foundation began its activity by recovering the battlefield of Aljubarrota. Through a Protocol established with the Ministry of Defense in August 2003, the Foundation received authorization to transform the Military Museum into a modern Interpretation Center of the Battle of Aljubarrota. This Interpretation Center was inaugurated on October 11, 2008.
On December 28, 2010, the Portuguese Official Journal published the Decret-Law n.º 18/2010, which states the legal recognition of the battlefield of Aljubarrota with the category of "National Monument".

Compiled by Damiáno Aloisius