The Lost Battle Of Fanal Forest

Few things remain of the ancient battle that took place in ancient times in the Fanal Forest. The events narrated in some mysterious manuscripts, most of which have been lost over time, are now remembered only through the stories told to children by the elderly inhabitants of Madeira on cold winter days, handed down by their fathers’ fathers from ancient times, and in the plaintive songs of women working in the fields.
Equally difficult is resurrecting the ancient legends and memories that are now fixed forever in nature and in the very conformation of the forest.
The vestiges of the dramas that occurred during the ancient battles that took place have always resurfaced from the Fanal forest, which, as an everlasting reminder of those deaths and sufferings, is periodically covered by a mist that shrouds with a piteous veil the suffering engraved in the wood and vegetation of this ancient place.

The story is told of the valiant Captain Merguijl who, at the head of his army, fought valiantly at the cost of his own life and who, after desolately observing at the foot of a centuries-old tree the defeat of his army, overwhelmed in number but not in valor by the Portuguese army, surrendered himself to death so as not to fall into the hands of the enemy

The entire battlefield was covered with the remains of the creatures used in the course of the battle, dragons, armored horses, and other strange animals whose memory was lost

A heinous fate also cut short the life of the knight Crucijffex, who was nailed still alive to the trunk of a tree and left there to die while the battle still raged on the plateau next to the forest.

The Portuguese army spared no atrocities to the defeated soldiers, leaving them to die heedlessly, like the brave soldier Ackgonijzzan, next to a tree that relieved his sufferings with its shadow.

One still remembers the strange destiny of the soldier Dormijiels who, unconscious from the blows he received, was killed by soldiers on horseback and lay forever under a tree, as if to give the idea that he had fallen asleep during the raging battle.

And nature still remembers the moment when the infantryman Mijltianus lost his life killed by multiple arrows that struck him in the chest, suddenly, as, launched into attack, he took part to what he thought would be the overwhelming advance of his army. Since then, the moment forever carved in wood seems to constitute a locus classicus, appearing one way or another in the  images of modern war reporters (cfr. R. Capa for instance, here)

And, as if to terrible but perfect closure, the forest gives us the image of the end of the battle and the eternal resting place of the defeated, effectively represented by the death of the royal deer Deerjekt, killed and almost completely submerged in the pond at the edge of the forest, almost as an everlasting reminder of the transience of life and the unrelenting horror of war

But these are only the last surviving memories and relics of an ancient, lost but not forgotten, tragedy of old times, the Lost Battle of Fanal Forest.