Portugal: Military History and Notable Events

1128 - Battle of Sao Mamede (All Facts)

• Battle in which (Dom) Afonso Henriques and his forces defeated his mother Teresa and her forces in order to found the Kingdom of Portugal

1139 - Battle of Ourique (All Facts)

• Battle in which (Dom) Afonso Henriques and his forces defeated the Almoravids

• Battle after which (Dom) Afonso Henriques assumed the title of King of Portugal

1147 - Siege of Lisbon (All Facts)

• Battle in which (Dom) Afonso Henriques and his forces defeated the Almoravids, taking the namesake city

• Battle which ended with a peaceful mass evacuation of its Muslim inhabitants after they surrendered to an allied Christian force under Afonso and Portugal

1297 - Treaty of Alcanices (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty between Portugal and Castile in which Castile defined the Portuguese frontiers

1384 - Siege of Lisbon (All Facts)

• Battle in which John of Portugal and his forces defended their namesake city and defeated King John of Castile and his forces

• Battle in which the Portuguese likely won because the Castilian army was hit was a devastating plague that killed over 2,000 men and its best commanders, thus saving the Portuguese from the Castilian threat

1385 - Battle of Aljubarrota (All Facts)

• Battle in which John of Portugal and his forces, with the help of English forces, defeated John of Castile and his forces

• Battle in which the Portuguese, outnumbered, but with the help of 300 English archers sent by John of Gaunt (himself pursuing claims to the Kingdom of Castile), defeated the 17K-large Castilian force

  • Although tired by a 12-mile march, the Castilians were ordered to attack the Portuguese but came under terrible crossfire from English archers and those not killed became entangled in a network of wolf-traps and trenches

• Battle which secured

  • Portuguese independence

    • This allowed a new age of its history to unfold, it being independent of its powerful neighbor

  • John of Portugal’s kingship

• Battle after which John of Castile fled to Seville

• Battle which famously lasted less than an hour

1475 - 1479 - War of the Castilian Succession (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts which arose from a dispute over the succession to the namesake throne between Joanna of Castile, wife of King Afonso V of Portugal and daughter of King Henry IV of Castile; and Isabella of Castile, sister of Henry IV of Castile, backed by the Castilian nobility

  • Series of conflicts between the Portuguese, who backed Joanna of Castile; and the Castilian nobility, who backed Isabella of Castile

• Series of conflicts in which Isabella of Castile (with the help of her then-husband and eventual co-ruler King Ferdinand of Aragon) and the Castilian nobility eventually held out and defeated Joanna of Castile and the Portuguese

  • Series of conflicts in which the Portuguese fought poorly at home but repeatedly defeated the Spanish at sea and on all the islands (except for the Canary Islands)

• Series of conflicts that ended with the Treaty of Alcacovas, in which Portugal agreed to give Spain rights to the Canary Islands in exchange for a monopoly of trade and navigation along the whole West African coast

• Series of conflicts which effectively established Isabella as Queen of Castile (and eventually as Queen of the unified kingdom of Spain)

1479 - Treaty of Alcacovas (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty signed between Portugal and Castile which ended the Castilian War of Succession

• Peace Treaty in which which Portugal agreed to give Castile rights to the Canary Islands in exchange for a monopoly of trade and navigation along the whole West African coast

1494 - Treaty of Tordesillas (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between King John II of Portugal and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela of Spain

• Treaty which

  • divided all the land explored on, discovered, owned, and/or controlled thus far by the two kingdoms; and any others that may be discovered in the future

  • divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Spain, along a meridian 370 leagues or 2,056 km (1,277 mi) west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa, a line of demarcation that was about halfway between Cape Verde (already Portuguese) and the islands visited by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage

  • divided the lands, with the lands east of the demarcation line belonging to Portugal, and west of the demarcation line belonging to Spain, thus, in hindsight, slightly favoring Spain