| Siege of Guardamar | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part ofBattle of the Strait | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Crown of Aragon | Emirate of Granada | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Pere de Tona | Abu-l-Nuaym Ridwan | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 27 arbalist | 5,000 horsemen | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 22 dead 1,500 captives[1] | Unknown | ||||||
Thesiege of Guardamar in 1331 was one of the battles of theBattle of the Strait.
In 1306 the council ofGuardamar del Segura, which consisted of a thousand inhabitants in 1308[2] sent a letter toJames II of Aragon affirming, through captives, that whenever a raid was planned on territories of the Procuració General d'Enllà Xixona they thought of attacking Guardamar because it was the weakest point due to the conditions of the castle and the wall.
In 1329 the Granadans managed to recoverAlgeciras, and at the beginning of 1330 PopeJohn XXII three years of tithes to the kings of Aragon, Castile and Portugal with the obligation to make at least one expedition to theEmirate of Granada in which they had to go personally.[3]
In 1330, coinciding with the Castilian attack, with 500 horsemen from theKingdom of Portugal[4] on the western border, which ended with theBattle of Thebes, there was aCatalan raid on the Murcia-Andalusian border in the context of the crusade against theemirate of Granada started in 1330: with the presence of Alfons XI of Castile on the western front, the Castilian troops and Valencians tried to cause all the damage they could to the populations of the eastern part, leavingLlorca.
With the truce signed on February 19, 1331[5] the campaign of Alfonso XI of Castile ended, the Grenadians were able to concentrate their forces, consisting of two thousand five hundred men on horseback and twelve thousand on foot,[6] commanded by Abu-l-Nuaym Ridwan ibn Abd Allah on the border with theCrown of Aragon.
The Grenadians, with reinforcements from Morocco, from their base in Algeciras, took Gibraltar and Xerès.
The residents ofGuardamar del Segura, fearing the attack, asked for help from the prosecutor Guillem de Liminyana, who was inOriola, but only Pere de Tona, with twenty -and-seven crossbowmen andlancers went to the defense of the town.[1]
The Grenadians, led by Abu-l-Nuaym Ridwan, with an army of five thousand men on horseback, fifteen thousand footmen, among them five thousand crossbowmen, and some machines of war that threw fireballs,[7] entered theKingdom of Valencia by Oriola and on October 18 of 1331 the siege was established and the next day Guardamar was shot down and taken completely, twenty-two of the defending soldiers dying, and the rest, being captured with the rest of the population.[2]
The army of Abu-l-Nuaym Ridwan took 1,500 captives, and another 1,500 Moors from theElda valley, forcibly or voluntarily, by leave with them to theEmirate of Granada.[2] Some were allowed to return in the following years. Fearing that the Grenadines would attackOriola orAlicante again, the king ordered the spokesman of the royal procurator Jofré Gilabert de Cruïlles to gather all the knights and infantry of the territory in Alicante at the end of October.[7]
In 1332, Ridwan again attacked the border and in April laid siege of Elche, which he raised after cutting down the vegetable garden upon learning that Alfonso the Benign was approaching with his army.[8] After the retreat, the Grenadians, withMarinid Dynasty reinforcements besieged and take Gibraltar.[9]
Jofré Gilabert de Cruïlles, the commander of the order of Montesa Xivert Dalmau de Cruïlles, the noble and advanced don Joan Manuel and the bishop of Murcia agreed, all together, to an entry in Moorish land, which would leave Lorca again at the end of August 1333.