Okay, I'm going to try a different tack. What if it wasn't that they won the battle... but that it was over before it started?
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"Despite the rape of his daughter, despite the assault against his dignity this presented, Julian was loyal to his King, and led his city well. A skilled negotiator and canny diplomat, it was he who presented the Umayyads with tales of the fat, complacent Visigothic kingdom of Hispania and Tolosa, even offering the use of the harbour at Ceuta as a staging post for an invasion across the Strait of the Pillars. This was far too good an offer for the caliphate to refuse, especially since they had unsuccessfully tried to conquer it. Mustering an army under Musa bin Nusayr, they sailed troop transport ships from Tangiers to Ceuta and set sail from the Abylan Bay... only for Julian to bombard the Umayyad fleet as it left the harbour, setting vessel after vessel ablaze and leaving the convoy in disarray. Furious at such deception, the Umayyads redoubled their efforts to secure Ceuta for themselves, and Julian cemented his place as a loyal vassal of Roderic. What followed was the bloodiest war of the eighth century C.E., and one of the longest, but the Visigoths emerged triumphant over this foe... but there were other problems to the north."
-- M.J. Viguera Molina, "The Visigothic settlement of the Ceutine Maghreb", p. 13-38,
The Foundation of the Ceutine. Part 1: History and Society (ed. M. Martin), Ashgate, UK, 1998 (vol. 46 of The Foundation of the Classical Islamic World series). Reviews all Arabic sources.
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"Berber influences and a distance from the capital meant that Ceuta was largely seen more as a colonial outpost than an integral core territory during the reign of the Visigoths, separated as it was from mainland Hispania by the Strait of the Pillars. This granted it a certain amount of autonomy, which, combined with moderating influences from the rest of the Rif in cities such as Tetuán, Tangier, Arcila, and Rincón, made it a rather more tolerant place of the Jewish community, particularly through the ninth and tenth centuries. These cities eventually formed a loose trading league, allowing the bounties of the local orange orchards to flow into mainland Spain in exchange for military protection from the various Muslim attempts at conquest. This in turn meant that the fortifications of those cities were built and frequently tested, but the old methods still stood firm against assault after assault, both from the Arabs and Berbers to the south and the death throes of the Visigothic Kingdom across the sea as it splintered into the patchwork of rival duchies that categorized medieval Spanish history.
"It was towards the end of the fifteenth century, however, that trouble began to brew for the Ceutine League. The kings of the Visigoths had long made it their business to drive Jews out of Hispania, and many of them had set up as traders and middlemen in the comparatively liberal and enlightened Ceutine trading ports. They enabled Ceuta to become a very wealthy city indeed, and its Jewish population (while still theoretically cordoned off in the almilla) slowly became more and more integrated into urban life, to say nothing of integral to it. Jewish advisers became common in the League cities, as did Muslim traders, albeit at a slower rate; and the distance from the mainland led the League to a very serious problem. Her name was Isabella of Castile.
"Aragon had long embargoed the Ceutine League's Jewish traders from its ports, but unbeknownst to the League (or perhaps perceived as being beneath its notice) it had been hoovering up the smaller duchies of eastern Hispania, whether by marriage or force of arms. By the late fifteenth century, it was in control of the entire east coast of Spain, with the rest of it controlled by Castile, Leon, and (after a series of rebellions) Portugal, with Pamplona and Navarra reduced to Aragonese client states. With internal pressures mounting, a solution was cooked up; a marriage between Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II, King of Aragon. It went ahead, and the old Latin name was dredged up again: Hispania. Spain, to us. The various kings and princes of the Ceutine League were very pointedly not invited.
"Isabella was a woman driven by her faith, and Ferdinand, while a capable administrator, was rather cowed by the furious strength of her intellect and ambition. With the marriage secured and her reign in place, she set out to purge ever more furiously the Jews from the homeland... and make sure they had nowhere to go. Jews began pouring into the League's cities, and with the key markets of Spain and southern Italy now rapidly closing off, the League was slowly being starved. The voyages to the comparatively moderate Portugal were extremely dangerous, as while the various corsairs of the Maghreb were bad enough for traders, the naval ambitions of a freshly-reunited Hispania made things quite amazingly worse. War was in the offing as Hispanian ships patrolled the Strait of the Pillars, and the French were increasingly reluctant to trade as well. Venetians and Savoyards and more besides were still open, and kontors of the Hanseatic League were set up in Ceuta, Rincón, and Alhucema to try and keep the money coming in, but eventually the fate of the League was sealed, and the Reconquista began... for a season.
"As soon as it began, the League marshalled every ally it could and petitioned Pope Sixtus IV for guidance. Isabella, they argued, was a she-devil of the most vicious stripe, for had she not declared what purported to be a holy war against good Christian kings and princes for the sake of coin? This was not a worshipper of God, but of Mammon, they cried, and they had an ace up their sleeve as far as persuasion went. Sixtus was a Pope widely renowned for his nepotism, and the Prince of Arcila, Pedro III de Trastamara, managed to inveigle his way into the della Rovere family and became a cardinal himself. A Papal Bull was issued denying the right of Hispania to wage war, with dire consequences if it continued: foremost among the sanctions would be the annulment of the (extremely dubious) Bull of 1464, which gave Ferdinand permission to marry within the third degree of consanguinity -- and without which, the marriage would be void. It was a chilling threat for the devout couple, and they consented.
"With this threat slowly passing, and the ports of Catholic countries (even, reluctantly, Hispania) opening up to traders seen as protected by the Vatican (earning them the soubriquet
tenderos del cielo, or "heaven's shopkeepers"), the Ceutine League entered its first golden age as a uniquely Ceutine identity began to take shape, and even through the wars with the Sultanate of Maghrib and other colonial attempts, they were seen as safe havens for the Jews of Europe..."
-- Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, Yale University, lecture given Friday 13th September, 1996.
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"In 1940, the Ceutine League -- the only place in North Africa with Judaism as a state religion -- was reformed in the face of Nazi aggression in North Africa. Gearing for war, the cities were well-defended, and Montgomery used their request to join the Allies (in rather stark contrast to the pseudo-neutrality of Francoist Spain) as the manna from heaven it undoubtedly was. With a sea trade port in the capital Ceuta, his lines were that bit more secure, and his ranks were bolstered by thousands of Jewish volunteers, eager to take the fight to the Nazi oppressors that had chased them from their homes. Lacking the facilities for tank construction, and with the QF 6-pounder still some time away from major deployment in North Africa, it was up to Coronel Levi Rebolledo of the Ceutine Jewish Auxiliaries, which rapidly became known as the
Legión de Sión (Legion of Zion) to cook up their own. The results were light tankettes that constantly harassed Nazi supply lines and acted as scouts for Montgomery in the field, but more importantly the designs attracted the attention and captured the imagination of Major-General Percy Hobart, who began to draw up plans for what became known as "Hobart's Funnies", the gallimaufry of specialist tanks and tankettes that were used to great effect by the Legion of Zion during the Sicilian campaigns of the end of the War..."
-- David Fletcher MBE,
"Forward, the Funnies!": The Anglo-Ceutine Specialist Tank Program, Schiffer, 1998.
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Ceutine League (Rodrigo VI)
Start Bias: Coastal
Capital:
Ceuta
UA:
Heaven's Shopkeepers
+1
Gold in all Cities for each different Religion with a follower in the
Capital. Naval Trade Routes have 50% longer Range and generate +7 additional
Gold per turn when sent from a City garrisoned with an Armoured Unit.
UB:
Almilla (replaces Bank)
Standard Bank bonuses, but has only one
Merchant specialist slot. However, this is ably compensated by its +3
Faith generation, the fact that it grants a +33%
Production bonus to Armoured Units after an Ideology is adopted, and that it is unlocked at Civil Service rather than Banking. Armoured Units trained in a city with an Almilla cost no Maintenance. Does not require a Market; instead, requires a Shrine.
UU:
Legion of Zion (replaces Landship)
Faster and cheaper than the Landship it replaces, the Legion of Zion is unlocked at Plastics rather than Combustion and starts with both Ambush I and the unique Promotion "Hobart's Funnies", which grants a +33%
Combat Bonus against a randomly-selected unit type. It's different every time! Upgrades to Tank but does not obsolete. Requires Oil.
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Hopefully this is okay. Jewish Ceuta? Jewish Ceuta. It am p cool. =]
P.S.: A couple of things potentially of note. Every person giving a speech here? They're an OTL historian. The only people I made up are Prince Pedro III of Arcila, Levi Rebolledo, and Rodrigo VI of Ceuta. Rodrigo (and how could I not call him that) is special because ITTL he was the first Jewish leader of the Ceutine League, and while his reign over the League was towards the end of the golden age mentioned in the
wall of text lore above, it seemed like a good fit.