THE ROLE OF MERCENARY TROOPS IN SPAIN IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY: THE CIVIL WAR

摘要

The civil war that the legitimate monarch, Pedro I of Castile (1350-69), faced against his half-brother, Count Enrique of Trastamara, was a military event of extraordinary importance in the history of medieval Spain. The Iberian Peninsula was turned into a battlefield by a conflict between urban interests and the interests of the nobility but, also, by a new theatre combat derived from the Hundred Years War. As Sun Tzu wrote many centuries before and Enrique of Trastamara surely thought, a quick victory is the principal aim of war, but neither Enrique of Trastamara nor Pedro I could get such a result, so they turned to international alliances and thus mercenary troops entered into this Spanish Civil War. On the one side, the English mercenary troops of the Black Prince supported Pedro I and, on the other hand, Bertrand du Guesclin's French mercenary troops supported Enrique of Trastamara in a series of clashes that ended with Enrique's victory and the ascent to the Castilian throne of the Trastamara dynasty.