Barbarossa (real name Hizir Reis) was born in the 1470s on the Aegean Island of Lesbos*, then already under Ottoman rule, to an Ottoman father and orthodox Greek mother.
Hizir and his elder brother, Oruc, were pirates. Oruc had a red beard. Their main target became the property of the newly formed Spanish state, which was busy expelling Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula during the ‘Reconquista’ of Ferdinand (Crown of Aragon) and Isabella (of Castille).
After Oruc died, Hizir inherited his name – red beard, or Barbarossa.
In some respects, Barbarossa was a humanitarian, because he sailed many Muslim refugees from Spain to safe havens in North Africa, such as Algeria. As he captured more and more Catholic ships, he and his fleet became ever more formidable. And Algeria, with Ottoman help, became his privateer stronghold.
When Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent captured Rhodes in 1522, thus evicting the Knights Hospitalier (who escaped to Malta), he made Barbarossa the island’s Governor. Rhodes was key to controlling north-south trade between Constantinople and its Egyptian bread basket. And the pesky Knights had been pirating that sea-borne trade. Years ago, the Knights had also captured Oruc and imprisoned him in Bodrum castle, so there was history between them.
Suleiman later promoted Barbarossa to Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Empire, and made the ex-pirate’s services available to Francis I in his war against the Hapsburgs, later formalised by the 1536 alliance.
The new Grand Admiral certainly threw himself into it, as he sailed from Constantinople in 1534 with 80 galleys. He captured or sacked enemy held ports in the Peloponnese (including Lepanto), Calabria, Campania, Sicily and Sardinia. He then captured Tunis in North Africa.
Charles V tried in vain to buy Barbarossa off, or to have him assassinated. The emperor had a large Spanish-Italian force recapture Tunis, but Barbarossa had already fled. He continued to create mayhem in mainland Spain, Majorca and Menorca, capturing several Spanish and Genoese galleys and liberating their Muslim oar slaves. You can see why he is seen as a hero.
In 1537 he captured many Venetian owned islands including Naxos (Aegean), Kythira (Peloponnese) and Corfu (Ionian), enslaving nearly all the latter’s population.
As a result, the Venetians persuaded the Pope (Paul III) to create a ‘Holy League’ against the Ottomans. This comprised: the Papal States; Hapsburg Spain; the Holy Roman Empire; the Republic of Venice; and the newly-housed Maltese Knights. But Barbarossa's fleet defeated them all at the Battle of Preveza, where Missy Bear has overwintered!
This partly explains why I am now so interested in the Ottomans.
For an example of Barbarossa’s reach and influence into western Europe, we can head back to modern France. Nice was an independent city often allied with Pisa or Genoa, before placing itself under the protection of Savoy. The French and Holy Roman Empire often fought over this part of the coast, and in 1543 a combined force of Francis I and Barbarossa besieged the city. The latter was allowed to pillage the city and take 2,500 slaves!
As the French controlled Toulon next door, they allowed Barbarossa to overwinter his fleet there, along with 30,000 of his Turkish soldiers. The Christian population was evacuated and the cathedral converted to a mosque for the soldiers!
Barbarossa used French Toulon as a base for further attacks on Spanish ports. He also continued to pillage Spanish Italy at will.
For example, you may recall Missy Bear’s visit last season to Lipari, in the Aeolian Islands. It serves as a chilling example of why Barbarossa’s foes feared him. It was 1544 and the two Sicilies (the island, and the Kingdom of Naples) were both under Spanish rule, following Alfonso V taking Naples from the French Angevins. The ‘pirate’ (or Grand Admiral) was heading south after plundering Naples. The Spanish-Italians managed to get word to Lipari that he was on his way, accompanied by a French fleet under Captain Polin! The islanders evacuated some women and children and then locked themselves in the citadel inside the Norman cathedral (built in Roger II’s time). The islanders sued for peace and offered monies for their safety, but Barbarossa laughed at them:
“You came too late for clemency. How dare you offer what is already mine? Keep your gates closed - we’ve opened a hundred such breaches with our cannon. Lipari is already in my power: it is foolishly presumptuous to grant me apparently of your own free will what you no longer possess. This is no time for treaties or agreements: you are all my slaves.”
Barbarossa eventually agreed to free twenty or so families, but allowed his men to loot the town, burn the city’s archives and desecrate the cathedral. The pirate then reneged on his deal and had the families and the rest of the population enslaved and taken to be sold at Messina.
I read somewhere that Barbarossa had the gallstones removed from elderly Liparians to be made into jewellery!
[Quite what French Captain Polin was doing during all of this, I’m not sure. This particular French Catholic was a busy man: the following year (1545) he massacred the protestant Waldensians in Marseilles, before participating in the French invasion of the Henry VIII’s protestant England – well the Isle of Wight actually. At least Francis I and Charles V agreed one thing: Protestants were to be squashed. Anyway, we repelled the French – yay - but lost the ‘Mary Rose’ in the process!]
Charles V repopulated the island with his Spanish subjects, who then built the massive city walls - that we visited last year - over the top of the ancient walls of the Greek acropolis.
One man’s hero is another man’s Satan, and Barbarossa retired to Constantinople in 1545 where he died the following year.
Under Barbarossa’s boss, Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire had achieved its zenith (as seen in the map). The Black Sea was their lake and they also controlled: most of the North African coast as far west as Algeria; Egypt; the Red Sea pilgrim routes to Mecca and Medina; the trade routes to the Persian Gulf; most of the Balkans from the Peloponnese up to Hungary; and were still threatening Austria.
But who were the Ottomans, where did they come from, and how did they achieve what they did? That’s for the next blog post.
[*Alix: In Roman times the women on Lesbos were said to be very beautiful, and hence is the origin of the word lesbians. The Roman poet, Catullus, gave his married lover the nom-de-guerre of Lesbia in his poetry to conceal her affair from her husband. Lesbia was actually Claudia, a descendant of one of the most ancient families in Rome, the house of Claudii Pulchri. It was her brother, the infamous Publius Clodius Pulcher, who gained entry to a sacred female festival disguised as a woman, causing a huge scandal in Rome. Claudia was apparently well-known in Rome for her “favours”, including an incestuous relationship with her brother. But hey, that was Rome for you. Anyway, back to ‘Red Beard’].
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