The Sultan's Admiral (16 page)

Barbarossa’s first action after the capture of the fort that had so long been a thorn in his side was to order its complete destruction. Then, using stones from the fort and from local quarries, he set all the slaves to work on constructing a breakwater to connect the island to the mainland of Algiers. It was just after this had begun that a number of transports, loaded with men and ammunition for the relief of the Penon, came sailing unsuspecting down the coast. Barbarossa ordered out the galleots, which swooped like hawks on their prey, capturing (according to De la Graviere) “two thousand seven hundred men and a considerable quantity of arms and provisions.” It was an additional triumph and, meanwhile, the Penon of Algiers was no more. Within two years, a great stone mole protected the harbour of Algiers from northerlies and westerlies, while inside lay an ever-increasing fleet of galleys and galleots—a symbol of the new sea power of North Africa.

The addition of so many sea captains and ships to the growing Moslem strength in the western Mediterranean was largely due to the fact that in recent years there had been practically no Christian naval vessels operating anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean. The last threat to Turkish power in the Aegean and the Levant had been eliminated in 1522 when the Sultan Suleiman had driven the Knights of St. John out of the island of Rhodes, after a siege in which he had lost thousands of men. The expulsion of the knights from Rhodes had been an immense blow to Christendom, for the knights were the finest fighting sailors of their day, and had long been the principal opponents of Ottoman sea power in the east. For seven years they had been homeless; and it was only now, in 1530, that they took up residence in Malta—the island which was to become so indelibly associated with their name that they finally became known throughout Europe not as the Knights of St. John, but as “the Knights of Malta.” But all this was in the future, and at the moment the knights—engaged in settling into their new home and extending its primitive fortifications—represented no threat to the Turkish dominance of the Mediterranean.

Bushy-bearded Kheir-ed-Din built well upon the foundations that his brother had laid. Lane-Poole summarised his achievements during this period of his life: “Everything that Kheir-ed-Din took in hand seemed to prosper. His fleet increased month by month, till he had thirty-six of his own galleots perpetually on the cruise in the summer season; his prizes were innumerable, and his forces were increased by the fighting men of the seventy thousand Moriscos whom he rescued in a series of voyages, from servitude in Spain. The waste places of Africa were peopled with the industrious agriculturalists whom the Spanish Government knew not how to employ. The foundries and dockyards of Algiers teemed with busy workmen. Seven thousand Christian slaves laboured at the defensive works and the harbour; and every attempt of the Emperor to rescue them and destroy the pirates was repelled with disastrous loss.”

An attack on Shershell in the summer of 1531 by twenty galleys of Spain, although it resulted in some Christian prisoners being released, was repulsed without much difficulty, and Barbarossa was “comforted to learn that near 900 of such impertinent visitors [the Spaniards] had been cut to pieces,” and that he had more than six hundred new captives. The commander of this unsuccessful expedition was Andrea Doria. His reverse rankled, and he no doubt looked forward to a further meeting with Barbarossa. Shortly afterwards the latter led out his ships on one of his annual summer raids and captured two Neapolitan galleys on their way with cargoes of silk from Messina to Spain. Later in the year, an attempted rising by the slaves in the bagnio was discovered and suppressed long before it could become dangerous. Barbarossa could undoubtedly call it a good year—the Spaniards repulsed at Shershell, a valuable cargo brought to port, and a weakness in the system exposed and cured.

It must be borne in mind that the divided state of Europe played a large part in all the Turkish successes of these years. While Spain and France were at loggerheads, while England was contesting with Spain and Portugal the rights to the new territories across the Atlantic, and while Italy was divided between papal power, egocentric princes, and the Spanish-dominated Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, there was little hope of any coordinated action against the Turks. While Islam united many nations and different ethnic groups under its flag, Christianity seemed to be used merely as a qualification for being a European. After that, there was no need to pretend to “love your neighbour.” This was part of the penalty that Christianity had to pay for having become the “national” religion of the Romans and, later, of the Byzantines. Once any chance of union between the Eastern and Western churches had been shattered by the Fourth Crusade in its destruction of the Byzantine Empire, Christianity as a supranational force was bound to collapse. Its place was taken by European nationalism, and it was against this “house divided against itself” that the Kingdom of Algiers and the power of the Barbarossas was enabled to rise. The Turks, according to the Abbot Haedo, “held the Christians in great contempt,” and it is not at all difficult to understand the reason for this. As professing Christians, the inhabitants of Europe were, of course, contemptible. They worshipped “graven images”; contrary to their own and the Moslem faith they had superimposed upon the pantheon of the ancient gods innumerable saints and martyrs (many of them bogus); and, while professing to be adherents of the God of Love and Peace, they spent much of their time killing one another.

But while the western as well as the eastern ends of the Mediterranean were now indisputably dominated by the Turks, the situation in the central basin, the Ionian Sea, was not so favourable to the Sultan. In 1532, the year after his repulse at Shershell, Andrea Doria conducted a remarkably successful campaign against the Grecian outposts of the Ottoman Empire. The great Genoese Admiral had withdrawn his allegiance from Francis I of France some four years before, and had taken over his own twelve galleys to join the cause of Charles V. This was an immense blow to France, for the added strength of the imperial navies, combined with the skill of Doria, entirely altered the naval balance of power between the two great rivals. The object of Doria’s raid on Greece was to create a diversion and take some of the pressure off Hungary, where the Sultan was advancing into imperial territory at the head of his armies. Doria brilliantly attained his objective, sweeping in through the Gulf of Patras, capturing the city, and going on to seize the two forts which commanded the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. Prior to his attack on Patras, Doria had captured the important garrison port of Coron commanding the Gulf of Messenia in the southern Peloponnese. In the spring of the following year, hearing that the garrison he had left behind was blockaded by a Turkish fleet, Doria fought an inspired action, defeated Lutfi Pasha in command of the Turkish fleet, and reinforced and revictualled the garrison.

There seems no doubt that it was Doria’s successes against the Turkish navy—and in their own home waters—that prompted Sultan Suleiman’s next action. His Grand Vizir Ibrahim had long been urging the Sultan to institute closer relations with the new ruler of Algiers. He was eager to cement a friendship between the Sublime Porte and these Turks in the western Mediterranean who had been enjoying such overwhelming success against the forces of Spain and the Emperor. In the spring of 1533 Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa, Beylerbey of Algiers, received an ambassador from Constantinople. He was commanded to present himself before Suleiman, Sultan of the Ottomans and “Allah’s Deputy on Earth,” at his earliest convenience. It was a moment of triumph for Barbarossa. Nearly thirty years previously he had left the Aegean as an obscure young man in the service of his brother, with two small galleots. He was now ruler of nearly all Algeria, master of a fleet that terrorised the western Mediterranean, and important enough to have the most powerful ruler on earth requesting his presence at court. For Barbarossa must have realised that the Sultan’s need for him in Constantinople was dictated by the fact that he, Barbarossa, had proved himself uniquely successful against the Christians— especially at sea.

“The issues,” writes Sir Godfrey Fisher, “which led to Kheir-ed-Din’s urgent summons to Constantinople appear to have been threefold—the reorganisation of the Turkish fleet, which had fallen into disrepute; the importunity of a claimant to the throne of Tunis … and the opportunity of effecting an arrangement for active co-operation with France in the Mediterranean which had apparently been advocated and, indeed, initiated by Barbarossa himself—perhaps to counteract friendly advances which the emperor was making to the sultan.”

Certainly the all-important issue was the reorganisation of the fleet: a necessity which Doria’s recent successes had brought home harshly to the Sublime Porte. It had certainly not escaped the notice of the Grand Vizir that, whereas Turkish ships under Turkish admirals commanded little success against the Genoese, Barbarossa and his lieutenants seemed to rule the western Mediterranean as its almost undisputed masters. Whereas Doria’s attack on Shershell had been beaten off with heavy losses, he was still able to cruise around the Ionian with the same impunity that Barbarossa enjoyed in the central and western sea. Barbarossa was a self-made man—like the Grand Vizir—and the latter could respect and understand the qualities which had lifted the son of an obscure janissary to power and prominence. Barbarossa was clearly the man to advise on the reorganisation of the navy and, indeed, even on the design of its ships and equipment.

On the second question, the sovereignty of Tunis, there can be no doubt that the initiative came from Kheir-ed-Din. He had carefully left the Tunisian area alone while organising Algeria, but he must no doubt have kept a watchful eye on this Moslem state on his right flank. He had many friends and acquaintances in Tunis, dating from the days when he and his brother had used it as their headquarters. In 1532, prior to the Sultan’s summons, he had already received a number of messages from leading citizens in Tunis imploring him to free them from their current ruler, a certain Muley Hassan of the dynasty of Hafs. Muley Hassan was an example of the worst type of North African prince, a man who is said to have stepped to the throne over the bodies of twenty-two (some authorities go so far as to say forty-four) murdered brothers. The Tunisians would doubtless have forgiven this blood-stained path to the throne if their new ruler had been efficient, and sympathetic to the interests of the ruling classes. Muley Hassan was neither.

Barbarossa, no doubt, communicated to the Sultan that there was a prospect of extending Turkish rule throughout Tunisia as well as Algeria. This was almost certainly one of the reasons why he received the imperial summons. Kheir-ed-Din could be useful to the Sultan in reorganising his navy. No doubt the Sultan could be useful to Kheir-ed-Din in providing arms and men for the occupation of Tunis. In either case, both seemed certain to benefit.

The third reason for the Sultan’s summons—and one which to Barbarossa was certainly as important as any—was the question of which nation the Turks would back in the internecine struggles of Europe. Overtures had recently been made to the Sultan by Charles V, eager to avert the Turkish threat to his territory in central Europe. He was equally eager to get the Sultan to call off, if he could, the rapacious attacks on his Mediterranean trade routes by Barbarossa and his fellow galley captains. Barbarossa’s interests, on the other hand, were best served by a collaboration with France. France had little or no interest in the North African coast, while any alliance that could damage Spanish power was of the greatest advantage to Algiers. It was up to him to persuade the Sultan that the most advantageous alliance for the Ottoman Empire was with France. With the help of France there was a better chance of imposing upon central Europe that extension of his Empire which Suleiman so ardently desired.

“In August 1533, he [Barbarossa] having appointed Hassan Aga Viceroy of Algiers, along with two other lieutenants of his, stopping en route to put down trouble in Constantine,” left Algeria for the Aegean, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus. Some records have it that the squadron with which Barbarossa left Algiers inflicted great damage on the territories through which they passed. It seems unlikely, and Hamilton Currey’s statement that “sailing through the Straits of Bonifacio they touched Monte Cristo etc.” is uncorroborated by any known evidence. It was unlikely that, being bound for Constantinople, Barbarossa would have diverged so far from his route as to go right up into the northern Mediterranean, when all he had to do was to take the straightforward eastern route south of Sicily and Greece, round Cape Matapan up into the Aegean. It does seem, however, from an analysis of the varying accounts, that he netted a number of corn ships bound from Sicily to Spain as his squadron swung easily eastward into the sea that belonged to the Sultan.

Sandoval, Bishop of Pamplona, in his history of the Emperor Charles V, has a good—but possibly imaginative—account of Barbarossa’s reception when he and his galleys and galleots rounded Seraglio Point and came into the Golden Horn. They rowed with easy confidence, the galley of Barbarossa distinguished from those of his lieutenants by the broad gold line which indicated the Sultan of several Algerian cities, and the Pasha and Beylerbey of Algiers. “A concordance of sweet sounds” was heard far off, for Barbarossa—like Sir Francis Drake again—was fond of music aboard ship. He had a similar sense of the respect that should be shown to a man who had made his way in the world, and who was a master mariner, general, and sea captain. He had brought presents for the Sultan that established his position, presents such as few men—even kings—could afford to bring. Camels laden with gold and gems, silks and bales of rich velvets, were preceded by some two hundred young Christian women (destined for the Sultan’s harem), each of them carrying a gift of gold or silver in her hand. Lions and other African animals followed. Behind them, riding upon a bay stallion that the Sultan himself had sent to him as a gift, came Barbarossa. “The tried generals and statesmen of the greatest of Ottoman emperors assembled to gaze upon the rough sea dogs, whose exploits were on the lips of all Europe; and most of all they scrutinized the vigorous well-knit yet burly frame of the man with the bushy eyebrows and thick beard . . It is doubtful whether Kheir-ed-Din was overimpressed by the packed ranks of janissaries lining his route, or the splendour of the city through which he was passing. Like all men who have triumphed through their own endeavours alone, Kheir-ed-Din rode into Constantinople asserting a dignity that he knew was unassailable.