(Aubeterre-Sur-Dronne, France - November 2021.)
On our Tuesday morning bike rides in France, Charlotte and the gang stop en-route for café et croissants at a local village épicerie. To be honest, I prefer a pain aux raisins, but I can happily rip off pieces of this buttery, crescent-shaped pastry and munch them, leaving a pile of large, flaky French crumbs on the table, and on me, and on the floor.
Except le croissant is not a French invention. It is part of the suite of Viennoiseries of leavened breads with added sweet ingredients. The French simply replaced the bread dough with puff-pastry. “Let them eat cake”, springs to mind, but that’s from a later era.
No, it seems to be agreed that the croissant originated in Vienna, although its exact birthday is disputed. The version accepted by the author Jason Goodwin, in his history book ‘Lords of the Horizons’, is that it was invented by Viennese bakers in 1683 to celebrate the failure of the Ottoman army to take Vienna following their second siege of the city.
The huge cannons of the Ottoman army had failed to breach the city’s inner walls, and the siege turned into an attrition of the sappers. The sappers on the Turkish payroll would tunnel under the inner walls and plant and detonate explosives. The Austrian sappers would in turn tunnel out to try to: a) undermine the enemy tunnels or; b) intercept them. Presumably the latter was followed by some horrific mole-like, hand-to-hand combat in the suffocating darkness. Although I’m not sure that moles have hands!
One morning, presumably very early, the bakers were tending their bread ovens and could hear the tell-tale scraping noise under them. They raised the alarm in the nick of time. They celebrated their saving the city by baking crescent-shaped buns, possibly mimicking the crescents often seen on some Ottoman flags!
The French and the Ottomans
The wider strategic relationship of Christian France with the expanding Muslim Ottoman empire is also interesting. The Franco-Ottoman alliance signed in the mid-16th century is a classic example of: forget your faith, because "any enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
You may recall from my blogs last season that western Europe was essentially a French Bourbon sandwiched between two Hapsburg slices of bread (the Spanish slice, and the Austrian/Holy Roman Empire slice). And the filling was constantly fighting both slices, especially over the tasty crumbs of Italy.
In the early 16th century, the Ottomans were continuing their advance up through the Balkans towards Hungary, and threatening the Hapsburg’s Holy Roman Empire. In fact, the Ottoman’s first besieged Vienna in 1529, but failed to take it. As the Ottomans were the emperor’s enemy, they could now be France’s friend! In this particular game of Risk, King Francis I of France, courted the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, and their alliance was signed in 1536. This sacrilege caused a scandal in the Christian world. Who could trust the French, eh? Plus ça change 😉
On the other side, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, sought an ally in Henry VIII of England. This is interesting, because at the time – as we all remember from school - Henry VIII was trying to divorce Charles V’s aunt, Catherine of Aragon!
To counter my gallic slur, I must add that Henry VIII’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, was to ask the Ottomans for a fleet to help her resist the armada of Catholic Spain. In a Protestant’s eyes, maybe it was better to trust a Muslim than a Catholic. And could you blame them, especially during the Counter-Reformation? The Turks refused Liz's request, but I don’t know why.
Anyway, back to Francis I. And this is where it starts getting interesting and relevant to Missy Bear’s adventure, because we are about to discuss that legendary Turkish sailor, who we came across last season: Barbarossa.
Under the early Arabs in the 9th and 10th centuries, the Mediterranean had been in Islam’s pocket. The Catalans, Genoese, Pisans, Venetians and Normans then rose into the ascendency. But by the 15th century, the Turks had resolved to put Middle Earth back in their pocket.
And Barbarossa would become a key player, as we shall in the next blog post.