The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (92 page)

¹¹⁰
See Chapter XI.
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¹¹¹
‘We want a Roman, or at least an Italian!’
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¹¹²
Othman did not live to see it, but Orhan had his father’s body brought there for burial in the citadel. The town thus became something of a shrine, and the burial place of all the early Ottoman Sultans.
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¹¹³
In fact, since the
serrata
(looking)
del Maggior Consiglio
in 1298, when the Greater Council was closed to all but those families whose names were inscribed in the Golden Book of the Republic.
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¹¹⁴
See Chapter XI.
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¹¹⁵
The circumstances of his election and subsequent deposition have denied him a place on the canonical list of Popes. It was none the less somewhat surprising that Cardinal Angelo Roncalli should have adopted the same name on his election to the Papacy in 1958.
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¹¹⁶
See Chapter VI.
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¹¹⁷
In Rome Bessarion was to found an academy for the translation and publication of ancient Greek authors. By the time of his death in 1472 he had amassed an important library of Greek manuscripts, all of which he left to Venice, where they became the nucleus of the Biblioteca Marciana.
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¹¹⁸
The Morea–better known to us as the Peloponnese–had seen its Frankish occupiers gradually wither away, and had been an autonomous despotate within the Byzantine Empire since the middle of the preceding century. It was usually entrusted to a senior member of the Emperor’s family.
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¹¹⁹
Unlike the ancient vessels of the same name, Turkish biremes and triremes possessed a single bank of oars only. In the triremes there were three rowers to each oar, in the biremes they sat in pairs.
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¹²⁰
It must sadly be recorded that, in defiance of their promise, on the night of 26 February seven Venetian ships, carrying some 700 Italians, slipped out of the Golden Horn and headed for home.
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¹²¹
Columbus, who was just setting out on his historic voyage from Genoa, was obliged to alter course because the sea ahead of him was so crowded with Turkish ships bringing Jewish refugees to safety.
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¹²²
See Chapter I.
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¹²³
The Pope ruled that the Catholic Kings were to be awarded all the land and islands, already discovered or thereafter to be discovered, that lay to the west of a line drawn from pole to pole, which itself ran 100 leagues to the west of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. Lands to the east of that line were allotted to Portugal (a concession which was later to allow the Portuguese to claim Brazil). This decision was ratified in 1494 by the Treaty of Tordesillas between the two countries.
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¹²⁴
Not to be confused with Ferdinand of Spain, husband of Isabella.
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¹²⁵
Venice had maintained a continuous embassy to the court of France since 1478–the first permanent diplomatic representation outside Italy.
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¹²⁶
See Chapter X.
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¹²⁷
Maximilian was never to receive his imperial coronation by the Pope. In 1508, however, he was to issue the Proclamation of Trent, which allowed him to assume the title of Emperor without it, and which was reluctantly accepted by Pope Julius II.
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¹²⁸
See Chapter VIII.
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¹²⁹
The Bolognesi celebrated their liberation by toppling Michelangelo’s magnificent bronze statue of the Pope and selling it for scrap to the Duke of Ferrara–who, in his turn, recast it into a huge cannon which he affectionately christened Julius.
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¹³⁰
‘Knight without fear and without stain’.
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¹³¹
Now to be seen in the National Gallery, London.
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¹³²
After his defeat Cem (pronounced ‘Jem’) fled first to Egypt and later to Rhodes, where Bayezit paid the Knights 45,000 gold pieces annually to keep him out of the way. He was in fact an invaluable hostage in the hands of Christendom. He died in Naples in 1495–quite possibly poisoned by Pope Alexander VI, with the connivance of his brother the Sultan.
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¹³³
‘Extremely melancholic, superstitious and obstinate’.
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¹³⁴
As always, numbers given by contemporary chroniclers at this period must be taken with a pinch of salt.
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¹³⁵
Pope Leo X had died at the end of 1521. His successor, Adrian VI–a Dutchman from Utrecht and the last non-Italian Pope until John Paul II–lasted less than two years before being himself succeeded by Leo’s cousin, Giulio de’ Medici, as Clement VII.
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¹³⁶
To describe them–as the
Oxford English Dictionary
does–as ‘German mercenary footsoldiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ is not to say the half of it. Their preposterous clothes, slashed and swashbuckling, are reflected in the court cards of a European pack, and inspired Michelangelo when he came to design the uniforms of the Swiss Pontifical Guard. There is still a French card game called
lansquenet.
See Patrick Leigh Fermor,
A Time of Gifts
, pp. 84–86.
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¹³⁷
Near the church of Santo Spirito, an inscription still commemorates the papal goldsmith, Bernardino Passeri, who fell at that spot in the defence of Rome.
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¹³⁸
J. Hook,
The Sack of Rome.
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¹³⁹
The other principal Spanish enclave on the African coast, Ceuta, was to be appropriated only in 1580.
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¹⁴⁰
Where polygamy is the rule, so large a family is less surprising than it would be otherwise.
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¹⁴¹
Where the Emperor Tiberius had had a villa and had converted a neighbouring cave (which can still be seen) into a banqueting hall. One night, according to Suetonius, while he was feasting with his companions, part of the roof suddenly caved in. Many of his guests and serving-men were killed, but the Emperor escaped.
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¹⁴²
Both are commemorated in modern Istanbul: Ibrahim Pasha by his palace on the north side of the Hippodrome, now the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art; Rüstem Pasha by one of the loveliest small mosques in the city, built by the great architect Sinan in 1561, its walls covered with superb Iznik tiles.
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¹⁴³
See Chapter VII.
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¹⁴⁴
Jurien de la Gravière,
Doria et Barberousse
, Paris 1886. Quoted in Bradford,
The Sultan’s Admiral
. (Byng’s execution in fact took place in 1757.)
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¹⁴⁵
Tripoli had fallen in 1510 to Spain, which in 1535 had offered it to the Knights to garrison.
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¹⁴⁶
It is actually sandstone, and roughly eighteen miles by nine.
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¹⁴⁷
This first hospital still stands in Triq Santa Scholastica. It is now a convent of Benedictine nuns.
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¹⁴⁸
A galleass might be described as a cross between a galley and a galleon. It was basically a cargo ship, largely dependent upon sail but also fitted with oars and a fair weight of guns.
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¹⁴⁹
The additional ‘l’ in the place name cannot be satisfactorily explained.
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¹⁵⁰
Preti (1613–99) was a painter of the Neapolitan school who spent the last thirty-eight years of his life in Malta.
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¹⁵¹
See Chapter XIII.
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¹⁵²
To remind the reader:
Galley: single deck, 120–180 feet long, 200-foot beam. Normally moved under sail, but always propelled by oars when in battle. Five guns mounted in bow, several smaller ones amidships. A metal beak of 10–20 feet was used for ramming.
Galleon: far heavier than galley, two decks, both thickly mounted with guns. No oars. Tall, unwieldy: a floating fortress.
Galleass: half-way between the two. High poop and forecastle (providing cover for oarsmen), 50–70 guns, lateen rigged.
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¹⁵³
Among the Christian wounded was Miguel de Cervantes, aboard the
Marquesa
. He was struck twice in the chest, a third shot permanently maiming his left hand–‘to the greater glory,’ as he put it, ‘of the right.’ He was to describe Lepanto as ‘the greatest occasion that past or present ages have witnessed or that the future can hope to witness’, and to remain prouder of his part in it than of anything else in his life.
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¹⁵⁴
On the unexpected death of Francesco II Sforza in 1535 the Milanese state had returned to the control of Charles V, who in 1540 had invested his son–later Philip II–with the duchy. Milan was to remain under Spanish rule until 1706.
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¹⁵⁵
Gardiner,
History of England
, vol. 3.
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¹⁵⁶
Readers hungry for the full details–if such there be–are advised to turn to Vol. II of Horatio Brown’s
Studies in the History of Venice
, pp. 245–95, where the whole story is set out in remorseless detail.
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¹⁵⁷
It is still there, next to the Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni.
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¹⁵⁸
Until his accession in 1640, Ibrahim had spent his entire life a virtual prisoner in the Seraglio. After a brief reign marked only by cruelty, frivolity and vice, he was destined to be executed in 1648 by his own exasperated subjects.
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¹⁵⁹
The name (the Greek word for cape) is given to the land jutting out to the northeast of Canea and protecting the anchorage of Soudha Bay just beyond.
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¹⁶⁰
Philibert de Jarry,
Histoire du siège de Candie.
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¹⁶¹
Those former Muslims whose families had converted to Christianity–at least in theory–as a result of the persecutions by Queen Isabella. See Chapter XIII.
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¹⁶²
In the early part of the sixteenth century the Netherlands had, as we have seen, become a province of the Spanish Habsburgs. Then, during the Reformation, the northern provinces had been converted to Calvinism and Prince William of Orange (William the Silent) had led them in a revolt against Spain. In 1579 they shook off Spanish rule and became the United Provinces of the Netherlands–though Spain did not recognise their independence till 1648. The southern provinces remained Spanish.
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¹⁶³
Born Marie-Anne de la Trémouille in 1642, she married in 1675 as her second husband Flavio degli Orsini, Duke of Bracciano; their palace in Rome became the centre of French influence in Italy. Widowed again in 1698, she returned to France, gallicised her name and became Mistress of the Robes to the Queen. From the day of her arrival in Spain she virtually ran the country.
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¹⁶⁴
I.e. the southern provinces, which had remained Spanish after the secession of the northern.
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¹⁶⁵
Prince Eugene (1663–1736) was the imperial field marshal who was known as the greatest soldier of his time. He had fought his first battle–during the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683–at the age of twenty. He was the teacher of Frederick the Great, and the only strategist whose campaigns Napoleon considered worthy of careful study.
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¹⁶⁶
How Villeroi had become a marshal no one ever knew: he lost virtually every battle he ever fought. After his capture and for the rest of the war, French soldiers on the march would sing:
   
Parsembleu! la nouvelle est bonne
   
Et notre bonheur sans égal:
   
Nous avons conservé Cremone
   
Et perdu notre général.
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