The Gold Rose: An Edward of Angoulême timeline
- Thread starter material_boy
- Start date
Castile is in for a rough time. I almost feel bad for what I'm about do 😅
Thank you, as always 😄
I'll try my best
And I should clarify: everyone is in for a rough time. There's a reason it's a Hundred Years War and not a Fifty Years War.
no doubt.I'll try my best
And I should clarify: everyone is in for a rough time. There's a reason it's a Hundred Years War and not a Fifty Years War.
Future generations better be prepared to pick up the fight. Specially The Plantagenets.
Well, I seem to recall you wanted "to see Trastámara getting impaled on the battlefield," so I hope it lived up to your expectations 😆
Family tree: France, pt. 1: Children of Jean II
King Jean II of France married (1) Bonne of Luxembourg, had issue:
Note: Family trees will be current as of the most recent update. Bold represents characters still alive as of that update. Trees will be updated them as new articles are posted to reflect births, deaths, marriages, etc. so they can be referred to as needed. (Most recent tree update: "Battle of Carcassonne," i.e., ca. ATL 1390.)
- Blanche (1336-1336)
- Charles V of France (1338-1380) married Jeanne of Bourbon, had issue
- Catherine (1338-1338)
- Louis I, duke of Anjou, (1339-1384) married Marie of Blois, had issue
- Jean, duke of Berry, (born 1340) married Jeanne of Armagnac, had issue
- Philippe II, duke of Burgundy (born 1342) married Marguerite of Flanders, suo jure countess of Flanders, had issue
- Jeanne (1343-1373) married King Charles II of Navarre, had issue
- Marie (born 1344) married Robert I, duke of Bar, had issue
- Agnès (1345-1349)
- Marguerite (1347-1352)
- Isabelle (1348-1372) married Gian Galeazzo Visconti, lord of Milan, had issue
- Blanche (1350-1350)
- Catherine (1352-1352)
- an unnamed son (1354-1354)
Note: Family trees will be current as of the most recent update. Bold represents characters still alive as of that update. Trees will be updated them as new articles are posted to reflect births, deaths, marriages, etc. so they can be referred to as needed. (Most recent tree update: "Battle of Carcassonne," i.e., ca. ATL 1390.)
Last edited:
Family tree: France, pt. 2: Grandchildren of Jean II
France
King Charles V of France married Jeanne of Bourbon in 1350, had issue:
Anjou
Louis I, duke of Anjou married Marie of Blois in 1360, had issue:
Berry
Jean, duke of Berry married Jeanne of Armagnac, had issue:
Burgundy
Philippe II, duke of Burgundy married Marguerite of Flanders, suo jure countess of Flanders, Artois, Burgundy, Nevers, and Rethel in 1369, had issue:
Navarre
Jeanne married King Charles II of Navarre in 1352, had issue:
Bar
Marie married Robert I, duke of Bar, in 1364, had issue:
Visconti
Isabelle married Gian Galeazzo Visconti, lord of Milan, in had issue
Note: Family trees will be current as of the most recent update. Bold represents characters still alive as of that update. Trees will be updated them as new articles are posted to reflect births, deaths, marriages, etc. so they can be referred to as needed. (Most recent tree update: "Battle of Carcassonne," i.e., ca. ATL 1390.)
King Charles V of France married Jeanne of Bourbon in 1350, had issue:
- Jeanne (1357-1360)
- Bonne (1360-1360)
- Jean (1366-1366)
- Charles VI of France (born 1368) married Isabeau of Bavaria, had issue
- Marie (1370-1377)
- Louis, duke of Orléans, (born 1372) married Valentina Visconti, suo jure countess of Vertus
- Isabelle (1373-1378)
- Catherine (1378-1388) betrothed to Jean of Berry, heir to the duchy of Berry, but died before marriage
Anjou
Louis I, duke of Anjou married Marie of Blois in 1360, had issue:
- Marie of Anjou (1370-1383)
- Louis II of Anjou (born 1377)
- Charles of Anjou (born 1380)
Berry
Jean, duke of Berry married Jeanne of Armagnac, had issue:
- Bonne of Berry (born 1367) married Amédée VII, count of Savoy, had issue
- Charles of Berry (1371-1383), betrothed to Marie, suo jure lady of Sully, but died before marriage
- Jeanne of Berry (1373-1375)
- Béatrix of Berry (1374-1374)
- Marie of Berry (born 1375)
- Jean of Berry (born 1375) betrothed to (1) Catherine of France, and (2) Jeanne of Auvergne, suo jure countess of Auvergne
- Louis of Berry (1383-1383)
Burgundy
Philippe II, duke of Burgundy married Marguerite of Flanders, suo jure countess of Flanders, Artois, Burgundy, Nevers, and Rethel in 1369, had issue:
- Jean (born 1371) married Margarete of Bavaria
- Charles (1372-1373)
- Marguerite (born 1375) married Wilhelm of Bavaria, heir to the counties of Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland
- Catherine (born 1378)
- Bonne (born 1379)
- Antoine (born 1384)
- Marie (born 1386)
- Philippe (born 1389)
Navarre
Jeanne married King Charles II of Navarre in 1352, had issue:
- Charles III of Navarre (born 1361) married (1) Leonor de Trastámara, annulled, and (2) Elizabeth of Lancaster, had issue
- Philippe (1363-1363)
- Marie (born 1365) marred Jean IV, duke of Brittany, had issue
- Pierre, count of Mortain, (born 1366)
- Isabelle (1367-1376)
- Blanche (1368-1382)
- Jeanne (born 1370)
- Bonne (1373-1383)
Bar
Marie married Robert I, duke of Bar, in 1364, had issue:
- Henri of Bar (born 1362) married Marie of Coucy, had issue
- Yolande of Bar (born 1365) married King Joan I of Aragon, had issue
- Philippe of Bar (born 1372) married Yolande of Enghien
- Charles of Bar (born 1373)
- Marie of Bar (born 1374) married Guillaume II, marquis of Namur
- Bonne of Bar (born 1375)
- Édouard of Bar (born 1377)
- Jeanne of Bar (born 1378)
- Louis of Bar (born 1379)
- Jean of Bar (born 1380)
Visconti
Isabelle married Gian Galeazzo Visconti, lord of Milan, in had issue
- Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1366-1376)
- Azzone Visconti (1368-1380)
- Valentina Visconti, suo jure countess of Vertus, (born 1371) married Louis, duke of Orléans
- Carlo Visconti (1372-1374)
Note: Family trees will be current as of the most recent update. Bold represents characters still alive as of that update. Trees will be updated them as new articles are posted to reflect births, deaths, marriages, etc. so they can be referred to as needed. (Most recent tree update: "Battle of Carcassonne," i.e., ca. ATL 1390.)
Last edited:
Family tree: France, pt. 3: Great-grandchildren of Jean II
France (grandchildren of King Charles V of France)
King Charles VI of France (born 1368) married Isabeau of Bavaria, daughter of Stephan III, duke of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, had issue:
Savoy (grandchildren of Jean, duke of Berry)
Bonne of Berry married Amédée VII, count of Savoy, in 1381, had issue:
Navarre (grandchildren of Jeanne of France)
King Charles III of Navarre married Elizabeth of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, had issue:
Bar (grandchildren of Marie of France)
Henri of Bar married Marie of Coucy, daughter of Enguerrand VII, lord of Coucy, in 1384, had issue:
Yolande of Bar married King Joan I of Aragon, had issue:
King Charles VI of France (born 1368) married Isabeau of Bavaria, daughter of Stephan III, duke of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, had issue:
- Charles, dauphin of France (1386-1386)
- Jeanne of France (1388-1390)
- Isabelle of France (born 1389)
Savoy (grandchildren of Jean, duke of Berry)
Bonne of Berry married Amédée VII, count of Savoy, in 1381, had issue:
- Amédée of Savoy (born 1383)
- Bonne of Savoy (born 1388)
Navarre (grandchildren of Jeanne of France)
King Charles III of Navarre married Elizabeth of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, had issue:
- Jeanne of Navarre (1384-1384)
- Charles, prince of Viana (born 1387)
- Blanche of Navarre (born 1388)
- Lionel de Navarre (born 1386)
Bar (grandchildren of Marie of France)
Henri of Bar married Marie of Coucy, daughter of Enguerrand VII, lord of Coucy, in 1384, had issue:
- Enguerrand of Bar (born 1387)
- Robert of Bar (born 1390)
Yolande of Bar married King Joan I of Aragon, had issue:
- Jaume, duke of Girona (1382-1388)
- Violant of Aragon (born 1384)
- Ferran, duke of Girona (1389-1389)
Last edited:
😅
It's all very bare right now. As with the English, I'll update it as time goes on. I just wanted to get the housekeeping out of the way.
It's mostly helpful for me to write it down because it's easy for me to forget how closely related some figures are once names change. That is to say, I know French princesses married into both Navarre and Milan, but sometimes it's not until I write it down that I think "Oh, right, Joan of Navarre and Valentina Visconti are first cousins."
Third Fernandine War
Third Fernandine War
The Third Fernandine War was the last in a series of conflicts fought between King Fernando of Portugal and the Trastámaran kings of Castile and León. The issue at the heart of the conflict was the succession to the throne of Castile following the 1369 deposition and murder of King Pedro of Castile. The war lasted from 1381 until Fernando's death in 1383, though its events set off a string of conflicts in and between Castile and Portugal that stretched into the 1400s. Hostilities between the two kingdoms continued most directly as part of Lancaster's Crusade and the War of the Portuguese Succession.
Background
King Fernando of Portugal was one of the most controversial men of his day. Noted for his good looks and commanding presence, he cut an impressive figure that drew many to his side, but he was often undone by his intense ambition and impulsiveness. He inherited a wealthy and prosperous country from his father, King Pedro of Portugal, a celebrated figure who had kept the kingdom out of war, meted out harsh justice to keep the peace, and built a highly efficient government administration. Fernando, who ascended to the throne in 1367, was far more interested in foreign policy and his self-aggrandizement soon led to war with Castile.
In 1369, King Pedro of Castile was deposed and murdered by his illegitimate half-brother, who was then crowned King Enrique II of Castile. The ascension of a bastard guilty of both regicide and fratricide was, of course, highly contentious. Pedro had a pair of daughters whose rights had been recognized by the cortes of Castile, but their legitimacy was questionable, owing to a secret marriage that Pedro claimed to have gone through several years before revealing it publicly. The shocking nature of Enrique's usurpation and the confusion over the princesses' origins opened the door to other, more distant claimants.
Fernando was the first to press a claim to the Castilian throne, launching the First Fernandine War. He based his claim on his descent from King Sancho IV of Castile, a great-grandfather of both Fernando and the murdered Pedro of Castile, thus making Fernando a second cousin of the last legitimate king of Castile, through a female line. This was a fairly obscure claim, but it was more valid than that of a bastard usurper. Fernando won a series of quick victories against Enrique, but a Trastámaran counterattack the following year ended the war in a stalemate. The two sides signed the Treaty of Alcoutim in early 1371, in which Enrique ceded some land in exchange for Fernando relinquishing his claim to the Castilian throne.
In 1372, Fernando rejected the Treaty of Alcoutim. He recognized Constanza, the eldest of Pedro's two questionably-legitimate daughters, as the rightful heiress to the Castilian throne. He made an alliance with the kingdom of England to install John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster and Constanza's husband, as king of Castile. This began the Second Fernandine War, which the Trastámarans won quickly and overwhelmingly. Fernando was forced to sign the Treaty of Santarém in 1373, which limited his ability to conduct his own foreign policy and obligated him to provide ships for the Castilian war fleet. Simply put, Portugal was reduced to a client state of Castile.
Fernando burned with anger following the humiliations of 1372 and 1373, but Portugal had been so thoroughly devastated that even the prideful, reckless king had to accept that he could not risk further conflict with Castile. Instead, he threw himself into the administration of his government. He cracked down on the abuses of his nobility against the lower classes, imposing crushing fines that brought the lords to heel and refilled royal coffers. He encouraged trade and promoted the development of unused land, leading to an economic boom that greatly enriched the crown. Fernando then launched a huge construction program that included building new walls around Lisbon and assembling a fleet of warships that could challenge Castile for supremacy at sea. By the end of the decade, Portugal had emerged from the ashes of the Second Fernandine War stronger than it had been before.
Prelude to war
Enrique II died in May 1379. He was succeeded by his son, but the new King Juan of Castile had little in common with his father. Juan was anxious, unsure of himself, and inexperienced in matters of war. He was also prone to illness and, perhaps as a result of his sickliness, intensely pious.
In July, Fernando defied the Treaty of Santarém and withdrew Portuguese galleys from the Castilian fleet. It was a test of Juan's resolve and he failed it, offering only a limp diplomatic response. This encouraged Fernando to make a more serious break from Castile. He quietly reached out to his old friend Juan Fernández de Andeiro, a Galician nobleman who had spearheaded Anglo-Portuguese talks in the early 1370s and who had since become part of Gaunt's Castilian court in exile. A wealthy Portuguese merchant by the name of João Peris made contact with Andeiro in the fall, passing on a coded message that hinted at the possibility of wedding Fernando's only child and heiress, Beatriz, to an English prince. Andeiro passed the word on to his master, Gaunt, and plans secretly began for a new Anglo-Portuguese alliance.
On 10 December, Andeiro embarked for Portugal. He landed in Porto the following month, ducked past local authorities, and made his way overland to Leiria, where Fernando was residing. Arriving unannounced and not wanting to make himself known at court, Andeiro paid a member of the king's household to discreetly deliver the news of his arrival. Fernando had Andeiro unceremoniously smuggled into the royal apartments. Talks were held in the king's private chambers over the next several days, Andeiro representing the interests of both Gaunt, as pretender king of Castile, and the boy King Edward V of England.
Negotiations were short. Fernando had sought to avenge himself upon the Trastámarans since 1373 and the moment to do so had finally presented itself, as Juan was distracted by conflict with Navarre. Fernando was determined to strike before the opportunity passed and he agreed to practically everything Andeiro wanted in order to secure English support.
Fernando rushed through negotiations for other reasons as well. The king was in very poor health despite being just 34. His daughter, Beatriz, was his only child, but Portugal had no precedent for a queen regnant and his wife, Queen Leonor Teles, feared that the crown would go to the king's half-brother, João de Castro, after Fernando's death. The king was desperate to secure the succession for his daughter by wedding her to a powerful ally. What's more, Fernando was strongly influenced by Queen Leonor through these talks, and the queen began an affair with Andeiro around this time. The queen may have urged the king to agree to Andeiro's terms as a result of the affair.
On 15 February 1380, the Anglo-Portuguese alliance was sealed. Fernando recognized Gaunt as the rightful king of Castile and committed all of Portugal's resources, both on land and at sea, to supporting an invasion by Gaunt at some undetermined date in the future. In exchange, Andeiro committed England to protecting Beatriz and ensuring her succession to the Portuguese throne. An expeditionary force of 2,000 Englishmen was to be sent to Portugal before the end of the year and put at Fernando's disposal, with half its costs to be paid by the Portuguese. Beatriz was betrothed to Richard of Bordeaux, the English king's younger brother, to seal the alliance. Its commitments were generally vague, but the broad strokes of the alliance were there.
Fernando waited nearly four months to bring members of his council into his plans. They were incredulous, as every man among them remembered the devastation of the Second Fernandine War. They urged the king to change course at once. Fernando, however, was resolute. He told them that he was not asking whether he should make war on Castile, but asking only how he should make war. The king remained an inspiring and intimidating figure, despite his illness, and the council fell in line behind him. Plans were soon drawn up for a defense against an expected Castilian onslaught the following year.
In early summer, Fernando moved his court to Estremoz as work began on a series of fortresses near the border. This did not go unnoticed. Improvements and repairs at key positions were an unmistakable sign of hostility, but Castile was not in a position to respond following its shocking loss to the Anglo-Navarrese at the Battle of Estella.
English preparations for war did not go unnoticed either. In late September, Juan began receiving reports from Paris that the English had begun requisitioning ships for yet another continental campaign—their third of the year, after Estella and a chevauchée in northern France. It seemed they were intended for Castile, but otherwise details were scarce. The Castilians initially expected an attack through Navarre, but a month later they finally learned of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance. By then, it was too late for Castile to mount an attack against Portugal before winter. The English expeditionary force arrived in Lisbon in late December, after braving a treacherous late-autumn crossing of the Bay of Biscay. Juan quickly dispatched the veteran diplomat Pedro López de Ayala to secure French support.
On 22 February 1381, Ayala sealed an alliance with the new boy King Charles VI of France. It was celebrated with an extravagant ceremony in Paris, but it was ultimately an empty gesture. The alliance between the two kingdoms had never been in doubt and the treaty simply reformalized their commitments following Charles's succession. The dysfunctional French regency government, teetering on bankruptcy and itself facing the threat of English invasion, could not provide any real support. Castile was effectively on its own.
The Castilian royal council pushed for an aggressive course of action. Lacking support from France and fearing that an even larger English force may be on its way, they fell back on the strategy that had been so devastatingly effective in the Second Fernandine War—a two-prong assault designed to devastate the land, terrorize the people, and trap the Portuguese king in Lisbon. Plans were laid for Juan to lead a large army from the north and lay waste to everything before him on a long march south toward the capital while a smaller, faster-moving force would make straight for Lisbon from the border town of Badajoz. The pincer movement would pin the Anglo-Portuguese near Lisbon while the Castilian fleet would blockade the mouth of the Tagus to prevent escape by sea. Once surrounded, they believed Fernando would have no choice but to surrender.
Castilian campaign
On 24 February 1381, Juan issued orders for Castilian forces to muster on 20 April. Juan was to lead the main army from Ciudad Rodrigo while the second, smaller army would be co-commanded by Fernando Osorez, master of the Order of Santiago, and João de Castro, the Portuguese king's half-brother and Beatriz's rival for the throne. Castro hoped that by joining the Castilian campaign he could force his half-brother to recognize him as heir.
Enríquez Rebellion
On 13 May, agents of the Portuguese king were discovered in Asturias. Alfonso Enríquez, count of Gijón and Noreña, the Castilian king's illegitimate half-brother, was soon revealed to be plotting a rebellion with their support. Outraged, Juan led the northern army out of Ciudad Rodrigo in late May and went not south into Portugal, but north into Asturias. Alfonso surrendered to Juan immediately, his scheme having been uncovered too soon for him to directly confront the king's army, and was imprisoned.
Alfonso's arrest created an unexpected political headache for Juan. The upper nobility had grown enormously powerful under Enrique II, which had led to widespread corruption and violence. Juan had repeatedly threatened to rein in his overmighty lords, but the arrest of Alfonso was the first real action he had taken against one of them. Several of the magnates serving in Juan's army urged the king to show his half-brother mercy, perhaps fearing that the king would be emboldened to act against them in the future if he were able to punish Alfonso now. Juan was often easily influenced, but his anger at his brother was such that he stubbornly resisted calls for leniency. Gutierre de Toledo, bishop of Oviedo, stepped in to mediate talks between the king and his lords, which went on for days before the king relented. Juan formally pardoned Alfonso in a public ceremony in exchange for Alfonso swearing oaths of allegiance on holy relics.
Despite the delay of the northern campaign, Osorez and Castro led their army out of Badajoz on schedule and crossed into Portuguese territory on 12 June. They went around Elvas, which was well-fortified and strongly garrisoned, but only made it as far as Estremoz before they were set upon by English forces. Fernando had expected the Castilians to repeat the pincer movement they had used in the Second Fernandine War and positioned the English army, led by Gilbert Talbot, 3rd baron Talbot, to ambush the southern arm of the invasion. Osorez and Castro had marched into a trap. They were forced to retreat, but found themselves caught between the Portuguese garrison as Elvas and the English army in pursuit. Osorez was wounded and captured in a skirmish near the border, but Castro escaped back to Castile.
The main Castilian army was still camped at Gijón in Asturias when news of the southern army's failure arrived. Juan's captains urged him to move forward with the plan to devastate the Portuguese countryside, but the king lost his nerve, fearing that he too would be marching into a trap. He decided to attack the border fortress of Almeida, so as not to venture too far into Portuguese territory.
Battle of Saltes
On 17 July, the Portuguese fleet sailed into the Odiel and launched a surprise attack on the Castilian fleet anchored off Saltes Island. The Castilians were badly outnumbered, with much of their fleet undergoing repairs at Seville. Fernando Sánchez de Tovar, admiral of Castile, was on hand at Saltes and quickly withdrew the fleet up the Tinto River. João Afonso Telo, admiral of Portugal, believed his enemy was in retreat and ordered an immediate attack. Tovar, however, was not retreating. He was one of the greatest, most experienced naval commanders of the era, having led many of Castile's campaigns against England. He was baiting the Portuguese.
The buildup of the Portuguese fleet in the mid to late 1370s had been a key part of Fernando's plan to break from Castile, but his shipbuilding program had not been paired with an effort to train men for service at sea. Portuguese commanders had no experience in naval warfare—Telo, for example, had been promoted to admiral by virtue of being Queen Leonor's brother—and crews were manned by peasants pressed into service. Predictably, the Portuguese fleet became badly disorganized when ordered to attack. The crews rowed at different speeds, some came too close to shore and snagged their oars in fishing nets, and some simply fell behind as men struggled in the summer heat. As a result, eight ships in the Portuguese vanguard pulled far ahead of the rest of the fleet. Seeing this, Tovar ordered his own fleet to turn and attack, catching the Portuguese by surprise.
The tightly-disciplined Castilians overran the Portuguese vanguard. The sights and sounds of the slaughter threw the rest of the Portuguese fleet into further disarray. Some ships joined in the fighting as soon as they caught up to the vanguard, hoping to save their countrymen. Others held back, trying to regain order in their ranks. At least two crews mutinied when ordered to engage. The piecemeal attack robbed the Portuguese of their numerical advantage, allowing the Castilians to pick off their enemies one or two ships at a time. The battle turned into a rout and then a massacre.
The Battle of Saltes was an unmitigated disaster for the Portuguese. Thousands of Portuguese crewmen were captured or killed as the Castilians seized control of nearly every ship in their fleet. The admiral of Portugal himself had been taken prisoner. Castile's position as the dominant power in the Atlantic was cemented for a generation.
Siege of Almeida
On 30 July, Juan finally crossed the border into Portugal. He surrounded Almeida, a fortified town with a strong castle that had recently been expanded by Fernando. The town and castle were both well-defended, but the larger issue for the Castilians was that they had no siege weapons, as they had planned to lay waste to the Portuguese countryside, not commit to a long siege. They remained camped around the town until 9 August, when reinforcements brought in an impressive siege train that included trebuchets and cannons.
The town of Almeida surrendered after only about 10 days, but the castle held out. Three more weeks passed before Juan, who had taken ill at camp, admitted defeat. He was out of money and English and Portuguese forces were reportedly moving north to save the fortress. He retreated back across the border. Regrouping at the Castle of Coca, Juan received a grave financial report. Back-to-back campaigns in 1380 in Navarre and 1381 in Portugal had put the crown deeply in debt. In September, Juan reluctantly disbanded the army and issued summons for the cortes to impose new taxes.
The dissolution of the king's army provoked a strong backlash. English and Portuguese forces had begun raiding Extremadura and Andalucia and, while the financial pressures bearing down on the crown were not widely known, tales of death and destruction wrought by the Anglo-Portuguese were widespread. Talbot would capture the town of Higuera la Real in Extremadura before year's end and it would serve as an outpost for English raiders for much of the next year. Juan looked craven and appeared unable to defend the realm. Castilians began to question whether he would survive an invasion by John of Gaunt. Two captains on the march of Navarre wrote their king off entirely, bringing their men and the border towns of Logroño and Vitoria over to King Charles II of Navarre.
In Paris, Juan's French allies looked on in horror. Bertrand du Guesclin, constable of France, received a stream of letters from his brother, Olivier du Guesclin, who was among a handful of French knights in the service of the Castilian king. The constable impressed the severity of the situation upon the French king's uncles, who governed the kingdom in Charles VI's name. The regents agreed that action was needed to save their southern ally and dispatched the constable to Castile.
Crisis and crusade
John of Gaunt loomed large over Castile after the failure of Juan's 1381 ground campaign. A Lancastrian invasion was inevitable. Political problems and revolt had kept Gaunt in England through 1381, but it seemed unlikely that he would be put off again.
The threat of invasion broke the Castilian court into factions. The parties were largely divided along generational lines. The elder party, known as the enriqueños, were longtime supporters of Juan's father. Veterans of the First Castilian Civil War, they had badly learned the lesson of meeting the English in battle and urged Juan to open negotiations with Fernando in hopes of breaking the Anglo-Portuguese alliance and heading off a Lancastrian invasion. The younger party, later known as juanistas, wanted nothing more than to earn fame and fortune in battle. They had urged Juan to give battle at Estella, leading to disaster. They denounced any talk of negotiations and called for a new offensive against Portugal. The king vacillated between the two camps until the arrival of Bertrand du Guesclin on 20 November 1381.
Bertrand du Guesclin had a history in Castile. He had fought for Enrique de Trastámara as a soldier of fortune in the First Castilian Civil War and had helped forge Castile's alliance with France in the late 1360s. He had strong support from the enriqueños, who were themselves veterans of the civil war, and his towering reputation won over even the more hawkish juanistas, at least for a time. Guesclin soon emerged as Juan's principal military advisor and convinced the king to adopt a Fabian strategy, which had been devastatingly effective against the English in France.
Guesclin restored an uneasy peace to the Castilian court in the nick of time. In early 1382, French ships patrolling the Channel began reporting a buildup of English transports at Plymouth, signaling that Gaunt's long-anticipated invasion was finally at hand. Guesclin expected Gaunt to invade through Navarre, with the goal of taking Burgos, the historic site of Castilian coronations. Hoping to avoid a two-front war, the Castilian fleet was sent to distract the Portuguese and keep them from mobilizing an attack on Castile's western border.
Crisis in Portugal
On 9 March 1382, 80 Castilian ships sailed into the mouth of the Tagus and launched a surprise attack on the Portuguese capital. The local population fled for the protection of Lisbon's powerful new walls as the suburbs were sacked. Homes and farms were looted of all moveable wealth before being burnt to the ground. Livestock that could not be rustled was slaughtered and left to rot. Even churches were stripped bare. The Portuguese were slow to respond and the Castilians simply took to their ships and sailed up river at the appearance of armed resistance. Luxurious mansions owned by the king and members of the upper nobility lined the Tagus for miles. None were spared. Lowborn Castilian seamen grew rich from the spoils. Public opinion turned sharply against the war as even the nobility, which had long been loyal to the king, began to curse Fernando and those around him for courting such disaster.
As Castilians wreaked havoc up and down the Tagus, the Portuguese king's council was consumed by an altogether different crisis. The Galician nobleman Juan Fernández de Andeiro, Gaunt's ambassador to Portugal, had sailed to Lisbon with the English expeditionary force in December 1380. Andeiro soon resumed his affair with Queen Leonor and subsequently found himself in a position of great power, as Fernando's health declined and the queen effectively came to control the government. The queen stacked the royal council with allies and supporters, ensuring that her voice dominated even when the king was well enough to attend to the business of state. By spring 1382, only two figures remained outside the queen's influence: Gonçalo Vasques de Azevedo, lord of Lourinhã, who was Fernando's long-serving and most-trusted advisor, and João, master of Avis, the king's bastard half-brother.
In early April 1382, the Portuguese court moved to Évora to escape the reach of the Castilians terrorizing the Tagus Valley. There, Inês Afonso, who was Azevedo's wife and one of Queen Leonor's ladies-in-waiting, caught Queen Leonor in an indecent conversation with Andeiro. The pair's relationship, which had long been the subject of court rumors, had finally been discovered. Panicked, the queen sent the ailing Fernando away, ostensibly so that he could rest more comfortably elsewhere.
As Fernando was packed off to a nearby royal residence, Avis and Azevedo were arrested on trumped up charges of treason. Queen Leonor ordered their executions without trial, but officials at Évora refused. Avis was a member of the royal family and a death sentence could only be imposed by direct order from the king. A standoff between the queen and the captain of Évora lasted for weeks, leaving Avis and Azevedo rotting in prison and unsure of their fates. The queen finally relented on 12 May, when she managed to buy Azevedo's silence with the lordships of Figueiró dos Vinhos and Pedrógão Grande. Avis was left completely politically isolated by Azevedo's betrayal. Fearing for his life, Avis agreed to resign his position on the council and leave court in exchange for his release. He left Évora to join the English army on the border. Fernando returned to the castle in late May, oblivious to the events that transpired in his absence.
Lancaster's Crusade
The Tagus campaign was more successful than the Castilians had imagined it could be. The Portuguese were not just distracted from launching an attack into western Castile, but were actively drawing men away from the border to defend against Castilian raids in the east. Only the remnants of the English expeditionary force remained behind, and its number had shrunk considerably. Contracted to serve for only a year, roughly half the 2,000 Englishmen who'd arrived in December 1380 had decided to return home by spring 1382. Those who remained had been organized into a routier company and were now led by Sir John de Southeray, John of Gaunt's bastard half-brother.
On 21 July, Gaunt landed at Corunna in northwestern Galicia with an army of 5,000 men. The Trastámarans were caught completely off guard. Galicia was poorly defended and had long harbored petrista sympathies. Gaunt was welcomed into the holy city of Santiago de Compostela just four days after landing. It was the feast day of the Apostle Saint James the Elder, whose bones were buried there. All of Galicia followed. Then, on 14 September, Gaunt's wife, Constanza, gave birth to a son in the holy city. The birth of a Lancastrian prince, named John, was heralded as a divine endorsement of Gaunt's campaign.
Fernando received Gaunt at Ponte do Mouro in early November. The event, though extravagant, was far from what the English expected. Fernando's health was clearly failing, Andeiro was at the center of power, and Queen Leonor was newly pregnant. The child was almost certainly the result of Andeiro's affair with the queen, but the king never questioned its paternity, either unaware of the affair or too embarrassed to admit that he had been cuckolded. Unless Fernando repudiated the child, it would displace Beatriz in the line of succession if it were a boy. Regardless, Richard of Bordeaux, the English prince who was betrothed to Beatriz and who had expected to become king of Portugal in time, was awkwardly presented to the Portuguese court as heir presumptive.
The English and Portuguese negotiated the finer points of the alliance between Fernando and Gaunt during the summit at Ponte do Mouro. Most significantly, Gaunt agreed to cede a number of fortresses along the border in exchange for Fernando fielding an army of 5,000 men for up to two years. This agreement, which was to come into effect upon Gaunt's taking the throne of Castile, would move the Portuguese border to the east, from Zamora in the north to Huelva in the south. Plans were made for a joint campaign in the new year.
Anglo-Portuguese campaign
The Lancastrian army was joined by the remnants of the English expeditionary force, bringing its size to about 6,000 men. Gaunt led an invasion into León through Portugal in late December, hoping to gain a foothold in the region before Portuguese reinforcements arrived in the early spring.
Siege of Benavente
João de Avis helped to identify Benavente as the ideal position from which to conquer León. The town sat at the crossroads of Asturias, Galicia, León and Castile proper, making it a vital strategic location. Gaunt was seemingly surprised to find the city so well defended after his quick conquest of Galicia. The Lancastrian army dug in for a long siege, but quickly encountered issues with unreliable supply lines, which led to food shortages.
On 5 March 1383, Bertrand du Guesclin died in Zamora, just 48 miles south of Benavente, after taking ill a week prior. It was an anticlimactic end for a man of his stature, but at 63 years of age, he was fairly old by the standards of the day. His death reopened the divisions at the Castilian court, as various figures soon began jockeying for the attention of the king. Among them was Bertrand du Guesclin's own brother, Olivier du Guesclin, who left his position at Villalpando to be at the king's side in Medina del Campo.
The confusion that followed Bertrand du Guesclin's death and Olivier du Guesclin's flight from Villalpando was quickly exploited by the Lancastrians, who bribed a demoralized member of the local garrison to open the gates of Benavente on 10 April. They sacked the city. Gaunt had gained his foothold in León, but the Portuguese army he was promised was nowhere to be found.
Succession crisis
On 2 April, Queen Leonor gave birth to a son, named Afonso, at Salvaterra de Magos. Fernando lay alone and dying elsewhere in the royal apartments. Upon hearing the news, the king called for a lavish celebration to mark the birth of his newborn son and heir. Courtiers, however, whispered that the child was a bastard born of adultery.
Richard of Bordeaux had been attached to the king's court since his presentation at Ponte do Mouro months earlier. He had come to Portugal with an English household, which included a small cadre of knights and administrators led by Sir Simon Burley. These men found themselves in a murky, possibly dangerous situation now. At the Portuguese king's summit with Gaunt at Ponte do Mouro, the English had strongly suspected that Fernando was not the true father of Queen Leonor's child, but had no real evidence of this. Andeiro's relationship with Queen Leonor, though an open secret to Portuguese courtiers, was kept from the English for obvious reasons.
Queen Leonor understood that the English alliance had become a liability with the birth of Afonso. Fernando was by this time so ill that he was not expected to live through the year. A long regency would be required for the newborn prince, which Queen Leonor meant to lead. Her loyalists at court seem to have been contemplating the birth of a prince for weeks. Installing their mistress as queen regent would seal their positions in power for a generation. The newborn prince's questionable legitimacy made Richard a figure around whom the queen's opponents could organize, and so he had to be neutralized.
Ten days after Afonso's birth, Portuguese officials crowded in the royal residences after dark. They shuttled back and forth between the king's and queen's apartments through the night, likely to avoid drawing the attention of the English. In the morning, they produced what was described as the king's plan for the government following his inevitable demise. Power was solely vested in Queen Leonor as regent until Afonso reached 14 years of age and, remarkably, this arrangement was to continue even in the event of Afonso's death at a young age. To achieve this, Beatriz, and thus Richard, were effectively taken out of the line of succession in favor of their hypothetical son. So, if Afonso died in childhood, the crown would directly pass to Beatriz's son and Queen Leonor would continue to rule as regent until said son reached the age of 14.
The English were astonished when the document was explained to them. At 16 years old, Richard was already over the age of majority, as it was defined in the very document that was barring him from power. Headstrong and impulsive, Richard exploded as he passed by Martinho de Zamora, bishop of Lisbon, later that same day. The bishop was a leading figure in the queen's party and had read the document out at court. Richard drew his sword from its scabbard and moved to attack the bishop in the halls of the palace, but was restrained by his own English bodyguards.
Queen Leonor looked for ways to remove Richard and his English household from court after his encounter with the bishop of Lisbon, but did not wish to end his betrothal to Beatriz, which would break Portugal from England entirely. She briefly considered sending Richard and Beatriz to England, which made a certain amount of sense, considering that the girl's inheritance had been lost to Afonso. Instead, though, she sent the English prince to lead the Portuguese army to León. At Ponte do Mouro, the Portuguese had pledged to deliver an army to Gaunt by early spring, but they had only begun to assemble one in mid April. Richard joined the expedition as a figurehead.
Collapse
On 19 June, Alfonso Enríquez, count of Gijón and Noreña, the Trastámaran king's bastard half-brother who had rebelled two years prior, declared his allegiance to the Lancastrian cause. Alfonso's support effectively delivered all of Asturias to Gaunt, sending shockwaves through Castile.
In July, Gaunt moved north to besiege the city of León, which cut Asturias off from the Lancastrian-controlled city of Benavente. He was joined there by Álvaro Pires de Castro, count of Viana, who commanded the long-promised Portuguese army, which arrived now three months behind schedule and with Richard of Bordeaux and his household in tow. Portuguese reinforcements swelled Gaunt's ranks to more than 10,000 men. The size of the army proved to be its undoing, as outbreaks of disease and severe food shortages killed thousands over the course of the months-long siege.
On 22 October, Fernando finally died in Lisbon. He was 37. Afonso, just six months old, was proclaimed king of Portugal. Queen Leonor took control as regent, in accordance with the plans she had forced upon her dying husband after Afonso's birth. The queen was reviled by the public, but she had the support of Fernando's councilors, most of whom she had installed herself, and the bishop of Lisbon, who was the leading figure in the Portuguese church. She also had considerable support among the upper nobility, but she had badly underestimated the impact Afonso's birth had had on her standing here. It was obvious to all who knew the king in his final, painful year of life that he could not have sired a child in such a state. Afonso was just too obviously illegitimate for many to accept. Combined with the crown's weak response to raids along the Tagus, nobles outside of court had come to detest the court party led by the queen.
Among those who could not accept the lie that the infant Afonso was the legitimate king of Portugal was the commander of the Portuguese army. Álvaro Pires de Castro was the uncle of João de Castro, Fernando's half-brother who had been forced into exile in Castile, and whose claim to the throne was suddenly of great interest to disaffected Portuguese nobles. João de Castro cut a dashing figure and was extremely popular both with the Portuguese nobility and the lower classes. Castro's charm was such that he had even managed to win over the king of Castile during his exile. Upon hearing the news of Fernando's death, Juan gave Castro a small squadron of ships to sail to Lisbon and claim the throne for himself.
On 10 November, João de Castro sailed into the mouth of Tagus. The city garrison, seeing a Castilian fleet on approach and unaware that Castro was aboard, rained artillery fire and crossbow bolts down on the ships. Castro was forced to retreat, but one of his ships was captured as it attempted to escape. Only after interrogating the ship's crew did the city's defenders discover that Castro had been in command and looking to land peacefully.
Word of Castro's attempted landing spread like wildfire. Riots erupted across Lisbon, as the people rose up to declare their support for the exiled prince and denounce the hated Queen Leonor. Mobs seized control of nearly every part of the city over the next several days, overrunning officials in some areas and being joined by them in others. By 16 November, the queen could not be guaranteed safety even in the royal residence. She fled the capital and made her way up river to Santarém under the cover of darkness. Her retreat inspired riots in other major cities. It appeared Portugal was on the edge of a popular revolution.
On 19 November, Álvaro Pires de Castro declared his support for his nephew. He detached the Portuguese army from the Lancastrians besieging León and moved south to support João de Castro's cause. Gaunt ended the siege in defeat after the loss of his Portuguese allies.
Aftermath
Historians often date the end of the Third Fernandine War to Fernando's death on 22 October 1383, but it could be more accurately dated to the count of Viana's decision to withdraw from León on 19 November. The detachment of Portuguese forces from the Lancastrian siege marked the end of Portugal's interest in the Castilian succession, which had motivated all of the Fernandine Wars, and the onset of Portugal's own succession crisis.
The sudden collapse of Queen Leonor's regency government launched the War of the Portuguese Succession, in which three parties fought for the crown. The court party led by Queen Leonor through the final years of Fernando's reign supported the infant Afonso and largely consisted of members of the nobility who had become too dependent on the queen's largesse to admit the child's obvious bastardy. João de Castro drew support from nobles outside the queen's party and from the lower classes, most especially in the large cities. Beatriz of Portugal had little local support, but was endorsed by the English.
The Anglo-Portuguese alliance effectively ended with the outbreak of the succession war. The English finally learned the full truth of the relationship between Andeiro and Queen Leonor, which was publicized by the queen's enemies to discredit her. The exposure of Afonso's likely illegitimacy resurrected Richard of Bordeaux's claim to the Portuguese throne through Beatriz, but the challenges facing the English prince seemed insurmountable. His betrothed was underage and she was in Queen Leonor's custody at Santarém. Moreover, despite Fernando's efforts to promote Beatriz's claim to the throne, Portugal still had no precedent for a queen regnant. The popular movement for João de Castro had boldly underscored that fact. Indeed, Lourenço Fogaça, who served as chancellor under Fernando, was the only Portuguese figure in high standing who supported Beatriz.
The War of the Portuguese Succession quickly drew the interest of its larger neighbor, Castile. João de Castro was initially supported by the Trastámarans, but this became a liability for him. Castile's attacks on Lisbon and along the Tagus had led to an intense hatred of Castilians at all levels of Portuguese society. Queen Leonor's party utilized Castro's Castilian connections in propaganda to erode his popular support. Castro sought to distance himself from the Trastámarans by seeking an alliance with the Lancastrians, but Gaunt lacked the resources to offer Castro any real support. Instead, Castro was caught up in the end stages of Lancaster's Crusade, which limped on for another year after the failure of the Siege of León before the collapse of the Trastámaran dynasty brought that conflict to an end.
Historians often rate Fernando as among the worst kings in Portuguese history for the destruction he brought upon his own kingdom by launching the Third Fernandine War. The war ended having achieved neither of the goals laid out in Fernando's 1380 treaty with the English: Princess Beatriz was not secure in the succession and Gaunt was not sitting upon the Castilian throne. Instead, Portugal collapsed into civil war and Gaunt was forced to fight on alone for another year. Fernando had thus plunged Castile and Portugal into a series of highly destructive wars and ended his life with nothing to show for it, leaving his country poorer and weaker than he had inherited it in 1367.
The Third Fernandine War was the last in a series of conflicts fought between King Fernando of Portugal and the Trastámaran kings of Castile and León. The issue at the heart of the conflict was the succession to the throne of Castile following the 1369 deposition and murder of King Pedro of Castile. The war lasted from 1381 until Fernando's death in 1383, though its events set off a string of conflicts in and between Castile and Portugal that stretched into the 1400s. Hostilities between the two kingdoms continued most directly as part of Lancaster's Crusade and the War of the Portuguese Succession.
Background
King Fernando of Portugal was one of the most controversial men of his day. Noted for his good looks and commanding presence, he cut an impressive figure that drew many to his side, but he was often undone by his intense ambition and impulsiveness. He inherited a wealthy and prosperous country from his father, King Pedro of Portugal, a celebrated figure who had kept the kingdom out of war, meted out harsh justice to keep the peace, and built a highly efficient government administration. Fernando, who ascended to the throne in 1367, was far more interested in foreign policy and his self-aggrandizement soon led to war with Castile.
In 1369, King Pedro of Castile was deposed and murdered by his illegitimate half-brother, who was then crowned King Enrique II of Castile. The ascension of a bastard guilty of both regicide and fratricide was, of course, highly contentious. Pedro had a pair of daughters whose rights had been recognized by the cortes of Castile, but their legitimacy was questionable, owing to a secret marriage that Pedro claimed to have gone through several years before revealing it publicly. The shocking nature of Enrique's usurpation and the confusion over the princesses' origins opened the door to other, more distant claimants.
Fernando was the first to press a claim to the Castilian throne, launching the First Fernandine War. He based his claim on his descent from King Sancho IV of Castile, a great-grandfather of both Fernando and the murdered Pedro of Castile, thus making Fernando a second cousin of the last legitimate king of Castile, through a female line. This was a fairly obscure claim, but it was more valid than that of a bastard usurper. Fernando won a series of quick victories against Enrique, but a Trastámaran counterattack the following year ended the war in a stalemate. The two sides signed the Treaty of Alcoutim in early 1371, in which Enrique ceded some land in exchange for Fernando relinquishing his claim to the Castilian throne.
In 1372, Fernando rejected the Treaty of Alcoutim. He recognized Constanza, the eldest of Pedro's two questionably-legitimate daughters, as the rightful heiress to the Castilian throne. He made an alliance with the kingdom of England to install John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster and Constanza's husband, as king of Castile. This began the Second Fernandine War, which the Trastámarans won quickly and overwhelmingly. Fernando was forced to sign the Treaty of Santarém in 1373, which limited his ability to conduct his own foreign policy and obligated him to provide ships for the Castilian war fleet. Simply put, Portugal was reduced to a client state of Castile.
Fernando burned with anger following the humiliations of 1372 and 1373, but Portugal had been so thoroughly devastated that even the prideful, reckless king had to accept that he could not risk further conflict with Castile. Instead, he threw himself into the administration of his government. He cracked down on the abuses of his nobility against the lower classes, imposing crushing fines that brought the lords to heel and refilled royal coffers. He encouraged trade and promoted the development of unused land, leading to an economic boom that greatly enriched the crown. Fernando then launched a huge construction program that included building new walls around Lisbon and assembling a fleet of warships that could challenge Castile for supremacy at sea. By the end of the decade, Portugal had emerged from the ashes of the Second Fernandine War stronger than it had been before.
Prelude to war
Enrique II died in May 1379. He was succeeded by his son, but the new King Juan of Castile had little in common with his father. Juan was anxious, unsure of himself, and inexperienced in matters of war. He was also prone to illness and, perhaps as a result of his sickliness, intensely pious.
In July, Fernando defied the Treaty of Santarém and withdrew Portuguese galleys from the Castilian fleet. It was a test of Juan's resolve and he failed it, offering only a limp diplomatic response. This encouraged Fernando to make a more serious break from Castile. He quietly reached out to his old friend Juan Fernández de Andeiro, a Galician nobleman who had spearheaded Anglo-Portuguese talks in the early 1370s and who had since become part of Gaunt's Castilian court in exile. A wealthy Portuguese merchant by the name of João Peris made contact with Andeiro in the fall, passing on a coded message that hinted at the possibility of wedding Fernando's only child and heiress, Beatriz, to an English prince. Andeiro passed the word on to his master, Gaunt, and plans secretly began for a new Anglo-Portuguese alliance.
On 10 December, Andeiro embarked for Portugal. He landed in Porto the following month, ducked past local authorities, and made his way overland to Leiria, where Fernando was residing. Arriving unannounced and not wanting to make himself known at court, Andeiro paid a member of the king's household to discreetly deliver the news of his arrival. Fernando had Andeiro unceremoniously smuggled into the royal apartments. Talks were held in the king's private chambers over the next several days, Andeiro representing the interests of both Gaunt, as pretender king of Castile, and the boy King Edward V of England.
Negotiations were short. Fernando had sought to avenge himself upon the Trastámarans since 1373 and the moment to do so had finally presented itself, as Juan was distracted by conflict with Navarre. Fernando was determined to strike before the opportunity passed and he agreed to practically everything Andeiro wanted in order to secure English support.
Fernando rushed through negotiations for other reasons as well. The king was in very poor health despite being just 34. His daughter, Beatriz, was his only child, but Portugal had no precedent for a queen regnant and his wife, Queen Leonor Teles, feared that the crown would go to the king's half-brother, João de Castro, after Fernando's death. The king was desperate to secure the succession for his daughter by wedding her to a powerful ally. What's more, Fernando was strongly influenced by Queen Leonor through these talks, and the queen began an affair with Andeiro around this time. The queen may have urged the king to agree to Andeiro's terms as a result of the affair.
On 15 February 1380, the Anglo-Portuguese alliance was sealed. Fernando recognized Gaunt as the rightful king of Castile and committed all of Portugal's resources, both on land and at sea, to supporting an invasion by Gaunt at some undetermined date in the future. In exchange, Andeiro committed England to protecting Beatriz and ensuring her succession to the Portuguese throne. An expeditionary force of 2,000 Englishmen was to be sent to Portugal before the end of the year and put at Fernando's disposal, with half its costs to be paid by the Portuguese. Beatriz was betrothed to Richard of Bordeaux, the English king's younger brother, to seal the alliance. Its commitments were generally vague, but the broad strokes of the alliance were there.
Fernando waited nearly four months to bring members of his council into his plans. They were incredulous, as every man among them remembered the devastation of the Second Fernandine War. They urged the king to change course at once. Fernando, however, was resolute. He told them that he was not asking whether he should make war on Castile, but asking only how he should make war. The king remained an inspiring and intimidating figure, despite his illness, and the council fell in line behind him. Plans were soon drawn up for a defense against an expected Castilian onslaught the following year.
In early summer, Fernando moved his court to Estremoz as work began on a series of fortresses near the border. This did not go unnoticed. Improvements and repairs at key positions were an unmistakable sign of hostility, but Castile was not in a position to respond following its shocking loss to the Anglo-Navarrese at the Battle of Estella.
English preparations for war did not go unnoticed either. In late September, Juan began receiving reports from Paris that the English had begun requisitioning ships for yet another continental campaign—their third of the year, after Estella and a chevauchée in northern France. It seemed they were intended for Castile, but otherwise details were scarce. The Castilians initially expected an attack through Navarre, but a month later they finally learned of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance. By then, it was too late for Castile to mount an attack against Portugal before winter. The English expeditionary force arrived in Lisbon in late December, after braving a treacherous late-autumn crossing of the Bay of Biscay. Juan quickly dispatched the veteran diplomat Pedro López de Ayala to secure French support.
On 22 February 1381, Ayala sealed an alliance with the new boy King Charles VI of France. It was celebrated with an extravagant ceremony in Paris, but it was ultimately an empty gesture. The alliance between the two kingdoms had never been in doubt and the treaty simply reformalized their commitments following Charles's succession. The dysfunctional French regency government, teetering on bankruptcy and itself facing the threat of English invasion, could not provide any real support. Castile was effectively on its own.
The Castilian royal council pushed for an aggressive course of action. Lacking support from France and fearing that an even larger English force may be on its way, they fell back on the strategy that had been so devastatingly effective in the Second Fernandine War—a two-prong assault designed to devastate the land, terrorize the people, and trap the Portuguese king in Lisbon. Plans were laid for Juan to lead a large army from the north and lay waste to everything before him on a long march south toward the capital while a smaller, faster-moving force would make straight for Lisbon from the border town of Badajoz. The pincer movement would pin the Anglo-Portuguese near Lisbon while the Castilian fleet would blockade the mouth of the Tagus to prevent escape by sea. Once surrounded, they believed Fernando would have no choice but to surrender.
Castilian campaign
On 24 February 1381, Juan issued orders for Castilian forces to muster on 20 April. Juan was to lead the main army from Ciudad Rodrigo while the second, smaller army would be co-commanded by Fernando Osorez, master of the Order of Santiago, and João de Castro, the Portuguese king's half-brother and Beatriz's rival for the throne. Castro hoped that by joining the Castilian campaign he could force his half-brother to recognize him as heir.
Enríquez Rebellion
On 13 May, agents of the Portuguese king were discovered in Asturias. Alfonso Enríquez, count of Gijón and Noreña, the Castilian king's illegitimate half-brother, was soon revealed to be plotting a rebellion with their support. Outraged, Juan led the northern army out of Ciudad Rodrigo in late May and went not south into Portugal, but north into Asturias. Alfonso surrendered to Juan immediately, his scheme having been uncovered too soon for him to directly confront the king's army, and was imprisoned.
Alfonso's arrest created an unexpected political headache for Juan. The upper nobility had grown enormously powerful under Enrique II, which had led to widespread corruption and violence. Juan had repeatedly threatened to rein in his overmighty lords, but the arrest of Alfonso was the first real action he had taken against one of them. Several of the magnates serving in Juan's army urged the king to show his half-brother mercy, perhaps fearing that the king would be emboldened to act against them in the future if he were able to punish Alfonso now. Juan was often easily influenced, but his anger at his brother was such that he stubbornly resisted calls for leniency. Gutierre de Toledo, bishop of Oviedo, stepped in to mediate talks between the king and his lords, which went on for days before the king relented. Juan formally pardoned Alfonso in a public ceremony in exchange for Alfonso swearing oaths of allegiance on holy relics.
Despite the delay of the northern campaign, Osorez and Castro led their army out of Badajoz on schedule and crossed into Portuguese territory on 12 June. They went around Elvas, which was well-fortified and strongly garrisoned, but only made it as far as Estremoz before they were set upon by English forces. Fernando had expected the Castilians to repeat the pincer movement they had used in the Second Fernandine War and positioned the English army, led by Gilbert Talbot, 3rd baron Talbot, to ambush the southern arm of the invasion. Osorez and Castro had marched into a trap. They were forced to retreat, but found themselves caught between the Portuguese garrison as Elvas and the English army in pursuit. Osorez was wounded and captured in a skirmish near the border, but Castro escaped back to Castile.
The main Castilian army was still camped at Gijón in Asturias when news of the southern army's failure arrived. Juan's captains urged him to move forward with the plan to devastate the Portuguese countryside, but the king lost his nerve, fearing that he too would be marching into a trap. He decided to attack the border fortress of Almeida, so as not to venture too far into Portuguese territory.
Battle of Saltes
On 17 July, the Portuguese fleet sailed into the Odiel and launched a surprise attack on the Castilian fleet anchored off Saltes Island. The Castilians were badly outnumbered, with much of their fleet undergoing repairs at Seville. Fernando Sánchez de Tovar, admiral of Castile, was on hand at Saltes and quickly withdrew the fleet up the Tinto River. João Afonso Telo, admiral of Portugal, believed his enemy was in retreat and ordered an immediate attack. Tovar, however, was not retreating. He was one of the greatest, most experienced naval commanders of the era, having led many of Castile's campaigns against England. He was baiting the Portuguese.
The buildup of the Portuguese fleet in the mid to late 1370s had been a key part of Fernando's plan to break from Castile, but his shipbuilding program had not been paired with an effort to train men for service at sea. Portuguese commanders had no experience in naval warfare—Telo, for example, had been promoted to admiral by virtue of being Queen Leonor's brother—and crews were manned by peasants pressed into service. Predictably, the Portuguese fleet became badly disorganized when ordered to attack. The crews rowed at different speeds, some came too close to shore and snagged their oars in fishing nets, and some simply fell behind as men struggled in the summer heat. As a result, eight ships in the Portuguese vanguard pulled far ahead of the rest of the fleet. Seeing this, Tovar ordered his own fleet to turn and attack, catching the Portuguese by surprise.
The tightly-disciplined Castilians overran the Portuguese vanguard. The sights and sounds of the slaughter threw the rest of the Portuguese fleet into further disarray. Some ships joined in the fighting as soon as they caught up to the vanguard, hoping to save their countrymen. Others held back, trying to regain order in their ranks. At least two crews mutinied when ordered to engage. The piecemeal attack robbed the Portuguese of their numerical advantage, allowing the Castilians to pick off their enemies one or two ships at a time. The battle turned into a rout and then a massacre.
The Battle of Saltes was an unmitigated disaster for the Portuguese. Thousands of Portuguese crewmen were captured or killed as the Castilians seized control of nearly every ship in their fleet. The admiral of Portugal himself had been taken prisoner. Castile's position as the dominant power in the Atlantic was cemented for a generation.
Siege of Almeida
On 30 July, Juan finally crossed the border into Portugal. He surrounded Almeida, a fortified town with a strong castle that had recently been expanded by Fernando. The town and castle were both well-defended, but the larger issue for the Castilians was that they had no siege weapons, as they had planned to lay waste to the Portuguese countryside, not commit to a long siege. They remained camped around the town until 9 August, when reinforcements brought in an impressive siege train that included trebuchets and cannons.
The town of Almeida surrendered after only about 10 days, but the castle held out. Three more weeks passed before Juan, who had taken ill at camp, admitted defeat. He was out of money and English and Portuguese forces were reportedly moving north to save the fortress. He retreated back across the border. Regrouping at the Castle of Coca, Juan received a grave financial report. Back-to-back campaigns in 1380 in Navarre and 1381 in Portugal had put the crown deeply in debt. In September, Juan reluctantly disbanded the army and issued summons for the cortes to impose new taxes.
The dissolution of the king's army provoked a strong backlash. English and Portuguese forces had begun raiding Extremadura and Andalucia and, while the financial pressures bearing down on the crown were not widely known, tales of death and destruction wrought by the Anglo-Portuguese were widespread. Talbot would capture the town of Higuera la Real in Extremadura before year's end and it would serve as an outpost for English raiders for much of the next year. Juan looked craven and appeared unable to defend the realm. Castilians began to question whether he would survive an invasion by John of Gaunt. Two captains on the march of Navarre wrote their king off entirely, bringing their men and the border towns of Logroño and Vitoria over to King Charles II of Navarre.
In Paris, Juan's French allies looked on in horror. Bertrand du Guesclin, constable of France, received a stream of letters from his brother, Olivier du Guesclin, who was among a handful of French knights in the service of the Castilian king. The constable impressed the severity of the situation upon the French king's uncles, who governed the kingdom in Charles VI's name. The regents agreed that action was needed to save their southern ally and dispatched the constable to Castile.
Crisis and crusade
John of Gaunt loomed large over Castile after the failure of Juan's 1381 ground campaign. A Lancastrian invasion was inevitable. Political problems and revolt had kept Gaunt in England through 1381, but it seemed unlikely that he would be put off again.
The threat of invasion broke the Castilian court into factions. The parties were largely divided along generational lines. The elder party, known as the enriqueños, were longtime supporters of Juan's father. Veterans of the First Castilian Civil War, they had badly learned the lesson of meeting the English in battle and urged Juan to open negotiations with Fernando in hopes of breaking the Anglo-Portuguese alliance and heading off a Lancastrian invasion. The younger party, later known as juanistas, wanted nothing more than to earn fame and fortune in battle. They had urged Juan to give battle at Estella, leading to disaster. They denounced any talk of negotiations and called for a new offensive against Portugal. The king vacillated between the two camps until the arrival of Bertrand du Guesclin on 20 November 1381.
Bertrand du Guesclin had a history in Castile. He had fought for Enrique de Trastámara as a soldier of fortune in the First Castilian Civil War and had helped forge Castile's alliance with France in the late 1360s. He had strong support from the enriqueños, who were themselves veterans of the civil war, and his towering reputation won over even the more hawkish juanistas, at least for a time. Guesclin soon emerged as Juan's principal military advisor and convinced the king to adopt a Fabian strategy, which had been devastatingly effective against the English in France.
Guesclin restored an uneasy peace to the Castilian court in the nick of time. In early 1382, French ships patrolling the Channel began reporting a buildup of English transports at Plymouth, signaling that Gaunt's long-anticipated invasion was finally at hand. Guesclin expected Gaunt to invade through Navarre, with the goal of taking Burgos, the historic site of Castilian coronations. Hoping to avoid a two-front war, the Castilian fleet was sent to distract the Portuguese and keep them from mobilizing an attack on Castile's western border.
Crisis in Portugal
On 9 March 1382, 80 Castilian ships sailed into the mouth of the Tagus and launched a surprise attack on the Portuguese capital. The local population fled for the protection of Lisbon's powerful new walls as the suburbs were sacked. Homes and farms were looted of all moveable wealth before being burnt to the ground. Livestock that could not be rustled was slaughtered and left to rot. Even churches were stripped bare. The Portuguese were slow to respond and the Castilians simply took to their ships and sailed up river at the appearance of armed resistance. Luxurious mansions owned by the king and members of the upper nobility lined the Tagus for miles. None were spared. Lowborn Castilian seamen grew rich from the spoils. Public opinion turned sharply against the war as even the nobility, which had long been loyal to the king, began to curse Fernando and those around him for courting such disaster.
As Castilians wreaked havoc up and down the Tagus, the Portuguese king's council was consumed by an altogether different crisis. The Galician nobleman Juan Fernández de Andeiro, Gaunt's ambassador to Portugal, had sailed to Lisbon with the English expeditionary force in December 1380. Andeiro soon resumed his affair with Queen Leonor and subsequently found himself in a position of great power, as Fernando's health declined and the queen effectively came to control the government. The queen stacked the royal council with allies and supporters, ensuring that her voice dominated even when the king was well enough to attend to the business of state. By spring 1382, only two figures remained outside the queen's influence: Gonçalo Vasques de Azevedo, lord of Lourinhã, who was Fernando's long-serving and most-trusted advisor, and João, master of Avis, the king's bastard half-brother.
In early April 1382, the Portuguese court moved to Évora to escape the reach of the Castilians terrorizing the Tagus Valley. There, Inês Afonso, who was Azevedo's wife and one of Queen Leonor's ladies-in-waiting, caught Queen Leonor in an indecent conversation with Andeiro. The pair's relationship, which had long been the subject of court rumors, had finally been discovered. Panicked, the queen sent the ailing Fernando away, ostensibly so that he could rest more comfortably elsewhere.
As Fernando was packed off to a nearby royal residence, Avis and Azevedo were arrested on trumped up charges of treason. Queen Leonor ordered their executions without trial, but officials at Évora refused. Avis was a member of the royal family and a death sentence could only be imposed by direct order from the king. A standoff between the queen and the captain of Évora lasted for weeks, leaving Avis and Azevedo rotting in prison and unsure of their fates. The queen finally relented on 12 May, when she managed to buy Azevedo's silence with the lordships of Figueiró dos Vinhos and Pedrógão Grande. Avis was left completely politically isolated by Azevedo's betrayal. Fearing for his life, Avis agreed to resign his position on the council and leave court in exchange for his release. He left Évora to join the English army on the border. Fernando returned to the castle in late May, oblivious to the events that transpired in his absence.
Lancaster's Crusade
The Tagus campaign was more successful than the Castilians had imagined it could be. The Portuguese were not just distracted from launching an attack into western Castile, but were actively drawing men away from the border to defend against Castilian raids in the east. Only the remnants of the English expeditionary force remained behind, and its number had shrunk considerably. Contracted to serve for only a year, roughly half the 2,000 Englishmen who'd arrived in December 1380 had decided to return home by spring 1382. Those who remained had been organized into a routier company and were now led by Sir John de Southeray, John of Gaunt's bastard half-brother.
On 21 July, Gaunt landed at Corunna in northwestern Galicia with an army of 5,000 men. The Trastámarans were caught completely off guard. Galicia was poorly defended and had long harbored petrista sympathies. Gaunt was welcomed into the holy city of Santiago de Compostela just four days after landing. It was the feast day of the Apostle Saint James the Elder, whose bones were buried there. All of Galicia followed. Then, on 14 September, Gaunt's wife, Constanza, gave birth to a son in the holy city. The birth of a Lancastrian prince, named John, was heralded as a divine endorsement of Gaunt's campaign.
Fernando received Gaunt at Ponte do Mouro in early November. The event, though extravagant, was far from what the English expected. Fernando's health was clearly failing, Andeiro was at the center of power, and Queen Leonor was newly pregnant. The child was almost certainly the result of Andeiro's affair with the queen, but the king never questioned its paternity, either unaware of the affair or too embarrassed to admit that he had been cuckolded. Unless Fernando repudiated the child, it would displace Beatriz in the line of succession if it were a boy. Regardless, Richard of Bordeaux, the English prince who was betrothed to Beatriz and who had expected to become king of Portugal in time, was awkwardly presented to the Portuguese court as heir presumptive.
The English and Portuguese negotiated the finer points of the alliance between Fernando and Gaunt during the summit at Ponte do Mouro. Most significantly, Gaunt agreed to cede a number of fortresses along the border in exchange for Fernando fielding an army of 5,000 men for up to two years. This agreement, which was to come into effect upon Gaunt's taking the throne of Castile, would move the Portuguese border to the east, from Zamora in the north to Huelva in the south. Plans were made for a joint campaign in the new year.
Anglo-Portuguese campaign
The Lancastrian army was joined by the remnants of the English expeditionary force, bringing its size to about 6,000 men. Gaunt led an invasion into León through Portugal in late December, hoping to gain a foothold in the region before Portuguese reinforcements arrived in the early spring.
Siege of Benavente
João de Avis helped to identify Benavente as the ideal position from which to conquer León. The town sat at the crossroads of Asturias, Galicia, León and Castile proper, making it a vital strategic location. Gaunt was seemingly surprised to find the city so well defended after his quick conquest of Galicia. The Lancastrian army dug in for a long siege, but quickly encountered issues with unreliable supply lines, which led to food shortages.
On 5 March 1383, Bertrand du Guesclin died in Zamora, just 48 miles south of Benavente, after taking ill a week prior. It was an anticlimactic end for a man of his stature, but at 63 years of age, he was fairly old by the standards of the day. His death reopened the divisions at the Castilian court, as various figures soon began jockeying for the attention of the king. Among them was Bertrand du Guesclin's own brother, Olivier du Guesclin, who left his position at Villalpando to be at the king's side in Medina del Campo.
The confusion that followed Bertrand du Guesclin's death and Olivier du Guesclin's flight from Villalpando was quickly exploited by the Lancastrians, who bribed a demoralized member of the local garrison to open the gates of Benavente on 10 April. They sacked the city. Gaunt had gained his foothold in León, but the Portuguese army he was promised was nowhere to be found.
Succession crisis
On 2 April, Queen Leonor gave birth to a son, named Afonso, at Salvaterra de Magos. Fernando lay alone and dying elsewhere in the royal apartments. Upon hearing the news, the king called for a lavish celebration to mark the birth of his newborn son and heir. Courtiers, however, whispered that the child was a bastard born of adultery.
Richard of Bordeaux had been attached to the king's court since his presentation at Ponte do Mouro months earlier. He had come to Portugal with an English household, which included a small cadre of knights and administrators led by Sir Simon Burley. These men found themselves in a murky, possibly dangerous situation now. At the Portuguese king's summit with Gaunt at Ponte do Mouro, the English had strongly suspected that Fernando was not the true father of Queen Leonor's child, but had no real evidence of this. Andeiro's relationship with Queen Leonor, though an open secret to Portuguese courtiers, was kept from the English for obvious reasons.
Queen Leonor understood that the English alliance had become a liability with the birth of Afonso. Fernando was by this time so ill that he was not expected to live through the year. A long regency would be required for the newborn prince, which Queen Leonor meant to lead. Her loyalists at court seem to have been contemplating the birth of a prince for weeks. Installing their mistress as queen regent would seal their positions in power for a generation. The newborn prince's questionable legitimacy made Richard a figure around whom the queen's opponents could organize, and so he had to be neutralized.
Ten days after Afonso's birth, Portuguese officials crowded in the royal residences after dark. They shuttled back and forth between the king's and queen's apartments through the night, likely to avoid drawing the attention of the English. In the morning, they produced what was described as the king's plan for the government following his inevitable demise. Power was solely vested in Queen Leonor as regent until Afonso reached 14 years of age and, remarkably, this arrangement was to continue even in the event of Afonso's death at a young age. To achieve this, Beatriz, and thus Richard, were effectively taken out of the line of succession in favor of their hypothetical son. So, if Afonso died in childhood, the crown would directly pass to Beatriz's son and Queen Leonor would continue to rule as regent until said son reached the age of 14.
The English were astonished when the document was explained to them. At 16 years old, Richard was already over the age of majority, as it was defined in the very document that was barring him from power. Headstrong and impulsive, Richard exploded as he passed by Martinho de Zamora, bishop of Lisbon, later that same day. The bishop was a leading figure in the queen's party and had read the document out at court. Richard drew his sword from its scabbard and moved to attack the bishop in the halls of the palace, but was restrained by his own English bodyguards.
Queen Leonor looked for ways to remove Richard and his English household from court after his encounter with the bishop of Lisbon, but did not wish to end his betrothal to Beatriz, which would break Portugal from England entirely. She briefly considered sending Richard and Beatriz to England, which made a certain amount of sense, considering that the girl's inheritance had been lost to Afonso. Instead, though, she sent the English prince to lead the Portuguese army to León. At Ponte do Mouro, the Portuguese had pledged to deliver an army to Gaunt by early spring, but they had only begun to assemble one in mid April. Richard joined the expedition as a figurehead.
Collapse
On 19 June, Alfonso Enríquez, count of Gijón and Noreña, the Trastámaran king's bastard half-brother who had rebelled two years prior, declared his allegiance to the Lancastrian cause. Alfonso's support effectively delivered all of Asturias to Gaunt, sending shockwaves through Castile.
In July, Gaunt moved north to besiege the city of León, which cut Asturias off from the Lancastrian-controlled city of Benavente. He was joined there by Álvaro Pires de Castro, count of Viana, who commanded the long-promised Portuguese army, which arrived now three months behind schedule and with Richard of Bordeaux and his household in tow. Portuguese reinforcements swelled Gaunt's ranks to more than 10,000 men. The size of the army proved to be its undoing, as outbreaks of disease and severe food shortages killed thousands over the course of the months-long siege.
On 22 October, Fernando finally died in Lisbon. He was 37. Afonso, just six months old, was proclaimed king of Portugal. Queen Leonor took control as regent, in accordance with the plans she had forced upon her dying husband after Afonso's birth. The queen was reviled by the public, but she had the support of Fernando's councilors, most of whom she had installed herself, and the bishop of Lisbon, who was the leading figure in the Portuguese church. She also had considerable support among the upper nobility, but she had badly underestimated the impact Afonso's birth had had on her standing here. It was obvious to all who knew the king in his final, painful year of life that he could not have sired a child in such a state. Afonso was just too obviously illegitimate for many to accept. Combined with the crown's weak response to raids along the Tagus, nobles outside of court had come to detest the court party led by the queen.
Among those who could not accept the lie that the infant Afonso was the legitimate king of Portugal was the commander of the Portuguese army. Álvaro Pires de Castro was the uncle of João de Castro, Fernando's half-brother who had been forced into exile in Castile, and whose claim to the throne was suddenly of great interest to disaffected Portuguese nobles. João de Castro cut a dashing figure and was extremely popular both with the Portuguese nobility and the lower classes. Castro's charm was such that he had even managed to win over the king of Castile during his exile. Upon hearing the news of Fernando's death, Juan gave Castro a small squadron of ships to sail to Lisbon and claim the throne for himself.
On 10 November, João de Castro sailed into the mouth of Tagus. The city garrison, seeing a Castilian fleet on approach and unaware that Castro was aboard, rained artillery fire and crossbow bolts down on the ships. Castro was forced to retreat, but one of his ships was captured as it attempted to escape. Only after interrogating the ship's crew did the city's defenders discover that Castro had been in command and looking to land peacefully.
Word of Castro's attempted landing spread like wildfire. Riots erupted across Lisbon, as the people rose up to declare their support for the exiled prince and denounce the hated Queen Leonor. Mobs seized control of nearly every part of the city over the next several days, overrunning officials in some areas and being joined by them in others. By 16 November, the queen could not be guaranteed safety even in the royal residence. She fled the capital and made her way up river to Santarém under the cover of darkness. Her retreat inspired riots in other major cities. It appeared Portugal was on the edge of a popular revolution.
On 19 November, Álvaro Pires de Castro declared his support for his nephew. He detached the Portuguese army from the Lancastrians besieging León and moved south to support João de Castro's cause. Gaunt ended the siege in defeat after the loss of his Portuguese allies.
Aftermath
Historians often date the end of the Third Fernandine War to Fernando's death on 22 October 1383, but it could be more accurately dated to the count of Viana's decision to withdraw from León on 19 November. The detachment of Portuguese forces from the Lancastrian siege marked the end of Portugal's interest in the Castilian succession, which had motivated all of the Fernandine Wars, and the onset of Portugal's own succession crisis.
The sudden collapse of Queen Leonor's regency government launched the War of the Portuguese Succession, in which three parties fought for the crown. The court party led by Queen Leonor through the final years of Fernando's reign supported the infant Afonso and largely consisted of members of the nobility who had become too dependent on the queen's largesse to admit the child's obvious bastardy. João de Castro drew support from nobles outside the queen's party and from the lower classes, most especially in the large cities. Beatriz of Portugal had little local support, but was endorsed by the English.
The Anglo-Portuguese alliance effectively ended with the outbreak of the succession war. The English finally learned the full truth of the relationship between Andeiro and Queen Leonor, which was publicized by the queen's enemies to discredit her. The exposure of Afonso's likely illegitimacy resurrected Richard of Bordeaux's claim to the Portuguese throne through Beatriz, but the challenges facing the English prince seemed insurmountable. His betrothed was underage and she was in Queen Leonor's custody at Santarém. Moreover, despite Fernando's efforts to promote Beatriz's claim to the throne, Portugal still had no precedent for a queen regnant. The popular movement for João de Castro had boldly underscored that fact. Indeed, Lourenço Fogaça, who served as chancellor under Fernando, was the only Portuguese figure in high standing who supported Beatriz.
The War of the Portuguese Succession quickly drew the interest of its larger neighbor, Castile. João de Castro was initially supported by the Trastámarans, but this became a liability for him. Castile's attacks on Lisbon and along the Tagus had led to an intense hatred of Castilians at all levels of Portuguese society. Queen Leonor's party utilized Castro's Castilian connections in propaganda to erode his popular support. Castro sought to distance himself from the Trastámarans by seeking an alliance with the Lancastrians, but Gaunt lacked the resources to offer Castro any real support. Instead, Castro was caught up in the end stages of Lancaster's Crusade, which limped on for another year after the failure of the Siege of León before the collapse of the Trastámaran dynasty brought that conflict to an end.
Historians often rate Fernando as among the worst kings in Portuguese history for the destruction he brought upon his own kingdom by launching the Third Fernandine War. The war ended having achieved neither of the goals laid out in Fernando's 1380 treaty with the English: Princess Beatriz was not secure in the succession and Gaunt was not sitting upon the Castilian throne. Instead, Portugal collapsed into civil war and Gaunt was forced to fight on alone for another year. Fernando had thus plunged Castile and Portugal into a series of highly destructive wars and ended his life with nothing to show for it, leaving his country poorer and weaker than he had inherited it in 1367.
Last edited:
We're back!
This admittedly took much, much longer to write than I anticipated. November was an incredibly busy month at work, then my boyfriend caught COVID in December, then I got sick too, then there were the holidays, and then we took a vacation after New Years. And then, finally, I got around to writing in mid January-ish.
The good news is that, hopefully, updates will come faster now. I have some 7600 words of unused material that was cut out of this and previous updates, so the next update could come very quickly indeed, depending on what gets voted in.
ICYMI, there are six options for the next update:
This admittedly took much, much longer to write than I anticipated. November was an incredibly busy month at work, then my boyfriend caught COVID in December, then I got sick too, then there were the holidays, and then we took a vacation after New Years. And then, finally, I got around to writing in mid January-ish.
The good news is that, hopefully, updates will come faster now. I have some 7600 words of unused material that was cut out of this and previous updates, so the next update could come very quickly indeed, depending on what gets voted in.
ICYMI, there are six options for the next update:
- Lancaster's Crusade: Gaunt makes his play for the crown of Castile (this will both explore the events that are briefly mentioned here more in depth and reveal how the Gaunt's quest for the crown of the Castile ends)
- War of Portuguese Succession: Afonso? Beatriz? Castro? Find out who takes the crown of Portugal and what it means for the Hundred Years War
- First government of the uncles: Charles V's plan for the regency quickly goes to shit
- Second government of the uncles: France tries to get it act together after things go to shit
- Parliament of 1380: A look at English politics in the wake of Estella and Gloucester's failed chevaucée
- Revolt of the towns: The peasants are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore
João de Avis may be Portugal's greatest OTL king ... but ain't no guarantee he makes it to the throne in ATL
True, but one can hope. One never knows what turns this will take.João de Avis may be Portugal's greatest OTL king ... but ain't no guarantee he makes it to the throne in ATL