The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry Read Online Free Page B

string of Spanish successes that continued until 1482 when, over-confident, the Christian army was caught in a devastating ambush outside Loja, a key border citadel.
    The Moors gained the ascendancy but then the ruler of Granada, Abul Hacan, enraged his principal wife by having an affair with a Greek girl. The row escalated to tribal fighting and led to a division of the emirate between the King and his eldest son, Boabdil. The split was hugely propitious for the Spanish and brought success against the feuding Moors. But Granada’s defence arrangements were good: a chain of castles every five miles or so, along its northern and western frontiers and the military resources of North Africa in the background, although these came at a heavy price.
    The Spanish strategy for the spring campaign of 1486 was to capture the citadels guarding the northern border of Granada. So on 14 May, the army set off across the Guadalquivir plain, into the low rolling hills and then up the valleys towards the spectacular Sierras. In the mountains the edges of the army were exposed to harrying attacks by light Moorish cavalry, but they lumbered on undeterred. Diego de Valera recounted:
    And the said knights departed together with the aforementioned people, and went to feed their horses at Peña de los Enamorados [Lover’s Rock]. And thence they departed in the afternoon, and at day break they were outside Loja: whither there came an English knight, a very noble man, called Lord Scales, with eighty or a hundred fighting men.
    Loja was originally a Roman military city. It is perched on a rocky outcrop that rises from the steep side of a valley; the river Genil curves round it like a moat and there is a single bridge crossing. The previous attempt to capture Loja had come to grief in the mountains. Now there was a new plan: the vanguard was to make a difficult climb and take the heights above the city, while the main army was to arrive on the opposite side of the river. Edward volunteered for the vanguard but the King said there would be ‘no lack of perilous service’ in the campaign and kept him back.
    The vanguard were supposed to take up their position surreptitiously, so they started clambering up the rocky escarpment towards the high ground. Coincidentally the forward pickets of the main army arrived on the plain and broke ranks to make camp. It was then that the Moors sprang their ambush. They had been waiting for such a moment. Two divisions charged out of the city, one to take the heights and roll the supposedly surprise attack back down the escarpment while the other attacked the disorganized men on the plain.
    At this juncture it seems that King Ferdinand and Edward rode over a hill and saw the fighting on the plain below them. They sat on their horses watching the Moors driving the Christians off the plain.
    Many Moors came out on foot and on horseback to prevent the royal camp being established and fired arrows and gunshot from the fruit groves. The fighting involved the Moors, the Englishmen and some northern mountaineers, who had come with the Dukes of Infantado and Najera...and are called Biscayners [Basques].11
    Edward turned to the King and asked if he could fight in the ‘English way’. Given permission, he dismounted, ordered his trumpeter to blow the charge, probably the same call that has echoed down the ages urging English soldiers forward, then, with battle-axe in hand and his banner-man beside him, he marched forward.12 His men must have hurried to catch up and so formed a wedge behind his banner. He charged straight for the Moorish weak point, the single bridge to the city. In Prescott’s translation, Bernáldez tells the story of Edward asking:
    for leave to fight in the manner of his country and dismounting from his horse, and armed with sword and battle-axe he charged forward at the Moorish host before them all, with a small company of his men, armed like himself, slashing and hacking with brave and manly hearts,