Ottoman

by Christopher Nicole

  Khair-ed-din clapped him on the shoulder. “A first victory. Are you not pleased, Hawk Pasha?”

  “Of course,” Harry said.

  “And they are rich prizes,” Khair-ed-din assured him. “You have not looked in the holds. We have wine, we have fine stuffs, we have gold, and we have slaves. A rich prizes.”

  “What will you do with the ships?” Harry asked.

  Khair-ed-din grinned. “They are of no use to me. I will burn them. All save one. I will leave one, with a crew of ten men. These men will sail their ship back to Genoa, to tell them what we have done. To tell them they were taken by Barbarossa! That will strike terror into the hearts of the infidels. Barbarossa!” He went to the break of the poop. “Barbarossa!” he shouted.

  The cry was repeated by all of the galley crews.

  A new dimension had been added to Mediterranean warfare.

  *

  Algiers did indeed gleam white in the afternoon sun as the squadron approached it. At first sight, to the eye of an experienced soldier like Harry Hawkwood, it suggested little of defensive value. But as he got closer he realised that Khair-ed-din, or Barbarossa as he now insisted on being called, had created a very secure little port out of virtually nothing. From the apparently featureless coast two long, thick moles had been extended, one crossing the other, so that any fleet attempting to close the shore would have to alter course twice. And the space between the moles was narrow enough to ensure that speed would have to be reduced to a minimum, and the attacking fleet would have to be in single file. On each mole was mounted a battery of artillery.

  Behind the moles and above the town rose a considerable fortress, also gleaming white in the sunlight, from the towers of which floated the green flag of the Ottomans.

  A brief strip of low and fertile land backed the fortress, which provided the Algerians with most of their food supply. Then the land rose rapidly into hills and mountains. The mountains, as Khair-ed-din told Harry, were named after the mythological Greek giant Atlas who had supported the heavens on his shoulders, and they stretched for roughly a hundred miles inland — and for far more than that parallel to the coast — before descending into the desert.

  “Fleets can approach by sea,” Khair-ed-din said, “but no large force can cross that desert.”

  Algiers had been founded by the Phoenicians long before the births of either Christ or Mahomet; the Romans had known it as Icosium. Many subsequent invaders had destroyed the city and left it in ruins, but it had been refounded by the Berbers in the tenth century, and indeed was still ruled nominally by a Berber prince who was happy to have Khair-ed-din use it as a base. It not only provided protection for the prince and his people, but enabled him to collect in rent a tithe of all the loot and slaves brought back by the pirates.

  It was actually a much larger city than Harry had anticipated, and his practised eye immediately saw where its defences could be strengthened.

  Khair-ed-din certainly proceeded ashore like a beylerbey, even if he could not as yet use the title here. Bowing officials greeted him, and they bowed even deeper when he introduced Hawk Pasha, sent by the Sultan himself to “visit” their Dey.

  Together he and Harry called at the Dey’s palace, where Harry was introduced to Al-Rashid, a tight-faced little man who welcomed the ambassador of the Sultan. Clearly he had not the slightest suspicion that this might be the first step in his ultimate forced submission to the Porte.

  Then Khair-ed-din and Harry climbed the steep, narrow streets, through the kasbah, to the open space above, where the fortress stood. Within it was Khair-ed-din’s palace, which was indeed filled with beautiful young women, the pick of his female captives.

  Harry was taken up the highest towers, to look down on the busy little port and the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean.

  “Had you eyes capable of seeing two hundred miles,” Barbarossa told him, “you would look upon the mountains of southern Spain. They rise between ourselves and Granada, which, Allah willing, will one day again belong to us.”

  Harry tugged his beard. “So close,” he mused. “I wonder the Dons do not attempt to destroy you.”

  Barbarossa grinned. “The Emperor has more important things to do — or he thinks he does. Besides, he knows we would be a tough nut to crack here. We would see his fleet long before it got close to us, and we would be waiting for him.”

  “Suppose he timed his assault for when you are not here?”

  “Who is to know when I am not here, Harry? Besides, he has missed his chance. From now on one of us will always be here, will we not?”

  *

  A section of the palace was given over to Harry, and there he installed his wives, and concubine.

  He was, however, more interested in the task ahead of him. Soon he accompanied Barbarossa on a raid to Sicily, where he was surprised at the ease with which the corsairs stole into a deserted bay, landed a formidable force, crept up the cliffs and overran a sizable village, holding it for two days while they totally ransacked it, carrying off some fifty girls and boys as slaves, as well as a huge accumulation of cattle and grain — and departing the moment a large body of troops was observed marching towards them.

  “That is the secret of sea warfare, Harry,” Barbarossa explained. “We can go anywhere, land anywhere. No coastline can be protected in its entirety. Therefore every coastline is vulnerable. Now, did we but possess Tunis as well…”

  Harry had never needed much influencing to concur that this was the way that wars should be fought. Eventually he took one of Barbarossa’s small, fast galleys and returned to Constantinople. The Sultan was not there. He had left Ibrahim in command of the war against Persia, and had once again led an army into Austria. And once again he had been forced to withdraw from Vienna, this time opposed by a large Imperial army. At least he had not been defeated in a battle.

  Harry spent a single day with his mother and aunt, reassuring them about his health, then set off to join the great army. He caught up with the Sultan at Belgrade, and was disturbed by what he found.

  “It is good to see you, Hawk Pasha,” Suleiman said, as Harry was shown into the private chamber by a heavily armed guard. “It is good to see a man I can trust.”

  “Padishah?” Harry would have supposed there was hardly a man in his empire this well-beloved Sultan could not trust.

  “I am surrounded by dishonesty and treachery,” Suleiman said, “and there is so much to be done. I must contend with Austrians, I must contend with the Persians, I must deal with all pressing matters of the law and religion back home…and to whom may I delegate authority, and rely on for complete understanding and loyalty?”

  “Surely Ibrahim…” Harry ventured.

  “Ibrahim! Ha! That treacherous Greek. I raised him from the gutter. You know that, Harry — the three of us were young men together. You remember how my father frowned upon my friendship with the Greek. No doubt he was right.”

  Harry could not believe his ears. “Ibrahim has betrayed you?”

  “Not yet. But there can be little doubt that he means to.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “Do I need proof? He commands in Anatolia. Oh, he has accomplished some fine things, and has repelled more than one Persian attack. He is proving himself a good general, but is that to my advantage? He keeps appealing for more troops. More troops! He says it is to drive back the Persians, but is it not to create a huge army with which to march on Constantinople and restore Greek rule?”

  “O Padishah, I cannot believe it of Ibrahim. He is your most loyal servant. And lacking any proof of treachery on his part…”

  “There are those who know the Greek better than even you do, Harry.”

  Roxelana! Harry thought. Ibrahim was right; she means to poison the Sultan’s mind against him.

  “But that is not the least of my troubles,” Suleiman growled. “There is treachery even within my own harem.”

  “Treachery, Padishah?”

  “Oh, yes. Plots
have been discovered. My own son, Mustafa, is being turned against me. Fortunately there is one I can trust…” He sighed. “And I now have another son.” Suddenly his face grew animated. “I have named him Selim — is that not appropriate?”

  His child by a Russian slave named after the greatest of the Ottoman warriors? My God! Harry thought. How high does Roxelana’s ambition soar?

  “What do you mean to do, Padishah?” he asked.

  “I mean to act! I must take my enemies one at a time. I am currently negotiating a peace settlement with this Ferdinand of Austria, to end the European war. Then I shall march to the east and Anatolia. I will take command there and settle with the Persians. I will also settle with Ibrahim.”

  Harry had no reply to make to that; there was nothing he could say.

  “Now tell me what you have come to say,” Suleiman invited.

  Harry swallowed. “I also have come to ask for men, Padishah.”

  “Ha!” Suleiman exclaimed. “But you at least I know I can trust, Hawk Pasha.”

  Because of Roxelana’s sister? Harry wondered.

  “What do you need these men for?” Suleiman asked.

  Harry outlined his plans. “But if you now seek peace with the Empire, Padishah, my plans are rendered empty.”

  Suleiman raised his finger. “Not so. I did not say I sought peace with the Empire, or with the Emperor. I am seeking peace with Archduke Ferdinand, who is but ruler of Austria. I seek no peace with his brother Charles, and neither with that perfidious Francis. What we shall have here is no more than a frontier truce. Oh, indeed, Hawk Pasha, the more you can consume Spanish energies and arouse Spanish fears, the better I shall like it. You will have your men, and I wish you every success.”

  Harry bowed in gratitude. “And may all go well with you, Padishah.”

  “It is my business to see that it does,” Suleiman said grimly.

  “I can only beg you not to act too hastily, or without proof.”

  “I shall act as I find,” Suleiman told him.

  *

  Harry could do no more, however uneasy he might feel as to the possible course of events. He sailed from Constantinople with twelve galleys and a thousand soldiers, in addition to their crews, and reached Algiers a fortnight later. He saw more than one tempting prize on the way, but was not to be distracted from his purpose.

  Al-Rashid pulled his beard at this unexpected influx of Ottoman power; nor was he reassured when Harry promised that the men were solely for a campaign against Tunis. Al-Rashid hated Mulai-Hassan, Dey of Tunis, but he also knew that, unlike himself, Mulai was on good terms with the Emperor — and so he feared repercussions.

  “Will my ships and my men not be here to protect you?” Harry protested.

  Barbarossa was delighted with the augmentation of his fleet, and Harry immediately set to work to reconnoitre Tunis from both sea and land, undertaking a long and dangerous five-hundred-mile trek along the mountains, accompanied only by Diniz and a guide. His mission, which took three months, convinced him that the assault must take place from the landward side, not only because of the strength of the seaward defences of the city, but so that the Spaniards would be unaware of what was intended until it was too late. They regarded Barbarossa as nothing more than a pirate, even if he did choose to call himself beylerbey of Algiers in the name of the Sultan. But when he began to expand along the North African coast they would need to take him more seriously.

  Meanwhile Barbarossa put to sea with his augmented fleet, and carried fire and sword right round the Spanish and Italian coasts, from Cartagena through Alicante and Valencia, Tarragona and Barcelona, Sete and Marseilles, Nice and even Civitavecchia, which was the port of Rome. Only Genoa, strongly defended by its own fleet, escaped this holocaust. Barbarossa’s name was on everyone’s lips, together with those of his most famous lieutenants, of whom Dragut was best known.

  *

  Harry did not spend all of his time planning the assault on Tunis. The sea remained his greatest interest — but no longer just the Mediterranean. From Spanish prisoners brought as slaves to Algiers he heard tales of the Atlantic, where there was always a wind and where great voyages were possible in the right ships.

  But, for all their naval supremacy, did the Spanish have the right ships for the purposes he had in mind?

  They were developing a new war vessel, he learned. The carracks and their smaller editions, caravels, which had dominated the oceans for more than two hundred years — the sort of ship in which Christopher Columbus had crossed the Atlantic and Vasco da Gama had rounded the Cape of Good Hope — were proving increasingly useless as ships-of-war. They could be built to huge sizes, some of a thousand tons burthen, and they could be powerfully armed and filled with fighting men, but their ponderously broad hulls left them totally unmanoeuvrable in anything but a fair wind. The greatest fleet of carracks in the world could sail up to an undefended seaport yet be left helpless if the wind was offshore.

  The Spanish seamen were thus engaged upon changing hull and sail design, seeking to improve fighting qualities. They were increasing the length-to-beam ratio from two to three, or in cases even four, thus placing much more hull in the water for greater speed. They were reducing the huge bow and stern castles to nothing more than slightly raised observation decks, thus eliminating the enormous windage which made many a carrack sail faster sideways than forward. And they were improving their sail plans: in addition to long bowsprits to which could be carried several foresails or jibs, they were learning to pull the square yards as nearly as possible fore and aft, to enable their ships to work to windward. These new vessels were called galleons.

  There was even talk about building a galleon which would have oars as well as sails. Such ships would be called galleasses, but as yet they remained as plans on the drawing-board.

  There were, of course, drawbacks to the new vessels. Their low profile meant they were useless as carriers; there was simply not sufficient room. Intended for long voyages — crossing the Atlantic might take upwards of two months if the weather was bad — their lowest or orlop decks were crammed with water and food, and there was no space for cargo. There were also problems with the guns; in a fully-armed ship the lower gun-ports were very near to the water, and would be unusable in a rough sea, while their relatively narrow hulls made their captains reluctant to have guns of any size mounted on the main deck. But that they were formidable vessels could not be doubted.

  Nor could Harry doubt that one day he would have to fight against such ships.

  But they were quite useless for the piratical raids he wished to carry out into the Atlantic, along the coasts of Portugal, Spain and, above all, France. The main drawback was that they were too large and too unwieldy; they could still be rendered helpless by the weather, and there was no prospect of taking them into shallow estuaries.

  But they were also designed to perform functions for which Harry had no use. He was not setting out to engage an enemy fleet, if he could avoid that, therefore cramming his ships with as many broadside cannon as possible was a waste of time; all he required was a powerful bow-chaser to bring down the mast of fleeing merchantman. What he did require was a large complement of men for the short raids he intended. Again, he never meant to be at sea for more than a few days at a time without being able to replenish both his food and water supplies, thus a deep hold in which to stow water casks and salted beef was unnecessary.

  Above all, he wanted yet more windward ability.

  His memory of sailing in the Bosphorus, Marmara and the Black Sea came back to him. A Venetian shipwright had built that little ship, which had done everything he had wanted of it, on a small scale. Why could the scale not be enlarged?

  He put this to Khair-ed-din the next time the corsair fleet happened to be in port.

  Barbarossa stroked his beard. “It is certainly possible, Harry, to build a larger version of your yacht, but I am not sure it will serve any useful purpose. You mean to take your ship through the Straits o
f Gibraltar and into the ocean? Have you any idea what you will find there? Do you remember what happened to your yacht in the Black Sea?”

  “She wasn’t decked, but these new ships will be decked. They will be able to ride out even an Atlantic storm. And are we going to admit that there is any sea we are afraid to sail on? Especially as the Spaniards already sail on it?”

  Barbarossa grinned. “I am happy to admit there are things I do not wish to challenge or learn, at my age, Harry. The Mediterranean is my sea. Here I prosper. And it is about that I wish to speak. You have heard of Andrea Doria?”

  “The Genoese admiral?”

  “The same. But he is no longer merely an admiral; he is now dictator of the republic.”

  “Then he will have less time to chase about the sea behind you.”

  “Quite the reverse. My prisoners inform me that he intends to devote the entire resources of his nation to my destruction — and yours. He is apparently building ships at an unheard-of rate, heedless of whether he bankrupts his people or not. And he is constantly importuning the Emperor to join with him in an assault to destroy Algiers.”

  “Hm. Does Al-Rashid know of this?”

  “No, and we are not going to tell him. He would have a nervous fit, and ask us to leave. But we cannot remain passively awaiting their attack. There are two things we must do.”

  “Yes?”

  “The first is, the moment this new Genoese fleet puts to sea we must seek it put and destroy it. It will be manned by untested crews, and the ships themselves will be untested.”

  Harry nodded. “That makes sense. And the other?”

  “We must take Tunis immediately, before the Genoese fleet is ready. That means within the next year: I do not think Doria will be able to have his ships at sea before the end of next summer. It is not merely that Tunis is an even stronger base than Algiers. It will give us a second fortress stronghold against the Spanish and Genoese positions. Should the Emperor Charles and Doria consider attacking one, they must also consider the possibility of being attacked from the other. This has now become a matter of great importance.”