Apocalypse Then: The Battle of the Three Kings

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At Ksar el-Kebir in northern Morocco an invading Portuguese army faced overwhelming odds. Their king had risked everything – an army, a dynasty and an empire – on his destiny.

Don Sebastian, the twenty-four-year-old King of Portugal, rose early on the morning of August 4, 1578. He was restless as they dressed him under the silken tent in new armor, over which was applied a leather tunic to guard against the heat of the Sun. Outside, the din of the camp was building as the army too girded for battle. On the hills facing them, the Moroccan army was also stirring. For Don Sebastian, the coming fight was the fruit of his labor and the culmination of months of personal tribulation. The victory to follow would cover him in glory he had sought all his young life.

Don Sebastian was born in Lisbon on July 20, 1554 during the reign of his grandfather, King John III. From his first day, Sebastian’s life had an ominous quality. The death of his father, eighteen days prior to his birth, left young Sebastian as the sole heir to the House of Aviz. His people regarded the fair, golden-haired infant as the salvation of the throne, which might otherwise have passed to Portugal’s eternal nemesis, Spain. Phillip II, King of Spain, was a nephew of John III and therefore a potential claimant to the Portuguese throne. When John died in 1557, a regency was formed under Don Sebastian’s great-uncle, Cardinal Henry, until 1568, when the young man, at the age of fourteen, mounted the throne as Sebastian I.[1]

The Portuguese empire he inherited was a sprawling network of forts linking together trading entrepots extending throughout the Indian Ocean, from Africa to Sumatra, and Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Brazil. Its expanse suggested a vitality that was deceptive. Portugal was a trading empire, and her power rested with her fleet. Poor in population (estimated at 1 million souls in 1580, at a time when France contained 16 million, Italy 13 million, and Spain 8 million), Portugal could not colonize its possessions. The empire clung to coastal strong points, whose security relied largely on alliances with key clans and tribes of the interior. Moreover, while the empire earned much, its wealth benefited few. The feudal social structure endured, with the king as the ultimate power of the land.[2]

The limits of Portuguese power were apparent in her struggle with Morocco. Portugal, having expelled the Moors in 1249, launched the first Iberian crusade into North Africa, capturing Ceuta in 1415. While the central reason was to secure the Moroccan littoral against the constant threat of Barbary pirates, Papal encouragement and the discovery of gold in the Maghreb fueled the effort. By 1513, the Portuguese had captured every major Moroccan port on the Atlantic coast, from Tangiers to Agadir. Spain, joining the hunt in 1494, took Melilla and other maritime cities along Morocco’s Mediterranean coast. Morocco was at the time in one of its periods of inter-dynastic turmoil. The reigning Wattasi sultans, ruling a kingdom that had shrunk to little more than Fez and its environs, preferred to compromise with the invaders. Tribal rivalries and powerful Sufi orders kept the country fragmented. And each side had its practical concerns: The Christians enriched themselves from the sea, the Muslims from Trans-Saharan caravan trade.[3]

It was a delicate balance of power. When in 1508 Portugal began interfering with the caravan trade, that balance was shattered, providing the impetus for Muslim unity. In the south, from the High Atlas Mountains, a rebellion grew as the tribes came together under Mohammed Cheikh, a leader of the Beni Saad clan. The Saadians, as they came to be called, installed themselves in Marrakech in 1525. By 1549, they had ousted the Wattasis and united Morocco.

Read Comer Plummer’s complete article at Military History Online