The Sultan's Admiral (18 page)

In July 1534 the Turkish fleet left the Golden Horn with its new Admiral in the van. It moved by easy stages down through the Aegean, to turn west round Cape Matapan. The inhabitants of the islands saw them pass. They clustered together in their hilltop villages (for the ancient harbour towns along the coasts had long since been abandoned) wondering, no doubt, whether the Turks were in search of more Christian sons to make into janissaries, or whether some expedition was planned to carry off their young men for service in the galleys. From the white Chora of Samothrace to the Chora of lonely Amorgos they watched the procession of this great new fleet as it made its way southward through the sea that their forefathers had once called “the Sea of the Kingdom.” But the kingdom to which it now belonged was that of the Ottoman Turks, whose empire now extended to Tabriz in Persia. The one-time invaders of Europe, whom the ancient Greeks had defeated in the most glorious years of their history, were now powerless; even the Persians were in retreat before the Turks. As John Milton phrased it:

Bactrian Sophi, from the horns

Of Turkish crescent, leaves all waste beyond

The realm of Aladule, in his retreat …

Now the crescent horns of an advancing line of galleys and galleots moved westward through the Ionian Sea, bound for the trouble of Europe and equally for the discomfiture of the Moslem ruler of Tunis. Eighty-four ships, according to one account, left Constantinople that summer under the command of Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa.

The ports and coastal villages of Italy and Sicily had learned in the past to look southward for the lean hulls of the galleys from the Barbary Coast, for the lateen sails and the fourteen-aside oars walking deliberately and purposefully towards their shores in the summer months of the raiders. Their watchtowers were manned along their coastlines and on their rocky peaks to give advance warning of the approaching enemy. From Malta and Gozo, from Sicily, from the Aegadian and the Lipari Islands, the local militia looked southward in the summer. But now, for the first time, to their horror the enemy struck suddenly from the east—and not just a few marauding corsair captains, but a huge fleet organised and commanded by none other than Barbarossa.

Setting his course westward from the coast of Greece, Barbarossa arrived out of the blue Ionian like an earthquake on the earthquake-ridden Strait of Messina. Here, in the region once haunted by Scylla and Charybdis and described by Homer as the place where “no sailors can boast that they ever passed Scylla without losing some of their number,” a new, but human, terror struck. Early one morning, out of the dormant sea, came the threshing sound of the galleys—poised on whose rambades were janissaries with their bows, arquebuses, and scimitars. Swinging to the north up the Messina Strait, leaving Cape Spartivento behind them, they saw on their port hand the long range of mountains that back Messina, and far away on their quarter the lazily smoking peak of Mount Aetna. They were in the land of legend, but they brought their own legend with them—one that was to dominate the Mediterranean, in a sense, far longer than the poetry of Homer. They brought the legend of “the corsairs” and of “the Barbary Coast.” This raid on Reggio was only a forerunner of the many that were to change the whole face of the Mediterranean coastline during the sixteenth century.

Reggio, a city that had remained faithful to Rome throughout the Punic Wars and which even the great Hannibal had never succeeded in taking, now fell into the hands of the Turks. For the first time the unfortunate southern Italians realised that the threat to their shores came not only from North Africa, but also from the Turks in the East. Barbarossa and his troops fell upon the city commanding the trade route between Italy and Sicily, and devastated it. Its inhabitants were enslaved—the young men destined for the galleys and the young women for the harems of Constantinople.

Moving northwards by easy stages up the Tyrrhenian Sea, they terrorised the Italian seaboard, even sweeping into small ports like Cetraro, to capture the local shipping and carry off the inhabitants. Communications were bad in southern Italy, and the news of Kheir-ed-Din’s onslaught did not reach Naples in time. If it had, one must surely have expected the Viceroy to prepare his galleys for action, and to lie in wait for the Turks as they resolutely pressed on northwards. Surely from the watch posts on Anacapri, from the heights of Sorrento, and from ancient Amalfi (once itself ruler of these seas), the advance of so large a fleet must have been seen? But it may be that Barbarossa timed his passage to the west of the Bay of Naples for the dark hours. Certainly there was no naval engagement. Perhaps the Viceroy and his advisers knew that with their limited fleet there was nothing they could do to stop the raider’s passage. Barbarossa, in any case, had vanished into the smoky blue seas to the north of the city. A few days later the news of his next exploit was brought to Naples by a sweat-stained horseman from the Gulf of Gaeta. Barbarossa had sacked the ancient seaport of Sperlonga—where the Emperor Tiberius had once had a summer villa—and had “loaded his ships with wives and maidens.”

But Kheir-ed-Din had in mind a particular prize for the Sultan: something that would shine like a pearl among the simple treasures of his other captives. Twelve miles northwest of Sperlonga lay the ancient town of Fondi, the family home of the Counts of Fondi. The present Countess was none other than the renowned Giulia Gonzaga—descendant of one of Italy’s greatest families, related to the late Pope Martin V, and the young widow of the noble Vespasio Colonna. Giulia Gonzaga’s beauty had been celebrated by painters and poets to such an extent that rumour of it had even reached the Sublime Porte. The unfading amaranth, the flower of love, was the appropriate device on her coat of arms. What more suitable gift, then, could Barbarossa bring the Sultan than the lady herself—beautiful, nobly bom, and highly suitable therefore for the Sultan’s harem?

After leaving his troops to sack Sperlonga, Kheir-ed-Din with a raiding force moved swiftly up the road to Fondi. Fortunately for the lady, some advance news of the approach of the Turks must have reached her. Although she was in bed when a messenger stumbled up to the villa, she just had time to leave the house, leap on her horse in her night clothes, and make her escape. In the words of Von Hammer in his
History of the Ottoman Empire
: “The attendant who accompanied her on this desperate midnight flight she later had condemned to death—saying that he had taken advantage of her distress and had been overbold.” An illustration to the
Histoire des Pirates et Corsaires
shows Giulia Gonzaga, with a sword in her hand and her breasts bare, riding down a Turkish soldier while the town of Fondi goes up in flames behind her.

Foiled of his prey, Kheir-ed-Din abandoned the town to his troops. Hamilton Currey, with more imagination than documentary evidence, writes: “They sacked Fondi and burned the town; they killed every man on whom they could lay their hands, and carried off the women and girls to the fleet. Kheir-ed-Din was furious with anger and disappointment. ‘What is the value of all this trash?’ he demanded with a thundering oath, of the commander of the unsuccessful raiders, surveying as he spoke the miserable, shivering women and girls. ‘I sent you out to bring back a pearl without price, and you return with these cattle.’ ”

The whole of his campaign that early summer on the west coast of Italy was designed, no doubt, to ingratiate himself with the Sultan. But it was also designed to lull the Sultan of Tunis, Muley Hassan, into a false sense of security. The news of the activity of the Turkish fleet on the coast of Italy was naturally spread far and wide throughout the Mediterranean. If Hassan had been suspicious that his neighbour, the Beylerbey of Algiers, was interested in his kingdom, he must surely have felt that he had nothing to fear from a man who was occupied with harrowing the Kingdom of Naples.

No doubt Barbarossa needed to use the Sultan’s fleet to show some immediate return to the Treasury in Constantinople. The slaves and captured valuables went back in comfortable procession round Cape Malea, up the Aegean, through the Sea of Marmora, and into the quiet waters of the Golden Horn. Having shown this comparatively simple proof of his efficiency, Barbarossa was now free to add yet another dominion to the Sultan’s glory—and to make himself its master. The fleet turned southwestward and headed for North Africa. They left behind them the green enamelled shoulders of the Italian mountains and passed Mount Erice towering above the western Sicilian coast. The lonely Aegadian Islands faded as they set course for the homed Gulf of Tunis.

On August 16, the fleet came to anchor off the Goletta, the “throat” of the great harbour of Tunis, and opened up a bombardment of the entrance. There was no resistance. Muley Hassan, who had alienated his people by the fatal mixture of cruelty and weakness, immediately fled. As Morgan puts it, “he packed up as much of his treasure as he could and, with his women and children, got away to his Arab allies in the country.” Two days later he made an ineffectual attempt at return, backed by one thousand local horsemen, but the fire power of the Turkish arquebusiers was too much for them. They scattered in panic, and Muley Hassan escaped with them, to seek refuge in the inland city of Qairwan. Tunis was Barbarossa’s.

Thus, thirty years after he and his brother, unknown corsairs, had been permitted by the then Sultan to shelter their two galleys in the Goletta, he returned to become King of the city. Commander-in-Chief of the Ottoman Navy, recognised by the Sultan Suleiman as the greatest Turkish sea captain afloat, ruler of Algiers and of nearly all Algeria, Kheir-ed-Din was one of the greatest monarchs in the Mediterranean world. As Sandoval wrote in his
History of Charles V
: “From the Strait of Messina to that of Gibraltar no one in any part of Europe could eat in peace or go to sleep with any feeling of security.”

The Sultan’s galleys were now despatched to Constantinople, laden with loot from their expedition against Italy. The greater part of the janissaries were also sent back, having been well paid by Barbarossa for their services. He kept with him his own galleys and some eight thousand Turks, renegades, and Moors. The Christian slaves who formed his share of the captives were set to work improving the defences of the Goletta, where a new fortress was built and a garrison of five hundred men installed. Throughout the winter of 1534 the work went ahead. It was rumoured that Muley Hassan was engaged in treating with Charles V, offering to become his vassal if the Emperor would recapture Tunis. Meanwhile, late into the year, the galleys and galleots “were perpetually scouring the seas and coasts of Italy … being in effect absolute masters in those quarters.”

It was a bad winter for Europe. On all sides the power of the Ottoman Turks was threatening divided Christendom. Trade by sea had become so insecure that insurance rates in the Mediterranean were crippling. Venice imposed additional taxation to build new galleys to try to defend what was left of the city’s trade with the East. But now that both Egypt and Syria were part of the Ottoman Empire, the great crescent of Turkish power had reduced the once-proud republic to a shadow of its former self. Genoa, whose western and central Mediterranean trade routes were now threatened by the Algerian Turks, was also compelled to raise taxes to construct fresh fortifications along the coast, and to build and arm new galleys. Many of the innumerable watchtowers and small forts that dot the coastlines of the Mediterranean countries and of the islands date from this period. Meanwhile, coastal towns and fishing ports began to fall into decay as more and more of the inhabitants removed themselves to the hilltop villages. Offshore fishing, once one of the main activities of islands like Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, was heavily affected—for only great courage, or hunger, could drive men down to their open boats to run the risk of being killed, sold as slaves, or ending up on a Turkish oar bench.

The reign of the corsairs had begun, and although the events of the following year might seem to alleviate Europe’s distress, the pattern of life in the Mediterranean had now been so altered by Barbarossa that it would be centuries before normal conditions of trade would return. This sea, which had not been united since the days of the Roman Empire, and which had subsequently been disputed over by as many as twenty different states, was now—except for Spain and its possessions—predominantly Turkish. This astounding change in the heart of the Western world had been almost entirely brought about by two men, Aruj and Khizr, or Kheir-ed-Din, Barbarossa.

It is possible that Barbarossa had overreached himself in his seizure of Tunis. Alternatively, if he intended to make sure of his new territory, he should have retained the Sultan’s ships and janissaries. But this may not have been possible, for Suleiman was engaged in his war with Persia (one of the few strategic mistakes in his reign), and could not afford to leave so many valuable men in North Africa. Barbarossa, also, had most probably calculated that in view of the divided state of Europe, even Charles V would find it difficult to mount a large-scale expedition against Tunis. In this he was to be proved wrong.

Charles V could not ignore the threat that Barbarossa’s occupation of Tunis posed to his Sicilian possessions. If he allowed the Turks to establish themselves in Tunisia he would soon find that Sicily was untenable. It was less than one hundred miles from the Cape Bon peninsula to the ports of Trapani and Marsala, an easy striking distance for galleys. They could be across the strait of Sicily in twenty-four hours, raid and devastate the coastline, and be back in Tunis before the news had even reached Palermo. Charles did not have so many war galleys at his disposal that he could afford to keep a squadron of them permanently in western Sicily: something that would be absolutely essential if he were to leave Barbarossa secure in Tunis. There was only one solution: to regain Tunis immediately and restore a ruler who would be a friendly vassal of Spain.