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July 16th 1212 AD Santa Elena, Spain.

In the 700's the Umayyad caliphate defeated the Visigoth kingdom and conquered almost all of Iberia with the exception of the Kingdom of Asturias. In 718 the Asturians defeated the Umayyads at the Battle of Covadonga, thus beginning a 700 year long Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula. In 1195 Alfonso VIII of the Kingdom of Castile was defeated by the Almohads, which allowed them to take many cities belonging to the Castilians. Several years later in 1211 A large Moorish army entered Iberia and conquered territory belonging to the Christian kingdoms. The Moors became a significant threat to Europe with their victories that Pope Innocent III called a Crusade on the Moorish kingdoms. In the spring of 1212 the Crusader army arrived at Toledo and set out from there. After wining small victories at Moorish castles on the way to their target, the Crusader army of 50k reached the Sierra Morena mountains.

Unsure what to do to get through the mountains, the army camped out until a local shepherd named Martín Alhaja approached King Alfonso(who was in charge of the coalition Crusader army) and offered to guide the army through the mountains. Alfonso granted Martín the hereditary title of Cabeza de Vaca for guiding the army through the mountains. The Crusaders and Moors met on a plain known as Las Navas de Tolosa. The Crusaders had 50k men and the Moors had 70k, but only around half of the Moorish troops had been readied for battle. The Crusaders deployed their forces at the bottom of a hill, with the Moors deploying at the top, with Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir having a fortified camp built at the back of his battle line.

The Moors made the first move and Moorish cavalry charged the Crusader lines and initially pushed the Crusaders back somewhat, but were stopped when Crusader knights counter-charged and pushed the Moors back. The Crusader center then attacked the Moorish center and initially had success, but when the Moorish reserves joined the battle the Crusader center was pushed back significantly. King Alfonso was afraid that his line was going to collapse so he joined the battle with his personal retinue of knights to try and turn things around. While the fighting was going on King Sancho VII of Navarre led his retinue of knights between the left and center battle lines and noticed that the Moorish camp was not well guarded. Sancho's knights charged the camp and quickly overwhelmed the guards. The shock of the charge caused Muhammad al-Nasir to panic and flee the battle and after seeing the the caliph's battle standard going away from the battle, the rest of the Moorish army broke and routed. The Crusaders then chased the Moors and killed or captured the majority of them. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, marked a turning point in the Reconquista, in which the Moors did not attempt to invade the Christian Kingdoms again and gradually lost territory to them, until their final defeat in 1492.

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