Siege of Tortosa (1148)

The Siege of Tortosa (1 July – 30 December 1148) was a military action of the Second Crusade (1147–49) in Spain. A multinational force under the command of Count Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona besieged the city of Tortosa (Arabic Ṭurṭūs̲h̲a), then a part of the Almoravid Emirate, for seven months before the garrison surrendered.

The campaign originated in an agreement between Barcelona and the Italian city-state of Genoa in 1146, following a Genoese raid on Almoravid territory. At the same time, the Genoese also agreed to aid the Castilians in an expedition against Almoravid Almería. Papal approval, which connected the two Spanish endeavours to the call for a second crusade to the Holy Land, was obtained the next year. Participants in the siege of Tortosa were even called "pilgrims" (peregrini) like those en route to the Holy Land.

The siege itself was a hard-fought battle. Siege engines were employed on both sides. Even after the outer walls were breached, the defenders fought in the streets to prevent the crusaders from advancing on the citadel. Eventually the citadel itself came under direct attack and the defenders asked for and received a truce of forty days before surrendering. There was no massacre and no looting, unlike during the conquest of Almería the previous year. The population, a mix of Muslims and Jews, was allowed to say, while the city itself was quickly settled by Christian colonists.

The conquest of Tortosa was a major event in the Reconquista of the Ebro Valley. Raymond Berengar IV followed it up with the conquest of Lleida on his own, without Genoese assistance or papal approval, in 1149.

The most detailed source for the siege is the short History of the Capture of Almería and Tortosa by the Genoese statesman Caffaro di Rustico. Although Caffaro was not himself an eyewitness to either siege, his work is based on the accounts of eyewitnesses. He was also the initiator of the official history of the Genoa, the Genoese Annals, in which he makes note of the sieges and remarks that they had already been "written in the books and chronicles of the Genoese ... who were witnesses and participants in [the] events". He is probably referring to his own work, which was written shortly after the events. It makes no mention of Genoa selling its share of the city in 1153.

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