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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
While they were assembled at Tomar, the king mustered his forces and established the number of men he had in terms of men-at-arms, foot soldiers and crossbowmen, which we will speak of later. At once the king and the constable drew up their battle formation, with vanguard, rearguard and wings to left and right, designating which soldiers and captains should be allocated to each of the latter, both to the van, which the count was to take, and the rear where the king would be.
It is important that you should know that formerly in Portugal, in battle formations, the terms ‘vanguard’, ‘rearguard’ and ‘left and right wings’ were not used. Rather, the vanguard was called the ‘front’, the rearguard the ‘back’ and the wings the ‘sides’. It was only after the English came over in the time of King Fernando, as you have heard, that these terms were adopted.
Once this task had been completed, the count immediately decided to do two things: one was to dispatch four light horsemen to capture one man from the enemy forces, in order to find out what troops the King of Castile had at his disposal, how he arranged his encampment and what guards he placed around it at night for his protection; the other was to send a written requirement to the King of Castile, which was delivered to him by a squire, as follows: ‘You will tell the King of Castile that my liege lord, the King of Portugal, and all his fellow-countrymen who attend him, declare unto him in the name of Almighty God and his martyr Saint George that he should renounce laying waste my king's land; furthermore, in the service of Almighty God, if the honour of the king, my liege lord, is preserved, in remaining king, as he is, of the kingdom of Portugal, he will reach with the King of Castile an honourable, reasonable and appropriate agreement; and that, if he is unwilling to make such a renunciation to his claim, nor to depart from my king's land, then the king, my liege lord, will place the entire matter in God's hands, will seek to resolve it in battle and await God's judgement.
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