The Sultan's Admiral (7 page)

It was in the month of July that the completed squadron with its siege train and its troops put the island of Djerba behind them. There were twelve galleots, “well provided, having on board 1000 Turks, some Moors, adventurers, and sufficient cannon.” The Spanish chronicler Haedo in his History of Algiers accounts for the presence of so many Turks by the fact that “Barbarossa’s great reputation, and the desire of partaking of Western riches, had enticed [them] down from the Levant, with a thirst not unlike that which hurries us Spaniards to the mines of America.”

Following the coast around from Djerba to the Bay of Bougie, the squadron had nearly five hundred miles of rowing ahead of them. But sometimes, when the easterlies blew (not uncommon on that coast in midsummer), they were able to set the lateens and rest easy at the oars. Undoubtedly they called at Tunis to complete their victualling and to rewater, as well as to stock up with further ammunition supplies from the powder mills established outside the town. Their reception by the Sultan of Tunis was more than friendly, for he—like every Moslem ruler —wished to see the hated Spaniards ejected from North Africa, and a ruler installed who was allied by blood and religion to his own house. At a cruising speed of 1 ,1/2 to 2 knots, together with their short stay in the city, the voyage from Djerba to Bougie must have taken them about fourteen days.

In the hot still month of August, when mirages flickered over the land and when the mountains behind Bougie shook under the summer sun, Aruj Barbarossa led his invasion force down into the bay. He and his brother landed and conferred with their ally, whom they found impatiently awaiting them together with three thousand mountain troops. There was no time to waste, for if the siege should prove a protracted one, the Turkish force would be compelled to retire before the violent changes of weather usually to be expected along that coast in autumn. In any case, they had every confidence that the small Spanish garrison would not be able to resist their combined forces for long.

The cannon were landed, the stone, marble, and iron cannon balls were trundled ashore from the galleys designated as supply ships, and the siege began. Since the discovery of gunpowder contemporaneously by the Englishman Roger Bacon and the German Berthold Schwartz in the fourteenth century, the whole aspect of war had changed. Gone were the great siege engines, giant catapults, and stone-hurling implements that had dominated European warfare since antique times. Nevertheless, the object of the new cannon remained the same as that of the earlier weapons: to open a breach in the walls and permit the armed soldiery to storm in and take the city by hand-to-hand fighting.

A mixture of approximately 66 per cent saltpetre, 22 per cent charcoal, and 12 per cent sulphur was the recipe for most European gunpowders. Loose powder was used for the cannons, while a method had been discovered for hand firearms of mixing the three ingredients wet—“incorporating”—which resulted in a more or less granulated explosive powder, known in England as “corned” powder. The Turks had successfully followed their European neighbours into this new world of high explosives and had made most successful use of them in their capture of Constantinople in 1453. No doubt most of the gunpowder and shot brought by Aruj for the siege of Bougie derived either from Turkish sources—possibly through his trader brother Elias back in Lesbos—or from captured European galleys. Turkish gunnery was soon to become famous on the battlefields of Europe, and the conduct of their gunners in this particular attack showed that they had already developed considerable skill in their craft.

Despite the fact that the fort occupied by the Spaniards had been largely rebuilt and strengthened by Count Don Pedro Navarro when he had captured the town, it was little more than a guard fort designed to protect the shipping and dominate the townspeople. It was not sufficiently strong to resist a prolonged bombardment by heavy cannon. Even so, it withstood a steady battering for seven days, and it was not until the eighth that a breach began to open in the outer walls. Despite their recent reverses at sea, Spanish morale was high at this time. Spaniards were aware of themselves as citizens of a rich country with a great new national pride, and they were among the finest soldiers in Europe. Even with the walls crumbling and a breach established, they had no intention of surrendering. Well armed and well disciplined, they awaited the expected onslaught. On their commander’s instructions they held their fire until the massing Turks and hillsmen were committed to the charge and were well within the range of the Spanish arquebuses.

Aruj, whose bravery could never be questioned (even if his impetuosity was to lead him into trouble), was not prepared to wait for a further day’s cannonading which would certainly have opened a wide breach, and possibly demoralised the defenders. As soon as he saw that there was room enough for a determined group to launch a frontal assault, he gave the order for the attack and stormed in at the head of his men.

The Spaniards made no move until the attackers had begun scrambling up the broken rubble slope towards the gaping hole in the wall. They then opened fire systematically and coolly upon the onrushing Turks and Zouaves. Courage and headstrong impetuosity are not enough in warfare. Although they may sometimes win battles, they are rarely a match for disciplined intelligence. In those first few volleys, the front ranks of the advancing attackers were decimated, and in one of them, “As Barbarossa was leading his men to the attack, a shot took away his left arm, above the elbow.”

It is quite probable that if the Turks had ignored their fallen leader and pressed on, they would still have overwhelmed the defenders (the arquebus was slow to reload), but Aruj Barbarossa’s fall demoralised them. In those days the individual leader was all-important. They wavered and hung back; then, picking up their wounded—among them the stricken Aruj—they fled out of range of the Spanish fire. The attack was called off. The disconsolate Turks, Moors, Berbers, and Zouaves withdrew, some to the ships, and the others—including the ex-ruler of Bougie—back to their lair in the mountains.

This was the first big setback experienced by Aruj in his career on the North African coast. To further pursue the parallel careers of this great warrior and seaman with that of Sir Francis Drake, it is interesting to note that Drake and his men suffered a very similar reverse, at a moment when victory seemed within their grasp, exactly sixty years later. In 1572, at the head of a small body of Devonian seamen, Drake had stormed the Spanish city of Nombre de Dios, captured the main square, and had the city at his mercy. At that moment a volley from the Spanish arquebusiers killed and wounded some of the English and Drake was hit in the leg. He lost so much blood “that it soon filled the very prints which our footsteps made, to the great dismay of all our company, who thought it not credible that one should be able to lose so much blood and live.” Their leader’s disablement had exactly the same effect on Drake’s seamen as did that of Aruj Barbarossa on his Turks—they abandoned the attack.

No surgeons were carried aboard the galleots, and indeed there were few enough with surgical knowledge in all Africa. But at Tunis there were skilled Arab physicians (as skilled as any in the world at that time). While the rest of the fleet embarked the soldiers and siege train, one galleot, with a picked crew of Turkish oarsmen, sped back along the coast to Tunis. It carried the unconscious Aruj, with the stump of his left arm constricted by a primitive tourniquet.

Only one stroke of fortune redeemed this first Bougie expedition from disaster. As Khizr Barbarossa and his eleven ships were coasting back towards Tunis they came across a Genoese galleot. She was well to the south of her course, being bound for the island of Tabarka near Alicante Bay in southern Spain. The galleot belonged to the rich Genoese family of Lomellini who owned Tabarka and its coral fisheries, and she was deep-laden with jewellery and other treasure. Captured with hardly any opposition, the galleot was towed back to Tunis where Aruj lay, slowly recovering from the amputation of his arm. But if the Turks and the Sultan of Tunis reckoned that the Genoese galleot was some recompense for the failure of their attack on Bougie, they little realised what a hornet’s nest they had stirred up for themselves.

The Genoese were not unfamiliar with the name of Barbarossa, nor with the fact that in recent years the coastlines of Italy and Sicily had been under constant attack by him, and that numbers of ships belonging to the King of Spain had never reached their destinations. But the problems of Spain were not their concern. Genoa, in any case, was at this time under French domination. Both Louis XII of France and his heir presumptive, the future Francis I, were very little disturbed at finding that their Spanish enemies were harassed by the Moslems. On the contrary, anything that weakened Spain was to the benefit of France. But that the trade of Genoa should now become a prey to these Barbary corsairs was another matter altogether.

Although Genoa had never really recovered from the blow in 1380 when her fleet under Admiral Luciano Doria had been destroyed in the Venetian lagoons, she was still the second naval power in the Mediterranean. The Venetians might have the largest European shipping fleet in the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, but Genoa still commanded most of the western trade. It was not for nothing that the city was known as “Genoa the

Superb.” Her senate was immediately determined that these sea raiders from North Africa should be taught to discriminate between Genoese shipping and that of other Mediterranean countries.

They had to their hand an efficient instrument, if one may call an instrument a man who was as haughty as Genoa itself—and a great deal more independent. This was the distinguished
condottiere
and soldier of fortune Andrea Doria. He was a descendant of the luckless Luciano, but considerably more able and talented. Born in 1468, he had been early left an orphan and had taken to the profession of arms—the only one suitable for his ancestry and his impecuniosity—before he was twenty. By 1512 he was a mature sea captain of forty-four and an experienced commander of land forces (the two professions being largely indistinguishable at that period). Summoned before the senate, Andrea Doria was ordered to take twelve galleys of the Republic and extirpate the nest of pirates that was lodged in the Goletta?. of Tunis.

It was late in the year, and there seems little doubt that the Turks were taken totally by surprise when the Genoese squadron of large galleys lifted over the horizon and darted straight for the harbour. Aruj was still too weak from his wound to be able to take any part, so the leadership fell upon Khizr. It was his first encounter with Andrea Doria. The Turkish ships were all inside the harbour when the Genoese anchored offshore and landed a large body of troops. Khizr did the best that he could, sank six of his galleots in the harbour to prevent the enemy from seizing them and towing them away, and sallied out with the remaining six to give battle.

But a galleot, however efficient, was no match for a large galley, manned by disciplined troops and equipped with heavy cannon. Khizr and his men were routed. They beached their ships, and took to their heels inland. Andrea Doria’s triumph was complete. His troops landed en masse, drove the Turks back within the walls of Tunis, captured the fort guarding the Goletta and razed it to the ground. They then took the six galleots that had been abandoned, as well as the one captured from them by Khizr, and towed them back in triumph to Genoa. They had inflicted a severe defeat upon “these insolent Moslem pirates.” They had, as far as they could see, seized all their ships, and had undoubtedly taught them a lesson—not to interfere with Genoese shipping in the future. Andrea Doria was hailed as a hero of his country and in the following year, 1513, was rewarded by being made Commander of the Galleys of Genoa.

Aruj fumed in impotent fury: half the ships lost, the fortress destroyed, their one prize of the year recaptured, and the Sultan of Tunis beginning to get apprehensive about his policy of permitting the Barbarossas to make use of his port and territory. But there was nothing Aruj could do until his wound was healed, and it was over a year before he was sufficiently recovered to take the warpath again. Khizr, meanwhile, sensing not only the temper of his brother but also that of the Sultan, wisely withdrew to Djerba. He raised the sunken galleots and took them with him, as well as a great deal of shipbuilding material and a number of Christian slaves belonging to him and his brother.

Throughout the winter Khizr and his Turks were steadily engaged on making good their losses. By the spring they had built three new galleots, bringing their numbers up to nine, and they had also established a powder mill on Djerba, so that they were no longer dependent on outside sources for their ammunition supplies. During the following year, 1513, the trade routes of the Mediterranean were unmolested, and the island ports and harbours of the European powers were able to return to normal. The Genoese, it was widely rumoured, had broken the power of the Turkish raiders and had taught them a lesson: not to interfere in the central and western Mediterranean.

But, far south in Djerba, there was no respite from activity. Day and night the shipbuilders and their slave-labour force were kept busy. Aruj himself, almost recuperated from his wound, came down to see his brother Khizr. He forgave him his defeat off Tunis, because of the way in which he had already rebuilt the fleet. Abbot Diego de Haedo, however, who knew many of the younger Barbarossa’s servants and followers, says that there was nothing to forgive: that Khizr, under the circumstances in which he was placed when Andrea Doria arrived off the port, did “all that was humanly possible for a man to do.”

Aruj was a stubborn man and he was unaccustomed to reverses. Bougie had been almost in his hands when the accident of his wound had caused his men to abandon the attack. He was determined to return the very next year and secure Bougie for himself. He was already in communication with the exiled king, and they had agreed to repeat the plan that had so nearly succeeded in 1512. The Turks would bring the same number of ships, twelve galleots, and the same number of men, and they would once again besiege the city in concert with the mountain troops. What had failed once would surely succeed a second time.