Military history of Spain
The military history of Spain, from the period of the Carthaginian conquests over the Phoenicians to the former Afghan War spans a period of more than 2200 years, and includes the history of battles fought in the territory of modern Spain, as well as her former and current overseas possessions and territories, and the military history of the people of Spain, regardless of geography.
Spain's early military history emerged from her location on the western fringes of the Mediterranean, a base for attacks between Rome and Carthage. With the fall of the Roman Empire, Spain was devastated by successive barbarian invasions, with stability only gradually appearing with the later years of the Visigothic kingdom. The early Middle Ages for Spain saw the country forming the front line in a battle between Christian and Islamic forces in the Mediterranean; the Conquista and Reconquista took centuries to reach a military resolution. The period from 1492, when the Reconquista was completed and the Spanish colonization of the Americas began, to the late 17th century is known as the Spanish Golden Age. Spain acquired a vast empire by defeating the centralised states of the Americas, and colonising the Philippines. Her tercio units, backed by imperial gold and silver, were involved in most of the major wars of the period. It was not until the years after the Thirty Years' War that Spanish military power began to fade; even then, supported by a reinvigorated navy, Spain remained a major military power throughout the 18th century, in competition with Britain and France on the global stage.
The Napoleonic Wars changed Spanish military history dramatically; the Peninsular War saw the development of guerrilla warfare against the occupying French forces. The collapse of central Spanish authority resulted in successful wars of independence amongst Spain's American colonies, drastically reducing the size of her empire, and in turn led to a sequence of civil wars in Spain itself, many fought by frustrated veterans of the French and colonial campaigns. Attempts to reassert imperial power during the mid-19th century, enabled by the development of the steam frigate ultimately failed, leading to the collapse of the remnants of Spain's empire in the Americas and Asia in 1898 at the hands of a rising power, the United States of America. The political tensions that had driven the Carlist Wars remained unchecked, spilling over once again in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39. Bringing a foretaste of the tactics of the Second World War, several nations used the conflict as a testing ground for new aerial and armoured warfare tactics. In the post-war period, Spain has increasingly turned away from the last remaining colonial conflicts in Africa, and played a growing modern military role within the context of the NATO alliance.
Ancient Spain from Carthaginian influence to Roman rule
In the classical period, Spain was a mix of Celtic and Iberian tribal states, and Greek and Phoenician trading ports, with the largest state being the kingdom of Tartessus. With the eruption of war between Carthage, a Phoenician colony in North Africa and the Greeks, the Carthaginians begin extending their influence in Iberia, creating the city of New Carthage, in hopes of creating a trading empire. Following the First Punic War with Rome, in 237 BC, Hamilcar Barca, the famous Carthaginian general, then began the conquest of Turdetania and Gades to provide a springboard for further attacks on Rome. Hamilcar entrusted the conquest and military governance of the region to his son Hasdrubal the Fair – his other son, Hannibal, would march his troops across Hispania with elephants to lead them on Rome in the Second Punic War. During that war, Rome declared Hispania to be a Roman provincia in 218 BC, beginning a century-long campaign to subdue the people of Iberia to Roman.File:05 colonna traiana da sud 01.jpg|thumb|right|240px|Relief from Trajan's Column, depicting the Hispanic-born Emperor's military successes.
After the expulsion of the Carthaginians from Hispania in the Second and Third Punic Wars, Rome attempted to subdue the native tribes. In the northeasterly province of Hispania Citerior, the Celtiberian Wars occupied Roman forces for the better part of the 2nd century. In Hispania Ulterior, the Lusitanian War did the same. The resistance of the Lusitani under Viriathus became legendary across the Empire. In the troubled final years of the Republic, Quintus Sertorius held most of Iberia as a de facto independent sovereign against the partisans of Sulla. His attitude towards the natives and his military reforms – he was a partisan of Marius – secured him the loyalty of the populace and the army and his general success until his assassination. The Spanish era, a dating system predominant in Iberia until the close of the Middle Ages, began in 38 BC. The last region of Hispania to be subjected was the northwest, finally being conquered in the Cantabrian Wars, which ended in 19 BC.
Under Roman rule, Hispania contributed, like the rest of empire, to the Roman military, providing auxiliary forces, in particular alae cavalry, and later legionaries,. Hispania also shaped Roman military affairs more subtely. The original Roman Gladius, the Gladius Hispaniensis, stemmed directly from the Celtiberian infantry sword used in Carthaginian Spain; this would form the basis of the Roman weapon for several centuries. Some of Rome's most famous military Emperors, including Trajan, Hadrian and Theodosius, were born in Hispania.
The fall of the western Roman empire and barbarian invasions
During the 3rd through 6th centuries, the Roman Empire was beset by numerous barbarian invaders, mostly Germanic, who migrated through its borders and began warring and settling in its territories. While the Vandals and Alans were fighting each other for supremacy in southern Gaul, the confederation of the Suevi crossed the Pyrenees and passing through Vasconia, entered Gallaecia in 409. The Vandals soon followed the Suevi example, with the Alans close behind. The Alans settled in Lusitania and Carthaginiensis and the Siling Vandals in Baetica, while the Asding Vandals vied with the Suevi for Gallaecia. The Visigoths crossed the Pyrenees to expand their kingdom in 416. They pushed the Vandals and Alans south, defeating and killing the Alan king Attaces in 426 and forcing the two tribes to amalgamate and retreat across the Straits of Gibraltar into Africa. For almost thirty years, Spain was the location for vicious tribal conflicts.The first barbarians to settle were the Suevi, whose king Hermeric, a former foederatus of Rome, ratified a peace with the local Hispano-Roman population in 438. Weary of fighting, Hermeric abdicated in favour of his son Rechila. As the Visigothic kingdom expanded into Iberia, expelling the Vandals and Alans, the Suevi expanded their own realm as far south as Mérida. In 456, the new Catholic king, Rechiar, died in battle with the Visigoth king Theodoric II and the Suevi kingdom began to retreat under Gothic pressure. Beset by internal political conflict, the Suevi capitulated to the Visigoths in 585. Some resistance was maintained for a few years, but soon the last of Suevi resistance was erased.
The Visigoths consolidated a kingdom spanning most of Iberia and Gaul. For the next two centuries, they warred not only amongst themselves in a sequence of succession crises – which followed the election of a new king after every royal death, but also against the Byzantine Empire, which was trying to regain lost territory in the south, the Arian Suevi trying to preserve their hold on Gallaecia, and the Franks pushing south against them from Gaul. The Visigoth military structure was highly decentralised – the great territorial magnates, the duces, maintained their own armies, as in all the great Germanic kingdoms of Europe at the time. These armies rarely cooperated in campaigns. At the Battle of Vouillé in 507, the Franks under Clovis I wrested control of Aquitaine from the Visigoths. The Visigoths lost all of their territory north of the Pyrenees except the province of Gallia Narbonensis. The first half of the 6th century was largely a failure for the Visigoths. They failed to hold onto their Gallic possessions, they failed to oust the Suevi, and they failed to repulse the Byzantine Empire when it first endeavoured to reassert control over its Iberian provinces, taking advantage of a local rebellion. In 554, Granada and southernmost Hispania Baetica were taken from the Byzantines; under the last Arian king, Leovigild, the Suevi kingdom was annexed in 585 and the war of reconquest against the remainder of the Byzantine territories was begun, finally being completed under King Suintila in 624. The Visigoths faced no serious external threat from then on until the sudden Moorish invasion of 711.
Islamic conquest and Reconquista
For almost seven hundred years, Spain was the battleground for the opposing forces of the Islamic Caliphate and Western Christian forces. Both Muslims and Christian were motivated by religious conviction, which inspired the warfare. The initial Islamic invasion of Iberia was sudden and unexpected. The varied Moorish tribes of Morocco united under the leadership of Arab generals sent by the reigning Umayyad caliph and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711 under the leadership of the Berber Tariq ibn Ziyad. Tariq won a swift victory at the Guadalete and defeated and killed the reigning Gothic king, Roderic. In a campaign lasting eight years, the whole of Iberia was subjected to Umayyad authority, except for the Asturias mountain range in the far northwest and the pockets of resistance in Navarre. The Islamic offensive ultimately paused after the losses it suffered in Frankland and in the Asturias, where battles such as those at Tours and Covadonga showed some of the potential weaknesses of the Arab methods of warfare.File:MoorandChristianBattle.png|thumb|250px|Moorish and Christian Reconquista battle, taken from the Cantigas de Santa María
The Islamic conquest was only very slowly undone, over the course of seven centuries in what the Christians of Spain called the Reconquista. Three main forces were involved in this process, the Visigothic holdouts in the Asturias, the holdouts in Navarre and the Pyrenees, and the Franks of Aquitaine. The Reconquista, as a concerted effort to remove the Muslims from the territories they held, commenced in the reign of Alfonso I. Alfonso led an offensive into the valley of the Duero and left the region depopulated, the so-called "Desert of the Duero". For the next century, this prevented any serious Islamic incursions into the Christian territories of the north. During the late 8th and early 9th centuries, the Franks under their Carolingian rulers took up the cause of reconquest along the Mediterranean littoral. By 797, Charlemagne's son, Louis the Pious, captured Barcelona, establishing a clear bulwark against future invasions. The Basques extended their kingdom as far as Nájera, and a widespread repoblación of the depopulated areas began, extending Christian borders southwards.
Despite a resurgence during the 10th century, the Caliphate of Córdoba's attempts to reverse the Reconquista failed, and by the 11th century, Christian Iberia was united under Sancho the Great, the King of Navarre, whilst the caliphate was divided and engulfed by civil war, the period of the taifas. The 11th century saw the development of a concept of Christian holy war, to be waged against Islam with the purpose of the Christians recapturing long lost territories – the Crusade. Crusading, under other names, also took place in Spain; Franks and Normans and even Papal troops took to Spain in increasing numbers to join the locals in their fight against "the Moor." The last threat of the 11th century came in the form of the Almoravids, who with their well disciplined forces first established a hegemony over Morocco and then extended it over al-Andalus. While the Reconquista paused in the west, to the east Alfonso the Battler, the King of Aragon, redoubled efforts to retake the valley of the Ebro. In 1212, the Reconquistadores gained a decisive victory over the Almohads at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. Shortly after the battle, the Castilians took Baeza and, then, Úbeda, major fortified cities near the battlefield, and gateways to invade Andalucia. Thereafter, Ferdinand III of Castile retook Córdoba in 1236, Jaén in 1246, and Seville in 1248; then he took Arcos, Medina-Sidonia, Jerez and Cádiz, effectively bringing the bulk of the reconquista to a conclusion.