Don Juan
These restraints irked the young prince. His appetite for glory had been stoked by the circumstances of his birth. His illegitimacy made his position within the royal household anomalous, and Philip went out of his way to deliver casual slights to the over-popular young man. He refused Don Juan the title of Highness; he was merely to be called Excellency. In an age of touchy protocol these niceties mattered. He might be Philip’s default successor, but in the interim the king was not going to confirm his royal status. Worse still, Philip undercut Don Juan’s position as commander by communicating the order to seek the consent of his advisers to Don Juan’s own subordinates. There is a tone of deep hurt wrapped around Don Juan’s elaborate written replies to his half brother: “With due humility and respect, I would venture to say that it would be to me an infinite favour and boon if Your Majesty would be pleased to communicate with me directly with your own mouth…[rather than] reducing me to an equality with many others of your servants, a thing certainly in my conscience not deserved.” Don Juan longed for glory, confirmation, ultimately a crown of his own. Shadowed by graybeards who had been tasked with preventing him from achieving anything at all, he was a man with something to prove. As he prepared to depart from Madrid in early June, the papal delegate in Spain understood, with approval, that Don Juan was eager to throw off these shackles. “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.”
TWELVE HUNDRED MILES AWAY, the man who would oppose him as admiral of the Ottoman fleet was preparing to raid Crete. At first glance Muezzinzade Ali Pasha—Ali, “the son of the muezzin”—seemed a creature from a different world. Where Don Juan was born half into the royalty of Europe, Ali was the son of the poor; his father called people to prayers in the old Ottoman capital at Edirne, one hundred forty miles west of Istanbul. Through the meritocratic system of Ottoman preferment, Ali had risen to the position of fourth vizier, and now to the exalted position of kapudan pasha—admiral of the sultan’s fleet—the post once held by the great Hayrettin Barbarossa. Ali was a man of whom people spoke well: “brave and generous, of natural nobility, a lover of knowledge and the arts; he spoke well, he was a religious and clean living man.” Yet like Don Juan, he was also something of an outsider. It had become the custom for the sultan’s ruling elite to be drawn from the ranks of converted Christians, usually captured as children—men who owed everything to the sultan and were brought up in his court. Sokollu was a Bosnian; Piyale had been taken as a child from the battlefields of Hungary. Ali was unusual in being an ethnic Turk; “coming from and growing up in the provinces, he was considered an outsider in the eyes of the important people of the sultan’s palace, and this was considered a fault.” He was not part of the ruling elite. Like Don Juan, he was a man with something to prove; he was ambitious for success in his sovereign’s eyes. He too was brave to the point of recklessness, and he was driven by a matching code of honor: to draw back would be cowardly.
Crucially, neither man possessed much experience of sea warfare. It was not coincidental that the contest for the Mediterranean had been marked by a singular absence of large-scale sea battles; even Preveza had been little more than a glancing blow. The men who had maneuvered their fragile galley fleets so skillfully—Hayrettin Barbarossa, Turgut, Uluch Ali, Andrea Doria and his great-nephew Gian’Andrea, Piyale, and Don Garcia—had been deeply cautious. It was with good reason. They understood the conditions of the sea and its fickleness; a sudden stopping of the wind or its increase, an unwise maneuver close to shore, a minuscule loss of tactical advantage, could cause havoc. Long experience had taught that the margin between victory and catastrophic defeat was paper-thin; these men weighed the risks accordingly. The two admirals now assembling the largest galley fleets ever seen had none of this experience—they were eager to seek out the enemy directly and fight. Ali carried explicit orders to this effect. It was a combustible set of circumstances.
MANY OF THE SEASONED OBSERVERS on the Christian side doubted that the whole laborious gathering of ships, men, and materials could amount to anything, especially if led by the Spanish. Don Juan’s progress toward Italy was tortuous. He left Madrid on June 6. It took him twelve days to reach Barcelona, then he waited a month for everything to be readied. “The original sin of our court is never to get a thing done with dispatch and on time,” wrote Luis de Requesens to his brother from Barcelona, watching and sighing. Eventually, on July 20, Don Juan stepped aboard his sumptuously ornate galley, the Real, and departed to cheering crowds and gunfire. Every step of the way he was slowed down by rapturous receptions, huge crowds, illuminations, fireworks, festivities, monastery visits, and church services. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the charismatic young prince, to detain and honor him. It was less a march to battle, more a royal progress, touched by explosive expressions of religious and crusading zeal, as if the ports along the route—Nice, Genoa, Civitavecchia, Naples, and Messina—were stations of the cross.
At Genoa, the Dorias entertained Don Juan as they had entertained his father, Charles V, with masked balls. “Everybody was surprised and delighted by the spirit and grace of the dancing of Don Juan,” it was reported, like a court circular. Not to be outdone, Naples laid on a brilliant reception for the young man. News of his progress swelled across Southern Europe, each landfall amplifying the sense of expectation and crusading zeal. A breathless communiqué to Rome captured the spectacular arrival of Christ’s general there on August 9: “Today at 23 hours Don Juan of Austria made his entrance to the enormous delight of the people. Cardinal Granvelle went to receive him at the harbour mole, and gave him his right hand. The said lord is fair-skinned with blond hair, a sparse beard, good-looking and of medium height. He was mounted on a very fine grey horse in handsome battle dress and he had a very good number of pages and footmen dressed in yellow velvet with deep blue fringes.” The next day he drove through cheering crowds from the port to the palace in the cardinal’s coach in a spectacular outfit of gold and crimson, followed by a long procession of nobles. At each harbor, the ships boarded detachments of Spanish and Italian troops, all King Philip’s men.
Don Juan receives the banner of the League
The pope had sent Cardinal Granvelle to Naples to consecrate the young commander in magnificent style. Granvelle was something of an ironic choice; as one of Philip’s representatives at the league negotiations, no one had shown more ill will to the proceedings with his interminable quibbling and foot-dragging. At one point the exasperated Pius had forcibly driven him from the room. Now, at an elaborate service in the church of Saint Clara on August 14, Granvelle conferred on Don Juan the badges of office as leader of the Holy League. Kneeling before the high altar, Don Juan received his general’s staff, and an enormous twenty-foot-high blue banner—the color of heaven—a gift of the pope, bearing the elaborately wrought image of the crucified Christ and the linked arms of the league participants. “Take, fortunate prince,” intoned Granvelle in a sonorous voice, “take these symbols of the true faith, and may they give thee a glorious victory over our impious enemy, and by thy hand may his pride be laid low.” The banner was carried high through the streets of Naples by Spanish soldiers and hung ceremoniously from the mainmast of the Real.
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER, a matching ceremony had taken place in Istanbul. Selim had conferred on Ali Pasha a similar swallow-tailed banner, but even larger. This one was vivid green—the color of paradise—and seamlessly embroidered with the ninety-nine names and attributes of God, repeated 28,900 times. Now it was dazzling splendidly in the autumn sun from the masthead of the Sultana in the Adriatic. The two banners were markers of matching aspirations and the assumption of God-given victory.
The consecrated Christian banner was given to mark the league’s first objective—the relief of Famagusta—but by now the war had drawn closer. During July and early August, Ali Pasha’s fl
eet had been blazing a trail of destruction across the Venetian sea empire. Working their way west along Crete and around the coast of Greece, the Ottomans made themselves lords of the Adriatic. Along the coast of modern Albania, they seized a string of fortified posts—Dulcigno, Antivari, and Budva—while the army moved overland in a coordinated pincer movement. Venier was forced to abandon his base on Corfu to avoid being bottled up, and moved the Venetian fleet west to Messina, to await the Spanish fleet. Venice was now totally without protection; the news worsened daily. In late July, the experienced corsairs Uluch Ali and Kara Hodja—“the black priest,” a defrocked Italian friar—carried their raids to the city’s very doorstep. Their ships came in sight of the city itself; an Ottoman squadron under Kara Hodja sustained a brief blockade of the basin of Saint Mark. Panic-stricken defensive measures were put in place; fortifications and cannon were mounted on the islands around the city. The Ottoman crescent moon was very close indeed.
FAR AWAY AT FAMAGUSTA, the siege was entering its final act. Lala Mustapha’s offer of negotiated surrender was fiercely resisted. Bragadin was in personal agony: “You must know that by the commission which I hold, I am forbidden on pain of death to surrender the city. Forgive me,” he cried, “I cannot do it.” It took Baglione and two more punishing assaults to talk him around. By July 31, the city was on its knees. The last cat had been eaten; only nine hundred Italians were left alive, of whom four hundred were wounded. The survivors were exhausted, shell-shocked, and hungry. Many of the city’s beautiful buildings were in ruins. The Famagustans had paid the highest price for their loyalty. There were no ships on the horizon. Baglione reassured Bragadin that “having discharged our debt in defence [of the city], we have not failed in any way…. I tell you, on my word as a gentleman, that the city has fallen. At the next assault we shall not be able to meet them, not only because of our few troops, now so depleted, but because of the gunpowder, which has been reduced to five and a half barrels.” Famagusta had been pummeled for sixty-eight days, absorbed 150,000 rounds of cannon fire, and used up, through warfare or disease, perhaps sixty thousand Ottoman troops. Bragadin gave way. On August 1, in the network of interconnecting tunnels under the walls, Venetian miners handed their counterparts a letter for the pasha. The white flag was raised on the ramparts.
The generous terms were a measure of the toll on Lala Mustapha’s army. All the Italians would be allowed to leave the island with colors flying; safe passage on Ottoman ships would be afforded them to Crete; the Greek inhabitants could go if they wished or stay and enjoy personal liberty and property. The Italians wanted to take all their cannon, but Mustapha refused to allow more than five. At this point there is a small but significant difference in the sources. All the Venetians agree that these, give or take a few minor details, were the terms on which Mustapha sealed the document and granted the safe conduct. Mustapha Pasha subsequently narrated his own version to the chronicler Ali Efendi, who took part in the siege. In this there is a further clause: the Venetians were still holding fifty hajj pilgrims captured by Querini in January, and it was agreed by both parties that these pilgrims had to be surrendered. In the space between these two accounts, something terrible arose.
On August 5, the Venetians started to embark on the Turkish ships. “Up to that hour the Turks’ relations with all the rest of us had been friendly and without suspicion, for they had shown much courtesy toward us in both word and deed,” wrote Nestor Martinengo, although by this stage, against the terms of the agreement, Ottoman soldiers were already entering the city and engaging in opportunistic looting. It may have been difficult to restrain men who had been promised lavish booty by the pasha.
At the hour of vespers, with the ships almost loaded, Bragadin set out to take the city keys to Lala Mustapha. The proud Venetian aristocrat departed from Famagusta in a show of pomp—some suggested less the defeated general than the victor. He walked in state, preceded by trumpeters and wearing crimson robes. A crimson parasol was carried above his head as the symbol of his office. With him went Baglione and the other commanders and a personal bodyguard—about three hundred men in all. They walked with their heads held high between the jeering ranks of the Ottoman army, but were safely conducted with due ceremony to Mustapha’s tent. The commanders left their swords at the threshold and entered. Mustapha rose from his seat and gestured them to stools covered with crimson velvet; they duly kissed the pasha’s hand, and Bragadin began his formal declaration of surrender: “Since the Divine Majesty has determined that this kingdom should belong to the most illustrious Grand Signore, herewith I have brought the keys to the city, and herewith I give the city up to you in accordance with the pact which we have made with each other.” And then, at the moment of greatest vulnerability for the Venetians, it all started to go horribly wrong.
Negotiated surrender hangs on a thread of mutual trust. Whether it was the Bragadin’s visible pride, or his earlier taunt to Mustapha, or the pasha’s exasperation at the sheer pointlessness of a siege that had cost at least sixty thousand men, or a need to justify the lack of booty to his men, or a justifiable grievance about the prisoners, whether it was spontaneous or premeditated, none of this is clear, but when Bragadin inquired if they were now free to depart, the thread snapped.
According to the Ottoman accounts, it started with a tetchy exchange about guarantees of safekeeping for the return of the ships from Venetian Crete. Mustapha wanted a hostage from among the nobles. Bragadin cursed him angrily: “You shan’t have a noble, you shan’t even have a dog!” Angry now, Mustapha asked where the hajj prisoners were. According to Ali Efendi’s account, Bragadin admitted that they had been tortured and killed after the peace treaty had been signed: “Those Muslim captives were not under my personal control. The Venetians and native Beys killed them on the day of surrender and I killed those who were with me.”
“Then,” said the pasha, “you have broken the treaty.”
There were other matters too to add fuel to Mustapha’s fire: the destruction of a large quantity of cotton and ammunition—booty might well have been a subtext to the pasha’s displeasure—and there were something haughty in Bragadin’s words and manner that riled the conqueror unbearably.
The Venetians told the story differently. In one, Querini had taken most of the Muslim prisoners away with him in January; in another, it was claimed that only six were left, and they had escaped; in a third, that Bragadin was ignorant of the fate of these men. “Do I not know,” came the angry reply, “that you have murdered them all?” Then getting into his stride, all Mustapha’s grievances came tumbling out. “Tell me, you hound, why did you hold the fortress when you had not the wherewithal to do so? Why did you not surrender a month ago, and not make me lose 80,000 of the best men in my army?” He wanted a hostage against the safe return of his ships from Crete. Bragadin replied this was not in the terms. “Tie them all up!” shouted the pasha.
In a flash they were hustled outside and prepared for death. The executioners strode forward and Bragadin was made to stretch out his neck two or three times. Then Lala Mustapha thought again; he decided to reserve him for later and ordered his ears and nose to be cut off—the punishment for common criminals. Baglione protested that the pasha had broken his faith; he was executed in front of the tent along with the other commanders. In the Venetian account, Mustapha then showed Baglione’s head to the army: “Behold the head of the great champion of Famagusta, of him who has destroyed half my army and given me so much trouble.” Three hundred fifty heads were piled in front of the ornate tent.
Bragadin’s end was lingering and dreadful. He was kept alive until August 17, a Friday. The wounds on his head were festering; he was crazed with pain. After prayers, he was processed through the city to the sound of drums and trumpets, accompanied by his faithful servant Andrea, who had accepted conversion to Islam in order to serve him to the last. Because of his earlier words to the pasha, he was made to carry sackfuls of earth along the city walls and to kiss the ground each
time he passed the pasha. He was taunted to convert to Islam. The Venetian hagiographers record a saintly response: “I am a Christian and thus I want to live and die. I hope my soul will be saved. My body is yours. Torture it as you will.” They probably heightened the horror for a receptive audience, but the stark facts are beyond doubt. These were ritual acts of humiliation. More dead than alive, he was tied in a chair and hoisted to the top of a galley’s mast, ducked in the sea, and shown to the fleet with jeers and taunts: “Look if you can see your fleet; look, great Christian, if you can see succour coming to Famagusta.” Then he was hustled into the square beside the church of Saint Nicholas, now converted into a mosque, and stripped naked. The butcher ordered to commit the final act—and this would not be forgiven in Venice—was a Jew. Tied to an ancient column from Salamis still standing to this day, Bragadin was skinned alive. He was dead before the butcher reached the waist.
The skin was stuffed with straw. Dressed in the commander’s crimson robes and shaded by the red parasol, it was mounted on a cow and paraded through the streets. Later the hideous dummy was exhibited along the coast of the Levant, then sent to Selim in Istanbul.
This theatrical act of cruelty was not universally applauded within the Ottoman domain. Sokollu was said to have been appalled. Maybe he understood, as with the massacre at Saint Elmo, that such acts only stiffened resolve; or he read a deeper motive. With the butcher’s knife Lala Mustapha had wrecked his rival’s attempt to broker surrender by peaceful means; Sokollu’s diplomacy turned on the need to keep the republic from alliance with Spain. All this was probably now in ruins. Bragadin had given the Venetians a martyr and a cause. He had not died in vain: the time spent on Famagusta and the losses incurred had seriously impeded the Ottoman war with Venice. His stuffed skin, now dangling from the yardarm of a Turkish galley, still had its part to play.
Empires of the Sea Page 27