Greece, the Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule From the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence

by David Brewer

  The Turkish expedition to capture Cyprus moved much faster than the league fleet moved to defend it. The Turkish fleet was at least as big as the 200-vessel league fleet, and on some estimates twice the size or more. The ships were commanded by Piali, the conqueror of Chíos four years earlier, and the land forces by Lala Mustafa, the fifth vizier. On 1 July 1570 Turkish ships appeared off Paphos in the south-west of Cyprus. Moving along the south coast they attacked Limassol and the neighbouring towns, where they met some resistance, but went on to Larnaka where, to their surprise, they landed unopposed. On 22 July a Turkish force led by Lala Mustafa of 100,000 men – some accounts say even more – set out for the capital Nicosia in the centre of the island, and three days later the siege began.

  The defence of Nicosia was the responsibility of Nicolo Dandolo, the lieutenant or civilian governor of Cyprus. Normally in time of war a provveditor-general sent out from Venice would have been in command, but the incumbent had died the year before and two successive replacements never reached the island, so Dandolo had been given the title of vice-provveditor.

  No account has a good word for Dandolo. He was described as poor spirited, stupid and irascible, and said to veer between keenness and slackness with every passing rumour. But he was in a virtually impossible position. He was heavily outnumbered, having some 20,000 fighting men, Italians and Greeks, only about half of whom were trained and not sick, to face 100,000 or more besiegers. Nicosia’s defensive walls, in the shape of an eleven-point star, seemed formidable, but had not been properly maintained – for which Dandolo was blamed – and were subject to continuous bombardment. Gunpowder was short. A sortie in force on 15 August failed, in some accounts because of the indiscipline of the Greek troops, and Dandolo forbade any future sorties. This can be regarded as the turning point of the siege: if there were to be no more attacks, it was only a matter of time before weak defences gave way. On 9 September, after a 45-day siege and a final bombardment of the walls, the Turks entered the city and overwhelmed the defenders. The city never formally surrendered, but a drunken Greek pulled down the flag of St Mark and raised the Turkish flag in its place. A three-day sack followed, said to yield more plunder than any city since Constantinople in 1453. Dandolo was captured and beheaded, and his severed head sent as a statement of intent to Famagusta, now the only town on the island still resisting the Turks, and Lala Mustafa’s next objective.

  The response of the Greeks of Cyprus to the Turkish invasion was far from uniform. Greeks played a part in the defence of Nicosia, and later, with sustained courage, in that of Famagusta. Others, however, may have welcomed the invaders. The Greeks of Lévkara, a village some ten miles inland between Limassol and Larnaka, not only yielded at once to the Turks – they could do little else – but also apparently sent messengers to the nearby villagers encouraging them too to submit. In retribution for this support of the Turkish invader, and as a warning to others, the Venetians killed all the inhabitants of Lévkara who were capable of fighting and destroyed the village. One cannot say whether the villagers of Lévkara genuinely supported the Turks or merely submitted to force majeure, but the brutal responses of the Venetians suggest their fears that other Greek Cypriots would favour the Turks.

  The siege of Famagusta, the last outpost of resistance to the Turks, began on 16 September 1570. Here the Greeks seem fully to have supported the Venetians, and in accounts of the siege are regularly mentioned as serving the guns, repairing the defences or building new ones. In the final assault they made a last stand near the Greek cathedral, where two Greek bishops and many Greek priests and monks were killed.

  This Greek support may have been because their Venetian commanders at Famagusta were so much better than the incompetent Dandolo at Nicosia. There were two leaders of the defence of Famagusta. One was Astorre Baglione, who had been sent out from Venice in April 1570 as military governor of Cyprus and commander-in-chief of the island’s defence. He would have been subordinate to a provveditor-general had there been one, and his authority in relation to the vice-provveditor Dandolo was never clear. The other was Marcantonio Bragadino, the civil governor of Famagusta, nominally subordinate to Baglione though in practice they acted in concert.

  Under these two commanders the troops were regularly paid, and fed as well as the rationing of short supplies allowed: ‘As long as there was a dram of food, Bragadino distributed it; and when there was none, there still remained his good will.’11 Baglione personally led 26 skirmishes against the Turks, saying ‘I, who love my soldiers, go with them.’12 The only criticism of him was that perhaps he should command more and fight less.

  Under Baglione and Bragadino the Famagusta defence held out for almost a year. There was a moment of hope when Marco Quirini, with the Venetian fleet that was operating independently of the ineffective league, arrived at Famagusta from Crete in January 1571. He destroyed three Turkish ships and some Turkish fortifications, and took on board valuables for safe keeping and the children and non-combatants of the town, but after three weeks he left, with promises of future but unspecified help. False hopes that a Christian fleet was about to appear were regularly raised towards the end of the siege – on occasions in May, June and July 1571 – but all were as regularly disappointed.

  In June the Turks, after months of bombardment, launched the final phase of the siege, a series of six or seven assaults during the month. The defenders were by now in desperate straits. At the start of the siege there had been 3,000 to 4,000 Italian troops; but by now all but 900 had been killed, and of these survivors some 400 were wounded and the remaining 500 were exhausted. Gunpowder had almost run out. Food supplies were nearly finished, and even all the horses, donkeys and cats had been eaten. But the besieged fought on, and a Turkish despatch to Constantinople acknowledged their heroism, saying that Famagusta was defended not by men but by giants. In the end, though, heroism was not enough. In mid-July the Bishop of Limassol came to Bragadino and Baglione and appealed to them to give up the town for the sake of all the defenders. The commanders delayed a decision for a fortnight but on 1 August 1571 raised on the ramparts the white flag of surrender.

  There was no authorised sack of Famagusta as there had been at Nicosia. There was less to plunder at Famagusta, but the main reason for its better treatment seems to have been that Famagusta had formally surrendered whereas Nicosia had not. The terms of surrender too were lenient. Lala Mustafa agreed to send the commanders and all the garrison safely to Crete, promised the people of Famagusta to intercede with the Sultan for them and praised the gallantry of Bragadino and Baglione.

  After a few days these amicable relations were shattered. On the evening of 5 August Bragadino and Baglione with other officers went to Lala Mustafa’s camp to discuss the details of the surrender terms. In the course of the discussion Lala Mustafa was said to have flown into a rage and ordered the visitors to be seized. Baglione was executed on the spot, and Lala Mustafa triumphantly raised his severed head. Bragadino had his nose and ears cut off, and twelve days later, seriously ill from his festering wounds, faced his final humiliation. After being forced to carry sacks of earth and stones round the ramparts he had defended, he was tied naked to a column in the main square and flayed alive, that is his skin was carved from his body. After his death the skin was cured and stuffed with straw, dressed in his clothes and paraded round Famagusta on the back of a cow.

  It is a horrific story, and though some details may be anti-Turk propaganda the main facts are well documented. The major question is over Lala Mustafa’s motives. He may have been infuriated because Muslim hostages in Famagusta had been killed, but he would have known this from the time when the city surrendered if not earlier. A sudden fit of temper is unlikely: anyone who had risen through the Ottoman hierarchy as he had was well used to calculating the effects of his actions. Perhaps Lala Mustafa planned this revenge from the beginning, and his original friendliness was merely a decoy. Whatever his motives, the theatricality of the retribution was clearly designed to
send a message: perhaps to the Venetians (that resistance to the Turks had a high price) or to the Cypriots (that he was their master now) or to his own troops (that he had at last triumphed) or maybe to the Sultan (to dramatise his victory). The story was widely circulated at the time and for centuries afterwards,13 and the death of Bragadino at the hands of Lala Mustafa was a characteristic element in the image of the Turk as ruthless, sadistic and probably deceitful.

  8

  1571 – Lepanto

  In 1570 the allied fleets of Venice, Spain and the Papal States had been put together with the object of saving Cyprus from the Turks. This league – with a small ‘l’ – had failed to save Cyprus and had never even confronted the Turkish fleet. But by the beginning of the following year the attitudes of the three allies had hardened.

  Spain had become increasingly aware of the Turkish threat from the sea. In 1570 the ruler of Ottoman Algiers had seized Tunis from Spain. Raiders from the nearby Barbary coast were a continuing menace and any renewed Morisco revolt might yet be supported by a Turkish fleet. Venice, by rejecting the Turkish ultimatum over Cyprus, had chosen war rather than diplomacy as the safeguard of her possessions, and for war she needed allies. The determination of Pope Pius V to fight a holy war against the infidel had only been increased by the failures of 1570.

  Thus on 25 May 1571 the Pope was able to proclaim a Holy League. Its leading members were to be, as in 1570, Spain, Venice and the Papal States, and now other Italian cities and the Knights of St John of Malta also pledged support. The Holy League was to be perpetual, its forces assembling each spring to campaign against the Turks and, reflecting Spain’s concerns, against the Barbary coast. The League forces were to be 200 galleys plus 100 other warships, 50,000 infantry, and 4,500 cavalry. Costs and plunder were to be divided in the proportions Spain three, Venice two, and the Pope one, though Spain was to keep any conquests in North Africa.

  Spain’s increased commitment was reflected in her contribution of ships. In the 1570 fleet of 205 vessels, Spain had provided only a third of the number from Venice: 49 against 144. In the 1571 Holy League total fleet of 316 ships (both fighting and support vessels) Spanish outnumbered Venetian by 164 to 134. But the Venetian fleet included six warships of a type newly developed, the galleasse, not yet tested in battle. Like the galley, the galleasse could be moved by oars or by sail, but the galleasse was much larger: 600 tons against the galley’s 140, longer and wider, so requiring twice as many oarsmen, and with more guns, thirteen against five. The galleasses were to play an important part at Lepanto.

  Of the commanders, two remained from the previous year: Colonna as before led the papal contingent, and Doria commanded ten galleys leased by Spain from Genoa. The Venetian fleet command had changed as Zane, the 1570 leader, had resigned in disgrace: the new appointment was the 75-year-old Sebastiano Venier, former Venetian governor of Corfu, elected provveditor-general of Cyprus though he never reached the island; later in his eighties he briefly became Doge of Venice. Commanding the dominant Spanish contingent, and in overall command of the Holy League fleet, was the man whom Lepanto was to make famous: Don Juan of Austria, anglicised as Don John, illegitimate son of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V (hence ‘of Austria’), half-brother of Philip II of Spain, and hero of the recent suppression of the Morisco revolt.

  Don Juan was not to go into battle without the agreement of a council representing the other contingents, but how a battle, once joined, was fought was up to him. It was clear that Don Juan would be far bolder than the cautious Spanish commander Doria had been a year earlier. The Pope’s representative in Madrid, meeting Don Juan before he took up his post, reported that ‘he is a Prince so desirous of glory that if the opportunity arises he will not be restrained by the Council that is to advise him and will not look so much to save galleys as to gather glory and honour.’1

  The Holy League fleet took time to assemble. The same papal representative commented that in Spain ‘the doing of things promptly is not something to be found in this country, better said its normal condition is to do everything late.’2 Nevertheless Don Juan sailed from Barcelona on 20 June 1571 with some of his allies, and collected others as he went on to Genoa, La Spezia and Naples. The whole fleet finally assembled in the port of Messina at the north-east tip of Sicily on 23 August, three weeks after the fall of Famagusta.

  The Turkish fleet, under Ali Pasha but with Pertev Pasha commanding the land forces, had earlier been stationed on the east coast of Greece at Évia, ready to intercept any attempt by the Holy League to save Cyprus. When no such attempt was made, Ali Pasha sailed round the Peloponnese and into the Adriatic as far north as Venice, raiding Venetian possessions as he went. Ali Pasha then learned that the Holy League fleet was assembled at Messina and, fearing that he might be bottled up in the Adriatic, withdrew to the shelter of the Gulf of Corinth under the fortress at Návpaktos, then known as Lepanto. By 16 September Don Juan had been instructed to seek out the Turkish fleet, and on 29 September he learned where it was – at Lepanto.

  Ali Pasha would have done well to stay there. To attack him there the Holy League ships would have had to pass through the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, only a mile and a half wide, practically in single file, and been easy targets if they had tried it. The campaigning season was almost over, and if the allies had sailed home after a second year of achieving nothing the Holy League might well have unravelled. But Ali Pasha received unequivocal orders from the Sultan ‘to find and immediately attack the infidel fleet’.3

  On the morning of Sunday 7 October 1571, the Holy League and Turkish fleets faced each other just west of the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, in two immense lines stretching some four miles. The Turks faced west, with their backs to the Greek mainland and initially with the wind behind them, while the Holy League faced east. The number of fighting ships involved – 208 Holy League and 251 Turkish – was the largest that ever took part in a naval battle.

  In a novel tactic for naval warfare Don Juan stationed his galleasses singly some three quarters of a mile ahead of his line and about half a mile apart. There were six galleasses in his fleet, and four were stationed to protect his left and centre. The other two were intended to protect his right, but, as we shall see, they in fact took no part in the battle. The galleasses were to be used as floating artillery platforms. Their guns had a greater range than the Turkish, so could bombard them before they could reply, and an attacking fleet passing the galleasses could be raked broadside.

  In a second innovation Don Juan had the huge beaks of his galleys removed. These had traditionally been used to ram and impale an enemy ship, but as naval gunnery had developed they had become a hindrance, obstructing the line of sight of the forward gunner and encouraging him to fire high, at the opponent’s rigging rather than the hull.

  At about half past ten, after morning prayers on both sides, the battle was opened with the usual formal challenge, of a blank charge from Ali Pasha’s flagship the Sultana, answered by a shot from Don Juan’s La Real. The fighting developed into three separate actions. On the Holy League left the galleasses did their work of breaking up the Turkish advance and the League ships drove the Turks against the neighbouring shore. The wind had initially been from the east but now swung round to the west in the League’s favour, a shift attributed to divine intervention. In this sector the League commander was killed but not a single Turkish ship escaped sinking or capture.

  In the centre, where Don Juan and Ali Pasha faced each other, the two forward galleasses were again effective, and then the ships became locked in individual combat. Ali Pasha’s Sultana rammed Don Juan’s La Real and hand-to-hand fighting on the decks followed, a land battle fought on water. A contemporary wrote: ‘Battle was joined with the greatest vigour and fury, and with noise so great it seemed not only that the galleys must be tearing each other apart, but that the sea itself roared in protest at the appalling clamour, whipping its previously calm surface into foaming waves, and deafened men could no lo
nger hear each other, and the sky vanished from their sight amid the darkening smoke from the flames.’4 Don Juan, wielding a double-handed sword, was wounded in the ankle, an injury he claimed not to have noticed, and Ali Pasha was killed. In this sector too the League was victorious.

  Things did not at first go so well for the Holy League right, commanded by Doria. He was without his protective galleasses; as the fleet sailed from the north to take up position Doria had the furthest to go, and the slow galleasses would have been an encumbrance. Also he may have foreseen that the Turks would try to outflank him and that ponderous galleasses would be no help in a battle requiring mobility. Furthermore, Doria was heavily outnumbered, with his 50 ships facing over 100. This enabled the Turkish commander Uluch Ali to spread his fleet southwards to his left and threaten to sail round Doria’s right flank, turn, and attack – with a now following wind – from the rear. Doria also moved south to prevent this, but with the result that he left a gap between his wing and the League centre, a gap that Uluch Ali now attacked. Doria has been severely criticised for this decision, but it was surely the correct one. A gap on his left could be plugged by League ships from the centre and the reserves, as in fact it was, whereas an opening on his right meant being outflanked and almost certainly defeated. But by this time it was clear to Uluch Ali that the Turkish centre and right had lost and he abandoned the fight, sailing north to Levkás and on to Préveza. The Holy League victory was complete.