Was there any chance of Sebastian I's invasion of Morocco succeding?

So in 1578 Sebastian of Portugal with an army of mercenaries invaded Morocco to support his prefered candidate for the morrocan throne over the ottoman supported candidate.

Sebastian overruled his advisors to stick to the coast and marched into the interior where his morrocan ally managed to gather 6,000 loyalists which joined the portuguese forces. However the enemy had managed to gather pretty much all of morocco to his side, with an army of over 60,000 which vastly outnumbered the europeans and so the portuguese forces were crushed with barely 100 escaping out of nearly 25,000 men, sebastian was killed, the portuguese royal family was wiped out and as a result a few years later portugal became ruled by philip of spain and stopped existing as an independant state.

At least one timeline on this forum has gone with sebastian being less reckless and avoiding battle with the morrocans thus preserving his dynasty but could he have actually won or once he decided on full out invasion was he doomed to failiure?
 
Hmmm somehow the Portuguese empire survived this so that does not change. The character may change in several ways.

The protuguese empire was administrated seperatedly by philip and his successors so when the portuguese rebelled in 1640 most of the portuguese empire went with it (the lone exception being ceuta in morocco which stayed loyal to the spanish and remains spanish to this day).

The main legacy of the 60 years of spanish rule was war with the dutch and english who they previously had had decent relations with but under spanish kings they were obliged to trade with neither and so quickly became targets. As a result they lost most of ther indian ocean posessions to the dutch (ceylon, mallaca etc.)

It's generally fair to say that things would have gone much better for portugal without the iberian union ever happening.

My question is whether to avoid that you have to eliminate the morrocan war altogether or if there was any chance of them actually winning it. Certainly the numbers seem very much against them.
 
I think at this time period, Morocco (and Muslim North Africa) was too united.

The primary European technological advantage didn't come into play until at least two hundred years later. The famed Arab horseman controlled the hinterlands while the Maghrebs had the benefit of controlling the walled cities. A European conquest of anything beyond expensive to maintain cities was unlikely until later.

I've been writing a sub-plot to an amateur historical novel that included a reconquest of North Africa by Europe in the mid to late 18th century. I did some research and was shocked that there were only about 2.5 to 3.5 million people west of Egypt (Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers and Morocco) in this time period, as opposed to 25 million for France alone.
 
I think at this time period, Morocco (and Muslim North Africa) was too united.

The primary European technological advantage didn't come into play until at least two hundred years later. The famed Arab horseman controlled the hinterlands while the Maghrebs had the benefit of controlling the walled cities. A European conquest of anything beyond expensive to maintain cities was unlikely until later.

TBF, as much as Sebastian talked about crusades and holy war, he probably wasn't actually aiming for direct european conquest of morroco.

It seems likely that he was trying to do what the ottomans had done 2 years earlier, bring in a friendly sultan who'd be in his debt and who he could negoitate the ceding of territory from. At the very least the return of lost shipping bases on the atlantic coast. In any case the aim seems to be to stop the turks by removing a supposedly turkish influenced sultan and replacining him with one who while still morrocan and muslim would be inclined to follow portugal's lead.

The reason why the ottomans managed it despite only providing 10,00 men and sebastian couldn't do it with 25,000 is that an infidel iberian army was percieved vastly differently than a muslim turkish one.

If the morrocans had been honestly divided between abdallah mohammed and abd al-malik then it would have worked. But there were too many moriscos and jews who'd fled iberica to morroco, al-malik and his brother was able to position themselves as the saviour of sufiism and jihadists against the infidel.

An army of 25,000 is very unlikely to defeat one of 60,000 to 100,000 so in order for sebastian to win you need either a morrocan leadership that is unable to muster so much of it's people to it's side and a country more actually divided (as in more than 6,000 choose to support abdallah) or alternatvely for the morrocan troops to be unenthusiastic and rout at the first instance of combat.

For either to happen you pretty much have to weaken the morrocan leadership, which means among other things killing the sultan's brother and heir Ahmad Al-Mansur.

Honestly, I mostly agree with the idea that the whole campaign was doomed to failiure and that in order to keep sebastian alive you simply have to have the campaign not happen but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
 
In my TL, Donnacona's Dream, I had the following happen:
1) Sebastian is able to secure the help of Phillip II of Spain in his campaign
2) Together, Sebastian and Phillip muster an army of 100,000 and win a decisive victory against the Moroccan Sultan
3) The Sultan flees to Marrakech, and Sebastian establishes a puppet Emir in Fes.

I totally did my best to leave everything vague in my TL, because I didn't have time or energy to do proper research into North Africa, so I could have totally pulled an ASB without knowing it.

It seems obvious that an army of 25,000 is too small to take Morocco, but what about an army of 100,000?
 
In my TL, Donnacona's Dream, I had the following happen:
1) Sebastian is able to secure the help of Phillip II of Spain in his campaign
2) Together, Sebastian and Phillip muster an army of 100,000 and win a decisive victory against the Moroccan Sultan
3) The Sultan flees to Marrakech, and Sebastian establishes a puppet Emir in Fes.

I totally did my best to leave everything vague in my TL, because I didn't have time or energy to do proper research into North Africa, so I could have totally pulled an ASB without knowing it.

It seems obvious that an army of 25,000 is too small to take Morocco, but what about an army of 100,000?

Wouldn't that be extremely hard to supply? The entire Army could fall apart as soon as they move away from the Coast as Berber Cavalry could cut their supply lines. Even staying near the coast would be hard.
 
Wouldn't that be extremely hard to supply? The entire Army could fall apart as soon as they move away from the Coast as Berber Cavalry could cut their supply lines. Even staying near the coast would be hard.

You're probably right, only because my actual understanding of military matters is very, very limited.

The problem is I have no idea of how big an army actually is reasonable to supply in Morrocco, because, to me army sizes are just numbers. The difference between 25 000 and 100 000 is just the factor of 4. I figure that if Portugal can supply an army of 25 000 in Morocco, then Spain, with about 3 times the resources, can supply an army of 75 000, and putting the two together we get 100 000. I know it doesn't work like that, but that's about the level of understanding of military matters that I have....
 
Maybe a more limited campaign, aiming primarily at the capture of a few coastal cities, would meet with more success. I don't know enough about Sebastian to know if he's be satisfied with this, though.
 
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