Spain Crushes Navarre at Noain: Iberian Conquest Complete

Spanish heavy cavalry crushed the last serious attempt to restore an independent Kingdom of Navarre on the fields outside Noain on June 30, 1521. A Franco-Navarrese army of roughly 12,000 troops under General André de Foix was routed by a slightly larger Spanish force commanded by the Duke of Najera and Ignacio de Loyola’s brother, suffering between 5,000 and 6,000 casualties in a battle that lasted just a few hours. Navarre had been conquered by Ferdinand of Aragon in 1512, absorbed into the Spanish crown despite centuries of independence as a buffer state between France and the Iberian kingdoms. The Navarrese royal family, the House of Albret, fled to their French territories and spent the next decade lobbying the French crown for military support to reclaim their throne. The opportunity came in 1521, when Charles V of Spain was distracted by the Revolt of the Comuneros, a civil uprising across Castile. A French-backed Navarrese force invaded in May 1521 and quickly overran most of the kingdom, including the capital Pamplona, where a Spanish garrison held the citadel. Among the defenders wounded at Pamplona was a Basque soldier named Iñigo López de Loyola, whose shattered leg and lengthy recovery led him to a religious conversion and the eventual founding of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. After Pamplona, the Franco-Navarrese army advanced into Spanish territory, overextending its supply lines. The Spanish counterattack at Noain was devastating. The Franco-Navarrese army, caught in the open after crossing the Arga River, was struck by a Spanish cavalry charge that shattered the infantry formations. Survivors fled north, but many were cut down during the retreat. The defeat ended the military campaign to restore Navarrese independence, and the kingdom remained under Spanish control. Upper Navarre was fully integrated into the Spanish state, while Lower Navarre, north of the Pyrenees, remained under the Albret dynasty and eventually became part of France when Henry of Navarre inherited the French throne in 1589.