Siege of Lisbon (1147)

Over the summer and autumn of 1147, King Afonso I of Portugal, helped by a fleet of northern European crusaders who had stopped on their way to the Holy Land, besieged the Muslim-held city of Lisbon. After nearly four months the starving city surrendered, and on 25 October the besiegers entered it. The conquest gave the young Portuguese kingdom its future capital and was one of the few clear successes connected with the Second Crusade.

The fall of the crusader county of Edessa in 1144 prompted Pope Eugene III to proclaim a new crusade over 1145 and 1146, and by spring 1147 he had also approved crusading against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula, part of the long Christian advance traditionally dated back to the Battle of Covadonga in 722.

In May 1147 a fleet left Dartmouth in the Kingdom of England, carrying crusaders from England, Scotland, Flanders, Frisia, France and parts of Germany. No king or great prince led them; they were mostly townsmen bound by a sworn association, with captains such as Hervey de Glanvill, constable of Suffolk, taking decisions jointly. The chronicler Odo of Deuil counted 164 ships, and there may have been around 200 by the time they reached Iberia. Bad weather drove them into Porto on 16 June, where the local bishop urged them to meet Afonso Henriques, who had proclaimed himself king in 1139 and had captured Santarém that March.

Afonso had already tried to use passing crusaders against Lisbon in 1142, without success, and some of the English refused to join a second attempt for that reason. Most, however, accepted his offer. Under the agreement the crusaders would keep the plunder of the city and the ransoms of prisoners before handing it over to the king, who also promised land grants and trading privileges. Hostages were exchanged to guarantee the oaths.

The siege began on 1 July. The besiegers took the surrounding districts and closed in on the walls of Lisbon, which was crowded with refugees from Santarém and other towns. The anonymous eyewitness account known as De expugnatione Lyxbonensi claims that the city held 60,000 families and its citadel 154,000 men, figures that cannot be taken at face value. Hunger grew inside the walls, and when a crusader siege tower finally reached the defences in October, the city's leaders agreed to terms.

The surrender guaranteed the lives and possessions of the Muslim garrison, but the agreement was broken as soon as the Christians entered on 25 October. The same chronicle, written from the Anglo-Norman side, blames the contingents from Cologne and Flanders for looting houses, abusing the inhabitants and killing the elderly bishop of the city, and presents the English and Normans as having stayed out of it. It describes the defeated population streaming out of the gates for several days.

Some crusaders sailed on, and some joined the Count of Barcelona in his attack on Tortosa, but most settled in Lisbon. Gilbert of Hastings was elected its bishop, an early link in the ties between England and Portugal that later grew into a lasting alliance. A later legend, at odds with the negotiated surrender, credits the nobleman Martim Moniz with dying to hold a city gate open for the attackers.

Lisbon became the capital of Portugal in 1255. The siege is seen as a turning point in Portuguese history and in the wider Reconquista, which ended in 1492.

Our 1100 map shows Lisbon still under Muslim rule, when the Almoravid dynasty controlled al-Andalus, and the 1200 map shows it inside the expanding kingdom of Portugal.