Charles V meets with the Bey of Tunis, 1535. Both
Habsburg and Ottoman power in North Africa depended in part on agreements with
local clients. Here the size of the Imperial expedition of 1535 is apparent.
Note the lines of galleys in the bay to the upper right – projecting power
across the Mediterranean took enormous resources.
Town and fortress of Herceg Novi (Ital.: Castelnuovo).
The Ottoman sultan, especially after the conquest of
Mameluke Egypt in 1517 (during the first year of King Charles’s reign), enjoyed
his own growing influence along the central North African coast. The sultan’s
most successful client was Khayr ad-Din, the Barbary pirate better known as
Barbarossa for his red beard. Fearful of the growing Spanish influence which
threatened his corsairing, in 1518 Barbarossa pledged himself to the sultan
Selim and in return received a title and military aid. With a large galley
fleet and a mixed army of Maghrebis, Christian renegades, Moorish refugees from
Spain and Turkish adventurers, Khayr ad-Din seized Algiers (1529) and Tunis
(1534) from local Muslim rulers. In 1533 Süleyman made the pirate his high
admiral with all the substantial resources of the Galata dockyards at
Constantinople. Barbarossa continued to plague the shores and shipping of
Christian Europe until his death in 1546. These were not insubstantial raids,
threatening only unlucky fishermen and villagers, but major acts of war. In
1543, his most spectacular year, Barbarossa first sacked Reggio Calabria (for
the second time) and then, cooperating with the sultan’s French allies, the
city of Nice (a possession of the Spanish-allied Duke of Savoy). The war in
North Africa and on the waters of the western Mediterranean thus became a
confrontation between the emperor Charles and the sultan Süleyman.
In Charles’s first Mediterranean offensive he personally led
the great invasion fleet and 25,000-man army that sailed from Barcelona to take
Tunis in 1535, a direct response to Barbarossa’s seizure of the city the
previous year. The fortified island of Goletta off Tunis became one of the
principal Spanish forts of the Maghreb, and the southernmost position of a
Habsburg cordon stretching down from Naples, Sicily and Malta to block further
Ottoman expansion. Süleyman replied to the loss of Tunis with a planned
invasion of Italy in 1537, landing a preliminary force of horse under the
command of an Italian renegade to scour the countryside of Apulia. To secure
his crossing to Italy Süleyman first laid siege to the Venetian fortress of
Corfu, extensively protected by massive new-style fortifications. The Turkish
besiegers proved incapable of reducing the Venetian citadel, and the entire
operation had to be abandoned. The next year Charles continued the Spanish
offensive, his Genoese admiral Andrea Doria taking Castelnuovo (now Herceg
Novi) in Montenegro. In the late summer of 1539 Barbarossa retook Castelnuovo
at a tremendous cost of life. Neither power could successfully bridge the
straits of Otranto. In 1541 Charles directed an enormous fleet against Algiers,
a twin to his successful operation against Tunis in 1535. Again the emperor was
personally in command, and success looked certain: Barbarossa was in the
eastern Mediterranean; the janissary garrison tiny. But soon after disembarking
a tremendous three-day gale utterly wrecked the supporting Spanish fleet, and
the invading force (reduced to eating their horses) had to be evacuated. For
almost ten years following this Spanish disaster there were no major land
operations in the Mediterranean.
Barbarossa (Hayreddin or Kheir-ed-Din Pasha) (c. 1476-
1546)
Ottoman admiral. Born around 1476, at Mitylene on Lesbos,
Hayreddin and his older brother Oruj led a fleet of pirate galliots, or open
rowing boats, in the Goletta near Tunis.
Ottoman Sultan Bayezit gave Oruj the title of bey (military
commander) for his 1505 capture of a Sicilian vessel carrying Spanish soldiers.
After Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria drove the brothers from the Goletta in 1512,
Oruj moved his base to Djidjelli, Algeria, and Hayreddin moved to Djerba.
In 1516 Oruj and Hayreddin helped the Moriscos (Muslims
expelled from Spain) push the Spanish from Algiers. In 1518, however, Spain
forced the brothers and their Arab and Morisco allies from Algiers, killing
Oruj. Hayreddin rallied the remaining forces, who chose him as their leader and
called him “Barbarossa” for his red beard.
Ottoman Sultan Selim I sent 2,000 janissaries and 4,000
soldiers to retake Algiers in 1519, whereupon Barbarossa became beylerbeyi, or
governor. King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V tried to retake
Algiers in August, but a storm destroyed most of his fleet. Barbarossa then
consolidated Ottoman power in Algiers, uniting the Arabs and Berbers with the
coastal Moriscos and sending his galliots to raid Spanish and Italian shipping.
In May 1529 he forced the Spanish to surrender their base of Penon in Algiers’s
harbor. He then had Christian captives build a breakwater to connect Penon with
the mainland.
Summoned to Istanbul by Sultan Suleyman I the Magnificent in
December 1533, Barbarossa was appointed capudan pasha (admiral in chief).
Barbarossa built a galley fleet, which he manned with Anatolian warriors rather
than captives or slaves.
In July 1534 Barbarossa used this fleet to raid the Italian
coast, and in August he occupied Tunis. King Muley Hassan of Tunis sought aid
from Charles V, who sent Andrea Doria there in July 1535. To save his own
fleet, Barbarossa withdrew from Tunis. As the Spanish and Genoese celebrated
their victory, Barbarossa invaded Spanish waters, taking 6,000 slaves in a raid
on Minorca. He then attacked Venetian bases in the Ionian Sea in 1536, and from
September to November 1537 he added the remaining Aegean islands to the Ottoman
Empire.
Meanwhile, in 1538 Andrea Doria assembled an armada of row
galleys and sailing galleons from Genoa, Venice, Spain, and the Papal States to
challenge Barbarossa. On 28 September 1538, Barbarossa’s smaller, more
maneuverable galleys and galliots defeated the combined armada in a day of
fierce fighting off Preveze in the western Ionian Sea, sinking five Spanish
sailing ships and two Italian galleys. Venice made peace with the Ottomans in
October 1540.
Barbarossa’s fleet supported France’s siege of Nice and
forced its surrender in September 1543, then raided Catalonia and Italy, before
returning to Istanbul. In establishing Ottoman naval power in the
Mediterranean, Barbarossa forced Emperor Charles V to make peace in November
1545.
Barbarossa died at his palace on the Bosphorus in July 1546.
For generations, no Turkish ship would pass his tomb at Besiktas in Istanbul
without firing a salute to the Ottoman Empire’s “King of the Sea.”
References
Bradford, Ernle D. S. The Sultan’s Admiral: The Life of Barbarossa. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.
Fisher, Godfrey. Barbary Legend: War, Trade and Piracy in North Africa, 1415–1830. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1957.
Shaw, Stanford. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 1, Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Wolf, John B. The Barbary Coast: Algiers under the Turks. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.
