Naval battle of Djerba

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The naval battle of Djerba took place from the 9th to the. May 14, 1560 near the Tunisian island of Djerba between the fleets of the Ottoman Empire and a coalition of Christian Mediterranean powers led by Spain. The Turkish fleet under Grand Admiral Piyale Pasha inflicted a crushing defeat on the Christian alliance.

prehistory

Piyale Pascha had visited the Balearic Islands in 1558 and devastated the Mediterranean coast of Spain. King Philip II of Spain appealed to the Pope and the Christian states of Europe to form a Holy League and put an end to the growing Turkish threat to the Mediterranean countries. This threat had grown steadily after the Ottoman victory in the sea ​​battle of Preveza in 1538 and the devastating outcome of the punitive expedition of Emperor Charles V against Khair ad-Din Barbarossa and Algiers in 1541.

The battle

In 1560 Philip II finally succeeded in bringing together a military alliance which, in addition to Spain, also included the Republic of Venice , the Republic of Genoa , the Pope ( Papal States ), the Duchy of Savoy and the Knights of Malta . The Alliance assembled a fleet of around 200 ships with 30,000 soldiers in Messina , under the command of Giovanni Andrea Doria , a great-nephew of Andrea Doria .

On March 12, 1560, the Christian League conquered the island of Djerba, off the southeast coast of Tunisia, which had long been a key bastion of the Ottoman corsairs under Khair ad-Din Barbarossa and Turgut Reis (Dragut). Thereupon Sultan Suleyman I sent a fleet of 120 ships under Piyale Pascha, which arrived on May 9, 1560 at Djerba. The fighting lasted until May 14th. Piyale Pasha and Turgut Reis, who came to his aid on May 11th, won an overwhelming victory. The Christian alliance lost more than 60 galleys and 20,000 men. Giovanni Andrea Doria escaped on a small ship. The Ottomans lost hardly a ship and only about 1000 men and brought Djerba back into their possession. Piyale Pascha was celebrated as a hero on his return to Istanbul and was married to a daughter of Suleyman's son Selim II .

consequences

With the victory at Djerba, the Ottoman maritime domination in the Mediterranean, which had started with the victory at Prevesa, reached its zenith. Five years later, in 1565, the Ottoman Empire was ready to attack the island fortress Malta of the Johanniter, but ultimately unsuccessfully (see Siege of Malta ). It was not until the defeat of the Turkish fleet in the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571 against a united Spanish-Venetian-papal fleet ended the myth of Turkish invincibility at sea.

literature

  • Roger C. Anderson: Naval Wars in the Levant 1559-1853 , Princeton University Press, Princeton 1952.
  • Giacomo Bosio (author), Jean Baudoin (arr.): History of the Knights of St. John , 1643 (here especially vol. 15).
  • Fernand Braudel : La Méditerranée et le monde méditeranéen à l'epoque de Philippe II , A. Colin, Paris 1966 (1949) (habilitation thesis 1947)
    • German: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Epoch of Philip II , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-58056-6 (3 volumes)
  • John Guilmartin: Gunpowder and Galleys . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1974.
  • Carmel Testa: Romegas . Midsea Books, Malta 2002 (English).