The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (41 page)

Imperial coronations were traditionally performed in Rome. On landing at Genoa in mid-August 1529, however, Charles received reports of Süleyman’s steady advance on Vienna and at once decided that a journey so far down the peninsula at such a time would be folly; it would take too long, besides leaving him dangerously cut off in the event of a crisis. Messengers sped to Pope Clement, and it was agreed that in the circumstances the ceremony might be held in Bologna, a considerably more accessible city which still remained firmly under papal control. Even then the uncertainty was not over: while on his way to Bologna in September Charles received an urgent appeal from his brother Ferdinand in Vienna, and almost cancelled his coronation plans there and then. Only after long consideration did he decide not to do so. By the time he reached Vienna either the city would have fallen or the Sultan would have retired for the winter; in either case, the small force that he had with him in Italy would have been insufficient to tip the scales.

And so, on 5 November 1529, Charles V made his formal entry into Bologna where, in front of the Basilica of S. Petronio, Pope Clement waited to receive him. After a brief ceremony of welcome, the two retired to the Palazzo del Podestà across the square, where neighbouring apartments had been prepared for them. There was much to be done, many outstanding problems to be discussed and resolved, before the coronation could take place. It was, after all, only two years since papal Rome had been sacked by imperial troops, with Clement himself a virtual prisoner of Charles in the Castel Sant’ Angelo; somehow, friendly relations had to be re-established. Next there were the individual peace treaties to be drawn up with all the Italian ex-enemies of the Empire, chief among which–apart from the Pope himself–were Venice, Florence and Milan. Only then, when peace had been finally consolidated throughout the peninsula, would Charles feel justified in kneeling before Clement to receive the imperial crown. Coronation Day was fixed for 24 February 1530, and invitations were despatched to all the rulers of Christendom. Charles and Clement had given themselves a little under four months to settle the future of Italy.

Surprisingly, it proved enough. Well before the day appointed, Charles had laid the foundations of a pan-Italian league–a league which testified to the spread of imperial power across the length and breadth of Italy unparalleled for centuries past. And so the peace was signed; Clement’s League of Cognac and Charles’s sack of Rome were alike forgotten, or at least dismissed from minds; and on 24 February 1530, in S. Petronio, Charles was first anointed and then received from the papal hands the sword, orb, sceptre and finally the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. Something of a cloud was cast over the proceedings when a makeshift wooden bridge linking the church with the palace collapsed just as the Emperor’s suite was passing across it, but when it was established that the many casualties included no one of serious importance spirits quickly revived, and celebrations continued long into the night.

It was the last time in history that a Pope was to crown an Emperor; on that day the 700-year-old tradition, which had begun in 800 AD when Pope Leo III had laid the imperial crown on the head of Charlemagne, was brought to an end. The Empire was by no means finished, but never again would it be received, even symbolically, from the hands of the Vicar of Christ on Earth.

CHAPTER XV

Barbary and the Barbarossas

Since the beginning of time men have preyed upon their fellows; and since the building of the first navigable ships, piracy had existed in the Mediterranean. Since the Dark Ages it had been practised by Christians and Muslims alike, with or without the excuse of war and often with the clearest of consciences. To the Turks, the activities of the Knights of St John during their years in Rhodes would have merited no other name; while Ferdinand and Isabella, after their defeat of the Kingdom of Granada, would hardly have seen the constant harassment of Spanish shipping by Muslim raiders from North Africa as an honourable continuation of the war on the part of the vanquished. Yet such, in the eyes of those raiders, it was, and as the sixteenth century got under way, so this harassment took on a new dimension: the Barbary–or Berber–Coast became synonymous with piracy.

After the first appearance of the Arabs nearly nine hundred years before, the North African coast–with the exception of Melilla, which had been occupied by the Spaniards in 1497 and remains to this day Spanish territory
¹³⁹
–had been controlled by the Umayyad, Abassid and Fatimid Caliphates, the Almoravids and the Almohads, and various other smaller dynasties such as the Beni Hafs in Tunis, the Beni Ziyan in the central Maghreb and the Beni Merin in Morocco. Their rule, for the most part, was not unenlightened. They allowed freedom of worship to such modest Christian communities as existed within their borders; in the thirteenth century there was even a Bishop of Fez, where Leo Africanus–whose writings remained, for some four centuries, one of Europe’s principal sources of information about Islam–had served as a registrar in the ‘strangers’ hospital’. He testified in about 1526 to the ‘civilitie, humanitie and upright dealing of the Barbarians…a civill people [who] prescribe lawes and constitutions unto themselves’ and were learned in the arts and sciences. It seems, moreover, that they normally enjoyed fairly close commercial relations with Sicily and the Italian mercantile republics, and were well known even to the English merchants of the fifteenth century, for whom Algiers was a good deal more easily accessible than Constantinople or even Venice. But although their rulers could prohibit piracy, they could never prevent private freebooters from setting sail, and the Christian victims–especially the Sardinians, Maltese, Genoese and Greeks–gave as good as they got. Until the end of the fourteenth century, indeed, they gave rather better; they, rather than the Muslims, were the chief terrorists of the Mediterranean. Only with the coming of the large commercial fleets did their occupation lose something of its savour; thenceforth it is the Moorish corsairs who assume centre stage.

The fifteenth century, as we have seen, witnessed two cataclysmic events, one at each end of the Middle Sea: in the east, the fall of Constantinople in 1453–with the consequent closure of the Black Sea to Christian navigation–and in the west the gradual expulsion of the Moors from Spain in the years following 1492. Both led to a proliferation of rootless vagabonds–in the east Christians, in the west Muslims–all of them ruined, disaffected and longing for revenge; and many of them adopted the buccaneering life. The Christians would normally establish their bases in the central Mediterranean: in Sicily, or Malta, or among the countless islands off the Dalmatian coast. The Muslims, on the other hand, could only join their co-religionists in North Africa. Between Tangier and Tunis there were some 1,200 miles and, in what was for the most part a fertile and well-watered coastal strip, innumerable tideless natural harbours ideal for their purposes. And so the legend of the Barbary Coast was born.

Of all the pirates of that coast, the two greatest were brothers: Aruj and Khizr–better known as Kheir-ed-Din–Barbarossa. Born on the island of Mytilene (the modern Lesbos), they were the sons of a retired Greek-born janissary, then working as a potter, and his wife who was formerly the widow of a Greek priest. (Since all janissaries had originally been Christians before their forcible conversion, the Barbarossa brothers possessed not a drop of Turkish, Arab or Berber blood–a fact to which their famous red beards were further testimony.) In his early youth Aruj–the elder of the two–had taken part in an unsuccessful expedition against the Knights of St John, during which he had been captured and forced to serve in their galleys. Ransomed–we have no idea by whom–he was soon afterwards entrusted with a privateer by merchants of Constantinople, and served under the Mameluke ruler of Egypt.

Some time during the very first years of the century, he and his brother appeared in Tunis with two galleots–basically open boats with about seventeen oars a side, each oar manned by two or perhaps three rowers; and in 1504, in the channel that runs between the island of Elba and the Italian mainland, Aruj won his first major prizes: two papal galleys, loaded to the gunwales with precious goods from Genoa. They were bound for Civitavecchia, but they never reached it; boarded and captured, they were brought proudly back to Tunis.

In the following years several Spanish vessels were also attacked, with similar results; and at last, in 1509, Cardinal Ximenes despatched the celebrated Don Pedro Navarro, with no less than ninety ships and an army of 11,000, ostensibly to spread Christianity along the North African coast but in fact to bring the miscreants to book. When Oran was captured at the cost of only thirty Spanish lives, 4,000 of its inhabitants were massacred in cold blood and 5,000 carried off to Spain, together with plunder valued at 500,000 gold ducats; in the year following, Bougie and Tripoli went the same way. But Aruj, who had by now taken over the island of Djerba as his base of operations, was growing steadily stronger, and in 1512 he responded to an appeal by the exiled ruler of Bougie–forced out by Don Pedro–to restore him in return for the free use of the port. After a week of heavy bombardment, the Spanish garrison was about to surrender when a lucky shot took off Aruj’s left arm; the siege was raised and the fleet returned to Tunis, though not without capturing a Genoese galleot on the way.

The Genoese were shortly to have their revenge; their admiral Andrea Doria sped with twelve galleys to Tunis, sacked the fortress and captured half the pirate fleet. But Aruj, his wound healed, returned to the attack and in 1516 received another appeal–this time from Prince Selim of Algiers. The city had not been conquered by Don Pedro, but two years before, in an attempt to prevent the constant Algerian attacks on Spanish shipping, the Spaniards had fortified an offshore island in the bay known as the Penon, from which they virtually controlled the harbour, threatening all traffic in both directions. Aruj did not hesitate. Bad luck had prevented him from regaining Bougie, but Algiers was a far bigger prize and would, incidentally, make a superb capital for the great Barbary kingdom that had long been his dream.

By now Aruj was powerful enough to mobilise a fleet of sixteen galleots–under the command of his brother Khizr–and an army of some 6,000 men. With this he marched along the coast to Algiers, pausing only at Cherchel, some miles to the west, where another sea adventurer, a Turk named Kara Hassan, had carved out a little sultanate for himself and amassed a small army of Moors and Turks, together with a number of ships. These Barbarossa needed, but rather than negotiate an alliance with Kara Hassan he found it simpler, with a blow of his scimitar, to strike off his head. Arrived in Algiers, he at once began a heavy bombardment on the island fortress; three weeks later, however, he had made little appreciable impact and so, being clearly in danger of losing face with the Prince, changed his plan. A few days later Selim was murdered in his bath, and Aruj had himself formally proclaimed Sultan.

The people of Algiers saw all too clearly the mistake they had made in inviting Barbarossa to help them, and it was not long before they opened secret talks with the Spanish garrison on the Penon to bring about his downfall. But Aruj, with his network of spies throughout the city, soon got wind of what was happening. One Friday, when all the leading citizens were gathered in the great mosque, the doors were slammed shut and the worshippers found themselves surrounded by armed men. One after another they were bound with their own turbans, and were then led to the main door to witness the beheading of the chief conspirators.

News of the
coup
soon reached Spain, where Ximenes was seriously alarmed. In May 1517 he sent out his second expedition against Aruj: 10,000 men under the leadership of the country’s leading admiral, Diego de Vera. Once again, Barbarossa acted quickly. Falling on the Spaniards while they were still unloading and before they had time to reform, he killed some 3,000 of them. The remainder hastily re-embarked and fled for their lives. Even then, luck was against them. Towards nightfall a sudden storm sprang up and drove many of the ships ashore, where Barbarossa’s men were waiting. It was a dismally depleted fleet that struggled back to its homeland. A month later the ruler of Tenes, a city some ninety miles west of Algiers, was foolhardy enough to march against the corsair; his army in its turn was smashed to bits, and, although he himself managed to escape to the hills, a few days later his city fell to Aruj, who once more proclaimed himself Sultan. The city of Tlemcen, 200 miles further to the west and some way inland, quickly followed; when Aruj entered it in September, the head of its former ruler was borne before him on a lance. With the exception of Oran, Bougie, the Penon and a few other fortresses along the coast, Aruj Barbarossa was now master of virtually all the territory that forms the modern republic of Algeria. It had taken him just thirteen years.

But Oran was to prove his Achilles’s heel. Soon after the arrival in Spain of Charles I–later the Emperor Charles V–in September 1517, the city’s governor, the Marquis of Comares, had returned to Spain to pay him homage and to discuss the general situation in North Africa, which was now becoming desperate. The Barbarossas were growing more powerful with every month that passed; the few remaining Spanish possessions on the coast were increasingly threatened. Now, surely, was the moment to strike again, before it was too late; this time, however, the enemy’s strength and military skill must not be underestimated, as they had so tragically been on previous occasions. The young King was quick to agree. He immediately gave orders for an expedition to be prepared through the coming winter. It was to sail in the early spring, when it had orders to track down Barbarossa and destroy him.

This time it was a veritable armada that reached Oran in the first months of 1518, and an army of trained veterans that at once set out for Tlemcen. Mistrusting the defences of the city, Aruj sent an urgent appeal for additional men and equipment from the Sultan of Fez, but the Sultan prevaricated; meanwhile, the Spanish army was approaching and there was no time to be lost. Tlemcen would have to be sacrificed; Aruj had no choice but to retreat to Algiers. But–probably owing to his fruitless waiting for the aid from Fez that never came–he had left it too late. Comares learned of his departure and set off in pursuit. Aruj had excellent horses, but they were no match for the Spanish thoroughbreds, and through forced marches the Spaniards steadily gained on him. It is said that Aruj scattered gold and jewels behind him to delay his pursuers, but Comares forbade his men to dismount and finally caught up with him as he and his army were fording a mountain river. Aruj and his vanguard had already crossed it, but he turned back to join the remainder who had not yet done so, thus presenting a united front to the Spanish force. It was on that riverbank that he made his last stand, and there, still laying about him with his one arm, that he was struck down in his forty-fourth year.

His end was worthy of all that had gone before. He had been fearless, sometimes reckless, perhaps the very first and greatest of those swash-buckling corsairs who were to blaze their trail through succeeding centuries. Of all his contemporaries, it was said that only Hernán Cortés was his equal for bravery. It might be added that in his own astonishing achievement–starting as he did a discredited foreigner without allies and, in the teeth of local hostility and everything that Spain could hurl against him, creating through sheer force of character in a few short years a strong and durable North African state–only he was the equal of the greatest of the conquistadors.

For the Marquis of Comares, the death of the first Barbarossa and the destruction of his army opened the way to Algiers. Had he marched on the city, it would surely have fallen, and with Algiers in Spanish hands, the rest of North Africa would soon have been his. But he did nothing of the kind. Instead, he returned directly to Oran–and the opportunity was lost to Spain for three hundred years. Meanwhile, Khizr–or, as we must now call him, Kheir-ed-Din–Barbarossa took on the mantle of his brother.

It was a hard act to follow, but Kheir-ed-Din had never lacked confidence. He may not have had quite the panache of Aruj, but he possessed all his brother’s ambition, all his courage, and–arguably–rather more statesmanship and political wisdom. It is unlikely, for example, that Aruj would ever have considered sending ambassadors to Constantinople to make a formal presentation of the new Province of Algiers to the Sultan. For Selim I, who had conquered Egypt only the year before, here was an invaluable westward extension to his African empire. He instantly appointed Kheir-ed-Din his
beylerbey
, or governor-general, and provided him with a guard of honour of 2,000 janissaries. With their help all the Spanish conquests except Oran and the nigh-impregnable Penon outside the harbour of Algiers were regained.

Next, alliances were sealed with all the principal Arab and Berber tribes of the interior. In a remarkably short time the second Barbarossa, considerably more powerful than the first had ever been, dominated the central and western Mediterranean. Around him he gathered a splendid company of corsair captains. They included Dragut, another converted Christian, who became known as ‘the Drawn Sword of Islam’; Sinan, ‘the Jew of Smyrna’, who was suspected of the black arts because he could take a declination reading with a crossbow; the redoubtable Aydin Reis, known by the Spaniards as
Cachadiablo
; and perhaps half a dozen others, all of them superb seamen. Between May and October of every year no foreign vessel was safe from their attacks; nor did they hesitate to pass through the straits to the open Atlantic, where they would lie in wait for the Spanish galleons returning from the Caribbean to Cadiz. But it was not only treasure that they were looking for; every bit as profitable were Christian prisoners, who could either be enslaved and set to work in the galleys or, occasionally, ransomed for gold.