Prologue.
Under cover of darkness, an agile ship docked in an out- of -the -way bay of the island of Crete. At the agreed signal, a boat came off from the dry land and reached the ship. Wrapped in a large cloak, a tall man came on board. The caution and circumspection were more necessary than ever: that man was on the Venetians’ payroll and he was now preparing to leave his employers for their eternal competitors: the Knights of St. John. His name was Gabriele Tadini Martinengo and he was an engineer. A military engineer.
Philippe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, read again the letter . The Sovereign of Sovereigns, the Highest Emperor of Byzantium and Trebizond, the Supreme Lord of Europe and Asia, in other words the Sultan Suleiman himself, sent to him his own best wishes for the appointment and wanted to cultivate his favour. And so, why that glittering and menacing ending? Why that mention about the recent capture of Belgrade, about the devastation of wonderful Christian sites and about the slavery of their inhabitants? And why the ambush set up for him, a couple of weeks before, by the Turkish pirate Kartoglu near Syracuse, Sicily, from which he had escaped by sheer luck?
The Grand Master looked up from the letter, took pen and paper and wrote: “I have perfectly understood what you wanted to tell me.”
Jan Parisot deLa Valette, a young French Knight of St. John, had accepted the invitation of the Grand Master and was travelling by ship towards Rhodes. Would he have arrived on time?
The lords of the sea.
The Mediterranean- the White Sea for the Ottomans- was a restless sea. It had been always restless. Over that sea the fortune, as the wind, made her turn , bringing peace and war, terror and hope, pauses and accelerations. Over that sea everything was provisional: the victories and the defeats, the treaties and the alliances. Even the holy and universal Leagues, born to calm the storms, struggled along between fights and rivalries, misunderstandings and mistrusts.
Over that sea travelled wealth and opportunities, money and chances. Over that sea overlooked the Cross and the Crescent; over that sea , ran the gold bezant and the bills of exchange, the Ottoman silver coins and the florins, the silk and the cotton, the gold and the ivory. On that sea shone the golden rostra of the galleys of Venice and fluttered in the wind the banners of the Knights of St. John or the Prophet’s flags .
The portrait of the Emperor Charles V, by Tiziano (Titian) .From: it.wikipedia.org /
Around that sea, different ideas and different worlds, doomed to collide sooner or later, lived together in a precarious balance. The Ottomans –- the Turks for Christendom –- overlooked on that sea and immediately they looked beyond. Beyond those waters there were Rome and the realization of a dream: a single empire, a single faith, a single Caesar. After the fall of Constantinople (1453), in the Mediterranean the balance was broken. Under the pressure of the Ottomans, the defence system built by the Venetians in the eastern Mediterranean collapsed in the space of fifty years and the doors of the White Sea opened wide to the new conquerors.
In Springtime the Ottoman fleet left the Golden Horn and returned in Autumn loaded with booty and slaves. And at every going out , Christendom trembled.
The Venetians , the ancient lords of that sea, were living from day to day . Their ships sailed still the seas; the lion of San Marco showed off still proudly on the churches and palaces of Crete and Cyprus, but nothing was as before. The Venetian Republic was on the defensive; rather than to impose, she suffered; she lived one day to the next, rather than to make plans; her policy depended more by the whim of the Sultan’s harem or by the court’s political mood, rather than by the decisions of her Senate. Sometimes she raised her voice; other times , as was her custom, she put her hand to her pocket and handed out substantial bribes.
It was a treacherous and dangerous sea, always in motion, never still, crossed by corsairs and pirates of both faiths and denominations. The Knights of St. John held Bodrum and Rhodes and they had not forgotten Acre; Baba Oruç (Barbarossa for the Christians) controlled most of the Maghreb and he had not forgotten either the Knights, or the years spent in their jails and at the oars of their galleys. The first ones sailed the Eastern Mediterranean in the name of the faith, the latter lorded it in the west, starting from the North African coast. Both scattered the terror: in the name of Christ the first ones, in the name of Allah the latter. Both kidnapped and looted, both burned villages and sank ships , both were cursed and feared. Their raids added instability to the instability, tension to the tension.
On both sides , the danger was exaggerated, distorted, made absolute. On the Ottoman side, the Knights descended from” the foul race of the Franks”, profaner of sacred places ; on the Christian side, the Turks brought fire, kidnapped, tortured and impaled. On both sides, any mention to the dialogue seemed pure blasphemy. The dispute had taken on the contours of a holy war: there would have been no compromise. The White Sea, with the force of a magnet, was attracting Islam and Christendom towards its waters.
Portrait of Suleiman the Magnificent (for the Ottomans, the Lawmaker). From: it.wikipedia.org / wiki /
Over that sea overhung the gigantic shadows of Suleiman and Charles, the Sultan and the Emperor. Suleiman fascinated with his speech, Charles stammered; Suleiman looked like the very embodiment of perfection, Charles looked like “a pagan idol”; Suleiman was grave and solemn, Charles, always agape for a congenital defect to his jaw, looked like a poor fool; Suleiman was King of Kings by the will of Allah, Charles, the fifth in this name, was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire thanks to the Fuggers’ money ; Suleiman has been greeted like a god on the earth, Charles was mistaken for a pirate by his Spanish subjects .
There could not be more different men and at the same time, more similar. Different in appearance, they were united by the character. Both of them lived intensely the sacredness of their mission, both of them were determined and resolute, both of them described themselves as men of faith and peace. And because they were men of peace, they were preparing war.
Over that sea, in East and in West, in Rhodes and in North Africa, two conceptions of the world , therefore, were facing by proxy. The island was the key of the White Sea, the Maghreb was a thorn in the side of Spain; in Rhodes flew the red banner with the white cross of the Knights, the Crescent in the Maghreb. Suleiman felt humiliated by the impudence and by the raids of the “descendants of the Franks”, Charles could not ignore the pleas of his subjects, helpless and powerless facing the harassment of the exiles Moors first, of the Barbary pirates, then. The ships with the cross threatened the routes to Mecca, Barbarossa threatened the Spanish forts in Africa; the Knights boarded the Ottoman galleons, Barbarossa razed entire villages on the Spanish coast and he deported their inhabitants; the Knights still held Bodrum (the castle of St. Peter the Liberator) in Asia, Barbarossa had taken possession of Algiers and, caressing the dream to become king of North Africa, he was preparing himself to conquer Tlemcen, the ancient capital of Maghreb; the Knights sailed the seas in the name of the faith, Barbarossa for ambition and revenge; the Knights had in the Pope their spiritual master, Barbarossa had in the Sultan a valuable provider of securities, weapons, soldiers and gunpowder. Over time, the proxy war, that war of pirates, had become a religious war.
Nothing was hated by the Muslims as the Knights’ red surcoat , nothing aroused fear among the Christians as the gold earring and silver arm of Barbarossa. In Bodrum, the Knights sold and bought slaves under the eyes of the defender of the faithful, humiliating him; Barbarossa in Spain killed by biting the prisoners and – it was said- he devoured their tongues; Rhodes was an insult to the power of the Sultan, the Maghreb a spear pointed straight to the heart of Charles’ kingdom.
Haradin “Goodness of the Faith” Barbarossa in a portrait of the time. From: it.wikipedia.org / wiki /
That proxy war could not last long time. And it did not last. Barbarossa was the first to fall. A Spanish expeditionary force set up and funded by Charles trapped and killed him in Tlemcen. But, while his silver arm was still travelling to Spain as a trophy, Barbarossa resurrected. Hizir, his brother, took his place. He resigned to become king of North Africa, he made obeisance to the Sultan, he changed his name and became Haradin (in Turkish “Goodness of the Faith”) Baba Oruç, Ariadeno Barbarossa.
The devil had returned.
The door of the White Sea.
This time, the Suleiman’s letter was clear. Even too much. Now- – he wrote — my patience is full. I am sick of your insults, my people are sick of your abuses . Give me Rhodes and Bodrum and you will have your life spared; choose war and you will not escape. And to be more convincing, he had put to sea an endless navy and nearly hundred thousand men. The Grand Master had little to oppose to him: his scornful silence (he does not reply to the Suleiman’s letter), eight thousand men about, the protection of St. John , to whom were symbolically handed the keys of the island, strong fortifications, and the “skilled artificer of warthings and unparalleled expert in the mathematical sciences “, the Italian engineer Gabriele Tadini.
At first the war of Rhodes was a war of moles. The Ottoman sappers dug tunnels and trenches to facilitate the assault of the Janissaries. Tadini subjected them to a deadly crossfire and those poor wretches died like flies. But Suleiman did not lack men, and who fell was quickly replaced. Huge amounts of earth were transported non far from the walls to erect towers on that to place the guns; the trenches day after day were coming nearer and nearer; day after day, the parapets were more and more higher .
When everything was ready, the word passed to the artillery. From late July to late August, the fortifications of the island were subjected to a pressing and deadly fire, under the eyes of Suleiman himself, arrived recently at the head of other soldiers. The fortifications, however, withstood. A first Ottoman attack brought in forces on September 4 was repulsed with heavy casualties and the commander in chief, Mustafa, ran the risk of being executed as responsible for that failure.
The siege of Rhodes on a miniature.
The Ottomans then tried again using the mines. Resorting to ingenious alarm systems, Tadini neutralized more than a tunnel; by digging huge vents beneath the fortifications, he cancelled the effects of many explosions, but he could not do miracles. The explosion of a mine opened a chasm in the English sector; Tadini was seriously wounded by a sniper; was also forced the Spanish sector, but in both areas the defenders adopted quickly countermeasures, they stood firm, and the Ottomans did not progress.
Then it began to rain. The trenches became muddy canals, the cold limited the movements of the diggers, the Janissaries had to be sent to the attack by the military police, the winter was imminent. The situation was at a standstill: nobody was winning , nobody was losing . What to do? To give up or to continue? In winter, usually, people demobilized, but Suleiman chose to continue. He did not want to lose his dignity. Rhodes, then, was not at the top of the world, the coast of Asia Minor was just around the corner: in case of necessity, food, men and weapons could have easily come from Istanbul. The fleet was put at anchor in a safe harbour of the Anatolian coast, the Sultan made built a “palace of pleasure” , in which to spend the winter season and the attacks resumed.
In vain.
For their part, the defenders were edgy. They saw traitors everywhere. Some women had been caught while they were trying to set fire to the gunpowder ; a couple of renegades had tried to send messages in Turkish camp using a crossbow; even a Knight — a big shot– was accused of double crossing.
The civilian population was yielding. Terrified by rumours of massacres perpetrated by Ottomans against the inhabitants of Belgrade, the inhabitants of Rhodes feared to have the same fate. They never ceased to address petitions to the Grand Master, in order to negotiate the surrender. The food began to be running out, the gunpowder was fast-fading. How long could hold up the inside wall, pulled up in a hurry in the Spanish sector to block the enemy? And how much time would the Ottomans have taken to exploit the hole opened in the British sector and so wide as to allow the passage of forty men shoulder to shoulder?
No help would have come. Charles had other fish to fry: Francis I, King of France, was manoeuvring to isolate him in Europe; the Spanish dominions in Italy were seriously threatened, and in Germany, a monk named Martin Luther had begun to rail against the corruption of the Roman Curia. Men and money had to be used elsewhere. The Grand Master was aware of it, but he was determined to hold on. How much longer?
The word “negotiation” could not be pronounced either in one side or in the other one. Suleiman could not treat; l’Isle-Adam did not want to do it. And then, as it often happens in such situations , it was negotiating through a third person, pretending not to do. A Genoese deserter tried a first approach: at first he was not heard, he tried again. Little by little took forms true negotiations.
The new commander, Ahmed Pasha– not the Sultan, he could not lower himself — was willing to grant spared life to the defenders and to all Christian inhabitants of the island . The Knights would have kept their weapons, their treasure and their flags. Some ships to leave the island would have been also given to them . The discussion lasted a long time, it was interrupted several times and it was revived several times. To prove his good will, Suleiman had withdrawn his army a kilometre and a half; l’Isle-Adam would not giving up, but he could not ignore the pleas of the civilian population, the food shortages, the precariousness of the defences, the shortage of gunpowder, the impossibility of getting help.
When , dressed in a mourning simple black suit , he introduced himself to the Sultan, l’Isle-Adam was a broken man. Suleiman understood his mood and consoled him, pointing to the instability of human fortune. The Sultan seemed to be behind that indomitable old man, and was genuinely impressed by the determination of the defenders. To them he paid homage a few days later, visiting the city almost unescorted and taking off his turban as a sign of respect , before leaving.
However, despite everything, the nerves were still tense. A Spanish soldier opened fire on the Janissaries, and Suleiman, in retaliation, ordered to bomb the city again. It looked like the end of everything. Then the common sense prevailed and the Knights, with a heavy heart, entered the ships and left Rhodes for ever. Before them, had gone away –- for the truth, he had left on the sly– the engineer Tadini , of whose “mathematical science” Suleiman would have gladly served
After Rhodes, an uneasy calm descended over the White Sea. The conflict moved to Vienna and Pavia, but none had any illusions: sooner or later the White Sea would be returned to the centre of contention. Skirmishes, successful or failed attempts, raids of corsairs, rumours and denials about the impending going out of the Ottoman navy, all contributed to the tension. Periodically, the White Sea seethed, quieted down, seethed again. The fleets sought one another, avoided one another , returned to seek one another.
In North Africa, the Spanish forts were scraping a living , always short of everything or they fell, as the Penon del Velez, for lack of gunpowder. Hungary had become the Suleiman’s new frontier , but it was proving a terribly hard bone. Charles, busy elsewhere, had entrusted his navy to an expert admiral, the Genoese Andrea Doria.
And just Andrea Doria set fire to the powders on the White Sea, when, with a daring surprise attack, he conquered the important Ottoman fortress of Corone ( to day, Koroni) in the Peloponnese. It seemed a routine raid, intended to produce no effects. Instead Suleiman flew into a rage and ordered his navy to sail to Corone and to recover the stolen things. But the Sultan had reckoned without his host: Andrea Doria swooped on the Ottoman fleet, and swept it away.
It was a sad blow for the Sultan, but it was also the beginning of Haradin Barbarossa’s second life . Called back from Algiers, the fearsome pirate was commissioned to rebuild the fleet that had been sunk in the waters of the Peloponnese. The shipyards of the Bosphorus were put under pressure; from all over the country, carpenters, caulkers, blacksmiths were concentrated in the capital. The foreigners, relegated in the Galata district, heard the incessant noise of hammers and workshops, and the wind brought to them the unmistakable smell of tar put to boil. Food was being stored, gunpowder and bullets were being produced in continuous rhythm, cannons were being melted, sails were being sewed, masts and oars were being fabricated.
It was a hectic and impressive work, made possible by a perfect organization and by a lot of money. All that noise, all that comings and goings, all that swarm of people and goods promised nothing good for Christendom. The spies got to work, some information began to travel and some concerns to grow.The Venetian spies reported : Barbarossa is tireless. He is always on building sites ,where he eats and drinks without leaving ever them.
A year later, at the head of the reconstructed navy , Barbarossa put to the sea.
The unstable sea .
The Ottoman fleet became the nightmare of Christianity, both in the east, both in the west of the White Sea. The coast of Campania, in Italy, was put to fire; the Countess of Fondi, the beautiful Giulia Gonzaga, had ran the risk of being kidnapped and taken to the harem of the Sultan; Tunis had fell, the Pope, seeing at any moment the Turks in Rome, called for the constitution of a holy League ; Charles V tried — true? false?– to come to terms with Barbarossa; Venice was no longer in a fast lane with the Sublime Porte and she was suffering raids in her possessions in the Aegean. In short, the situation was back to be hot.
And this happened despite the bloody conquest of Tunis by Charles in person. Barbarossa, believed dead in Tunis, appeared later that year in Menorca and put to the sword or made slaves the island’s inhabitants. The Christian fleet , united under the banner of the League built by Pius III and under the command of Andrea Doria had been mocked at Preveza, where Barbarossa, though outnumbered, had taken a resounding success.
The emperor Charles V painted by Titian.
Preveza also shattered the fledgling League; Preveza dirtied –wrongly, however– the Doria’s reputation (the admiral was accused of being too careful because, it was whispered, he wanted to save the ships that belonged to him), forced the Venetians to accept a humiliating treaty with the Sultan, led Charles to engage in a new, disastrous attempt to take Algiers. The policy led the Ottomans in the port of Toulon, guests of the catholic King Francis I of France, ready to ally with the devil himself just to upset Charles’ plans ; the winds brought again the Christian fleet in Djerba, where another Doria, Gianandrea, suffered another setback.
One after the other, the White Sea lost its protagonists. Charles V was succeeded by Prudent Philip, second in this name; an imposing mausoleum had received the mortal remains of Haradin Barbarossa, who had died in his own bed in Istanbul, more than eighty year old; Andrea Doria had ninety-four springs when he left this world. A new generation was overlooking the waves of the White Sea.
And the White Sea would have soon known this new generation.
Epilogue.
Jan Parisot de La Valette, was waiting his turn to board. As all his fellow-in-Faith he was leaving Rhodes with a heavy heart. Suleiman probably did not notice him among the defeated Knights who were leaving Rhodes forever. If he noticed him , he soon forgot his face and his expression. That day in Rhodes, the ways of La Valette and Suleiman met themselves for a short time and then they parted. Forty years later they would have met again.
In Malta.
The events at a glance.
1512: in the strip of the North African coast named by the Christians “Barbary Coast” and by the Muslim, Maghreb (“West”) where had found refuge many Muslims expelled from Spain after the fall of Granada (1492), two pirates make their appearance: the brothers Baba Oruç and Baba Hizir, both by Christians nicknamed “Barbarossa”. They put their base in Djerba, off the coast of modern Tunisia and from there, with the connivance of the Sultan, they began to sail the seas in search of booty and slaves.
1516: Oruç Barbarossa, caressing the idea of becoming a sovereign of an independent kingdom, takes possession of Algiers and Tlemcen, the ancient capital of the Maghreb, and keeps under constant pressure the Spanish forts built along the coast.
November 1517: Charles of Ghent arrives in Spain to take up, with the name of Charles I, the title of king. His arrival has something comic: Charles misses landing location and the local population mistakes him for an enemy. Two years later he will be elected , thanks to allocation of substantial bribes, to the rank of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire with the name of Charles the Fifth. Implicit in the title is the task of defending the true faith.
1518: funded by Charles, a Spanish expedition lands in North Africa, attacks the Barbarossas in Tlemcen, defeats them, but then, instead of marching on Algiers, it comes back to Spain. Oruç is killed. Hizir survives, he takes the place of his brother, he renounces to the plan to become king of an independent kingdom and he abides by the Sultan’s authority. He receives in return the title of “Governor of Algeria ” and a new name: Haradin (in Arabic: “Goodness of the faith”). From then on, for the Christians he will be Ariadeno Barbarossa. His successes will be contributing to bring to his orders crowds of pirates; his name will be feared and cursed throughout the Christian Mediterranean; his cruelty and his ferocity will become proverbial.
1519: a Spanish attempt to conquer Algiers fails.
1521: Suleiman the “Magnificent” (the “Lawmaker” for his countrymen), grandson of Mohammed II the Conqueror, becomes Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He is 26 years old.
June 24, 1522: the Ottoman fleet appeared in front of Rhodes. The island was defended by the Knights of St. John and by a system of fortifications perfected by the Italian engineer Gabriele Tadini Martinengo.
December 20, 1522: After a heroic and valiant resistance, Rhodes surrenders. Suleiman, strongly impressed by the valour of the defenders, allows the survivors to leave the island safely. Among them, there is the young Jan Parisot de la Vallette, the future defender of Malta.
1523: a second Spanish expedition directed to Algiers ends in disaster.
April 1529: at the head of a formidable army, Suleiman marchs on Vienna. The siege was unsuccessful and in October, because of bad weather, it is permanently removed.
May 1529: Barbarossa takes hold of the Penon del Velez, the Spanish fort which controls the access to the city of Algiers, and massacres the garrison remained without gunpowder.
January 1530: In Bologna, Charles was crowned Emperor. Suleiman “celebrates” the Charles’ coronation marching into Hungary. But he must retreat early because of a fierce resistance and an inclement season.
June 1530: Charles granted to the Knights of St. John – expelled from Rhodes eight years before – the islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino in exchange for a symbolic gift of a falcon.
September 12, 1532: the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria, commander of the Spanish fleet, conquests the Ottoman stronghold of Corone , in southern Peloponnese. The fleet immediately sent by Suleiman to help Corone is defeated.
1533: Suleiman calls Haradin Barbarossa to rebuild and to reorganize the Ottoman fleet. A year later, in May, the massive fleet fitted out by Barbarossa leaves the Golden Horn between the roar of the guns to devastate the coasts of the western Mediterranean. On this occasion the pirate tries to kidnap Giulia Gonzaga as a gift to Suleiman.
August 16, 1534: Barbarossa conquered Tunis. Charles V , “defender of the faith”, must react.
June 15, 1535: an impressive fleet staged by the Emperor appeared in front of the fort of La Goulette that controls the access to Tunis. On 21 July, after heavy bombardments from the sea, Tunis falls. Charles V himself enters by horse in the conquered city. The fall of the city is followed by a blood bath. The rumour of the death of Barbarossa is spread. Not even a year later, the old pirate reappears stronger than ever in the island of Menorca in the Balearic Islands, where he seizes the city of Mahòn deporting its inhabitants.
March 5, 1536: in Istanbul , the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha is killed. With the murder of the Vizier also changed the policy of the Sublime Porte – till then, after all, conciliatory- towards the other Mediterranean power: the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Barbarossa was commissioned to plunder the Venetian harbours in the Aegean islands. The Christian response is not long in coming: Spanish, Venetian and papal ships gather in Corfu under the auspices of the newly formed Holy League ordered by Pope Pius III.
Early September 1536: the fleet of the League commanded by Andrea Doria moves towards the Gulf of Preveza where Barbarossa has dropped the anchor. The advanced season is not favourable to the clashes at sea. Doria, however, puts the block to Preveza. Barbarossa does not move. Meanwhile, propagate rumours of secret contacts between Charles V and Barbarossa.
September 27, 1536: Andrea Doria takes off the block to Preveza. The next day, Barbarossa makes come out his fleet from the gulf and, accomplices the disagreements and the disorganization raging in the Christian ranks and Doria’s supposed desire to save his galleys, defeats the enemy fleet. The aftermaths of this battle are felt immediatly: the Holy League dissolves and the Venetians sign a humiliating treaty with the Sultan. During the battle of Preveza, a Venetian large heavily armed galleon had given quite a hard time to Barbarossa. Taught by that experience, the Venetians build and put to sea big ships ( galleasses) – the armoured ships of those days- that will have so much a part in deciding the battle of Lepanto.
October 1541: to redeem the defeat of Preveza, Charles moves again against Algiers. The attack is led in the wrong season and it ends in yet another disaster. The Emperor tries to make the best of a bad bargain, but engaged in other wars, he won’t embark on other crusades at sea . The failure of the expedition against Algiers and the Charles’ forced lack of interest to maritime operations, will allow the Ottomans, both by planned actions of their navy , both by sudden attacks of the “irregular” pirates, to tighten the Mediterranean in a grip of terror. In the ‘Forties there have been countless people- men, women, children – abducted and sold into slavery or sent to Algiers to Istanbul. There was a time when so much was the abundance of prisoners that a Christian was sold in exchange for an onion.
Winter of 1543: in occasion of an alliance between the catholic King Francis I of France and Suleiman, the Ottoman galleys put their base in the French port of Toulon, from where they begin to spread terror along the Italian coast. The Ottoman fleet returns to Istanbul in May of the following year, engaging, during the return voyage, terrible raids across the western Mediterranean.
Turgut Reis, named by the Christians Dragut.
1546: the eighty-year-old Haradin Barbarossa dies in his own palace in Istanbul . He is buried with full honours in a magnificent mausoleum. From now on, the Ottoman fleet at the time of putting to the sea, would have had to parade, as a sign of homage and good wishes, in front of the mausoleum of the terrible pirate. But for Christians the spirit of Barbarossa is not dead. It lives in another pirate, equally cruel, who took Barbarossa’s place at the service of the Sultan: his name is Turgut. For the Christians, he becomes Dragut( From “drago”, drake, in Italian).
1551: Tripoli , defended by the Knights of St. John on behalf of Charles V, falls
1556: Charles V abdicates in favour of his son Philip, and retires in the monastery of Yuste in Extremadura.
1558: Charles V dies in Yuste.
Spring-summer 1560: a powerful Spanish fleet prepared to conquer again Tripoli, heads towards the den of Dragut in Djerba, under the command of the twenty-year-old grandson of the great Andrea Doria: Gianandrea. The island is captured and fitted with a fort. However, before dispersing, the pirates have time to warn Istanbul. At the command of Piale Pasha, the Ottoman fleet reaches Djerba in no time and it swoops on the ships of Giandrea Doria. Worried about losing the galleys of his property, the Genoese admiral leaves Djerba , promising to return soon to the rescue of the garrison of the fort. He won’t ever return. Nor ever will depart the fleet prepared by Philip II to rescue Djerba: at last moment, the Prudent king will held it in Spain. Left alone, the defenders of the fort are massacred and with their bones, the Ottomans will erect a high pyramid, called by Christians “the fortress of the skulls.”
1 October 1560: while Piale Pasha enters triumphantly Istanbul, dies inGenoa, ninety year old, another protagonist of that challenge: Admiral Andrea Doria.
Suggested reading:
Fernand Braudel: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Collins, 1973
Ernle Bradford: The Shield and the Sword: The Knights of Malta, Fontana.
Eric Brockman , The two sieges of Rhodes, 1480-1522, Murray, 1969
Roger Crowley , Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580, Faber,2008
James Reston Jr ,Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for Europe , Penguin, 2009
(Italian) Cesare Giardini, La vita e il tempo di Carlo V , Mondadori 1977
This is an automatic translation from Italian. Excuse the mistakes.
The portraits of Suleiman, Charles V and Barbarossa are on it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerra_ottomano-asburgica
Stories and History 