Valour and courage

Enrique of Castile (1230-1303) was a younger brother of Alfonso X, King of Castile, and hence a brother-in-law of Edward I. His career shows the importance of Anglo-Castilian relations at this time.

Arms of Enrique of Castile

In his youth, after a failed plot against Alfonso, Enrique was obliged to seek refuge in England. He arrived in 1256 and was welcomed by Henry III; in return Enrique offered to lead troops to conquer Sicily on Henry’s behalf, but this plan fell through. In 1259 Enrique left England and ended up in Africa, where he took service with the Hafsid Emir of Tunisia, Muhammad al-Mustansir. To the shock of his Christian comrades, Enrique adopted the customs and dress of the Hafsid court. A sort of medieval Laurence of Arabia.

Enrique then made his way to Italy, where he fought against Charles of Anjou at the Battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268. He was captured and taken to Apulia in Sicily, where Charles had him exhibited to the public in a cage, loaded down with iron fetters. Outraged Castilian troubadors urged Edward I to secure Charles’s release. One of them, Austorc de Segret, warned the English king that if he failed, he would forfeit the respect of the French:

“Now Edward will need valour and courage if he wants to avenge Henry, who was unparalleled in wisdom and knowledge, and he was the very best of his kin. But if he now stays shamed in this matter, the French over here will leave him neither root nor branch nor well-armed forces, if his worth is stripped of merit”.

The Battle of Tagliacozzo

Another, Cerverí de Girona, called upon Edward to avenge Don Enrique and make war on his captors. The king preferred diplomacy, and spent the next 23 years lobbying for Charles’s release. At last, in 1291, Charles II of Sicily agreed to let his elderly prisoner go. The charter of release, which is held at the archives of Napoli, states that Charles explicitly agreed to do this at Edward’s request. Enrique’s release came too late for Eleanor, who had died the previous year.

Enrique must have been tough. He had survived decades of brutal imprisonment, and went home to serve as regent of Castile. The old man was suitably appreciative of his rescuer’s efforts: when the Anglo-French war broke out in 1294, he dispatched hundreds of knights of Castile to aid the English.