Una diferente ‘Plus Ultra’ - the Avís-Trastámara Kings of All Spain and the Indies (Updated 11/7)

41. The Great Turkish War - Part III: Blood in the White Sea
  • ~ The Great Turkish War ~
    Part III:
    - Blood in the White Sea -


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    The humiliating defeat of the Hispano-Genoese fleet at Vido in 1554 had opened up the Central Mediterranean to bolder Ottoman aggression. Having made an armistice with Charles IX of France in 1552, Juan Pelayo was free to shift his focus to the Turks. There were grave concerns that the Ottomans would take advantage of their victory at Vido and begin to organize an invasion of Southern Italy, but news of the arrival of Spain’s most esteemed commander, the Duke of Alba, in Naples that year possibly caused them to reconsider for the time being. Preoccupied with the arduous passage of the Leyes Nuevas and the equally arduous abolition of the encomienda overseas, Juan Pelayo relegated the Mediterranean situation to Alba, who organized and expedition to retake the Barbary port of Tripoli, which had been in corsair hands since 1525. A 10,000 man army ended up sailing from Naples in 1556, and captured the city with relative ease, passing its defence and administration to the Órdenes Militantes. Alba would be recalled to France when the ceasefire ended in 1556, however, and, as was so often the case, the Spanish monarchy neglected its fortifications in the Central Mediterranean and the tenuous hold they had over the Hafsid sultanate. Sensing an opportunity provided by the renewal of Franco-Spanish hostilities, Mehmed III ordered his Kapudan Pasha, the feared and accomplished Dragut Reis, to retake Tripoli, promising him whatever number of ships, arquebuses, and galley-slaves he needed to succeed. With a fleet of only 23 galleys, Dragut descended on North Africa, taking not only Tripoli in 1557, but also the critically important city of Tunis in 1559, having distracted the Spanish relief fleet by faking an expedition to take Spanish-held Djerba instead. When another fleet was sent by García de Toledo, viceroy of Sicily, failed to retake Tunis in 1560, the looming threat of an Italian invasion and the painful memories of rapacious corsairs terrorizing the Western Mediterranean slowly began to return to the surface.

    The campaigns of characteristic corsair terror returned in late 1560, with the Ottoman admiral Kurtoğlu Hızır Reis raiding the island of Malta and virtually depopulating its sister island, Gozo, taking most of its inhabitants as slaves. Past experiences with honorless corsair freebooters had not prepared the Christian world for the opponent they now faced. The massive war that was gradually brewing between the kingdoms of the cross and the empire of the crescent was distinct from previous confrontations between the Ottomans and their European enemies. Whereas the piratical activity of the Turkish Barbary corsairs that had been ongoing since the 1510s and the incursion into Southern Italy of the 1530s had all been primarily privately funded and undertaken, the corsair captains who now prowled the Mediterranean were state servants of the High Porte, admirals with official titles and official instructions directly from Mehmet III, sailing about in galleys built in the arsenal of Konstantiniyye. The Ottoman Emperor had given his full blessing to the newborn Ottoman navy, bestowing it with a near-endless resource pool, and was now ready to swing it like an iron cudgel at the brittle flotillas and vulnerable coasts of Christendom.

    One of the terms of the Treaty of Soissons - signed in 1562 between the Anglo-Hispano-Imperial alliance and the new Sainte-Ligue controlled French monarchy - was that the signatory powers of Europe would begin to take into serious consideration the Turkish threat and would take timely, coordinated action against it. However, coordination against a common enemy - especially the Ottomans - was never something that the Christian princes of Europe were necessarily keen to see through, or even capable of seeing through in any meaningful way. Although the conditions for a united war effort against the Turks had never been more favorable than in 1562, there were still numerous obstacles that had sprung up and would continue to spring up. The 1561 Treaty of Zombor, for instance, was an awkward factor at Soissons. Philipp II had always been eager to see a multinational anti-Ottoman alliance (in no small part due to his Hungarian possessions), but the fact that he was now paying 100,000 ducats a year to Mehmet III in exchange for peace critically stifled any Habsburg contribution. It also allowed Mehmet to refocus what forces may have been expended in Hungary on other under-defended theatres, such as Italy and North Africa. Additionally, the young and newly-enthroned king of France, Charles X - who was supposed to defend the Catholic coherence of France - had to contend with a gargantuan and combative Protestant coalition in the middle of his realm, led by the charismatic and cunning Prince of Condé. To complete the complications, the time and attention of Juan Pelayo and the Spanish power brokers was fully engaged with matters of legal reform and political union between the divided constituent realms of Spain. In contrast, the Ottoman state under Mehmet III appeared to be stable even after decades of ceaseless territorial expansion, and had coffers that never seemed to be empty.

    Corsair fleets now began endlessly raking the Italian coast with an intensity that increased with each passing year. The response of the mighty Spanish empire, however, was late, as more pressing issues were closer to home.

    - O Novo Reino do Algarve -

    The 16th century was a time of significant population growth in Europe, to which Spain was no exception, in part due to the infrastructural improvements and long lasting domestic peace that defined the reigns of Miguel da Paz and Juan Pelayo. Between 1500 and 1560 the Spanish populace had swelled from 11 million to nearly 14 million, and would continue to mount until the end of the century. Long overdue irrigation projects, declining rates of petty crime and banditry, expanding trade networks - both internal and external - and a proliferation of hospitals, orphanages, and charitable services run by the mendicant orders had all been major boons to the overall health and quality of living of the average Spaniard, but a population boom almost invariably brings difficulties as well. With the agricultural methods and technology available in the 16th century, the Iberian Peninsula had surpassed its ability to keep all of its inhabitants fed long before the 1560s, with massive quantities of grain regularly imported by sea from other regions of Europe (particularly from the Netherlands and Southern Italy). The potential of recurrent food shortages and ensuing famines was made much more acute by the resurgent, unrelenting corsair raids on Southern Italy, and by the effects of war, pestilence, and - more recently - rebellion in the Netherlands.

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    Portuguese settlers in Morocco being conscripted

    An enticing solution to this predicament lay in the Gharb of Morocco, the large coastal plain between the Atlas mountains and the Atlantic, and to the southwest of the Rif. The Gharb is watered by numerous rivers and tributaries - particularly the Lucuz, Morbeia, and Cebu rivers (the latter of which is the largest river in North Africa by volume) - and, consequently, was a fertile grain basket that out-produced much of Iberia. In the past when the Maghreb was on more equal standing with Christian Iberia in terms of political cohesion, military strength, and economic vitality, the Spanish princes were interested in a more stable, neighborly approach to securing the fruits of Maghrebi agriculture, often through fair trade deals. After the obliteration of the fragile Wattasids of Morocco and Ziyyanids of Tlemcen by Spanish armies in the early 16th century, the Spanish Crown and Spanish magnates were less disposed to treat the Maghrebi princes light-handedly in their pursuit of chronically-needed grain.

    Faced with a widespread emboldening of Maghrebi insurgents and their sympathizers following the battle of Vido, a coincidental collection of certain important Spanish individuals in North Africa began an initiative to transform the Spanish presence there. The old African Crusade started by Miguel da Paz had ended the political independence of the Maghreb and set the foundation for complete Spanish hegemony over the region, but the thrust behind the actions of the 1510s and 1520s had petered out when more promising opportunities were uncovered in the Americas or Asia. North Africa simply did not offer enough real wealth to attract an interest from the Spanish monarchy or its subjects that could match previous generations, and, more often than not, cost the treasury more money than it was worth. The fortresses and cities in Morocco that belonged to the Crown of Portugal in particular (as part of the Kingdom of the Algarves) each constituted a serious drain on the Portuguese treasury, and were near abandonment before the Spanish monarchy paid off the Portuguese treasury’s debt with Castilian silver in 1547 (through the newfounded Casa de Prestación). At the behest of the leading officers of his Council of Finance, Juan Pelayo ordered the creation of a provisional council to investigate and balance the Portuguese budget after the financial crisis of 1547.

    While most of the Portuguese settlements in Morocco were weighed among the first items on the chopping block, the budgetary assessment coincided with the alarming Ottoman absorption of the Mamluk Sultanate, leading the council to conclude that any retraction of Spanish power projection in North Africa was out of the question - at least for the time being. In order to financially justify the continued occupation of North Africa, however, the Portuguese settlements would need to shoulder at least half of their own expenditures. The council suggested a more direct involvement or control of the more profitable local industries, particularly fishing, textiles, the Trans-Saharan trade, and - most importantly - grain shipments. It therefore became critically important for the Christian moradores of the North African towns that the Gharb was made open to more effective exploitation.

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    Al Gharb

    Beginning in 1562, a policy of aggression returned to Spanish North Africa, the impetus for which largely came from the reputable Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba. With the most hardened opposition to the Leyes Nuevas coming from the grandees, Juan Pelayo wanted to keep the Duke of Alba as far from Spain as he reasonably could. Alba, despite being a lifelong loyalist to the Crown, had extensive holdings in Spain and considerable influence among his fellow grandees, as well as - most importantly - an intimidating military record and the unbending admiration of the soldiers who had served under him. Although service in North Africa was considered a borderline degrading assignment for someone of Alba’s stature, his placement there for most of 1562 to 1568 was an advantageous accident, and possibly prevented disaster. More or less given free reign in Africa (so as to keep him preoccupied), Alba crossed over the boundaries separating the kingdoms of Spain with impunity, acting as plenipotentiary of the Crown in lands that legally belonged to the Portuguese only. The appointment of a Castilian to a post that was essentially a contravention of promises made by the Spanish monarchy to its Portuguese subjects - during a time when Juan Pelayo was actively trying to chisel away at the separateness of the kingdoms of Spain, no less - would have been objectionable under different circumstances, but time was of the essence: a whirlwind of mujahideen was growing around the Banu Zaydan - the Saadi sharifs of the Sous valley - and their leader, Abdallah al-Ghalib, was openly vowing to march on Marrakech and unite the sultanate of Morocco once more to drive out the murderous Spaniards. The Saadian prince made good on his promise when he surrounded the important port of Agadir - Portugal’s southernmost outpost in Morocco - and put it to siege in the final months of 1562.

    A war with the Saadians (and also the increasingly hostile Kabyle Berbers) was not merely a frontier conflict: defending Spanish North Africa meant defending cities and villages that were filled with Sunni inhabitants who had numerous reasons to detest their Spanish overlords and pray for the day that a Muslim prince drove them out. In the cities located directly across the straits of Gibraltar - namely Tánger, Alcácer-Ceguer, and Ceuta - Muslims still comprised a slight majority as late as 1550. The tension in these cities between their Christian and Muslim inhabitants was palpable from the start. For instance, even during times of peace the canons of the Cathedral of Tánger regularly sounded off its bells as lustily as they could at sunset, so as to overpower the Muslim inhabitants’ call to prayer for the salat al-maghrib.

    Although the conquest of the “kingdom of Fes” - the half of Morocco north of the river Morbeia - had been relinquished to Portugal by Castile since the Treaty of Alcáçovas in 1479, Castilian assistance was becoming increasingly vital to the Portuguese presence in North Africa. From very early on, the Portuguese garrisons were almost exclusively resupplied by Castilian convoys and fed with Andalucian grain, and it was also not uncommon for the services of Castilian men-at-arms to be leased by the Spanish monarchy to the Portuguese Cortes for additional manpower. The grand scheme of Spanish was proving to be endlessly precarious in both the short and long term, and its protection and expansion could therefore no longer be jeopardized by the myriad legal divisions of the three realms of Spain. The Portuguese claim to the kingdom of Fes and the consequent limitations placed on Castilian and Aragonese assistance there had seriously strained the resources of the Órdenes Militantes and had threatened the territorial and political gains made in the region over the past century with total collapse. The Spanish monarchy’s critical need for freedom of operation within Portuguese North Africa led Juan Pelayo to reapportion the kingdom of Fes away from the Crown of Portugal, tacking it - alongside the rest of North Africa - directly onto the “Crown of Spain” in 1562. This was blatant disregard of the kingdom of Portugal’s territorial integrity, and in other circumstances would have sparked vocal displeasure from Juan Pelayo’s Portuguese subjects, but necessities demanded by the trumpet of cruzada could not be sensibly denied in times such as these.

    Claiming the fecund riverine valleys of Morocco through a policy of extermination and repopulation - to simply put the non-Christian Maghrebis to the sword and transplant Christians from Iberia or elsewhere to take their place - was both unthinkably heinous and logistically unfeasible. Instead, in the space of a few months, Alba sent mixed companies of Castilian-Portuguese soldiers to encroach on the possessions of the emirate of Fes, establishing garrisons first in Alcácer-Quibir (Ksar el-Kebir), and from there in Soquelarba (Souk El Arbaa), Masmuda (Masmouda), and Uezán (Ouezzane). As was to be expected, the emir of Fes was powerless to protest, and the tribal leaders of the local Jebala Berbers called for ghazis to rise up and cast out the intruders themselves. While the harrying Berbers did much to agitate the Spaniards, they were ultimately just as powerless to prevent a garrison from being placed in the Spaniards from inserting themselves deep in the interior. With the cooperation of the governor of Larache, Fernão Carvalho, Alba then ordered a 4,000 man Castilian-Portuguese expedition to march up the Lucuz river, accompanied by scribes and land surveyors who would parcel out the river’s basin to be awarded to Spaniards on a meritocratic basis as donataries. At a stroke, more than 3,000 square kilometers of some of Morocco’s most fertile farmland - and all the inhabitants therein - had been placed under the supervision of hundreds of Spanish donatários. Further south, Mamora (Kenitra) was re-fortified and a prefabricated fortress was assembled upriver at Mogrão (Mograne), and Alba prepared to conduct an identical campaign along the Cebu river. This was a mostly non-violent endeavor, although those who resisted were often brutally punished.

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    Um donatário português em Marrocos

    This quick and decisive action was a refreshing change of pace for Spain’s activity in North Africa, but foreboding news came packaged with it. A relief force for Agadir was still being assembled when word arrived that the city had fallen after the Saadian army unexpectedly gained entrance within the walls by tunneling into the subterranean cistern. Not a single member of the Portuguese garrison was spared in the slaughter. The claimants to the Moroccan throne now had solid access to the sea and was apparently equipped with Ottoman-crafted cannons, one of many things the Saadians had been accumulating over the past 15 years via the difficult, but not impassable route along the valleys and passes of the Saharan Atlas. Wasting no time, Abdallah al-Ghalib and his army completed the laborious journey through the Tizi n'Tichka, the pass through the High Atlas from Uarzazate, and reached Marrakech in early 1565, which was taken with minimal trouble. In less than a year’s time, Saadian troops were surrounding the Portuguese-held ports of Mogador, Aguz, and Safim. Further abroad, relations between the Ottomans and the Republic of Venice had unraveled rapidly.

    - Böl ve fethet -

    Mehmet III was a cautious planner, and took care not to embroil himself with too many enemies at once. With the Turkish invasion of Chios, the territorial possessions of the Serene Republic became the only enclaves in the Eastern Mediterranean that remained outside of Ottoman control. It was becoming progressively obvious that the arrangement by which the Turks and Venetians operated could not last indefinitely, and that the Turks were becoming more assertive of their direct rule over the Eastern Mediterranean - not just their suzerainty over Venetian colonies. Callous treatment by the Ottomans in the 1540s and 1550s led to a remediation of relations between Venice and its former enemies in Europe, namely Spain, the Papacy, and the Habsburgs, all of whom were showing interest in roping Venice and its sizeable navy into an anti-Ottoman Catholic League. A letter sent by Mehmet III in 1558 to the Venetian governor of Cyprus demanded to know why Ottoman tax collectors had been denied their right to collect customs, dues, and also head taxes in the port of Limassol. 3 years later, when an Ottoman ambassador arrived on the island he was ostensibly there for architectural purposes, studying the columns of the island’s many ruins. The true purpose of this visit was revealed to be more devious when a 30,000 man Turkish army unloaded on the shoreline west of Nicosia in 1564.

    News of the furthest, and one of the oldest Christian strongholds in the East being overwhelmed by the Turks sent waves of alarm throughout the West, and Juan Pelayo soon authorized an offer of military aid to the Venetians in order to restore trust and curry their favor. The doge of Venice, Girolamo Priuli, and the viceroy of Naples, Pedro Afán de Ribera, quickly reached an agreement to assemble a joint relief force, ultimately consisting of 11,000 Spanish and 9,000 Venetian troops, with a mixed fleet of 57 ships. The panicked mood setting in was frenzied when an unseasonal storm struck the Hispano-Venetian expedition near the isle of Saria. At least 15 vessels were dashed on the shore near Paphos, while almost half of the fleet was misdirected to Chrysochous Bay - almost 70 kilometers off course. The force that was intended to relieve Nicosia was now split, and the closest army was nowhere near large enough to challenge the Ottomans, who diverted 16,000 of to crush the seasick half (numbering under 8,000) that landed at Morphou Bay. The remaining soldiery was either ferried back to Sicily, or was used to swell the garrisons of Limassol, Larnaca, and Famagusta, and hope for the best. The Venetian defense held out valiantly at every location and gave the Turkish expedition a bloody nose, but the island had definitively fallen by the last days of 1565.

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    Kıbrıs

    1563, 1564, and 1565 were truly somber years for the kingdoms of Spain. Beyond the fall of Marrakech to the Saadians and the disastrous expedition to Cyprus in 1565, the Castilian and Portuguese nobility were on the verge of open rebellion against the monarchy, the Kabyle Berber kingdoms of Kuku and of the Ait Abbas (known as Labes to the Spaniards) had mobilized against Spanish Bugia and Algiers, and all of Tunisia was now an Ottoman protectorate in the hands of the Hafsid pretender, Ahmad. Bugia fell quickly, being undermanned like most Spanish North African outposts. With the city surrounded on land by thousands of Berber horsemen from the highlands of Aurès, and at sea by dozens of Turkish galleys from Tunis, the 700 Spanish soldiers behind the walls were poised for defeat from the start. Aid from Spain was too slow to assemble, and, after the city fell, the commander of the Spanish garrison was taken aboard the galley of the Turkish commander, Salah Reis, and offered a quick death should he convert to Islam. He refused, and was beaten to death on the ship deck. The 900 Spanish and Italian residents of the city were all sailed to Tunis in chains to be sold into slavery.

    Algiers evaded the same fate at the last minute, when relief came to the Peñón as Salah Reis and the Ottoman ships were arriving to reinforce the besieging Berbers. Salah was caught at unawares as the Spanish ships - headed by the massive, 200-gun Portuguese galleon known as Botafogo (Spitfire) rounded the Peñón to meet his flagship head on. Salah brashly ordered his oarsmen to ram them head-on, confident in the strength of his sizeable galley and oblivious to the thick hull strength of such a bulky galleon. The damage wrought on the Botafogo amounted to oak chips in the water, while the Spanish captain waited until the Turkish vessel lodged itself against his, and the bristling salvo of dozens of bronze cannons that followed almost split Salah's ship in half and quickly consigned its captain to the frothing, bloody waters. This encounter was a singular incident and its implications went unnoticed in Konstantiniyye and Lisbon, but it was an episode that was telling of things to come in naval warfare.

    Hoping to foment even greater despair in Spain and Italy, the now 81-year old Dragut Reis was fitted with a sleek 27 galley fleet to plunge into the Western Mediterranean and make a cursory series of raids, as well as to reconnoiter the Maghreb and the Morisco-laden provinces of Iberia (and hopefully take on Morisco renegades who could pass on useful information about the coast and interior). Dragut's appearance was indeed unexpected, and he was able to ravage the eastern shores of the Balearic Islands in less than two weeks. Although he was informed that a fleet was being amassed at Cádiz to hunt him down, Dragut opted to push the envelope with a daring excursion to Gibraltar, where his flagship's mortars cratered the courtyard of Fort Santiago, the headquarters of the Órdenes Militantes. Dragut embarked two days later, while just 40 kilometers ahead of the Spanish fleet, which was unsuccessful in pinning him down afterwards. Dragut lived two years more, passing away peacefully in Istanbul at the impressive age of 83, succeeded as Kapudan Pasha by his lieutenant, Piyale. Mehmet III planned for another, larger fleet to enter the Western Mediterranean in the year following this expedition - this time to also unload thousands on troops on the North African shore near Algiers - but had to scrap the plan when a Venetian fleet under Sebastian Venier inflicted a surprising and stinging defeat on the Ottoman navy at Cerigotto, effectively halting any major Turkish naval activity for the next two years.

    It would be much more difficult, however, to extend aid to the Muslims of the Maghreb than it would have been in the past. For one, direct maritime access to the tribes of the Maghrebi interior was now virtually nonexistent, even with Bugia in Berber hands. By 1550, the Spanish were regularly and meticulously combing the entire North African coastline from Mogador to Bugia with dozens of small galiots, manned by less than 50 men each, with varying armaments including 4 to 8 falconets, 2 to 4 pedreros (swivel guns), and a mortar on the top deck. Any coastal activity that was within the patrol of these galiot squadrons and was not operating out of a Spanish-controlled port or tied to a Christian seigneury had effectively been stamped out, and was continuously being stamped out wherever it struggled to re-emerge. Countless fishing villages and pirate lairs that had been operating for hundreds of years had been abandoned, plundered, and demolished in the Spanish monarchy’s vengeful campaign to extirpate Barbary piracy. If the Ottomans’ potential allies wanted a base of operations in the Western Mediterranean, they would have to wrestle it out of Spanish hands.

    Spain's North African possessions and its internal stability were nonetheless reasonably vulnerable. The failed Cypriot expedition and now this frightening swipe at Gibraltar - the very gullet of Spain - finally drove home the need for an immediate shift in Spanish priorities. The closesness of this threat became even more painfully obvious when another small-scale revolt broke out in the Alpujarras, instigated by the region's Moriscos against measures that included prohibition of the Arabic language. While Spain's empire was global, and therefore had considerable obligations in regions distant from home, the Turks and their implicit Morisco and Maghrebi allies now posed a grave threat to European Spain itself. Spain, its nearby overseas possessions, and the waters surrounding them needed to be soberly and resolutely guarded, and this could not be fully achieved while resources were being diverted to mount foolhardy expeditions to the opposite end of the Mediterranean. If tens of thousands of Spanish men-at-arms were to be sent anywhere, it should be to protect the Iberian coastline, or, better yet, to kick down the front door of the insolent upstarts of the Saadi clan.

    Oddly enough, despite being one of the most militarily active nation states on the planet, neither Spain as a whole nor any of its constituent realms possessed a standing army, and there was very little to speak of in regards to a Spanish navy beyond the yearly convoys that transported goods from the Americas. While the Catholic Monarchs pioneered the practice of national debt as a means of regularly funding their soldiery, there was no additional framework in Castile, Aragon, and Portugal to ensure a year-round fighting force, and armies were usually assembled through Medieval levying practices. There were, however, developments underway in this tense period that would lead to a more workable military system for Spain, whether by accident or innovation.

    - Matamoro -

    The most immediate concern was, of course, Spain’s naval capabilities. Despite having long lost most of their presence in the Western Mediterranean and only having just re-entered the Central Mediterranean in a meaningful fashion, the Ottomans now seemed to stalk every corner of the middle sea, less abatedly with each passing year. Serendipitously, Andrea Doria’s fall from grace following the battle of Vido and Juan Pelayo’s budding program to reform the navy saw a native Spaniard, Álvaro de Bazán (the Elder), granted the position of “Captain-General of the Galleys of Spain” alongside the governorate of Gibraltar, both of which his son, also named Álvaro, was in turn granted upon the death of his father in 1558.

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    Álvaro de Bazán
    Capitán-General de las Galeras de España

    As Grand Master of the Military Order of St. John, Álvaro de Bazán (the Younger) used his newfound influence to safeguard Spanish Morocco on the advice of his most trusted lieutenant: a Morisco by the name of Juan Isidoro Benámed (born Yahya bin Ahmed). An Alpujarrano from the village of Bayárcal, Benámed’s parents placed him in the care of the Church at the age of 7 - a common practice among Moriscos who wished to either ensure the Old Christians of their good faith or to allay their suspicions of continued crypto-Islam. After Benámed’s parents passed away and their property was targeted by a powerful local, he was largely abandoned by his older siblings, who all elected to find passage to North Africa and revert to Islam. As part of an initiative to raise up churchmen fluent in both Castilian and Arabic, Benámed was sent to a Gregorian abbey in Orán at the age of 10 (the first Gregorian institution on the African continent). Taken as a squire at the age of 15 by a Knight of St. John, Benámed officially passed under the guardianship - and eventually into the service - of the Órdenes Militantes in North Africa. By the age of 34, Benámed was maestre de campo to Álvaro de Bazán and held command over the chapters of Mogador, Aguz, Safim, Mazagão, and Azamor. It was exceedingly unusual for a Morisco to be entrusted with such a command, but Benámed had the good fortune of having served directly under Álvaro de Bazán (who himself was a native of the kingdom of Granada) and therefore had the captain general’s endorsement. Fortunately for the defenders of Portuguese Morocco, Benámed was not noble-born, unlike most of his other high-ranking comrades in the militant orders, and was also significantly more enthusiastic about his vocation as a knight of Christ in a heathen land.

    Under the guidance of a lesser knight, each one of the Portuguese-held settlements south of Casabranca may have fallen to the 300 kilometer-long network of sieges set up by the Saadians, leading to a resurgence in Barbary piracy and allowing the Islamic world maritime access to the Atlantic once more. As Spanish control of the sea was unchallenged along the Atlantic coast of Morocco and with Álvaro de Bazán offering the complete assistance of the galleys of Castile, Benámed was able to hop from one besieged port to another, bringing with him whatever supplies and reinforcements were needed. Benámed’s fluency in Arabic and intimate understanding of Maghrebi culture also allowed him constant information regarding the movement of the Saadian troops and the goings-on in the countryside. Making benevolent overtures to the Muslim inhabitants within the walls, Benámed let the occasional group of Islamic refugees spill in with frightful stories of Berber ruffians - unaccustomed to the ethical standards of the non-nomadic society north of the Atlas mountains - harassing and lording over the local Muslims they claimed to be liberating. Indeed, as the sieges dragged on and the Saadians became more aggressive when foraging for additional supplies, the Arabic-speaking populace of the coastal plain became less enthusiastic over the removal of Spanish rule.

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    Juan Isidoro Benámed de Bayárcal, el caballero morisco

    Meanwhile, with Abdallah al-Ghalib accumulating an army large enough to strike at Northern Morocco, the Spanish had limited time to take direct control of as much of the country as possible before the Saadians waged their inevitable holy war. News of al-Ghalib's impending departure from Marrakech (with roughly 20,000 men in tow) pushed the Duke of Alba to hasten his pacification of the Lucuz and Cebu basin, and he began looking for any outliers that might give his opponent the advantage. The most conspicuous target lay at the mouth of the Buregregue river, a town called Salé. The Buregregue estuary had largely been ignored by the Portuguese since the 1520s after they pulled apart the walls of the Kasbah of the Udayas, the large fortress located opposite of Salé, and, consequently, the communities in this area had been able to regrow to a more appreciable portion of their former size and significance. Salé in particular had started to attract the attention of wary Portuguese governors in São João da Mamora and Casabranca de Anafé when its inhabitants completed a modest ringwall around their town and were beginning to bring limestone downriver from the upland hills to rebuild the great kasbah across the river. What made the situation more troubling was the presence of Spanish-born Muslims within the city, as Salé was also one the leading recipients of the steady flow of Morisco and Mudéjar exiles filing out of Andalucía and València. Salé was now the only port of any significance on the Atlantic coast of Morocco that did not have a permanent Portuguese garrison, and consequently was growing to be a source of considerable unease for Spain.

    After drafting and sending Salé a brief list of demands (including the complete dismantling of the kasbah and the placement of a Spanish garrison within the town), Alba immediately mustered what forces he had available (2,000 Portuguese and 1,200 Castilian men at arms, accompanied by 3,000 Moorish mercenaries) and departed south. Unexpectedly, the oligarchs and imams of Salé refused Alba's ultimatum and prepared themselves for battle, possibly placing hope in the vast army under al-Ghalib that grew by the day. Realizing that he would have to settle in for a siege with less than 7,000 troops (3,000 of whom in which there was very little trust) while an opposing army numbering in the tens of thousands and full of apocalyptic zeal was only a 3 days' march away, Alba used his plenipotentiary powers to order the officers of the Órdenes Militantes in Northern Morocco to empty their barracks and assemble at Salé, while he issued an additional petition directly Juan Pelayo, stressing the seriousness of the situation and requesting at least 5 to 6 veteran tercios (15,000-18,000 men). There were also perhaps 12,000 able bodies that could be drawn up from the Portuguese moradores as well as the Castilian expeditionary companies in a reasonable timeframe.

    The forces being amassed by the Avis-Trastámaras outside the walls of Salé and by the Saadians in Tédula entered a standstill, but after two weeks Juan Pelayo informed the Duke of Alba that such a sizable reinforcement would be impossible for the foreseeable future with armed revolt underway in Spain. The ongoing struggle between the royalist and anti-royalist factions on the Iberian peninsula and the resistance of the Islamic inhabitants of Salé offered the perfect window of opportunity for the Saadians to crush the larger share of Spanish military strength in North Africa. By the time he departed from Marrakech in late January of 1567, the Saadians outnumbered the still assembling Spanish army 4 to 1. Arriving two weeks later, the 40,000 man army under Abdallah al-Ghalib fanned out to surround the entire mouth of the Buregregue.

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    Salé

    Concurrently, the Duke of Alba was close to losing the cooperation of the Portuguese. The local Portuguese power holders were growing both tired and nervous with the overbearing Duke of Alba and his equally overbearing cadre of Castilian compatriots. The arrival of Alba and thousands of Castilian troops in 1562 was seen as much-needed (if regrettable) aid from the Crown by the Portuguese in Morocco, but the dissolution of de jure Portuguese exclusivity in the kingdom of Fes that same year and the revitalized persistence with which Juan Pelayo was trying to bind and standardize Portuguese law with that of Castile and Aragon had heightened their apprehension. This atmosphere of suspicion hovered for three years until it was exacerbated when the Portuguese in Morocco heard that a number of Portuguese grandees had joined their Castilian counterparts in open rebellion against the Crown in 1565, and was finally sent over the edge when news arrived in 1566 that the leader of the Portuguese side of the rebellion, Teodósio de Bragança, had been murdered in cold blood. While aware that joining a rebellion against the Crown would be futile and inappropriate given their location and circumstances, many of the Portuguese who resided across the Strait of Gibraltar had been holding their breath watching the duke of Bragança's bid for independence, and now felt distinctly threatened by their intruding Castilian brethren.

    Al-Ghalib was mistaken about his enemy’s numbers, however. Having been told there were at most 12,000 Spaniards and Spanish allies at Salé, al-Ghalib departed Marrakech before his two younger brothers could arrive from the Middle Atlas (having secured the loyalty of the emir of Debdu) with an additional 15,000 fresh recruits. As the leader of a religiously-charged movement and a quasi-messianic figure to the influential Sufi marabouts of the Sous valley, Abdallah al-Ghalib's authority rested on his ability to make rapid victories against the infidel, and the longer he waited for the moment to strike, the less faith his subordinates had in him and the more likely they were to fall back into their inter-tribal disputes. Al-Ghalib had also pulled troops away from the coastline in order to speedily enlarge his army before departure, leaving the besieging forces to the west more vulnerable to sorties by the Órdenes Militantes. Now the Saadi prince faced not 12,000 Spaniards, but 22,000, unaware that the rebellious junta in Spain had been beaten decisively in less than a year and a half, and in 3 months’ time three Andalucian tercios had been raised up, marshaled in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, convoyed to Mamora, and encamped in good order near the old kasbah. The Saadians’ only real experience against the Spanish had been at the distant outpost of Agadir and the dozens of isolated blockhouses in the coastal hinterland, and they were therefore unware in general had been unaware of the level of Spanish preoccupation with France and with legal reform. The Saadians and their poorly-equipped followers were unprepared to face the full weight of the newly-invigorated, silver-rich Spanish war machine.

    Bypassing the easier target of Casabranca de Anafé and the nearby donatário of Fédala, it became clear that Abdallah al-Ghalib had elected to take the Spaniards head-on. Given his unique circumstances, al-Ghalib had no choice but to seek out a confrontation with the Spanish army here and now - the rest was in Allah’s hands. The battle was by no means a foregone conclusion. Alba’s troops - even the tercios - were not seasoned veterans, and many had little to no military experience beyond irregular militia activity and small-scale skirmishes. Hoping to overwhelm the most openly disciplined and well-armed component of the Spanish army, al-Ghalib concentrated the greater mass of his army on the three tercios, which barely held together against the seemingly endless flood of Berber horsemen while the artillery batteries they were arranged to protect were nearly captured twice. The battle was also spread out over 25 kilometers, with separate engagements occurring simultaneously outside the walls of Salé - where the Spanish were nearly overran - and near the towns of Tamesna and Témara, the latter of which saw the bulk of the action.

    Mindful of his grandfather’s fate at the battle of Mequinez 43 years prior, al-Ghalib decided to cut his losses and withdraw with whatever elements of his army were still in relatively good shape. With the still sizeable remnants of al-Ghalib’s army now recuperating just 140 kilometers away, Alba remained camped at Témara, sending a smaller contingent to relieve Mazagão by sea (so that the Saadians would not be able to pin them down by numerical superiority on the coast), followed by the remaining seaside fortresses over the course of the year. No attempt could be made to ride the victory at Témara all the way to Marrakech, however, as the Spanish needed to turn east towards Fes, where a coup against the Spanish puppet-emir was underway. After mopping up the conspirators in Fes, Alba left permanent garrisons at Mequínez (Meknes), Quemisete (Khemisset), and Azrú (Azrou) to shield the emirate from the south. With each passing year, it had become clearer that merely occupying the good harbors of North Africa and making desultory, half-hearted endeavors into the interior was leaving the gate open for expensive complications, if not outright existential threats for Spain and her subjects. The crisis years of the 1560s, with the insertion of armies and investment of funds into North Africa on a level not seen since 1525, offered a watershed moment for Spanish involvement in the region. The pressing need for Moroccan grain and the arrival of certain gung-ho, resource-rich Castilians into the Portuguese system brewed a revival of old Reconquista strategies on the African continent: swiftly capture the local cities and strongholds and coax the local Moorish potentates into a disadvantageous field battle; heavily garrison the captured cities, strongholds, and chokepoints and assign the subjugated Moorish peasantry to encomenderos and donatários; finally and most importantly, import Christian colonists to stabilize and consolidate the regional gains. All of these steps needed to be accomplished very quickly once initiated, and overall territorial expansion must be piecemeal and done slowly.

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    The Relief of Mazagão

    The battle of Témara did not collapse the dominion of the Saadians, nor did it render Morocco unto the Spaniards. It did, however, reverse the tide in North Africa, and the Spanish finally turned eastwards. His name ruined by defeat, Abdallah al-Ghalib was killed by his brother and successor Mulay Abdelmalek (Mulei Maluco to the Portuguese) two years later in 1569, following which the conflict with Spain subsided into border raids. Following the relief of besieged Algiers, Juan Pelayo instructed the viceroy of Catalonia and the leader of the relief force, Luis de Requeséns y Zúñiga, to gut the city and re-order the surrounding plain - the Mitidja - that served as Algiers’ breadbasket. Building fortifications at Merad, Bulaida (Blida), Larba, Bumerdés, and Cape Chinete (Cape Djinet), Requeséns essentially bottled up the Mitidja, turning it into a closely-controlled island within a hostile sea - a procedure that would become normative for Spain in North Africa. Across the sea, Juan Pelayo set Álvaro de Bazán on the task of building a large and regularly maintained Spanish-made fleet and a harbor to house it. With many of the kingdom of València’s ancient liberties permanently brushed aside by the Crown to restore order following the Revolt of the Germanies in 1520 and 1525, most of the kingdom's namesake port could easily be appropriated by the monarchy for its own purposes. With the Balearic Islands as its watchtower and windbreak against the prowling corsairs, the harbor of València was carved out to make room for a grand naval arsenal befitting the power of Imperial Spain. Acquiring an equitable number of ships from each constituent kingdom of Spain would be much more difficult. Bazán was ordered to secure 35 ships from Castile, and 15 ships each from València, Catalonia, Sicily, and Naples. Castile, with its streamlined procedures for collecting taxes and soldiers, was easy enough to utilize. As usual, the Cort General of Catalonia offered the stiffest resistance, but was successfully swayed with promises that would have long-term effects on the region. Specifically, the Principality of Catalonia committed 12 galleys and 3 galleasses after Antonio Pérez offered to relocate the head offices of the Casa de Prestación, the rudimentary central bank of the Spanish monarchy, to Barcelona - something which had already long been considered due to its proximity to Genoa - along with implicit promises of debt cancellation.

    The languorous realms of Spain were beginning to stir into efficient, collaborative action towards total war against the behemoth that was global Islam, but they were perhaps not stirring quickly enough. After an abortive assault on the island of Malta and the Órdenes Militantes defending it, it was assumed the Turks were content to settle into the gains they had made in the Central Mediterranean. In truth, the Turkish withdrawal from Malta was owed to the fact that the island’s harbor was not worth the effort taking when the harbor of Tunis - along with those of Avlonya and Durazzo - was just as suitable for their plans, and in good proximity for their next target.

    NorthAfrica1570-1.png

    Top: North Africa in 1550
    Bottom: North Africa in 1570
    (Yellow: Spain, Green: Spanish tributaries, Red: Spanish enemies, Blue: Neutral)
     
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    42. The Great Turkish War - Part IV: Rûm
  • ~ The Great Turkish War ~
    Part IV:
    - Rûm -



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    The Ottomans disembark at Otranto, 1570

    One quiet morning in 1570, when the April sun cleared the morning fog outside of the city of Otranto, for the first time in 89 years, an Ottoman army had landed on Italian soil.

    From a low-hanging cliff, Piyale, Sultan Mehmet III’s trusted Kapudan Pasha, his grand admiral, Piyale, oversaw the disembarkation of 16,000 men and 71 bronze cannons directly to the south of Otranto. On the northern side of the city, another 9,000 men and 28 cannons unloaded on the beach. Brought with him was an ideological weapon: his lieutenant, a full blood Italian turned corsair renegade, known to the West as “Occhiali.” Born Giovanni Dionigi Galeni, Occhiali was taken captive at the age of 17 from a village in Calabria in 1536 and used as an oar slave. After converting to Islam in 1541 and receiving the the Turkish name Uluç Ali (from which his Italianized nomenclature came), Occhiali became a corsair himself and served under Dragut before earning his own fleet which operated out of Tripoli. With a near 30-year career in the Mediterranean, Occhiali was already a household name in Italy, and Piyale was hopeful that putting him front and center in the campaign would serve to convince the Italian populace of the benefits that came with peaceful submission to the High Porte and conversion to Islam.

    A full-blown Italian invasion had been long in the works. Apart from being the spiritual center of the perfidious infidel, Rome was also of great symbolic importance to the Ottoman sultans, who had for generations laid claim to the direct inheritance of the Roman Empire. For the janissaries, the sultan’s crack troops, the name of the Eternal City was one of their common warcries - indeed, when the janissaries, sipahis, akinjis, azabs, and yayas poured into Avlonya and Durazzo in 1569, the Adriatic ports reverberated with chants of “Rûm! Rûm! Rûm!” There was even a familial impetus to taking Italy: The mother of Mehmet III’s eldest son, Mustafa, was the daughter of a Venetian officer, captured in the 1520s, while Mustafa himself was betrothed to an Italian woman himself, a captive from Monopoli in Apulia, given the Turkish name Meleksima. Now that Italy was both logistically and financially within arm’s reach of the Ottoman war machine, each passing day carried with it equal certainty of an imminent Turkish invasion.

    The entire peninsula had perhaps never been more vulnerable to a Turkish invasion. Imperial authority had mostly withdrawn from Northern Italy to contend with more pressing threats from France and the League of Fulda, allowing the princes of the region to return to their quarrelsome past. Similarly, the kingdom of Spain - wrapped up in a revolt in Iberia and a largescale Islamic counter offensive in North Africa - had essentially left the defense of Southern Italy in the hands of the local population and the viceroys of Naples and Sicily. All the while, every inch of the Italian coast from Pescara to Sorrento had been aggressively harassed by Barbary Corsairs and Turkish privateers, tenderizing the southern seaboard for the establishment of potential beachheads. Apart from the difficulties facing Southern Italy’s Spanish defenders to the west, the decades following the conclusion of the the most recent Habsburg- Valois war in Northern Italy had led to intensifying chaos throughout the entire peninsula.

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    Piyale, Kapudan Pasha


    - Sangue e contesa -

    Since the 4 year popular uprising (1494-1498) of the Dominican friar and populist leader Girolamo Savonarola, a fever had been building in Florence - and the rest of Northern and Central Italy, by extension. The sorry and negligent state of the Renaissance Church was certainly no less acutely felt in Italy than elsewhere, and the mounting demands for an end to clerical corruption were accentuated by a desire to also see an end of the rampaging interventions of foreign armies and unscrupulous condottieri. The ejection of the French from Lombardy in the 1530s (and then from Savoy in the 1540s) and the shifting of Habsburg and Spanish attention elsewhere had also allowed the smaller powers of Northern Italy to align themselves into new coalitions and revisit old wounds and ambitions. The already fragile situation in Northern Italy was further shaken in 1551 when Massimiliano Sforza was blocked by a makeshift barricade near Balocco on the way back from Turin, and, after his guards dismounted to inspect it, the duke of Milan was fatally shot in the collarbone by an arquebus ball as he leaned out the door of his carriage to take a look. The assassin was never caught, and, while Massimiliano had accrued a great number of upper class rivals and lower class dissidents, the motives for the murder remained entirely ambiguous.

    As Massimiliano’s eldest son had died in 1547, his second born, Ludovico, established Massimiliano’s 12-year old grandson, Giancarlo, as duke of Milan, with himself acting as regent. Ludovico was vigorously interested in continuing his late father's policy of political domination in Northern Italy, and almost immediately undertook aggressive actions against the Republic of Venice. Conscious of the republic's increasingly hated status in Europe due to its perceived subservience to the expanding Ottoman state, Ludovico Sforza did not bother to hide his designs on the rich cities of the Venetian Terraferma.

    With the cooperation of his brother-in-law, Adriano, the duke of Savoy, and Ercole II d'Este, the duke of Ferrara, Ludovico campaigned against Venice (and Mantua as well for a short period), capturing Bergamo before being captured in defeat near Brescia. After being ransomed, Ludovico pursued war against Venice once again, capturing Brescia. With Charles V von Habsburg threatening to intervene in 1555 (having defeated the League of Fulda at Darmstadt in 1554), Massimiliano II - having reached his majority - was forced to recall his uncle and sue for peace with the Venetians, handing back Brescia but retaining Bergamo. However, the Venetian Republic never fully ratified the surrender of Bergamo, and the numerous dust-ups started by the regency of Ludovico di Sforza would continue to entangle Northern Italy well into the next decade.

    Meanwhile to the south, the Florentine Renaissance and the long reign of the Medici family had been brought to an abrupt end by Savonarola’s uprising in 1494, creating an opportunity which was seized by the notorious condottiero (and illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI) Cesare Borgia, who entered Florence with a Papal army and declared the city to be under his indefinite protection as Papal Gonfalonier. Hoping to take advantage of the situation and further Imperial interests in Central Italy, Maximilian von Habsburg had extended an alliance to Cesare and invested him with a new title, that of the “Grand Duke of Tuscany.” Cesare used this title (now paired with his pre-existing title of “Duke of Romagna”) as pretext for an invasion of the Republic of Siena, which was also a nominal French ally. Siena fell to Cesare in 1518, although an exiled republican government in Montalcino continued its resistance for another 4 years. A considerable swathe of Central Italy - straddling the Italian peninsula from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea - was now gathered under the Borgia family, meaning that Fabrizio, whose only son had died childless before him, would be succeeded by the closest Borgia scion.

    The Florentine masses were by no means satisfied with the Borgia ascendancy. Savonarola’s prophecy foretelling a rejuvenation of Christendom and the purification of the Church through fire seemed to be thoroughly vindicated by the sack of Rome in 1512 by French gendarmes and Swiss mercenaries and the natural death of the widely detested Pope Julius II the very next year. This was confusingly reversed when Florence - proclaimed by Savonarola as the new Jerusalem - was surrendered without a fight 2 years later to the vengeful bastard son of one of history’s most debauched Popes. Most of Central Italy - particularly the urban centers - shared in this long-standing discontent, and were therefore willing to entertain increasingly radical and theological ideas. Ideas that spread even into Spanish-held Naples with the assistance of the well-connected Vittoria Colonna, the widow of the marquis of Pescara, Fernando d'Ávalos and the second wife of Cesare Borgia. In spite of the the closeness of the Holy See, Protestant thought had found its way into Northern and Central Italy, and a number of Protestant theologians had sprung up from the native academia and clergy, such as Girolamo Zanchi in Lombardy, Gian Paolo Alciati in Savoy, Pier Paolo Vergerio in the Republic of Venice, Bernardino Ochino in Siena, and Pietro Martire Vermigli in Florence - the latter two being in direct correspondence with Vittoria Colonna for a time. Each of these men would eventually be executed or forced into exile, but their conversions had swayed more followers and were indicative of the growing social and spiritual anxiety in the region. To add to the instability, the discontinued Italian Wars between the French, the Spanish, the Habsburgs, and their local allies threatened to break out once again over the succession of Fabrizio Borgia, Duke of Romagna and Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the son of Cesare Borgia and his second wife, Vittoria Colonna, as Fabrizio’s closest surviving male relative was across the Mediterranean, the 4th Duke of Gandía, Francisco de Borja - a Spaniard.

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    Francisco de Borja leaving Spain to press his claim in Italy

    The placement of Francisco de Borja on the ducal throne of Tuscany and Romagna was deeply concerning to the Valois and the Habsburgs. If Juan Pelayo were to see to it that Francisco’s claim came to fruition, the larger share of the Italian peninsula would fall under either direct or indirect Spanish control, with the Papal States wedged in between. This was a position from which the king of Spain could intrude on the Holy Roman Emperor’s traditional sphere of influence, and strong-arm the Pope into doing his bidding. The Habsburgs were not so keen on the Avís-Trastámaras continuously sticking their noses where they did not belong, and the Valois were even less keen on seeing the Spanish using the papacy to uphold their outrageous territorial claims to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Some detente between allies was achieved at a 1552 meeting in Modena between Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Eustace Chapuys, the respective ambassadors of Juan Pelayo and Charles V, in which the Spanish delegate assured Chapuys that his sovereign had no intention to incorporate Tuscany and Romagna into his realm, although the Imperial delegate countered with the Emperor’s offer to purchase the duchies in question outright, for the sizeable sum of 400,000 ducats. However, the ongoing war in Germany convinced Charles V to concede the matter for the time being, and Juan Pelayo never reneged on his support for Francisco de Borja’s claim. The preceding arrival of the Duke of Alba and his tercios in Genoa in 1547 was therefore both a calculated deterrent against French re-entry into Italy, and an enticement of military assistance to Charles von Habsburg in crushing the Swabian revolt in exchange for a concession of hegemony over Central Italy. With the 20 Years’ War continuing to unfold to the north and the west, the matter remained unresolved and Florence and Siena adopted provisional administrative councils under small-scale Papal military supervision, while a Papal governor took control of the duchy of Romagna.

    - Sieben Siegel und sieben Trompeten -

    The chaotic byproduct of the tumultuous interconfessional warfare to the north of the Alps soon began to pour over into Italy as well. The dynamic and thriving Swiss Cantons had effectively been sidelined by the continuously up-and-coming House of Habsburg in the Swabian War of 1499 and the Fällkrieg of 1514-1520, with the Swiss Confederation neutered by Emperor Maximilian at the turn of the century and essentially dismantled in 1520. The old confederations’ constituent cantons were further divided by the religious fault lines that came with the emergence of Protestantism, with the Protestant and Catholic cantons stiffening their adherence to their respective sects and entering into frequent, bloody feuds.

    Beginning in the 1540s, the Protestant cantons of Bern, Aargau, Solothurn, and Neuchâtel had to contend with an energetic Catholic Swiss military leader by the name of Ludwig Pfyffer. Although he was only officially elected magistrate of Luzern in 1566, Pfyffer had been the city’s de facto leader for decades, and used his influence and connections to turn Luzern into a center of Reform Catholicism and its associated intelligentsia, and eventually form a “Golden League” of the seven Catholic cantons. Despite often receiving implicit support from the Habsburgs, Pfyffer was a proud Swiss patriot and strove to re-assert Swiss autonomy at every opportunity, and opted to align himself with the duchies of Milan and Savoy, which were both similarly distancing themselves from the Habsburgs. Outcry over this often violent interreligious contest made its way back to Vienna, where in 1557 the Kaiser issued emissaries to the predominantly Protestant free cities of Bern, Freiburg, and Solothurn to demand that they either rein in or forcibly disband their native free companies. The immediate effect of this disruptive situation was the increased percolation of Protestant mercenaries out of Switzerland and into Northern Italy.

    The growing religious and political tension of the Swiss-Italian sphere came to a head in the form of one particular Bernese mercenary company in the employ of Massimiliano II of Milan. Having just lost their commander to an infected arquebus hole in his leg, a council of leading officers took charge of the free company, of which a certain Matthias Gruber soon became the de facto leader. Young, charismatic, and uncompromising in his beliefs, Gruber was also a spiritual guide to his fellow Swiss mercenaries, who mostly belonged to the same congregation of Brethren of the Word (Andreas Karlstadt's more radical sect of Protestantism) that had come to dominate Bern and Freiburg. This particular congregation was known colloquially as the "Alpine Brethren," or Alpenbrüder, for their homeland and also for their protection of Protestant refugees fleeing Italy via the Alpine passes and their role in the dissemination of Protestant literature back into Italy via those same passes. They were also noticeably more intense in their adherence to the teachings of Karlstadt than most of their coreligionists elsewhere, owed in part to their precarious proximity to the anti-Protestant Habsburgs, Sforzas, and di Savoias.

    The moral rigor of these Alpenbrüder companies made them honest dealers and passionate fighters - both desirable traits to potential employers - but also infused them with an apocalyptic fever that was welling up dangerously beneath the surface. When pestilence broke out at Mantua, the Alpenbrüder alone were spared by their isolation from their more debauched compatriots and their refusal to buy baubles from the local markets or cavort with the local prostitutes and camp followers. This exemption by the Angel of Death seemed as clear as day to Matthias Gruber to be a sign from God that the Alpenbrüder had His blessing and it was time to take matters into their own hands and return to Milan.

    Having already been filled with agitation by 3 months without movement and a year and a half without pay, and with disgust by what they saw as the corruption and licentiousness of the local Italian authorities and the Roman Church, the Alpenbrüder zealously followed Gruber back to Milan to demand their rightful wages from Duke Massimiliano II. In abject debt from nearly two decades of intermittent warfare, Massimiliano was in no position to surrender liquid payment, and entreated the Alpenbrüder to await approval of a loan from the Genoese. They emphatically refused to wait, and forced an entrance into the city. Overreliance on Swiss mercenaries had left Massimiliano with very little homegrown soldiers to fall back on, and - what was more - the cheapness of Swiss mercenaries from Protestant cantons compared to those from Catholic ones (the latter also being constantly in the service of the Habsburgs) had also led Massimiliano to purchase the services and fill his duchy with thousands of armed men who were more than likely to sympathize or even join the Alpenbrüder. Massimiliano escaped Milan by one gate as Matthias and his Alpenbrüder entered through another, the young duke fleeing on horseback to the court of his uncle, the duke of Savoy.

    The unexpected ease of taking Milan fanned the fervor of the Alpenbrüder, and Matthias Gruber set about tightening his grasp on Milan to pave the way for the establishment of a borderline theocratic form of Karlstadter administration. The unrest of the Milanese locals and the potentates in the surrounding countryside - coupled with news of Duke Adriano of Savoy securing the pledged assistance of Ferdinand von Habsburg, duke of Tyrol and Further Austria, in exciting the Alpenbrüder from Milan - convinced Gruber and his followers to abandon the city and move southward to the more defensible landscape of the Apennine piedmont. However, their numbers were growing every day, with the greater share of the assorted Swiss mercenary companies across the upper Po Valley abandoning their commanding officers and joining the ranks of the Alpenbrüder (alongside a not-so-insignificant number of Italian sympathizers).

    In a heightened apocalyptic frenzy, the Alpenbrüder had become convinced that it was upon them to inflict God's judgement in Northern Italy just as the Israelites were ordered to destroy the Amalekites, with the ultimate goal being the city of Rome itself and the toppling of Papal power. In the early months of 1563, the crushing defeat of an army led by Alfonso II d'Este (who barely escaped with his life) at Torrile and the brutal massacre of most of its surviving components strengthened both the resolve of the Alpenbrüder and their emergent reputation of infernal invincibility, and more importantly laid Parma and Modena open to pillage.

    The moral seriousness and egalitarianism of the Alpenbrüder coupled with their success in upsetting the local powers-that-be initially gave them a strong appeal to the commoners, who had grown utterly distraught at the return of inter-ducal struggles and full-blown condottieri warfare in Northern and Central Italy. However, the Alpenbrüder were, at the end of the day, mercenaries, and were therefore accustomed to ghastly outbursts of violence, destruction, and thievery in the aftermath of victory, which was now also tinged with vengeful religious fanaticism. Soon conflicting views on the treatment of captured priests and monks along with the desecration of churches, icons, and the remains of saints would quickly sour the cautious support extended by the Italian middle and lower classes, and the Alpenbrüder would be unable to garner enough local support to fully occupy any city they took.

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    Last stand of the Alpenbrüder

    After almost two years of chaos, the inevitable Milanese-Savoyard-Habsburg army arrived in early 1564, and broke the Alpenbrüder at Ponte Ronca and killed Matthias Gruber himself. Yet even this defeat did not end the affair, and the Alpenbrüder regrouped and resumed their insatiable warpath south of the Apennines in the contested duchy of Tuscany. While unable to take Florence, the Alpenbrüder still wreaked havoc across Romagna, Tuscany, and even Lazio, reaching as far as Viterbo - which they despoiled - raising fears that Rome would be sacked a second time. The Alpenbrüder may have fizzled out more quickly after their defeat at Ponte Ronca if not for an opportune anti-Papal uprising in nearby Siena. Disgruntled by the dissolution of their republic and their subjugation to Florence - and then to de facto Papal rule - the citizens of Siena frequently rose in rebellion, although never with much success. However, when another seemingly unimposing rebellion occurred in May of 1564 and seemed near collapse, the closeness of the rampaging Alpenbrüder (returning northward from Viterbo) presented an enticing solution to a small ring of crypto-Protestant burghers who had personally known the Protestant theologian Bernardino Ochino and referred to themselves as the “Eletti” (the “Elect”). After communicating discreetly with the leading officers of the Alpenbrüder and opening the Porta dei Pìspini under the cover of night, the mercenaries entered the city and made short work of the minimal garrison of the city’s Papal gonfalioner. The Eletti soon used the Alpenbrüder to sweep aside the city’s rebel leaders too, however, and resolved to re-establish the Republic of Siena but with an implicitly Protestant framework.

    No matter the radical ideas flowing through Tuscany at this time - and through Siena in particular - the sudden insertion of more than five thousand armed Swiss Protestants and the nebulous, secretive intentions of the city’s new ruling oligarchy proved to be too much for the general public. The final straw came when a contingent of Swiss Protestants attempted to destroy the sacred head of St. Catherine of Siena. As night fell, an incensed mob stormed the makeshift barracks of the Alpenbrüder and - while repulsed - forced the Swiss to relocate outside of the city walls. The situation had become unbearable to the Papacy, but luckily a gradual change in policy since the death of Pope Paul IV in 1560 convinced the authorities in the Papal States to seek foreign intervention. The new pope, Pius IV, born Giovanni Angelo, was the first pope drawn from the Medici family, which had been expelled from Florence in 1494 and had largely resided in the kingdom of Naples ever since. While he had been selected with the approval of the dominant anti-Spanish faction in the Roman Curia, Pius IV’s familial obligations superseded those of his benefactors in Rome, and the unraveling of matters in Tuscany allowed him to both appease his Spanish neighbors and possibly obtain leverage to reinsert his kin into positions of power in their ancestral homeland. Communicating through the viceroy of Naples, Pedro Afán de Ribera, Pius IV offered to grant passage and military assistance to Francisco to Borja in securing the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Romagna so long as he pacified the region. With 1,200 Spanish troops landing with him at Piombino in late 1564, Borja was joined by a 3,000 strong Papal army and a prepaid ensemble of German and Italian mercenaries, and marched towards Siena to restore order. Clashing with 3,200 Alpenbrüder along the way at Isola d’Arbia in March of 1565, the remaining Alpenbrüder dispersed in disillusionment.

    However, just as Juan Pelayo seemed ascendant in the peninsula, the difficult passage of his Leyes Nuevas in Spain and waves of Berber counter offensives across North Africa drew the Spanish monarch’s attention elsewhere, and the house of Habsburg renewed the protection of their interests in Italy. With the Turks rebuffed in Hungary and a 10-year treaty signed in 1561, Philipp II von Habsburg was free to descend the Brenner Pass at the head of 8,000 Italian mercenaries, Tyrolean levies, and Hungarian horsemen. Invited to Rome by Pope Pius IV after driving back a massive Turkish army at Buda, Philipp II used this Papal commendation to enter Italy in a show of force, intended to intimidate the Venetians, to remind the Sforzas and di Savois of their loyalties as Imperial vassals, and, last but not least, to secure the allegiance of Francisco de Borja. Philipp II and the Spanish Borgia prince had an amicable meeting at Arezzo in 1566, guaranteeing Francisco’s deference to the Kaiser before the King of Spain, and ensuring that the title of Duke of Gandía would be abdicated to Francisco’s second son, Juan, while the Grand Duchy would pass to his eldest, Carlos (known to posterity as Carlo Borgia).

    - La caduta del rivellino -

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    Uluç Ali - "Occhiali"

    This discord in Italy was merely a garnish for the long-awaited circumstances of Mehmet III's designs on Italy. The winds had been shifting more and more favorably to a successful invasion of Italy for nearly two decades. In less than 10 years, fortuitous developments had been mounting across the White Sea: a solution to the Venetian problem in the form of their violent expulsion from Cyprus, Corfu, and other key islands in the Eastern Mediterranean; the installation of a pro-Turkish pretender on the throne of Tunis; the mobilization of the petty Kabyle Berber kingdoms against the Spanish-held ports between Tunis and Algiers; a resurgent Saadian principality seizing Agadir and Marrakech and threatening to overrun Portuguese Morocco; and an armed revolt led by some of Spain's leading nobles against their monarch. The plan of Mehmet III was a truly massive undertaking. Merely a week after the fleet of Mehmet III’s Kapudan Pasha, Piyale, embarked from Avlonya and headed to Otranto, a Barbary Corsair fleet under the command of Müezzinzade Ali Pasha, the bey of La Goletta, would depart from Tunis and land at Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, followed by another fleet under Damat Ibrahim Pasha, the beylerbey of Egypt, from Tripoli at Gela. Another week later - having waited out a storm in the Ionian Sea - a fleet from Durazzo arrived at Brindisi while fleets that had assembled at Corfu and the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf arrived in the Gulf of Taranto and the bay of Catania. Piyale Pasha dispatched Occhiali to Taranto, while Occhiali’s own lieutenant, another Italian renegade known to the West as Hassan Veneziano, assumed command at Brindisi. In a year’s time, at the height of the campaigning season in 1571, the Ottomans and their North African vassals and allies had fielded roughly 25,000 troops in Apulia, 18,000 in Calabria, and 42,000 in Sicily.

    Every raw resource and industrial infrastructure available to the Ottoman State had been vigorously utilized for nearly 8 years to prepare a mass invasion. Galleys, galiots, and troop ships had been endlessly assembled at the arsenals of Konstantiniyye, Alexandria, Tunis, and Tripoli, their oars manned with slaves from Ruthenia, Greece, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, the Caucasus, and, most importantly, Sicily and Naples. Iron, timber, and pitch from the Balkans, textiles and grain from Egypt and Tunisia, navigators and experienced seamen from the Maghreb and the Aegean Isles, horses, mules, and camels from Anatolia, Hejaz, and the Levant - all poured in to the ports, foundries, and rallying fields to fuel and equip the Ottoman war machine. Countless manpower from every corner was called upon or volunteered themselves - elite janissaries, Tatar horse archers, Syrian ghazis, Slavic irregulars, Turkish conscripts, and more - and spent months or even years trekking across the mountains and valleys of the Near East and the Balkan Peninsula to muster at the ports of the empire. Upon setting sail, these fleets and their supply convoys numbered nearly 500 ships in total. Apart from their human cargo, they carried millions of yards of cloth, canvas, and parchment, hundreds of thousands of iron ingots, arrows, arquebus balls, millet bread biscuits, and barrels of pitch, tens of thousands of tents, beasts of burden, battleaxes, scimitars, spears, firearms, and hundreds of roaring cannons to pulverize the Turkish army’s way through the Italian Peninsula.

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    An Ottoman fleet at anchor in Durazzo

    As the ravelin of Italy - and, by extension of Christian Europe - Otranto's fortifications received special attention and had been renovated multiple times since the city had been reclaimed from a surprise Ottoman invasion in the 1480s. The Ottoman beachhead may have been broken on the walls of Otranto if not for one auspicious event. The most commonly-held story is told accordingly: Two weeks into the siege, a Spanish Morisco conscript was moved by the sight of the crescents and Arabic calligraphy waving in the breeze, and the sound of the muezzins leading the call to morning prayer, and came to long for the faith of his ancestors. He abandoned his post and entered Piyale's camp at sunrise, where he informed the Kapudan Pasha that there was a spot in the southern curtain wall that was weak enough to be toppled by a single, well-aimed cannonball, and behind which was a massive gunpowder magazine. This particular stretch of wall had not been placed under any direct fire by the Turkish artillery or arquebusiers, as it was separated from the Ottoman line by a steep hill, and was therefore out of range of any established artillery placements. Nevertheless, Piyale immediately ordered the movement of six bronze cannons and and a massive Venetian-crafted bombard (ordered by Mehmet III as part of the 1565 treaty) known to the Italian as “La Cerbottana di Dio” - “God’s Peashooter” - into position to fire upon the magazine. The downwards slope of the hills left the artillery crews and their janissary guard completely exposed to the arquebusiers on the walls, but, despite the withering gunfire, La Cerbottana was able to land a large bitumen-wrapped shell, which punctured the wall and caused a massive explosion. Piyale redirected his entire janissary contingent and the bulk of his reserves to this opening - which was located at an undermanned section of the city - and soon the city was overrun. For the second time in less than a hundred years, an Ottoman army had stepped foot on the Italian peninsula and had taken the city of Otranto. This time their stay would be much longer, and much more devastating.

    The quick siege of Otranto allowed Piyale to move on to Lecce before it had time to finish organizing its defenses, leading to a brutal sack. Brindisi quickly followed suit as morale among the Apulians dropped steeply. Hassan Veneziano moved to Bari, where a carriage carrying the remains of St. Nicholas of Myra barely made it out of the city before the Turks breached the walls, depositing the relics in Taranto, and thence to Naples. Other cities in the vicinity - such as Ostuni, Monopoli, Barletta, Andria, Altamura, and Matera - did not have anywhere near the same level of fortifications as Otranto or Brindisi, and were either beaten into submission or surrendered outright, each in less than two weeks. Only Taranto stood to offer up significant resistance, but was surrounded by Occhiali’s fleet at sea and Piyale’s army on land, and fell after 5 weeks. To the north, Foggia was abandoned ahead of the Ottomans, and was used as a staging point for the siege and capture of Lucera, to the west. The speed with which the Ottomans advanced in Southern Italy and along its shores can be attributed to the Italian element within the Ottoman sphere. Just as the Moriscos and Mudéjares were essential in the Turkish and Barbary subversion of the security of the Spanish mainland, the veritable legions of Italian slaves and renegades found in the Islamic ports and corsair fleets of the Mediterranean were extremely useful in allowing Piyale Pasha to pry the door open to the Italian Peninsula. Indeed, the Ottoman invasion would have been impossible if not for these renegades, many of whom knew the curves and byways of the Calabrian, Apulia, and Sicilian coastline better than the Christian galley captains assigned to protect them.

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    1) Red - Piyale Pasha
    1a - Durazzo; 1b - Avlonya; 1c - Otranto; 1d - Brindisi; 1e - Bari; 1f - Barletta; 1g - Matera; 1h - Foggia and Lucera; 1i - Pescara
    2) Green - Occhiali
    2a - Corfu; 2b - Ambracian Gulf; 2c - Lepanto; 2d - Taranto; 2e - Crotone; 2f - Catanzaro; 2g - Reggio di Calabria; 2h - Messina; 2i - Catania; 2j - Syracuse
    3) Blue - Müezzinzade Ali Pasha
    3a - Tunis; 3b - Sousse; 3c - Monastir; 3d - Sfax; 3e - Mazara del Vallo; 3f - Sciacca; 3g - Marsala; 3h - Trapani
    4) Purple - Damat Ibrahim Pasha
    4a - Tripoli; 4b - Gela
    5) Yellow - Murat Reis
    5a - Bugia; 5b - Jijel; 5c - Annaba; 5d - Cagliari

    With the powers of Europe rustling at this knife plunged into the heart of Christendom, Piyale Pasha and his subordinates knew that any gains in Italy would have to be made quickly and with as little fuss as possible, and so made a concerted effort to be tactful in occupying such large swathes of territory so densely populated by hostile Christians. Towns and villages that surrendered without a fight were treated graciously, and were usually billeted with Christian levies and mercenaries or often not garrisoned at all (depending on the strategic value of the settlement). Even among the towns that offered resistance, only one out of a handful would be specially brutalized - its buildings leveled, its inhabitants butchered, raped, or enslaved, and its spoils dispersed to the looting soldiers - so as to sufficiently terrorize the other towns into surrendering. As Mehmet intended to lord over these lands and their people, it was essential that they be treated leniency and that the seeds of Islam be planted among them. As conquering Southern Italy required dislodging its Spanish overlords, the same leniency was not offered in any shape or form to the local Spaniards. Any Spanish soldier unfortunate enough to be captured alive after his commander refused Ottoman demands for surrender was executed without exception. Their commanding officers often suffered a much more grisly fate, being burnt at the stake, skinned alive, or simply beaten to death. Those who surrendered when the terms were offered were spared execution, but were also usually subjected to some form of abuse. For instance, after the Spanish commander Garcia Diaz de Acuña surrendered Reggio to Müezzinzade Ali Pasha, the Turkish captain had the Spaniard's eldest daughter seized and shipped to Konstantiniyye to be added to Mehmet III's harem.

    Spanish rule in Italy had been mostly stable, but was certainly not well-liked: the introduction of the Inquisition was widely unpopular, and the viceroyalties were seen as foreign apparatuses meant only to farm taxes to pay the Spanish army and to siphon staple foods to feed the overpopulated Iberian Peninsula. Popular uprisings were not uncommon, and the hills were rife with banditry. The local rift between the Spanish and Italians was therefore not difficult for the Turks to exploit. In one instance, when news arrived in Reggio that an Ottoman army had seized Catanzaro, the native Calabrians proceeded to ransack the homes of every wealthy Catalan and Castilian merchant family in the city - all before the Turks even appeared before the walls. These precautions to prevent unrest were not always successful, and sometimes were useless in dulling the spirit of resistance among the locals. For example, after the unexpected success in pushing the frontline northward after the capture of Foggia and Lucera, the Ottoman push - entrusted to Piyale Pasha’s Bosnian lieutenant, Hüsnü - ground to a halt due to stiff opposition coming from the rugged Gargano promontory. Drawing spiritual inspiration from the shrine to St. Michael the Archangel in Monte Sant'Angelo, the natives of Gargano regularly conducted debilitating guerrilla warfare against the Ottoman troops in the lowlands, and pledged to cast Hüsnü and Piyale into hell along with their "father," Satan. These measures were also not always followed by Ottoman and Barbary combatants. For example, Ivan Abdulov, a Muscovite traveler acompanying the Ottoman army in Calabria, records the janissaries regularly brutalizing the local inhabitants with little to no provocation. When the janissaries found a large number of the elderly sheltering themselves in a chapel in the Calabrian countryside, Ivan watched the janissaries march them out to the hills, strip them naked, beat them, and leave them lying in agony in the countryside. Ivan asked the janissary captain how they could act in such a cruel manner, to which the captain responded that "among us such deeds are a virtue."

    Repairing the fortifications and reinforcing the occupying garrisons in each of these towns was not a priority. The clear and mostly realistic goal of Piyale Pasha to wage a war of conquest in Apulia and Sicily (and later Calabria as well), and a war of decimation everywhere else. Apulia, Sicily, and Calabria were close enough to the empire and its puppet states that they could be easily resupplied by sea, and therefore easily pacified and integrated into proper Ottoman sanjaks - only after such integration could the conquest of Naples and Rome be undertaken with absolute confidence. The activities of Ottoman and Barbary forces elsewhere in Italy and the Mediterranean were for the express purpose of tenderizing the region for future campaigns and to precipitate the collapse of the local Spanish administration, as well as to bloody the nose of Spain and its allies to secure a quick surrender. However, the bombastic initial success of Piyale's campaign on almost every front led his subordinates to encourage him to broaden its scope. With Spanish forces in Calabria abandoning their posts, the viceroy of Sicily still awaiting reinforcements, and the Hispano-Italian relief army at Nola in disarray due to its hasty mobilization, Piyale began to entertain the idea of going straight for Naples and delivering a knockout blow to the Spanish administration in Southern Italy. The possibility of taking Naples - the most populous city on the entire peninsula and in close proximity to Rome - in a 2-year time window was simply too great to resist. With Naples in Turkish hands, Sultan Mehmet himself would be free to lead his armies into Rome in a matter of years, rather than decades. In late 1571, only 8,000 Hispano-Italian troops had so far been assembled at Nola, only 5,000 of which were fully prepared to march, while ships promised by the Republic of Genoa and troops promised by the Papal States were behind schedule.

    Juan Pelayo’s Council of War was in a state of hysteria as it scrambled to organize a response and speed up the measures it had been preparing for an Ottoman offensive. It was only in mid 1572 that an armada would be ready to sail from the grand harbor of València. The fruits of years of political centralization under Juan Pelayo and naval reorganization under Álvaro de Bazán were manifest, however: 35 warships from Castile, 22 from Portugal, 15 from València, 15 from Catalonia, and 18 from the many ports of Spanish North Africa were set to be fully operational and outfitted by 1572, while the 30 ships raised by Naples and Sicily would need to stay put for defensive reasons. In all, there were 135 warships, of which 20 were galiots, 72 were galleys, 20 were galleasses, and 23 were galleons. More than 200 independently owned or requisitioned cogs, caravels, and merchant galleys were available to further sustain Spanish naval efforts. Nonetheless, moving the tens of thousands of soldiers needed to confront the Ottoman invasion would be an arduous matter. Sailing directly from Spain to Sicily or Naples was virtually impossible considering the galleys’ need to take on fresh water every few days, and also considering the capricious - and sometimes volatile - nature of Mediterranean weather depending on the time of year. Reinforcing Spanish Italy with Spanish troops would require hopping from Iberia to the Balearic Isles, Sardinia, and the ports of North Africa as needed - a woeful process compared to that of the Ottomans, who could sail directly from Tunis or Albania, and in short time.

    Having received news of the barracks of València filling with tercios and the city’s arsenal bustling with activity, Piyale Pasha decided to further complicate the arrival of the Spaniards by authorizing an assault on Sardinia led by Murat Reis, a corsair captain and ambassador to the Kabyle kingdoms of Kuku and Ait Abbas. Just as Müezzinzade Ali Pasha was preparing a march to Palermo, he received orders from Piyale to divert 12 of his galleys and 3,000 of his janissaries, artillerymen, and engineers to back to the port of Biserta in Tunis, and from there they would meet with Murat Reis in Bugia to attack Cagliari. Despite Müezzinzade’s protests that Carlo d'Aragona Tagliavia, the viceroy of Sicily, had arrived in Alcamo and was fast at work fortifying the Gulf of Castellammare along with the valleys of Segesta and Gibellina, 3,000 of Müezzinzade’s crack troops were severed from his campaign and shipped to Murat Reis. By June of 1571, Murat was ready and, accompanied by 4,000 Kabyle auxiliaries, struck at Cagliari with the speed and savagery customary of a corsair like himself, sending Sardinia’s viceroy Juan Coloma y Cardona running all the way to Nuoro to regroup and organize a response. Cagliari became a corsair port overnight, and, along with Bugia, had effectively closed the waters from Cape Serrat to Cape Spartivento. Occhiali meanwhile had begun a campaign along the Calabrian coast after assisting in the capture of Taranto, besieging and taking Crotone, Catanzaro, and Reggio di Calabria by early 1572, while Damat Ibrahim Pasha would lead the forces landed at Gela and Catania to converge on Syracuse. After a bloody, spirited defense, Syracuse fell after 9 weeks, and the beylerbey of Egypt would march northwards to Messina to cut off the city by land while Occhiali descended upon the straits by sea.

    - "Et portae inferi..." -

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    Ottoman advances, 1570-1573

    Goaded onwards by their own success, the Italian theater was gradually becoming too large for the Turks. Even with naval supremacy in the Central Mediterranean and the full weight of the imperial war machine at their beck and call, Ottoman forces in Italy were beginning to struggle under the demands imposed by a broad frontline stretching across Apulia, Campania, Calabria, and Sicily. There were never quite enough men to garrison the towns and cities, pacify the countryside, and root out the guerrilla fighters in the hills and mountains, and Piyale Pasha wrote to Konstantiniyye incessantly in search of more conscripts, more janissaries, more galleys and more slaves to man their oars. The clear and straightforward vision of the Italian campaign began to blur as both unexpected difficulties and unexpected opportunities presented themselves, and the different aspirations and opinions of the many strong-willed leaders under Piyale's command began to sow confusion and division in the war effort. In particular, Occhiali and Murat Reis were corsairs through and through - not Ottoman state officials or governors like Piyale, Müezzinzade, or Damat - and ultimately their highest loyalty was to themselves, their private fleets, and the North African harbors they called home. When word reached Piyale of the Spanish relief fleet setting sail from València in April of 1572 (sooner than was expected), he quickly learned the hard way not to place one's trust in a pirate - much less entrust one with an important spearhead position: after being ordered to abandon Cagliari and depart for Sicily to speed up the capture of Palermo and the capitulation of the island, Murat Reis considered affairs in Italy to be secure enough, and had already chosen months prior to instead remain in Sardinia and carve out his own corsair principality (having been denied any such power or authority in the Maghreb).

    On the verge of tearing out his beard at the selfish pursuits of one of his most esteemed lieutenants (and chief liaison to many of the Turks' North African allies), Piyale had to choose between ordering Müezzinzade to throw his full strength at Palermo in the hopes of capturing the city or at least cutting it off before the Spanish arrived, or ordering him to hunker down and fortify his position in Western Sicily. Piyale opted for the latter option, deeming it safer, but both options were based on the presumption that Palermo would be the first and most urgent target for relief by the Spaniards. Confusingly, the Spanish fleet moved in short, seemingly erratic spurts, cautiously spending days at a time in a number of harbors in the Balearic Isles and the Maghrebi coast to watch for changes in the wind or the temperament of the sea. The multiple arms of the fleet - moving at different times and anchoring in different harbors - made it difficult for Barbary scout squadrons to ascertain its true size. Most confusingly, the bulk of the fleet then clung close to the North African coast after leaving Algiers, while a smaller portion dithered in the Baleares before suddenly springing directly eastward across open waters, towards Sardinia.

    Landing at Oristano ahead of both a massive storm on its tail and a Muslim army moving northwest from Cagliari, five tercios and 2,500 Genoese mercenaries were quickly unloaded and not given a moment's rest before being marched at double time to take the force sent by Murat Reis head-on. While the vast majority of his troops were able to turn on their heels and return to the safety of Cagliari, the sudden arrival and quick movement of 17,500 enemy soldiers sent Murat's defenses into disarray, while the 55 ships that unloaded at Oristano swung around to catch and disperse half of Murat's fleet at Cape Spartivento. Joined by the viceroy and the nearly 4,000 Sardinia militiamen he had mustered, the Spanish army - led by the viceroy of Catalonia and captain-general of Algiers, Luis de Requesens y Zúñiga, and none other than Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the 3rd Duke of Alba - surrounded Cagliari and dug in. Having had set thousands of slaves to the work or repairing and improving the fortifications of Cagliari immediately after taking the city almost a year prior, Murat was confident in its defenses (and almost rightly so), and was almost certain that this siege would allow Murat to essentially entrap and possibly wear down this large Spanish army, keeping it from intervening in the more important warfare in Sicily and Naples. However, Murat underestimated the sense of urgency that seized the Spaniards, and lacked experience against the heavier warships that now encircled the Golfo di Cagliari. The galleons in particular frustrated the defenders: not very maneuverable compared to the sleek corsair galleys but with very thick hulls and packed to the brim with bronze cannons, able to riddle the harbor with salvo after salvo while unable to be penetrated by anything but the heaviest ordnance. A week and a half into the siege, Requesens - hearing that Spanish marines had landed within the city before a single hole had been punched in the ring wall - repositioned two tercios to stage a direct assault on what was deemed the weakest gate, costing hundreds of lives but forcing open Caglari's outer defenses. Escape by land or sea was impossible for the corsair garrison, and while the defenders fought street-to-street, Murat slit his own throat in the viceregal palace.

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    The new fleet of All Spain, assembled in force

    The other 80 ships of the Spanish fleet trundled onwards along the Kabyle coast, stopping only to bombard the ports of Bugia, Jijel, Collo, Annaba, and Biserta. However, while Müezzinzade girded himself in anticipation, the Spanish Armada did not turn north eastwards towards Sicily. Instead it circled the Gulf of Tunis, establishing beachheads at Radès, La Marsa, and old Carthage in May of 1572. Conscious of the desperate nature of the situation and hoping to inspire his troops on the shores of Tunis and Italian subjects across the Straits of Sicily, Juan Pelayo himself - now approaching 56 years - had joined himself to this fleet and presented himself on the field, having left his eldest (and now only surviving) son Gabriel behind as regent. Alongside his trusted maestre de campo, Julián Romero de Ibarrola, the king of All Spain oversaw the disembarkation of 8 tercios numbering 24,000 men, with 4,000 light cavalry and 14,000 mercenaries, engineers, artillerymen, and priests.

    As the Spanish army entrenched themselves around Tunis, Müezzinzade Ali Pasha ordered 25 of his vessels to link up at Nabeul with any ships the nearby Barbary princes could spare. An exhausted relief force ran from Beja and Kairouan, joining nearly 9,000 men at Fouchana, but unexpectedly entered within range of the southern wing of Spanish cannons, who turned away from the walls of Tunis the rain hell on the new arrivals. Struggling to maintain formation under artillery fire - and soon after arquebus fire as well - the cavalry vanguard had no choice but to split down the middle and retreat southwards as the hail of bullets and cannonballs caused their horses to run amok, exposing the foot infantry of this irregular relief army to a shattering charge by the mercenary heavy cavalry of Cosimo de' Medici. With the crippling summer heat endemic to the Maghreb fast approaching, the Turkish fleet - supplemented by another 20 ships - unloaded 4,000 troops on the Cape Bon peninsula and waited out the Spanish. With La Goletta falling to a Spanish assault and with Spanish engineers temporarily securing a tunnel beneath the walls of Tunis, the Turkish fleet chose to round Cape Bon and attempt to draw out a segment of the Spanish fleet into a disadvantageous position. Instead, the Spanish ships stuck close to the harbor of Tunis, and sudden, unseasonal winds pushed hard on the rear of the Turks. With their back to the shore at La Marsa, 15 of the Spanish ships were burned, sunk, or damaged beyond repair, but 18 of their opponents’ galleys were captured alone, with even more sunk or damaged. Tunis would fall only a week and a half after the arrival of the Spanish, and more than 15,000 Christian slaves within the city were liberated. After another week, Ibarrola would turn south to confront the growing army at Cape Bon, inflicting a crushing defeat at Hammamet in late June of 1572. With the nucleus of Islamic naval power in the Mediterranean in his hands, Juan Pelayo decided that Spain - and by extension Christian Europe - could no longer afford to see Tunis change hands with the enemy once again, and allowed his victorious troops to butcher and pillage with abandon. More than 30,000 inhabitants of Tunis were slaughtered, with thousands massacred in the surrounding countryside and by rampaging bands of jinetes throughout Cape Bon. The city and the peninsula were both gutted - among those who escaped death, nearly half were ejected either forcibly or voluntarily.

    The tidal wave of blood wafted into the ports of the Sunni world as lurid accounts of monstrous Christians putting innumerable Muslims to the sword filtered in. Upon hearing the news, Müezzinzade Ali Pasha immediately ordered the execution of all 3,000 of his Spanish prisoners, and Piyale Pasha declared that not one more Spaniard would be offered quarter. The Kapudan Pasha withdrew his troops from sieges at Benevento and Campobasso, and began mustering for the march to Naples while Occhiali entered the Tyrrhenian Sea, killing or enslaving nearly all of the inhabitants of the Lipari Islands before carrying out raids on Sorrento, Capri, Castellamare di Stabia, Spineto, and Ischia. In Cagliari, Requesens began coordinating the Neapolitan counteroffensive and 4 tercios and mounted auxiliaries were placed under the command of the Duke of Alba and directed to Sicily, disembarking at Castellammare del Golfo, to the west of Palermo. Juan Pelayo's Sicilian plan was simple: unleash the Iron Duke on Sicily and let him do what he did best. After garrisoning the mostly freshly recruited Tercio de Jaén in Castellammare along with its mounted supplement, Alba took the three "Tercios Viejos" of Murcia, Toledo, and Cartagena and the remaining cavalry with him as he then pushed deep inland and set up shop in Caltanissetta. 9,000 infantry and 1,500 light cavalry was hardly a proper relief force when Ottoman-Barbary forces across the island numbered more than 40,000, but these three tercios had been requested specifically by the Duke of Alba in Cagliari, being filled with some of Castile's most seasoned veterans - some of whom had been serving under Alba for upwards of 20 years. Wasting no time, Alba immediately began ordering the harvest and apportionment of every stalk of grain throughout the island's interior not yet in reach of the Muslims, amassing it in Caltanissetta and a handful of storehouses in the hill country that were unlikely to be found without a map. These were harsh and disruptive measures, but soon the many Berber raiding parties that frequently left the abandoned coast to forage inland were returning empty handed and with their numbers diminished - many were not returning at all. Eventually the armies of Damat and Müezzinzade had to subsist solely on grain shipments from Tunis.

    With no choice but to confront the smaller Spanish force, Damat Ibrahim Pasha cautiously marched inland with 22,000 troops to do away with the troublesome Duke of Alba. Finally engaging the Spanish near Enna, Damat engaged his 2,000 janissaries at the front. For the first time, the Spanish tercio and the Ottoman janissary - perhaps the two most fearsome units at the time - met on the field. Unfortunately for Ottoman renown, these particular tercios were commanded by what was also perhaps the most able Spanish commander in history. The janissaries nobly held their line, but were drawn too thin across the valley. With the Turkish sipahis and Berber horsemen cutting themselves to ribbons against the combined arquebus fire and stiff pike defense of the Tercios Viejos, Alba pushed in his reserves in excellent discipline, with not a single tercio square losing formation as it bowled over Damat’s front line. With the Turks trying to withdraw, Alba sprung his surprise: 500 light cavalry and 2,000 Sicilian irregulars descended on the retreating force from the hills to the east and bottled them up against the pursuing tercios. Damat escaped with his personal guard, but the Spanish and Sicilians had killed more than 7,000 while suffering only 2,400 dead, injured, or missing themselves. Losing more of his available soldiery in the following slaughter, confusion, and desertion, Damat limped back to Catania and braced for a Spanish siege. Alba did not have the necessary artillery to break down Turkish defenses, however, and instead continued to rake the Turks out relentlessly over the rough hills of Sicily. Moving to Butera to put pressure on Gela, Alba drew out Müezzinzade’s forces, held off another 14,000 from the rudimentary palisade the Spanish erected. This time another 8,000 Turks were killed or wounded, but the Spanish and Sicilians had endured 3,800 dead and wounded of their own. While his numbers had been bolstered by the local Sicilians (who had taken most of casualties), Alba’s army was now reaching critically low numbers, and had to withdraw back to Caltanissetta. Müezzinzade and Damat, however, could no longer sustain their contiguous control of the southern coast of Sicily, and opted to abandon the poorly defended port of Gela, which Alba then sacked and dismantled its fortifications.

    Before the fall of Tunis, unusual circumstances had already begun to jeopardize the Ottoman invasion of Sicily. The Maltese Islands - home to the Hospitaller Knights of St John since the fall of Rhodes - had been raked over in previous years by Turkish corsairs, with a significant portion of their population enslaved each time and their fortifications ground down in bombardments, all to ensure the Knights would not pose a threat to the invasion eventually mounted from the ports of Tunisia. Failure to follow through with the complete seizure of Malta and its Grand Harbor would prove shortsighted, however, as would the Ottoman underestimation of the mettle of the Knights of St. John. Although reduced to a fleet of less than 30 galleys, the Hospitaller navy re-entered the scene in mid 1571 under the leadership of the unwavering Mathurin Romegas, who had made a name for himself as the thorn in the Turkish Sultan’s side in previous decades for his relentless crusading piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean. With a motley armada composed of galleys either purchased on credit in Genoa, seized in battle from corsair captains, or assembled in the Grand Harbor at short notice, Romegas had brought together a potent (albeit small) force in the space of a few months and right under Mehmet III's nose, abetted by the preoccupation with Southern Italy. Swinging forth with characteristic gusto, Romegas sacked Homt Souk on the isle of Djerba and garrisoned the abandoned fortifications, before turning northwards to evade a patrol from Tripoli. Deprived of most of their ships and fighting men, the ports of Sfax, Mahdia, Monastery, and Sousse were left vulnerable to consecutive lightning raids by the Knights of St. John, who also began to intercept supply convoys from Tripoli, Cyrenaica, and Egypt headed for Syracuse. Álvaro de Bazán, at the time gathering forces in Algiers to retake Cagliari, saw the advantage in a predatory fleet operating behind Ottoman lines and preying on its essential grain shipments, and scraped together another 15 galleys to send to Malta to assist in whatever way they could. Long considered a vicious slaver and brigand in the Islamic Mediterranean, Occhiali, Müezzinzade, Damat, and numerous other subordinates petitioned Piyale for permission to pursue Romegas personally and return with his head on a pike. After repulsing the garrison fleet of Tripoli near the Kerkennah Islands, Piyale strongly considered sending as many as 70 galleys to Tunis to smoke out Romegas and torch the Grand Harbor of Malta. However, after the loss of Tunis, the Turks could not divert enough troops to properly challenge the Spanish army in the region, and decided that a favorable truce could only be wrung out of the Spaniards if Naples could be sufficiently threatened, if not taken outright.

    Descending on Campania Proper in August of 1572 with an army 33,000 strong, the 12,000 man Hispano-Neapolitan army was forced to give battle at Nola. Not expecting the Ottomans to arrive so soon, the Viceroy of Naples, Iñigo López de Mendoza y Mendoza, pushed the Christian army to hold the line against the bulk of the Ottoman army emerging from the valley extending from Avellino, but was taken by surprise when a 5,000 man janissary division attacked his exposed flank from the north, having emerged from the valley to the south of Caserta. Mendoza and his troops valiantly sustained their defense for nearly 8 hours, but despite endeavoring to fight to the last man, the Ottomans emerged victorious and the viceroy himself was cut down. As only 1,800 survivors poured into Naples after the battle of Nola, the city was now open to siege. However, time was running out for Piyale in more ways than one. As of February 2nd 1572, the Treaty of Zombor - which guaranteed 10 years of peace between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs - had officially expired. After a few months trepidatiously watching the Hungarian border and monitoring the situation in Southern Italy, Philipp II von Habsburg left his brother Johann Karl to handle affairs in Vienna and sent emergency summons to dozens of Christian princes to convene in Bologna. In October of 1572, Philipp II was joined - either in person or represented by emissaries - in Bologna by Emanuele de Avis-Trastamara, the Duke of Calabria and representative of the Spanish Crown, Marcantonio Colonna, the Duke of Tagliacozzo and Duke and Prince of Paliano, Thomas Howard, the Papal Legate to England, Alfonso II d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, Francesco Ferdinando d’Ávalos d'Aquino, the marquis of Pescara and marquis of Vasto, Guglielmo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, LMassimiliano II Sforza, the duke of Milan, Carlo de Borgia, the Duke of Romagna and Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, the son of the Duke of Urbino, Filiberto III, the Duke of Savoy, Giacomo Durazzo Grimaldi, the Doge of Genoa, Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, unofficially representing French interests, Alvise I Mocenigo, the Doge of Venice (quite surprisingly), and by Pope Pius V, elected after the death of Pope Pius IV in 1566. After less than 4 days in session, everyone gathered swore themselves unto a Holy League to protect Rome and to drive out the Turkish threat, and pledged whatever resources they were in power to relinquish. The princes of Christendom and their representatives assembled at Bologna were truly fortunate in having a pope like Pius V. Whereas Pope Paul IV had been consumed by his hatred of Spain and Pope Pius IV had been driven primarily by family interests, Pius V was willing to look past petty personal issues and inclinations of Italian patriotism. As a Dominican, Pius V was a pope with a monastic background - a rarity - and the intense spirituality and asceticism of his Dominican origins were manifest in the strength of his convictions and his unbending devotion to uniting the Catholic cause. Long known as a firebrand against political and fiscal corruption in Rome, Pope Pius V used his new authority and flung open the papal coffers, offering all funds available to the Holy League. With the Ottoman front unraveling in Sicily and developing in their favor at Naples, the conclusion of the Italian war remained completely unsure, and the hour of the fever pitch climax of this conflict - centuries in the making - was soon at hand.

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    Banner of the Holy League
     
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    43. The Great Turkish War - Part V: Otranto
  • ~ The Great Turkish War ~
    Part V:
    - Otranto -


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    Italy under Ottoman occupation, c. 1573

    Having secured a victory at Nola as decisive and quick as the surprise capture of Otranto, Piyale Pasha had eliminated all meaningful resistance between him and the walls of Naples. However, the veteran Kapudan Pasha had great trouble in weighing the merits of descending into the Campanian Plain before Nola, and even now his mind was not fully decided on whether or not Naples should be put to siege. Piyale was a pragmatic man and knew that making a rush for Naples could either end in a historic conquest of a scale not seen since Mehmet the Conqueror, or in an abject failure that could set back Ottoman ambitions in the Mediterranean a whole century.

    On one hand, Piyale had been presented with a golden opportunity: in just under 3 years, Ottoman forces had worked their way from the tip of Salento and the Adriatic to the Gulf of Salerno and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Turkish troops were closer now to Rome than they had ever been, and the response of Spain and the rest of Christendom was - as usual - too slow and too divided to slow their momentum. Every day spent discerning the feasibility of taking Naples was another moment that the Christian princes could spend, and which they had been spending on building up a counteroffensive to drive back the armies of Mehmet III. There were also reasons as to why the Ottoman campaign might fail if it did not seize Naples in a timely manner: if Piyale were to withdraw from Campania, an unsustainably lengthy military frontier would have to be established stretching across the hills of Molise, Apulia, and Calabria (compared to a more concise frontier from Molise to Naples), the likes of which would be spread too thin to properly hold back a concentrated Christian offensive and would likely put a massive yearly dent in the Ottoman treasury. With large numbers of Apulians and Calabrians regularly fleeing either into the unchecked countryside or into Christian-held territories, there would be very little taxable benefit in holding Southern Italy without the port of Naples, and more money would have to be spent in transplanting settlers from the Balkans and the Aegean to fill the empty towns and put the fields back to plow.

    The success of the Italian campaign had also put Piyale under considerable pressure from the High Porte to seize the moment and undertake bolder actions. Mehmet III, who had spent so many of his younger years in the shadow of his elder, more zealous brother, Selim, had been shaped by the contest he had with his brother and longed to prove himself just as much a warrior of Allah. To Mehmet, there was no better way to prove this than by fomenting the eventual capture of Rome itself, allowing him to live up to both his sobriquet as the "Shadow of Allah upon the Earth" and the namesake of his predecessor, who had captured the second Rome - Constantinople - in 1453. This was indeed a very heady concoction of religious, patriotic, and quasi-apocalyptic symbolism that had been brewed in Mehmet's mind by these special circumstances, and it gradually drove him to feelings of overconfidence and to disregard many of the concerns of his military leadership. Mehmet greeted the news of Otranto and Nola ecstatically, and, according to the Venetian ambassador in Konstantiniyye, the sultan "had never carried himself with such joy and eagerness, [he] follows every word of the dispatches from Apulia with great excitement and relentlessly urges his Grand Admiral and his janissaries to push further and further still with every fortuitous gain."

    On the other hand, the city of Naples was an imposing goal, even to the fearsome Ottoman war machine. Even after annihilating the Hispano-Neapolitan army and cutting down the viceroy, Iñigo López de Mendoza y Mendoza, at Nola, Piyale seriously reconsidered for a moment whether or not to pull back after sizing up the walls and artillery protecting Naples, acknowledging in private to his lieutenant Hüsnü that he may not have given the orders to take Naples had he not been filled with rage at the moment over the bloody sack of Tunis. The troops under Piyale's command may have broken through the imposing, cutting edge defenses of Otranto in less than two weeks, but Naples was no Otranto. With more than 100,000 inhabitants, Naples was one of the most populous cities in Europe and possibly the world - certainly the most populous in the Spanish Empire. It was more than the jewel of Spanish Italy, it was the nexus of the Christian Mediterranean, and had been armed, fortified, and shored up appropriately. When Occhiali disembarked near Salerno to meet with Piyale and give him an idea of the naval situation in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Occhiali, perhaps injudiciously, told Piyale to his face that he was a fool to expend what impetus his army and the campaign as a whole still had in biting off more than he could chew at Naples, rather than hunkering down and solidifying the gains made in Apulia and Calabria - which were already far greater than what was initially expected - and reestablishing the supply lines from the Maghreb by redirecting his forces to topple the stubborn Spanish resistance in Sicily and to retake Tunis.

    After Juan Pelayo had overseen the capture of Tunis in 1572, however, Occhiali’s preferred plans were no more prudent than Piyale’s assault on Naples. One of Occhiali’s lieutenants, Sinan Reis, had been sent to resupply Müezzinzade Pasha and reconnoiter the Gulf of Tunis in late October of 1573. When Sinan returned, his assessment of Tunis was worse than anticipated: the city and its environs were crawling with Spanish and Italian soldiers, laborers, and engineers, and appeared to be almost completely devoid of the bulk of its native Muslim populace. With massive shipments of limestone slowly ferried overseas or extracted from the nearby hills, old fortifications were being repaired and new ones constructed - not only at Tunis and La Goletta, but at Radès, Kelibia, Hammamet, and Grombalia as well. According to a Maghrebi shepherd questioned by Sinan's men during a coastal incursion, the construction of Spanish fortifications were underway even at Mornaguia, some 20 kilometers inland from Tunis. The Hafsid sultan meanwhile had relocated what was left of his court to Kairouan, and showed no signs whatsoever of moving against the Spaniards in the near future.

    With the recapture of Tunis off the table for the foreseeable future, the situation in Sicily became much more precarious. So long as that great port had been in Turkish hands, the Ottomans could essentially funnel the money, supplies, and soldiery of half the Maghreb directly into Sicily, and in less than a week's time if at short notice. In Spanish hands, the port of Tunis would ensure that Ottoman and Barbary forces in Western Sicily would be endlessly harassed by sea, and, more importantly, would provide a quick and easy supply line to Palermo, effectively allowing that city to hold out indefinitely in the event of a siege. Sicily was the beating heart of the Central Mediterranean, and if its harbors and grain supply were not decisively wrested from the Spanish before they deposited more of their tercios upon its shores, then the Ottoman position in Italy would remain exposed from both the North and the South, and would have to fight with its back against the wall for how long only God could tell.

    Ultimately, the mounting fervor of the Ottoman military, brought on continuously by successive victories, swept aside all but the most serious concerns, and the naysayers and worried parties were outnumbered by those that saw the events of the past three years as an obvious sign from the heavens to carry on with confidence. Piyale was duty-bound - by his Sultan, his soldiers, and his faith - to press forward. There was also one factor that possibly tipped Piyale in favor of continuing the siege of Naples. As was to be expected, prior to 1570 the Spanish administration was not too keen on imparting any more military training or arms and armor on the notoriously insubordinate Italian populace than it absolutely needed to. This meant that when the bulk of the Spanish military was needed elsewhere (which was the case throughout most of the 1560s), Spanish Italy was usually left with garrison numbers unbefitting of its geopolitical importance. While the events of 1570 to 1573 may appear that the Spanish authorities in Italy were guilty of leaving the backdoor open, they cannot necessarily be blamed for underestimating the quickness with which the Ottomans blew through the coastline defenses in Apulia, nor for overestimating the willingness of much of the Italian populace to comply with Spanish orders and form a unified front of resistance. Between the fall of Otranto and the beginning of the siege of Naples, a common thread can be seen in which the Italians in the smaller towns often elected to abandon the Spanish garrisons - whether out of contempt for the Spaniards or (more likely) a realistic fear of Ottoman engineering and artillery - and fight the Turks on their own terms, usually in the form of guerrilla warfare. This was the primary (and perhaps solitary) source of comfort for Piyale Pasha - no matter how profuse the bastions, curtain walls, and cannonades of Spanish Italy, they were all simply undermanned.

    For those who had been watching from a distance, the arrival of Piyale Pasha in Campania with 33,000 troops suddenly made the fearsome Ottomans appear much closer to the princes of Western and Central Europe than they were back in Apulia, and every inch the infernal Turk creeped closer to Rome re-imbued the rest of Christendom with a sense of seriousness and urgency. The full scale entrance of Ottoman-Barbary fleets in the Tyrrhenian Sea also brushed up against the heretofore (mostly) unaffected realms of France and Northern Italy in a way not seen since the days of Barbarossa, and heightened the demands for action. Before 1570 the corsair fleets sustained themselves with the profits and oarsmen from the plunder and slaves which came primarily from the south and east-facing coasts of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. With these regions in Turkish hands, funding and manning these galleys became more difficult, and the corsairs had to range further afield in order to keep Ottoman-Barbary naval supremacy in the Central Mediterranean solvent. From his base in Messina, Occhiali sent out smaller squadrons to raid as far as Liguria and Corsica - raiding Ostia, Follonica, Cecina, Biguglia and Levanto - while Piyale ordered similar expeditions along the Adriatic seaboard as far north as Rimini. This, of course, brought Ottoman ships well within the closest stomping grounds of the two maritime republics of Genoa and Venice - still two of the most formidable naval powers in the Mediterranean - as well as the territories of the Papal States and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany-Romagna. These expeditions lasted throughout much of 1573 and 1574, and with the princes of Christendom beginning to mount an initiative against the Turks and a Holy League finally declared, the affected states decided that now was the time to push back at sea. After separately failing to pin down a corsair fleet attempting to pillage Savona and another near Livorno, a Tuscan-Genoese fleet under the leadership of Giannettino Dorian assembled at the isle of Capraia to cut off whatever incoming corsairs were heading northward. Emerging from a winter storm near Pianosa in December of 1573, a Turkish fleet under Sinan Reis was surprised to encounter an amassed force of Italian galleys and was forced to give battle. After a few hours of confused combat, Sinan managed to withdraw his fleet in defeat, although the casualties and lost ships between the two fleets were roughly equal and Sinan was able to sack Porto Ercole on his way back to Messina.

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    Ottoman ships at Messina

    For the Ottomans and especially the Barbary Corsairs, thinking they could continue to act with impunity in such a way whenever and wherever they pleased was only fanning the flames of the Holy League, and thus accelerating the mustering of its armies. Approving operations such as these was a shortsighted move on Mehmet III's part. While the necessity of raiding further north in order to ensure the subsistence of Ottoman-Barbary galleys was perhaps unavoidable, Mehmet had neglected his divide-and-conquer diplomacy and had stepped on the toes of too many potentially hostile parties, and was now earning the growing ire of virtually all of Western and Central Europe. What was more, these further-reaching raids indicated that the demands of Mehmet's Italian campaign had officially surpassed its allotted resources. Had a smaller scale campaign more directly concentrated on the Spanish been undertaken, these issues might not have arisen and a quick and easy conclusion with a victorious outcome may have been achieved. Nevertheless, a likely tremendous conquest and perhaps the very raison d'être of the Ottoman state were both on the line, and it was simply too late for Mehmet to back down.

    Piyale meanwhile was receiving frequent criticism from the de facto commander of the Italian campaign's naval component, Occhiali. The old renegade was now in his 70s, and was growing increasingly impatient with the Kapudan Pasha and the Ottoman Sultan, to whom his allegiance was still rather circumstantial. Muslim naval superiority in the Central Mediterranean had not been significantly challenged since the battle of Vido in 1552, a fact that made Occhiali concerned that the Ottoman-Barbary fleets had gone untested for too long, and worried that Piyale and the rest of the Ottoman military apparatus had grown inattentive and overly confident in their ability to project naval power in Southern Italy. The results of the naval action at Tunis and Cagliari did not suggest an overall inferiority of Muslim naval capabilities, but were not very promising. The hostile defensive actions made by the Genoese and Tuscans accentuated these concerns, and made Occhiali wary of the outcome if and when Spanish and other Christian warships returned to the region in force, and targeted the Ottoman-Barbary fleet for a pitched battle.

    - “... non praevalebunt adversus eam.” -

    Immediately after the lightning re-capture of Cagliari and Tunis, the Spanish fleet had to remain docked for the rest of the year, cautiously guarding the gains made in the Central Mediterranean and engaging in short distance activity as large quantities of materiel for refitting and resupply were needed before further campaigning could undertaken. Apart from badly needed powder and shot - the vast majority of which had been spent on Turkish galleys and the ports of the Barbary Coast or had been deposited in Tunis and Cagliari - timber, canvas, pitch, and nails were also being slowly ferried from València for repairs, along with hundreds of tonnes of limestone to rebuild fortifications. A tense silence settled over the waters of the Central Mediterranean as each side hesitated to take up the offensive. The viceroy of Catalonia, Luis de Requesens y Zúñiga, had been hard at work since early 1572 amassing dozens of galleys at Cagliari and billeting 7 tercios in a vast system of barracks constructed across the Campidano lowlands. Requesens knew very well that Piyale was closely checking in on the Spanish center of operations in Cagliari - he saw the corsair patrols a few kilometers from the harbor on a regular basis. He made no attempt to intercept these scouting squadrons, however, as he knew that manipulating the information that made its way back to the Ottoman commander was much more auspicious than enshrouding himself in the fog of war. Requesens knew that Piyale's every action hinged on when and where a Spanish relief force was expected to arrive, and would sporadically scramble his galleys and then cruise them to Capoferrato or Sant’Antioco before returning to Cagliari to keep the Kapudan Pasha in a state of confusion, or at least on his toes. In constant apprehension over movement in Sardinia, Piyale proceeded to Naples with utmost caution. The city would only be fully on land encircled if a naval blockade could be established and maintained, and if this blockade was broken, or if there was a debilitating outbreak of disease or the casualties of battle became too much to bear, then a full disengagement would commence immediately. It was for these reasons that the route of withdrawal across the Southern Apennines to the Tavoliere delle Puglie was to be kept wide and extensively guarded.

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    Napoli

    After vanquishing the 12 galleys and single galleass of Naples' garrison fleet, Occhiali decided that the Neapolitan harbor was too well-protected to approach closely, with numerous batteries mounted along its seawall and in the Castel dell'Ovo. By Piyale's reckoning, the entire Gulf of Naples - from Sorrento to Capri to Ischia to the Capo Miseno - would have to be bottled up, to which Occhiali objected that such a blockade would stretch his galleys thin, require constant patrols, and leave his ships exposed to sudden storms and other capricious weather. If the port of Sorrento could be taken, however, then it would be relatively easy to cut off all maritime movement in and out of Naples entirely. While half of Sorrento’s population had either fled the city or been killed or enslaved in previous raids, it remained a tough nut to crack. The port was guarded at sea by steep cliffs and on land by deep gorges, except for 300 meters on the south-west, where a protective wall stood. To the east, the bulk of Piyale’s army marched south to seize Castellammare di Stabia and close off the Sorrentine Peninsula, while Occhiali’s ships pounded the city and 900 janissaries and 1200 irregulars were disembarked near Marina di Puolo and instructed to scale the gorges to the north-west and take the town by surprise. This risky maneuver was a success, but only after nearly 200 valuable janissaries lost their lives scaling the cliffs, a matter which left Piyale infuriated with Occhiali’s insistence on taking Sorrento and widened the division between the two commanders.

    The frustrating difficulty in taking Sorrento had become a recurring trend with the smaller projects of the Ottoman encirclement of Naples. These unanticipated complications came from the locals, as the resistance shown in Campania was markedly stiffer than that encountered in Apulia and Calabria, and numerous consecutive fortifications and strongpoints began to chip away at the Ottoman force as their defenders consistently refused surrender and often fought to the last man. After the initial resistance shown at Otranto, Brindisi, and Taranto, the Mezzogiorno was bowled over by the sheer awe of the Ottoman war machine, and dozens of towns surrendered left and right out of not only fear of the Turks but also apathy towards preserving Spanish rule. The gravity of the situation had now become fully realized by the native Southern Italians and desperation had truly begun to set in, and their resolve had hardened in the face of this final stand scenario in which they had unexpectedly found themselves in. A tentative expedition to Salerno was rebuffed at Nocera Inferiore - not even a town of great strategic importance - after the locals fought tooth and nail, losing the majority of their populace in the process. To the west, the 700 janissaries that emerged victorious in Sorrento had to hold down the town alone for 6 days as Piyale’s contingent was held up at Castellammare di Stabia for longer than expected when the defenders took to the Lattari Mountains. Across the gulf, the Castello Aragonese at Ischia and the Castello di Nisida both cost the Ottomans roughly 2,000 lives and 3 weeks to take. Even after these important fortresses and harbors were secure, control of the Gulf of Naples was still not complete, and the Lazian ports of Formia, Gaeta, Sperlonga, and Terracina continued to slip small, single-mast ships into the Gulf of Naples under the cover of night, trickling in supplies and reinforcements and extracting women and children refugees.

    These small yet committed acts of bravery were a thorn in the side of Piyale Pasha, but still did very little to prevent or even slow the Ottoman advance to the walls of Naples, where they set up camp in April of 1573 (having wintered at Caserta after the battle of Nola). Over the preceding months, Piyale’s army was joined by an additional 12,000 troops and 10,000 slaves and other laborers and camp attendants drawn up from Calabria and Apulia. Aware of the impossibility of both retaking Tunis and holding down the gains made in Sicily with the forces available to Müezzinzade Ali and Damat Ibrahim, Piyale would have to make the siege of Naples proceed as quickly as was humanly possible. Luckily for Piyale, due to the more pressing threat of corsair violence over the previous decades, Naples was better fortified against a seaward approach than one by land. The west and south-facing walls were thick, well-planned, and dotted with triangular bastions, and consequently reducing the walls by artillery fire was out of the question, but the curtain wall was also too long to be sufficiently manned in every portion by Naples' 4,700 defenders. Piyale therefore planned to use his superior artillery and janissary sharpshooters to keep the Christian gunners hunkered down behind their parapet and thus protect his sappers, engineers, and slave laborers as they dug their tunnels. Optimally, 4 or 5 large and equally spaced tunnels could be dug in less than 2 weeks, and once the mines were planted and the fortifications above them blown open, there would be more breaches than the defenders could handle at once and the Turks could rely on sheer numbers to overwhelm them.

    With the Spanish viceroy dead, the defense of Naples was now in the unlikely hands of Rudolf von Albeck, an Austrian Hospitaller from a lesser noble family in Carinthia, who was in Naples at the time alongside 300 of his brethren as head of a reinforcement effort to be sent to Malta but had been postponed indefinitely since 1570 given the circumstances at sea. In that time, Albeck had earned the trust and friendship of the Viceroy of Naples, Iñigo López de Mendoza y Mendoza, and was requested to lead the city’s war council because of this, as well as due to the not so insignificant fact that he was neither a subject of the king of Spain nor an Italian, and therefore was foreign to the Spanish-Italian power struggle in Naples and could be trusted to be impartial in political and cultural matters. Albeck quickly set about restoring Christian morale: Eucharistic processions around the Duomo and the surrounding streets began immediately after the arrival of the Ottoman army and continued every day, while the priests within the walls offered confessions and dispensed the Holy Sacrament for extended periods - often for as many as 40 hours at a time. Albeck was also influential in defusing the class and culture-based tensions dividing the military leadership in Naples, gathering the senior Hospitallers and the city's garrison commanders and their aides-de-camp together in the Castel Nuovo for a solemn ceremony in which all swore that whether Spaniard or Italian, noble or commoner, all would stand side by side as brothers through the tribulation before them, and all would lay down their lives for the Christian faith. Under Albeck’s supervision, the remaining 50,000 to 60,000 Neapolitans (more than 30,000 having fled the city since August of 1572) were restricted to strictly confined quarters of the city in order to allay the perpetual and potentially cataclysmic threat of disease. With only 4,700 professional soldiers under his command, Albeck had to defend the most important city in Spanish Italy against a force 10 times larger.

    There was one glaring issue for Piyale. Overlooking the city of Naples from the north was the promontory of Vomero, atop which was perched the fortress of Castel Sant’Elmo. Piyale (always the pragmatist) knew that it was unlikely that his 45,000 man army would emerge from the siege of Naples with sufficient numbers or morale to take on an army sent by the Holy League on an open field. With news arriving that Italian, German, and French noblemen and their retinues were gradually assembling in the Roman suburbs along with companies of landsknechts, gendarmes, and condottieri, Piyale also knew that such an army would arrive soon after Naples was taken. With such an impending threat looming from the north, the Ottomans needed to secure the city’s chief northward fortification, ideally before an assault on the rest of the city was undertaken. No matter the numerical superiority of the Turks, storming a breached wall was always an extremely costly affair, and, with the bitter opposition shown by the Campanians thus far, Piyale estimated almost 10,000 of his own would perish unless Sant’Elmo was taken first, or at least neutralized in some way. After 8 days traipsing through the steaming, volcanic Campi Flegrei to the west, 9,000 soldiers, laborers, engineers, and artillerymen under the command of a Greek renegade known as Erhan Bey prepared themselves for the siege of Castel Sant’Elmo. After hearing of the Turkish approach, Albeck sent 120 of his Hospitaller brethren to reinforce Sant'Elmo and the Certosa, voluntarily captained by a Hospitaller of Converso origin, Melchior de Montserrat. Inspired by this Jewish convert putting himself on the frontlines, the morale of the vastly outnumbered garrison was bolstered. Castel Sant'Elmo was only large enough to hold 500 to 600 defenders at a time, with an additional 300 to 400 in the underlying monastery complex, the Certosa di San Martino - a paltry sum compared to the 9,000 assembling at the foot of Vomero. What was more, the primary purpose of the Castel Sant'Elmo was to overlook Naples and discourage rebellion, with the protection of Naples' under-defended northwest being secondary. The northwest approach to Sant'Elmo was uphill, but nowhere near as precipitous as any southeast means of retreat for its defenders. This meant that the 800 or so men on Vomero would be fighting with their back to the promontory, making an organized retreat virtually impossible. They would have to fight to the death.

    However, that relatively small hilltop fort was more stout than any in Piyale’s camp had truly anticipated. Sant’Elmo had been rebuilt from 1537 to 1547 under the orders of Pedro de Toledo y Zúñiga, the alcalde of Naples under the viceroyalty of Fernando de Portugal, who had recruited a military architect from València named Pedro Luis Escriva to redesign it. The fort was renovated in an unconventional hexagonal star shape, which attracted intense criticism, leading Escriva to publish a written defense of his design. This hexagonal renovation ultimately proved to be prescient, and the Castel Sant'Elmo - long considered a symbol of Spanish oppression - would become a symbol of Neapolitan resilience. The uphill route to Sant'Elmo was smooth enough, but was void of any trees or large boulders for cover, and still left any approaching attackers painfully vulnerable. The uphill angle also made bombarding the fort extremely difficult, and, without any nearby vantage point to aim from, many of the rounds fired by the Ottomans either fell short or hit only the base of Sant'Elmo. The most difficult obstacle was the elevation of Sant'Elmo itself, which was constructed on top of a stone base several meters tall. The high walls, which had numerous embrasures, were guarded also by a double tenaille and a moat. Unless greater suppressing fire could be brought down on the fort, it remained a perfect sniper's den, and the bodies of unfortunate slaves and inattentive janissaries and sipahis continued to stack up in the ditches, riddled with arquebus holes. Erhan decided to encroach on the battlements by digging out lines of trenches and mounting protective earthworks progressively up the hill, a task to which hundreds of slave laborers - most of whom were Christian - were put to work. While at work, many of the slaves would often drop their shovel or pick and stand up, waving their arms and shouting to the gunners on Sant'Elmo that they were Christian, and to spare them. Regardless, most of the slaves that exposed themselves were shot on sight.

    Piyale Pasha anticipated that Sant'Elmo would last only two weeks if a breach could be made, and, if not, only two weeks more with the supplies available to the defenders. These expectations were not a proper assessment of the difficulty awaiting the Ottoman troops, and were not met by Erhan Bey. The withering gunfire and ordnance frequently overwhelmed the Ottoman line if an unprotected advance was made, and they were most often forced to keep whatever distance they could. So voluminous and thick was the constant pillar of gunsmoke rising from Sant'Elmo that the onlookers in Naples compared it to a miniature Vesuvius. Whenever the Ottomans made a push attempting to stack ladders against the walls and climb them (usually at night), they were met not only by bullets but also by bounding, terrifying "fire hoops," an innovation provided by the Hospitaller knight Ramon Fortuyn. Using rings of iron originally intended as barrel hoops, the fire hoops were coated with caulking tow and then steeped in boiling tar, a process which was repeated until they were as thick as a man's leg. After being lifted over the parapet with a large pair of tongs, the fire hoops were lit and sent careening down the hillside. The psychological effect of these bouncing circles of hellfire was obviously profound, but the physical damage they inflicted was measurable as well, especially among the janissaries, whose loose robes made them particularly susceptible to catching fire. With no well, stream, or other body of water nearby to douse themselves, these unfortunate soldiers simply ran and screamed until they died in agony, often spreading the flames (and fear) to others if their accompanying squadron was more tightly packed. The rough terrain of the outlying Campi Flegrei also made resupply very difficult, and every week a day or two would pass in which the Ottoman artillery and sharpshooters would go completely silent for lack of powder and shot.

    When the charges were finally set, the explosion blew a chunk out of Sant'Elmo's foundation, but left no damage to the upper walls. Unable to create a ramp into the fort by reducing the walls with artillery and tunnels, and under too much suppressing fire to attempt to scale the walls with ladders, Erhan opted to encircle Sant'Elmo instead and starve the defenders out. This change of plans required at least a week more of trench-digging to round Vomero and reach the walls of the Certosa di San Martino. The days passed as they had before, although von Albeck made sure to send additional munitions, polearms, axes, wooden planks, and a company of arquebusiers along the Petraio footpath (the only road connecting Naples to Vomero) to reinforce, rearm, and repair the rudimentary defences of San Martino after receiving news of Ottoman movement in that direction. After a painful 8 days digging and stacking rocks and dirt for bulwarks to absorb arquebus shots, the Ottoman line finally came within distance of the Certosa acceptable for a mass assault. After an intense 7 hours spent furiously exchanging gunfire and then fighting hand to hand in the hallways of the Certosa, Ottoman troops had secured the monastic grounds and cut off Sant'Elmo from Naples. As the Certosa also functioned as the sick bay for Sant'Elmo, it housed dozens of wounded defenders,, all of whom were shot or gutted in their beds. The fort remained unassailable, however, and the Ottomans had to remain hunkered down in San Martino or keep their heads ducked in the hillside trenches, unable to descend down the Petraio into Naples proper as well for fear of the gunners atop Sant'Elmo, merely a few hundred meters above them.

    The Ottoman contingent at Vomero might have been more regularly supplied and supported had Piyale Pasha not simultaneously been preoccupied with preparing for a mass assault on the curtain wall of Naples. Aware of the infernal efficiency and precision with which the Ottoman engineering corps was known to operate, Albeck ordered frequent sorties to raid the Ottoman trenches and mines and inflict whatever damage they could. Counter-tunnels were also dug to take the Ottoman miners head on, or to run parallel with the Ottoman tunnels and then be detonated, collapsing both. Large casualties were usually taken and important officers sometimes captured in these sorties, and the dangers of digging tunnels also meant that many of the defenders lost their lives needlessly underground, but these operations succeeded in delaying Piyale's plans until late June. Once the carts full of dirt and stone stopped emerging from the Ottoman tunnels, the defenders knew the charges would soon be set and ignited at any moment, and girded themselves accordingly. At around 5 AM on June 23rd, two massive explosions collapsed sections of the curtain wall. While the reverberation of the falling wall faded, the air filled with the customary “Allahu akbar” that preceded a charge, which grew deafening as its roar was picked up by 22,000 attackers, countered from the walls by cries of “¡Santiago!” and “Gennaro!” Something was wrong, however. The Turks had spent weeks digging 4 tunnels, not 2. Furious over the delay, Piyale rode to the southwestern front, where Dervish Bey, governor of the sanjak of Shkodër, had been tasked with supervising the siegeworks. Blaming the slave and criminal laborers for laziness and intransigence, Dervish Bey informed Piyale that one tunnel had been deluged in an unseasonal rain storm 4 days before, and the sappers had not yet finished digging out all the runoff mud, while the charges in the other tunnel simply fizzled out, and had to be reset. The latter tunnel was detonated that same day and the former a week later, but Piyale’s intended strategy of surprising and overwhelming the defenders at four separate points simultaneously - and thus ensuring a quick and relatively painless victory - was foiled. After two hours had passed and the other two breaches failed to materialize, Von Albeck deduced that they Turks had either encountered difficulties or had dug the southwestern tunnels to confuse the defenders and spread them as thinly along the wall as was possible, and promptly ordered the bulk of his forces to relocate to the northwest. Thousands of Ottoman troops remained in their trenches in the southwest, while the rest of the assault took on the full brunt of the defenders to the north. The first assault failed, although the attackers gave as good as they got. Assaults on these breaches would continue regularly, both at night and during the day, every two to three days for the next 4 weeks. While morale was dwindling in Naples, it was likewise sagging in the Ottoman camp. Piyale’s troops had been on campaign almost nonstop for the past three years, and the wear and tear was now being profoundly exacerbated by the defiance encountered in Campania. Embittered by the death of their brothers in arms and impatient with the prolonged siege, the Turkish army flouted Piyale’s original policy of leniency towards the native population in increasingly savage ways on a daily basis, which only served to strengthen the resolve of those within the walls of Naples, who violently returned the Turks’ hatred whenever and wherever they could. Mutinous discontent simmered within the Ottoman ranks.

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    Rudolf von Albeck (center) leads the defense of Naples

    Things continued to develop in an unpredictable manner for Piyale. More intent on demoralizing and distracting the defenders, Piyale aimed his cannons not at the walls but over them, hoping to terrorize the inhabitants and possibly start a fire or hit a gunpowder magazine. The Neapolitans responded by removing cobblestone from the streets and dumping buckets of seawater on the exposed dirt, creating mud patches into which the Ottoman shells sunk harmlessly. Some explosive rounds landed in just the right spot, however. Once the drier summer months came around, the risk of fires started by Ottoman ordnance increased, with sporadic, small-scale fires throughout July and August caused by explosive shells. On one particular July afternoon, a flaming, bitumen-wrapped cannonball crashed into the slums in the northeast corner of the city unnoticed and began to spread. With an Ottoman assault underway at the southernmost breach in the walls, there weren't enough men available to stamp out the fire early on, and it soon became an inferno once it reached a minor gunpowder depot, the explosion of which threw the embers to the wind, spreading it further. Watching a quarter of Naples become enveloped in black smoke, Piyale Pasha seized on this opportunity and ordered his lieutenants to direct a general assault on every breach. Von Albeck had every bell in the city rung and sent detachments door to door to bring out every able-bodied man. Roughly 10,000 in all were called up, much of whom were boys and elderly men, and were handed either buckets of water and wet blankets or whatever weapon could be found for them - hammers, cudgels, rocks, butcher's knives, woodcutting axes, and even sharpened broomstick. All those who were chosen to fight were sent to the breach palisades, where the professional Spanish troops and the veterans of the Italian garrison formed the front ranks along with the more experienced Knights of St. John. Ottoman troops at the two northernmost breaches were able to force their way inside the walls three times, and on numerous occasions it seemed certain that the collapse of Naples' defenses was imminent. Nevertheless, with a raging firestorm at their backs and the Ottoman Empire's toughest troops slinging bullets and arrows and swinging scimitars at their faces, Naples' defenders held the line, and after 6 hours of combat, Piyale ordered a retreat from the walls. With the defenses of Naples at their weakest, Piyale would nonetheless be unable to quickly organize another large assault, as a potential catalyst for the Holy League’s long-awaited march southwards had just arrived in Rome.

    Charles X of France was initially keen on providing whatever military assistance he could to drive back the Turks, but his enthusiasm was deflated by opposition from Kaiser Philipp II, who was prudent to a fault, and - as was to be expected - was not in the least bit enthused by the idea of French armies marching across Northern Italy once more, no matter their intent or destination. At first merely reluctant to allow French troops passage within the Empire, Philipp's concerns were doubled when the young Duke of Lorraine, Charles III, (his imperial vassal) insisted on marching alongside the French expedition to Italy. Imperial troops were sent to man the Alpine Passes into Savoy as well as forts along the Rhine and the cities of Basel and Geneva. Outraged at this overly defensive response to his request to join his forces to the Holy League (which Philipp II was instrumental in creating) - especially at a time when the defense of Christendom was at stake - Charles X retracted his promises and refused to talk anymore about involvement in Italy. The crusading spirit of the eldest daughter of the Church was not stillborn, however. Jealousy had been brewing among the peerage of France over the house of Guise’s newfound proximity to the king after the Sainte-Ligue descended on Paris in 1560, and by 1572 the duke of Guise, François, and his son Henri had more or less become personae non gratae at the French court, largely due to the machinations of the diplomat Michel de l'Hôpital and François de Montmorency, the marshal of France. Unable (at least temporarily) to provide military assistance at home against the rebellious Farelard Confederates and wary of nefarious plots in Paris, François relocated to Château du Grand Jardin, his family estate in Joinville. Looking to distance his son from any hostile actions by royal courtiers, François gave Henri permission to undertake an ambitious plan to fulfill their Christian duty, bring prestige to France, and hopefully restore the House of Guise’s good name at home by assembling an army in Italy - independent of royal assistance or even consent - to protect Rome against the Turks.

    Taking the roundabout route from the family estates in Champagne with 600 retainers and gendarmes, Henri de Guise gathered another 1,200 through Picardy and along the Loire, and 700 in Aquitaine gifted by the League of Rodez, a chapter of the Holy League. Blocked from descending in Piemonte, Henri welcomed another 2,000 Provençal volunteers on his way to Marseille, along with 1,500 more from Savoy and Liguria. Luckily the House of Guise had friendly relations with the Dorias of Genoa, and were able to bypass the Imperial garrisons in the Alps by embarking on a fleet of Genoese galleys, which unloaded them at Fiumicino in Lazio in May of 1573. After his arrival in Rome, Henri’s expedition was joined by an assembled group of French expatriates and the condottieri and Swiss mercenaries whose services they had purchased upon hearing of his embarkation in Provence - numbering 2,500. Henri was invited to join the commanders appointed to defend Rome: Alfonso II d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio, Francesco Ferdinando d’Ávalos d'Aquino, the marquis of Pescara and Vasto, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, the son of the Duke of Urbino, and Karl von Habsburg, the cousin of Kaiser Philipp II and Landkomtur of the bailiwick of Austria. The number of armed men committed to the Holy League now tallied at roughly 18,000.

    Anxious over the army mustering at Rome, Mehmet III did what he could to attempt to jolt the Habsburgs back eastwards by sending an 8,000 man army (mostly Slavic yayas) to Belgrade, and 3,000 Tatar horsemen to raid Transylvania. Temesköz and the region around Déva were badly pillaged, but Philipp II called the Sultan’s bluff and continued to oversee the mustering of troops for the Holy League in Lombardy. With the winter rains approaching and the campaigning season drawing to a close, Piyale Pasha needed to act quickly and dramatically in order to either galvanize a peace offering from the Holy League or demoralize Naples into surrender. With Naples still holding out - albeit feebly - and Christian forces arriving piecemeal in Lazio, Piyale decided that only the boldest show of force would topple the still-flimsy Christian relief and shock the Holy League into a favorable ceasefire - or at least prevent a full scale withdrawal from Campania. Unexpectedly, Piyale detached a contingent of his best artillery crews and a supplemental force of 3,000 janissaries, placing them under the command of Hüsnü Bey and sending them north to march double-time over the tumultuous hill country and surround Benevento. Although well-fortified (if undermanned), this outlier fell in just two weeks and was left with a minimal garrison before the bulk of this contingent left to link up with another 12,000 separated from the siege at Naples, marching directly towards Rome. Piyale’s orders to Hüsnü were specific and cautious: get as close to Rome as possible and rain terror on the Roman suburbs, draw out a contingent of the coalition's forces into a disadvantageous position, inflict as much damage as possible, and pull back to Campania if Turkish losses were mounting too quickly or too disproportionately. Fortunately for the Holy League, an unnamed Benedictine monk - having witnessed the rapid arrival of the Turks along the Valle Latina from nearby Monte Cassino - made the bold decision to descend from the monastery just barely ahead of the Turkish army and ride as hard as he could to Rome to alert Henri de Guise. Piyale’s gambit produced part of its desired effect among the officers of the Holy League in Rome, who greeted the news with some panic, unsure if this meant Naples had fallen and that now the Turks were prepared to throw their full weight at the Eternal City.

    The charismatic Henri de Guise was instrumental in rallying the members of the Holy League to act as quickly as possible, in order to ensure any armed confrontation took place far from Rome. The disparate components of the Holy League were slow to coalesce into a unified fighting force, and were unable to take up a favorable position at Frosinone, nor to prevent its sack by the Turks, but were able to stop Hüsnü Bey in his tracks at Palestrina - only 30 kilometers from Rome. From its vantage point on a hilltop near San Bartolomeo, the Ottoman artillery was able to cut the Holy League’s line to ribbons, and the northeast flank under Alfonso II d'Este buckled when Hüsnü ordered a company of janissaries to seize on the wavering Italian troops, breaking up their ranks with a barrage of grandes followed by a charge. Henri de Guise’s line held, however - even to the detriment of the young French nobleman, who took an arquebus ball to the cheek but continued fighting - preventing the Ottomans from collapsing the army of the Holy League entirely. The retreating Christian lines also drew more Ottoman troops within range of their enemy’s artillery, further disintegrating the cohesion of either army, devolving the battle into chaos. As the day was humid and windless, the field had quickly filled with a heavy cloud of gunsmoke, spoiling the momentum of the Turkish charge and obscuring the line of sight for the arquebusiers and artilleryman of both sides, leading to misplaced shots that ended in devastating friendly fire. As the battle spiraled out of control, the Ottoman artillery suddenly came under direct threat by Karl von Habsburg, who had intended to outmaneuver a company of flanking sipahis and ended up on the edge of the Ottoman camp. With landsknechts spilling in dangerously close to his own tent, Hüsnü drew back his janissaries to protect the Ottoman baggage, and then sounded a retreat. After the smoke cleared, around 3,000 Ottoman troops had been killed or captured, and 16 Ottoman cannons were seized. In comparison, the losses suffered by the Holy League were severe, with more than 6,000 dead or wounded. Still, the fact that the intruding Turks had successfully been driven off offered a major morale boost to the members of the Holy League, who felt this to be a sign that the tide was beginning to turn in their favor. The Christian leaders were surprised to discover, however, that this was not the army of Piyale Pasha and that Naples was in fact still in Spanish hands, and were disturbed to learn that this army that had nearly bowled over the combined forces of the Holy League was merely a probing contingent (albeit one with a large component of elite janissaries).

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    The encounter at Palestrina had not ended up fulfilling its intended purpose for the Ottomans at Naples, who had meanwhile failed to fully penetrate the walls of Naples, and had not succeeded in starving out Castel Sant’Elmo, the assault on which alone had cost the Ottomans no less than 3,500 lives. The long awaited and perhaps inevitable outbreak of disease struck in early October as dysentery diffused through the Ottoman camp, exacerbated by the onset of torrential Autumn rain. Risking a jeopardized withdrawal due to the muddying roads and wary of news of the Spanish in Cagliari preparing to relieve the city, Piyale accepted that 1573 would not be the year in which Naples was to be taken, and somberly gave the orders to strike camp and begin the laborious journey eastwards. Over the 6 and a half months of siege, no less than 20,000 Neapolitans and Campanians had lost their lives. With all things considered, the Kapudan Pasha had performed well given his circumstances, and was able to make an orderly withdrawal with most of his army back to Cerignola, leaving behind a heavily battered Naples. Deep-seated indignation towards Naples and anxiety about the displeasure of his Sultan were both welling up within Piyale, who immediately set about making plans to return to Naples at the beginning of Spring, this time with a vengeance.

    - Milites Christi -

    Swiss mercenaries and landsknechts on Habsburg payroll (as well as Austrian and Tyrolean levies) had been crucial to the victory at Palestrina, meaning that any further action depended on the sustained agreement between the Holy League’s Spanish and Habsburg parties. Naturally, the Holy League entered a deadlock as Philipp II became more conditional with the usage of his soldiers, and the victory at Palestrina would therefore not be quickly followed up. After Palestrina, nearly three months were spent in negotiation among representatives of the Holy League, primarily between the Habsburgs, represented by Philipp II's Flemish ambassador, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, and the Spanish, represented by Juan Pelayo’s cousin, Emanuele, duke of Calabria, who met regularly in the Apostolic Palace on Vatican Hill and were mediated by Pope Pius V. Emanuele reminded his audience that Naples was, of course, still under siege, and as long as it was in great peril, Rome would be as well. He asserted that if Naples - being the most important city in Southern Italy and, more importantly, a mere 200 kilometers away - were to fall, the Turks would have in Naples the perfect operating base and would surely waste no time in returning to Rome - although next time not with 15,000 troops, but 150,000. Busbecq informed Emanuele that his Kaiser still wished to do all in his power to quicken the demise of the Turks, and that he deeply cherished the long standing friendship between the Houses of Austria and Spain, but he also needed to be sensible with the resources available to him - after all, had the 20 Years’ War not proven that the Habsburgs’ fight against heresy in the heart of Christendom was no less important than the Avis-Trastámaras’ struggle against Islam? It was common knowledge that after decades of constant warfare the House of Habsburg was struggling to either pay off or postpone payments on their staggering debt, and, with social upheaval in the Netherlands, growing tensions with Denmark, and the Hungarian frontier still vulnerable to the Turks, Philipp II insisted that any further assistance to Spain be withheld unless significant concessions and guarantees could be secured from Juan Pelayo. Busbecq laid out his liege’s terms accordingly, in three straightforward requests:

    1. The remission of 4 million ducats in outstanding debt owed to the Casa de Prestación and its affiliate enterprises
    2. A new 2 million ducat loan from the Casa de Prestación at no more than 6% interest
    3. the opening of the heretofore off-limits ports of Spanish America to trade with the cities of Antwerp and Dordrecht.

    Money was easy enough for the king of Spain to part with (or so he thought), but the opening of his American empire to foreigners was nearly intolerable. Having overcome an extremely difficult rebellion in Nueva Vizcaya from 1552 to 1558 that threatened to kill the Spanish treasury’s most prized cash cow, Juan Pelayo was extremely cautious when it came to loosening Spanish America’s reliance on Spain proper, but with Piyale Pasha amassing troops just across the Apennines and Naples’ defences in critical condition, this momentous concession had to be made. Similar guarantees had to be made to persuade the other powerful assets of the Holy League into taking further action. Piyale Pasha had meanwhile supplemented his decimated army with every nonessential garrison and patrol in Apulia and Calabria, and convinced Mehmet III to empty the garrisons of much of Bosnia, Serbia, Albania, and all of Greece except for the Peloponnese and Chalcis, and to have them ferried to Italy posthaste. When Piyale Pasha re-entered Campania in May of 1574, his ground quaking army numbered a terrifying 77,000. The Spanish and the other members of the Holy League were now racing fervently to reinforce Naples before Piyale’s impossibly large army overwhelmed it. Having been preparing a proper army to contest the Ottomans in Italy for the last year and a half, Spain’s troop ships swept into the Gulf of Gaeta not a moment too soon. Unloaded to the north of Naples from Sardinia were 7 tercios numbering 21,000, along with 3,500 light cavalry and 2,500 artillerymen and engineers, all under the leadership of none other Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba. Those in the Holy League’s camp at Aversa cheered at the arrival of so many Spaniards, and the Italian princes conferred leadership to the Iron Duke. Giving the north and south flanks to Karl von Habsburg and Emanuele of Calabria, the Duke of Alba commanded 27,000 Spaniards, 7,000 Neapolitans, and 11,000 condottieri, landsknechts, and other mercenaries and troops in the employ of the Habsburgs and a number of Italian princes. Not wanting the Ottomans to encircle him and put his back to the sea, the Duke of Alba decided to take Piyale Pasha head-on at the outskirts of Naples near the city of Caserta.

    The battle of Caserta was by far the largest land battle of what came to be known as the Great Turkish War, and would prove to be something of a definitive face-off between the strengths of the Ottoman and Spanish Empires. The janissaries lived up to their legacy as the fearsome shock troops of the Ottoman Sultan. Unlike their Christian adversaries, the janissaries had known literally nothing but warfare since their adolescence, and were proficient not only with their scimitars and arquebuses, but with polarms, bows, daggers, and grenades of glass and porcelain. Under the right circumstances, they could bust up a tercio formation with either a hail of their grenades or with the superior range of their arquebuses. There were, however, only 9,000 janissaries at Caserta, and only 14,000 in the world. The rest of the Ottoman infantry left much to be desired when weighed against a Spanish tercio or a seasoned company of landsknechts or condottieri. It was this dead weight that the janissaries essentially had to carry and cover for, and it was simply impossible for them to be sent every single place on the battlefield where they needed to be and when. On the other side, a company of a Spanish tercio could only be broken up if it was properly isolated or under pressure from some drastic disturbance, such as a well-placed artillery volley. At even numbers, the piqueros, rodeleros, and arcabuceros of a veteran tercio were perhaps evenly matched (at best) with the janissaries, but when two companies converged on a company of janissaries in pincer-like formation - even at inferior numbers - the janissaries were usually overwhelmed. The battle of Caserta would therefore prove whether the individual strength and expertise of elite soldiers like the janissaries and sipahis could overcome the advancements made in mixed unit tactics in Western and Central Europe.

    While the Ottoman army was as formidable as many feared, the only other significant advantage they had over most European armies they encountered was their superior firearms and artillery. However, while the Ottoman marksmen were beginning to be equipped en masse with the revolutionary wheellock musket, a very large percentage of them were still carrying matchlocks, which were prone to misfire and were inoperable in wet weather. In contrast, most of the marksmen of the Holy League at Caserta were armed with snaplock and snaphaunce muskets, which used flint to light their powder and could therefore operate in all but the rainiest weather.
    The numerical balance was also tilted slightly by the sheer size of both armies, which prohibited sizable portions of each from participating in the combat. Additionally the voracious Spanish appetite for firearms meant that the percentage of musket-carrying soldiers was greater in the Holy league’s army, something of which the Duke of Alba was conscious. Alba gave orders to encircle the Ottoman army despite his inferior numbers in order to concentrate firepower at as many angles as possible. Being enfiladed from two sides, Piyale was blocked from forcing the thin line of Spaniards surrounding his troops back due to the tercio’s defensive mechanism, in which the arquebusiers simply traded places with the pikemen in the event of an enemy closing in. Attempts to outflank the Spanish were further frustrated by the battlefield that had been chosen; attempting to flank Holy league’s northern wing brought the Ottoman sipahis within range of the artillery on the fortifications of Caserta, slowing them significantly and allowing for a counter charge, while an attempt to flank the southern wing was surprised by a tercio in reserve, which closed the gap between themselves and the crescent of tercios, skewering the Ottoman incursion between them. With such a massive number of troops forced into a shrinking space, the distribution of the different Ottoman units was lost and different companies became enmeshed with one another, complicating the issuing of orders from the Ottoman leadership.

    Watching his well-ordered and intimidatingly large army be inexplicably balled up into a mass of bloody corpses, Piyale ordered a retreat. Unfortunately for the Spanish, as the tide was turning, a shrapnel from an exploding cannonball cleaved Alba’s breastplate, piercing his chest. Nevertheless, the Spanish commander continued giving orders as he bled internally, and, after the tercios threatened to waver over the news of Alba’s injury, order was restored when word spread that he was still alive. After 8 hours of combat, Piyale left the field. Thousands were massacred in the retreat, and even more were massacred who retreated misguidedly towards the nearby Valle de Maddaloni instead of southward toward Nola. The Duke of Alba, the King of Spain’s most faithful servant, would live only long enough to see the immediate outcome of his final master stroke, and would expire from his wounds that night.

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    While he had intended to fall back to Avellino and leave a garrison there to cover his retreat, Piyale had falsely expected disarray in the Christian camp with the death of the Duke of Alba, and had to force a more hurried retreat farther southeast when the vanguard of the army of the Holy League under Emanuele, the duke of Calabria, gave full pursuit. Benevento, Lucera, and Foggia all had to be abandoned, and Piyale deposited garrisons in Potenza and Melfi to hold the Appenine passes against further encroachment by the Holy League. As Emanuele of Calabria settled in with his troops outside the walls of Potenza, uncertainty overtook the leaders of the Holy League. Piyale Pasha and Occhiali were still both alive and uncaptured, all of Apulia and Lucania were still firmly in Ottoman control, and Ottoman ships still regularly ferried supplies across the Strait of Otranto. For many, it seemed that the most realistic option would be to acknowledge the quandary of the situation and cede Apulia or perhaps Sicily to Mehmet III in exchange for peace, but the idea of a permanent Ottoman foothold on the Italian Peninsula or its islands was too unsettling for most of the Holy League and simply unbearable for Juan Pelayo and the princes of Italy. The Venetian delegates - many of whom having spent a considerable amount of time in Konstantiniyye and in Mehmet III’s presence - were knowledgeable of the atmosphere in the High Porte and considered it unlikely that Mehmet III would even be willing to settle for Apulia or Sicily. The Venetians were convinced that the Ottoman Sultan would never offer conciliatory terms unless the combined military might of his empire was jeopardized. Therefore if Southern Italy were to be be completely purged of the Turks some external factor would be needed to precipitate the collapse of Piyale’s campaign or at least place it in an completely unworkable position.

    While the many signatories of the Holy League understood that a large-scale naval encounter with the Turks was both inevitable and necessary, the Spanish grand admiral Álvaro de Bazán was adamant that the Ottoman navy be struck with an overpowering force as soon as possible, no matter the situation on land. Nothing less than a complete victory at sea and the destruction of the bulk of the Ottoman fleet - if not its entirety - would suffice. As it stood, despite the victory at Caserta, the combined armies of the Holy League simply lacked the numbers to fully eject the Turks from the Italian Peninsula, especially if resupply across the Adriatic remained possible. A sudden and devastating end to Ottoman naval supremacy would leave between 30,000 and 40,000 Ottoman troops (and no less than 7,000 janissaries) stranded in Southern Italy, cut off from any viable supply route. What was more, Bazán warned that if the Turks be allowed to withdraw even a sizable fraction of their forces across the Adriatic in retreat, they would bring back with them the experience gained by the Ottoman officers and soldiery in Southern Italy. The lay of the land, its terrain, its native populace and their language, its seasonal weather, and the layout of its fortifications would find its way back to Rumelia alongside thousands of prisoners and slaves and whatever plunder they could afford to carry. In short, unless the Turks were properly trapped in Apulia, then the valuable lessons they had learned in Southern Italy could be properly studied within their own borders, meaning that the Italian Peninsula would remain in peril of a more coordinated and adaptive Ottoman invasion in the future. Bazán’s plan gained the traction it needed from the Genoese and Venetian representatives (who had an obvious interest in wiping out the Ottoman navy), and the matter was decided with the approval of Pope Pius V, who offered a blank check of 10,000 ducats to pay for the procurement of ships and seamen.

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    Pope Pius V

    Genoese ships were secured easily enough, but the Venetian navy was at anchor in the Venetian lagoon and therefore was cut off from the rest of the ships of the Holy League by the massive Ottoman navy hovering around the Strait of Otranto. With nearly 300 ships at their disposal, the Ottoman navy could not be challenged without the renowned naval power of the Most Serene Republic. When Doge Alvise Mocenigo allowed his name to be added to the document swearing a Holy League at Rome in 1572, the High Porte treated this as a declaration of war by the Republic of Venice and prepared to move against the Venetians in Dalmatia and wherever they could be found in the Adriatic, bypassing the much closer Crete in order to strike close to the city of Venice and force the republic to accept terms of peace as quickly as possible. This meant that any movement by Venetian warships was bound to be quickly confronted by the Ottomans in order to keep the naval forces of the Holy League separated. When a Venetian fleet numbering 72 galleys sailed southward from Venice in late 1574, it was soon met by an Ottoman fleet at Termoli, where the Venetians unexpectedly lost 16 ships and retreated in defeat, much to the relief of the Ottomans and the disappointment of the Holy League. However, despite strict instructions from the Venetian Senate not to risk any excessive damage or danger to the Republic’s fleet, Barbarigo - in a moment of compassionate determination - ripped up the orders commissioned to him from the Senate and pledged his fleet to converge on Messina with the other ships of the Holy League, no matter what chances they had of victory. Pushing his rowers hard to cut across the Adriatic and descend the Dalmatian Coast, Barbarigo anchored at Ragusa, where - in typical Venetian fashion - he sold any ships that were undermanned or needed to be scuttled. From Ragusa, Barbarigo rode the southwesterly current along the Apulian Coast toward Otranto.

    With the Strait of Messina as the only significant waterway guarding Ottoman activities in the eastern half of the Mediterranean that remained in Ottoman hands, Piyale Pasha gave emergency orders to Occhiali to withdraw whatever forces he could from Calabria and Sicily and defend Messina and Reggio to the last man. Occhiali - who was a corsair first and a loyal subject of the Padishah Sultan second - was more concerned about his ships. As the supervisor of all naval activity beyond the Strait of Messina, Occhiali was much more privy to the goings-on in the Western Mediterranean and the buildup of the many fleets of the Holy League. With 67 galleys and galiots at anchor in Messina, Occhiali knew his fleet would be easily overwhelmed if the Holy League descended on him in full force. Occhiali ascertained that the Holy League lacked the numbers to simultaneously relieve Naples (obviously their priority) and retake Messina, an assumption that turned out to be correct, and he was likewise correct to assume that the naval forces of the Holy League would try to force a battle that envelops as much of the Turkish fleet as possible, and therefore he needed to keep his ships in close proximity to the Ottoman navy’s center of gravity. Occhiali therefore had good reason to believe that the Holy League would not be able to take advantage of an open Strait of Messina for at least half a year, and relocated his fleet to Taranto in outright defiance of the Kapudan Pasha’s orders. Without Messina, the Ottoman front in Sicily started to unravel. Müezzinzade Ali Pasha, Damat Ibrahim Pasha, and their Turkish officers were powerless to prevent mass desertions, particularly among their North African auxiliaries, who boarded any available ships sporadically to secure passage back to the ports of the Barbary Coast that were not in Spanish hands. The two Turkish commanders were incensed as they were forced to fill in the vacuum left by Occhiali’s unapproved departure, stretching their numbers thin across Syracuse, Catania, and Messina. With almost 200 hostile ships fast approaching Messina, this city had to be abandoned as well, leaving the Ottoman army stuck in the southeastern corner of Sicily, entirely unsure of what to do next.

    As the vast majority of Ottoman military traffic had been busy crossing the Strait of Otranto back and forth for the last 4 years, it was no mystery where the site of confrontation would eventually be, however, in the mad flurry of galleys, galleons, and regular supply ships choking every route of the Central Mediterranean, ships were being sighted everywhere and it became near impossible for either side to pinpoint the exact location of the bulk of their adversary’s fleet. Receiving additional ships from València and Palma de Mallorca, Luis de Requesens departed from Cagliari with 42 ships and Álvaro de Bazán departed from Tunis with 47, both en route to Palermo where they picked up an additional 15 ships; Mathurin Romegas and the Knights of St. John rounded up their galleys from Djerba, Monastir, and the Grand Harbor of Malta - 26 in all - and passed Syracuse on their way to Messina; Gianandrea Doria led 24 ships from Genoa and 8 ships from Tuscany-Romagna out of Porto-Vecchio in Corsica to Fuimicino in Lazio, and from there along the coast to Messina; heading from Ragusa, Agostino Barbarigo had 46 ships in tow, and the elderly captain Sebastiano Venier trailed him from Ancona with another 18; last but not least, Pope Pius V had funded 12 galleys of his own, captained by Marcantonio Colonna and Paolo Orsini and joined by another 4 ships which were financed by private French investors, and had his fleet join with Doria at Fiumicino on the way to Sicily. In total, the Holy League had brought together 242 ships - 20 galleasses, 22 galleons, 28 galiots, and 172 galleys. Encouraged by the Ottoman abandonment of Messina (and unable to sufficiently resupply in the empty city), the ships of the Holy League pushed onward, hoping to catch the Ottoman fleet unprepared. Pushing towards Otranto, the Holy League’s fleet skipped over the Gulf of Taranto, where the fleet of the feared corsair Occhiali lay in wait. Ecstatic at the success of his trap, Occhiali put to sail and followed the rear of the Holy League’s fleet at a distance. When the fleets of the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire finally met 10 kilometers from the port of Otranto, both sides had been flanked: the Christians from the south by Occhiali, and the Turks from the north by Barbarigo.

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    The Battle of Otranto

    Against the Spanish center, the line of Piyale Pasha’s lieutenant Hassan Veneziano scored first blood by landing a shot right on the main mast of the massive galleass San Casiano de Tánger. However, the Spanish galleass used the momentum of its collapsing mast to swing about and deliver an 80-cannon salvo right into the cluster of galleys surrounding Hassan’s flagship. Intense fighting between the galleys, galleasses, and galiots commenced while the galleons lagged behind. After 2 hours of bloodshed, the dreaded circumstances arose and an easterly wind sprung up, driving the galleons into the midst of the battle. When it came to mano-a-mano confrontation between a Turkish galley and a Christian galley, the Turks prevailed consistently, in part owed to their continued usage of bows alongside firearms. While bows were considered obsolete by 16th century European navies in comparison to the arquebus, a standard Turkish bowman could fire 10 to 20 arrows in a minute (which could penetrate plate armor), which was a considerable advantage at close quarters compared to the 2 shots an arquebusier could make in the same timeframe. However, as at Caserta, the tactics and hardware of the Ottoman military proved to be outdated in a handful of ways that proved critical. The archetypal Ottoman-Barbary galley was once the terror of the Mediterranean - sleek, fast, and piloted by experienced seamen. These values still held up, but the mobility and firepower of such galleys paled in comparison to some of the vessels they found themselves pitted against. The primary source of trouble came from the galleons; they lacked rowers who could effect quick re-positioning and bursts of speed and, of course, could ram their opponents, but, without the need for oarsmen, more space was opened up in the design of the vessel for a greater number of marines and, more importantly, a greater number of larger artillery pieces. While their movement was almost entirely at the mercy of the wind, the galleons were effectively impossible for standard galleys to approach due to their superior firepower, hull strength, and higher freeboard - the latter of which left the topdeck of the galleys extremely vulnerable to the galleon’s gunners when in close range. The only feasible strategy that the Ottoman galleys could find in respect to these hulking vessels was to hope and pray that the wind did not pick up in their advantage and that they were kept as far away as possible, or were prohibited by shallow waters or crushed one at a time by overwhelming force. Significant money had also been poured in by Spain and the other powers of the Holy League to produce an outsized number of massive galleasses, some of which held as many as 200 cannons.

    The sudden entry of almost two dozen galleons - bristling with guns - was devastating. One particular Portuguese galleon, the Elefante, repulsed the boarding attempts of no less than three galleys at once, all three of which it proceeded to sink. The Ottoman center was split in half, leaving one half of it between the Spanish from the south and the Venetians from the north. Occhiali’s flanking maneuver fared much better, destroying at least 20 ships, but this too was reversed when the Venetians were able to join the fight on the southern flank. When Occhiali’s lieutenant Sinan Reis routed without order, Occhiali himself attempted to flee the bloody waters. A great deal of importance was placed on killing or capturing this Italian renegade, whose very existence was an affront to the Italian Christians who pursued him. No less than four ships were sunk or disengaged as they pursued Occhiali off of Cape Leuca, until a well-aimed chain shot decapitated the elderly corsair at his shoulders. Found drifting in the crimson waters were golden chalices and candlesticks pillaged from churches as far away as Sorrento. The crusading frenzy long outlasted the fighting. Hundreds of bobbing Turkish bodies were drawn up by the victorious sailors, who chopped off the heads, ears, noses, hands, and feet. These mutilated remains were then loaded into their cannons, and fired over the walls of Otranto - the most unsettling way for the shocked Turkish garrison to learn that the massive naval battle had been lost.

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    After Otranto, the Ottoman army’s supply of powder, shot, and - most importantly - food all began to diminish rapidly, and were only replaced in any measure with great difficulty. Within a few months the Apulian and Lucanian countryside was stripped bare of any foodstuffs, and the looming risk of mass starvation menaced the Turkish troops. Mass desertion on land and mutinies at sea to secure ships for passage back across the Adriatic became commonplace, and a semblance of discipline was only restored after grisly public executions and floggings became equally commonplace. With only 22,000 men he could reliably assemble, Piyale moved north from Matera to meet the Holy League near Altamura. As the opposing armies lined up across from each other, Piyale dismounted, drew his saber, and cut down his horse in front of his troops, letting them know that there would be no retreat. Exhaustion and dissent among the Turks won the day for the Christians, and, true to his earlier symbolic gesture, Piyale ordered no retreat, and was captured alive and forced to sign a treaty of surrender (which he possessed no authority to sign) on behalf of all the Turks still in Italy. Mere weeks later, approached by an 8,000 man army led by the viceroy of Sicily, Carlo d'Aragona Tagliavia, the Ottoman forces in Syracuse and Catania surrendered in exchange for guarantees of safe passage back to Tripoli.

    What had started as a contest of men and ships in Southern Italy had now become a war of attrition between the finances of Spain and the Ottoman State. By 1576, the two wealthiest empires on Earth - and perhaps the wealthiest to ever exist up until that point - were practically heaving money directly into the furnace to spite one another. The Ottoman Sultans had indeed been blessed with lordship over the raw resources and human capital of the Balkans and Anatolia and the bustling commerce of the Bosporus, the Nile, the Red Sea, and the many overland routes of the Silk Road. Nonetheless, the riches of the Old World were ultimately no match for the deus ex machina that was American silver, and while the Spanish monarchy was barely breaking even throughout most of the 1570s and 1580s (even requesting loans from some of its wealthier encomenderos), the coffers of the High Porte went completely empty for the first time in 1578, and would remain empty for several years. The work at Cerro Rico de Potosí in Nueva Vizcaya and in the Altiplano of Nueva Castilla was intensifying, and record yields would continue to pour in at increasing quantities for the next few decades. The Ottoman presence in Italy became utterly hopeless with the death of Mehmet III in mid 1576, more than likely brought on by the stress and dejection over the events of the two preceding years. Mehmet’s equally energetic son Mustafa took his place, who quickly minced no words in letting the world know that he would neither make nor accept any peace offering with the king of Spain, nor would one more inch of land held in Italy be surrendered. The situation was, of course, out of his hands and the latter promise was not within his power to keep. The Spaniards retook Taranto by sea and overcame the garrison at Gioia del Colle after a six-week siege in early 1576, leaving Salento open and allowing them to besiege the last two Turkish bastions at Otranto and Brindisi. After months fighting a war of attrition and small skirmishes in the hills, and a two week and three week siege at Brindisi and Otranto, respectively, the last Ottoman garrison on the Italian Peninsula had surrendered on February 3rd of 1577. In May of the same year, Ottoman delegates met in Castelnuovo with dignitaries from every member state of the Holy League besides those of Spain, Genoa, Venice, and the Papal States, and secured a lasting peace treaty. The Ottoman invasion had ended in utter defeat, and the war in Italy was over. The desolation left behind was unimaginable, with hundreds of thousands displaced either temporarily or permanently. The consequences of the Great Turkish War would stretch forward into the following centuries, and for those nations not present at the Treaty of Castelnuovo, the war would continue at sea, both in the Mediterranean and thousands of miles away.
     
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    44. The Middle Sea Transformed
  • ~ The Middle Sea Transformed ~
    Mediterranean c. 1570-1585

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    By May of 1575, a naval counteroffensive by the princes of the Holy League against the Great Turk was imminent. Of the 280 Muslim vessels present at the battle of Otranto, only 81 remained in Ottoman hands. In contrast, 204 of the original 242 ships in the Holy League’s armada had survived the battle and most were still seaworthy and adequately manned. Those 81 Ottoman ships meanwhile were in disarray: of the vessels not captured or sunk at Otranto, 35 had regrouped at Corfu under Hassan Veneziano, 24 had scattered to the wind, and 22 had fled towards Tripoli under Sinan Reis, disobeying direct orders from Hassan. For the moment, Ottoman seapower was one crushing defeat away from being rendered virtually nonexistent. Feverish excitement seized the Christian leaders. The whole of the Mediterranean - right through the Aegean and possibly the Marmara as well - would be laid bare. Albania, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Syria, and the ultimate prizes of Constantinople and Jerusalem themselves all now seemed realistic goals for the Holy League. All that had to be done was strike while the iron was hot.

    This crusading spirit was encumbered by a few major issues, however. For one, the gargantuan fleet of galleys, galleasses, and galleons deployed at Otranto under the banners of the Holy League was brought together by an unwieldy coalition of dozens of princes and private individuals, most of whom had neither the funds nor the enthusiasm to push much further against the Turks. The Holy League’s success at Otranto was lightning in a bottle, a colossal undertaking propelled by a great number of equally skilled and inspired figures who - due to highly unusual circumstances - were able to convince an unprecedentedly large portion of Christendom to set aside their squabbles and cooperate against a common enemy for just one campaigning season. But now one of the Holy League’s leading patrons, Philipp II von Habsburg, was saddled with astronomical debt and plagued by a resurgent Protestant conspiracy in the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary, and was beginning to anxiously look for a way out of the conflict - at least for the time being. This was a matter that would continue to fan the ire of the king of Spain, who had bought the Kaiser's aid against the Turks with a hefty package of financial relief.

    Additionally, while the balance on land in Southern Italy had been decisively shifted against the Turks at Caserta in mid 1574, even after Otranto there remained tens of thousands of Turks on the Italian Peninsula under the yet-uncaptured Piyale Pasha. Sultan Mehmet also defiantly refused surrender, a refusal which would be echoed tenfold by his son and heir Mustafa when he took the throne after his father’s death in 1576. The king of Spain, Juan Pelayo, had given orders to his skilled admirals Luis de Requesens and Álvaro de Bazán that if total victory was achieved over the Turks at sea, they were to turn eastward to assist in the retaking of Lucania and Apulia. These orders they obeyed, leaving behind only 34 of the Spanish ships under Bazán’s lieutenant, Pedro de Bolnuevo, who was given the task of ensuring Turkish supply lines across the Adriatic and Ionian Seas remained terminated. So gargantuan had been the Ottoman undertaking that it took a whole year and 9 months after the Turks’ supply chain had been completely cut off at the battle of Otranto to finally finish off the last Turkish remnant on the Italian Peninsula.

    The question now was what to do with the initiative gained at sea. With the Ottoman navy in shambles and the bulk of the Ottoman army trapped in Apulia and afflicted with hunger and demoralization, there was overblown optimism for the next target, with many calling for an assault on Konstantiniyye itself. However, the resilience of the Turkish capital, disputes over who would take ownership of the city, and the exhaustion of a now 5 year conflict quickly shelved any such idea. To the Venetian admiral Agostino Barbarigo, the recapture of Corfu seemed to be the logical next step after securing the Straits of Otranto, but the Spanish, Papal, Genoese, and Hospitaller leadership overruled this in favor of hounding Hassan Veneziano and destroying the rest of the Ottoman navy. Barbarigo was beside himself over the decision and threatened to disengage his ships. Sebastiano Venier cooled his comrade’s temper by pointing out that the Ottomans still had a sizable garrison on the island that would require far more resources to besiege than they had. Venier also motivated Barbarigo by reminding him that this might be their only chance to capture Hassan Veneziano, a traitor not only to the Christian faith but to their own beloved Republic. The Turkish garrison in the old fortress at Corfu - too large to be confronted but dwindling along with their supplies - and the Holy League’s ships - out of range for the Turkish guns - eyed one another apprehensively as the fleet moved southward.

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    The island and fortress of Corfu

    After scouring the coast of Epirus, a Turkish fleet of 20 ships was eventually found and smashed in the Ambracian Gulf at Vonizza, in the shadow of another long abandoned Venetian castle, but Hassan Veneziano was nowhere to be found, having sped away as hastily as he could to the south. Facing either inevitable execution back in Konstantiniyye or capture by the vengeful Christians, Hassan was prepared to make a last stand against the Holy League at Igoumenitsa (opposite Corfu), but, in a rare act of mercy (or simply fearing for the fate of his ships), Sultan Mehmet wrote to Hassan swearing full pardon for the captain’s failure to secure victory at Otranto if he set sail for the Golden Horn immediately. With mixed orders as to how to proceed at this point, the admirals of the Holy League seized Preveza and harbored there indecisively for 16 days, with the Venetians renewing their appeal for a blockade of Corfu. The sudden arrival of 18 Venetian galleys under Marcantonio Bragadin - carrying orders from Doge Alvise Mocenigo to prioritize the securing of Venetian interests in the region - decided the matter for Barbarigo and Venier, who separated from the Holy League fleet and sailed north with Bragadin to put Corfu to siege. Pedro de Bolnuevo redirected the Holy League fleet to Avlonya and Durazzo, which he bombarded, reducing their fortifications but leaving their harborrs untouched, after which the Ottoman garrisons at Otranto and Brindisi were similarly harassed. After receiving news in early November of 1575 that Piyale Pasha was reorganizing his forces to confront the Holy League at Altamura, Pedro de Bolnuevo withdrew the Spanish ships to Barletta to assist in dealing a final blow to the Ottoman campaign in Italy. With this, the fleet assembled by the members of the Holy League at Otranto dissipated.

    Had matters on land in Southern Italy been resolved before the battle of Otranto, then the full weight of the Holy League’s armada might have been able to wreak havoc on the shores of the Islamic Mediterranean with impunity for decades to come and possibly could have rushed the Golden Horn, galvanizing a coup in the High Porte to secure peace and precipitating a real collapse of sorts of Ottoman authority in its fringe territories. This was not to be, however, and may have been an unlikely outcome to begin with. However, even without the assistance of the Venetians (who had succeeded in their recapture of Corfu and now turned to the remaining Ionian Islands) or the commitment of the Holy League’s other members, the Spanish monarchy and authorities in Spanish Italy were in agreement that some counteroffensive - no matter how small - should be pursued against the Turks.

    The long years of domestic and foreign strife and struggle - combined with the wear and tear of the Spanish monarchy’s customary semi-nomadic lifestyle - had finally come to bear on Juan Pelayo by the mid-1570s, and long distance or overseas travel was no longer feasible for the aging, arthritic king. Preoccupied with matters in Portugal, Juan Pelayo sent the Infante Gabriel to Naples to oversee the restabilization of Spanish Italy and gave him plenipotentiary powers in regards to the unresolved Turkish problem.With thousands of Spanish and Italian troops already mobilized across the Mezzogiorno and with Ottoman Epirus virtually ungarrisoned, Gabriel ordered an expedition to assemble at Taranto in early 1576 at the suggestion of Pedro Girona, 1st Duke of Osuna and new viceroy of Naples, to be commanded by Vespasiano Gonzaga, duke of Amalfi and lifelong friend of the infante. In less than a month and a half, Gonzaga and his fleet of 36 galleys and complement of 2,700 Spanish marines and 4,500 Italian conscripts and condottieri seized in rapid succession Durazzo, Avlonya, and the fortress of Bashtovë, the latter of which was not included in the original plan but which had been taken in a bold maneuver by the young Alessandro Farnese, son of the Duke of Parma. A loose maritime-based military frontier was hastily organized around these three ports, centered administratively around the newly fortified Durazzo, the command of which was given to the late Duke of Alba's son, Fadrique (4th Duke of Alba). Spanish forces were unsure of how to proceed next or of what reprisal could be expected from the new Ottoman Sultan, Mustafa. Venetian insiders in Konstantiniyye had, after all, informed them that Mustafa was a determined hothead who considered the unraveling of the Ottoman campaign in Italy as the cause for his father’s untimely death, and would make good on his promises to strike back at the Holy League.

    As much as Mustafa would have liked to continue the war and as much as Juan Pelayo also would have liked to inflict further punishment on the Ottomans, the two empires were gasping for breath. While Mustafa made a point to spurn the Spanish, Venetians, and Papal States when excluding them from the peace talks at Castelnuovo in May of 1577, an Ottoman party led by the sanjak-bey of Yanya appeared outside the walls of Durazzo a mere three weeks later, requesting an audience with Fadrique de Toledo. After less than two days in discussion and another week exchanging letters with the viceroy of Naples, an inconspicuous and indefinite ceasefire was declared. Nonetheless, there was a palpable feeling of missed opportunity among most of the Holy League’s members, and the protracted vanquishment of the Turkish invasion two years later brought the hunger for a more lasting victory at sea to the fore once again. Likewise, the pride of the Ottoman Empire and its loyal subjects had been profoundly hurt, and the High Porte losing its grasp on Southern Italy when it had come so frustratingly close to complete victory had caused the Ottoman State and its sultan to become consumed by a desire for revenge, or at least a reversal of fortunes. In a show of resolve, Sultan Mustafa had ordered another 120 galleys immediately after Hassan Veneziano’s return, but the reconstruction of the Ottoman fleet at such a scale was not a project that could realistically be completed in 2 years. Even the raw shipbuilding materials that the Ottoman State’s Balkan territories produced in abundance had been mightily strained by the demands placed prior to 1570. The Great Turkish War of 1570-1577 may have ended, but the conflict was far from over, even in the short term. The rulers and leadership of neither Spain, Venice, nor the Ottoman Empire were interested in a final and lasting peace so long as the innumerable violent transgressions of the past decade remained unavenged and mastery of the Mediterranean remained up in the air.

    - Mustafa and Meleksima -

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    Sultan Mustafa I & his beloved consort, Meleksima, "la Pugliana"

    The next period of Mediterranean conflict would be one in which the Turks were decidedly put on the defensive, however. The issue of an inevitable re-emergent Ottoman navy plagued the minds of Venetian and Spanish leadership with increasing urgency as the years and months passed without taking advantage of the tremendous victory at Otranto. These concerns fully materialized when 55 new Turkish galleys had been outfitted and manned and departed the Golden Horn in April of 1578, joined shortly after by 30 older galleys protecting the sealanes of the Aegean and performing reconnaissance in the Ionian Sea. This fleet clearly anticipated a concerted effort by the Holy League to counter it, as it continued to Chalcis in unison, and was soon joined by another 30 corsair galleys from Tripoli and Misrata once it continued south. The Ottomans overestimated the speed and cohesion of their opponents’ response. Without enough oarsmen and sailors to man them, many galleys in the possession of Spain, Venice, Genoa, and the Papal States had been scuttled or sold since 1575, including many that had been captured from the Turks. The Turkish fleet stopped for no more than two days at a time between stops taking on fresh water and supplies along the Eastern coast of Greece, giving the Holy League no more than two weeks to assemble their response. Although 15 Genoese galleys and 8 Spanish galleys departed La Spezia for Taranto a week before the Turkish ships left Konstantiniyye, Spanish, Venetian, and Papal forces had to rely solely on whatever vessel could reach the Strait of Kythira on short notice. By early May of 1578, a grand total of 79 galleys, galleases, and galleons - 27 Venetian, 20 Spanish, 15 Genoese, 14 Papal, and 3 Hospitaller - gathered haphazardly in the Strait of Ithaca. After cautiously proceeding southward, a few Messenian fishermen informed the ships of the Holy League that the Turkish fleet was anchored at Modon (Methoni to the Greeks). The Holy League leadership were nervous about confronting a fleet that both outnumbered theirs by third and was protected by Modon’s fortress, but the Greek informants encouraged an attack, strongly emphasizing that there was something grievously wrong with many of the Turkish ships. In the early morning hours of May 9th, the Christian ships forced a battle at Modon.

    The rapidity of the Turkish fleet’s construction and movement had been intended to convince the Holy League of the unshakable power of the Ottoman Empire - that the Sultan of Sultans could so quickly assemble more than a hundred galleys even after a crushing defeat at sea and 7 years of massive military expenditures. Sultan Mustafa and all his naval architects and laborers did not, however, possess some supernatural ability to make wood and pitch cure faster. Whether Mustafa intended to put out so many ships so quickly to intimidate the Holy League into a more favorable peace treaty, or simply wanted to throw whatever he could at the Holy League to delay their intrusion into the Aegean, his new galleys were not fully sea-ready, and the still-green wood of many had already begun to rot when they reached Chalcis. Leadership proved another issue. With most of the Ottoman naval leadership being corsair captains with minimal loyalty to the High Porte, the only reliable admirals left were Piyale Pasha and Hassan Veneziano, but the former was still in Spanish custody and the latter - perhaps also the best experienced to take on the Holy League after Otranto - was under permanent house arrest in Konstantiniyye due to his shameful defeat in 1575. Assigned to lead the Ottoman fleet was Ridwan Pasha, an Albanian statesman whose only experience was as beylerbey of Anatolia. The fleet of the Holy League, on the other hand, was lucky enough to have the seasoned Venetian Marcantonio Bragadin at its head, as well as the esteemed Castilian Álvaro de Bazán, who opted to join the fleet at the last minute in Taranto. What was more, the galleys encountered by the Holy League at Modon were no different than those sunk at Otranto. If the Ottoman naval leadership present at that battle (or what remained of it) were consulted at length, there may have been strong suggestions made about improving the firepower of the average Ottoman galley or possibly building a squadron of heavy sail-powered ships akin to the Spanish galley. However, the Ottomans needed to quickly take measures to prevent a full-scale collapse of Turkish sea power, so spending time dabbling with new naval tactics and designs was considered out of the question. This ended up being another factor among many that doomed the reborn Ottoman armada.

    With many sailors ill from drinking spoiled water from rotten casks, the Ottomans put up a sluggish defense, although their numerical superiority put significant pressure on the Holy League. Realizing many of the Ottoman galleys had compromised hulls, the Holy League’s firepower was shifted away from clearing decks and became focused on getting a sinking shot on as many decaying galleys as possible. Soon the harbor waters became clogged with sunken vessels, making strategic withdrawal for the Holy League difficult once within range of the guns of Modon. This lightning offensive and slow, arduous withdrawal took its toll on the Holy League’s ships, with 35 galleys destroyed - an agonizing sacrifice. The Ottomans, however, had been fish in a barrel - 50 galleys sunk, 6 captured, and another 28 deemed unfit for service and irreparable, with the salvageable ships departing speedily for the protection of the Sea of Marmara. Reinforcements from Spain would arrive in Naples less than a week later in the form of 18 galleys, 3 galleasses, and 2 galleons, while the great arsenal of Konstantiniyye had gone completely silent. [1]

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    Modon

    By the time word of the Turkish fleet’s collapse arrived in the Golden Horn, Spanish and Venetian ships were already tentatively probing the Aegean. After encountering no resistance, the Venetians organized into two separate fleets, one to break up the blockade of Crete and one to coordinate with the Spanish for a potential raiding campaign. Both Spain and Venice were hemorrhaging cash, and, as peaceful indemnities from the High Porte were unlikely to be secured in a peace treaty any time soon, large scale ravaging of Turkish commerce was necessary to recoup the monstrous cost of humbling the Ottoman Sultan. Luckily the seizure of Durazzo and Avlonya and the recapture of Corfu and the Ionian islands made projecting naval power deep into the heart of the Ottoman Empire much more feasible than it was previously. The idea of a continued push into the Mediterranean - unthinkable even after the victory at Otranto - was still seen as an unnecessary overextension after Modon by the Spanish, and Álvaro de Bazán was alone in supporting the idea. However, two fortuitous developments in the Summer of 1578 put an Aegean offensive back on the table. Terms for a ceasefire with the Turks were already drying on their paper in Naples when news came forward that a power shift in Tripoli - the last great corsair port in the Mediterranean - had removed the city from its close affiliation with the Ottoman state. Sinan Reis, one of the three Turkish admirals at the battle of Otranto, had established himself in Tripoli since 1575 and had filled in the position of the city’s unofficial Ottoman consul. During one of the frequent oligarchic power struggles within the city, Sinan Reis had become unexpectedly separated from his entourage of bodyguards on one sweltering June night in 1578, and had been murdered in one of the alleyways. This was significant in that Sinan was one of the very few remaining Turkish loyalists in Tripoli, and most of Tripoli’s corsair magnates had grown exasperated with the continued assistance to the Ottoman Sultan in his increasingly unrealistic project of taking Italy for himself, and had suffered more losses in ships and seamen than could be compensated with Italian slaves and plunder. In spite of this, commitment to the war against the infidel was still strong enough for Sinan to secure a united fleet of 44 galleys, galiots, and xebecs - drawn not only from Tripoli but also from Misrata, Sirte, and even distant Alexandria - to put pressure on the Holy League from the south. With Sinan removed from the picture, this armada dispersed, and the Libyan corsairs returned to more local machinations. There were plenty of Spanish and Hospitaller spies and informants keeping a close eye on the internal politics of Tripoli, and made sure to quickly notify the viceroys of Sicily and Naples that the threat from Tripoli had greatly diminished.

    Meanwhile, all was not well in Konstantiniyye. The Ottoman Empire had suffered major setbacks due to overextension and the determined resistance of its neighbors on all sides, but it had also been blessed with consistently competent rulers, and a relatively painless transfer of power between them since 1521. Musa I may have bled the Ottoman treasury and lost superfluous troops in his two attempts to dislodge the Knights of St. John from Rhodes and may have failed to fully resolve the rivalry between his sons, and Mehmet III may have caused similar losses with his 1561 expedition into Hungary and nearly broke the spirit of two centuries of westward expansion with his all-or-nothing invasion of Spanish Italy, but both sultans left behind an empire that was larger than the one they had inherited. The young Sultan Mustafa now seemed too hard headed to make the prudent decisions necessary to bring back the Ottoman Empire from its existential crisis. However, under any other circumstances, such a stubborn monarch - so stubborn even in the face of obvious defeat - would have spelled further disaster for the Ottoman state, but Mustafa was nothing if not diligent and determined. Also, ever-present by Mustafa's side was his sole consort, Meleksima (known to the Christians as la Pugliana), who shared her husband's vigor for statebuilding, a highly unconventional interest for an Ottoman consort. It was Meleksima’s intuition and persistent warnings that convinced Mustafa that he could not trust his late father’s grand vizier, Lala Mustafa Pasha. This suspicion was vindicated when Lala’s dutiful deafmute secretary was tortured and forced to reveal a hidden repository in Lala’s quarters, which contained documents and letters proving the grand vizer’s extensive embezzlement of imperial funds since 1576, as well as negotiations with powerful timariots and even Venetian ambassadors to orchestrate a coup to reduce Mustafa to a figurehead monarch. Lala Pasha would be arrested and strangled in the dead of night, followed shortly after by every co-conspirator Sultan Mustafa could get his hands on, right down to the most insignificant errand boy. The destabilization of the Ottoman state did not stop here, however. The importance of the janissary corps to both the Ottoman war machine and to the Ottoman state’s image and prestige - as well as the presence of their barracks in the Ottoman capital - afforded the janissaries a precarious amount of influence in regards to the High Porte. Further inflating this level of influence was the size of the janissary corps, which had been raised during the reigns of Musa I and Mehmet III from 7,000 to 14,000. Mehmet III had to combat the assertive self-importance of the janissaries on multiple occasions, attempting to appease them by granting them permission to marry in 1574. The contention between the janissaries and the sultanate continued to simmer, however, as irregularity of payment caused by the depletion of the imperial treasury in the late 1570s left the sultan’s most elite troops feeling underappreciated, and the sacrifices made for the sultan’s ambitions - the death, capture, or desertion of more than 6,000 janissaries in Italy - intensified this feeling. With the High Porte’s funds exhausted and the support for Mustafa flagging in almost every part of the empire, the janissaries felt the time was right to force Mustafa’s hand by marching on Topkapı Palace in mid September of 1578. Luckily for Mustafa, a janissary revolt was long anticipated, and, although many of his courtiers pleaded with him to flee the city for the safety of Edirne, Mustafa elected to stay - lest his subjects lose even more faith in him. Besieged in Topkapı, Mustafa relied on the 30 or so galleys that had returned from Modon to sustain him, until these too chose to abandon the sultan, holding Ridwan Pasha prisoner after a mutiny and departing for Çanakkale to protect the Dardanelles. Mustafa’s resolve paid off when Sinan Pasha (later known as Koca Sinan Pasha, or Sinan the Great), beylerbey of Anatolia who had served under Mustafa’s father in Egypt and Hungary, arrived in Üsküdar with 14,000 sipahis and azebs. Surprisingly, the Turkish inhabitants of Konstantiniyye stood with their sultan, facilitating the crossing of Koca Sinan’s army and participating in the street-to-street fighting against the janissaries. After 5,000 lay dead - 1,200 of them janissaries - a ceasefire was declared by Mustafa to avoid the wholesale slaughter of the janissary corps as they holed up in their barracks. The janissaries - reduced to less than 4,000 - were downsized and reformed by Mustafa, partially as a punishment: the janissary corps would be opened to Turkish volunteers, no more than 3,000 janissaries would be present in Konstantiniyye at any given time, and the remaining janissaries would be garrisoned at Edirne in Thrace and Eskişehir in Anatolia. Koca Sinan would concurrently be rewarded with the office of grand vizier in an unprecedented show of imperial gratitude. This was an auspicious choice, as Koca Sinan would prove to be as devoted to pulling the Ottoman Empire out of its crisis as Mustafa. Koca Sinan was also interested in innovative plans for Ottoman renewal, including one which was thought over during his stint as beylerbey of Egypt and which was especially troubling to the Spaniards - that of a canal cutting through the Isthmus of Suez, connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and thus to the Indian Ocean.

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    Konstantiniyye

    The destructive intrigue in Tripoli and Konstantiniyye compelled the Spanish to join the Venetians in their despoliation of the Aegean in early 1579, which would culminate in a devastating sack of Thessaloniki, the second most important Ottoman port in the Aegean, in which nearly the entire city was burned. Spanish and Venetian dominance in the Aegean reached its high water mark when the Dardanelles were forced open and the Turkish squadron there routed, bringing the Hispano-Venetian fleet close to the very walls of Konstantiniyye, before assessing the city’s defenses and ruling it too formidable to risk losing ships harassing it. A possibly apocryphal report tells of how Álvaro de Bazán’s flagship fired a single cannonball over the seawall. A few more raids would occur that year before the fleet would refocus itself on Western Greece and Epirus in 1580, with the capture of Parga, Preveza, Missolonghi, and the island of Kythira by the Venetians, and of Ulcinj and Castelnuovo by the Spanish, with a failed raid on Tripoli in 1581. Faced with a popular revolt over increased war taxes in Egypt and a breakdown of Ottoman authority in Serbia outside of the major cities, Mustafa offered a ceasefire to Venice, Spain, Genoa, the Papal States, and the Knights of St. John in early 1582, which was to be respected for at least 4 years - the longest period of peace in the Mediterranean in half a century.

    - Un nuovo Mediterraneo -

    After 1575, it took some time for the new circumstances in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas to become fully realized by the Christian natives of Albania and Epirus. The Greeks and Albanians of the region had already revolted en masse in the late 1560s - an event which had to be put down by large Turkish armies and for Mehmet III to begin the invasion of Italy ahead of schedule - and the flames of rebellion, not fully extinguished, reignited with even greater force in the late 1570s. The policies directed towards the Albanians in particular were much harsher than the normative laws for dhimmi populations elsewhere in the empire, involving restrictions limiting freedom of movement, dress code, animal ownership, and other directives that bordered on forced religious conversion. With Spanish possessions organized into the “principality of Arbanon” - which was awarded to Vespasiano Gonzaga - the Ottomans could no longer afford to keep the inhabitants of Epirus under their thumb by the old restrictive measures, lest they drive more of the dhimmi out of the countryside and into Spanish and Venetian hands, where they could become soldiers, informants, and taxable heads. Much Of Ottoman Albania thus became a no man’s land where neither Ottoman nor Spanish and Venetian laws were strictly enforced. The Spanish and Venetians may not have been able (or willing) to help ignite a full scale war for independence in Albania or Greece, but were still eager to grant sanctuary to its inhabitants. Over the course of 3 decades, more than 40,000 Albanians (between 1/5th and 1/4th of the entire Albanian population) and 10,000 Greeks were ferried across the Strait of Otranto or settled in Durazzo and Avlonya. The refugees from across the Adriatic and Ionian Seas continued to trickle afterward, and, by 1610, Arbëresh had become the dominant language of the Apulian countryside while Greek mercenaries could be found in Spanish employ as far away as Casabranca.

    This sort of resettlement was not only welcome in the Western Mediterranean but was in fact also badly needed. The Ottoman State may have been reeling, but its rivals were also having to mend the wounds of mass depopulation and accommodate huge population movements. The Spanish Monarchy and its kingdoms in Southern Italy were particularly smarting over the events of 1570-1577. Out of a total population of over 4 million, just shy of 1 million people had been affected by the 7 year conflict. Salento - the heel of the Italian Peninsula on which Otranto and Brindisi were located - had endured the most drastic population shift, with Pedro Girona, viceroy of Naples, describing its countryside in 1578 as "scraped clean of man, beast, tree, and stalk of grain alike." The urban population of Brindisi immediately following Ottoman surrender had been reduced to "a little over a thousand," and Otranto's was now "in the mere hundreds." The depredations of war, piracy, famine, and disease combined with fear of the Turk had caused the death or enslavement of nearly 300,000 Southern Italians, with an additional 450,000 Southern Italians displaced temporarily and another 200,000 displaced permanently. Of those permanently displaced, 80,000 were resettled in Central Italy - mostly under the charitable provision of the Holy See and the Marquis of Pescara - where the turbulent events of the 1550s and 1560s had freed up land and employment to be filled by newcomers. For similar reasons, between 15,000 and 20,000 Southern Italians had migrated or been invited to the cities and duchies of Northern Italy. Juan Pelayo and his successor Gabriel also made sure to look after their beleaguered subjects by welcoming 35,000 Italian refugees into Spain, 16,000 of which put down roots in the kingdom of València, while 8,000 found their way to Catalonia, 6,000 to Andalucía, and 5,000 to the Balearic Isles (which had experienced significant depopulation by Barbary raids). Roughly 10,000 Italians managed to jockey their way to the Americas (primarily Cuba, Nueva Castilla, and Nueva Vizcaya) and another 10,000 or so were unwilling to renounce or face persecution for their newfound Islamic faith and fled to the Barbary ports of Libya or across the Adriatic to the domain of the Ottoman Sultan.

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    The Italian diaspora of 1570-1580

    While the resettlement of thousands of Southern Italians in Spain proper reinvigorated the mercantile and maritime industries of the Spanish Levant and strengthened Iberia’s bonds to that of Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily, the most transformative migration occurred in Spanish North Africa (ironically a safe haven compared to Southern Italy during the 1570s), with more than 50,000 Italians settling permanently during the 1570s and 1580s and bolstering the relatively meager local Christian populace. With less than 100,000 Christians living under Spanish rule in North Africa (roughly 50,000-60,000 in Morocco and 20,000-30,000 everywhere else) before the arrival of these Italian refugees, the change was sudden and immense. 6,000 Italians set up shop in Tánger, Ceuta, and Alcácer-Ceguer, 7,000 in Orán, Mazalquivir, and Mostagán, 10,000 in Algiers and the surrounding Mitidja, and the lion’s share - 27,000 - in Tunis, Cape Bon, and Biserta. The principal African cities of the Strait of Gibraltar - namely Tánger, Ceuta, and Alcácer-Seguer - had declined significantly in the 1560s despite the ongoing consolidation of Spanish possessions in North Africa. The Muslim inhabitants of Tánger, Ceuta, and Alcácer-Seguer were expelled in 1560 due to mounting anxiety over a Turkish-assisted rebellion on both sides of the Alborán Sea, reducing their respective urban populations from 12,000 to 6,000, 5,000 to 3,000, and 2,700 to 1,100. At the height of the Saadian War of 1562-1567, when the threat of Abdallah al-Ghalib overrunning the entirety of Spanish Morocco seemed very real, the Christian populations of Tánger, Ceuta, and Alcácer-Seguer dropped to 3,000, 1,300, and 700, respectively, before rebounding to 7,000, 3,500, and 1,200 after the battle of Témara dealt a fatal blow to Saadian momentum. The arrival of 6,000 Southern Italians in the 1570s and 1580s therefore prevented a permanent deterioration of this strategically important region's urban development. The much more at-risk Christian populace in Spanish-held cities on Morocco's Atlantic Coast ironically remained stable during this period, as unmolested emigration from the area was rendered impossible by besieging Saadian armies. Tunis and its surroundings especially benefited from the influx of Italian settlers: as the city and its environs were relatively recent acquisitions by Spain they needed a large and loyal populace to hold down such a sizeable territory in such a highly contested region of the world, and also needed enough heads to populate it in order to make it profitable after tens of thousands of its previous inhabitants. On the observation of the viceroy of Sicily in 1601, Tunis and Palermo were apparently almost identical.

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    Spanish North African frontiersmen - "fronterizos/fronteiriços"

    The acceleration of settler colonialism in Spanish North Africa changed the fabric of not just the cities under direct Spanish control but also of their frontiers and of the Maghreb as a whole. In the Rif - perhaps the most unruly and rugged region of Spanish North Africa - Christian settlers were surrounded and outnumbered by the native Muslim populace but could not rely on Spanish authorities to divert protective forces to their rough and relatively unprofitable new home. In Tetuán and in its environs along the River Martín there were only 300 Christian households (1,200-1,500 Christian heads, not counting the garrison) by 1580 - 39 years after its capture by the Spanish. Living among them were 700 Muslim households (2,800-3,500 Muslims), although the latter were in steady decline, with most of the Berber-speaking population opting to withdraw into the rebellious valleys and hills of the Rif. Chefchauen was in an even more precarious situation, with only 70 Christian households (also not counting the garrison, which fluctuated between 700 and 1,000) measured against 320 Muslim households. The relative military inexperience of the average Christian settler in Spanish North Africa when compared to the bellicose Berber raiders they had to contend with therefore necessitated contracting specialized protection. Particularly popular were the Stratioti (known as estradiotes in Castilian), primarily Greek and Albanian light cavalry mercenaries from the Balkans who were content to live even on the hostile Barbary frontier if it meant finally escaping the Ottoman yoke. Where protection from hostile and numerically superior Muslim neighbors could not be outsourced, a semi-nomadic frontier culture emerged among the more daring Christian settlers. Much like their Mesetense predecessors during the Reconquista and also like the contemporaneous Slavic cossacks on the Pontic Steppe, these frontier-dwellers - known as fronterizos (fronteiriços in Portuguese) - occupied the marginal hill country and no man’s land between the ever-shifting frontiers of Spanish North Africa. As fixed control over these regions vacillated constantly, the fronterizos lived beyond the grasp of Spanish corregidores and press gangs and therefore evaded paying any taxes or dues and mandatory military service (although their services were frequently bought by Spanish authorities for campaigns or Christian settlers for protection). Their livelihood was on horseback, herding cattle, sheep, and goats, and rustling the herds of their Berber adversaries. Their presence at the edge of the Spanish pale meant that their communities often accumulated lançados and degredados (voluntary exiles and exiled convicts, the former usually of Jewish origin) as well as escaped slaves and the bastard children of Spaniards and Arab, Berber, or Subsaharan women.

    - “Ut omnes unum sint” -

    Just as the Ottoman State was beginning to inch through painful and experimental reforms to its structure and military composition in the aftermath of the Great Turkish War, so too was Spain undergoing a few important transformations brought about by the strains of war. As with any other ruler, the younger Juan Pelayo’s primary desire was for his kingdoms to function and cooperate within their established systems, but, with the concerned and contemplative spirit that comes with old age, the elder Juan Pelayo became more interested in leaving behind lasting and substantial solutions to the systems dividing his kingdoms and jeopardizing the union of a Spanish state. Juan Pelayo’s ancestors had scored innumerable military and diplomatic victories against the Moors, the French, and one another to ensure that the fate of All Spain culminated under one monarchy, and the Revolt of the Grandees and the laborious inefficiency of the combined Spanish war machine in the Great Turkish War had cast a glaring light on how easily the work of centuries could be undone. The loosely united federation over which Miguel da Paz had ruled was no longer a serviceable political arrangement, especially in the face of Spain’s rapidly centralizing rival states in France and Rumelia. Conforming the law codes of the kingdoms of Spain and declaring their union indissoluble were all helpful measures, but written law issued from the top-down would not secure a united Spain the way fundamental changes on the ground could. While permanent resettlement between the kingdoms of Spain required the consent of either the Crown or the relevant cortes, domestic crises and social disarray such as that experienced throughout the 1560s allowed such restrictions to be ignored without penalty, and the depredations of warfare as well as the Monarchy’s desire to amalgamate its many subjects to promote cultural unity and dampen the individual kingdoms’ desire for independence increased internal migration within Spain. After the Revolt of the Grandees and the pacification of Estremadura, 8,000 Portuguese families departed the Tagus Basin and relocated to the kingdoms of Galicia and Leon and along the Sierra Morena, while 11,000 Castilian families resettled in their place, all within a roughly 20 year period.

    Both to express goodwill towards his Portuguese subjects and to keep their rebellious kingdom at arm’s length, Juan Pelayo spent most of the remaining years of his life after 1566 taking up residence in Lisbon, enlisting the accomplished Portuguese architect Francisco de Holanda to renovate the neglected Paço da Ribeira, embellishing it with a Plateresque façade. Holanda likewise informed Juan Pelayo of the chronic shortage of freshwater in the city and convinced the king to set aside funds for the construction of a Lisboan aqueduct, although such a project would not come to fruition in Juan Pelayo’s lifetime. As Juan Pelayo clearly intended for the kingdom of Navarra to eventually be integrated into the Spanish Monarchy (having taken its queen, Jeanne de Valois, daughter of Charles IX of France, as his second bride), his Navarrese offspring - Juan Carlos and Clara - accompanied their father to Lisbon and received their instruction there from 1567 to 1575, largely under the tutelage of Flemish Albertine teachers. While Portugal was his patrilineal homeland, Juan Pelayo could not help but treat his Portuguese subjects with suspicion after the many decades he spent struggling against the Dukes of Bragança and their independence movement. Additionally, it had become undeniable that Castile was Spain’s center of gravity in terms of population, wealth, and simple geography. Juan Pelayo indirectly promoted the use of Castilian during his later years in Lisbon, and luckily Castilian entertained a certain prestige among the Portuguese nobility, in no small part due to Castile’s success in the Americas and the notoriety of Castile’s military and commercial repertoire in Western Europe.

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    Juan Pelayo, King of All Spain and the Indies c. 1576

    Having lived just long enough to witness his greatest victory unfold, John III of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal - colloquially known to posterity as Juan Pelayo - expired at the age of 62 on October 3rd, 1579, two years after the Turks were expelled from Otranto. According to the new instructions of Juan Pelayo’s 1570 Edict of Union, the Cortes of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal were all required to convene in the Alcázar of Toledo (a building restored by Juan Pelayo in 1566-1569), the ancient capital of Visigothic Spain, to affirm Juan Pelayo’s eldest son, Gabriel, as their king in a mostly symbolic coronation ceremony, after which he would convene each of the Cortes within their respective borders to receive their more binding, legal affirmation. Even after the Revolt of the Grandees, the passing of the Leyes Nuevas, and the proclamation of the Edict of Union, the nobility of Spain still dragged its heels before acquiescing to this exhibition of Spanish unity and submission to the victorious Monarchy, particularly the nobles of Portugal and Aragon, who chafed at the idea of the coronation taking place with the borders of Castile - the symbolic significance of Toledo be damned. When the lords and deputies of the Portuguese Cortes departed from Castelo Branco (having avoided Elvas and Olivenza for obvious reasons), riots erupted among the lower classes in Porto, Braga, and Coimbra, Attach filesegged on by the lower clergy, who had been the country’s leading proponents of anti-Castilian fervor since the Interregnum of 1383-1385. Nevertheless, the four coronations of Gabriel the First of All Spain passed without issue. The transfer of power from Juan Pelayo to Gabriel was almost a formality by 1579. Juan Pelayo’s heir had intimately been included by his father in the management of the realm since 1564 at the age of 28 - being made the viceroy of València in 1568 - and was de facto regent of the realm by 1575.

    Gabriel was introduced to the management of the Spanish Empire at the most trying time possible. Tasked with co-managing the immediate aftermath of the Revolt of the Grandees and then 9 years of cataclysmic war with the Turks, Gabriel then had to manage - without his esteemed father - the seemingly unending and unresolvable conflict with the Turks and the institutional reform needed to remedy Spain’s shortcomings in the 1570s. The most glaring deficiency of the Spanish state had been the difficulty with which it raised its armies and fleets. Only through endless concessions and maneuverings could a fleet be assembled that could challenge Turkish naval supremacy, and the old troop-raising methods produced an army that without the assistance of the Holy League would have been utterly overwhelmed by the Turks (having concurrently fielded less than 40,000 men at any given moment). Spain’s forests had suffered as well - hundreds of trees were sometimes required to be felled in order to construct and outfit a single galleass. Deforestation in certain areas on the Meseta Central was so severe during the years 1570-1585 that many hundreds died from exposure and famine due to the lack of fuel. Reports of fuel shortages and hardship on the Meseta prompted Gabriel to form a Council of Forestry (Consejo/Conselho de Silvicultura), technically an appendage to the Council of State, which would regulate the cutting and replanting of trees, and imported thousands of pine saplings to be planted along the Sierra de Guadarrama and the Serra de Estrela [2]. Likewise, the minting of gold and silver coinage in Spain would increase exponentially during the war of 1570-1577, leading to the creation of a regulatory body of gold and silversmiths in Toledo in 1580 to mitigate further devaluation of Spanish currency.

    What would be harder to regulate were the usage of Spain’s recruitable males. Primarily following the suggestion of his trusted advisor García Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio, 4th Marquess of Villafranca del Bierzo and son of the former alcalde of Naples, Juan Pelayo had first put forward the idea of a standing army proportionate to the demographics of the kingdoms of Spain and proportionate to Spain’s needs in 1573. Given the Ottoman sultan’s ability to quickly raise up armies numbering above 100,000, it was estimated that Spain should at the very least be able to maintain an army of 120,000 in order to properly defend itself. The potentates of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia were immediately on board with the idea of expanding the Spanish monarchy’s standing army, especially when its expansion was done in consideration of the marauding Turks that were desolating Southern Italy. In Iberia, however, this “union of arms” would be a much harder sell. The cortes of Spain’s kingdoms were fairly easy to convince of a standing army while the Turks were outside the walls of Naples, but once the Duke of Alba drove Piyale Pasha back in 1574 and the Holy League shattered the Muslim fleet in 1575, the proposed union of arms seemed unnecessary (both to the cortes and - at the time - also to Juan Pelayo). The king of Spain let the idea be shelved until 1578, when he intended to force it through the cortes, but he unfortunately passed away a mere 7 months into negotiations, leaving the proposal in the hands of his son, Gabriel. Much of the Spanish nobility was still harboring deep resentment over its humiliation in 1566, and, as the Turkish threat appeared to be undone, they were prepared to use their influence in the cortes to stonewall any further empowerment of the monarchy and the Spanish state. Likewise, while Castile’s streamlined political mechanism left it prostrate before the Spanish monarch, the extensive fueros of the Crown of Aragon and the fiercely guarded independence of the Crown of Portugal meant that the two other constituent kingdoms of Spain would not surrender their manpower to a Castile-oriented monarch without a fight - especially when submitting meant footing the bill for the year-round training, drilling, feeding, and housing of thousands of professional soldiers. Those opposed to the union of arms were also confident that Gabriel would be an easier opponent than Juan Pelayo, as he was considerably more reticent than his father.

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    El Rey Gabriel, c. 1579

    Gabriel, however, had been enmeshed in the Spanish government for 15 years before his accession to the throne, during which time Juan Pelayo continuously stressed the importance of Gabriel eventually safeguarding his Leyes Nuevas and the post-1566 state of affairs once made king. The new king was therefore prepared to see the union of arms through, no matter what concessions were necessary. For the kingdom of Aragon and the principality of Catalonia, the longstanding exclusion of subjects from the Crown of Aragon from the Atlantic endeavors of Spain’s Castilian and Portuguese subjects and their unofficial exclusion from Spanish affairs in general. A missive from the Generalitat of Catalonia decried the treatment of Aragonese travelers in Castilian lands as “being treated as aliens in the lands of their very cousins …. shunned and offered contempt in the most rudimentary exchanges.” In 1582 an agreement was reached, whereby the constituent kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon would offer 16,000 troops on a yearly basis if the prohibition against Aragonese settlement in the Americas and North Africa (the latter hardly enforced) were done away with, and if an Aragonese consulate were allowed to establish itself adjacent to the Casa de Contratación and the Casa de Prestación in Sevilla. For Portugal, all that was needed were the substantiated reports in 1583 of thousands of laborers hollowing out locks from the lagoon of El Mallahah in the north and at as-Suways in the south, proving the Turks’ commitment to connecting the Eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea. With the 4-year ceasefire of 1582 with the Ottomans drawing to a close, a standing army would be ratified by an unprecedented gathering of all three cortes of Spain at Madrid in October of 1585, after having been ratified by the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia separately from April to June. 16,000 Portuguese troops would be added to the 16,000 from Aragon, alongside the 40,000 from Castile, and 12,000 from Naples, Sardinia, and Sicily, reaching a more modest 84,000 soldiers to be expected at any time from the kingdoms of Spain. Deep seated trouble was brewing in Spanish Italy, and the conflict with the Turks and their allies was progressing into the Indian Ocean, but Spain was keeping apace to evolve.

    _______________________________________________________________________________________
    [1] This whole battle might sound fantastical, but this is almost copy-paste what nearly happened to the new Turkish fleet IOTL after Lepanto.
    [2] OTL Philip II also seeded the Sierra de Guadarrama with thousands of imported pines, although this was done for primarily aesthetic purposes IIRC.
     
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    45. Ilhas de Ofir
  • ~ Ilhas de Ofir ~
    Southeast Asia c. 1550-1580

    SpiceIslands.jpg

    Spain had been fortunate to have in its service a man like Afonso de Albuquerque, whose constant and aggressive attempts to conquer every strategic port and choke point east of Boa Esperança would have surely failed if undertaken by someone without his inexhaustible energy and borderline reckless courage. Under his authority, Spanish interests had been secured firmly in a variety of extremely important locales in Asia, of which arguably the best investment had been Malaca. The rich and developed city on the Malaca Straits offered Spain a prized and much-envied promontory into East Asia, commanding the vast majority of all seagoing traffic between the Indian Ocean and the Java and South China Seas. For the Spaniards that recognized its potential, Malaca became as important to prioritize as the entirety of Spain’s possessions in India and East Africa. The Spanish administration in Asia had quickly adopted the personal strategy of Afonso de Albuquerque, which was to expend considerable effort and resources fortifying a select few of Spain’s most important territorial possessions, rather than attempt to tie down every strip of coastline in the style of a traditional conquest. Creating self-sustaining and unconquerable footholds in such a crowded and heavily contested part of the world would require not only the construction of expansive physical fortifications, but also the extension of the surrounding pale through missionary activity, military action, and land grants, as well as - most importantly - fostering the creation of a substantial, native Ibero-Christian community. The latter had been pursued vigorously by Albuquerque, who - just as he did in India - encouraged Spanish soldiers to marry local women and settle permanently within the city, in order to create and cement a loyal Catholic population that had ties to local affairs and a vested interest in perpetuating Spanish rule. Albuquerque likewise encouraged the settlement of órfãs do rei (“orphans of the king”), well-born orphan girls in the king of Portugal’s official custody, the shipment of whom became annual in 1542. These girls (between the ages of 12 and 30) were sent overseas to Spain’s Asian and African possessions to both bolster the local European population and to secure strategic marriages with the local nobility.

    After bursting onto the scene with the surprise capture of Malaca in 1509, the Spanish then quickly made their presence known in virtually every corner of the East Indies. Innumerable feitorias, Catholic missions, and military endeavors - both formal and informal - were undertaken amid the equally innumerable islands of the Malay Archipelago in rapid succession, but only a handful of settlements evolved into what could be considered proper Spanish possessions. Once the wide-ranging freebooting, exploratory voyages, and diplomatic maneuvering cooled down in the second half of the 16th century, Spanish influence and control between the Strait of Malacca and the Celebes Sea coalesced around a dozen or so fortified footholds, the most important being (from west to east): Malaca (Malacca), straddling the strait through which the vast majority of oceangoing traffic to the Far East passed; Calapa (Sunda Kelapa), the primary port of the Javan Sunda kingdom; Macáçar (Makassar), the largest port on the isle of Celebes and entrepôt of the kingdom of Gowa; Solor, the island commanding access to Timor and the surrounding archipelago; Ambon, the island at the center of the Moluccas, known colloquially as the Spice Islands due to their highly lucrative native herbs; and Ternate, former seat of the once powerful rival of the nearby sultanate of Tidore.

    - Quersonese Dourado -

    The sudden and violent insertion of Spanish power into the Straits of Malaca was an unwelcome development for most of the surrounding powers, to say the least. While the capture of Malaca may have weakened its eponymous sultanate, it suffered no great collapse. The last sultan of Malaca, Mahmud Shah, had escaped with his life and relocated with his royal family to the region of Pahang in eastern Malaya after a number of failed attempts to retake Malaca in 1511, and then moved again to Bintan in the Riau Islands, where a new capital was established for what would become the sultanate of Johor. Virtually all of the territorial possessions of the former sultanate (barring Malaca itself) also stayed intact and loyal during this transition. Losing Malaca therefore did not decapitate the state structure or even seriously undermine the territorial integrity of the sultanate of Malaca, and Spain had earned a permanent and vengeful foe in Southeast Asia. Spanish aggression likewise created another powerful regional enemy when the unprovoked sack of the wealthy Sumatran port and sultanate of Pasai allowed Aceh, its nearby rival (also Muslim), to fill in the new power vacuum in northern Sumatra. As the only other competitors in the surrounding area were the ports of Pidie and Daya, Acehnese expansion quickly brought the sultanate into hostile relations with Spain, as both ports were friendly to the Spanish and housed informal communities of Spanish traders. Between the sultanates of Johor, Aceh, and others further afield, Spanish Malaca was attacked a countless number of times during the 16th century, three of which - in 1512, 1520, and 1565 - involved hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of warriors against which the Spaniards had to defend themselves.

    A few circumstances prevented Spanish Malaca from crumbling under this incessant hostility. For one, Afonso de Albuquerque had been diligent during his stay in Malaca in overseeing the construction of new fortifications, choosing a nearby and hitherto underutilized hill to create an imposing fortress with a five-story keep known colloquially as “A Famosa.” Additionally, although during the 16th century the Spanish east of India numbered less than 4,000 and there were never more than a few hundred Portuguese soldiers in Malaca, the Spanish consistently and effectively wielded two military advantages over the peoples of the Malay Archipelago: the galleon was a superior warship in terms of firepower and hull integrity to those which formed the backbone of local navies, and - while gunpowder weaponry had been used in Southeast Asia for centuries - the number of firearms per capita among the Spaniards vastly exceeded that of local forces. Finally, Malaca was a multiethnic and religiously pluralistic urban center in which Muslim Malays did not have an absolute monopoly on power or wealth, with much of the population represented by a very large Chinese community and other communities of varying sizes from Malabar, Coromandel, Bengal, Ceylon, Persia, and Arabia - most of whom were indifferent about which ethnic or religious group controlled the city, and many of whom were readily employed in Spanish military endeavors. Spanish Malaca was also administered in a relatively relaxed and lenient manner in regards to non-Christian - even Muslim - religious practices compared to some other locales in the Estado da Índia, although the city’s principal mosque was converted into a cathedral immediately after the city’s fall in 1509.

    MalayMilitary.png

    Left: a lancaran, the backbone vessel of native navies in the Malay Archipelago in the 16th century
    Right: a double barreled cetbang swivel cannon

    For these reasons as well as due to bouts of political chaos, the surrounding sultanates eventually abandoned any sincere hope of capturing Malaca after 1565, and a balance of power between Johor, Aceh, and Spanish Malaca became the norm in the straits. With Aceh and Johor vacillating between moments of tense competition and mutual hatred and moments of united desire to drive out the Spaniards, Spanish Malaca in turn had to vacillate between gestures of peace at one moment and subversive maneuvers to take advantage of Muslim disunity at another. This allowed for a relatively brief period of renewed expansionism. The northwest frontier was secured along the Linggi River, and then further protected on the other side of the river by a secluded military base that was established next to the Portuguese lighthouse at Cape Rachado. A fort was built at the mouth of the Muar River (the fort settlement also called Muar) in 1568, solidifying the pale of Malaca’s southeastern border and allowing for raids deep into Johorian Malaya, one of which sacked Kota Batu, the royal capital of Johor, in 1587, and again in 1599 alongside the important Johorian island of Bintan. In the Malayan interior, fortifications and customs stations had been built at Tampin, Machap, Selandar, and Pekan Asahan by the turn of the century. An attempt to establish a permanent formal foothold on the other side of the straits at Dumai was also attempted in 1574, but had to be abandoned in less than 7 months, although a small Dominican mission and an even smaller feitoria were maintained on the adjacent isle of Rupat.

    While Malaca had to continue to function in this permanently besieged state, the Spanish had made good progress in nearby Java. The Sunda Kingdom - longtime competitor to the now defunct Majapahit empire - had achieved prosperity and peace in the late 15th and early 16th centuries due to both the decline of its Javan rival and the capable and energetic rule of its king, Jayadewata (known also to posterity as Sri Baduga Maharaja). The vast majority of the Sundanese were still fiercely adherent to their traditional beliefs and associated Islam with the newfangled aggression of their culturally similar but linguistically different Javan neighbors. Sunda, being therefore an anti-Islamic, wealthy, capable regional power, offered the perfect opportunity for a much-needed ally to Spanish Malaca - following the same diplomatic trend that fostered warm relation with the non-Muslim kingdom of Siam. What was more, King Jayadewata was insistent in currying good favor with the Spanish, and consequently acquiring military assistance, he hoped. Jayadewata had sent his son, the crown prince Prabu Surawisesa to Spanish Malaca in 1512 to extend the friendship of his father, and again in 1521 to propose a formal alliance along with an invitation to trade in pepper and construct a fort in the kingdom’s main port of Calapa (Sunda Kalapa), at the mouth of the Ciliwung River. The fact that the Spanish had been approached by Sri Baduga first was a somewhat rare reversal of Spanish diplomacy in Asia, and was also rare in that the treaty - signed in August of 1522 - would be ratified in two separate copies for the king of Sunda and the king of Spain himself. Apart from securing a beneficial defensive alliance and trading relationship with the Spanish, Jayadewata consolidated his rule over the previously divided kingdoms of Sunda and Galuh, established a new capital at Pajajaran and constructed defensive moats surrounding the city, and oversaw the improvement of the road connecting Pajajaran and Calapa. Allying with the Sundanese, however, roped the Spanish into another increasingly desperate theater of war.

    The principal threat to the Sunda Kingdom was the powerful, growing Muslim sultanate of Demak in eastern Java, founded by Raden Patah (known to the Portuguese as Pate Rodim), a former vassal of Majapahit rumored to have been the son of the last king of Majapahit, Brawijaya, and a Chinese concubine. Between 1513 and 1518, Raden Patah was at war with Patih Udara, the rajah of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Daha, over mastery of the eastern half of the region of Pasisir (the northern coastal plain of Java) and in 1518 conquered Daha with the submission of its capital, Kediri. After this the sultanate of Demak became the more commonly accepted successor to Majapahit in the former empire’s rapidly Islamizing former core territories - as well as in some still firmly Hindu ones - and the sultan of Demak acquired tributaries not only across Java but in Sumatra and Borneo as well. Raden Patah died soon after his victory, however, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Pati Unus (known to the Portuguese as Pate Onus), who made the ill-fated decision to spend his short reign attempting to overwhelm Spanish Malaca. The Spanish insistence on establishing a monopoly on the spice trade and repeated appeals by the dispossessed sultan of Johor convinced the sultan of Demak and the powerful trading cities of the northern Javan coast (a region known as Pasisir) to amass a large fleet and attempt to drive the Spanish out of Malaca on two occasions, one with a fleet numbering 100 ships in 1512 and another with a fleet of 375 ships in 1520. Had the Javans made their move on Malaca shortly after the Spanish takeover in 1509, they might have been successful, but by 1512 the Spanish had completed their new fortifications. Both attacks were repelled, with Pati Unus killed in battle during the 1520 expedition. The loss of so many ships severely weakened both the military and trading capabilities of Islamic Pasisir for decades.

    Had Raden Patah lived longer or had Pati Unus not been so disastrously committed to taking Malaca, their rapidly ascendant sultanate may have overpowered the Sunda Kingdom or at least taken the port of Calapa - the latter of which was a goal which was frequently and openly voiced by Raden Patah and Pati Unus alike. After all, it took 10 years for the Spanish-Sunda alliance to be made official in 1522, and even then the Spanish only completed their promised fortress in Calapa in 1525 (something which required an emergency 20,000 ducat grant from the Spanish crown). Fortunately for Sunda and its Spanish benefactors, Demak was broiled in a succession crisis between the childless Pati Unus’ two brothers, Raden Kikin and Raden Trenggana, for two years after his death, and Demak’s vassal-cities were too hard hit by the failures of 1512 and 1520 to muster the necessary forces to take Calapa before it could be fortified. When Raden Trenggana won out over his brother, however, the new sultan’s attentions were turned westward, with the rival sultanate of Cirebon being bested and forced into tribute in 1526. From Cirebon, Trenggana ordered his able commander Fatahillah to assault Calapa, leading to a brief, failed siege in 1527. Trenggana made no further attempt on Sunda for the time being and turned back east, spending the rest of the 1520s and the 1530s conquering the region of Mataram in central Java along with the important northern port of Tuban.

    His power base revitalized and expanded, Trenggana marched to Calapa himself at the head of a 40,000 man army in 1540. Trenggana relentlessly pillaged the Galuh Kingdom (eastern half of the Sunda Kingdom since 1482) and his forces washed over the northern coast, even taking the smaller port of Banten. Nevertheless, he was unable to take Calapa due to the resilience of its defenders and (more importantly) his inability to contest Spanish naval supremacy, which kept the port well-supplied. When influenza broke out in Trenggana’s camp, he was forced to turn east once more at the head of less than 20,000 broken men, this time venturing to conquer the Hindu principalities east of the Brantas River. While on campaign against the principality of Pasuruan in 1546, he was assassinated by a 10 year old child noble from Surabaya, who stabbed him with a kris while serving him betel nut. Demak again fell into a bloody feud over the sultan’s succession, this time between Trenggana’s son Mukmin and Arya Penangsang, son of Tranggana’s brother and defeated claimant Raden Kikin. Mukmin sat on the throne for three years before Arya Penangsang had him murdered and took the throne himself. Harsh mishandling of domestic affairs and rivalries between vassals as well as unending waves of bloody court intrigue eventually made Arya Penangsang extremely unpopular among the realm’s nobles, who had the him killed in 1568 and Trenggana’s son-in-law Hadiwijaya crowned sultan of Demak. Hadiwijaya would move all of Demak’s regalia to his court in Pajang, raising Pajang to the status of sultanate and lowering Demak to the status of vassal state. This move re-focused royal power in Mataram and alienated the vassal-cities of Pasisir, leading to a weakening and eventual dissolution of control and influence over the cities of Surabaya and Gresik, as well as the complete de facto autonomy of former vassals in Kalinyamat and Cirebon.

    MalaccaStraits1580.png

    The Straits of Malaca, c. 1580
    (see symbol key at bottom for reference)
    Green: area of Spanish dominance, Pink: hostile powers, Blue: friendly powers
    1: Sultanate of Aceh, 2: Sultanate of Johor, 3: Sultanate of Brunei, 4: Sultanate of Banten,
    5: Sultanate of Cirebon, 6: Sultanate of Kalinyamat, 7: Sultanate of Pajang (formerly Demak)
    8: Sunda Kingdom

    The failed conquest of Calapa was not without impact, however. The port of Banten remained in Muslim hands after Trenggana departed from Sunda in 1540, and although the Spanish sacked the city in an attempt to stamp out an embryonic Muslim polity in the region, they were unable to drive out Fatahillah and the remnant Javans completely. Banten became the seat of a new vassal state loyal to the sultanate of Demak under Fatahillah, and Fatahillah’s son Sendang Garuda declared himself its sultan once Demak had entered terminal decline. Particularly worrying to not only Calapa but to Malaca as well was the subjugation of the pepper-producing region of Lampung by Sendang in the 1560s, which transformed Banten into a serious regional competitor to Calapa and turned the Sunda Strait into a Muslim-controlled waterway in the larger spice trade that could potentially divert Muslim trade away from the Malaca Straits.

    Besides the extensive fortifications at Calapa and Pajajaran and the good road between them, the rest of Sunda had become worryingly vulnerable. This vulnerability would be laid bare in 1554, when the sultanate of Cirebon - re-asserting its independence from Demak - undertook a campaign into the Sunda Kingdom, culminating in the sack and destruction of Kawali, traditional capital of Galuh in 1558. The devastation and destabilization wreaked in Galuh by Cirebon and Demak in the 1540s and 1550s would cause a serious retraction of Sundanese royal control in that old kingdom by the late 1560s. Spanish Malaca now not only had the defenses of its undermanned city and environs on its plate, but also had the responsibility of maintaining a consistent stream of military and financial assistance with the increasingly encircled Sunda Kingdom.

    The religious issue - as everywhere else in the Malay Archipelago - was also a complicated one, and presented an exceptionally difficult challenge to the Spanish. While there were sizeable factions within the Estado da Índia (and outside of it) that viewed evangelization as secondary in importance to trade, the spread of the Christian religion was always counted among the priorities of interacting with overseas populations by the Spanish crown and by a plurality of the crown’s subjects that were active overseas. Genuine compulsion of conscience notwithstanding, the Spanish crown’s interests in promoting Catholicism could be as politically and economically-minded as those of the Estado da Índia. While trade and military cooperation with the polytheist states of Asia was all well and good, the Spanish crown - just like any other state at the time - desired subservient vassals and tributaries wherever it could find them, and this was an arrangement that went hand in hand with the baptism of rulers and the free movement of Catholic missionaries. The supreme permeation of Catholicism in the mind of the average 16th century Spaniard must also be considered.

    In short, what all this meant was that Catholicism and the sharing of it was going to be mixed into every interaction between Spanish subjects and non-Christians, and that, consequently, every interaction between Spanish subjects and the Sundanese was going to be tinged with a seemingly irresolvable religious tension. At this point in the century, the Sunda Kingdom’s raison d'être was not only the self-determination of the Sundanese people but also the protection of the Sundanese spiritual order against invasive and disruptive foreign religions. The inevitable conflict between this sense of purpose for the Sundanese state and the Spanish urge to evangelize became evident by the late 1560s, during the reign of Raga Mulya, who had welcomed numerous Gregorian and Martinian advisors and educators into his court in Pajajaran, which in previous decades was welcomed but was now greeted with raised eyebrows. The more hardline traditionalists among the Sunda nobility had gradually come to see being overly friendly and concessive with the Christians as no different from inviting in Muslim imams, and Raga Mulya became detested by many for his perceived weakness and imprudent fondness for foreign ideas. It did not help that his rulership was, at best, indecisive and reserved - the second in what would become a chain of weaker and more ineffective rulers. To make matters worse, Islam was filtering into the country naturally, as it had been doing for the past century. On a visit in 1513, the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires remarked that the ports of both Banten and Cimanuk (both belonging to the Sunda Kingdom) had a significant number of Muslim inhabitants, the former owing to missionaries from Johor, the latter to missionaries from Cirebon. The thriving Muslim communities in those ports no doubt played a very important role in the relatively easy establishment of a new Muslim state at Banten in 1540, as well as in the surrender of Cimanuk to the sultanate of Cirebon without a fight during the invasion of 1554.

    By the 1580s, the regime of the Sunda Kingdom was more or less propped up by the Spanish, with the whole of Calapa virtually under the governance of the Spanish fort and feitoria, an ailing state kept alive by Spanish guns and ships and the occasional turmoil that afflicted its invasive neighbors. The political and religious situation of the Malaca Straits and the Java Sea thus made any further expansion in the straits extremely difficult for the next few centuries. If any substantial conquest or fruitful missionary effort was to be achieved in the Malayan Archipelago with the resources available to the Spanish there, it would be found further east.

    - Orang Serani -

    The conflict between Christianity and Islam in the Malay Archipelago was also unlike any other encounter between the two religions. Islam was experiencing the culmination of two centuries of proselytization, and was on a vigorous upswing in the region, with intensified missionary efforts and prolific warrior sultanates springing up on top of the ashes of decrepit polytheist states. However, Christianity - increasingly invigorated by Reform Catholicism and the boldness of an exceptional generation of explorers and evangelists - had upset what had hitherto appeared to be a textbook Islamic victory, forcibly making a toehold out of Malaca, the heart of Malay Islam. Islam possessed a clear advantage in the archipelago, but was now butting heads with the small yet unyielding influence of another Abrahamic religion. Southeast Asia therefore offered fertile ground for conversion of the like encountered so far in the Americas, and missionaries were as integral to political and economic expansion as any cannon or galleon.

    In partial contrast to affairs in the western Malay Archipelago, the introduction of Christianity to the eastern half of the archipelago offered much more promise. It did, however, also carry interesting circumstances that were unique among those encountered by Spanish missionaries. In 1557, a Portuguese Gregorian by the name of Antonio Vaz (who was responsible for the conversion of the sultan of Bacan and his court) gave us insight into the actual religious composition of the Moluccas at the time (at least from his perspective), observing that Islam was primarily the religion of the nobility, whereas the common folk either had little regard for the Prophet or were secretly resentful of Islam, retaining their folk beliefs. Also, while the rulers and aristocracy of the Moluccan sultanates had been Sunni Muslims since the latter half of the 15th century, they themselves were still in the process of Islamization into the late 16th century, primarily due to distance from the core of the Muslim world, and the masses that they ruled over were, at best, only partially Islamized. The Moluccan elite were therefore Islamic enough to generate unease toward the Christian Spaniards, but syncretist enough for many of them to tolerate or even be enticed by the Christian religion. As elsewhere in the maritime Far East, conversion to Christianity (or at least acceptance of baptism) also carried promising business relations with the Spanish and the potential assistance of their potent (albeit small) regional military - boons that offered an even greater incentive to convert for the downtrodden lower classes and vulnerable rural communities.

    Moluccans.jpg

    16th century Moluccan elites

    It nevertheless must be added that there were still some exceptional obstacles in the conversion of a few strategically important regions. Local and inter tribal politics were often a deciding factor in the reception of Christianity, and the difficulty of traversing the complex relations between hundreds of states and cultural groups of varying sizes often hampered the spread of Christianity in otherwise promising locations. For instance, the kingdom of Gowa - a Bugis state in southwestern Celebes and the most powerful in the region - had a mutually beneficial relationship with the Spanish centered around the thriving port of Macaçar, and was resistant to the spread of Islam (possibly owing in no small part to the popularity of pork among the Bugis). As Macáçar more or less guarded the entrance to the Spice Islands and the Eastern Lesser Sunda Islands, and was also the most developed and populous port of the southeastern Malay Archipelago, the Spanish operations in Solor and Timor had to compete with Ambon and Ternate for the favor of the feitoria there. The feitoria at Macáçar in turn had to compete with the feitoria at Calapa for the favor of the captaincy of Malaca. Christianization during the 16th century proved laborious, however, due to the profusion of competing states in the area and their response to Spanish missionaries. While converts were being made in Celebes, their numbers remained low, primarily due to the chronic shortage of priests and consequent lack of catechesis. However, encouraging success came in the 1540s to the north of Gowa, in a region known as Ajatappareng, which consisted of five principalities that formed an alliance as a response to the growing might of Gowa and the formation of the rival Telumpoccoe alliance to the east, which consisted of the three Bugis kingdoms of Bone, Wajo, and Soppeng. Intrigued by the Celebes’ potential riches, a Portuguese trader named Antonio de Paiva made multiple voyages to the island and Malaca from 1542 onward. During these expeditions, Paiva engaged in separate theological discussions with the Ajatappareng kings of Suppa' and Siang and their ministers, and was requested to arrange baptism for La Putebulu, king of Suppa' and his family, followed by the king of Siang in 1544.

    These baptisms came with the unofficial promise of a military alliance, so it is more than likely that some of these conversions were done in the hope of military support from the Spanish against the expansionist kingdom of Gowa. The baptisms continued in 1545, with more rulers converted by a Portuguese Dominican named Vicente Viegas, following which Catholicism spread rapidly (if in many places superficially) among the populace of Ajatappareng. By baptizing Gowa’s rivals, suspicion among the elite of Macaçar emerged towards the Catholic missionaries in particular and the Spanish in general. Situations like this soured the idea of conversion to the power brokers on the unconverted side and also discouraged further missionary efforts. With only a few hundred priests and friars available in Southeast Asia during the 16th century, the Spanish had to choose their missionary efforts carefully. Similarly to the Sunda Kingdom or the Majapahit remnant states in Blambangan and in the many petty kingdoms of Bali, in a relatively secure realm like Gowa there was both a sense of urgency toward safeguarding religious traditions seemingly threatened by the Abrahamic faiths as well as a simple lack of material or political justification for a conversion to Catholicism. The Spanish could offer many things, such as firearms or American silver, but these things could only be brought over in small quantities and over extended periods of time, and the promise of military assistance from a group as scattered and few as the Spanish in Asia was often hard to be impressed by.

    Most successful attempts at conversion were therefore in the hands of determined missionaries rather than in the barrels of Spanish cannons. The Portuguese Dominicans (and to a lesser extent the Franciscans and Augustinians) were indispensable in the early exploration of the East Indies and the development of Spanish interests there, with the Spanish and even European presence on numerous islands in the 16th century consisting solely of Dominican missionaries. Their impact was especially potent in the Moluccas and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where the indigenous populations were much more receptive to Christianity than were the Malays to their west. While a Spanish trading post had been established on the isle of Solor (in the village of Lamaquera) in 1520, it was in 1569 that the Dominicans constructed the island’s first fort out of palm tree trunks. When this fortified mission was burned down by Javanese Muslim pirates a year later, the Dominicans quickly set about rebuilding it, this time with more durable walls with stones made from sand, calcium, and eggs of the local hawk-eagle. The diligence of these Dominicans ensured that Solor would become a valuable Spanish asset and the center of Spanish control in the Solor Archipelago and the Lesser Sunda Islands, with a population of no more than 200 Portuguese (“white” and “black” Portuguese) while the Christianized natives numbered roughly 25,000 by 1590. To the immediate west, the larger island of Flores - named by the Portuguese for the red-orange flowers of its Delonix regia trees - offered even more fertile ground for missionary work, with feitorias and missions emerging in the villages of Larantuca and Maumere, and a local rajah accepting baptism in 1587. To the south, the isle of Timor also became frequented by Spanish merchants due to its abundance of sandalwood, a prized source of perfumes and incense - the latter of which made it highly marketable to both Buddhists and Hindus, who considered sandalwood sacred. Missionary work had been established in Timor as early as 1556 by the Dominican friar António Taveiro, who was operating out of Solor, and in 1569 a formal Spanish feitoria was established at Lifau (Alifau in Portuguese), to trade with the nearby kingdoms of Oé-Cusse and Ambeno.

    Solor.jpg

    Solor, c. 1560

    To the north, the evangelization effort in the Moluccas Proper also held promising aspects. The Spanish missionaries were fortunate in that this region was going through a century-old power struggle between a predominantly Islamic ruling class atop numerous trading sultanates, and a predominantly polytheistic and Hindu tribal majority dominating the Moluccas’ interiors and the shores of un-Islamized islands. On the island of Ambon, the Spanish found a semi-urban populace split unevenly between the 'uli-lima' (group of five) - who were Muslim converts and allies to the Muslims of Java - and the 'uli-siwa' (group of nine) - who retained their traditional beliefs and who were seeking powerful allies to depose the uli-lima. The Spanish easily tipped this balance and were more or less welcomed by the uli-siwa, who appreciated the aid and consequently found Christianity appealing. However, despite the central location of Ambon - Solor’s chief competitor - in the Moluccas and its proximity to the Banda Islands, it failed to elicit any excessive interest from the Spanish for the first half of the 16th century. While a formal feitoria was established in 1520, the local Ambonese opposed the construction of a new Spanish fort until 1549, and Muslim pirates were a regular pest on the island’s northern coast until the turn of the century. Further dampening Spanish interest in Ambon was the failure to establish a peaceful or permanent presence in the Banda Islands at the time. After being discovered by António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão (who had bribed or coerced Malay pilots to guide them) in 1512, two profitable and fairly peaceable exchanges occurred at the Banda Islands that same year and in 1515, in which the Spanish ships were packed full of nutmeg, mace, and also clove, the former two over which the Banda Islands enjoyed an exclusive monopoly, being the only location in the world at the time in which nutmeg and mace were grown. Due to distractions elsewhere, the Spanish would not return until 1529, this time with a company of troops under the captain Garcia Henriques, who had orders to construct a fort. Feeling threatened, the Bandanese attacked the Spanish when they began their unauthorized construction, and the cost of the intermittent fighting that followed convinced Henriques to depart the island and leave the nutmeg and mace trade to the middlemen in Ambon. Spanish visitation afterwards was not prohibited, but the Bandanese chieftains were unenthusiastic towards Christian evangelization. Spanish difficulties in the region changed, however, when Spanish fortunes were reversed in Ambon’s other rival, the feitoria on the island of Ternate.

    After sacking Ternate in 1522, the Spanish expedition under Fernão Magalhães forced its sultan, Bayan Sirrullah, to allow the establishment of a fort and feitoria, leaving the island under Spanish domination. After Bayan died (presumably poisoned) mere months later, his son, Tabariji, succeeded him as sultan. Meanwhile, Dayal, an older son of Bayan and half brother of Tabariji, had fled to neighboring Tidore in 1522 and was taken in by its sultan, Mir, his maternal uncle. While Ternate was Tidore's rival, Sultan Mir refused to turn over Dayal to the Spaniards, and gradually formed an anti-Spanish coalition with the other sultanates of the Moluccas in Jilolo and Bacan (Gilolo and Bachão to the Portuguese). With the Spaniards' confidence bolstered by their successful overturning of a regional potentate in Ternate with only 200 Portuguese troops, another Spanish expedition sacked Tidore in 1525 with minimal provocation - ruining the burgeoning friendly trade relations with that sultanate and further souring the local opinion - although the expedition would depart without occupying Tidore, a more good natured gesture intended to keep its sultan mindful not to fall out of good standing with Spain. When a Christianized village on the island of Halmahera was attacked by Ternateans in 1535, the Spanish - who had begun to exercise an outsize control over the royal court and began to suspect that Tabariji had rejected Spanish influence - used this incident as context to force Tabariji's abdication, sending the 17 year old sultan to Malaca, and thence to Cochin. Tabariji's 12 year old brother, Hairun, was then made sultan, and the Spanish attempted to procure custody of him but were blocked by his mother and the grandees of Ternate, although they allowed European tutelage. Hairun seemed interested in Christianity early on and also dressed in Portuguese fashion and spoke Portuguese well, giving hope for his conversion to Spanish contemporaries, but his ambivalence continued, and, with age, he leaned further and further towards his Islamic countrymen. Despite denying any ill will toward the Spaniards, they moved to depose him in 1544, once a more promising prospect for a Christian ruler of Ternate emerged. The attempt failed, with Hairun being tipped off beforehand and fleeing under the cover of night to Jilolo.

    The deposed Tabariji (still in exile in Cochin) had meanwhile become steadfast friends with a Portuguese officer by the name of Jordão de Freitas, and through this friendship had become convinced of the Christian religion and converted of his own accord, taking "Dom Manuel" as his baptismal name. His mother Nyaicili Boki Raja had converted two years earlier, taking the baptismal name “Dona Isabel,” and was installed as regent in Ternate. As Nyaicili was the daughter of a sultan of Tidore, and the wife of one sultan of Ternate and mother to another, she offered a highly promising bridge between the two sultanates and an end to their bitter rivalry, and also could have been (just as importantly) a potential watershed figure in the Christianization of the Moluccas. Years of diplomatic finagling and some earnest religious work had finally produced the circumstances for Catholicism and Spanish rule to triumph in the Moluccas, but the time was not yet right, as many of the actors involved were too short-sighted and often too brutal for this to come to pass.

    Spanish involvement in the Far East during the early and mid 16th century was extremely complicated, and in order to properly analyze Spanish failures here during this period - whether diplomatic or otherwise - one must first look at larger issues with the Spanish spice trade. Just as Spain had sought to render the Indian Ocean its mare clausum, Spanish authorities in Malaca realized the potential of dominating interport trade in the Malay Archipelago very soon after seizing the port. Until the late 16th century, Spaniards in the East Indies secured trade deals and shipments of cash crops and other precious commodities through a combination of overtly aggressive gunboat diplomacy and the generous usage of American silver. The Spice Crash of the late 1540s and the diversion of royal funds back to Europe and the Mediterranean in the 1550s though the 1580s made silver payments harder to come by for the Spaniards in the East Indies, which created a volatile diplomatic shift in the region. American silver was a much-needed sweetener for Spanish-East Asian relations, as the shiny bullion had made it much easier for the native princes and oligarchs to forgive the rampant Spanish freebooting, and in its absence many of the potentates in East Asia felt that the time had come to air out their grievances, sometimes violently.

    Additionally, despite the massive revenue that was to be made in the Spice Islands and its importance to the Spanish Crown, the circumstances of physically reaching the riches there had done much to indirectly harm Spanish diplomacy in the region. The maritime distance from Lisbon to Malaca (following the Cape Route) in the 16th century was more than 13,000 nautical miles - 24,000 kilometers, more than half the circumference of the Earth. What was more, a varying concoction of storms, shipwrecks, doldrums, scurvy outbreaks, or possible death or capture at the hands of pirates or other enemies awaited those foolhardy to make such a daunting trip. The Carreira da Índia therefore naturally tended to attract not as many upstanding, tactful, or well-to-do individuals as it attracted those for whom there were few opportunities at home, or worse, those who were on the run for indictable reasons. The Miguelinas were about as far as one could get from Spain at the time where it was worth trying one’s luck, and consequently the Spanish presence there was plagued early on by plenty of bad apples - often unscrupulous and greedy, sometimes downright bloodthirsty and rapacious. Sometimes the distance from the effective power of the laws of Spain also tempted hitherto reputable men into acting unlawfully, as was seen in Fernão Magalhães and João Serrão’s unsanctioned sack of Ternate to avenge Serrão’s brother, Francisco, or João da Silveira and Sancho de Tovar’s similarly unsanctioned expedition to Maynila. Whether the result of simple uncouthness or out of desperation due to their isolation and severe manpower shortage, the Spanish frequently undermined their position in the Spice Islands as well through diplomatic and administrative blunders - the most grievous being their management of affairs in the Moluccas in the 1540s and 1550s.

    With Hairun in exile in Jilolo, Nyaicili’s regency got off to a good start, with a balance established between the interests of the Spanish and those of the Ternatean elite. The violent rivalries between the Moluccan sultanates sagged as well, with Spanish galleons occasionally making patrols to put an end to trading conflicts that spiraled out of control. When Nyaicili suddenly passed away in 1550, however, the 6-year calm in the region disappeared as well. The Spanish in Ternate had hoped that Nyaicili’s regency had softened the Ternatean nobles to the concept of a Catholic monarch and that the time had come for Tabariji to be called up from Cochin to take up the Ternatean throne. A coup would have ensued immediately had it not been for the intervention of Rodrigo Magalhães, who, as the captain-major of Sambongão was in closer proximity to Ternate and had a better understanding of the local politics than his superiors in Malaca.

    The captain-general of Malaca, António de Noronha, wanted to publicly present Tabariji to the Ternateans as a show of good faith, but Magalhães was emphatic that Tabariji be kept a safe distance from Ternate before the path to his peaceful installment was guaranteed. Magalhães' caution was not misplaced. For the magnates of Ternate, incessant Spanish interference was enough of a nuisance, but submitting to an apostate who had renounced Islam was simply too much to bear. Tabariji was a less appealing prospect than his mother Nyaicili as well, as the Ternateans felt an older woman was less likely to impose her newfound religion on them than a younger man. A failed poisoning attempt on Tabariji in Malaca while he was en route to Ternate confirmed Magalhães’ concerns, and it was decided that Tabariji would take up indefinite residence in Ambon until an aristocratic assembly in Ternate could be convinced to recognize his accession. This assembly never materialized, as the Spanish garrison found itself confronted after Nyaicili’s funeral by an embassy of nobles, among whom was Hairun, having been snuck back into Ternate by a conspiracy of Muslim Ternateans. The conspirators informed the Portuguese captain, Fernão Lopes d’Espinho, that Ternate would accept no other ruler than Hairun and that the Spanish would be allowed to remain and keep their feitoria if this demand was met. The conspirators also claimed that Hairun’s claim had the support of the sultans of Jilolo, Tidore, and Bacan. D’Espinho agreed to negotiate with Hairun himself outside of the protection of the feitoria provided the pretender was not accompanied by his guard. Meeting outside the walls, the negotiation proceeded with concessions made to Hairun, but, after the meeting was concluded, two Spanish guards accosted Hairun and stabbed him to death.

    This was an outrageously reckless and critically shortsighted move considering the precarious situation of the Spanish in the Moluccas, and Hairun’s claim was immediately taken up by his skilled and vengeful son, Babullah. D’Espinho had misguidedly assumed the claim of support from the other Moluccan sultanates was a mere bluff, and now Jilolo and Tidore moved to install Babullah on the throne of Ternate. Even the sultanate of Brunei - with which relations had begun to cool - expelled the Spanish ambassador and began raiding Christian settlements in the Miguelinas. The Spanish feitoria was put to siege, and the nearest Spanish outposts scrambled to relieve it. Three galleons and a dozen galleys and junks had to be assembled in the harbor of distant Malaca, arriving just under two months after the beginning of the siege. After a massive and fiercely fought battle with the Moluccan fleet, the Spanish navy was able to break through and resupply the feitoria. However, issues emerging with the sultanates of Aceh and Brunei required the Spanish ships to depart after a week, after which the blockade was restored. Another 3 months passed before the Spanish garrison relented, and although they were allowed to leave Ternate mostly unharmed, they were forced to surrender their weapons and were jeered and pelted with rocks and fruit.

    The Spanish presence in Halmahera and the surrounding islands quickly evaporated and Christianized villages were pillaged relentlessly, as a southern Spanish-Islamic frontline solidified in the Ceram Sea. A number of feitorias and Catholic missions were affected by the collapse of Spanish rule over Ternate; Ambon and its environs was regularly harassed by Muslim pirates from Ternate and Java, and the Spanish presence in the Sula, Sangihe, and Talaud islands and the feitorias at Manado and Dávau were all wiped out by Babullah’s forces by 1560. Islam received a breather on the island of Maguindau and the beleaguered Sulu Archipelago due to combined Bruneian and Ternatean assaults on Spanish holdings, with the Spanish feitoria on the isle of Palauã destroyed by Bruneian raiders in 1555, and the isle of Jolo liberated in 1558, following which nearly half the population of the more Christianized and Spanish-aligned isle of Basilão was butchered or enslaved. The large Spanish donatary of Cotavato had to withdraw from the coastline, emboldening the Mouros on its borders and increasing its reliance on the assistance on the hill-dwelling Teduray. Sambongão and its captaincy came under intense pressure from the sea, barely enduring an 8-month siege by Mouro pirates and Ternatean ships in 1559 and only surviving after concessions were made to the nearby rajah of Sanmalan (Samalã to the Portuguese) in order to procure a food supply. This disruption of Spanish control was nearly fatal to Catholic proselytization efforts in this part of the archipelago. With the supply of missionaries cut off, catechesis weakened, and a great number of converts in turn either reverted to their former beliefs or easily apostasized to Islam when pressured by the Moluccan sultanates. This upset of previously unchecked Spanish dominance sparked other acts of aggression towards Spanish holdings in loose coordination with the Moluccan sultanates, with the sultanates of Aceh and Kalinyamat besieging Malaca in 1565 with cannons and gunners gifted by none other than the Ottoman Turks in tow.

    TabarijiAmbon.jpg

    The court of Dom Manuel Tabariji in Ambon, c. 1565

    The one unpredicted boon to come out of this situation for the Spanish was the concentration of displaced resources and manpower in Ambon, which became a more heavily-fortified and Lusitanized settlement with greater capacity for trade volume and power projection. This in turn prompted a more serious attempt to subdue the extremely lucrative Banda Islands, which received its first successful Spanish fort and feitoria in 1559. A more lasting Spanish settlement was made possible on Banda Neira due to the decision to bring along 240 Christian Ambonese farmers and merchants. Meanwhile, with Ternate out of reach for more than a decade, Tabariji - known to the Spanish by his baptismal name, “Dom Manuel” - had been deprived of a proper coronation on his home isle. To amplify the prestige of the Ternatean pretender and reinforce his claims, the captain-major of Malaca himself, António de Noronha, paid Tabariji a visit on Ambon in 1556 and organized a makeshift coronation for him in which he reaffirmed his baptismal vows and pledged submission to the king of Spain, after which he was crowned not the king of Ternate, but “o rei das Molucas” - the king of the Moluccas. Noronha brought with him a circlet of silver and a signet ring bearing the coat of arms of Portugal, along with a throne made of lacquered teak with inlaid Malay patterns in gold leaf, crafted in Malaca, which was placed in the modest palace that had been built for Tabariji adjacent to the Spanish fortress when he first arrived in Ambon.

    Ternate had rapidly resumed its role as the leading power in the Northern Moluccas under the capable and aggressive rule of Sultan Babullah, and the sultan of Brunei, Saiful Rijal (known to the Portuguese as Lixar) had brought the extent of his maritime empire and its raiding parties back to the shores of Luçon and Maguindau. However, as Ternatean hegemony returned to the Moluccas, so too did the anxiety of its old rivals, and the alliance between the Moluccan sultanates fell apart as soon as the Spanish were no longer an immediate concern. Tabariji was also not without supporters, nor had his mother been without committed loyalists. Those among the Ternatean nobility who had converted to Catholicism or sympathized with it, as well as those who appreciated the lucrative trade with Malaca and the period of peace during Nyaicili’s regency between the Moluccan sultanates formed a counter-conspiracy to precipitate peaceful relations with the Spanish or even their return to Ternate. What truly prevented a collapse of Spanish power in the Malay Archipelago and a complete and lasting Ternatean ascendancy in the Moluccas, however, was the new line of transit discovered between the Portuguese East Indies and the Castilian Americas. Crossing the Pacific was certainly no short ordeal - measuring 14,000 to 16,000 kilometers from Nueva Castilla or Nueva Vizcaya to the port of Ambon - and the first nescient voyages throughout the 1530s and 1540s were especially fraught with disaster, but by the late 1550s a one-way trip could be completed in less than 4 months. Whether taking the Cape Route or the Trans-Pacific Route, getting any number of Peninsular Spaniards from Europe to the East Indies was costly and exorbitantly time-consuming. However, criollos, mestizos, and indios amigos in the Americas could be moved to the Malay Archipelago in the hundreds comparatively quickly. What this meant was that by the 1560s, Spanish endeavors in the East Indies could return to conquest in earnest.

    - Kemurkaan Allah -

    The state of affairs in Southeast Asia had become so dire by the 1560s that the pleas of the captain-major of Malaca finally reached the ears of Juan Pelayo himself. In an unprecedented mandate, Juan Pelayo - unwilling to commission a fleet from Spain proper when a massive Turkish military operation in the Mediterranean seemed imminent - ordered the Council of the Indies to determine the best avenue for funneling ships and soldiery from Spain’s more pacified American possessions into Spain’s much less pacified Asian possessions. By 1562, the Council of the Indies elected to organize an expedition from Nueva Castilla (chosen over Nueva Vizcaya due to the untrustworthy reputation of that viceroyalty after the Beraza revolt), which would assist the Portuguese in the Malay Archipelago. In 1564, 6 galleons, 670 soldiers, and 28 priests had been assembled and would set sail from Ledesma (OTL Manzanillo) under the captain Blas López de Villarcayo, to be followed by two other galleons and 210 auxiliaries in 1565. The knowledge of the Portuguese East Indies - geographically and politically speaking primarily - was minimal in Nueva Castilla, and the instructions of the Council of the Indies were not very helpful. Even after dozens of completed voyages between Asia and the Spanish Americas, the Nuevacastellano fleet was not entirely certain on which route to take to reach Malaca - where they assumed their services were needed most - and set off into the Pacific with no guidance beyond the knowledge of a few trusted ocean currents.

    It is somewhat fortuitous, then, that the fleet from Nueva Castilla took the route that led them into the Halmahera Sea, from whence they followed the instruction of locals toward the “Pelabuhan Sepanyol” - the “Port of Spain” - which by then was Ambon. The timing was opportune, as Ambon had been under the administration of the same captain-major - Vicente Castro de Pinhel - for 14 years. Such a long tenure was of course due to the lack of reliable officers in Southeast Asia as well as a bit of self-serving greed, but was also beneficial in that it had provided Ambon with consistent leadership in this trying time, and gave Castro the sort of local knowledge and personal interest in local affairs that came with such a lengthy residence. Under Castro’s administration, Ambon had been prioritized at the expense of numerous other feitorias in the region but to the long-term benefit of Spanish power in the Moluccas (as Ambon was the superior choice of investment). Castro had also taken on the local tradition of seasonal raiding, which he pursued vigorously. This meant that at any given time Castro had at least three galleons, more than 200 Portuguese soldiers, and many hundreds of lascarins and local auxiliaries at his disposal, ready for a naval expedition. When Villarcayo arrived in Ambon in March of 1565 (miraculously without losing a ship), Castro had three galleons in his service and was preparing to conduct another seasonal raid northward. The arrival of six more galleons with hundreds of men at arms was quite unexpected, and excited Castro with the possibilities of a massive reversal in fortunes in the protracted war against the Moluccan sultanates. Even more exciting to Castro was the fact that the viceroy of Nueva Castilla - conscious of the legal issues separating their kingdoms - had carefully instructed Villarcayo to defer to Portuguese leadership on his arrival, and Villarcayo had been content to follow these instructions. In less than a week, an expedition to knock Ternate out of the war was unanimously agreed upon.

    However, after another week had passed, Villarcayo suddenly took ill and died, and command of the Nuevacastellano expedition passed to his lieutenant, Cristóbal Domínguez de Aroche. Aroche, unlike his perished captain, was a significantly rougher man than his predecessor, and who had spent the last 15 years of his life fighting a brutal war of attrition with the Chichimecs. Aroche intended to carry over the traditions and know-how of Castile’s experience with the Indios of Mesoamerica, planning on employing tactics more befitting a conquistador of the Americas than an agent of the Estado da Índia. He immediately ordered about his men as he saw fit, having just endured a four month voyage over the Pacific and as a consequence quickly growing impatient with Castro’s more seasoned but also more meticulous planning. After Aroche and his six galleons departed Ambon ahead of schedule, Castro and his three were forced to follow lest the campaign lose its cohesion right out of port.

    The Spanish armada passed Tidore and hid behind the island of Maitara as scouts were sent to scope out the Ternatean fleet - assembled along the southeast coast of Ternate in anticipation of the arrival of the Spaniards. The three Portuguese galleons began to hesitate when the scouts reported no less than 120 vessels, although most of them were mere catamarans. Aroche then unexpectedly broke off his galleons without the permission of the captain-major once night had fallen, heading southward and then swinging about in a wide curve toward the southwestern Ternatean coast. There he disembarked with 200 men while instructing his ships to lure the Ternateans into an attack close enough to the Portuguese ships that the Portuguese would be forced to join in the fray. After trudging nearly 8 kilometers to the outskirts of the port of Ternate and waiting for the first glimpse of daybreak and the sound of cannons raging nearby, Aroche and his contingent set about darting through the streets with torches, igniting as many structures as possible. With most of Ternate’s fighting men fighting in the harbor, the flames spread uncontrollably, abetted by the palm thatch roofs attached to every single building. The 9 Spanish ships were by now completely surrounded and some were at risk of being overwhelmed. Seeing the fire burning ever brighter, the Castilian galleons took advantage of the Ternateans’ distraction over the sight of their city aflame and dropped sails, painstakingly forming a single file beeline towards the shore while the Portuguese ships watched in bewilderment. The ferocity of the Nuevocastellanos was unexpected by both the Moluccans and the Portuguese. As the galleons continued to desperately fend off thousands of Moluccan seamen, the Spaniards ashore burned and butchered indiscriminately. With the entirety of the port of Ternate seemingly engulfed in flames, the Moluccan fleet fell apart from both despair over Ternate’s fate and their ineffectiveness against the Spanish ships. Sultan Babullah, his two sons, and a very large portion of the city’s populace perished in the chaos. The entire city was a smoking ruin.

    Castro was furious - for Aroche forcing the Spanish ships into a sea battle that was nearly lost while he and his contingent conducted an unchallenged massacre on land, and more importantly for Aroche brazenly disobeying orders to regain control over Ternate and its wealth and instead utterly annihilating it. With his forces outnumbered by the Nuevacastellanos and with the more general goal of subduing Ternate accomplished, there was little Castro could do, and Aroche continued his de facto leadership over the expedition. Castro attempted to dissuade Aroche from straight away turning on Tidore by informing him that the remnants of the Moluccan fleet - dozens of ships and thousands of fighting men - were slowly regrouping at Jilolo, but Aroche insisted that Tidore be dealt with first. The sultan of Tidore, Gapi Baguna, had not yet finished crafting the terms of a peace offering before the Spanish ships were in his harbor. Aroche listened to his translator for a portion of these terms before offering his own: the construction of a Spanish fort on Tidore, the baptism of the sultan and his family, the oath of allegiance of the sultan to Dom Manuel Tabariji, and an annual tribute of 60 crates of peppercorn. These terms were unacceptable to the sultan and were perhaps intended as such, and his refusal was met with a coastal bombardment. With most of Tidore’s military capabilities at port in Jilolo after the battle of Ternate, surrender followed shortly. Gapi Baguna and his family would be taken aboard one of the galleons with all of his (confiscated) royal treasures and put under permanent house arrest in Ambon, one of his daughters given in marriage to Tabariji’s 12 year old son.

    All that remained was to confront the residual Moluccan forces at Jilolo, which was by 1565 no longer an independent sultanate but an appanage governed by Babullah’s nephew. Years before, the sultan of Jilolo, Katarabumi - reputedly an outstanding ruler - had taken advantage of Jilolo’s superior access to arable land and improved the conditions of his sultanate to the point that Sultan Babullah grew wary enough to make an ultimatum demanding tribute in 1552. In truth, Babullah had desired direct control over Jilolo due to its supply of foodstuffs made available by its large hinterland on the isle of Halmahera. Katarabumi declined, confident in the fortress guarding his port, and Jilolo held out for 5 months before a Tidorean fleet arrived, hoping to share in the spoils. Katarabumi fled into the wilderness, adamantly refusing to acknowledge the suzerainty of Ternate, and the old and broken sultan poisoned himself a year later. Jilolo was placed under the rule of Katarabumi’s eldest son, Kaicili Gujarati, but in 1560 a revolt against Ternatean rule was organized with the cooperation of the Spanish and was promptly defeated, after which Babullah took his revenge and ambushed Kaicili’s fleeing ship, killing him along with most of the sultanate’s nobility. However, one of Katarabumi’s grandchildren, named Yusuf, was still alive and lived as a minor chieftain in the Halmahera interior. Breaking with his modus operandi, Aroche agreed with Castro that the best option was to offer Yusuf a renewed sultanate in which the Spanish would exercise minimal control in return for peaceful compliance with Spanish overlordship. This compromise was offered to the remaining Moluccan fleet at Jilolo, although more than half of the Moluccans elected to fight on, and in the following battle were routed once again. The Spanish disembarked a party of less than one hundred to ensure the surrender of the Moluccans in Jilolo’s fortress and to send another smaller party to beckon for Yusuf’s return. After some very logical hesitation, Yusuf took up rule in Jilolo after declaring Juan Pelayo his sovereign lord.

    Moluccas1580.png

    The Moluccas, c. 1580
    (see symbol key at bottom for reference)
    Green: area of Spanish dominance, Pink: hostile powers, Blue: friendly powers
    1: Ajatappareng Confederation, 2: Kingdom of Gowa, 3: Principality of Buton, 4: Principality of Bacan

    Such acts of extreme boldness had, of course, secured some truly colossal success in the Americas and some short term benefits in Asia. But these were also, obviously, not acts that could be repeated indefinitely and without repercussions. News of the cataclysmic fall of Ternate spread far and wide, just as it had with the fall of Malaca decades prior. Commentators as far away as Japan began to ruminate on the lengths these frightening Spaniards would go to secure power, and what heinous acts they would commit to keep it. Many of the enemies of Spain in these waters were successfully cowed, but their hatred only grew. While it was perhaps necessary to use drastic military measures to protect Spanish interests in this utterly distant corner of the globe, it certainly was not good grounds for building trust and peaceful trade relations with the resource-holders of Asia. What was of even greater concern (but was at the time imperceptible to most of the Estado da Índia) was that the potentates of Asia who were disinclined to tolerate further Spanish expansionism might in the future be willing to offer material concessions to anyone who could dislodge the Spanish, particularly to the increasingly far-ranging sailors of Spain’s European rivals. Two French vessels - the Pensée and the Sacre - had, after all, successfully reached Sumatra as early as 1529 under the command of the brother Jean and Raoul Parmentier, who had been bankrolled by the Norman shipowner Jean Ango and given approval by the French crown itself.

    - Ilhas do Arcanjo -

    With the three leading Moluccan sultanates shattered, their far flung trading and tributary networks dissipated quickly, although numerous upstart statelets in northern Celebes and the Sula Islands attempted to fill in the gaps afterwards. Tabariji made the obligatory visit to Ternate in October (and a cursory visit to Tidore), speaking in public to the beleaguered populace, assuring them that they would be allowed to live in peace under his protection and the protection of the king of Spain, but also encouraging them to accept baptism. Having grown comfortable in Ambon and distressed by the ruined remains of Ternate, Tabariji stayed only until the end of the monsoon season and departed in March, never to return. After 7 weeks mopping up Muslim pirates and Moluccan garrisons in the immediate area, Castro retired to Ambon, tasking Aroche and his Nuevocastellanos with cleaning up the mess they had made on Ternate, effectively making him the island’s governor. Aroche had come armed not only with a desire to violently flip Moluccan society upside down, but also with the careful instructions of the Spanish monarchy for societal planning in conquered territories, detailed extensively in the corollaries to the Leyes Nuevas pertaining to the Spanish Americas. Ternate’s complete destruction allowed Aroche to both control and compartmentalize the placement of its surviving populace and to rebuild the port following the plaza-centered town planning that was adhered to in every new settlement in the Americas, which allowed for a more open central marketplace and a more rapid mustering of Spanish troops in the event of an external attack or internal uprising.

    Aroche engineered an even more sweeping societal change when he joined in military action around Maguindau and the Sulu Archipelago to assist the Portuguese there and brought back hundreds of Christian “indios miguelinos” from Cotabato and Sambongão to plant in Ternate, Tidore, and Halmahera. These Christian populations were dispersed among the Muslim, Hindu, and animist locals, disrupting their communal cohesion, giving the Spanish a loyal fifth column, and promoting the dissolution of non-Christian cultural and religious sensibilities. This practice was exceedingly commonplace in the Castilian Americas, where those among the indigenous populations that were more receptive to Christian teaching and more accepting of Spanish rule were given special privileges and economic opportunities, and were then co-opted for the continued military activities of the Spanish. To give the Spanish credit, they were admittedly generous in the sharing of spoils with these Indios and were relatively egalitarian in their treatment of them as comrades on the battlefield. The profusion of Christian converts in certain areas of Southeast Asia that followed the Moluccan War of 1550-1565 allowed the Spanish much greater mobility in managing its still very small possessions, with populations of Christian natives resettled or recruited for military service in batches numbering in the hundreds and sometimes thousands. Nowhere was this more effective than in the vast archipelago to the north of the Moluccas.

    While the Spanish encountered in the empire of Brunei another Muslim thalassocracy that was arguably a greater threat than the combined strength of the Moluccan sultanates, they stood a greater chance of supplanting Bruneian hegemony due to a few circumstances. For one, the Spanish were fortunate in that the spread of Islam in Brunei’s overseas tributaries was much more recent and consequently much more surface-level than it was in the Moluccas. Brunei itself had been ruled by a Muslim dynasty since the mid 14th century, but Islamic proselytization in the vassal states it had established or subdued in the Miguelinas had only begun in earnest in the early 16th century, almost concurrently with the arrival of the Spanish and the alternative religious option they offered. Additionally, Brunei had a much more extensive network of Malay-speaking satrapies and trade posts in this region than the Spanish had, and was entering its golden age during this period decades under the competent rule of its sultan, Bolkiah, but the Spanish offered connection to a massively far-reaching global trade system. There were also issues of manpower - something that a coastline state like Brunei did not have in quantities that could easily overwhelm the Spanish - and decentralization, as the bulk of the Bruneian Empire’s makeup was comprised of highly autonomous princes and tribal councils, all of which regularly entertained the thought of total independence.

    None of this is to say Brunei posed no threat to the Spanish, however. Due to the promising trade potential of Celudão as a stopover for trade with China (seen as something of an ultimate goal for the Spanish in Asia), the Spanish put an effort into establishing settlements on the nearby island of Minolo, eventually named “Ofir” in Spanish maps (a name of Biblical origin referring to an unknown and extremely wealthy island east of India, which floated around in the imagination of Spanish explorers and cartographers before ending up fixed on former Minolo), as a natural bulwark against the approach of the Bruneians very early on. Indeed, the Spanish were on the defensive on Ofir and Palauã until the 1580s, and frequently found themselves with their backs against the wall in Maguindau due to Bruneian expeditions there as well. This early investment in Ofir in turn facilitated the establishment of Catholic missions and trade back across the Ofir Strait in the region of Bombão and on the northern coast of the island of Majas. The fall of Ternate and defeat of the Acehnese assault on Malaca in the annus mirabilis of 1565 nonetheless permanently turned the tables on Brunei and its Sulu allies, with an expedition in 1567 retaking Basilão and Jolo and reducing the sultanate of Sulu to the island of Tauitaui (Tawi Tawi).

    EastIndiesBattle.jpg

    A battle between Spaniards and "Pintados" - Bisaian warriors known for their elaborate full body tattoos

    Spanish expansion in the northern Miguelinas proceeded in an easier fashion than that in the Moluccas or Malacca Straits primarily due to its relative lack of political development and its superior accessibility to the Castilian Americas. The political structure of the islands north of the Moluccas was - barring a few centralized territorial states - based around organized communities and quasi-city-states known as barangays, which held anywhere from 20,000 inhabitants to as few as 50 families. The continuous patterns of piracy and raiding discouraged much of the isles’ coastal activity beyond that of the most powerful barangays, and encouraged smaller, more decentralized communities in the interior. This left large swathes of Luçon, the Bisaias, and Maguindau vulnerable to a hostile takeover by a sufficiently organized and well-armed force such as that fielded by the Spanish.

    There were several organized polities that the Spanish would have to contend with, however. The rajahnate of Sebo, the confederation of Majas, and the kedatuan of Dapitan were all sizable Bisaian states which the Spanish never attempted to subdue militarily, contenting themselves with the establishment of feitorias and Catholic missions, trade relations with whom were spearheaded on the initiative of Rodrigo Afonso de Magalhães, son of the late Fernão de Magalhães and his successor as captain-major of Sambongão and captain-general of Maguindau. An attempt was made to more directly dominate the rajahnate of Cebu, however, by coaxing its rajah, Tupas, into allowing for the construction of a stone fortress in the middle of his capital in 1552. Without warning, Rajah Tupas massacred the Spanish soldiers and laborers once they had finished construction and took possession of the fort himself. The Catholic mission was spared, as Tupas, his family, and the nobility of his realm had accepted baptism in 1549. Under less level-headed guidance, the Spanish would have surely organized a punitive expedition, but Magalhães did not want to jeopardize the hitherto remarkable success the Spanish had enjoyed with the Bisaian states. After tenderly addressing the unexpected hostility and returning relations with Sebo to normal, Tupas was murdered under suspicious circumstances and the Spanish resumed occupation of their feitoria, letting the rajahnate keep the new fortress. Friendly relations had also been reached with Maguindau’s un-Islamized polities, namely those of Butuan (known to the Portuguese as Caragão) and Himologão.
    The only outlier was Caboloan (known to the Portuguese as either Caboloã or Pancasirão) a state centered around the barangay of Binalatongan (Binalatongão to the Portuguese) in the Agno River basin that had begun to coalesce more concretely beginning in the 1520s, and by 1600 had still not fallen under the thumb of the Spanish circuit.

    Similarly to what had happened after the capture of Malaca and the nominal dissolution of its sultanate, the subversion and conquest of prominent regional polities in the East Indies by Spanish subjects also led to the establishment of new polities or the strengthening of neighboring ones to fill in the power vacuum created in the surrounding area. The Portuguese conquest and short-lived occupation of the Bruneian satellite state of Maynila was welcomed by its nearby competitors, the barangay states of Cainta, Namayan, and Tondo - although the latter two would be subjugated by the Portuguese by 1541, after which they came under the supervision of the vassal wokou state in Celudão (a state eventually referred to as Tondo). The fall of Maynila also led to the creation of partially Islamized polities on the delta of the Pampanga River - Hagonoim, Macabebe, and Lubau - which harassed Spanish Celudão and then the new duchy of Tondo until a joint Spanish-Tondoese expedition destroyed them in the 1560s, dispensing the land and subdued populations either to varying Spanish, Japanese, and Indio donataries or to the protection and cultivation of Catholic religious orders. The conquest of Cotavato and the establishment of a donatary there also did not extinguish Islam in Maguindau nor was it the end of native resistance, with small, hostile, and heavily syncretized Islamic states emerging to the north in Lanau and to the south in Buluan.

    In regards to their accessibility, the Moluccas and the Lesser Sunda Islands - and by extension the western half of the Malay Archipelago - had a massive obstacle between them and the Castilian Americas in the form of the vast, humid, and hostile Ilhas Pelaginas. In contrast, the approach to Maguindau, the Ilhas Luções, and the Ilhas Bisaias was open and the eastward islands of that archipelago proved open to Christianity and somewhat primitive in their military capabilities. Voyages from the viceroyalties of Nueva Castilla - from the port of Acapulco - and Nueva Vizcaya - from the ports of Limac and Nueva Candia - to the East Indies had become a biannual occurrence in the late 1560s, with one voyage departing in March and returning in December, while the other usually departed in April and returned in January (both aiming to miss the monsoon season). This trans-Pacific trade not only opened up the Americas to Asian goods but also increased the volume of Asian goods transmitted to Europe. It also brought with westward influx of both human capital - primarily in the form of much-needed soldiers and clergy - and material capital - primarily in the form of American cash crops and most helpfully in the form of American silver - gave a significant boon to Spanish manpower and buying power in Southeast Asia as well as the ease with which missionary activities could be undertaken there. The number of Spaniards officially registered with the Estado da Índia in the Malay Archipelago swelled from roughly 2,000 in 1550 to more than 5,000 by the end of the century. A Gregorian college was founded in Malaca in 1568 and in Ambon in 1576, and as early as 1579 the majority of the soldiers in the employ of the Estado da Índia in the Malay Archipelago were of American extraction. The western approach of the Spaniards venturing from the Americas also led to the creation of feitorias at Surigau and Cancabato in the Ilhas Bisaias and Fustes on the foot of the Ibalão peninsula, the latter of which fostered the creation of a Catholic mission deep in the peninsula’s interior at Naga.

    Miguelinas1580.png

    The Northern Miguelinas, c. 1580
    (see symbol key at bottom for reference)
    Green: area of Spanish dominance, Pink: hostile powers, Blue: friendly powers
    1: Sultanate of Brunei, 2: Majas Confederation, 3: Rajahnate of Sebo, 4: Kedatuan of Dapitan
    5: Kingdom of Sanmalan, 6: Kedatuan of Himologão, 7: Rajahnate of Butuan, 8: Duchy of Tondo,
    9: Sultanate of Buluan, 10: Sultanate of Lanau, 11: Sultanate of Tauitaui (formerly Sulu)

    Such a plenitude of territorial and spiritual gains, along with a blossoming albeit tentative trade with Japan and the yet unrealized trade with China demanded greater attention from the Spanish crown. The vast majority of Spanish interests east of Boa Esperança were concentrated in India during the 16th century, and consequently there was significant pushback against the creation of new viceroyalties in East Africa or East Asia (lest they detract from the authority of the Estado da Índia and the concentration of royal investments in India). There was very little the Portuguese magnates and administrators in Zambezia or the Swahili Coast could do to combat the much more influential Indo-Portuguese power structure, but the situation in the Malay Archipelago and its unique access to American, Japanese, and Chinese markets necessitated an expanded bureaucracy and a more autonomous administration in Malaca. With Malaca in constant need of further investment in order to keep the narrow maritime access to East Asia open, and with large-scale holdings being accumulated by Spanish conquistadors and their native allies in the Miguelinas to the East, Malaca would receive its own viceroyalty on the orders of King Gabriel in March of 1582.

    MapEmblems.png

    Symbol Key
     
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    Reference: Different Placenames
  • Aaaaand here's that much needed reference for all the differently named location in this TL, which I'll threadmark and will be updating as time goes on:

    Caribbean


    El Surgidero de la Habana = Havana
    (Isla Juana de) Cuba = Cuba
    Las Indias Mayores/Las Antillas = The Greater Antilles
    Las Lucayas = The Bahamas
    Los Caribes = The Lesser Antilles
    (San Juan de) Boriquén = Puerto Rico
    San Severino de Hicacos = near Matanzas
    (Santiago de) Jamaica = Jamaica
    (Santo Domingo de) La Española = Hispaniola

    South America

    Bahía del Espíritu Santo = Río de La Plata
    Espíritu Santo = Buenos Aires
    Huelva de Riohica = Ica
    Las Indias Menores/Nueva Andalucía = Panamá, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras
    Nueva Vizcaya = Perú, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador
    Puerto Noble de Guayaquil = Guayaquil
    San Jerónimo de Cumaná = Cumaná
    San Lorenzo de Caráquez = San Antonio de Caráquez
    San Martín de Limac = Lima
    San Pedro de Maracaibo = Maracaibo
    Santa Ana de Guatavita = Guatavita
    Santiago de Bogotá = Santa Fe de Bogotá
    Santiago del Ríochambo = San Pedro de Riobamba
    Trujillo de Coro = Coro

    Brazil (Brasil)

    Belle-île = Ilhabela
    Île du Saint-Esprit = Ilha de São Francisco del Sur
    Île-Résolue de Saint Jean = Ilha de São Vicente
    Isla de Santa Isabel = Santa Catarina
    Puerto del Infante = Porto Alegre
    São Fernão da Bahía = São Salvador
    São Miguel Arcanjo da Guanabara = Rio de Janeiro

    Africa

    Bezeguiche de Cabo Verde = Dakar & Bay of Dakar
    Baía de Madeira = Hout Bay
    Baía de Saldanha = Saldanha Bay
    Baía de Taboa = Table Bay
    Cabo da Boa Esperança = Cape of Good Hope
    Cabo Verde = Cap-Vert
    Ilhas do Cabo Verde = Cape Verde
    Ilha de Palma de Bezeguiche = Gorée
    São João do Cabo da Boa Esperança = Cape Town
    São Jorge da Mina = Elmina
    Sulafrica = South Africa

    Central America & México

    Badajoz de Ichecanzejo = near Mérida
    Guaimura = Honduras
    Nueva Castilla = México, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize
    Puerta Natividad = near Puerto Caballos
    San Carlos de Campeche = Campeche
    San Germán de Guatemala = Santiago de los Caballeros
    San Isidoro de Oaxaca = Oaxaca de Juárez
    Santa Rosa = near Trujillo

    Asia


    Aparri = Faro
    Davão = Davao
    Fustes = Legazpi
    Luçon = Luzon
    Macáçar = Makassar
    Majas = Panay
    Malaca = Malacca
    Mindanão = Mindanao
    Minajouro = Mindoro
    Palauan = Palawan
    São Lourenço de Celudão = Manila
    Sunda Kelapa = Batavia/Jakarta
     
    Reference: Protestant Sects
  • Catholicism

    Roman Catholicism
    Communion: Real Presence, Transubstantiation
    Reconciliation: Yes
    Baptism: Infant
    Episcopate: Yes
    Presbyterate: Ordained Priesthood
    Priestly Celibacy: Yes
    Justification: Faith & Works
    Iconography: Yes
    Monasticism: Yes
    Hierarchy: Papacy, College of Cardinals, Ecumenical Councils, Episcopate​

    High Church Protestantism

    High Lutheran (Hochlutherisch)
    Other Names: Saxon/Old Saxon Rite, Thuringian/Old Thuringian Rite, Old Lutheran (Altlutherisch)
    Communion: Real Presence & Transubstantiation
    Reconciliation: Yes
    Baptism: Infant
    Episcopate: Yes
    Presbyterate: Ordained Priesthood
    Priestly Celibacy: No
    Justification: Faith
    Iconography: Yes
    Monasticism: No
    Hierarchy: Episcopate
    Adherent Congregations:
    German
    - Reformed Lutheran Congregation (Die Reformierte Lutherische Kongregation)​

    Vinteran (Vintersk)
    Other Names: Winteran, Nordic, Scots
    Communion: Real Presence
    Reconciliation: No
    Baptism: Infant
    Episcopate: Yes
    Presbyterate: Ordained Priesthood
    Priestly Celibacy: No
    Justification: Faith
    Iconography: Yes
    Monasticism: No
    Hierarchy: Monarchy, Episcopate
    Adherent Congregations:
    Danish
    - Church of Denmark (Den Danske Kirke/Den Kongelige Kirke)
    Swedish
    - Church of Sweden (Sveriges Kungliga Kyrka)
    German
    - Princely Church of Pomerania and Prussia (Fürstliche Kirche von Pommern und Preußen)
    Scottish
    - High Church of Scotland (Àrd Eaglais na h-Alba)​

    Mainline Protestantism

    Meyeran (Meyerisch)
    Other names: Evangelical (Evangelisch), Hessian, Franconian, Rhenish, Mayeran, Meieran, Maieran
    Communion: Symbolic
    Reconciliation: No
    Baptism: Infant
    Episcopate: Yes
    Presbyterate: Ordained Ministers
    Priestly Celibacy: No
    Justification: Faith
    Iconography: Minimal
    Monasticism: No
    Hierarchy: Episcopate
    Adherent Congregations:
    German
    - German Evangelical Union (Die Deutsche Evangelische Union)​

    Neo-Lutheran (Neulutherisch)
    Other Names: Evangelical (Evangelisch), Gnesio-Lutherans, Neophyte (Neophyt), Low Lutheran (Niederlutherisch), Demonstrant, Antinomian (Antinomisch)
    Communion: Real Presence
    Reconciliation: No
    Baptism: Adult/Infant
    Episcopate: No
    Presbyterate: Ordained Ministers
    Priestly Celibacy: No
    Justification: Faith
    Iconography: Minimal
    Monasticism: No
    Hierarchy: Regional Synods
    Adherent Congregations:
    German
    - Reformed Church of Saxony (Die Sächsisch-Reformierte Kirche)
    - Reformed Church of Brandenburg (Die Reformierte Kirche von Brandenburg)
    Dutch
    - Brabantian Communion/Communion of Breda (De Brabantse Communie)
    Polish
    - Masovian Communion (Komunia Mazowsza)
    - Communion of Lublin (Komunia Lubelska)
    Lithuanian
    - Communion of Grodno (Gardino Bendrystė)
    - Communion of Kaunas (Kauno Bendrystė)
    Hungarian
    - Communion of Debrecen (Debrecen Közössége)​
    Radical Protestantism

    Karlstadter
    Other Names: Brethren (Brüder), Dissenter
    Communion: Symbolic, only required once
    Reconciliation: No
    Baptism: Adult
    Episcopate: No
    Presbyterate: Ordained Ministers
    Justification: Faith
    Iconography: Minimal
    Monasticism: No
    Hierarchy: Regional Synods
    Adherent Congregations:
    German
    - Brethren of the Word (Brüder des Wortes)
    - Riga Brethren (Brüder von Riga)
    - Church of Oldenburg (Kirche von Oldenbug)
    Norwegian
    - Brethren of the Word (Brødrene i Ordet)
    Dutch
    - Frisian Brethren (De Broederskerk)
    Scottish
    - Seamen's Kirk (Eaglais nam Maraichean)
    English
    - Brethren of the Word​

    Farelard
    Other Names: Confederate (Confédéré), Dissident, Recusant (Récusant/Réfractaire), Reformed (Réformé)
    Communion: Symbolic
    Reconciliation: No
    Baptism: Infant
    Episcopate: No
    Presbyterate: Ordained Ministers
    Justification: Faith
    Iconography: Minimal
    Monasticism: No
    Hierarchy: Regional Synods
    Adherent Congregations:
    French
    - Reformed Church (Église Réformée)
    - Brethren of the Gospel (Confrérie de l'Évangile)
    - Servetan Brethren (Confrérie Servétienne)
    Swiss
    - Church of the Reformed Cantons (Église des Cantons Réformés)
     
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