The Sultan and the Queen

by Jerry Brotton

  Whether Harborne’s petition for the release of the Swallow’s crew was successful is unknown, although his failure to mention it in subsequent correspondence suggests that it was not. What happened to Hassan Aga is also unclear: Harborne’s letter is the last we hear of him. With other matters to attend to, Harborne was unable to act on every single captive, ransom and conversion brought to his attention during his time in Constantinople.

  One English traveler who did have Harborne to thank for saving him was Edward Webbe. One of the most colorful of all the Elizabethan adventurers in the eastern Mediterranean, Webbe obtained a degree of fame with the publication of his picaresque memoir The Rare and Most Wonderful Things Which Edward Webbe an Englishman Born, Hath Seen and Passed in His Troubelsome Travails (1590). He was born around 1553 near the Tower of London, the son of a master gunner, and by 1566 he was in the service of Anthony Jenkinson. He spent five years traveling throughout Russia with Jenkinson, and in 1571 he was captured and enslaved by Crimean Tatars. After being ransomed, he returned to England and sailed to Alexandria, where his ship was attacked by Turkish galleys. Following a fierce fight in which most of his crew was killed, Webbe described how he and ten survivors were “sent to Constantinople, and committed unto the galleys, where we continued the space of five years.”

  Somehow Webbe managed to persuade his captors of his “good skills in the gunner’s art” and traveled with the Ottoman army to Persia, Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, Goa and Ethiopia, and along the Red Sea coast, “to do the Turk’s service in the field.” Returning to Constantinople, he organized what he described as “a cunning piece of firework, framed in form like to the Ark of Noah,” for the circumcision ceremony of the sultan’s sons. However, as a Christian with no immediate military usefulness, Webbe became once more a “prisoner in the Turk’s dungeons” and was pressed “to forsake Christ, to deny him, and to believe in their God Mahomet: which, if I would have done, I might have had wonderful preferment of the Turk, and have lived in as great felicity as any lord in the country.” He managed to resist, despite being “grievously beaten naked” and “reviled,” until “it pleased God to send thither for the release of me and others, a worthy gentleman of this land, named Master Harborne.” Webbe praised Harborne, who “did behave himself wonderfully wisely, and was a special means for the releasement of me and sundry other English captives.”10 Unfortunately, Webbe’s freedom was short-lived: traveling home through Italy, he was imprisoned and tortured as a heretic in Rome and Naples before finally returning to England in 1587.11 He was last heard of in 1592, living in Blackwall, having been made a cannoneer for life, presumably living off his pension and his tall traveler’s tales.

  Despite Harborne’s success in negotiating the release of captives like Webbe, his time in Constantinople steadily darkened because of what he rather dramatically called “the subtle secret devices of my many mighty enemies both Christian and heathen.”12 His memoirs (written sometime after Francis Walsingham’s death in April 1590, and never published) conceded that throughout the second half of 1586 he was under intense pressure from London. “I being certified by the late Right Honorable of worthy memory Mr. Secretary Walsingham, of the said Spaniard his great preparation to invade this realm.” According to Harborne, the Spanish were prepared to pay the Venetians 160,000 ducats “to break off our intercourse and expel us” from Constantinople, as well as to encourage the Venetian ambassador to use his influence over Murad’s imperial harem to conclude a nonaggression treaty that would free Philip to concentrate on attacking England. It was now clear to Harborne that the “said Spaniards and adherents’ jealous suspicion of my proceedings since my second arrival there” went far beyond commercial protectionism, and that he needed to use what influence he had to “restrain the Venetians from entering the cursed league” with Spain.13

  Harborne maintained that his strategy drew on his reformed religious beliefs. “I performed my utmost endeavor,” he wrote, “by setting one enemy of god his church against the other to impair the same.” In a pragmatic echo of Hanmer’s denunciation of Catholics and Muslims, Harborne claimed to have set Spaniards against Turks to get what Walsingham wanted. His anti-Catholic Protestantism was clearly useful in creating an alliance with the Ottoman court, although privately he was frustrated by the way the sultan and his court teased him about his religious beliefs. “Everyone, for a joke,” wrote Morosini, “calls him Lutheran—even the very Pashas—much to his disgust, as he is a most desperate Calvinist.”14

  Putting aside such annoyances, Harborne’s first objective was to build a network of alliances close to Murad. He cultivated his friendship with the sultan’s tutor, the great Turkish historian Seadeddin Muhammad Ben Hassan, and made his peace with his old enemy Qilich Ali Pasha, presumably by giving them both substantial “presents.” This secured their opposition to any plans within the harem for a nonaggression pact with Spain. Harborne’s machinations appear to have been at least partially successful, as he was able to report that “the Spaniard dares not withdraw his total forces out of Sicily, Naples and other ports of the Levant Seas,” which could then be turned against England.

  The “cursed league” was blocked, and Harborne was triumphant. “I performed my uttermost endeavor,” he boasted, “not only to break of the same but further to procure the said Turkey navy against him [Philip II], which when (for the streightness [violence] with Persia) I perceived could not be, I yet notwithstanding through god his assistance so prevented his crafty devices in that count, that neither his travel or much exhausted treasure prevailed.”15 Although he had persuaded Murad to reject an alliance with the Spanish, Harborne believed that any attempt to convince the sultan actually to join with Elizabeth in turning his navy against Philip II was unlikely to succeed, mainly because of the financial and military cost of the Ottoman campaigns in Persia, which had recently led to the occupation of the former Safavid capital of Tabriz.16

  On June 24, 1587, Walsingham congratulated Harborne on “how carefully and discreetly you have proceeded in your negotiations with the sultan and his counselors.” He also told him that the queen was delighted with his success in preventing the peace treaty, and that

  her pleasure is that you let the Grand Signor understand that she most thankfully taketh this his stay, by you signified, of renewing the truce desired by the King of Spain which you shall in her name not only persuade him to continue but also show unto him how necessary it is for him to attempt somewhat presently for the impeachment of the said Spaniard’s greatness, much more in truth to be doubted than of Persia, against whom his forces seem to be altogether bent, and may be performed by setting such princes as are in Barbary at his devotion upon the King of Spain, furnishing them for the purpose with some number of galleys, which with small cost shall give him great annoyance, whereunto her majesty’s hand will not be wanting.17

  Walsingham then made one final tantalizing offer: “You may signify unto the Grand Signor that her Majesty hath lying upon the coast of Spain a fleet of very strong, well furnished ships under the conduct of Sir Francis Drake, which the last year spoiled and burned Cartagena and other places in the West Indies, who hath already entered diverse ports of Spain and Portugal.” The implication was clear: England was a naval power to be reckoned with, and if Murad joined forces, they could wipe out Spanish maritime influence in the Mediterranean. Not that Elizabeth really needed Murad’s help, as Walsingham was at pains to explain: “Although her Majesty needeth no assistance of other princes yet shall it be a great encouragement and contentation to her Majesty as a more terror to the King of Spain, they having like interest, use like endeavor to abate his power. All which,” concluded Walsingham, “as well to satisfy and stir up the Grand Signor as also to disgrace your adversaries in that court and country, I leave to yourself to be published, urged and enlarged as you shall see cause.”18

  Having successfully resurrected his career as ambassador to Constantinople and single-handedly wreck
ed Spain’s détente with the Ottomans, Harborne was now faced with the colossal task of engineering an Anglo-Ottoman naval attack on Philip’s Mediterranean fleet. He clearly believed that the undertaking was impossible, and the strain soon began to tell. In November 1587, when war between England and Spain seemed assured, Harborne wrote an extraordinary letter to Murad, complaining about his reluctance to ratify an Anglo-Ottoman military alliance. The letter shows how Harborne used religious concordance between Protestants and Muslims to justify a military coalition:

  Do not let this moment pass unused, in order that God, who has created you a valiant man and the most powerful of all worldly princes for the destruction of idol-worshippers may not turn his utmost wrath against you if you disregard his command, which my mistress, only a weak woman, courageously struggles to fulfill. The whole world, with justice, will accuse you of the greatest ingratitude if you desert in her danger your most trusting confederate, who, in the confidence of the friendship and the promises of Your Highness, has placed her life and her kingdom in jeopardy that cannot be greater on this earth. For the Spaniard, since my mistress had declined him peace, is determined to destroy her completely, relying on the maximum assistance of the pope and all idolatrous princes. And when, finally, there will not remain any other obstacle in Christendom, he will direct his invincible military forces toward your destruction and that of your empire and will become the sole ruler of the world. For the pope, whom they consider as their God on earth, does not cease to persuade him with his false prophecies that he can and will achieve it. If, however, Your Highness, wisely and courageously, without delay, will undertake jointly with my mistress war upon the sea (which the Almighty God, the pledged faith, the favorable moment, the fame of the glorious house of Othman, and the salvation of your empire unanimously advise), then the proud Spaniard and the mendacious pope, with all their adherents, will not only be cheated of their cherished hope of victory but will also receive the penalty for their audacity. Since God protects only his own, he will through us in such wise punish these idol-worshippers that those of them who might still remain will be converted by their example to worship the true God in unison with us. You, however, who are fighting for his true fame, he will grant victory and shower with other favors.19

  Harborne’s argument is a selective combination of Hanmer’s theology and Walsingham’s realpolitik. Where Hanmer saw Catholicism and Islam as idolatrous faiths, Harborne proposed an antipapal coalition between Protestant and Islamic iconoclasm. The rest of his arguments are a succinct précis of the brief that Walsingham had urged him to publish and “enlarge” back in June.

  The letter to Murad was an official (if clandestine) statement of Elizabethan foreign policy designed to flatter and cajole the Ottoman sultan into action. Harborne’s memoir of this fraught period, written toward the end of his life, is altogether more revealing about his attitude toward the unholy alliance he was charged with proposing. He grumbled about “the perverse condition of those Turkish infidels with whom forcedly so long I was conversant,” and admitted that it was “my continual earnest prayer to god, which blessed be his holy name he granted, that her Majesty in her just defense might never need this heathen tyrant his assistance, as also that during my residence there he might never make him the executioner of his fierce wrath and scourge of Christendom for their sins.”20 Whatever his public statements, privately Harborne felt deeply uneasy about trafficking with the “infidel.”

  In early 1588 Harborne began to petition Walsingham and his Turkey Company paymasters for a recall. His five-year embassy was coming to an end. His situation was exceptionally stressful, but his request appears to have been exacerbated by the company’s failure to pay him his £200 annual salary with any degree of regularity. “I disbursed there more than I ever charged to account in the advancement of her majesty’s service,” he complained.21 All told, by his count he had been paid just £400 over his ten years in Constantinople. The surviving accounts reveal that his expenditure was covered not only by the Turkey Company but also by the sultan himself. Of the £15,341 Harborne spent on wages, household costs, redeeming captives and “presents” (£1,442), the company covered £13,246; the remainder had come out of “the allowance of the emperor [Murad] in the time of his being in Constantinople.”22 Such costs were much higher than those incurred by Henry Roberts in Marrakesh, but this reflected the far greater commercial and political investment that Elizabeth’s advisers were prepared to make in Constantinople. Although Harborne would claim that such expenditure had contributed to an alliance between Elizabeth and Murad and the wrecking of that between the sultan and Philip, it had not produced the firm military axis that Walsingham had hoped for. No Ottoman attack on the Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean was forthcoming, and without it there would be no delay in the launching of Spain’s armada against England.

  In late April 1588, as Harborne was about to be recalled to London, a Spanish armada of 130 ships, 8,000 sailors and 18,000 soldiers prepared to sail out of Lisbon bound for the English Channel. It raised its banner in a ceremony reminiscent of that used before the Battle of Lepanto, against another of Spain’s “infidel” enemies, the Ottomans. In July 1588, the English fleet led by the lord high admiral Charles Howard, Francis Drake and John Hawkins engaged the Spanish off Plymouth. By the beginning of August, after a series of engagements in different parts of the English Channel, the English were in the ascendant, scattering the Spanish fleet and pursuing it up the eastern coast of England. Much of what remained of the Armada was destroyed in stormy weather on the rocky coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Against all odds, the English had prevailed in the face of the overwhelming might of Catholic Spain.

  On August 1, 1588, as the remains of the Spanish fleet limped around the Scottish coast in a desperate attempt to reach home, Harborne wrote his final dispatch to Walsingham from Constantinople. Disillusioned and frustrated by the sultan’s persistent broken promises of a formal military alliance, Harborne told Walsingham that he was ready to “depart presently.” He enclosed his final petition to the sultan, offering the same accusations and justifications as before. He believed the Ottomans remained more interested in war with Persia than with Spain, and offered the forlorn hope that Don António could lead an anti-Spanish force to recapture the Portuguese throne, diminishing Spanish power in Iberia, North Africa and beyond.23

  Twelve days later, after putting his twenty-five-year-old secretary Edward Barton in temporary charge of the embassy (partly because he was a fluent Turkish speaker), Harborne left the sweltering heat of Constantinople for the last time. When he reached Hamburg on November 19, he learned of “her majesty’s victory over the Spaniard.”24 It must have been a bittersweet moment for the tenacious Englishman. After ten years in Constantinople, he had retrieved a commercial agreement with the Ottomans when all seemed lost, established England’s first official embassy in the Muslim world, founded an extensive network of English factors across the Mediterranean and negotiated the release of scores of English captives from the horrors of galley slavery. Although he had failed to clinch a deal that would have set Turkish Muslims against Spanish Catholics, his diplomacy had played its part in unsettling the Spanish and their preparations for invasion—or so Harborne would insist upon his return to England. A life of peaceful, obscure retirement in Norfolk now awaited the former ambassador, who lived for nearly three more decades before his death in 1617.

  • • •

  In Marrakesh, Henry Roberts had been facing a similar struggle to persuade another reluctant Muslim ruler of the wisdom of backing Elizabeth in her struggle with Spain. Like Murad, Sultan al-Mansur seemed unconvinced that the English were worth the risk: they just did not appear to have the military power and diplomatic status to match their rhetoric. Don António was coming to the same conclusion. In the spring of 1588, he had appealed directly to al-Mansur for help in persuading Elizabeth to attack Spain. But the wily al-Mansur prevaricated, waiting to see what would com
e of the Spanish invasion of England.

  On July 12, 1588, Roberts wrote to Leicester informing him that “here came news that the king of Spain’s armada is departed for England; the which I well perceive is the case that this king [al-Mansur] doth prolong the times, to know how they speed: for, if the king of Spain should prosper against England, then this king would do nothing; and, if the king of Spain have the overthrow, as by God’s help he shall, then will this king perform promises and more.”25 Don António and Elizabeth were powerless to act in Morocco, or anywhere else for that matter, until the outcome of the Spanish invasion was known.

  Across the capitals of Europe and North Africa, statesmen eagerly awaited news of the fate of the Spanish Armada. In Marrakesh, the Spanish circulated rumors that their fleet had triumphed. In a letter dated August 5, Elizabeth wrote to al-Mansur informing him of her victory. The letter reached the small community of English merchants in Marrakesh at the beginning of September. The news sparked extraordinary scenes of celebration. The merchants set off fireworks and organized impromptu street banquets and dancing. They led a procession through the city center; according to eyewitness reports, some flew standards showing Elizabeth standing in triumph over a prostrate Philip, while others carried effigies of the Spanish ruler and Pope Sixtus, which they set on fire, much to the consternation of the watching Italian and Spanish merchants. The procession then entered the mellah, where three men challenged them. The first, Diego Marín, was a Spanish diplomat; the other two, the Portuguese nobleman Joao Gomes de Silva and the Spaniard Juan de Heredia, a survivor of the Battle of Alcácer-Quibir, were living in the city in a state of limbo after having been ransomed. What exactly happened next is disputed, but what is clear is that the three men drew their swords and attacked the English merchants, knocking several from their horses, killing between three and seven of them and wounding many more. The mellah descended into chaos, with Jews and Muslims watching in horror as Catholics murdered Protestants, Europe’s Christians replaying their sectarian conflicts on the streets of Marrakesh.26