3 - Spain and North Africa

Summary

Compared to the entrepreneurial, polyglot character of the crusade in the eastern Mediterranean, crusades against the Moors of Spain and north Africa remained largely the monopoly of Spanish kings. Dynasticism and political unrest dictated the pace of fourteenth-century campaigning, which was fitful, but the strategic objective of seizing the Straits of Gibraltar and severing Muslim Granada's life-line to north Africa provided grounds for co-operation. Only later, when the conflict promised to move along the shores of Berber Morocco and Tunisia, could other powers, most notably the Genoese, intervene. Historic contacts of diplomacy and trade paved the way for English involvement in this period. Formally, expectations of involvement were high. Edward II and Edward III were both sensitive to the prestige of the Iberian reconquista, viewing it, theoretically, as a suitable field of honour for a royal crusade, not least because of their strong dynastic links to Castile. The traditional popularity of the Spanish frontier among French and Gascon nobles could be a source of extra pressure. This was amply illustrated in 1330–1331, when Philip Valois recruited a number of Edward III's Gascon vassals for a proposed expedition to Granada. The thorny issue of Edward's homage, together with French designs upon Gascony, meant that much more was at stake than chivalric war, and the English king stood to lose influence over important regional clients, like the hitherto pro-English count of Hainault and the influential lords of Craon, Albret, Isle Jourdain and Armagnac.