by Henry Kamen
The relationship with Italy was, of course, not simply a military one. Nor was it based only on Spaniards crossing over to Italy. Since at least the fifteenth century, Italians had been active in many aspects of the culture and commerce of the Iberian peninsula. A significant group of Genoese traders and bankers was established in Seville, where the opening of relations with the New World found them well placed to exploit the opportunity.45 In the early years of trade with America, they were by far the most important group of investors.46 The Genoese under Charles V became the principal bankers and capitalists of the monarchy, helping to finance the great enterprises of the Crown but also, and through their loans and credit extending their connections all over the western Mediterranean.47 A historian has acutely observed that ‘as the Spanish were conquering the Americas, the Genoese found their America in Spain’.48 The Venetian ambassador in Spain, Badoer, reported in 1557 that the economic interests of the Genoese ‘extend through all kingdoms and states’, and that the republic of Genoa ‘lends credits to all and waits on everyone’.49 Their role in making possible the launching of the empire as big business was crucial. They advanced money to finance emigrants, trade goods, send slaves, and advance sugar production in the New World. ‘Everything here goes as the Genoese desire’, an agent in Seville wrote in 1563 to one of the chief Castilian bankers of that time.50 The mechanism used was for the Italian bankers to advance credit (through credit notes known as ‘bills of exchange’, precursor of the modern cheque) to the crown at the place and time agreed, and to be repaid out of the revenues of the government of Castile. Where possible, the Genoese preferred to realize their returns out of the bullion that the fleets brought from America to Seville. As a consequence, large sums were transferred from Spain to their agents in Antwerp and in Genoa.
While Charles as emperor confronted in the north of Europe the challenge of the Protestant Reformation, Spanish security in the south continued to be threatened by Muslim naval power in Africa and the Mediterranean. The reign of the emperor coincided with the most successful period of expansion in the history of the Ottoman empire, ruled from 1520 to 1566 by Suleiman the Magnificent. Spaniards were by no means exempt from the consequences. Khayr al-Din Barbarossa in 1518 declared himself a vassal of the sultan, and with the assurance that he had the backing of Istanbul continued to prey on Christian shipping in the western Mediterranean. In 1522 he recaptured Vélez de la Gomera, and in 1529 the Peñón of Algiers, where he put to death the small Castilian garrison of 150 men, who had previously refused offers of a safe return to Spain if they surrendered. Barbarossa's fleet of sixty ships had an impact that extended far beyond these minor incidents, for they could count on the support within Spain of the large and discontented Morisco population. The resounding defeat by Barbarossa off the island of Formentera of eight galleys that the emperor sent from Genoa in 1529, alerted Charles to the urgent need for action. But it was a particularly difficult moment, and the options available were few. From April 1530, the major part of his time had to be spent in the Empire, where he was attempting to deal both with the German princes and with the looming Ottoman threat to the city of Vienna. The coasts of Spain remained exposed and unprotected, without adequate ships or fortifications, and in Catalonia where the local population was reluctant to contribute to the defence effort it became necessary to seize French settlers to do the work.51
Castilian leaders were willing to assume the costs of defence in the peninsula, but firmly opposed Charles's efforts to raise money in order to face the Turks who threatened Vienna. A member of his royal council, Lorenzo Galídez de Carvajal, pointed out that ‘the expenses of the Empire and of other countries that are not Spain, should not be paid with Spanish money nor discharged on Spain’.52 In the event Charles did not press the Castilians. But he exercised his right to use the troops based in Italy. The Castilian and Italian tercios, totalling over six thousand troops and commanded by the marquis di Vasto, consequently found themselves stationed on the Danube. They made a historic march from Milan up through the Valtelline to the east, passing through Innsbruck, Passau and Linz and on to Vienna, the first Italo-Spanish army ever to appear in the Holy Roman Empire.53 A curious detail of their expedition is that many went accompanied by their women, a total of 2,500 ladies of undetermined nation – presumably mostly Italian – or social rank. The march of the tercios into Central Europe was a significant step forward in Spain's response to the international obligations of power. An enthusiastic soldier who took part in the expedition set down in verse his vision of the promise of Spanish glory:
Spaniards, Spaniards,
Everyone stands in fear of you!54
Hundreds of noble adventurers from all over the continent also made their way to Vienna in 1532 to serve against the Turk. Among them were a number of Castilian grandees who wished to demonstrate their loyalty to the emperor. The dukes of Alba and Béjar, the marquises of Villafranca and Cogolludo, the counts of Monterrey and Fuentes, and the scions of the great noble families – the houses of Medina-Sidonia, Nájera, Alburquerque, Mondéjar – were among the many who went northwards. Their next appearance was in the event largely symbolic, for on seeing the immense army that the emperor had managed to assemble for the defence of Vienna – some hundred and fifty thousand men and sixty thousand cavalry, described admiringly by the Franche-Comtois Féry de Guyon as ‘the biggest and most beautiful army that anyone had seen in half a century’ – the Turks decided to strike camp. The tercios arrived on 24 September 1532, when the Turkish withdrawal had already begun, and consequently never saw battle. Francisco de los Cobos, writing from Vienna, reported with pride how the emperor inspected the newly arrived contingents: ‘the day before yesterday he went out to the camp to see the Spanish and Italian contingent, who are the finest anyone ever saw, especially the Spaniards’.55
The defence of Vienna was accompanied by a counter-move made in the eastern Mediterranean, in an attempt to draw the Turks away from the siege. In the spring of 1532 Andrea Doria led a fleet of forty-four galleys (of which seventeen were Spanish), carrying over ten thousand German, Italian and Castilian soldiers, towards Greece. Though the Castilians played a minor role, the campaign carried clear echoes of that led a generation before by the Great Captain. On this occasion the expedition resulted in the occupation in September of Coron (where Doria left a Castilian garrison of 2,500 under Gerónimo de Mendoza) and of Patras. The following year, Suleiman sent forces to recover Coron but Doria returned to the Aegean with thirty vessels (including twelve under Alvaro de Bazán) and scattered the Turkish forces. The captured positions were almost impossible to maintain, and were abandoned in 1534 when the Turks returned to the attack. The Imperial treasury could not meet the heavy cost of the campaigns, and when the Spanish tercios reached Messina in 1534 they threatened to mutiny if they were not paid.56 It was an ominous sign. In previous campaigns in Italy the Germans had often mutinied but the Castilians had usually restrained themselves. After 1534 mutinies were a regular occurrence among the tercios.
No sooner had Doria returned than he faced a completely altered and considerably more dangerous scenario in the western Mediterranean. Barbarossa had journeyed to Istanbul in 1533 and received from the Ottomans a commission as their admiral in the west, together with the help of Turkish ships and troops. With these he proceeded to impose his control on the principalities of the North African coast, and raided and burnt along the coasts of Italy. On his return to Castile in the spring of 1533 Charles was anxious to put into effect his long-considered idea of eliminating the North African corsairs at their root, the cities of the African coast. The Castilian leaders, with Cardinal Tavera at their head and with the support of the empress, expressed their opposition to the choice of Tunis as objective. The desirable objective was, for them, Algiers, whose shipping represented more of a threat to their coasts. In the event, the emperor's advisers opted for Tunis.
The famous expedition to Tunis assembled at its rendezvous in the port of Cagliari, Sar
dinia, in the early days of June 1535. It was, as all operations in the western Mediterranean came to be, an international undertaking but with a predominantly Italian complexion, since the defence of the coast of Italy was in question. Genoa, the papacy, Naples, Sicily and the Knights of Malta sent vessels. Charles sailed to join them from Barcelona with the fifteen Spanish galleys, and vessels came from Portugal under the command of the empress Isabella's brother. Ten thousand new recruits from Spain were ferried in transport ships supplied by Vizcaya and Málaga. The cream of the nobility of Italy, Flanders and Castile was present.
The assembled force was an imposing sight, totalling over four hundred vessels.57 Of the eighty-two galleys equipped for war, eighteen per cent were from Spain, forty per cent from Genoa (mainly the vessels of Andrea Doria), and the remaining forty-two per cent from the other Italian states (including the galleys of Naples under García de Toledo). There were over thirty thousand soldiers on the fleet; they included the Spanish recruits, together with four thousand men from the tercios of Italy, seven thousand Germans and eight thousand Italians, as well as several thousand adventurers who came along at their own expense.58 The operation was put under the direction of two Italian generals, Doria for the navy and Vasto for the men. The costs of the exercise were met in part by bullion received from America, in part by Genoese bankers (who were also paid in American gold). It was the most imposing military expedition ever to have been mounted by Christian powers in the long history of the western Mediterranean.
The siege of the fortress of La Goletta, at the entrance to the bay of Tunis and defended by a strong Turkish garrison, began on 20 June and lasted for three and a half weeks, during which a number of reinforcements from friendly local Muslim leaders arrived. The fort eventually fell on 14 July, a day of intense heat that afflicted victors and vanquished alike. ‘We won the victory despite the terrible heat’, Féry de Guyon recalled, ‘that day there was no water to be had in wells or rivers, and the battle began after four in the afternoon; the soldiers were so worn out that immediately after winning the battle they just sat or lay down on the ground.’59 Charles decided to press on to the city of Tunis, which was captured on 21 July and sacked by the triumphant soldiery. Barbarossa escaped, and was replaced as ruler of Tunis by Muley Hassan, who swore allegiance to the emperor, while La Goletta was left with a Spanish garrison. Charles had every reason to be content with a campaign that brought rejoicing to the Christian Mediterranean. The enormous navy then made its way home to its various destinations. Off the coast of Italy one of the galleys, loaded with German soldiers, capsized and all on board perished;60 more men died in the accident than during the entire military action at Tunis.
No sooner had Charles achieved his moment of glory in Tunis than a new threat emerged, this time from France. The emperor sailed directly from Tunis to Sicily and Naples, where he spent the winter and dedicated himself to the administration of his kingdoms in southern Italy. In March 1536 he accepted an invitation from the pope to discuss common problems, and on 5 April 1536 was in Rome. Two days earlier, French troops crossed the frontier into Italy, and a state of war existed.
Charles had much business to discuss with the pope, Paul III, who laid on a triumphal entry for the emperor. On 17 April Charles addressed an assembly of cardinals and diplomats in the presence of the pope. He was very angry with France for having broken the peace, and startled the assembly by refusing to speak in his own tongue, French. Instead, he spoke in Castilian. He angrily denounced the threats to peace posed by France, and France's unacceptable alliance with the infidel Barbarossa. Holding up in his hand a sheaf of secret correspondence between Francis I and Barbarossa, he said: ‘I myself, with my own hands, seized at La Goletta these letters I am holding.’ He challenged Francis I to resolve their differences by a personal duel rather than endanger the lives of so many Christians. At the end of his long peroration, delivered without any notes, he repeated firmly, ‘I wish for peace, I wish for peace, I wish for peace!’
The hearers were stunned, many because they had not expected to be addressed in a language little used among diplomats. The bishop of Macon, one of France's envoys to the papacy, spoke up and asked the emperor for a text of the discourse, since he did not understand Castilian. Charles replied tersely: ‘My lord bishop, let me be clear: do not expect to hear me speak in any language other than Spanish, which is so noble that it deserves to be known and understood by all Christian men.’ Charles's own advisers were perplexed by the unexpected vigour of his ‘sermon’, as they termed it, and by the use of Spanish. The next day, when his ire had cooled, the emperor summoned the two French ambassadors privately and gave them a verbal summary, ‘in italiano buonissimo’, of what he had said in Castilian. Despite the incident, Charles always gave precedence to his own language, French, in both private and public life.
The success at Tunis, the empress reminded Charles in September 1535, ‘has been particularly pleasing to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and to the whole of Italy’.61 The Castilians had always insisted on an expedition against Algiers, and had little interest in Tunis, which was on a part of the African coast deemed to be of interest to the Crown of Aragon only. In 1510, indeed, King Ferdinand had stated that ‘the conquest of the kingdom of Tunis is the responsibility of the Crown of Aragon’.62 Castilians therefore continued to insist on the need to take Algiers. The corsairs, in any case, had not been stopped. In a stunning response to Tunis, Barbarossa with thirty galleys launched a lightning attack on the port of Mahon in the Balearic Islands on 1 September. They sacked the town, took a good part of the population prisoner, and left five days later.
The expedition to Algiers, the empress and her advisers hoped, would be an attempt to make up for the incomplete victory at Tunis. But it had to be put off for some time because of the emperor's involvement with the situation in Milan provoked by the death of its duke, Francesco Sforza, in November 1535. Charles, at the time in Naples, wrote to the empress in February 1536, asking her to continue with the idea of the proposed expedition to Algiers, but also to send immediate resources to Genoa to confront the possibility of an outbreak of hostilities with France in northern Italy. All available galleys, the emperor wrote, should be sent to Genoa under Alvaro de Bazán, together with three thousand men for the infantry, available provisions, and money coined from the American gold and silver that had recently arrived in Seville.63 The nature of the help he required showed that Spain had now moved up in the emperor's list of priorities. From being simply one component of the empire it had become the most crucial. The speech in Spanish proclaimed this reality to the whole world. Writing to his wife the day after his speech, Charles admitted frankly and for the first time, that for his military needs ‘there is no way of finding finance anywhere else’64 than Spain. Since Spain, as we have seen, contributed little through taxation, the emperor's mind was obviously on the precious metals from the New World.
The constant vulnerability of the Christian states was confirmed by a reverse suffered by their naval forces in September 1538 off the island of Prevesa, near Corfu in the eastern Mediterranean. Over 130 Christian vessels, under the command of the viceroy of Sicily, Gonzaga, and including a Spanish contingent as well as vessels of Doria, Venice and the papacy, confronted a similar concentration of vessels under Barbarossa.65 The Christian forces failed to achieve anything decisive, except to make it clear that the Turks were still the supreme naval power in the eastern Mediterranean. For the next generation the defence of the sea had to be conducted from the west, where the spate of attacks on Christian territory was unrelenting. Pressure mounted on the emperor, above all from the Spaniards, for an attack on Algiers.
An ill-fated attack on Algiers was eventually launched in 1541. According to the official estimates, Naples and Sicily were to meet sixty per cent of the costs, Castile forty. Similar proportions applied to the galleys, of which the Italians would supply two-thirds and Spain one third.66 Two-thirds of the soldiers would be Italians (commanded by
Colonna) and Germans (commanded by Alba), one third Spanish (under Ferrante Gonzaga). The assembled force sailed from Mallorca in mid-October 1541, picking up on their way the duke of Alba, who was at Cartagena. The total force was estimated at 65 galleys, 450 support vessels and transports, with 12,000 sailors and 24,000 troops. Among the captains was the conqueror of Mexico himself, Hernando Cortés. On 23 October the infantry began to go ashore six miles from the city of Algiers.
That afternoon, a sudden storm hit the coast.67 ‘That day, Tuesday,’ Cardinal Tavera later reported, ‘such a big storm arose that not only was it impossible to unload the supplies and guns, but many small vessels were overturned and also thirteen to fourteen galleys.’ The storm went on unabated for four days, destroying a good part of the ships and many of the men (‘thank God’, noted Tavera, ‘no one of importance was lost, only ordinary men and servants and sailors’). It was impossible to unload the artillery. On the 26th, to the amazement of the besieged Algerians, the emperor began to withdraw his forces. The bad weather continued to hinder an orderly withdrawal and Charles did not reach Mallorca until the end of November. The total losses suffered by his forces were possibly not less than 150 vessels and 12,000 men, without counting cannon and supplies.68 It was the emperor's first resounding defeat, an unmitigated disaster in every sense, a profound humiliation, and for all the foregoing reasons his last expedition against the forces of Islam.
