At 25, he left the war council and chose the battlefield himself.

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The story

In 1385 Nuno Álvares Pereira was 25 and Portugal's constable. The war council could not agree where to fight, so on 6 August he left the camp with about 2,000 men and chose the battlefield himself. Froissart says he had ditches and wolf pits dug across a narrow plateau. On 14 August, at the hour of vespers, the French knights who charged first rode straight into them. The Castilians, several times more numerous, lost.

Next Porto gave away its meat, kept the tripe, and got a nickname.— The Tripe-Eaters of Porto

Context

After the victory, Nuno gave most of his wealth to his veterans. In 1423, aged 63, he entered the Carmo convent he had founded in Lisbon and became Friar Nuno of Saint Mary. The 1755 earthquake destroyed the convent's roof; today its nave stands open to the sky. Numbers for the armies vary widely: the Aljubarrota Battle Foundation puts the Portuguese at about 7,000 and the Castilians at 31,000–44,000, of whom only about 10,000 fought. The 'Portuguese square' is now called a myth, and the baker woman who killed fleeing Castilians first appears in sources in the 16th century. He was canonised in 2009. The ditches and pits come from Froissart; Ayala, the Castilian eyewitness chronicler, and Fernão Lopes, sixty years later, do not describe them.

15th-century miniature: armoured knights fight before a walled town, under the banners of Portugal and Castile. — The Battle of Aljubarrota in a miniature from Jean de Wavrin’s “Chronique d’Angleterre” (manuscript of c. 1479–1480). British Library, Royal MS 14 E IV, f. 204r.Image: Jean de Wavrin · Licence: Public domain · Source: Wikimedia Commons

One against five

One dot is 1,000 men. Figures vary widely between sources.

Each dot stands for 1,000 people. Filled dots show the lowest estimate; empty dots, the rest of the range up to the highest estimate.

According to historians' estimates.

One against five: One dot is 1,000 men. Figures vary widely between sources.
Group	Estimate	Note
Portuguese	7,000 people	About 7,000 men.
Castilians (total)	from 31,000 to 44,000 people	Between 31,000 and 44,000, according to the Aljubarrota Battle Foundation.
Castilians who fought	10,000 people	Only about 10,000 actually fought.