[13]The tenth and eleventh centuries constituted an important seminal age of foundation building for European civilization. The sub-continent pursued the quest for institutional stability, striving to rebuild after the devastation wrought by the triple shock waves of Scandinavian, Magyar and Muslim invaders. This quest often took the form of institutionalized personal relationships known as feudalism, which offered primitive but pragmatic solutions to the problems of government and military defense on which the future could build. The Iberian kingdoms endured many of these same difficulties and drew upon similar experiences.⁽¹⁾ Nonetheless, while influenced by their neighbors to the north and east, Iberia constituted in many other respects a unique case. Its transitional Germanic monarchy, the Visigothic kingdom, had been virtually obliterated by the Muslim invasion of the eighth century, and the nuclei of the Christian principalities which withstood this assault in the northern Cantabrian and Pyreneean mountains were sufficiently isolated from European and Muslim influence to pursue individualized programs of state-building born of local needs and traditions.

Iberian urban settlements, while lacking the strong commercial base and merchant classes that Pirenne would have required for status as towns, were sufficiently diversified agglomerations of peoples with assorted agrarian, pastoral and ecclesiastical functions to have been rather more than rural villages. Certainly Oviedo (the Asturian royal [14] city), Catalan Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela in Galicia all merit consideration as towns, per se. As the Asturian monarchy encroached upon the central plateau to the south in the tenth century after consolidating its grip on Galicia to the west and Castile to the east, additional opportunities opened to both political and urban expansion. In this regard, the settlements which grew up to service the great pilgrimage route feeding travelers to Saint James's shrine at Compostela developed more rapidly than the other Leonese-Castilian towns as limited commercial enterprises.⁽²⁾ But to achieve this expansion against the great Muslim caliphate based at Córdoba and its successor Taifa Kingdoms of the eleventh century required special policies dictated by a frontier situation. The lightly populated zone north of the Duero made walled settlements crucial to the populating and holding of lands still well within Muslim raiding and conquering capabilities. It was in this context that municipal militia service was formed.

The origins of this municipal military service in the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula are at best obscure. Not only are many of the documents alluded to in the introduction of uncertain validity, but also there is a comparative scarcity of municipal documents of any kind prior to the eleventh century. Even to the latter part of the eleventh century, the fueros and cartas pueblas (the population charters given to new settlers) which provide us with the institutional record of military service as it applied to the towns of these kingdoms rely on brief labels for the service being sought rather than extended descriptions of the requirements and the nature by which they were to be fulfilled. Richer sources exist for the twelfth century and beyond, but inferences drawn from that later material can be used to illuminate the eleventh century only at great risk to the creation of an authentic picture.

The annals and chronicles of the early Reconquest present analogous problems. Pre-eleventh century chronicles are rare. The narrative material for this period survives primarily in later chronicles, which drew on earlier sources that we now lack, or possibly upon oral tradition written down centuries after the events. The chronicles we possess which do date from this era are usually devoted to the lives and exploits of the kings of Asturias and Leon, or matters directly connected to their activities. The significant narratives, such as the Chronicle of Alfonso III, the Chronicle of Sampiro, the Chronicon Albeldense, and others, afford disappointingly scant attention to the emerging towns, save a brief discussion of a critical siege here and there.⁽³⁾ The chronicles of the ninth and tenth centuries [15] make occasional reference to regional musters of military forces and the use of towns as assembly points, but convey no sense of towns contributing organized units.⁽⁴⁾ Again, the situation improves markedly by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but too late to assist in dealing with the question of origins.

Historians have taken no consistent line with regard to the beginnings of municipal military service, their views largely depending on their willingness to consider the dubious charters of the ninth and tenth centuries as evidence. The surmise made almost a century ago by Sacristán y Martínez that the eleventh century marks the beginnings of town militias seems not far from the mark even today.⁽⁵⁾ Other important sources, the municipal charters or fueros, are scarce prior to the eleventh century or exist in late copies. For instance, the laws of the towns of Valpuesta in 804 and Brañosera in 854 required the residents to perform wall-tending and guard duties, and the citizens of Oviedo were exempted from paying the fee for missing military service in 857 (suggesting that at some point the monarchy at least considered having Oviedo's residents render military service). However, the very appearance of such military requirements and service terms cause some scholars to insist that these are interpolations in the later copies from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.⁽⁶⁾ While it does not seem inconceivable that towns and settlements would have had such requirements in the ninth and tenth centuries, we cannot argue that the existing municipal documents prove it to be so. This absence of evidence combined with the silence of the ninth and tenth-century chronicles suggest that the eleventh century offers the earliest possibility for the origins on any sizable scale of such activity.

Modern historical concern for the definition of the eleventh-century terminology raises the question of the terms themselves which denote military service of one kind or another. Offensive service, that is service initiated by the king or his representative to go forth on campaign, was customarily designated by the terms exercitus, expeditio or most frequently fossatum (in later romance fonsado). In the late eleventh century the term hostis (in later romance hueste), derived from Carolingian origins but utilized in the same context as fossatum, appeared in Aragon and became more widespread in its usage, migrating to Castile in the later twelfth century. If a town or an individual had an offensive campaigning obligation and failed to fulfill it in a particular year, a tax called the fossatera (in later romance fonsadera) was levied in its stead. On the other hand, a call for a rapid emergency defensive force to deal with an unexpected raid or full scale invasion was designated by the term apellitum (apellido in Romance) [16]. Anubda indicated a form of guard duty often associated with fossatum, while castle service and wall construction was indicated by the term castellaria.⁽⁷⁾ Some form of all of these terms was commonplace in municipal charters during the eleventh century, one more indication that this was the era which saw the initiation of municipal military service on a slowly broadening scale.

The military service requirement for villagers and townsmen was forged from the policies of southern expansion undertaken by the Asturian monarchs in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Ordoño I (850-66) and Alfonso III (866-911) advanced upon the upper Meseta, pressing into the lightly-populated lands north of the Duero River. The most important step in this process was the resettling and rebuilding of the town of Leon, which was to become the center of the Asturo-Leonese realm. The monarchy thus abandoned the comparative security of mountainous Asturias for a project of large-scale territorial aggrandizement. By 920 the Navarrese state under Sancho Garcés I advanced into the upper Ebro Basin to seize Nájera, Calahorra and Viguera. Spanish historians occasionally define this as the beginning of the Reconquest. Such activity could take the form of major battles, aiding rebellious segments of Muslim towns, or the individual resettlement of open or lightly-populated lands. In its most precise form, the Reconquest involved the forced seizure of populated territories and towns under Muslim control.⁽⁸⁾ The Umaiyad caliphs in Córdoba, especially cAbd ar-Rahmân III (912-61) responded with vigor to this challenge. As a result the lands north and just south of the Duero as well as the Rioja district of the upper Ebro became increasingly a battleground where villages and towns were taken and retaken by either side.

Both Muslim and Christian principalities also contended with separatist forces within their respective realms. The caliphs struggled with the ever troublesome division between nativist Muslims and North African Berbers as well as tribal and clannic consolidations. Meanwhile the Christian kingships competed with each other and could not prevent the development of a new principality, the independent County of Castile, between the Asturo-Leonese and Navarrese states. When the Caliphate of Córdoba slipped into the control of the general al-Mansúr and his son cAbd al-Malik from 976 to 1008, the Christian armies of Leon, Castile, Navarre and Catalonia suffered an unprecedented string of defeats at Córdoba's hands, climaxed by the sacking of Barcelona in 985, the sacking of Leon and the destruction of its walls in 988, the sacking of Santiago [17] and the leveling of its basilica in 997, and the sacking of Pamplona in 999. These were merely the most spectacular assaults.⁽⁹⁾ When even the bells of Santiago's church were brought to Córdoba and upended to provide braziers for the mosque there, the Christian monarchs might well have pondered their future hopes of territorial expansion to the south.

Fortunately for Christian Iberia, these disasters simply indicated a temporary superiority of Muslim armies and generalship which passed with the death of cAbd al-Malik. The Muslims did not possess the resources necessary to resettle Leon, Pamplona or Barcelona even at their crest of power. By 1031, the Caliphate itself ended, to be replaced by a number of petty Taifa states centered on the major cities of Muslim Spain. But this dramatic shift of power in the Muslim south could not have been envisioned by the Christian kings, who doubtless believed that they required new methods to strengthen their grip on the northern Meseta, the Duero and upper Ebro. Placing populations within walled towns was insufficient to the task at hand. These settlers had to take an active part by doubling both as populators and as warriors. In all likelihood the resettling of Leon provided the opportunity to achieve such an end.

In the period 1017-20, Alfonso V of Leon awarded a fuero to the town of Leon with the first clear statement of a military obligation. This charter included the obligation for residents to participate in the royal fossatum with the king or his representative, and for settlers in the general region of the town to gather in Leon in times of war so as to assist in the defense of its wall. They were, moreover, exempted from paying the fosataria, the tax paid when no military service was rendered to the king.⁽¹⁰⁾ This probably indicates that they were free of the military tax in times of peace, but were expected to render fossatum and wall defense in war without exception. While doubt has been cast upon the authenticity of some of the contents of the Fuero de León because of the possibility of interpolations in the thirteenth-century copy which we possess, the military provisions were not unknown for other eleventh-century towns awarded charters within a few years after Leon, and no question has been raised concerning their appropriateness for the time.⁽¹¹⁾ Indeed, logic suggests that Leon with its political importance and strategic location would be the very place to lay down a policy containing such precedents. If the policy proved serviceable in Leon, it could be extended steadily as the Duero frontier came back into the control of the Leonese monarchy. In fact, new options for expansion were now on the horizon.

Christian Hispania underwent its own shift in the balance of power in the early eleventh century. The aggressive and able king of Navarre, Sancho III Garcés the Great (1000-35), absorbed the old Carolingian marcher counties of Aragon, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza to the east and then seized Castile from Vermudo III of Leon to the west. His son Fernando I inherited Castile and completed the conquest of the Kingdom of Leon, thereby creating the largest Christian territorial state in Iberia, one which reached from Galicia and northern Portugal across northern Spain to the Rioja. Fernando gave much of his reign over to securing all of this land and attempting the conquest of his brothers' kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon. This Navarrese-Castilian interaction may have led to some blending of legal and municipal traditions. For example, Sancho III Garcés gave the first Navarrese indication of a military interest in the municipalities by assessing a fonsadera in the charter of Villanueva de Pampaneto in 1032. Fernando I, while exempting Villafría from fossato in 1039 and Santa Cristina from the same in 1062, required that service from Canales de la Sierra in 1054 and imposed apelido defensive service on five northern Portuguese towns between 1055 and 1065. Meanwhile, García III Sánchez imposed the first fosato requirement on a Navarrese town at Cuevacardiel in 1052.⁽¹²⁾ The Portuguese forais (population charters) were contemporary with Fernando's thrust into the Portuguese frontier south of Galicia which secured the towns of Lamego, Viseu and Coimbra. Coimbra was taken in 1064, and marked the beginning of standard siege practice for Christian kings. Residents of a town under siege who surrendered promptly could remain with full freedoms after the conquest. If the Muslims surrendered after having been under siege for some time, they could leave with only those goods they could carry. Waiting for the town to fall by force, they faced death or enslavement.⁽¹³⁾ A large population of Muslims remaining behind after the conquest could create complications in the writing of the fuero, but it was not until the conquest of Toledo later in the century that substantial numbers of such minorities had to be confronted by the Leonese-Castilian monarchs.

Fernando's initiatives were substantially expanded by his son Alfonso VI, both in his pressure on the Trans-Duero and in his military exploitation of municipal populations.⁽¹⁴⁾ But the region which witnessed the most vital creative force in Castilian military law lay not south but to the east in the Rioja, where an opportunity of major importance opened [19] the gateway to a new line of municipal development in 1076. In Navarre, King Sancho IV Garcés was thrown from a precipice by his brother Ramón, who was in turn driven out of his country for this murderous act. The vacant throne was soon claimed by Alfonso VI and Sancho I Ramírez of Aragon, both being grandsons of Sancho the Great and cousins of the deceased monarch. Moving more rapidly, Sancho I seized Pamplona and took effective control of the greater part of Navarre. Alfonso VI did manage to occupy a portion of the Rioja in southwestern Navarre, bolstering his claim by giving an important fuero there to the town of Nájera in 1076. In the same year he granted a charter with similar military laws to Sepúlveda in southern Castile, while at about the same time Sancho Ramírez issued a highly significant fuero to the royal Aragonese town of Jaca. The military law in these three documents is remarkably similar in language and scope, despite the fact that they survive only in later copies, suggesting that these fueros were indeed contemporary as well as closely related to each other. Emphasis was placed on personal participation by the king in the required military expedition, which could be called only in anticipation of combat in the field. Nájera and Sepúlveda dealt with the contribution of baggage animals to the fonsado and Sepúlveda added helmet and armor contributions as well. Jacans were required to bring a food supply for three days in the field, and all three towns required service from both mounted and unmounted citizens.⁽¹⁵⁾

These fueros indicate a force probably more influential than the wars with Islam in the history of municipal military evolution, namely the territorial competition among the Christian kings of the Peninsula. At this point the Castilian-Navarrese-Aragonese frontier became the intense focus of this competition, which manifested itself in the remarkable development of municipal law during the next century as this frontier became extended through mutual conquest down the Iberian Cordillera in the direction of Valencia and Murcia.⁽¹⁶⁾ Part of this mutual aggressiveness took the form of militarized towns which bristled along the edges of Castilian and Aragonese territorial extensions, towns which were prepared to fight either Christian or Muslim opponents. In this tripartite conflict, the Rioja was the initial bone of contention.

Frustrated in his efforts to secure Navarre, Alfonso VI turned his attention to the Muslim south. He continued the custom begun by his father Fernando of collecting tribute money from the Taifa kingdoms. At the same time he launched a series of campaigns designed to weaken Toledo, where the weight of his tributes had generated political instability. [20] Striking down the old Roman Silver Road well to the west of Toledo, the king assaulted the supporting fortresses of the Muslim stronghold at Coria, probably taking the city itself before 1080.⁽¹⁷⁾ Within five years, Toledo with its keystone location on the central Meseta and its crucial bridge across the Tajo River had fallen into Alfonso's hands. A new era in Christian frontier expansion had dawned with the penetration of the Central Sierras and the capture of this major Muslim city. Determined to maintain his momentum, Alfonso turned to another Taifa capital, the city of Zaragoza in the Ebro Valley, placing it under siege in 1086. Success here could have dramatically changed the future history of central Iberia. The Muslim Taifa states, however, resorted to their own desperate action in the crisis by inviting the Almoravids from North Africa to balance the scales against Alfonso VI. As a large force of Almoravids and peninsular Muslims gathered near Badajoz in the summer of 1086, Alfonso was forced to abandon his enterprise at Zaragoza and gather an army to deal with the threat. Alfonso's Leonese-Castilian army was assembled in haste, and while he was in need of all available forces, there is no documentary indication of any municipal militias in his levies. Within a half century town militias would be capable of frequent strikes near Badajoz in the Guadiana Basin, but their late eleventh-century capacity in range and development seems to have ruled out any assistance by them at this point. The resultant conflict took place near Badajoz at Sagrajas (or Zallaca), a battle culminating in a disastrous and costly defeat for the Christian king.⁽¹⁸⁾ Fortunately for Christian Hispania, the Muslims were not able to follow up their decisive victory with conquering assaults into the Tajo and Duero regions. However, any Christian hope of expanding their possessions beyond the Tajo River was crushed, and the Leonese-Castilians shifted to a defensive stance for decades to come.

Alfonso now faced a situation fraught with both opportunities and hazards. He and his father had encouraged settlements in the Trans-Duero and his conquests had assured control of the regions north of the Central Sierras. His salient in the Tajo Valley at Toledo presaged the possible conquest of the entire central Meseta, but the Almoravid entry into Spain threatened all of this work, compelling Alfonso to look to those strategies that would best shore up his defenses. Municipal militarization was to be one of those strategies. The king could be liberal with military exemptions in fueros for towns such as Logroño (1095), Miranda de Ebro (1099) and Vallunquera (1102), all far to the northeast near Burgos and the Rioja.⁽¹⁹⁾ The Aragonese-Navarrese kingdom offered no present [21] threat and the towns were too distant to be of assistance against the Muslim south. Further to the south a more militant policy was followed. Alfonso VI would be remembered in the Primera crónica general two centuries later as a monarch who fortified his towns to strengthen the security of their settlers. More recent historical thought has noted that he enhanced municipal striking power as well by stressing the development of the light municipal cavalry class (caballeros villanos), an indication that he needed a broader military base to defend his extended frontier.⁽²⁰⁾ Fresnillo's caballeros, positioned on the road between Burgos and Sepúlveda at the Duero, were required to render fonsado service in 1104. In the salient of Toledo itself, the pre-conquest resident Mozarabs were offered the opportunity to render both cavalry and infantry service, thereby entering the open social structure of the Castilians based on military participation. To secure a militarily effective population for fortified Aceca which supported nearby Toledo, Alfonso offered caballero status to anyone who brought a horse with him when he settled.⁽²¹⁾

In terms of the future of town militias, however, Alfonso's most important resettlements were established on the northern flanks and uplands of the Central Sierras. Coca, Arévalo, Olmedo, Medina, Iscar and Cuéllar were significant reserve fortifications, while Segovia (repopulated 1088) and Sepúlveda (still being resettled as late as 1085) sat opposite the key Central Sierra passes of Navacerrada and Somosierra, respectively. Ávila (repopulated 1089-92) and Salamanca covered the major gap in the central chains between the Sierra de Gredos and the Sierra de Gato. Alfonso drew largely on a group referred to in contemporary sources as "serranos" for his settlers, which literally means peoples of the mountains but here refers to the residents of the Upper Duero, especially Lara and Covaleda.⁽²²⁾ In the next century, the chronicles would recount repeated instances of the military successes achieved by the militias of Ávila, Salamanca, Segovia and Toledo. For the present they served by settling and holding royal lands in their forward positions, while developing their nascent economies around the raising of sheep and the control of cattle trails in their vicinity. Even the most devastating expedition by the Muslims could not make permanent gains in the Trans-Duero.

The operating conditions here were much like those of the Crusader Near East with its similar topography and climate, where Christian territories were maintained by warriors who dwelt within fortified cities and strategic castles. The Muslim armies of Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia might campaign rigorously in Crusader-held lands, but could secure no [22] territory without expensive and time-consuming sieges of fortified populations.⁽²³⁾ Where the Crusaders occupied well-established older cities, the brunt of battle in Trans-Duero Spain was borne by newly resettled frontier towns of somewhat diversified types. Ávila, for instance, was a combination of episcopal center and military base whose stout-walled site was strategically important but commercially ill suited to little but sheep raising. Segovia, on the other hand, was a collection of rural farming aldeas fused into a town by defensive walls in the late eleventh century. The increase in the number of fortified towns, especially during Alfonso VI's reign, produced a growing contrast between the older and commercially-consolidated towns of the pilgrimage route north of the Duero and in Asturias as against the sheep-raising military bases of the Trans-Duero. The southern towns had more political freedoms, a more fluid social structure, and narrower economic bases in which military activities came to play an ever larger role.⁽²⁴⁾ In the give and take of Alfonso VI's later conflicts with the Almoravids his conquests stood firm. The new phalanx of frontier towns would assist in retaining his gains for his successors.

Leon-Castile's remarkable expansion had certainly not gone unnoticed in Aragon-Navarre, nor the methods by which it had been achieved. The triumphant seizure of Navarre from the hands of Alfonso VI by Sancho I Ramírez in 1076 could have been reduced to insignificance within ten years by Alfonso's preparations for his assault on Zaragoza. A conquest there by Castile would have terminated any future for Aragonese-Navarrese expansion to the south, leaving Sancho's realm a compressed micro-state in the Pyrenees. The Almoravids had inadvertently purchased valuable time for Aragon. Sancho Ramírez had been receiving pressure from the expansionist counts of Urgel and Barcelona to the east as well as Castile to the west, generating stress which the alliance of Aragon with the Papacy in 1063 and the abortive French crusade against Barbastro in 1064 had not fully alleviated.⁽²⁵⁾ On the positive side, the acquisition of Navarre had considerably enhanced Sancho's territory and his population reserves. He had access to French colonists and military support through the Somport Pass above Jaca, which the Muslim geographer al-Idrìsì called his "gateway", as well as through Roncesvalles into Navarre.⁽²⁶⁾ The time had clearly arrived for a major effort to break the long-standing defensive line against Zaragoza in the south which ran through the frontier towns of Ejea, Huesca, Barbastro and Tudela.

In Aragon-Navarre, Sancho Ramírez established the precedent of placing a military obligation upon his townsmen at Jaca in 1077. Jaca's [23] residents were expected to bring supplies for three days when rendering military service, a requirement destined to become widespread in the large group of Aragonese and Navarrese fueros which were derived from or influenced by that of Jaca.⁽²⁷⁾ While a three-day combat range (which was at least implied by the requirement of supplies) might have been sufficient for campaigns in the upper Aragón River valley, it would have been well short of enabling Jaca's militia to serve on even the comparatively close southern frontier at Huesca, over fifty kilometers of mountain road away. When Sancho Ramírez imposed the Jacan requirement on Argüedas in 1092 ten kilometers north of the frontier at Tudela, his expectations of drawing upon municipal light cavalry and infantry for service at the frontier were increased.⁽²⁸⁾ Shortly thereafter, King Sancho Ramírez undertook to crack the Muslim frontier line with a campaign against Huesca, but he did not live to see it through. Pedro I, the first of Sancho's three sons to succeed him to the throne, captured Huesca in 1096 and broke the defensive line with Zaragoza.⁽²⁹⁾

Pedro I's municipal military laws continued along much the same lines as those established by his father. The king awarded fueros to the towns along the Aragón River and to Barbastro to the southeast, once it was retaken. The fueros of Barbastro (1100), Caparroso (1102) and Santacara (1102) all exempted residents from longer-range hueste service, but required the shorter-range duty for local battles and castle defenses within the scope of the three-day supply requirement. In addition to these hueste exemptions, there were indications of French influence appearing east of Huesca at Lecina (1083) and Barbastro, and north of Jaca at Santa Cristina (1104), where exemptions were granted from cavalcata, a form of mounted service known since the Carolingian era which could presumably be rendered only by caballeros. Pedro also gave a fuero to the middle rank infanzón nobility of the kingdom in 1104 requiring the three-day field service for battles and castle defense, a fuero which later served as a basis for the fuero of Zaragoza.⁽³⁰⁾ Both native Aragonese and French immigrants populated the Río Aragón towns of Caparroso and Santacara, which were strategically critical since they were poised to strike at the frontier while defending the interior of Aragon from Zaragozan raids. During this period with encouragement from the monks of San Juan de la Peña, Pedro succumbed to the crusading ideal and offered Pope Paschal II his services as a crusade leader. The pope wisely suggested that Pedro might better direct such energies against his domestic Saracens. Pedro spent his last years preparing for the final siege of Zaragoza, starting in an assault in 1101 which was [24] aborted by his lack of sufficient cavalry.⁽³¹⁾ His premature death three years later placed his brother Alfonso I on the throne, a king destined to play much the same role in twelfth-century Aragon that Alfonso VI fulfilled in eleventh-century Castile. Indeed, Zaragoza was ultimately to be his Toledo. Such victories were destined to earn for Alfonso I the sobriquet "El Batallador."
 
 

El Batallador's opportunities developed in large part as the result of a succession crisis in Leon-Castile. In 1109, Alfonso VI saw the approach of his death with great concern, inasmuch as he lacked a male heir, his only son having been killed in the battle of Uclés during the preceding year. Moreover, his daughter Urraca had recently lost her husband Count Raymond, and their only son Alfonso Raimúndez was but a child. Alfonso VI sought to remedy the situation by marrying the widowed Urraca to King Alfonso I el Batallador of Aragon. Much has been written concerning the prudence of this marriage, from which at least two major complications grew. First, Alfonso I and Urraca proved totally incompatible. Even a papal annulment of this consanguineous union (both were great-grandchildren of Sancho the Great of Navarre), however, did not prevent the Aragonese king from both laying claim to much of Castile and launching the campaigns required to make good that claim. Second, a major successionist threat at the other extreme of Leon-Castile appeared as Galicia rose up in reaction to the marriage of Alfonso and Urraca, which threatened the youthful Alfonso Raimúndez with the potential loss of his right to the throne. In the face of this unfortunate disunity, there were two remarkable developments. The Almoravids did not or could not take advantage of the situation to capture Toledo or conquer portions of the Trans-Duero. Moreover, Urraca held her kingdom together, passing it intact to her son Alfonso Raimúndez at the close of her reign.⁽³²⁾ Contemporary with all of this, the chronicles begin to give indication that the municipalities were testing their fledgling military capabilities in the Trans-Duero and in Galicia.

In 1109, the year of Urraca's accession to the throne, the Almoravid Emir cAlì ibn-Yúsuf, was applying intense pressure in the Tajo River Valley to follow up his brother Tamìm's victory at Uclés the year before, and to take advantage of the change of rulers in Leon-Castile. cAlì led a major assault into the Toledan frontier region, breaking down the walls and sacking the towns of Talavera, Madrid, Olmos and Canales (among others), while probing but [25] not penetrating the defenses of Toledo and Guadalajara. There is also a record of municipal forces from Madrid and "Estremadura" (here indicating almost certainly the Trans-Duero) campaigning in the vicinity of Muslim-held Alcalá de Henares, some twenty-five kilometers distant.⁽³³⁾ Supporting the likelihood of increasing militia activity, Queen Urraca's renewals and additions to the fueros of Leon and Carrión included laws which exempted unmarried women and widows from fonsadera along with male children too young to bear arms. Also, a temporary exemption from fonsado of one year was granted to caballeros who had recently married, an interesting insight into the burdens that warfare placed on personal life in these towns.⁽³⁴⁾ The municipal military capability could also be used against the queen, however. For example, the townsmen of Sahagún along the pilgrimage route assisted Alfonso el Batallador in his capture of their town because of their grievances against the important monastery there, a municipal revolt which could be taken as a demonstration of opposition to Urraca as well.⁽³⁵⁾ The Almoravid frontier may have encountered the sting of the militias at this time. At least, the señor of Ávila was credited with a victory over the Muslims near Baeza on 11 November 1115 by Ibn-cIdhârì and it would seem likely that the señor had at least some Abulenses under his command at the time.⁽³⁶⁾

A particularly active area during Urraca's reign was Galicia, then in the control of its energetic bishop, soon archbishop, Diego Gelmírez of Santiago. Two requests for military service survive from Urraca'a reign, both pertaining to Gelmírez and the territories under his control. One for the year 1111 required that the bishop pursue the taking and manning of the castles of several rebellious Gallegan nobles, while a second in 1113 called for assistance in the siege which Urraca undertook against Burgos, then in Alfonso el Batallador's hands. The length of the second expedition (late May to mid-July) suggests that it was too extensive to have obligated participation by the residents of Santiago or the other towns of Galicia, given the short municipal service terms. Indeed, the 1113 Burgos expedition with its additional foray to assist at Berlanga was sufficiently exceptional to gain for Gelmírez a personal exemption from such service in the future.⁽³⁷⁾ Closer to home, the contemporary Historia Compostelana indicates that Santiago's militia did perform military service, including an undated campaign accompanied by forces from Iria and Santa María de la Lanzada against English pirates. In addition, campaigns against rebel castles are cited for Santiago's forces in 1121, 1126 and 1130, [26] while victorious battles with the Portuguese are noted in 1121 and 1127. On at least three of these occasions the Santiagan recruits served directly under Diego Gelmírez.⁽³⁸⁾ The divisive forces of Urraca's reign and the ambition of the enterprising archbishop thus spurred a brief surge of militia development. With the expansion of Leon-Castile and the emergence of an independent Portugal in the mid-twelfth century, Galicia slips into a rearward position and we hear little of Santiago and the Galician militias after this time.

On the Aragonese frontier, Alfonso el Batallador balanced his involvement regarding his claim to the Leonese-Castilian throne against this continuing program of pressure on Zaragoza. In 1117 Alfonso made an agreement with Urraca to relinquish the bulk of his claims on Castile in exchange for a truce with his former wife, largely to gain freedom of movement against Zaragoza. In 1119, he granted a fuero to Tudela, some 75 kilometers up the Ebro from Zaragoza. Infanzones and residents were given a year's exemption after settlement, then were expected to render offensive and defensive service.⁽³⁹⁾ However, one suspects that the Tudelan grants along with those made to other towns by his deceased brother Pedro were primarily defensive in purpose. We have no record of militia forces at the siege of Zaragoza in 1118, where extensive French support was required, nor in any of the campaigns which followed the Zaragoza conquest. What does occur simultaneously with the Zaragozan conquest is the extension of Aragon's legal and linguistic influence into eastern Castile, especially with regard to the granting of a fuero to Soria in 1120. This charter called for settlers from beyond the Ebro River in upper Aragon to relocate in Soria and clearly indicated that Alfonso retained designs on Castile and sought to make permanent his situation there. The linguistic influence is argued to have penetrated the entire Soria region, as well as Bureba, the Rioja, Berlanga and Almazán. This westward thrust of Aragon was not destined to be permanent, either politically or linguistically. The more natural direction of Aragonese expansion was to the south where the dependencies of Zaragoza lay. Even here, the acquisition of Tarazona, Borja, Magallón, Rueda and Épila continued the pressure on Castile while the conquest of Calatayud and Medinaceli secured control of the key access road from Córdoba which thwarted Muslim efforts to retake Zaragoza.⁽⁴⁰⁾

The next decade saw important foundations being laid in municipal law in Aragon, including the question of military service. In order to tighten his hold on the newly-won lands and to deal with the rising Castilian threat of his former stepson, Alfonso Raimúndez, who came to power as King Alfonso VII of Castile, El Batallador [27] began to concern himself once more with the institutional development of his municipalities, particularly their military potential. He issued fueros to Cáseda, Carcastillo and Encisa, three Navarrese towns on or near the River Aragón in 1129, which required militia service in the form of fonsado, a Castilian word which indicated fundamentally the same kind of service designated by the term hueste. All three charters discussed the matter of booty won in combat and the proper royal fifth share of those military profits for the first time. Possibly no other law could indicate so clearly the fact that militias had already begun to function effectively in the kingdom, and that the booty which resulted from their combats needed to be taxed.

Carcastillo also requires service based upon a ratio of those obligated to serve (one-third of the caballeros and the peones had the obligation to join a given military expedition, the remainder paying a fee in lieu of service). Moving to the southern frontier in 1131, the Fuero de Calatayud called for the one-third service ratio for caballeros, the royal rights to a fifth of booty, and added two new areas of concern: prisoner exchange and the right to indemnify personal wounds and the loss of animals from the booty taken in combat. That such considerations are making their appearance in the fueros strongly suggests that the Aragonese town militias are becoming active, despite the absence of contemporary chronicles describing their deeds. Moreover, this area of municipal law expands considerably in the Aragonese towns along the flanks of the Iberian Cordillera in the next fifty years.⁽⁴¹⁾ This development places Alfonso I of Aragon as something of a "founding father" of municipal military evolution in his kingdom, as well as establishing a basis of intense political and legal competition between Aragon and Castile for settlement and municipal development in the Iberian Cordillera. The result was a truly remarkable elaboration of peninsular law during the twelfth century which climaxed in the fueros of Teruel and Cuenca by 1195.

The rapid development of the Kingdom of Aragon under Alfonso I and its conquest of Zaragoza dramatically altered its own evolution, as well as that of Castile and Navarre. Castilian expectations for the absorption of the upper Ebro Valley were dashed by El Batallador's triumphs, and a similar process of separatism was underway to the west in Portugal. At the same time, the Almoravid states to the south were in the early stages of political and military decay. This would soon lead to what C. J. Bishko calls "an uncoordinated but simultaneous three-pronged Portuguese, Leonese-Castilian and Aragonese-Catalan offensive," which [28] reaped a harvest of territory for all these budding political entities while removing beyond recall any hope of Christian political unity for the Peninsula.⁽⁴²⁾ It now seems clear that all three states had anticipated this expansion in opportunity by the development of their municipal military law. Castile continued to maintain pressure on the Rioja and the upper Cordillera in Alfonso I's early reign, assuring his control on Lara, Villafranca, and Nájera. In 1128, Alfonso VII pursued Castile's interests against the Agagonese frontier by confirming a fuero for Burgos, even though it contained an Aragonese-style military requirement for fonsado specifying a field conflict and three days of supplies. When Alfonso I died in the wake of the battle of Fraga in 1134, Alfonso VII moved to establish a feudal overlordship over Zaragoza agreed to by El Batallador's brother and successor, Ramiro II.⁽⁴³⁾ This activity points to one of the major creative forces for municipal law in the age, the cross-borrowing and competition between Aragon and Castile in the towns of the Iberian Cordillera.

From the standpoint of military law, there are at least two other areas which need study in the twelfth century: the central Meseta focused upon Toledo and the Trans-Duero centered on Salamanca and Ávila. García-Gallo has recently detailed the twelfth and thirteenth-century evolution of the fueros of Toledo and the towns which drew from the legal traditions of that city, while advancing the argument that the Toledan form of regional law precedes other areas in the chronological evolution of precedents. The militia requirements from this law were concentrated in three charters of Alfonso VII's reign: the charter of Escalona of which some laws date from c. 1130, a fuero given to the French residents of Toledo in 1136, and the fuero given to the castle town of Oreja after its conquest in 1139.⁽⁴⁴⁾ With regard to the precedent-establishing value of this portion of Toledan law, Oreja had only a reference to the requirement of a fifth of booty for the king, by no means a new precedent. The French residents of Toledo were freed from mounted military service (cavalguet), remarkable only in that their exemption probably related to the fact that they were a valued commercial class. Escalona did have important new material regarding residence requirements which required a knight who intended to cross the Central Sierras to leave his wife and children or another knight in his residence in the town to retain his miles tax advantage. The knight was also obliged to leave any horse or arms received from the king to his sons or blood relatives at his death. García-Gallo regards the Toledan precedents as at least as important as the traditions evolving in the Cordillera to the east. Within the possibly narrow frame of military law, I am not inclined to accept that position. In truth, both areas [29] developed important law and doubtless influenced each other, but there is no grand summation of the Cuenca-Teruel kind with its rich delineation of the laws awaiting at the end of the Toledan development.⁽⁴⁵⁾

The Trans-Duero provided another creative center of military law not duplicated in either the Cordilleran or the Toledan families which seems to have emerged in this age. One can make a strong case that both Salamanca and Ávila received charters in the early twelfth century which contain important military law. These fueros no longer exist, but two distinct families of Portuguese forais cite either Salamanca's or Ávila's charter as their basis. The Portuguese charter of Numão (1130) followed later in the century by that of Trancoso carry on the Salamancan tradition, while the charter of Évora will inaugurate the use of Ávila's charter in the 1166. In addition to this direct connection, Salamanca and Ávila prototypes apparently contained significant laws regarding ratios of knights in the towns' contingent who must serve on any given campaign (Salamanca requires one-third, Ávila two-thirds). Versions of this law appeared across the Peninsula between 1121 and 1135 in Navarre, Aragon, Castile and Portugal, a development suggesting yet another network of legal interrelationships requiring study.⁽⁴⁶⁾ The surviving pattern of emerging military law, whether Cordilleran, Castilian or Portuguese, strongly indicates that monarchs perceived a major role for these municipal militias in the frontier wars of the mid-twelfth century.

From 1120 to 1150, the creation of law and intensified militia activity went hand in hand. The Crónicadelapoblación de Ávila, a thirteenth-century chronicle not always reliable in its earliest sections, does allude to combat against Muslim raiders and disputes over booty before 1107 that relate well to the concern for a municipal reserve and booty fifths likely to have been included in its lost fuero.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Although the seventeenth-century histories of Ávila indicate the presence of that town's militiamen (along with those of Zamora) at Alfonso VI's conquest of Cuenca in 1106 and at the disastrous loss at Uclés in 1108 against the Almoravids, this seems rather unlikely at so early a date given the considerable distance of these areas from Ávila.⁽⁴⁸⁾ But by the reign of Alfonso VII, the accounts in contemporary chronicles become too frequent to be discounted. Early in the reign of Alfonso VII, cAlì ibn-Yúsuf, now joined by his son Tâshfìn ibn-cAlì, was again increasing his pressure on the region of Toledo. In 1132 the Christian frontier forces made a major counter-thrust which dramatically demonstrated an increased campaigning range for the militias of the Trans-Duero and the Tajo Valley.

The impact of one of these raids was sufficient to merit recounting by three chronicles, one of them Muslim. Rodrigo González de Lara, Alfonso VII's governor of Toledo, gathered a substantial force for a major raid in the region of Seville, including the militias of Ávila, Segovia and Toledo. When King Umar of Seville mustered an army to curtail the destructive raiding and booty taking of González's invaders, a major battle resulted. The battle seemed of such significance to the author of the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris that he plagiarized the Bible (I Maccabees 9) for some of the battle details. We do know that Ávila's militia faced an Arab wing, that Segovia confronted a wing made up of Almoravids and Andalusian Muslims, and that Toledo's forces constituted part of González's reserve to the rear. The Christian forces routed the Muslims, beheaded Umar, and continued their forays against the people, trees, crops and cattle of the region, returning with an enormous collection of booty. Probably in the spring of 1132, the Lucena raid of both mounted and unmounted forces described in the Introduction took place, taking the militias of Ávila and Segovia south of Córdoba.⁽⁴⁹⁾

The Lucena and Seville raids are stunning when one considers that both are approximately 400 kilometers from Ávila, and demonstrate a remarkable range for these militias. Victories were not assured, however. The commander of the Muslim fortress of Calatrava crushed the militia of Escalona in the early 1130's, and Salamanca's ambitious militia overextended itself in a raid against Badajoz and was defeated and shorn of its booty by Prince Tâshfìn and his Córdoban forces in 1132.⁽⁵⁰⁾ The late 1130's and the 1140's indicate continued conflict along the frontier as crumbling Almoravid resistance and increasing municipal capabilities spurred Alfonso VII, his frontier captains and his militias into greater activity. Contemporary accounts suggest that Ávila, Segovia, Salamanca, Zamora, Madrid, Guadalajara and Talavera were the most active towns, but regional levies which summoned a number of unnamed towns were continually alluded to. The highlights of this period were the municipal assistance in the taking of Oreja in 1139 (an important fortress-town for the defense of Toledo) and the raid against Córdoba which included the militias of Ávila, Segovia and Toledo and climaxed with the battle of Montiel at the end of the 1140's. Having raided Andalusia, Munio Alfonso, the king's renowned governor of Toledo and the commander of the expedition, quickly retreated through the Muradal Pass from Córdoba. The Andalusians pursued the Christians past Calatrava fortress to Montiel on the road to Toledo, where Munio turned [31] and fought, decimating the Muslims. When the returning army marched back into Toledo before an astounded and pleased Alfonso VII, Munio displayed a large quantity of booty both from the raids and the battle, as well as the heads of the Muslim commanders on the spears of his warriors. Neither Munio nor King Alfonso could foresee that Munio's head would one day ride a Muslim spear in a similar triumphal procession into Córdoba.⁽⁵¹⁾

The lost fueros of Salamanca and Ávila and the sections of the fuero of Guadalajara which can be accepted as contemporary to the early part of Alfonso VII's reign were the best systematized creations of new law in Leon-Castile which parallel the increase in municipal military activity. The remainder of the charters for the reign of Alfonso VII were less informative and clear. The most widespread statute in the surviving charters was exemption from the fonsadera fee, or from offensive fonsado or from defensive apellido service. Some of these exemptions were conditioned, as in the similar fueros granted to Oviedo and Avilés (dated 1145 and 1155 respectively, but both possibly from the thirteenth century) which limited exemption to groups already performing quasi-military service: guards of cattle, grain and vineyards. Villacelema served only when nearby Mansella did, and Sahagún and Oviedo-Avilés only up to a certain fixed frontier. Oviedo, Avilés and Sahagún had service requirements for those not exempted by guard duty which bore a strong resemblance to Aragonese law: service only with the king, involving a field battle (lidcampal) or castle duty and with a three-day time limit.⁽⁵²⁾ On the other hand, several towns assessed a fine for missing military service, and while Astudillo exempted its caballeros from fonsado, it did require two peones of every three to serve, with the third contributing a pack animal in lieu of his personal service. Finally, Ocaña in 1156 had the only reference to the royal booty fifth outside of Guadalajara and Oreja, although Lara and Villavicencio divided the fees paid by those missing combat muster between the city government and those who served.⁽⁵³⁾

The lack of a consistent pattern of requirements in these surviving fueros thus tends to support likelihood of the potential Salamanca-Ávila charters, especially in the light of the extensively documented military performance of these towns during Alfonso VII's reign. The unevenness of the sources outside of this pattern requires considerable caution in the making of generalizations regarding Alfonso VII's reign. Nonetheless, one acquires a strong sense of the concentration of the recruiting areas of urban military service. Certain towns, especially those near the Tajo frontier, developed exceptional capability for offensive expeditions. Defensive service was more evenly [32] shared among the many towns, apellido exemptions being exceedingly rare. Even here, towns such as Salamanca, Ávila, Segovia, Madrid and the central force at Toledo were likely to have rendered extraordinary service, since their developing capacity would have made them more valuable in emergency situations. It is difficult to imagine how that most enduring achievement of Alfonso VII, the securing of the Tajo Valley, could have been accomplished without the municipal contribution. Yet, the military capability of Ávila and Segovia in the Trans-Duero threatened the security of the newer frontier towns to their south on the other side of the Central Sierras in the Tajo Valley. Alfonso VII guaranteed the boundaries of Madrid against Segovia in 1122 in part due to Madrid's own military performance in behalf of the crown, while the same monarch had to certify the frontiers of Talavera against Ávila in 1152. Concern for Ávila's enterprising expansion caused the redactors of the Fuero dePlasencia to prohibit the settlement of Abulenses in any part of that town on the western flank of the Gredos Sierra as late as the early thirteenth century. Such towns often threatened the peace agreements between Christian and Muslim rulers by their zest for independent raiding.⁽⁵⁴⁾ Thus, we have early indications of both the possibilities and the potential liabilities of these municipal military establishments.

Municipal development within the kingdoms neighboring on Leon-Castile needs also to be considered. The details of Aragonese military law suggest special emphases there which are not present or less developed in Leon-Castile. Portugal similarly evolved its own special concerns, which are more clearly defined for us since the survival rate of Portuguese charters is better than that of Castile or Aragon. Around 1094, Count Henry of Burgundy and Teresa (Alfonso VI's illegitimate daughter) were given the "land of Portugal" with an open southern frontier. This can be taken as the beginning of the Portuguese foral tradition. One clear line of interest in Portugal up to the mid-twelfth century was defense. Whereas fossato, expeditio or hostis, all terms indicating offensive operations, tended to be the most frequently cited terms to the east, it was apellido service that was more clearly stressed in Portugal. Starting with the foral of Guimarães in 1095-96, given by Henry and Teresa, apellido was discussed in twelve of the 24 forais which contain military materials down to 1157. Much of the concern was given to the length of this service (one to three days), with occasional distinctions between fighting Muslim opponents for which there were fewer limitations in time, and warfare against fellow Christians where stricter time limits were imposed. There was reference to the fees [33] charged for missing the apellido call, which varied from charter to charter.⁽⁵⁵⁾

Other forais inform us of the fluidity of the social structure on the Portuguese frontier. Cavaleiros owed their social and economic position to their maintenance of a horse and its use in combat. To maintain their preferential standing in the face of the non-combat loss of their mount, nine charters allow a time period in which the horse can be replaced without the loss of status (between one year at Viseu in 1123 to five years at Sintra in 1154, with three years the most common interval cited). Leiria and Sintra make it clear that foot soldiers can gain the status of knights by acquiring and using a horse. Early references to the royal booty fifth also occur in the documents from 1111 onward.⁽⁵⁶⁾ These statutes appear in the transitional age of Count Henry and Teresa, continued when the widowed Teresa ruled the County of Portugal alone, and lasted into the reign of their son Afonso I, who changed his title of count to that of king in 1140. The emphasis on defense was not surprising at the outset, given the battle for Portuguese independence against Queen Urraca and Alfonso VII. Moreover, Almoravid pressures were felt here, as well, as the twenty-day siege of Coimbra by cAlì ibn-Yúsuf in 1117 cited by the ChronicaGothorum would indicate.⁽⁵⁷⁾

By the time Afonso I had driven his mother Teresa from power in 1128, the primary tendencies in Portuguese municipal military obligations were established. To a considerable degree Afonso continued these earlier municipal traditions, but there was an unmistakable shift to the offensive for this great conqueror and monarchy-creator. For example, there had been no prior reference to offensive military requirements before his time, but fossado, fossadeira and expeditio appeared in seven charters from his accession down to 1157. The first adaptation of a Salamancan charter took place at Numão in 1130 (a non-royal charter) with its one-third participating and two-thirds reserve regulations for the cavaleiros, while a half and half ratio of residents called to service appears to have been assigned to the royal fossado at Penela in 1137.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Moreover, a concern for the factor of age appears. Miranda da Beira, Louzã and Sintra allow cavaleiros too old to serve in combat to retain their knightly rights, and their widows retain this privilege as well. Miranda and Louzã even give knightly status to archers, a Portuguese tradition with a long history.⁽⁵⁹⁾ The forais of Seia (1136), Sintra (1154) and Freixo (1155-57) demonstrate a royal tendency toward longer charters containing more military law. Seia indicates interest in the contribution of animals to the fossato, suggests the possibility of a yearly fossato in May, [34] and legislates against the stealing of a knight's booty. Sintra assembled a variety of older military laws in its charter, while adding a limitation of one royal exercitus per year on which residents would be obligated to serve and for which they would not be required to pay the royal fifth of booty tax. Finally, Freixo contained laws fining a resident who wounded another resident during a defensive apellido, permitting an individual who missed an apellido to have a witness testify that he had not heard the emergency call, and restricting any residents who held properties in other places that he owed his fossado obligation in Freixo and there only.⁽⁶⁰⁾

Unlike Leon-Castile, however, we have little indication from the contemporary chronicles that the Portuguese municipalities were making a substantial contribution to the rapid advance of the frontier under Afonso. For example, the narratives of the taking of Lisbon in 1147, the most thoroughly recounted event in twelfth-century Portuguese history, make no mention of town militias, as was also the case in Aragonese Zaragoza. There is one reference in the ChronicaGothorum to sixty cavaleiros of Santarém aiding the badly outmanned royal forces at Alcácer a few months after the taking of Lisbon.⁽⁶¹⁾ The approximately one hundred kilometers between Santarém and Alcácer would have tested the probable outside range of a three-day obligation for cavaleiros of that Tejo River town, and suggests that here as well as in Aragon the service requirements tended to restrict the municipal militias to brief, short-distance striking raids and defensive forays. To this point, at least, there were no towns with the striking capacity of an Ávila, Segovia or Toledo along or behind the Portuguese frontier.

The development of municipal militias to mid-century on the eastern flank of Leon-Castilla in Aragon was dramatically affected by the death of Alfonso el Batallador in 1134, brought on by the sharp political (and therefore legal) divisions it created in the Cordilleran zone. Alfonso's death and its attendant succession crisis redirected the future of Aragon and the Peninsula as a whole. Having no children, Alfonso willed his kingdom to the three military orders, the Temple, the Hospital and the Holy Sepulchre, possibly as a device to bypass any claims on his lands which might be exercised by Alfonso VII of Leon-Castile.⁽⁶²⁾ At the outset, the nobility of Navarre seized the opportunity to break free of Aragon and reestablish their native dynastic line with García IV Ramírez (1134-50). Meanwhile, the last surviving son of Sancho Ramírez, Ramiro II, was drawn out of his monastery to assume the Aragonese throne. The betrothal of his infant daughter Petronilla to the Count of [35] Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, assured the succession of the Aragonese throne and created the fateful linkage of Catalonia and Aragon. During the long reign of Petronilla and the minority of her son Alfonso II (Alfons I of Barcelona-Catalonia), Aragon found itself pulled toward the Mediterranean, while at the same time Ramon Berenguer took an active interest in the southern frontier of both Aragon and Catalonia. For Navarre, meanwhile, the separation from the Aragonese monarchy had finally borne its bitter fruit. In the early eleventh century before under Sancho III it had been the dominant and rising monarchy in the Peninsula. Now the events of 1134-37 had sealed off its frontier against the Muslim south, leaving it to atrophy as a reconquest state while Leon-Castile and Aragon-Catalonia expanded to consume its territorial options. Brief fueros given to Peralta (1144), Yanguas (1144, 1145) and Olite (1147) offered military law which contains nothing that was new for Navarrese militias.⁽⁶³⁾ However, future territorial competition with its Christian neighbors and the continuing ambition of the Navarrese kings gave promise for the future development of militia law and capability, loss of Muslim contact notwithstanding.

The case of Aragon becomes somewhat more uncertain between 1134 and 1162, the age of Ramiro II's brief reign (1134-37) followed by Count Ramon Berenguer IV's reign as Petronilla's consort. Ramiro issued fueros to Huesca (1134), Uncastillo (1136) and Jaca (1134-37) which offered now familiar requirements for hoste, castle duty and battlefield service with a three-day food supply, a retention of already established precedents. More interesting in this same period is a charter given by Alfonso VII of Leon-Castile to the infanzón nobility of Aragon, renewing a similar grant of Pedro I. Here a sharp distinction was made between lesser nobles who have the typical three-day obligation as against those who hold royal honors and thereby have a three-month requirement for military service in the royal hoste, obviously the group which constituted the backbone of Alfonso's expeditionary capability.⁽⁶⁴⁾ The reign of Ramon Berenguer IV introduced a brief era of a Catalan ruler applying Aragonese law to his newly acquired realm. The Count of Barcelona was not likely to attempt dramatic changes in the municipal legislation, coming as he did from a rather different legal and cultural background. The three charters containing military law which he granted went to Daroca (1142), San Estebán de Luesia (1154) and Cetina (1151-57). San Estebán gave a seven-year exemption from hoste service to new settlers, while Cetina simply specified that the townsmen were required to send mounted and unmounted warriors and an animal contribution to the hoste when the nearby Order of the Hospital was called on for service. Daroca limited [36] exercitus service to that done with the king present, specified kinds of booty on which the royal fifth was owed, and had a more elaborate prisoner exchange law than had hitherto appeared.⁽⁶⁵⁾

The regency of the future Alfonso II produced an increase in the number of semi-independent señoríos under powerful noble families, especially along the Cordilleran frontier with Castile. One of these, Manrique de Lara, gave a fuero to Molina de Aragón (1152-56) which contained a significant amount of new military law.⁽⁶⁶⁾ This fuero is problematic, since our oldest surviving manuscript is a thirteenth-century copy and may have acquired additions based on the more ample codes from the end of the twelfth century. An analysis of Molina's military laws indicates much material for which there was precedent. Laws giving tax exemptions to caballeros who retained a house in the town with their families in residence for a portion of the year had already appeared in García-Gallo's "Toledan" group of charters, and laws on the booty fifth and fining for missing the military obligation were well established in Aragon. More dubious was the law which specified the turning over of a captured leader from the Muslim side to the king. Guadalajara and Daroca had a similar law, but the awarding of a maintenance allowance for the captors of the important prisoner appeared nowhere else before the end of the century. Similar doubts must be entertained for laws regarding campaign and watchtower duty, medical allowances for the healing of wounds, the use of concejo standards (battle flags) and specified battle equipment for mounted and foot soldiers. Most significantly, a certain level of wealth required the purchase of a horse and the obligations of service which went with it, a most unusual law for the mid-twelfth century.⁽⁶⁷⁾ It is possible that all of this law was included in the twelfth-century version of the charter. If so, it would mark Molina's charter as an important milestone between earlier Castilian and Aragonese law in the Cordillera and the extensive charters of Cuenca and Teruel granted at the end of the century. If we possessed an earlier copy of Molina's charter which would verify that contribution, we would have major indications of the growth of traditional law in the Iberian Cordillera by the mid-twelfth century. But while I am inclined to accept Molina's fuero as a faithful rendering of its original contents, caution prevents trying to argue such a case definitively.

The one area of Christian Iberia not yet considered with regard to the evolution of town militia service is Catalonia. The dynastic marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronilla would produce a common ruler for the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of [37] Barcelona in Alfonso II (Alfons I) while creating the new political entity known as the Crown of Aragon. The nature of the municipal military traditions of Catalonia offers an apparent contrast with the Aragonese evolution. While urbanization was, if anything, more advanced in Catalonia than elsewhere in Iberia in the mid-twelfth century, urban military service was at best obscure and underdeveloped if it is to be measured by the surviving records of military law. French-style feudalism was rather better developed in Catalonia than the rest of the peninsula and frontier expansion here had not moved at a rate equivalent to that of Castile or Aragon since the mid-eleventh century. The powerful comital houses of Barcelona and Urgel had concentrated upon containing each other's spheres of influence as well as that of the expanding Kingdom of Aragon. Muslim geographers noted the bellicosity of the "Franks" of Catalonia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and we know of at least one occasion when "Frankish" troops (clearly in the context Catalan mercenaries) served in the forces of the Emir of Granada. However, these descriptions of Christian valor were reserved for "Franks" as a people.

In contrast to the references which can be found for the towns of Navarre and Leon-Castile, the discussion of Barcelona and Tarragona which we have from Muslim geographers refers only to the "Franks" in general or the dangers to be experienced in the particular area. The mid-twelfth century Muslim geographer al-Idrìsì noted the valor and bellicosity of the residents of Estella, Leon, Segovia and Ávila, in particular. Yet no town was singled out in Catalonia for a description of the military prowess of its inhabitants.⁽⁶⁸⁾ Surviving municipal charters add little to the picture. Two eleventh-century documents for settlers near castles mention hoste and cavallcades service, but Albana (1040) limited it to milites (knights) and Castelló exempted settlers from such obligations. In his donation of Tarragona to its bishop just prior to the taking of the town in 1118, Ramon Berenguer III declared the right to control questions of war and peace in the lives of its settlers without offering any specifics as to just what this might mean with regard to military obligations. Once Aragon and Catalonia were combined in the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV, there were some signs of change. In 1147, the milites of Almenar were required to serve, perform castle guard, and make food contributions in time of war. More significantly, Count Ramon and Bishop Bernat of Tarragona required exercitus etcavalcata in 115l from all citizens of Tarragona, those with horses and those without them. Compared to what we have seen emerging in the other peninsular states, this is scant material, indeed, and Spanish legal historians such as García-Gallo have not considered the evolution of Catalan municipal [38] law to offer much interest until the thirteenth century.⁽⁶⁹⁾ One must allow for the possibility that urban forces of some kind might have been called up as a type of feudal service under the Count of Barcelona. If so, we have no clear indications of precisely how that service was rendered. It is equally possible that the Count took care of his basic military needs with the conventional feudal levies of his knights, and gave no thought of drawing upon his commercial settlements for combat forces in this early period.
 
 

The mid-twelfth century presents a useful position from which to review the early chronological evolution of municipal military service in the Peninsula. First, it is clear that at least two distinctly different kinds of municipalities had emerged among the Spanish Kingdoms by 1157. The first was primarily commercial, was concentrated either in the northern portions of Navarre, Castile and Leon or along the coastal littoral of Catalonia, and was primarily focused upon pilgrimage-oriented or Mediterranean-oriented trade. These towns appear to have played a rather small role in the military endeavors of the Reconquest. Second, a unique type of frontier cattle town appeared in the eleventh century (if not before), focused on the raising of sheep and the control of cattle trails and grazing lands, whose development in the frontier zones of Aragon, Navarre, Leon-Castile and Portugal tended to place them in an extremely exposed military position. In the century from 1050 to 1157 these frontier towns multiplied, largely because the rulers perceived their signal value as agencies of settlement and defense for the newly won lands in the Trans-Duero, the Tajo River Valley, and the Upper Ebro River Valley. It is in this second kind of town that the military obligation comes to play such a vital part in royal frontier policy and in the daily lives of its citizens.

The charters of these municipalities display an increasing variety of military laws and policies, whose evolution is most pronounced in three frontier areas: the Cordilleran zone of Castile-Navarre-Aragon, the central zone dominated by Toledan law, and the Leonese-Portuguese zone. This developing municipal capacity to make war by the time of Alfonso VII of Leon-Castile has been noted by both the earlier and more recent Spanish urban and military historians. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ My own findings indicate that Portugal and the Navarrese-Aragonese Cordillera also developed significant progress in military capability, although more limited to defense. In Leon-Castile, however, the offensive capability was more evident, even to the point of these towns initiating independent raiding not always [39] convenient to the policy of the monarch or the stability of the relationships among the various frontier municipalities.

At the same time, this bellicosity on the part of the towns would prove an advantage in the decades to come. As the Almoravid principalities crumbled in the face of Leonese-Castilian, Portuguese and Aragonese-Catalan pressure, peninsular Muslim history repeated itself once more. A new reformist and puritanical North African movement, the Almohads, gathered its forces and invaded Almoravid Spain in the last decade of Alfonso VII's rule. By the death of Alfonso VII in 1157, the Almohads had secured the Almoravid territories, and operating out of Seville and Córdoba they substantially increased the Muslim threat to the Christian frontier while bringing heavy pressure to bear on the Tajo River line. Compounding these difficulties, Alfonso VII chose to divide his kingdom into its Leonese and Castilian components between his sons Fernando II and Sancho III, respectively. Thus, the Christian frontier appeared to be in the process of fragmentation at the very time the Almohads were bringing unity to Islamic Spain. By 1162, all of the Christian kingdoms save Portugal had young and inexperienced monarchs on their thrones in the face of an aroused Muslim south. In this age, the Christians would need all of the military frontier resources at their command. The towns would soon be challenged as never before.

1.  For peninsular feudalism, the early ground-breaking work is, Sánchez-Albornoz, Los orígenes del feudalismo. 3 vols. More recent is the work of his student, Hilda Grassotti, Instituciones feudo-vasalláticas, 2 vols., and Barbero and Vigil, Formación del feudalismo. For Catalonia, see Lewis, Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, and Bonnassie, La Catalogne, 2 vols.

2.  For a useful overview of urban revival theories in Leon-Castile, see Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana de León y Castilla, 7-95. For Catalonia, Font Ríus, "Orígenes del régimen municipal de Cataluña," 16:397-435.

3.  Sánchez Belda, "La Mancha," 8-9. While Sánchez Belda's remarks concerning the insouciance of the ecclesiastical chroniclers to the deeds of townsmen are directed to twelfth-century Castile, they are valid as a generalization for most contemporary accounts of reconquest history.

4. Crónica de Alfonso III, Villada, ed., 124-31. "Crónica de Sampiro," Pérez de Urbel, ed., 306, 313, 322.

5.  Sacristaán y Martínez, Municipalidades de Castilla y León, 105, 122.

6. ⁶"Fuero de Valpuesta," 3:19. "Fueros de Brañosera," 17. "Fuero de Oviedo," 37:327. Louis Barrau Dihigo first questioned these early charters as late copies originating in the eleventh or twelfth century on the grounds of the terminology utilized in the documents, "Recherches sur l'histoire politique," 52:81. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz defended the authenticity of Brañosera's terminology for the ninth century in his review of Barrau Dihigo's work, AHDE (1925), 2:534. Since then others have entered the debate. Some accept the contents of Brañosera's fuero but move the date of that charter to 854. Pérez de Urbel, Historia del Condado de Castilla, 1:134-35. M. E. González, "La anubda," 39-40:14. However, Antonio Floriano Cumbreño has remained critical of the authenticity of Brañosera based on the charter's anachronistic terms which he argues belong two centuries later in time, Diplomática española del periodo Astur, 1:105-12, 159-64. Catalonia also gives us a ninth-century document of Carolingian origins requiring military servicein Barcelona in 844, but this was almost certainly a territorial document for the county rather than a specific municipal levy, "Capitular del rey Carlos el Calvo a los godos e hispanos de Barcelona," 1:6.

7.  For a fuller discussion of the scholarly debate on the origins and meaning of some of these terms, see: Powers, "Origins and Development of Municipal Military Service," 26:92-97, and "Frontier Competition and Legal Creativity," 52:469-75. M. E. González, "La anubda," 5-42. Many are also discussed in Chapter Six and briefly described in the Glossary. For the best early discussion and a useful list of variants for fossatum and hostis, see Palomeque Torres, "Contribución al estudio del ejército," 15:215-22. Fernando I conceded charters to Villafría, Orbaneja and San Martín in 1039 and to the monastery of Santa Juliana in 1045 in which expeditio was described as that which is called fossato. "Fueros de Villafría, Orbaneja y San Martín," 379, and "Priuilegio de franqueza, que conceden al monasterio de Santa Juliana," 649.

8.  Ubieto Arteta, "Valoración de la reconquista peninsular," 31:213-20. Lacarra, "Expediciones musulmanas contra Sancho Garcés (905-925)," 1:41-70.

9. ⁹ The best brief survey of frontier warfare in the tenth century can be found in Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain, 41-48. For the factors leading to tribal and clan consolidation in Muslim Spain, see Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain, 137-46.

10.  "Fuero de León, (1020)," 15:487-91.

11.  The most substantial criticism of this charter has been offered by the eminent medieval Castilian legal historian Alfonso García-Gallo, "El fuero de León," 39:5-171. At no point does García-Gallo question the military provisions, however. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz has defended with intensity the authenticity of Leon's charter and its laws in, "El fuero de León," 2:11-60. While he passes rather too glibly over the chancerial and lingistic arguments García-Gallo has to make, Sánchez-Albornoz does base his case in part on contemporary examples of the military service laws. While we cannot be absolutely certain, I am inclined to accept the military laws as proper to Leon for the early eleventh century. It would seem unlikely that such military obligations would be interpolated later, as Leon's distance from the frontier extended significantly during the eleventh century, reducing Muslim pressure on this town substantially.

12.  "Carta de poblacción (sic) de Villanueva de Pampaneto," 184. FVillafría, 379. "Fuero de Santa Cristina," 222. "Canales de la Sierra," 50:317-18. "Forais de S. João da Pesqueira, Penella, Paredes, Linhares, Anciães, 1055-65," 1:346. "Fuero de Cuevacardiel," 122-23. The Rioja thus became early on an important area of legal interaction between Leon-Castile and Navarre, as the fueros of Canales and Cuevacardiel would indicate. For a recent assessment of some of the Riojan fueros, see Martínez Díez, "Fueros de la Rioja," 49:331-60.

13.  Lomax, Reconquest, 52-54.

14.  A number of Alfonso's early fueros dealt only with requirements of guard duty and the fonsadera tax payment or exemption from these levies. "Fueros y privilegios de las villas sujetas a la ciudad de Burgos, 1073," 257. "Fueros de Palenzuela, 1074," 26. "Fueros de Alberguería de Burgos," 2:411. "Fuero concedido a Santa María de Dueñas," 16:627. "Fuero de Sahagún, 25 noviembre, 1085," 2:35-41. The villages subject to Burgos had to render fonsadera and anubda, while Palenzuela and Alberguería were exempt. Palenzuela has much interesting military law, but the material is far too precocious for the late eleventh century in language and complexity. While the exemptions seem appropriate to the period, the remainder seems closer to the age of Alfonso X, in whose 1261 confirmation of this charter our copy survives. Santa María de Dueñas received exemption from fonsado and anubda. Sahagún's fuero, surviving in a late copy, specifies a three-day limit for the royal expeditio for the male settlers, a first for Castile-Leon if valid, but possibly a reflection of the later Aragonese requirement imposed during Alfonso el Batallador's control of the town. There are a number of problems with the dating and internal integrity of the Sahagún charter, which may consist of sections from different periods reassembled in its later copy. See Barrero García, "Los fueros de Sahagún," 42:393-401.

15.  "Fuero concedido a Nájera," 2:79-85. "Fuero latino de Sepúlveda, 1076," 48. "Fuero concedido a Jaca por Sancho Ramírez (c. 1076)," 3-4. Molho dates the charter of Jaca in 1063, but Lynn Nelson, expanding on the argument advanced by Antonio Ubieto Arteta, redates it convincingly in the fall of 1076 or the spring of 1077. Nelson, "The Foundation of Jaca (1076)," 53:694-95. The similarity of the basic military requirement in Jaca to that of Nájera and Sepúlveda would seem to strengthen his argument. FNájera, "Plebs de Nageranon debent ire in fonssado, nisi una vice in anno ad litem campalem. "Villano qui non fuerit in fonssado non debet nisi duos solidos et medium. Si inffancion de Nagera non fuerit in fonssado habet calupniam X solidos, et pro fuero pectavit exinde medietatem." FSepúlveda 1076, "Et ad fonsado de rege si uoluerint ire non uadan nisi los caualleros, si non fuerit a cerca de rege aut a lide campal, et ad isto uadan cauallero et pedones los uezinos." FJaca 1076, "...ut noneatis in hoste nisi cum pane dierum trium; et hoc sit per nomen de lite campale aud ubi ego sim circumdatus, uel successoribus meis, ab inimicus nostris. Et si domnus domus illuc non uolet ire mitat pro se uno pedone armato." Concerning the Jacan use of hoste, a usage more typical of France, in lieu of fonsado in the more common previous usage, see Powers, "Frontier Competition," 469-72. Nelson also discusses possible French influence from contemporary urban unrest arriving via the pilgrimage road to Santiago, one branch of which passed through Jaca. Nelson, "Foundation of Jaca," 704-05. For a recent discussion regarding the authenticity of the Fuero de Nájera, see Martínez Díez, "Fueros de la Rioja," 348-51.

16.  Powers, "Frontier Competition," 469-87.

17.  The Chronicon Lusitanum dates the conquest in 1077. Terrón Albarrán's study of the Coria campaign suggests 1079, although noting that the evidence allows for debate. "Chronicon Lusitanum," 14:405. Terrón Albarrán, El solar de los Aftásidas," 122-30.

18.  We have extended chronicle accounts of Sagrajas (Muslim Zalaqa) from both Muslim and Christian sources. Ambrosio Huici Miranda has provided useful extracts from them along with his analysis of Sagrajas in Grandes batallas, 37-82. Terrón Albarrán, El solar, 224-49, offers an extended reassessment of the conflict with a critique of Huici Miranda's account, noting the debate over the precise location of the battle. There is also the older account of Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 1:331-37, which tends to be less critical of the sources, especially the Muslim ones.

19.  "Fuero de Logroño," 335. On the overall significance of Logroño's charter, see Lacarra, "Notas para la formación," 10:227-32, and Martínez Díez, "Fueros de la Rioja," 352-58. Fuero de Miranda de Ebro, 47. This fuero has been traditionally dated in 1095, but Cantera Burgos suggests 1099 as the more likely date. "Fuero de Vallunquera," 16:630. Private charters by the count of Lara to Andaluz and by the abbot of Sahagún to Villavicencio in 109l also exempt military service as a requirement. "El fuero de Andaluz, 1089," 21:197. "Fueros de Villavicencio, 1091," 118. Sánchez-Albornoz has suggested a later date for Villavicencio, c. 1110. "Fuero de León," 41.

20. PCG, 2:520. Sacristán, Municipalidades, 135. Martínez Ruiz, "La investidura de armas en Castilla," 1-2:208-09. Pescador, 33-34:146-52. Pescador argues that the Castilians were more advanced in giving this class legal distinctiveness than were the Leonese, who resisted associating the popular cavalry in any way with the blood nobility.

21.  "Fuero de Fresnillo," 46-48. "Carta de seguridad concedida a los mozárabes de Toledo, 1101," 45:460. "Fuero del Castillo de Aceca," 462.

22.  García-Gallo, "Fueros de Toledo," 412. Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 97-102. Moxó, Repoblación y sociedad, 201-16.

23.  Smail, Crusading Warfare (1097-1193), 205-44.

24.  Torres Balbás, et al., Resumen histórico del urbanismo, 37-39. Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 20-34, 49-78. Valdeavellano, Orígenes de la burguesía, 85-127, 213-17. For a comparison with the Crusader Near East, see Smail, Crusading Warfare, 205-44.

25.  Ramos y Loscertales, "El reino de Aragón," 15:67-76. David, Études historiques sur la Galice, 373-76. For the role of Cluniac monasticism in the politics of the Spanish kingdoms, see Bishko, "Fernando I y los orígenes de la alianza castellano leonesa con Cluny," 49-50:74-78. On crusading influence entering Spain through French and papal inspiration at this time, see Ubieto Arteta, "Valoración de la reconquista," 213-20.

26. La geografía de España del Edrisí, 79-80.

27.  Lacarra, "Notas," 10:213-19. García-Gallo, "Aportación al estudio de los fueros," 26:430-40. FJaca, 3-4. García-Gallo takes a rather restrictive view of Aragonese foral penetration into Castile.

28.  "Fuero de Argüedas," 10:255. Ubieto Arteta, Colección diplomática de Pedro I, 83. Ramos y Loscertales, "Reino de Aragón," 80-81.

29. Ubieto Arteta, Colección de Pedro I, 83-96. Dozy, Recherches sur l'histoire, 2:266-69. Abubéquer de Tortosa, Lámpara de los príncipes, 2:318-19, gives us our best contemporary description of the battle of Alcoraz, the victory which opened the door to besieging Huesca. None of these sources would indicate that town militias participated, but only that horse and foot soldiers were present, an observation sustained by a document of Pedro I to a Sancho Crispo which rewarded him for his contribution of three hundred "milites et pedones" to the battle of Alcoraz. "Pedro I dona a Sancio Crispo," 132.

30.  "Galindo señala los derechos de Lecina, 1083," l:65. "Fueros de Barbastro, 1100," 334. "Pedro I concede carta de fueros de Caparroso," 371. "Pedro I concede los fueros de Santacara," 373. "Alfonso I de Aragón concede a los pobladores de Zaragoza los fueros de los infanzones de Aragón, Enero, 1119," 83-84. "Pedro I concede a Santa Cristina de Somport," 427. This last is a lost document known only through an 1108 document of Alfonso I which refers to it.

31.  Ubieto, Colección de Pedro I, 112-17, 122. Bishko, "Spanish and Portuguese Reconquest," 3:403.

32. ³Reilly, Queen Urraca, 352-70.

33. CAI, 79-80. Gautier-Dalché, "Islam et Chrétienté en Espagne," 47:191. Pastor de Togneri, Conflictos sociales, 230. "Anales Toledanos I," 23:386-87. Represa Rodríguez, "La 'tierra' medieval de Segovia," 21:5-22. Slaughter, "La batalla de Uclés," 9:393-404.

34.  "Fueros de León y Carrión, 1114," 48-49.

35.  "Las crónicas anóimas de Sahagún," 76:339-56.

36.  IIM, 2:144-45. This is a thirteenth-century chronicle, but contains considerable information for the twelfth century.

37.  "Historia Compostelana," 20:132-33, 152-53, 168-69. "Foral de Guimarães, l:2. "Fueros de Santiago, 1105," 3:62. Fletcher, Episcopate in the Kingdom of León, 81-82. Fletcher, Saint James's Catapult, 247-48. Reilly, Queen Urraca, 275-77. The Guimarães charter is dated 1095-96, but is found in a confirmation of 1128 by Afonso I Henriques.

38.  "Historia Compostelana," 20:133-34, 314-16, 322, 324-26, 346-50, 443-48, 520. Saint James's Catapult, 247-48.

39.  "Capitulos del fuero de Sobrarbe," 13:31-35. Lacarra, "Notas," 10:218-13, sees this exemption from hueste service for infanzones as unique to Tudela. Orcástegui, "Tudela durante los reinados," 10:66. Alfonso had freed the Muslims of Tudela from the defensive obligation to serve four years earlier in 1115, an equally unusual exemption to judge by my own research. See: "Pactos ó capitulaciones que se otorgáron entre D. Alonso I de Aragón y los moros de Tudela, 1115," 2:558-59. The Mozarabs brought back from Alfonso's Grenadine expedition and settled in Zaragoza were also granted exemption from hoste and cavalcata against either Christians or Muslims. Lacarra, Doc., Primera serie, 45. For a survey of all of Alfonso's activities in the period, see Lacarra, Vida de Alfonso el Batallador, 59-103.

40.  Menéndez Pidal, Documentos lingüísticos de España, 10-11. "Fuero de Soria (1120)," 8:586-87. Lomax, Reconquest, 84.

41.  "Fuero de Cáseda," 475. "Fuero de Carcastillo," 470-71. "Fuero de Encisa," 473. Fuero de Calatayud, 37. For a discussion of the importance of municipal legal development in this area, see Powers, "Frontier Competition and Legal Creativity," 52:475-87. With the exception ofthe undated fuero of Marañón which includes a one-third ratio for caballeros and royal booty specifications for mounted versus unmounted militiamen, the remainder of Alfonso's military laws for townsmen at the end of his reign go to Zaragoza and the more northern and western towns in the kingdom: Mallén (1132), Asín (1132), Tudela (undated), Barbastro (undated). These repeat earlier laws regarding hoste, lid campal and castle service with three days food supply, already well established principles in Aragon and Navarre. The time frame of 1121-23 has been suggested for Marañón by Rodríguez de Lama, "Fuero de Marañón," 2:119-22. "Fuero de los pobladores mozárabes de Mallén," 504. "Fuero de Asín," 505. "Fueros de Tudela, Cervera y Galipiezo," 418. "Privilegio de D. Alfonso I el Batallador confirmando los privilegios de la ciudad de Barbastro," 357. FZaragoza 1119-34, 449. Ramiro II cited Zaragozans for their military service in September of 1134 while awarding the town some land grants. See Lacarra, Doc., Tercera serie, 557.

42.  Bishko, "Reconquest," 407.

43.  "Confirmación de los fueros de Burgos, julio 12, 1128," 132. CAI, 10-12. Ubieto Arteta, "Navarra-Aragón y la idea imperial," 6:50.

44.  "Fuero de Escalona, 1130," 45:465. "Confirmación del fuero de los francos de Toledo, 1136," 467. "Fuero del Castillo de Oreja, 1139," 45:470.

45.  García-Gallo outlines his case for the precedents in military law in his "Fueros de Toledo," 45:451, n. 244, while comparing the Toledan group of charters with those cited by Alberto García Ulecia for the Iberian Cordillera and northeastern Castile in the latter's Los factores de diferenciación, 355-448. See also Powers, "Frontier Competition," 465-87.

46.  "(Foral de) Numão, 1130," 1:368-70. The foral of Numão cites no derivative charter in its text. "Foral de Trancoso, 1157-1169," 1:325-28. Pimenta, Idade-Média (Problemas e soluçoens), 253. FCarcastillo, 470-71. FMarañón,2:121. FCalatayud, 37. "Fuero de Lara," MD, 142. Three of these charters survive only in vernacular copies, but the coincidence of the laws and the dates makes a persuasive case for their authenticity on this point. "Foral de Évora,"DMP, 1:371-73. Blasco, "El problema del fuero de Âvila," 60:7-32. Vergara y Martín, Estudio histórico de Âvila, 25-27. Ricardo Blasco has compared some members of the Évora group of charters in order to make the case for a pre-existing fuero of Âvila, and G. M. Vergara y Martín has dated the missing charter between 1080 and 1130. "Fuero de Guadalajara (1137)," 108-11. FEscalona, 465. For a more complete analysis of this problem, see Powers, "Portuguese and Leonese Municipal Military Law," Speculum, forthcoming. See also Chapter 2.

47. CPA, 18-19. Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 386-87.

48.  Martir Rizo, Historia de Cuenca, 27-28. Âlvarez Martínez, Historia general de Zamora, 159. Vergara, Estudio, 35-37.

49. CAI, 74-80, 86, 92-95. "Anales Toledanos I," 23:388. IIM, Nfa, 190-91. Ibn-cIdhârì dates the Seville conflict in 1130, but the details conform closely to that of the other two chronicles. Fletcher, Saint James's Catapult, 270.

50. CAI, 88, 91-92, 95-97. Sánchez Belda, "La Mancha," 14-15. Fletcher, Saint James's Catapult, 270.

51. CAI, 110-17, 126-32, 146-48. Fernández Duro, Memorias históricas de Zamora, 1:323. Gautier-Dalché, "Islam et Chrétienté," 199-207. While less clear in the presentation of municipal activity, Alfonso VII's overall campaigning is surveyed by Recuero Astray, Alfonso VII, 137-88.

52.  "Fuero de San Cebrián," 52. "Fuero de Alesón," 33:130. "Carta puebla de San Andrés de Ambrosero," 33:135. "Donación del Emperador de los hombres del Burgo," 1:371. FCuevacardiel, 122-23. "Fuero de Oviedo, 1145(?)," Fernández-Guerra y Orbe, ed., El fuero de Avilés, 114, n. 5. For the argument in behalf of a post-1227 date for the Oviedo-Avilés charter, see Vígil, Asturias monumental, 1:277-82. "Fuero de Fresno," 6:430. "Fuero de Astudillo, 1147," 241. "Fueros de Salinas de Añana, 1148," 1:217-18. "Fuero dado a los burgueses de Sahagún, 18 diciembre, 1152," 2:71-77. "Fuero de VillaCelema," 14:562. Fuero de Allariz, 41. "Alfonso VII confirma una concordia ... de Ocaña, 1156," 17:658. "Fuero de Villavicencio, 1156," 176. "Fuero de Pajares de los Oteros," 1:374. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz has suggested the year 1143 for this undated charter, "Fuero de León," 41. Of the above charters, San Cebrián (1125), Alesón (1135), San Andrés (1136), Burgo (1140), Oviedo (1145), Fresno (1146), Salinas (1148), Villacelema (1153), Allariz (c.1153), Avilés (1155) and Pajares exempted payment of fonsadera. Villamundar (1142), Oviedo, Fresno and Villacelema exempted residents from fonsado, while Villamundar also offered the only contemporary exemption from apellido. Curiously, in addition to sharing Aragonese characteristics, Oviedo, Avilés and Sahagún also shared the place-name of Valcarcer as the geographic limit of the irrespective requirements of service. The only modern candidates for this place-name are Las Valcárceres (northeast of Burgos) and the Valcarce River, a tributary of the Sil c. 35 kilometers west of Ponferrada. Both of these locations are well north of the contemporary Tajo frontier, but the Valcarce River could suggest a need for service against the emerging Kingdom of Portugal.

53. FGuadalajara 1137, 108. "Fuero de los Balbases," 145-47. FLara, 142. FAstudillo, 241-43. "Fueros de Noceda," 270. Guadalajara, Lara (1135) and Noceda (1149) required fonsadera payment, while Balbás (1135) seems ambiguous, suggesting that some owe it, while others, possibly new residents, are exempt.

54.  "Privilegio de Madrid, 1122," 214-15. Carlos de Lecea y García, La communidad y tierra de Segovia, 31-33. "Privilegio del Emperador don Alfonso VII, delimitando las tierras de los concejos de Âvila y Talavera, 1152," 13-15, 53-54. FP, 156. Sacristán, Municipalidades, 291.

55. FGuimarães, 1:2. The confirmation of this charter in 1128 by Afonso I also includes an exemption from the non-service fossadeira tax. "Foral outorgado a Constantim de Panóias, 1096," 1:5. "Foral outorgado aos habitantes de Ferreira-de-Aves," 1:48-49. "(Foral de) Cernancelhe, 1124," 1:364. "Foral de Seia, 1136," 1:177. "Confirmação dos foros de Ansiães," 1:188. "D. Afonso Henriques dá carta de foral aos habitantes de Leiria, 1142," 1:234. "Carta de privilégio de Santa Cruz de Coimbra," 1:266. "Carta de foral concedida aos povoadores de Mesão-Frio, 1152," 1:290. "Carta de foral concedida aos moradores do Banho," 1:293. "Carta de foral concedida aos moradores de Sintra, 1154," 1:301. "Foral outorgado aos povoadores de Freixo, 1155-57," 1:311-12.

56.  "Carta de foral concedida a Azurara da Beira, 1109-12," 1:18. "Carta de foral outorgada aos moradores de Sátão, 1111," 1:30. "Foral concedido aos povoadores de Tavares, 1112," 1:35. FFerreira, 1:48-49. "Foral de Viseu, 1123," 1:82. FCernancelhe, 1:363. FLeiria, 1:234. "Carta a favor dos moradores de Arouce (Louzã)," 1:287. FSintra, 1:301. The four forais citing the booty fifth are: "Foral concedido aos habitantes de Coimbra, 1111," 1:32. "Foral outorgado aos habitantes de Soure, 1111," 1:33. FNumão, 1:368-69. FSintra, 1:301.

57.  "Chronica Gothorum," 26-27.

58. FNumão, 1:368. "Carta a favor dos moradores de Penela, 1137," 1:193.

59.  "(Foral de) Miranda da Beira, 1136," 1:373-74. FLouã~, 1:287. FSintra, 1:301.

60. FSeia, 1:177-78. FSintra, 1:301. FFreixo, 1:309-12. The only other Portuguese charter to suggest Seia's May assembly is Fonte-Arcada. "(Foral de) Fonte-Arcada, 1193," 1:486.

61.  "Annales D. Alfonsi Portugallensium regis," 157-58. This is the newest edition of that part of the Chronica Gothorum which deals with the reign of Afonso I Henriques. The brief chronicle which describes the taking of Santarém also fails to mention any participation by militias from the towns in 1147. "De expugnatione Scalabis," 93-95. See also Ayres de Magalhães Sepúlveda, Historia do exército portuguêz, 4:69-98.

62. Lourie, "The Will of Alfonso I," 50:635-5l.

63.  "Fuero de Peralta," 546, 549. "Fuero de Yanguas, 1145," 4:83-84. "Fuero de Olite," 57.

64.  "Las franquicias de Huesca, 1134," 135. "Privilegio concedido á los vecinos de Uncastillo," 4:50. "Privilegio del Rey de Aragón D. Ramiro el Monge por el cual confirma y adiciona de los fueros de Jaca, (1134-37)," 129-34. "Alfonso VII confirma los fueros y usos de los infanzones y barones de Aragón, 1134," 93-94.

65.  "El fuero de San Estebán de Luesia," 591. "Fuero de Cetina," 24:591. "Fuero de Daroca, 1142," 362-63, 366-67. Lacarra, "Notas," 10:241-46.

66. El fuero de Molina de Aragón, 64-65, 72, 83-85, 9l, 128. Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 119-21.

67. FMolina, 77. Pérez Prendes, "El orígen de los caballeros de cuantía," 9:142-43.

68.  Yusuf, son of Samuel Ibn-Nagrilla, account of 1042 campaign against Lorca by Nagrilla, and including "Frankish" Catalan mercenaries; Divan Shemuel ha-nagid, 39, No. 10. I am indebted to Professor Norman Roth of the University of Wisconsin for the preceding reference. Al-Idrìsì, Geografía, 80-83. Lévi-Provençal, Péninsule, 128, 153-54, 209.

69.  "Concesión del castillo de Albiñana con sus términos," 1:40. "Carta de franquicias otorgada a los habitantes de Castelló, 1085," 1:68. "Ramon Berenguer III dona la ciudad y territorio de Tarragona al obispo de Barcelona, San Olegarío, para restaurarla y poblarla," Doc. 2. "Carta de población concedida a los habitantes de Almenar, 1147," 1:106. "Carta donationis quam fecit Bernardus, Tarraconensis archiepiscopus, venerabili Raimundo, comiti Barcinonensi, super civitate Tarraconae, 1151," 1:262. García-Gallo, "Aportación," 443-44.

70.  Sacristán, Municipalidades, 291. Almirante, Bosquejo de la historia militar, 1:134-35. González, Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII, 1:880. Gautier-Dalché, "Islam et Chrétienté," 191-204. Gautier-Dalché, Historia urbana, 20-34.