Suleiman The Magnificent 1520 1566 (28 page)

The failure of his plots left the Emperor no alternative save to fight, and he determined to get in a hard blow before his attention should be distracted by the renewal of his struggle with France. This was rendered inevitable by the murder, in July, 1541, of the French King's agents Rinfon and Fregoso, as they were descending the Po on their way to Constantinople. Whether the imperial repre-

42 R.B.M, IE, 333-334.

43 See below, pp. 230-233.

sentative in Milan was actually responsible for the deed is doubtful, though there can be little doubt that Charles approved of it. 44 But serious hostilities did not begin till the spring of 1542, and in the meantime a golden opportunity was offered to attack Barbarossa, and thus prevent him from cooperating with his French ally in the forthcoming campaign in the West. There was no question where that attack could be most effectively delivered. The desires of Spain, her ambitions in North "Africa, and the safety of navigation in the western basin of the Mediterranean, all dictated an assault on the town of Algiers. It had been the chief headquarters of corsair fleets since its capture by Aruj Barbarossa in 1516, and the principal starting point of their raids. It stood out unsubdued in a region most of the rest of which acknowledged Spain's overlordship; it was a bar to the development of her Mauretanian empire. As usual, an attempt was first made to induce Hassan Aga, the lieutenant of Barbarossa who commanded it, to surrender the place without a fight. At the outset it promised well, but it ultimately ended in failure; and Charles, despite the lateness of the season, and the warnings of his councillors, resolved to risk everything on a grand expedition to take Algiers by force. 45

The rendezvous for the different contingents was fixed in the Balearics. In the first weeks of October, 1541, Spanish, Italian and German levies were concentrated there. All told, the Christian forces numbered sixty-five galleys and 400 other ships, carrying 12,000 sailors and twice as many troops. Almost all the greatest of Charles's soldiers were there, among them Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, who had returned from the Indies in the previous year. On October 23, the troops were successfully landed in the bay to the east of the town, and on the morrow they established their batteries on the heights above, so that

44 R. B. M., HI, 269, 534. * R. B. At, HI, 334-335*

they could rake Algiers with a devastating fire. The inhabitants were terrified, and sought means of escape, but Hassan Aga scornfully refused Charles's demand that he surrender. The Emperor, however, on the evening of the twenty-fourth, was convinced that he had the game in his hands.

But the weather was to come to the rescue of the Turks. At midnight a gale blew up and the rain began to fall in torrents. The besiegers could not keep their powder dry; their cannon and muskets were rendered useless. The defenders were quick to perceive the situation and to profit by It. A sortie in force was attempted; though ultimately repulsed, it spread havoc among the assailants, who, according to Hajji Halifa, "fell upon each other ... in the confusion which ensued," so that three thousand of them were killed." 4Q The Turks used their bows and the Moors their crossbows with deadly effect. The Christians had no means of replying, and their discouragement reached the point of demoralization when daylight dawned and showed them that the gale had driven some 140 of their ships, utterly helpless, onto the shore. Large bodies of troops had to be detached to protect their crews from Moslem attack. A little later Andrea Doria sent a swimmer ashore to advise the Emperor to abandon the enterprise, and inform him that he would await him, with such ships as he had been able to save, in the more sheltered waters off Cape Matifou. Bitter as it must have been to him, Charles was obliged to retreat. On November i his army began to reembark, and when the scattered remnants of his great expedition got home, It was found* that he had lost some 150 ships and 12,000 men, not to speak of large quantities of munitions and supplies. The moral effects of his defeat were of course immense. It was his first great reverse; it weakened his confidence in his

ajji Halifa, pp. 67-68.

own good fortune and correspondingly encouraged the Turks. 41 Old Barbarossa had longed to participate in the conflict, but was detained in Constantinople by palace intrigues; he arrived on the scene just too late to catch the Emperor on his return to Spain. But he made himself heard from in the course of the next two years. The Franco-Turkish alliance, which Charles, when he attacked Algiers, had hoped to break, was now at its height. Barbarossa aided the Due d'Enghien to besiege Nice, which held out for the Emperor's vassal, the duke of Savoy. During the year 1543 Francis handed over the port of Toulon to the Turks. Most of the inhabitants were commanded to leave the town in order to make room for their Moslem guests; and when, in the spring of 1544, the French king decided that "good policy" demanded that he should disavow his ally, he was obliged to pay Barbarossa a generous bribe in order to induce him to depart. 48 —The Turks had now extended their control over waters hitherto dominated by Spain; they were also, without question, the preponderant power in North Africa.

So discouraged was Charles by his failure before Algiers that he took no further active part in the war in the Mediterranean. In 1545 he made one final effort to approach Barbarossa, which revealed the full measure of his impotence. He was in mortal terror at the time lest the triumphant mariner should attack Tunis, and he sent him word that if he would refrain, he would promise, on his part, to make no further effort to oust Barbarossa from Algiers. This singularly one-sided proposal was naturally refused, but the Emperor was relieved of the worst of his anxieties in that quarter by the death of the old sea-dog on July 4, 1546, at the age of at least eighty* 49 ~~Barbarossa

47 TL B. M., HI, 336-339. ^Ursu, pp. 144-152. 49 R.B.M.,m, 340-34!.

was certainly one of the most notable figures in the annals of naval warfare. With the powerful and incessant support of the Sultan, he had made the Ottoman navy the master of the Mediterranean. He was a statesman as well as an admiral. His death marks the end of an epoch; and though the Turkish fleet was to win further notable victories in the succeeding years, it will be more convenient to postpone the account of them to a later chapter.

A few words remain to be added in regard to the government of North Africa in Suleiman's day; for after Selim the Terrible had granted the tide of beylerbey to Khaireddin Barbarossa in 1518, it remained officially an integral part of the Ottoman Empire down to the great revolt of the Janissaries in the early years of the eighteenth century. 50 The centre of it was of course the town of Algiers, and the most interesting thing about it is the extent to which, mutatis mutandis, its administration, on a smaller scale, resembled that of the great empire to which it owed allegiance.

Since it was so remote from Constantinople, it was evident that the Sultan must give its beylerbey an unusually large measure of autonomy, Khaireddin and his successors were granted absolute authority, under the Ottoman government, over the regions committed to their charge. But it was no easy task to make that authority effective. In the first place, the shores of Algeria were dotted at the time of his death with Spanish outposts which were a constant menace. Most of these were recaptured, as we shall later see, in the following decade; but Oran, the most important of them all, remained a thorn in the side of Barbarossa's successors till the end of the Turkish domination. An even more difficult problem was presented by the Berber tribes of the interior. Traditionally independent and unsub-

50 Mercier, Histoire de FAfriqzte Septentrionale, IE, 336-338.

missive, they resented ail efforts of the beylerbey to extend his sway over them. Barbarossa was too shrewd to interfere with their local rites and customs, but he did insist that they recognize his supremacy. To accomplish this, he had at his disposal some 15,000 Janissaries (in Algeria they were known as Yoldachs), who were largely recruited, as were those of his master, from men of foreign origin, and were organized and paid in similar fashion; but of these a scant one-third was available for the purpose; the rest were stationed at Algiers and other coastal towns or held available for participation in pirate raids. The beylerbeys had to supplement their services by efforts to break up the ancient tribal organization through smaller groups, such as the zmul, who were primarily loyal to the authority of a religious chief, or the maghzen, who followed the lead of a noted warrior. By dint of well-timed concessions, these groups were induced—probably without their realizing it—to render the central government inestimable service.

Yet the administration of the interior was, after all, but a subsidiary affair. Algiers was first and foremost a seaport; and the people to whom its greatness was primarily due were the corsairs whom it bred and protected—the pupils of its terrible ruler and the foremost mariners of the Mediterranean. Their galleys, which were stripped of everything not essential for combat, were incredibly swift. Their rowers were Christian captives; their soldiers and gunners were subjected to the strictest discipline. They seldom left port without bringing back large rewards in merchandise and men. The latter were stripped and sold at auction in the market-place; the former also was quickly disposed of, for the return of a pirate fleet meant a holiday in Algiers, and everybody was on hand to pick up what he could. The government took pains to assure itself of its share. Twelve per cent of the profits went to the bey-

lerbey or his representative, one per cent to the upkeep of the fortifications, and another to that of the mosques; the rest was divided among the commanders (reis), soldiers, sailors, and outfitters of the successful fleet. The reis had the "ville basse"—or seaside portions of the town to themselves. There they spent their leisure in palaces of Oriental luxury, surrounded by the bagnios in which their captives were imprisoned. They formed, in fact, a sort of maritime aristocracy, whose piratical achievements were the principal source of the wealth and prosperity of Algiers. They were by no means all of them Moors or Turks. A list of the thirty-five reis at Algiers in the year 1588 makes twenty-three of them of European origin, including two Spaniards, one Corsican, one Sicilian, one Neapolitan, one Calabrian, and sk Genoese. The attractions of a life of adventure in the sixteenth century were wellnigh irresistible to all those who were capable of living it.

Algiers reached the heyday of its power and prosperity in Suleiman's time. The city, which probably at that time had a population of nearly 100,000 souls, and had already begun to resemble the Algiers of today, comprised an amphitheatre of white, cubical houses, rising tier on tier above a semicircle of blue sea. It was strongly governed by able representatives of its distant overlord, who were amply competent to keep the discordant and potentially dangerous elements of its cosmopolitan population under control, and render it a standing menace to Christendom. The splendid "Fort of Victory," built on the spot where Charles V had pitched his tent in the campaign of 1541, served as a constant reminder to its inhabitants of one of the most glorious of the triumphs of the Crescent over the Cross. But the greatness of Algiers, like that of the Ottoman Empire of which it formed a part, was almost wholly dependent on the character and ability of its ruler. Under

the unworthy successors of Barbarossa and of Suleiman, revolts against the government became increasingly frequent and difficult to put down. The tie with Constantinople became weaker and weaker and was finally broken.

The piracy on which Algiers had chiefly depended in the sixteenth century was no longer tolerated in the nineteenth; and with its disappearance the picture gradually changed, until opportunity and excuse were given for the French occupation of i830. 51

51 Lavisse and Rambaud, IV, 816-821.

Persia, India, and Abyssinia

iVe have several times noticed that Suleiman's attention was diverted from his European campaigns by the necessity of waging war on Persia, and we shall later see other instances of the same thing. The Sultan led three great expeditions against Persia during the forty-six years of his reign—in 1534, " m l S4%i an d in 1553—and each one kept him absent from Constantinople for a year and a half or more. They were all more or less directly connected with the affairs of the West, for as Francis I had begged and received the aid of Suleiman against the Emperor in order to catch their common enemy between two fires, so the Hapsburgs strove to enlist the sympathies of the Persians against the Sultan. These efforts began with the despatch from Hungary of a Maronite of Lebanon, called Brother Peter, to the court of the Shah in 1518; and it would seem that the Shah responded cordially. 1 The Emperor at first was not anxious to follow the matter up. Not till 1529, when he first began to appreciate the possibilities inherent in the Franco-Turkish alliance, did he send a certain Jean de Balby to the Shah to ask for an anti-Turkish diversion in Asia Minor. Nothing came of it at the time, for the Shah had just obtained a friendly understanding with Suleiman in order to enable himself to attack the Usbegs of Khorasan, and when the project was revived ei^ht years later, it was found that the Emperor in turn had lost all interest in it, and the whole affair van-

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ished in smoke. 2 Yet the fact that Charles had been willing even^to entertain the idea is significant of the trend of the times. 8 It is a pretty illustration of the fact that ever since the emergence of strong national states, the usual policy of each one of them has been to seek an ally on the other side of his immediate neighbor, who has generally been his rival and foe. France and Scotland made common cause for many centuries against England. So did England and Portugal (and sometimes Spain) against France. France has always sought an ally on the other side of Germany; first it was Turkey, then Poland, then Sweden, and finally Russia; and there are other examples innumerable. The Asiatic powers were being gradually drawn into the orbit of intercontinental politics.