II
Christian reactions to the extension of Turkish influence into the western Mediterranean took two forms: confrontation and accommodation. The French king, Francis I, proved willing to cooperate with the Turks, to the scandal of his many rivals; in Spain, though, the struggle with the Ottomans was seen as a continuation and accentuation of the great crusade that Christians had long been fighting against the Moors. Charles V sought ‘the aid and guidance of our Creator’, in the hope that with divine assistance he would manage to do ‘what seems most effective against Barbarossa’.21 Under the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria a Christian counter-attack began.22 Doria’s family had produced many of the great Genoese admirals of the previous centuries, and Andrea was his own master: he showed his independence by failing to participate in person in an attack on Naples launched by Francis I in 1528, and then switched sides from Francis to Charles V. But it is likely that he was lured into the service of Charles V more by money than by principle. He operated his own fleet, though he had access to the dockyards of his native city; he employed volunteer crews, to whom were added an assortment of convicts; his run of successes made him popular with the volunteers, even though he imposed a moral regime in which blasphemy was strictly forbidden.23 In many ways he is a mirror image of Hayrettin Barbarossa, combining a degree of independence with willingness to work for a cause. Sent against Greece in 1532, he amply proved his worth to his new master with the brilliantly executed capture of the naval base of Coron on the southern tip of the Peloponnese. Doria penetrated a Turkish cordon and landed his own troops, to the amazement of his enemies. In their heyday Coron and Modon had been ‘the two eyes of the Venetian Empire’, protecting the trade routes running east from the Ionian Sea. Recovering Coron from the Turks was a great strategic victory; Süleyman despatched sixty galleys in the expectation of winning it back again, but Doria saw them off.24
Concern in the West grew in 1537 when Süleyman sent 25,000 men under Hayrettin against Corfu. A Turkish siege of Corfu was an obvious threat to the West: the Ottomans would acquire a launch-pad for attacks on Italy, and would be able to control traffic into the Adriatic. A Holy League was formed at Nice under papal patronage, bringing together Doria, the Spaniards and Venice, which was traditionally so cautious in its dealings with the Sublime Porte. Early in 1538, Hayrettin responded with a series of assaults on the Venetian bases in the eastern Mediterranean, which included Nafplion and Monemvasia in the Peloponnese. This was not simply tit-for-tat warfare: taken together, the Venetian islands and coastal stations offered supply lines and protection to western shipping. The Ottomans claimed to have taken twenty-five islands out of the hands of Venice, sometimes by sacking them and sometimes by imposing tribute.25 The impression that Doria was ultimately his own master was confirmed, however, by his lacklustre performance when the massed forces of the Holy League – 36 papal galleys, 10 Hospitaller ships, 50 Portuguese ships, as many as 61 Genoese ships – met the Ottoman fleet, commanded by Hayrettin, at the battle of Preveza, off Corfu, on 28 September 1538.26 Once he saw that the western fleet was suffering losses, he pulled back rather than continuing to fight. As a Genoese he had no great interest in protecting Venetian interests, and – though well aware of the threat from Süleyman and Hayrettin – his priority was the defence of the western Mediterranean. A contemporary French observer compared Doria and Barbarossa to wolves who do not eat each other or crows ‘who do not peck out each other’s eyes’.27
III
The king of France offered a different solution to the question of how to deal with the Turks. Francis I was locked in conflict with Charles V over historic claims to parts of Italy – the duchy of Milan, to which his predecessor Louis XII had possessed a claim, and the kingdom of Naples, already invaded by both Charles VIII and Louis XII. Whereas Charles had seen the conquest of Naples in 1495 as the first step on a victorious crusade to Constantinople and Jerusalem, Louis XII, who reigned from 1498 to 1515, looked towards a narrower horizon. He did launch a naval expedition to Lesbos, but this was a disaster, and cured him of any ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean. He became involved in the ever-turbulent affairs of Genoa in 1507, suppressing a revolt within the city, but his aim was, once again, to consolidate his hold in north-western Italy rather than to launch a great French enterprise against the Turks. He underestimated the ability of Ferdinand of Aragon to mobilize opposition within northern Italy. Defeat at Ravenna in 1511 forced Louis to withdraw from Italy; nevertheless, his successor, Francis, resolved to avenge France on its Habsburg foes, first recovering Milan and then unfurling ever more ambitious plans, which culminated in his humiliating defeat and capture at the great battle of Pavia in 1525.28 After his release from prison in Madrid, Francis rapidly abandoned his promise to live in peace alongside his Habsburg neighbours, for France was flanked on all its frontiers by lands owing allegiance in various degrees to Charles V. Some of these neighbours were not particularly loyal to Charles, and Francis had less reason to fear encirclement than he may have imagined, but he also knew that he could pursue his dream of an empire in Italy only by maintaining pressure on the Habsburgs.29
The French king attempted to resolve his difficulties within western Europe by meddling in the Mediterranean wars between the Spaniards and the Turks.30 Ultimately, his aim in seeking an alliance with the Turks was not peace but mischief. In 1520 he sent an emissary to Tunis, urging the corsairs ‘to multiply the difficulties of the emperor in his kingdom of Naples’, a plan that showed scant regard for the interests of the inhabitants in southern Italy, whose sovereign Francis aspired to become.31 For the moment, the alliance between the French and the Turks was a secret one, and much of the interference took place within the Balkans, where French agents encouraged Christian warlords to work alongside the Turks in attacking the Habsburg territories. Francis sent embassies to Süleyman in 1529, keen to avenge himself against Andrea Doria following the admiral’s defection; the same year the French supplied cannons that were used in the reduction of the Spanish fort at the entrance to Algiers harbour. Seven years later Charles V heard reports of an understanding between the French and Ottoman courts to attack the Habsburg dominions simultaneously. Charles tried to box Francis into a corner by appealing for the creation of a Holy League against the Turks, since if it came into being the French king would be forced to choose publicly between Christian unity and a Turkish alliance; for Francis what mattered was the balance of power, since the Ottomans could be used, he imagined, as a counterweight against the Habsburgs.32 One wonders how Francis would have reacted had Süleyman’s attack on Vienna in 1529 succeeded. An embassy to the sultan in 1532 expressed Francis’ priorities with ruthless clarity: Süleyman was urged to concentrate on Italy rather than Hungary and Austria. Francis imagined that Süleyman’s troops could chase the Habsburgs out of the peninsula, upon which he would raise the banner of Christ and enter Italy as its divinely appointed saviour. Süleyman, however, was increasingly distracted by conflict with the Shah of Persia, and left the management of the Mediterranean war to Hayrettin Barbarossa in North Africa. The impression is of pure cynicism on the French king’s part. By 1533 the alliance was no secret: embassies from Hayrettin were received in France, and a few months later eleven fine Turkish galleys arrived, bringing the emissaries of the sultan himself. Negotiations culminated in a trade treaty, the ‘Capitulations’, which masked a political alliance.33
French support for the Turks was shameless. In 1537 twelve French galleys set out to resupply 100 Turkish ships, chasing around the central Mediterranean in search of Hayrettin’s fleet, and dodging the ships of the Maltese Knights. In 1543 a French ambassador accompanied Hayrettin’s fleet as it savaged the coasts of southern Italy, carrying off the daughter of the governor of Reggio. The sultan even offered to lend Barbarossa’s ships to the French king. Barbarossa’s fleet arrived in Marseilles amid fanfares and public celebrations. Francis was happy to offer food not just for the great feast held in honour of the Turkish navy, but also to suppl
y Hayrettin’s war fleet, so that ‘he would be master of the sea’. The Turks then amused themselves with raids along the coast to the east, which lay under the dominion not of France but of the duke of Savoy, an imperial vassal: Nice was besieged and the nuns of Antibes were carried into slavery.
At this point the most extraordinary event in the curious history of the Franco-Turkish alliance occurred. Francis opened up Toulon to the Turkish ships, inviting Hayrettin’s men to spend the winter there. Francis presented Barbarossa with a clock and silver plate. Thirty thousand Turks were dispersed within the town and its suburbs, and Toulon Cathedral was transformed into a mosque. A slave market was established, for the Turks continued to pick up men and women from the surrounding countryside, pressing some of the men into galley service. Turkish coin circulated in place of French money. The city council complained that the Turkish troops consumed too many olives, and supplies of food and fuel became short in a region not bountifully endowed with natural resources. Barbarossa was well aware of the controversy that had developed over his presence in France, and he was also worried by the failing provisions; he persuaded the king to give him 800,000 gold écus, and sailed away in May 1544. Further depredations resumed, on a savage scale, when Barbarossa left Toulon, having persuaded the French fleet to join him: Talamone on the Tuscan coast was sacked; Ischia was devastated after refusing to pay off the attackers with money, boys and girls; and all this was witnessed by Francis’s embarrassed ambassador, le Paulin.34 Later in 1544 Francis shamefacedly made peace with Charles V, promising to unite with Spain against the Turks, but in reality Francis and his successor Henry III had no compunction about collaborating with Turkish fleets, including the Barbary corsairs, in raids on the territory of the common Habsburg enemy. In the late 1550s, for instance, the navies of France and Algiers joined in attacks on Minorca, always exposed and vulnerable, and on Sorrento, within sight of Naples.
Charles V was not so principled that he was unwilling to collaborate occasionally with Muslim rulers within the Mediterranean, most obviously the rulers of Tunis. Venice, too, had a tradition of appeasing the Ottomans in order to serve its commercial interests. The neutrality of Dubrovnik was assured by tribute payments to the Sublime Porte. But King Francis pursued his own interests more ruthlessly than his Christian rivals, and did so in the hope that this would win him territories in Italy and glory as a military commander. Charles V was a more sober figure, careful in framing his policies, which in large measure were reactive: he saw Islam expanding in the Mediterranean at the same time as Protestantism was expanding in Europe, while France was challenging the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Spanish kingdoms that now lay under his rule. Charles’s political passions were determined by the confrontation with Süleyman the Magnificent and with Martin Luther and his successors. When he abdicated in 1556, not long before he died, the balance of forces within the Mediterranean remained delicate. Three events within the next sixteen years would confirm the division of the Great Sea between a partly Christian West and a mainly Muslim East: the siege of Malta, the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus and the battle of Lepanto.
IV
A glance at the naval forces arrayed in the sixteenth-century Mediterranean reveals that the coming of the Ottomans had created a new order, reminiscent, if anything, of the early days of Islam. Now that a Muslim empire was once again seeking to expand its power by land and sea in all directions, navies under Muslim command gained control of the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and challenged Christian navies in the western Mediterranean by means of their proxies, the rulers of the Barbary coast. It was an extraordinary transformation. After centuries in which Muslim navies had exercised tentative control of waters close to the Islamic states – Mamluk fleets off Egypt and Syria, Moroccan ships in the far west, Turkish emirs within the Aegean – Muslim sea power had expanded outwards on a massive scale.35 Constantinople became the command centre of an enormous fleet, in great contrast to the Byzantine era, when naval power had increasingly fallen into the hands of the Genoese and Venetians. Skilled admirals became expert in the art of war at sea. This was not just a fighting force; the sultans were also keenly interested in provisioning their capital, both with wheat for its ever-expanding population and with luxuries for its imperial court.36 Meanwhile, in the West, Spanish naval power came to rely on Italian resources. Most of the ‘Spanish’ ships that will appear in the next chapter, fighting the Turks at Malta and Lepanto, were supplied by Spanish Naples and Sicily.37 The arsenal at Messina had been active for centuries; but the role of Sicily and southern Italy in the struggle for naval command within the Mediterranean had not been so significant since Charles of Anjou attempted to create a maritime empire in the thirteenth century.
Alongside these changes there was conservatism. One of the extraordinary features of the history of the Mediterranean is the longevity of the galley. The ships themselves, especially when built by the Ottomans out of unseasoned or ‘green’ timber, did not last as long as the great Roman grain ships of antiquity. But the basic design of the galley had changed rather little, if one sets aside the massive galleasses built by the Venetians – slow and cumbersome vessels that had to be towed to their stations, and that developed out of the large merchant galleys built to service the late medieval trade to Flanders and the Levant.38 The length of a Spanish galley might be about forty metres and the width only five or six, making a ratio of roughly 8:1. As in antiquity, there was a raised deck running along the length of the ship, with rowing benches placed at a lower level. A vessel of this size would have about twenty-five benches down each side, typically seating five oarsmen.39 Sail-power was also used when appropriate, and in the western Mediterranean there was a preference for larger sails than in Venice and the Ottoman Empire. This may have suited navigation across the more open seas of the western Mediterranean, while in the Adriatic, Ionian and Aegean Seas galleys tended to hop from island to island and to crawl along the sharply indented coastlines – there existed quite an intense network of communication by galley in the Ottoman Aegean.40 Under sail, speeds were respectable, and might reach ten or even twelve knots, but a mere three knots was a normal cruising speed under oar, which could be more than doubled when a quick spurt was needed, in pursuit or escape. Naturally, the men could not maintain high speeds for long; a rate of twenty-six strokes per minute could probably be kept up for only twenty minutes. The old problems remained: low freeboards were easily swamped in high seas, and it was difficult to supply the rowers with sufficient water and food without making frequent halts.41 These problems could be resolved by not sailing too far out of sight of land in squally weather, so galleys still hugged the shores. Yet they had the advantage of manoeuvrability precisely because they were not entirely dependent on the vagaries of the Mediterranean winds, and a well-trained crew could turn the vessel about in a narrow space.
These crews were typically a combination of slaves and free men. The art in managing a crew was, of course, to instil an awareness of the need for teamwork. It was common practice to seat free and unfree oarsmen side by side; free oarsmen had greater privileges and could be used to watch over their unfree neighbours, who were generally shackled. Ottoman fleets, though, might be composed of a mixture of ships, some manned by slaves and others by volunteers. A sixteenth-century report refers to a fleet of 130 ships, of which forty were rowed by slaves, sixty by free Muslim conscripts, who received a stipend, and another forty by Christian volunteers, who were paid as well; the report also stresses that in time of war care was taken to recruit free Muslims because they alone were fully trusted. Villages were expected to send conscripts and to pay for their maintenance – about one oarsman for every twenty to thirty households.42 Venice had its Milizia da Mar, a government agency established in 1545 to organize conscription in Venice and its dependencies; nearly 4,000 oarsmen were owed by the Venetian guilds and confraternities, and at any time over 10,000 conscripts were on the books, from whom galley crews would be selected by lot.43 F
ree and unfree rowers were subjected to tight discipline, whether they served on Christian or Muslim ships. It was obviously essential that all rowers kept time and carried the weight of the oar (some galleys had individual oars, but many were quinquiremes, where five men manipulated one massive oar). Conditions on board were very unpleasant when under way: oarsmen had to relieve themselves where they sat, though a sensible commander would make sure that faeces and other rubbish were washed away every couple of days. In the meantime, the air became fetid. There was a little space in which to store goods and curl up for the night under the benches and in the gangways. Shackled slaves had no chance of escaping when a galley was swamped and sank; this was the fate of enormous numbers on both sides at the great battle near Lepanto in 1571. Under way, many rowed almost naked; dehydration was a problem in the summer heat of the Mediterranean, and some died at their niches, but a captain with an ounce of sense knew that he could not afford to lose his oarsmen. A shift system meant that oarsmen had time to recover their energy. Those who proved most cooperative would be promoted up the ship’s command structure, and released from the tedium and squalor below decks to help keep time or to perform other vital functions. Up to a point, then, the stark picture of misery on board the galleys needs to be modified, though it would be equally erroneous to try to present the treatment of the slaves, or indeed the volunteers, as positive and considerate. Iron discipline ruled.
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