The Battle of Aljubarrota
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Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. A.D. 1385. English and French troops fight to the death. But this is not Flanders or Picardy. It's the Heathered Moorland of Portugal. The country itself would have been different completely. It's a question of independence.

An important battlefield long thought to be lost, now archaeology is helping rescue the past and bring new light to the epic events of the Battle of Algebarotta. In this episode of the Forbidden History Podcast, we explore a fascinating story from the medieval world between the 5th and the 15th century. We're joined by Tim Sutherland, who is one of Britain's most experienced archaeologists.

He and a team of specialists try to understand medieval life by exploring the realm of the medieval dead.

We have a classic view of the storybook medieval life. We don't hear the stories about the common man trying to keep his family alive. In our stores there are hundreds if not thousands of skeletons. Archaeologically speaking we can now focus in on the medieval dead people. You're looking for clues in the skeleton all the time. You couldn't help almost look through their eyes thinking what did they see? How did they die?

The Hundred Years' War consumed other parts of medieval Europe, not just the battlefields of northern France. English and French armies continued the war in other theatres, supporting allied regimes in their own domestic struggles. A lot of people think that Hundred Years' War is about England and France, especially in this country. What they don't realise is that it incorporates other parts of Europe, including Spain and Portugal. And a lot of the Portuguese armies were

Boistered by English troops who went over there as sort of mercenaries to fight on behalf of Portugal against the Spanish. At Aljabarrota in Portugal, French knights fought here alongside troops from the Kingdom of Castile. Their opponents were King João I's army of Portugal and its English mercenary allies. It's hardly remembered in the story of the Hundred Years' War, yet for the Portuguese,

It's one of the most important events in the country's history. Oaxaca is very, very important in history because on one side you have the Portuguese nobles and the Spanish nobles. On the other side you had the English army and the Portuguese people. It was historically the end of an era and it started the discoveries and the voyages after that. The battle was a founding moment for Portugal.

King João I faced heavy odds against the much larger invading Castilian and French force. His army commander, Dom Nuno Álvares Pereira, won a decisive but costly victory in the battle and cemented Portugal's ruling dynasty for centuries to come. João Gouveia Monteiro is one of Portugal's foremost medieval scholars.

We have Portuguese in both sides in the Battle of Ols Barota. The eldest with the Castilian king and the younger sons and bastards with the Portuguese king.

Portuguese independence was a consequence of the Battle of Aljubarrota because Portugal remained as an independent country and John I of Castilla didn't manage to join the two crowns, the Portuguese crown and the Castilian crown. Aljubarrota lies amid the rolling hills 75 miles north of Lisbon.

For many years, the site of the battle was relatively untouched in a rural backwater. Over centuries, the ground hardly changed. Then, in the mid-20th century, came development. The landscape changed very quickly as building work commenced in the whole area. It seemed this important battlefield was lost forever. But over the past decade, there's been a resurgence in interest. The Battle of Aljaburrata Foundation

was formed to promote interest and learning in the events of 1385. The center was built on the site of an existing museum, and much of what remains of the surrounding battlefield was then protected and, where possible, building work halted. Portuguese researchers are now trying to find any traces that remain of the original ground on which the historical events took place.

Archaeologist Maria Castro Atayad Amaral has conducted digs on the battlefield, one of the only archaeologists ever to do so. Now she's continuing her research, spurred on by the developments in this kind of work elsewhere in Europe. Tim Sutherland is one of Europe's leading battlefield archaeologists.

His excavations at Towton Battlefield in Northern England set the bar for investigating medieval conflict and mass graves. I first heard about Al-Dabrata a long time ago. I was doing some research for another battlefield and the name popped up and I thought it was an interesting story and then of course it faded away.

Then later I met Maria at a conference. We discussed her battlefield and how it related to the work we've been doing at town. So Maria invited me down there to see if there was anything we could do to help them undertake their research work, but particularly in terms of the battlefield archaeology and how they would like to progress and future work they would like to do. Tim's in Portugal to help bring some of his experience to the study of Aljubarata.

One way of doing this is metal detecting. The technique is now well established for use as part of an archaeological survey, particularly battlefields which cover a wide area and where the finds are very fragmentary. Simon Richardson is one of Britain's most experienced archaeological metal detectors. He and Tim have worked together for decades on battlefields and historical sites around the world.

I've been working with Simon for a long time now, possibly too long, I don't know. We could almost read each other's minds in terms of we knew which parts of the battlefield were probably productive, how we'd like to work and hopefully what we'd find. And of course, I trust Simon implicitly in terms of how he would work in that landscape. So all I do is we discuss it briefly and then Simon goes off. And if anybody's going to find it, I think Simon would do.

And that's the sort of confidence I have in his capabilities as a metal detectorist. Before they head north, Maria takes Tim and Simon to see medieval artifacts found from around the same period as Aljaburrata. Lisbon's Military Museum houses an amazing medieval collection. Finds from the Battle of Aljaburrata are extremely rare. Few, if any, can be definitely provenanced.

So they can only be seen as a rough guide to the kind of artefacts that might still remain to be found. So maybe this is a nobleman's spur and this is not. Fragments like this you can actually recognise quite easily, and even the end. They're very distinctive. Simon has detected finds as elaborate as these back in England. The arrowheads I've found are 350 and spurs, five.

One relic the museum holds would be a sensational find on any medieval battlefield. This is a really heavy spear point, isn't it? Yeah, and it's significant that if that's in the battle, then obviously there are really good contexts in which iron is preserved, because for that to last several hundred years is really significant. If we found anything like that on the battlefield, we'd be... It will be the first time. So that's what we're looking for. We'll try our best.

but they'll be lucky to recover artifacts like these after so many years. The battle was fought in the height of the Iberian summer, when the soil was hard and dry, so items dropped won't have sunk into the mud where they might have been hidden from view. The victorious Portuguese army is known to have stayed on the field for three days and nights after the battle, so most things of value or practical use were probably collected immediately.

The steep valley sides of the plateau of Algebarata made it an ideal defensive position, chosen by the commander of King João's Portuguese army, Nuno Álvares Pereira. Pereira knew the invading Castilians and French were heading for Lisbon, and their route would take them via the main road up on the Algebarata plateau.

His plan was to block the enemy with a road climbing the steep rise and it would be impossible for them to attack him effectively. It worked, and the invaders were left with no alternative but to march all day in the burning sun to find another way onto the plateau. Anticipating this, Pereira turned his army about and moved into a second position, there to await the Castilians and French.

No one knows exactly where the battle was fought, and modern development has changed the terrain surface. What is known is the position of Pereira's command post. Just nine years after the battle, a chapel was built on the small knoll where he set his standard. The tiny hamlet that grew around it was named, like the chapel, for the chosen saint of the Portuguese as well as English soldiers. Ah, St. George.

The patron saint of England is St. George, so we're really used to the St. George's flag. And obviously he was a military saint as well. He's always seen as a knight in England especially. It was near the St. George Chapel that in 1958 archaeologists made an amazing discovery: human bones had been found from time to time on the surface for many years.

And so Portuguese army officer and archaeologist Alphonse do Paço conducted excavations. He found a large pit, probably an ossuary, where many bones had been collected and buried years, decades or even centuries after the battle.

The digs were large-scale, but very few artifacts were found which could be related to the battle. Archaeological techniques were less well-developed, and they either missed smaller items, or it's possible they've since been lost. So Maria has to begin again from scratch. An advanced archaeological metal detector survey has never been attempted here. She shows Tim and Simon the battlefield, so with their experience, they can work out the best place to begin.

This is quite a prominent little knoll, almost a circular piece of high ground isn't it? Very steep behind, steep drop-offs on either side. It doesn't look to me a very big piece of land not to get the whole

Portuguese army on, so obviously they must have fought forward of this position. The chapel was built in the place of the vanguard, of the headquarters if you like. The conditions look quite favourable. The ground is grassy but it's quite flat and it's not too thick, so that's good for the metal detector. And the fact that the ground's damp, that's really good as well. One, it's a lot easier to dig, but secondly it helps the machine. So if the ground's damp, you can find things deeper

and smaller, it makes it more sensitive. We don't want it too wet, but these conditions are about perfect, I'd say. Further away from the chapel, they can be reasonably sure, would have been closer to the main contact areas during the fighting. I still think we're too close to where the vanguard was, to where the Portuguese headquarters was. It would have been ground, soldiers would have gone out,

over and come back over so maybe things have been lost as they've done that. If you could find one or two arrowheads here it'd be fantastic. Maybe arrowheads came in but I think the centre of the battlefield would have been a bit further away. There's not enough room here I don't think to have the Portuguese. No, it's still a little bit too close. A thousand feet north of the chapel is a plot of land that's been reclaimed by the Foundation. Tim and Simon get to work. The signs aren't good

The ground is tough. It's very hard. It's very, very contaminated. And at the moment, it looks like it's been built on. It's been had refuse dumped on it and all sorts of stuff. So I think there's probably stuff here. But if it is, it's really deeply buried and there's an awful lot of contamination over the top of it. When it's as hard as this, it's unbelievably hard digging. This isn't going to be a straightforward survey for Simon.

But Tim and Simon have been doing this a long time, and their spirits aren't that easily dented. How's it going, Tim? Yeah? Things looking brighter? What have you got now? I've got a light bulb fitting. Yeah, we're getting ring pulls off cans, bottle tops. After a fruitless day, they decide to abandon this first plot. Next morning, they move on to a second area of protected land.

As part of the survey, Maria has brought in a team of Portuguese specialists. Nuno Mbaraka is an archaeological geophysicist. This is the third GPR profile I do in this area and I can see a huge, huge anomaly in the 2D. It's really interesting because you see very large and it's quite interesting, quite good.

Again, this type of study is a first for Algebra Rata and is very comprehensive, bringing to bear magnetometry, earth resistance and ground-penetrating radar, or GPR. They've used as a starting point the 1958 survey because Maria wants to find out more about the strange features found here back then which have created controversy ever since.

Alphonse de Passau's excavation uncovered a huge network of earthworks beneath the modern surface. Many trenches with rows of pits in them ran at various angles across the battlefield, seeming to radiate forward from the Portuguese front line near the chapel. It seemed that these were the remains of the innovative defenses used by Pereira against the Castilians and French. They're described in the surviving chronicles of the battle.

When I read and I read it many, many times, the account of Froissart, the main tactical goal was to create a kind of bottleneck. I mean, funneling the attack of the Castilian army with the organization of some artificial obstacles, such as pits, trenches and ditches and piling up of trees and so.

Despite the heavy rain, Nuno's survey is going well. But in this case, as we have so many structures, so many things, so... And quite deeply buried structures as well in terms of the pits and the trenches. As you can see, these anomalies here are found at 1.5 meters. You can find some anomalies, some perpendicular structures,

in the field that are not related to houses. For example, the road is on this side and on this side and it's not normal to see perpendicular structures that are not aligned to the road. So probably this is man-made but not any kind of house or nothing like that. So I presume what we're seeing here now is a lot of

Maria will have to wait for a future dig to confirm Nuno's findings.

The structures are hidden deep below the surface, perhaps the only evidence of the elaborate battlefield fortifications developed by the English in the 14th century, then brought here to aid the Portuguese. At the Foundation, Tim and Simon take a break from surveying to check out the previous work done at Aljaburrota.

It's head trauma, it's point force trauma, isn't it? Yeah, I'm not convinced there are probably crossbow bolts. No, there could be a bit of both. On a few of the bones found during the 1958 excavations, trauma marks clearly indicate conflict-related injuries, very similar to wounds they've seen elsewhere. We've seen a lot like this, haven't we? Yeah, it's very similar to the work at Towton.

and the stab wounds or the arrowhead wounds or whatever they are, the knife wounds, and also the visbe, obviously. There are quite a few of the examples of these now, so this is fantastic. There are many parallels here with Tim and Simon's groundbreaking work at Towton Battlefield in England. There, alongside osteologist Malin Holst, they found a mass grave from the medieval battle which had been emptied of most of its skeletons.

But here at Algebra Rotter, it's a different story. What I find interesting about Algebra Rotter is that there are direct parallels with our work at Towton. At Towton, on the battlefield, we knew there was a mass grave. When we finally found it, we found it had been excavated

sometime in the medieval period, and it'd be the long bones that had been removed. So at Algebrotto we've got the opposite of what we've got at town. We've got the long bones, we've got the skulls, and they've been put into an ossuary or a pit in the consecrated ground at the chapel. What we don't have are the mass graves. The bones in the foundation are just a small sample of those found in the ossuary by the chapel.

The others are an hour's drive away. So next day, while Tim heads north, Simon returns to the battlefield where he's decided to change tactics. I'm going to try this tree-line area today. We did a sample survey in this field and we've turned up nothing but 30-year-old junk. It's totally contaminated to a depth of about a foot and a half. I think those trees are about 30 years old and I think probably the contamination will stop at the trees.

The trees are on the extreme left flank of the Portuguese army and I probably saw a little action but there's still the chance there's the odd crossbow quarrel gone into there. Maybe people ran through that way to escape and bits and pieces have dropped off, they've lost pieces on the way. So I think that's our best chance.

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Coimbra is a university town 40 miles from Aljaburota. Here to show Tim the bones is one of Portugal's leading forensic anthropologists. I'm Eugénia Cunha, I'm a full professor at Coimbra University and I've been working with human bones over the last 30 years. What really gets me is that bones are really the most authentic witness of our past.

And if we are able to read all the information that is kept in the bones, because it's like an hardware in a software, you have to find the right software to open the hardware. And so bones are a bridge to archaeology, because we will reconstruct life and death on the basis of bones. In 1958, osteology was less developed than it is today.

The bones were analyzed according to the techniques prevalent at the time. But then they were stored away for decades, all but forgotten. At that time it was completely different. There was the very classical physical anthropology, which was much more linked with, for instance, cardiometry, measuring, and so on. Then I was lucky because I studied in here biology, and in 1986 I started working in here as a teaching assistant.

and I came across those bones immediately. And so I thought, I have to reanalyze them. And we were able to study the huge amount of 3,000 bones or fragments of bones. With a team from the university, Eugenia revisited the bones using modern techniques. It was a huge undertaking.

So you see the labels in here are esbarrota. They are all together, mixed completely, and for studying them we separated by left and right femurs, left and right humerus and so on. This is the place where they are since the 50s. The 3,000 or so bones here are classified as secondary depositions. They were moved into the ossuary pit by the chapel, from wherever they had lain since the battle.

in the open air on the moorland. So you've got lots of different types of bones, but I presume these are from a multiple number of individuals. So how do you know how many people were actually killed or represented by the bones that were killed? Because we were able to separate all kinds of bones, almost 3,000 bones or fragments of bones, they could correspond to a minimal number of 414 individuals. So you've positively identified 414 individuals

Yes, obviously. In reality, there are an awful lot more.

And so apparently there was approximately 6,000 people killed. If we think about it, I think the reasonable thing is that they opened other mass graves and they put other bodies in their place. So that's what I think it's worthwhile to keep going and try to find some more. 414 individuals for certain. In total, probably many more. Perhaps the current survey will help identify future sites for excavations.

and aid the attempts to find the remaining mass graves. The bones were radiocarbon dated to approximately the time of the battle, and clearly these weren't the bones of everyday civilians. They only have included male, male individuals, no females, no kids. This is quite important. This is not a natural population, this is a select population. They were strong, they were robust, which is in accordance with being soldiers.

But it's the physical evidence of injuries that link the bones most conclusively with the battle. There are no two individuals alike. There are no two bones alike, you know. So there is always something different that I can tell. And from my information, there is a take a look, a macroscopic look, and then a magnifying glass look, and then a microscopic look, and then more and more. And that is really motivating me.

Of the thousands of dead, most were Castilians or their French allies. It's likely their bodies were left unburied for so long by the Portuguese locals. You have like tiny fragments like this one and then you see that detail in there? It's still got metal in it. Metal in there. You see the metal in there?

It's amazing how it can be in there still. It doesn't go through? So it's just stuck in the surface? No, no, just touch, it didn't perforate, yes. It's not a perforating lesion. So these are either arrow wounds or stab wounds or something? Something that's penetrated the surface of the skull? Yes, absolutely. Can you see the cut in there? Like that. Yeah, so that's something like a sword blow? Or a knife cut or something? Like that. You see that? Perforating in there. Oh, that one's gone through? Yeah.

And we did a frequency of the traumatic injuries and a lot of them were reached in the occipital. And some of them definitely were not protecting the head. From the chronicles, it's known that many of the French knights who attacked the Portuguese in the first wave were captured, then executed during the battle. Could these be their remains? So according to some of the chronicles, some of the prisoners that were taken during the middle of the battle were actually executed.

Is there any evidence of that? Yes, if you take into account that a perimarty injury in the occipital bone, it's absolutely in accordance with execution. We have to be aware that this is the strongest bone we have. The occipital bone and then the temporal bone is very thick, as you can see. So it's not that easy to kill, but they did it. The familiar evidence of suffering and death on the medieval battlefield.

So in terms of this material, it's very similar to the type of skeletal material and the evidence of trauma that we've been getting from the Battle of Towton from 1461 because although it's 100 years later approximately, it's very similar weapon trauma because they're basically using the same weapons and it's all typical of medieval conflicts and we're now accumulating quite a lot of evidence

to actually analyze medieval conflict on a personal level rather than at a historical, general level. Eugenia's work on the bones shows what might be possible if more ossuaries or mass graves are ever found at Algebarata. The battlefield survey is a step in that direction. And while Tim has been away, back on the battlefield, Simon has at last had some success.

He's searched methodically all day in the wooded area on the edge of the plateau, beyond the contaminated soil.

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On the 14th of August, 1385, this was the Portuguese left flank. Towards the battle's climax, the Castilians and the remaining French broke through Pereira's defenses near the center. It was savage close-quarter fighting, with both sides long past taking prisoners. As the Portuguese finally won victory, night fell almost immediately and any pursuit of the broken Castilians and French was forbidden.

The English troops in particular were angry at missing out on the chance of plunder, but Pereira knew his men would be vulnerable to counterattack if he let them loose in the darkness. He held his ground while the defeated, many of them wounded, escaped while they could from the plateau, perhaps over the ground where Simon searched.

I had quite a successful morning. I thought yesterday that the contamination will stop at the trees and the ground in the trees will be okay. Yeah. And that's proved correct. Fantastic. So within the trees, on the slope, the ground seems to be original. Right. So there's not the same amount of rubbish as you'd be finding everywhere else? No, there's hardly any. Well, there's no silver foil.

There's no toothpaste tubes and hand cream jars in there. - And bottle tops and this, that and the other. - Nothing. - Fantastic, well that's really good news. - But we have had some reasonable finds. Well this is one of the first things I found was a little medallion. - Medallion, yes. - That's very nice. - And it has a head on both sides. I don't know if it's sort of church related or whether it's a commemorative.

but it's quite early. Quite distinctive isn't it? It's quite distinctive because the border is offset, it's not been struck brilliantly. Do you think this has been hammered rather than cast? Yeah I think it's been stamped. Oh really? That looks really... I mean if I found that in England I'd be thinking English Civil War, 1650s, 1680s, something in that area but I'm not so sure in Portugal whether it'd relate to that period.

It's not easy to tell whether the medallion is medieval, but for sure these finds are the oldest of the survey so far. Now, very close to the medallion I found a ring. But again, it's quite early. Oh. It's a little, it's a lady's ring. It's a copper band where it has in silver a castle turret.

a tower fastened on the top. That's very nice this one. Yeah so I think that's quite early as well. I mean rings vary so much. I mean in the medieval period you can get plain copper bands, you can get them with things brazed on the top which that has. That's a little silver tower. That's very dainty though isn't it? Very very slender. Yeah I mean some of them were. I mean that may be.

Wow. Quite early. Well, that's nice. Can't say it's medieval. I can't really say, but it is early. It's going in the right direction. That's really nice. I like that. Really nice. The ring seems to be a type known as a gimel, or kladoch ring. They date back at least as far as the 14th century. I thought you'd only found one thing. No. Me too. So I think this may be a jetten. You see a shield and a crown on the top.

I mean, it's not in fantastic condition. Yeah. Not by far. You're thinking it's not a coin? It's like a coin. It's called a jetton. Jettons were tokens used for counting or in gambling games, common in medieval France or England. Soldiers gambled, and both French and Englishmen were here in 1385. I think there may be a big shield on that side with a crown on top, and there's lettering

around the edges. But also, there's a border with a writing in, what we call the legend, that's offset. So again, that is stamped. Simon saves his best find till last. Now this is the best find, Maria. I think you'll be very pleased with this. Because I am 100% certain this came from the battle. It's in two bags. Wait for it, wait for it. This one you can display in your visitor centre. Maria's been waiting a long time for this. Yes. So have I.

Three days. You're not the only one. Yeah. Oh, that looks nice. Whoa! That looks very nice. Yes. Again, is it a leather stud? Yeah, it's a leather stud. The stud or fitting is bronze and of a type used on soldiers' belts or other leather equipment. It's definitely medieval and military, dropped by a knight or man-at-arms here more than six centuries ago. Let's see how thick the leather was. Yes.

Yeah you can tell how thick the leather was from the the way the studs are bent at the back. It's cast which makes it older. If it was more modern it'd be pressed but it's not that, it's cast. I mean it's not crude but it's in a way, see the border, it varies in diameter, it wavers, it comes in and out. There's a little casting hole, a little blow hole in the metal right in the centre so it's not modern.

You can tell by the field, by the way it's been cast. I would say 100% that is definitely medieval. And in that position there on the Portuguese left flank, it's definitely from the battle. I'm very happy to have found it. I just wish I could have found more. I'm very pleased that we've sort of worked out where the best area was and it proved out to be the best place. And I'm very happy too and thank you very much. You're very welcome.

The results have been extremely good for the survey. From long experience, Tim and Simon know just how rare it is to make finds like these for the first time on a medieval battlefield. But when Tim looks at the plot where Simon was detecting, he realizes the discoveries are even more significant than even he first thought.

What we can see here obviously is the battlefield. It's an aerial view of the battlefield. There's the chapel. There's the extent of where we've been working. There's all the tree line, which is important. And so it should be all the areas you've been metal detecting. What's important though obviously is we go down, if we zoom into this area here, what I initially thought was an area that's been excavated and it's just beyond it. What's really interesting is that where you've been finding these artefacts,

it's in an area that's not been excavated.

Well we thought that with the ground conditions, it was undisturbed. Yeah, it looked so different and so it's paid off by going into new ground where nobody's been excavating, nobody's been dumping material, you've actually got evidence that's relevant to what happened a long time ago rather than what's been happening over the last 10, 20, 30 years. And that's just a small little window in all that landscape isn't it? It's amazing how small the area is that you've managed to find that's not...

been reworked before one way or another and even in that just that small area which is literally a few meters wide you've managed to find a few artifacts imagine what we could have found in the rest of the field if it hadn't been trashed it's such a shame because the whole battlefield presumably at one time had the same amount of information over the whole of it

The legacy of Pereira's triumph still towers over the Portuguese landscape. Just a stone's throw from the battlefield, the Monastery of Batalha was begun in 1386, in thanks to the Virgin Mary for the victory at Algebarota. It's among the most impressive medieval buildings in Europe. I mean, we're impressed. We're pretty blown away. Imagine what they must have felt like. Medieval times, living in a little house made of straw and mud and

and timber, and you come and you see something like this. It's just everywhere, isn't it? It's just absolutely everywhere. Just look at one piece and it leaves your eyes to take to something else. Obviously this is the old medieval church, but we're getting this slightly later. And this is obviously when they're starting to have made it. This is when Portugal is on the way up. And they're trying to show it, and I think they've managed to succeed, haven't they? It's really impressive. This is huge.

The Portuguese truly entered the world stage in the years after Aljubarata. With the Age of Discovery, they led the way in exploration across the globe. At the monastery's heart lies the tomb of King João I and his English queen, Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt. The Treaty of Windsor, signed in 1386 between England and Portugal, remains the oldest alliance in world history.

Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you liked this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you.

And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out Where Did Everyone Go? Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind forgotten places. Available now on your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.