Read Online Empires of the Sea - the Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580 by Roger Crowley - Free Book Online
Authors: Roger Crowley
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that the Genoese had sworn to display him in an iron cage. Al Morez, “the Cretan,” beat his oarsmen with a severed arm. “More cruel than Al Morez?” Tunisian peasants would ask when trying to determine the exact measure of a man’s brutality. Elie the Corsican, a master of marine ambushes, was crucified on his own mast; Aydin the Ligurian, “the Devil Hunter,” drowned in an Algerian river. These men were the squadron commanders in Hayrettin’s holy war, who gathered sacks of noses and hands as prizes and fought without rules.
During the 1520s the level of their maritime plunder grew steadily, but Charles only worsened his own plight. In the age of inquisition, the remnant Muslim population of Spain remained an unfinished project. The Moorish inhabitants of Valencia were conspicuously loyal to the emperor during an uprising in the early 1520s. They were cruelly rewarded. Charles was not fanatical by nature, but he was conscious of his responsibility before Christendom as Holy Roman Emperor. In 1525 he authorized the proclamation known as the Purification of Aragon—an edict that required the conversion or exile of all the Muslims in that part of Spain. Baldly put, the terms were: convert or die. Barbarossa promptly answered the plight of the Valencian Moors. Large numbers were ferried across to the Maghreb to swell the pirate wars and suggest suitable targets for revenge attacks. There was no bay, no coastal village, no island unvisited. The complaints of Spanish subjects to their king became ever louder.
In May 1529, all these forces came to a head when Spain’s neglect of its African outposts brought a defining catastrophe. The Peñón of Algiers, the small fort that throttled the city and its port, ran short of gunpowder. Spies reported the situation to Hayrettin, who immediately stormed it. The commander, Martin de Vargas, was offered the choice of conversion to Islam or execution. He chose to die. He was beaten to death in front of the janissaries—a slow and painful end. Shortly afterward, a relief fleet of nine Spanish ships arrived at the Peñón, unaware of the catastrophe, and were all captured.
It was a loss that would have long-lasting consequences for the Western Mediterranean. Hayrettin demolished the castle, connected its island to the mainland by a causeway, and secured a safe harbor of immense strategic value. This victory strengthened the corsairs’ hand enormously. Algiers the White, glittering above the blue sea, became the sea robber’s kingdom and souk, the Baghdad or Damascus of the Maghreb, where ships could be safely harbored, booty collected, and human beings bought and sold. It was now a permanent problem for Charles. Algiers was the western marker of a war that stretched all the way to the Danube. Ten days before the Peñón fell, Suleiman departed from Istanbul with seventy-five thousand men to march on Vienna.
It was Charles’s brother Ferdinand who braced himself for this onslaught. For once Charles was more pleasantly occupied. After an eight-year struggle with France, he was in the act of signing what he hoped would be a lasting peace. Temporarily free from the burden of war, he set off for the greatest triumph of his life: his coronation in Italy as Holy Roman Emperor, the champion of the Christian world. He departed from Barcelona with the imperial galleys under their general in chief, Rodrigo de Portuondo, to a volley of ceremonial cannon shot.
It was to prove a moment of hubris. Charles might aspire to be the ruler of the world, whose kingdom stretched from Peru to the Rhine, but on the coast of Spain he was horribly vulnerable. In the summer of 1529 there was suddenly no protecting fleet, and Hayrettin quickly knew it. Immediately he dispatched Aydin the Devil Hunter, his most experienced corsair, with fifteen galliots to ransack the Balearic Islands and the Spanish coast. Revenge centered on Valencia. After snaffling a succession of passing merchant ships, Aydin’s
During the 1520s the level of their maritime plunder grew steadily, but Charles only worsened his own plight. In the age of inquisition, the remnant Muslim population of Spain remained an unfinished project. The Moorish inhabitants of Valencia were conspicuously loyal to the emperor during an uprising in the early 1520s. They were cruelly rewarded. Charles was not fanatical by nature, but he was conscious of his responsibility before Christendom as Holy Roman Emperor. In 1525 he authorized the proclamation known as the Purification of Aragon—an edict that required the conversion or exile of all the Muslims in that part of Spain. Baldly put, the terms were: convert or die. Barbarossa promptly answered the plight of the Valencian Moors. Large numbers were ferried across to the Maghreb to swell the pirate wars and suggest suitable targets for revenge attacks. There was no bay, no coastal village, no island unvisited. The complaints of Spanish subjects to their king became ever louder.
In May 1529, all these forces came to a head when Spain’s neglect of its African outposts brought a defining catastrophe. The Peñón of Algiers, the small fort that throttled the city and its port, ran short of gunpowder. Spies reported the situation to Hayrettin, who immediately stormed it. The commander, Martin de Vargas, was offered the choice of conversion to Islam or execution. He chose to die. He was beaten to death in front of the janissaries—a slow and painful end. Shortly afterward, a relief fleet of nine Spanish ships arrived at the Peñón, unaware of the catastrophe, and were all captured.
It was a loss that would have long-lasting consequences for the Western Mediterranean. Hayrettin demolished the castle, connected its island to the mainland by a causeway, and secured a safe harbor of immense strategic value. This victory strengthened the corsairs’ hand enormously. Algiers the White, glittering above the blue sea, became the sea robber’s kingdom and souk, the Baghdad or Damascus of the Maghreb, where ships could be safely harbored, booty collected, and human beings bought and sold. It was now a permanent problem for Charles. Algiers was the western marker of a war that stretched all the way to the Danube. Ten days before the Peñón fell, Suleiman departed from Istanbul with seventy-five thousand men to march on Vienna.
It was Charles’s brother Ferdinand who braced himself for this onslaught. For once Charles was more pleasantly occupied. After an eight-year struggle with France, he was in the act of signing what he hoped would be a lasting peace. Temporarily free from the burden of war, he set off for the greatest triumph of his life: his coronation in Italy as Holy Roman Emperor, the champion of the Christian world. He departed from Barcelona with the imperial galleys under their general in chief, Rodrigo de Portuondo, to a volley of ceremonial cannon shot.
It was to prove a moment of hubris. Charles might aspire to be the ruler of the world, whose kingdom stretched from Peru to the Rhine, but on the coast of Spain he was horribly vulnerable. In the summer of 1529 there was suddenly no protecting fleet, and Hayrettin quickly knew it. Immediately he dispatched Aydin the Devil Hunter, his most experienced corsair, with fifteen galliots to ransack the Balearic Islands and the Spanish coast. Revenge centered on Valencia. After snaffling a succession of passing merchant ships, Aydin’s
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