Tropas navarras en las contiendas europeas bajo los primeros Evreux (siglo XIV)

Abstract

The Kingdom of Navarre lives through complex and decisive processes during the 14th century that were to mark its historical future. The Evreux lineage had been installed on the throne since 1328. They were a dynasty of French princes descending from the Capetians, and thus the small kingdom was to participate with armed contingents of various sizes in the defence of the international interests of their sovereigns. These were also campaigns in which it was possible to trace the last remnants of the slow languishing of the chivalrous and crusading that had ultimately guided Phillip III’s participation in the Algeciras campaign (1343). Far from such ideals, the convulse reign of Charles II of Navarre (1349-1387) was to mark the zenith of the international protection of this small kingdom through the campaigns in Albania and, above all, its interventions in the Hundred Years War, both in its French scenario and in Castile, when this became a new scenario in the conflict. Such military actions, which were more or less successful and always complementary of an intense diplomatic activity, were not only to be the key to define the weight of the Navarran monarchs in the European context. Certain sectors of local nobility inserted in a critical situation due to the crisis in their traditional sources of income and the gradual change of fidelities of the new dynasty, were to find in armed service outside the kingdom a means of subsistence and, in certain occasions, a means of economic, political and social promotion.