The Sultan's Admiral (2 page)

There can be no doubt that the two Barbarossa brothers, Aruj and Kheir-ed-Din, were men of violence—in a century that was not noted for peace in the Mediterranean area. Unlike so many condotiieri and soldiers of fortune, however, the Barbarossas (and in particular Kheir-ed-Din, by far the greater of the two) were men of constructive violence. They fought their enemies and destroyed their cities and shipping in order to create a new kingdom on the North African coast. Whereas the Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria left behind him little but a name, written on the forgetful waters of the Mediterranean, Kheir-ed-Din established a kingdom, organised a fleet, and originated a dockyard system that was to serve the Ottoman Empire efficiently for many years. He changed the balance of power at sea so effectively that he was largely responsible for the massive expansion of that empire during the reign of the Sultan Suleiman.

I found that most of the misrepresentations of Kheir-ed-Din’s character originated from France—for reasons which become apparent in the concluding chapters of this book. Contemporary chroniclers, even of his greatest adversary, Spain, were almost unanimous in according him respect, a just estimate of his achievements, and a genuine admiration.

This is not an attempt to rehabilitate Barbarossa, who does not need it, but to strip away some of the veils of varnish and inaccurate overpainting that have disguised from Europeans the portrait of a very remarkable man. He bears comparison with Sir Francis Drake in his aptitude as a sailor and a military leader, and in the pattern of his life. Both men rose from humble origins to positions of great power and influence. Both started their careers “on the wrong side of the law” (such as it was), and ended with high honours bestowed upon them by their sovereigns. Kheir-ed-Din, perhaps, had a longer-lasting effect upon history. The Kingdom of Algiers, which he founded, was largely to determine the pattern of life and trade in the Mediterranean until the early nineteenth century.

I have been fortunate enough to visit, at one time or another, almost all the places that feature in the history of Barbarossa’s turbulent life throughout this sea. Many of the capes, harbours, and anchorages, from Djerba to the lonely Lipari Islands, I saw first from the decks of small vessels or sailing boats. At Djerba, indeed, where the lateen-sailed trading craft still loiter in the bright lagoon, it is not hard to “see Barbarossa plain”; nor, when the peaks of Levkas lift out of an Ionian morning mist, to relive the day when Andrea Doria fled before the Sultan’s Admiral.

1968 E. B.

Majestically the great galley drove on southward bound down the coast. In the distance, out of sight below the rim of the horizon, her consort followed. To port of the leading vessel the tawny hills behind the coastal plain of western Italy burned under the summer sun. To starboard lay the rocky island of Capraia. Beyond it, the northern peninsula of Corsica reared up against the hard blue sky. The sea was calm and there was too little wind to fill the great lateen sails. So the two ships came on, “negligently rowing along, no less than ten leagues asunder, careless, indolently supine, and, according to custom, in very indifferent order …”

It was the year 1504 and the two galleys so innocently running down the Italian coast belonged to no less a dignitary than Pope Julius II. At that time the occupant of St. Peter’s chair was not averse to a little speculation in mercantile trading, and the galleys had recently loaded at Genoa with locally manufactured goods, imported luxuries, and silks and spices from the East. They were bound for the port of Civitavecchia, a little north of Rome, to unload their goods for transport to the capital by road.

The leading galley was the papal flagship, an ornate and elaborately decorated vessel—the flower of the shipbuilder’s craft. About 150 feet in length, riding the sea to the easy beat of her oars, she looked from a distance more like a work of art than a practical vessel designed for war or commerce. Her sails were brailed up along the two great curving yards that soared like wings above her fore and main masts. Except with a fair and following wind from astern, when she could run goosewinged before it, it was upon the motive power of her rowers that she mainly depended. Now, in the high Mediterranean summer, the oarsmen got little respite.

At the prow and poop a short deck provided accommodation for the fighting men and the sailors who worked the yards. They were at rest, reclining under awnings, anticipating no danger in this pacific part of the Italian seaboard. With them also there were trumpeters and heralds—those guardians of the pomp and authority so dear to the heart of Renaissance Europe. The poop itself was elaborately carved, painted, and gilded, and flaunted a purple damask awning under which the captain, chief officers, and other gentry embarked for the passage sat at their ease. On a special platform above the poop the pilot and the helmsman directed the great vessel; the one giving his orders for the course, while the other leaned as necessary against the long tiller that was attached to the centre-line rudder.

Apart from the centre-line rudder in place of the old steering oar, there was little about this galley that would have been unfamiliar to the ancient Romans or the Greeks. Perhaps a certain improvement in the sails—lateens instead of square sails—and a greater degree of colour and decoration might have been remarked. Other than that, the main distinguishing feature of the galley—the original reason for her whole existence as a fighting ship—had remained little changed throughout the centuries. The great beaked prow standing out proudly from the forward fighting platform was a direct legacy from the ram of the classsical world. Although techniques of fighting had changed with the advent of artillery—the forward guns taking over much of the old dudes of the ram—it remained an integral part of the warship. The long prow could still be used to impale the ship’s side of an enemy while the fighting men harassed her with arquebus fire as well as crossbow bolts and arrows, until such time as they could leap aboard and take her with cold steel.

Beautiful indeed as such a ship was, there was another side to her: something that explained the perfumes and unguents worn by the gentry on the poop, or held to their noses in delicately pierced pomanders. “It is not necessary to look far to find an extreme contrast with the pride of the galley’s appearance. At the very moment that the galley dazzles one’s eyes with her sculptures, her draperies and her movement through the water, she horribly affronts one’s nostrils, and exudes throughout her whole length the utmost misery …”

Now, as the papal galley altered course slightly to pass through the five-mile-wide channel between the island of Elba and the mainland of Italy, a watcher standing on the rocky cliffs of Piombino might have thought her beautiful indeed. The very way in which, between each stroke, the blades of her oars were momentarily suspended above the water, like the wings of a hovering falcon, would have entranced the eye. Then, as they dipped again in one easy flowing motion, she glided swiftly forward. But it was the motive power for these oars, the wretched toiling men who, in their semidarkness and stench, made the galley repulsive to the nostrils. Hygiene was little comprehended in the sixteenth century, and a galley’s bilges—even though regularly pumped out—were foul from men who were compelled to urinate and defecate at the very benches where they laboured in their chains.

Below decks in the long waist of the ship, seated four, five, or six at the heavy looms of the oars, the galley’s “machinery” was at work. “They are chained six to a bench,” one who was himself a galley slave tells us. “The benches are four feet wide covered with sacking stuffed with wool over which are thrown sheepskins which reach to the deck beneath them. The officer who is master of the galley slaves remains aft with the captain to receive his orders. There are two under officers, one amidships and one at the prow; and all of them are armed with whips, with which they flog the totally naked bodies of the slaves. When the captain gives the order to row, the officer gives the signal with a silver whistle which hangs on a cord around his neck. The signal is repeated by the under officers and very soon all the fifty oars strike the water as if one. Imagine six men chained to a bench as naked as they were bom, one foot on the stretcher, the other raised and placed on the bench in front of them, holding in their hands an oar of immense weight, stretching their bodies towards the after part of the galley with arms extended to push the loom of the oar clear of the backs of those in front of them, who are in the same attitude. They plunge the blades of the oars into the water and throw themselves back, falling onto the seat which bends beneath their weight. Sometimes the galley slaves row thus ten, twelve, even twenty hours at a stretch, without the slightest respite or rest. On these occasions the officer will go round, putting into the mouths of the wretched rowers pieces of bread soaked in wine to prevent them from fainting …” Small wonder then that Grossino, a North Italian visitor to Rome, viewing some Turkish galley slaves, could remark: “Poor creatures! They must envy the dead.”

Most of these men who drove the beautiful papal galley on her way down the coast were Moslems—either captured Turks, Arabs, or Moors from the North African coast. The complement of the oar benches was also reinforced by condemned criminals, and by a third class of galley slave, the “volunteers.” The latter were men who had fallen into debt and who, to escape the harsh punishment inflicted on debtors, had preferred to serve at the oar. Their small wages were then paid directly to their creditors until such time as their debts were discharged. But increasingly throughout the sixteenth century, as the conflict between East and West in the Mediterranean reached new heights, it was the captured and enslaved enemy who formed the bulk of the crew below decks.

Viewed by a lookout above Piombino, the galley, as she neared the narrow strait, would have resembled some colourful water insect. Her great oars, the remi di scallocio, seemed to walk the hull on legs across the still blue water. But this galley, in any case, had long been under observation.

The island of Elba lies like a fish off Piombino, with its head pointed towards Corsica and its forked tail towards the mainland. It was important for its iron ore and for its skilled metalworkers, and there was a regular trade between Elba and the ports supplying Rome and the other inland cities of Italy. It was this, perhaps, which had lured up into a sea hitherto “safe for Christians” the lean Turkish galleot that now idled under the shadow of the great rocks, hidden in a cove below the northern fin of the island. On the other hand, it was just as likely the knowledge that the coastal route between Elba and Piombino was much followed by rich merchant ships bound for Rome which had brought so far north the sea captain Aruj and his Turkish crew.

In marked contrast to the large papal galley now entering the channel, the Moslem galley (technically a galleot because of her size) had no more than eighteen banks of oars on either side, as compared with the twenty-seven of the Christian vessel. She was a great deal shorter on the waterline as well as in beam, while her lighter oars were worked by only two or three men. In this case, however, there was a further and important difference— the galleot was manned entirely by Turkish freemen. Too small to be worked on the slave system of the larger Christian vessel, her oarsmen were also fighting men. If the larger ship had the advantages of her greater strength, speed, fire power, and numerous soldiers aboard, she was not wholly manned by men eager for conflict and desperate for plunder.

Even so, as the Turks who had been watching the approach of the galley from a vantage point above the headland ran down to acquaint their captain, Aruj, there was some doubt and hesitation among the crew. Aruj himself had none, set the men to the oars, and made out into the channel to meet the papal galley head on.

“The Turks, weighing the bulk of the galley against the feebleness of their galleot, utterly condemned the madness of the proposal, and plainly told their captain that he reflected not; that the second galley might, easily enough for their destruction, come up to its consort’s assistance; adding that, instead of offering to be so rash as to attack an enemy so far above their match, and who had succour of equal force within sight, they thought it their business to make off with speed, in order to escape such evident danger.

“ ‘God forbid,’ replied the determined Corsair, ‘that I should ever live to be branded with such infamy!’ ”

On she came, dip, sweep, pause, and dip again—the great, heavy, beautiful bird, carving her way through the sea. Meanwhile the small, but agile and bright-eyed, hawk awaited her. There was indeed, in the conflict about to take place, something reminiscent of the loosing of a hunting hawk upon a bustard in the desert. “If the attack is successful, the spectator sees a white flutter of feather and tail, a scuffle on the ground, possibly several swoops on the part of the hawk, then all is quiet as the hawk seizes his quarry by the neck. White feathers soon fly in the breeze as the hawk plucks the breast of his prey preparatory to having a bite of its flesh . .