22. Forrer, Die Osmanische Chronik, 94.
23. Charles V to Juan Pardo de Tavera, March 7 and 31, Archivo de Simancas, Valladolid, Colección Estado 638, 77, 81, 95–96, in James Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 172; John F. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys, 2nd ed. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003), 77–78.
24. Adrien Berbrugger, “Négociations entre Hassan Aga et le Comte d’Alcaudete, Gouverneur d’Oran 1541–1542,” Revue Africaine 9 (1865): 379–85.
25. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, 204. Hadji Khalifa gives a lengthy account of Charles’s demands. René Basset, Documents Musulmans sur le Siège d’Alger (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1890), 39–40.
26. Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, Caroli V Imperatoris Expeditio in Africam ad Argieram (Antwerp: Ioannes Steelsius, 1542), 375r.
27. Basset, Documents Musulmans, 23.
4. WAR AT SEA, 1541–1550
Epigraph: Rossi, “L’Assedio di Malta,” 151.
1. Maurand, Itinéraire de J Maurand, 329.
2. Ibid., 327.
3. Gazavat-i Hayreddin Pasa Supplément Turc 1186, fols. 2a–3b, 4b–5a, Bibliothèque Nationale, cited in Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel (London: Tauris, 2011), 126.
4. Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Adam Islip, 1610). Or perhaps they did not. (Knolles said Polin asked the corsair to keep his men at bay to ensure that the Janissaries did not sack the town.)
5. M. Henry, Documents relatifs au Séjour, in J-J. Champollion-Figeac, ed., Documents historiques inédits tirés des collections manuscrites de la Bibliothèque royale . . . , vol. 2, (Paris: Imprimerie Imperial, 1847), 518–19. Cf. J. Bérenger, La collaboration militaire franco ottomane à l’époque de la Renaissance, in Revue international de l’histoire militaire 68 (Commission Française d’Histoire Militaire, 1987), 56.
6. Maurand, Itinéraire de Jerome Maurand, xxxii. See also Charrière, Négociations, vol.
1, 567. For more on their reception, see Ursu, Politique Orientale, 146–47.
7. “Ceste flotte à bande ramée / Dont le vent en poulpe est si doulx, / C’est Barbarousse et son armée / Qui vient nous secourir treztous.” M. Henry, Documents Relatifs au Séjour, 566. See also Christine Isom-Verhaaren, “‘Barbarossa and His Army Who Came to Succor All of Us’: Ottoman and French Views of Their Joint Campaign of 1543–1544,” French Historical Studies 30, no. 3, (summer 2007), 395–426.
8. M. Henry, Documents Relatifs au Séjour, 566. See also Isom-Verhaaren, “Barbarossa and His Army,” and Aldo Galotta, “Il Gazavat-I Hayreddin Paşa Pars Secunda e la spedizione in francia di Hayreddin Barbarossa (1543–1544),” in Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. C. Ménage (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1994).
9. Pierre de Bordeille Brantôme, Œuvres Complètes, vol. 2, bk. 1 (Paris 1858–1895), 66.
10. “Barbarossa being cleane gone, the Spaignardes, that wer yn Naples and yn Sardine, comme all ynto Lombardye.” Nicholas Wotton to Sir William Paget, July 30, 1544, Camp at Saint-Dizier, in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Henry VIII, pt. 5, vol. 10 (London, 1949), 18.
11. E. Hamilton Currey, Seawolves of the Mediterranean (London: John Murray, 1910), 217. Cf. Paolo Giovio, Elogi degli uomini illustri (Turin: Einaudi, 2006), 919.
12. Stephen C. Spiteri, The Great Siege: Knights versus Turks MDLXV: Anatomy of a Hospitaller Victory (Tarxien, MT: Gutenberg Press, 2006), 220; Bosio, Dell’Istoria, vol. 3, 85.
13. Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, vol. 7, 248.
14. Antonfrancesco Cirni, Commentarii d’Antonfrancesco Cirni Corso, ne quali si discrive la Guerra ultima di Francia, la celebratione del Concilio Tridentino, il socorso d’Orano, l’impresa del Pignone, e Historia dello assedio di Malta diligentissimeamente raccolta insieme con altre cose notablii (Rome: Giulio Accolto, 1567), 37v.
15. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, vol. 3, 243. See also Mallia-Milanes, “Frà Jean de la Valette 1495–1568: A Reappraisal,” in The Maltese Cross, ed. T. Cortis (Malta: University Publications, 1995), 116.
16. The price of slaves, like any commodity, could fluctuate wildly. “And to reduce this Misfortune to a Proverb, some parted with their new taken Slaves for an Onion per head,” in Joseph Morgan, Complete History of Algiers (London: Bettenham, 1731), 305. Robert Davis puts the market bottom at 1544, following a particularly successful raid on Naples. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 112–13. As to Kust Ali, he got worse than he gave. In 1554 Valette was sailing off the coast of Pasaro in Sicily when he ran into his old captor. A short battle later, Valette had the man chained to a bench, where a few years later he died, presumably of exposure and exhaustion.
17. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, vol. 3, 309.
18. Victor Mallia-Milanes, “Frà Jean de la Valette 1495–1568: A Reappraisal,” in The Maltese Cross, ed. T Cortis (Malta: Malta University Publishers, 1995), 117–29. See also Bosio, Dell’Istoria, vol. 3, 255–56, for Valette’s petition.
19. Brantôme, Œuvres complètes, vol. 2, 68.
20. Cirni, Commentarii d’Antonfrancesco Cirni (Rome: Giulio Accolto, 1567), 71v.
21. Setton, Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 534.
22. Ibid.; cf. Diego de Fuentes, Conquista de Africa (Antwerp: Ph. Nuto, 1570), 24v.
23. Setton, Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 534.
24. Sir John Masone to the Council, May 10, 1551, Tours, France, in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series of the Reign of Edward the VI (henceforth CSPFS, Edward VI): 1547–1553, 103.
25. Çelebi, History of the Maritime Wars, 122. Other accounts say nothing of the stream.
26. Sir Richard Morysine to Cecil, May 12, 1551, Augsburg, Germany, in CSPFS, Edward VI: 1547–1553, 105.
27. The quote appears in various forms in secondary literature (Currey, Seawolves of the Mediterranean). I have not been able to find its first use.
28. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, vol. 3, 237, 369. Turgut had no love for Don Garcia de Toledo either. The corsair’s nephew Hassan Rais Esse had been an official at Mahdia when Don Garcia seized it (ibid., 270).
29. Eugenio Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti (Florence: Clio, 1840), ser. 3, vol. 1, 70. Ottoman historian Mustafa Ali in Christine Isom-Verhaaren, “Süleyman and Mihrimah: The Favorite’s Daughter,” Journal of Persianate Studies 4 (2011): 74.
30. Peter Vannes to the Council England, August 15, 1551, Venice, Italy, in CSPFS, Edward VI: 1547–1553, 159.
31. Nicolay, Dans l’empire de Soliman, 77; Washington, Navigations, Peregrinations, 565. Presumably, the bronze Marcus Aurelius statue on the Campidoglio is meant. The garden as a whole is discussed in Vincenzo Bonello’s monograph, “Il ninfeo del giardino di d’Omedes,” a copy of which his son Giovanni Bonello was kind enough to provide to me.
32. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, vol. 3, 254. To give d’Homedes his due, Doria was himself under orders and en route to reinforce Mahdia with arms and men (Setton, Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 554), which suggests that other targets were always possible, or at the very least that Charles was trying to cover as many bets as possible during that uncertain summer.
33. Setton, Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 554
34. Roger Ascham, The English Works of Roger Ascham, preceptor to Queen Elizabeth (London: White, Cochran, 1815), 372.
35. Nicolay, Dans l’empire de Soliman, 76; Washington, Navigations, Peregrinations, 565.
36. Andrew Vella, “The Order of Malta and the Defence of Tripoli 1530–1551,” Melita Historica 6, no. 4 (1975): 367.
37. Dr. Wotton and Sir Richard Morysine to the Council, September 1, 1551, Augsburg, Germany, in CSPFS, Edward VI: 1547–1553, 165.
38. Ascham, English Works, 374.
39. Ibid., 9.
5. DJERBA, 1551–1560
Epigraph: The phrase is first recorded in Gonzalo Correas, Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales (162
7; Madrid, 1906), 203.
Similarly, the soldier and poet Garcilaso de la Vega (1503–1536) wrote in his Eglogo II, “O patria lagrimosa y como vuelves / Los ojos a los Gelves, sospirando” (“Weeping and sighing, O homeland, / As you turn your eyes to Djerba.” He was writing of the 1510 disaster when four thousand men died trying to take the island for Spain. Garcilaso also fought at Tunis in 1534 and wrote of the disaster (see Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. 2, 455, and Prescott, History of Philip II, vol. 2, 327–33).
Nor was it just the Spanish who had problems with Djerba: “An old Maltese nautical term Taqa’żorba (the modern day meaning is equivalent to ‘find oneself at the lowest ebb of one’s strength’), originally seems to have meant ‘being driven helplessly to the nethermost part of the Mediterranean.’” Djerba is designated as Zorba on numerous old maps. JosAnn Cutajar and George Cassar, “Malta and the Sixteenth Century Struggle for the Mediterranean,” in The Great Siege 1565: Separating Fact from Fiction, ed. G. Cassar (Valletta, MT: Sacra Militia Foundation, 2005), 30.
1. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, vol. 3, 332.
2. Roger Ascham, The English Works, 9.
3. Braudel, Mediterranean, 927; Lanz, Correspondenz des Kaisers Karl V., vol. 3, 576.
4. Stanley Fiorini, “Mattew alias Josep Callus: Patriot or Opportunist?” Treasures of Malta, vol. 12, no. 3. Also see Godfrey Wettinger, “Early Maltese Popular Attitudes to Government of St. John,” Melita Historica 6, no. 3 (1974): 255–78.
5. Jacopo Bonfadio, Le lettere e una scrittura burlesca (Rome: Bonacci, 1978), 149.
6. Raffaele Bracco, Il Principe Giannandrea: Doria Patriae Libertatis Conservator (Genoa: Scuola Graf. Opera SS. Vergine di Pompei, 1960), 91–92. Vilma Borghesi, Vita del Principe Giovanni Andrea Doria scritta da lui medesimo incompleta (Genoa: Compagnia dei Librai, 1997).
7. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Epistolae Quattuor (Frankfurt: Andrea Wecheli, 1594), 290; Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, trans. Edward Seymour Foster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 231.
8. Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives at Simancas, Vienna, Brussels, and Elsewhere, vol. 7, ed. Pascual de Gayangos (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1899), 269.
9. Çelebi, History of the Maritime Wars, 68.
10. Seraphim M. Zarb, “A Contemporary Letter Describing the Occupation of Jerba in 1560 by the Christians,” Scientia 21, no. 2 (April–June 1955): 54–70. The letter is not dated, but it can only have been written sometime in the spring of 1560.
11. Bosio, Dell’Istoria, 426.
12. Ibid.
13. Çelebií, History of the Maritime Wars, 173.
14. Ibid., 171.
15. Ibid., 179.
16. Alberi, Relazioni, ser. 3, vol. 1, 407.
17. Ibid., 189. By 1573, the Venetian ambassador Andrea Badoara referred to him as “a good sailor and valiant soldier.” Alberi, Relazioni, ser. 3, vol. 3, 365.
18. Busbecq, Legationis Turcicae, 224; Forster, Turkish Letters, 170.
19. Çelebi, History of the Maritime Wars, 163.
20. Ibid., 173.
21. Ibid.
22. Charles Monchicourt, L’expédition espagnole de 1560 contre l’île de Djerba (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1913), 240–41.
23. Alessio Bombaci, “Le Fonti turche della battaglia delle Gerbe,” Rivista degli studi orientali 19, no. 1 (1941): 207.
24. Setton, Papacy and the Levant, vol. 2, 762. He would be ransomed in 1562.
25. Çelebi, History of the Maritime Wars, 173.
26. Ibid.,164.
27. René-Aubert de Vertot, Histoire des chevaliers hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jerusalem, vol. 3 (Paris: Rolin, 1726), 404.
28. Throckmorton accounts for one boat only. Throckmorton to the Queen, June 30, 1560, Houson, in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 4: 1560–1561, 157.
29. Piali Pasha to Ferhad Aga, 1560, Djerba, in Charrière, Negotiations, vol. 2, 612. It is presumably early on, as he is hopeful that the Christians will surrender for lack of water.
30. “There is at Gerbes for general one Don Antonio D’Alvaro, with 2,000 Spaniards and four months’ victuals.” Throckmorton to the Queen, June 30, in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth (henceforth CSPFS, Elizabeth), vol. 3: 1560–1561, 150.
31. Eugenio Sarrablo Aguareles, “Don Alvaro de Sande y La Orden de Malta,” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 61, no. 1 (1955): 54.
32. Alessio Bombaci, “Un Rapporto del Grande Ammiraglio Piyale Pascià a Solimano Sull’Assedio delle Gerbe (1560),” in Festschrift Friedrich Giese aus Anlass des siebenzigsten Geburtstags überreicht von Freunden und Schülern, ed. Gotthard Jäschke (Leipzig: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Islamkunde, 1941), 80. Also in Die Welt des Islams 23 (1941): 75–83.
33. Zekeriyyāzādé (The War of Djerba) mentions two outside wells, a tunnel to one of which Uludj Ali’s men discovered, fought over, and filled in. Quoted in Orhan Koloğu, “Renegades and the Case [sic] Ulu/Kili Ali,” in Mediterraneo in Armi (sec. 15–18), ed. Rossella Cancila, vol. 2, no. 4, Quaderni Mediterranea: Ricerche storiche Palermo (Palermo: Associazione Mediterranea, 2007), 530. See also Çelebi, History of the Maritime Wars, 164.
34. Busbecq, Legationis Turcicae, 226–27; Forster, Turkish Letters, 172.
35. Secretary to Cecil, “Intelligences from Sicily,” August 22, 1560, Messina, in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 3: 1560–1561, 254. Good intelligence was badly delayed. As late as mid-August, an English diplomat was writing home that “the fortress that the Spaniards keep at Gerbes [Djerba] is yet in their hands, and (as they write from Naples) they doubt not of the keeping of the same. There are other advices that it must fall shortly into the Turk’s hands.” John Shers to Cecil, in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 3: 1560–1561, 229.
36. Çelebi, History of the Maritime Wars, 175–76.
37. Bombaci, Rapporto, 83.
38. Commendator Fra Antonio Maria Pagliaro to unknown recipient, August 18, Malta, CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 3: 1560–1561, 240.
39. Bombaci, Le Fonti turche, 207.
40. The suggestion is there were only six. CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 3: 1560–1561, 255. Of the remaining thousand, one hundred and twenty were ransomed in 1562 (in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 3: 1562, 383); many of the rest would be found still pulling oars of the Ottoman navy at the battle of Lepanto. As to springing Sande, Busbecq was not alone: “Salviati, the French Ambassador, has come to confirm the old league between France and the Turk, to whom he presented 100 vestures. A part of his commission is to ransom Don Álvaro Sandi, taken at Gerbes.” CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 4: 1561–1562, 581. The offer was rebuffed, presumably because Francis was in bad odor since the peace. Cf. Petremol to Charles IX, November 25, 1565, Constantinople, in Charrière, Négociations, vol. 2, 562. It was crushing to Sande, whom Busbecq described as a man “of great spirit and of a sanguine disposition and one who knows not fear.” Busbecq, Legationis Turcicae, 272; Forster, Turkish Letters, 216.
41. Uberto Foglietta, La Vida de Don Álvaro de Sande (Madrid: Belmonte, 1962), 285.
6. AN ALMOST-PEACEFUL INTERIM, 1561–1564
Epigraph: Charrière, Négociations, vol. 2, 75.
1. “Intelligences,” August 9, 1561, in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 6: 1561–1562, 241.
2. John Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003); Eugenio Sarrablo Aguareles, “Don Álvaro de Sande y La Orden de Malta,” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, vol. 61 (1955): 57. English envoys to Venice refer to 120 notables who are returned to Venice in October 1562 (in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 4: 1562, 383). Why they were notable and what their specialized knowledge was is unrecorded.
3. “Advertisements from Italy,” August 13, 1561, Milan, in “Elizabeth: August 1561, 16–20,” CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 4: 1561–1562, 265.
4. “Intelligences,” August 13, 1561, Rome, in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 4: 1561–1562, 284.
6. Throckmorton to Cecil, March 22, 1561, Paris, in CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 3: 1560–1561, 34. John Shers to Cecil, February 6, 1561, Venice: “Ascanio Della Corna [sic] raises three thousand men to go to Malta to defend that place with the help of the Knights of the Order there, against the Turk’s army, which is expected.” CSPFS, Elizabeth, vol. 3: 1560–1561, 538.
7. Report from Constantinople to Naples, January 21, 1564 (received March 29, 1564), AGS Estado, legajo 1053, doc. 44 (or 45?), in Emilio Sola, Despertar al que dormía: Los últimos años de Solimán en la literatura de avisos del Siglo de Oro Español, Archivo de la Frontera, Centro Europeo para la Difusión de las Ciencias Sociales (CEDCS), 2011, 56–57. http://www.archivodelafrontera.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CLASICOS036.pdf. Report from Constantinople to Messina, March 6, 1564, AGS Estado, legajo 1053, doc. 35, in Sola, Despertar al que dormía, 55.
8. Ibid. Another envoy delivered thirdhand gossip (“on good authority”) that Suleiman was entering senility: “very old, decrepit and losing his memory, and they treat him like a child.” Garci Hernández to Philip II, March 28, 1564, Venice, AGS Estado, legajo 1325, doc. 13, in Sola, Despertar al que dormía, 54.
9. Nicolay, Dans l’empire de Soliman, 77. Washington, Navigations, Peregrinations, 565.
10. Busbecq, Legationis Turcicae, 63. Forster, Turkish Letters, 49. Busbecq claims to have met a merchant who provided the sultana with love philters derived from unnamed parts of hyenas. The merchant would have had several options. Fifteenth-century philosopher Muhḥammad Ibn-Muāsā ad- Damiāriā writes that “he” (and presumably she) “who hangs on his person a piece of the vulva of a female hyena will be loved by men” (ad-Damirií, ad-Damîrī’s Hḥayāt al-hḥayawān: A Zoological Lexicon, vol. 2 (London: Luzac, 1906–1908), 210). Alternatively, Pliny (bk. 28, chap. 27) recommends that women put hyena snout bristles on their lips to attract men.
The Great Siege of Malta Page 34
