The Chronicle of Alfonso III relates how,This story is found in all extant versions of the Chronicle and is likely to be original and unmodified by later copyists and redactors. in an unspecified year, Ordoño marched against the Musa while the latter was constructing a massive fortification at Albelda. While the Asturian monarch invested the new fortress, Musa camped his army on the nearby hill of Monte Laturce, hoping to force the raising of the siege. Ordoño divided his forces, leaving one half to tend to the ongoing siege and taking the other to challenge Musa. In a pitched battle the Muslims were routed; Musa was severely injured and barely evaded capture, while his Basque son-in-law, García (distinct from García Íñiguez), was killed. The Christians counted 12,000 Muslim cavalry among the dead, and in the Muslim camp were found the treasures which Charles the Bald, king of West Francia, had recently sent to the Muslim warlord. Ordoño then concentrated all his men on taking the fortress, which they did on the seventh day of the siege. Its defenders were executed and then its walls razed. Musa's son, Lubb ibn Musa, the governor of Toledo,The French Orientalist Évariste Lévi-Provençal argued that Tudela, traditional stronghold of the Banu Qasi, was meant, but Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz defended the Chronicle. on learning of his father's defeat, immediately submitted to Ordoño and remained loyal to him until his death. The battle appears to have impressed itself on the memory of its generation (at least regionally), for the Riojan Chronica Prophetica (composed in 882) contains a regnal list of Asturian kings coloured with a few annotations. Besides the name and reign of Ordoño I is the notice Ipse allisit Albaida: This one destroyed Albelda. The Battle of Monte Laturce provided aspects for the fictional Battle of Clavijo.Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, "La auténtica batalla de Clavijo", Cuadernos de Historia de España, 9:94–139, reprinted in Orígenes de la nación española, III (Oviedo: 1975), 281–311, cited in Richard A. Fletcher (1984), Saint James's Catapult: The Life and Times of Diego Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 67.
