unholy alliance: valois and ottomans

Renalssance Studies Vol . 3 No. 3

Unholy alliance: Valois and Ottomans MICHAEL HEATH

Cultural interchange between West and East, in such areas as architec- ture, and the luxury industries, ’ presumably helped to lessen cultural incomprehension, but Renaissance satirists and polemicists often had an interest in maintaining the latter. Long before the time of Montesquieu’s Persians, or even of Montaigne’s Cannibals, satirists used the device of the naive foreigner, often a Turk, to expose the fatuity of European prac- tices. A Turkish ambassador supposedly asked why there were no madmen on the streets in Christendom, as there were in his own land, and got the reply that they were all shut up in monasteries and convents. It must have been a different Turk who was amazed to see that the Christians went mad and danced in the streets on certain days and could only be cured by the application of a certain magical grey powder [on Ash Wednesday]. A Muslim imam apparently wanted to know why the priest at the Mass was permitted to eat and drink his fill while the shivering populace at the other end of the church was left to hunger and thirst. The reporter, a Reformer of course, adds that he would have been even more amazed to discover that the spectators also had to pay the bill for the priest’s meal.’ Reformation propagandists made spectacular use of the new proximity but continuing strangeness of the Turks.

This tendency is also visible in more secular domains, and in this paper I shall discuss a particular aspect of the impact on political thought and discourse of interaction between East and West in the sixteenth century: the case of the Franco-Turkish alliance. The reaction of Renaissance France to the Turks is intriguing; states closer to the Islamic world, such as Venice, Spain and even Poland, had had diplomatic and trading ties with the nations of the East for centuries, but France’s public experience of Muslims had been confined largely to memories of Charles Martel, Charlemagne, and of course the Crusades. There was a stronger tradition of public hostility to Islam in France than anywhere else, and the impact of the alliance between the Valois princes and the Ottoman sultans was correspondingly greater.

’ Papers on these themes were given at the Autumn Colloquium of the Society for Renaissance Studies, ‘Cultural Relations between East and West in the Renaissance’, held at the Warburg In- stitute on 25 November 1988. This essay is a revised version of my own contribution.

* These anecdotes are told, respectively, by H. Estienne, Apologie pour Herodote (Geneva, 1566), 533, 0. G. de Busbecq, Epistolae turcicae (Paris, 1589), fol. 105‘, and P. Viret, Disputatiom chrestzennes (Geneva, 1544), 11, 223.

’ See M. J. Heath, ‘Islamic themes in religious polemic’, Bib Hum R , 50 (1988), 289-315.

@ 1989 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Oxford University Press

304 Michael Heath

An example of France’s pride in her crusading tradition was the long- standing belief that the Turks feared no nation but the French, whom they called Franki; this atavistic fear was supposed to derive both from memories of the Frankish crusades and from some well-known Islamic prophecies of doom, a doom to be engineered by a king of the Franks. In fact rfrandj (or Firandj or further east Feringhee) was and is the normal Muslim term for Latin Christian and goes back at least to the eighth cen- t ~ r y ; ~ while it may have had associations with Charles Martel, it had few with the Crusades and none, of course, with sixteenth-century France. But it was a splendid advertisement for France, and was used for example by the publicists of Louis XII, Claude de Seyssel and Jean Lemaire de Belges,’ to explain why Bayezid I1 had offered the king his friendship - haughtily rejected, of course, by his Most Christian Majesty. When Fran- cis I succeeded Louis in 1515 a patriotic poem widened the circle of his Muslim admirers:

Puis d’aultre part l’on nous a recit6 Que le Souldan et le Turc ji te doubtent, Et le Sophir et le grant Cham escoutent Le loz de toy, raviz comme en extase Du bruict qu’en faict, par l’air volant, Pegase; Car long temps a qu’il est prophetis6 Qu’un roy francois [Fran~ois?] sus tous aultres prise‘, Subjuguera, selon la prophetie, Tous les peuples et d’Afrique et d’Asie.6

However, ten years later Francis I betrayed the national tradition and concluded a military alliance with Suleiman II;’ after the defeat at Pavia and the capture and imprisonment of the king, the regent Louise of Savoy was prepared to accept whatever alliances she could get, while Suleiman was naturally delighted to acquire a western counterweight against the imperial ambitions of Charles V.

I have called it an unholy alliance, but that begs the question whether it was in fact considered impious, or at least unlawful under canon law; it is arguable that France’s close contact and co-operation with an infidel power had an influence and effect on the modernization and seculariza- tion of international law.

On the question of swearing oaths with infidels, the Decretum of Gra- tian was sufficiently ambiguous to be quoted on both sides of the argument, but there was a long history of the medieval papacy denouncing

‘ See the Encyclopedia of Islam, article Ifrandj. Seyssel, Histozre de Louis X I I (Paris, 1558), fol. 71‘; Lemaire, Oeuvres, ed. J. Stecher (Lou-

vain, 1882-91), IIJ, 83. Reproduced in A. de Montaiglon, Recueil de poisies francoases des X V e et X VIe sikcles (Pans,

1855-78), I V , 189. On the vogue for such prophecies, see M. J. Heath, Crusading Commonplaces (Geneva, 1986), 45-59.

’ See R. J . Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge, 1982). 187ff.

Unholy alliance: Valois and Ottomans 305

Christians who allied themselves with the infidel; for example, tradi- tionalists liked to quote a canon of the third Lateran council of 1179 ‘ubi excommunicantur qui Turcis auxilium tulerint contra Christianos’. The influential Bartolus of Sassoferrato flatly proscribed all such alliances in the fourteenth century.’ In our period, a number of writers hostile to the Franco-Turkish alliance added the practical argument that the Turk could not be relied on to keep his side of the bargain, since he considered Christians to be infidels; thus the Sultan could always quote the dictum of Cicero’s paradigmatic tyrant: ‘Neque fidem dedi, neque do infideli cui- quam.’ This slightly preposterous thought appears in a book by the French Ligueur jurist Regnault d ’Or lean~,~ but it was not only the tradi- tionalists who objected to the alliance. Orleans’ pragmatism was echoed by a confessional opponent, the Huguenot captain Francois de La Noue, who devoted a whole chapter ( X X I ) of his Discours politiques et militaires to the subject, and rounded off an enumeration of unfortunate agreements with the infidel with the example of the squalid shifts to which Francis I was compelled to resort: I shall return to those shortly. So a Ligueur and a Huguenot could agree on this, if on nothing else. Agree- ment from a third viewpoint is represented by the prominent international jurisprudent Alberico Gentili, who condemned the alliance both by quoting Gratian and by recalling the thousands of miserable Christians driven off into slavery as a result of it.’O However, Gentili was rather out of step with his confrPres, and maybe also a little inconsistent here; along with other international jurists, he insisted elsewhere on modifying canon law in the light of the theory of ‘natural law’ and applied this principle in a related field, for example, when he denounced as unnatural wars waged against the Turks purely on religious grounds. Other jurists, such as Jean Bodin and Emeric Cruce‘, used the touchstone of natural justice to con- done alliances with infidels, on the grounds that they were human beings, subject to natural law, but also able to profit from it; they also insisted that agreements, once made, must be observed, and for Hugo Grotius, of course, the principle that pacta sunt servanda was one of the cornerstones of all law.”

The common humanity of Turks and Christians under natural law was brought to public attention particularly by a series of defences of the Turkish alliance which appeared in the time of Francis I and Henry 11. These were cynically summed up by the Venetian ambassador Giusti- niano: ‘Comme les FranCois trouvent cette alliance aussi honteuse qu’elle l’est en effet, les defenseurs du roi la justifient en alle‘guant que le droit

See M. Villey, La Croisade: essaisur la formation d’une thiorie juridique (Paris, 1942), 189ff. ’ Observations de diverses choses (Vannes, 1597), 269.

l o De iure be& ed. J. Rolfe (Oxford, 1933), I , 659-60. “ Bodin, Les Six Lives de la Republigue (Paris, 1576), 106; C. L. Lange, Histoire de l ’ in tem-

tionalisme (Christiania, 1919), I , 313.

306 Michael Heath

nature1 et les canons permettent 2 chacun tous les moyens de de‘fense.’’’ But at least the principle that a pledge given to a Turk was as binding as any other was made familiar by this polemic, and also by the witticisms of a number of Reformers, including Luther and Viret,” who maintained that the Turks fulfilled their contractual obligations more faithfully than the Roman church. The tendency was taken to its logical conclusion by Emeric Cruce‘; in his Nouveau Cynge of 1623 he proposed that the Turk be permitted to join a federation of European states devoted to establish- ing peace throughout the continent. This was the consummation of a train of thought set in motion, however unwittingly, by Francis I a century earlier.

At first the French government tried to cover its tracks, naturally enough. A silly example: the first French ambassador to Constantinople, La Forest, is described, even in the Treasury’s own accounts, the Comptes d’Espargne, as ‘ambassadeur du roy devers aucuns princes et seigneurs du pays d’oultremer’. I 4 But ill-concealed French meddling in the messy business of the Hungarian succession and in the conflict with Barbarossa’s corsairs meant that soon it was more a question of justifying this extraordinary reversal of France’s traditional role: a splendid opportunity for the ancient arts of deliberative rhetoric to be allied with the new dialectic of political science. I have recently analysed some writings against the Turks in terms of what I see as the principal topics of deliberative rhetoric, justice, necessity, ease and profit.I5 It is interesting to apply the same principles briefly to these French apologetics, which are essentially (though indirectly) writings in favour of the Turks.

I have already mentioned the topic of justice and natural law, but of course legal theories always carry more conviction when backed by some solid precedents. In an open letter to the pope, one of the most complete statements of the French case, the great diplomat and soldier Guillaume du Bellay combined theory and precedent in an eloquent rebuttal of Charles V’s accusations:

Mais si d’adventure il mect en avant que nous ne debvons avoir societe‘ d’aucune chose avecques estrangiers et barbares, et pense qu’ilz sont privez de toute humanite‘, et separez par ung jugement de nature de l’aultre espece des hommes, il ne considere point ce qu’il juge de soy mesme, qui aultresfois les a voulu avoir amis.I6

It was satisfying to roast the emperor over his own fire, but du Bellay went on to cite scriptural and canonical precedents too: Abraham, David,

‘ * Relations des ambassadeurs italiens, ed. N . Tommaseo (Paris, less), I, 69. ” Luther, Works (Philadelphia, Pa, 1955- ), XLVI , 167 ( V o m Kriege widder die Tiircken); Viret,

De 1’Estat de 1’Eglise (Lyon, 1565), 802-3 and 806. I 4 Quoted in G. Pellicier, Correspondancepolitique, ed. A. Tausserat-Radel (Paris, 1899), p. xii. ’ I In Crusading Commonplaces (Geneva, 1986). l6 Translation de l’epistre d u Roy (Paris, 1543: B L C 38 b 13), sig. D vii‘.


Solomon and the Maccabees had all been permitted to ally themselves with unbelievers in time of necessity (as it happens, the Maccabees were also used very often as prototypical crusaders, so they appeared for both sides in the case). From the New Testament Du Bellay cited the parable of the Good Samaritan and the charitable conduct of the Apostles towards the Gentiles, and some ambiguous canons of Gratian’s Decretum were also made to support his line. He concluded, smoothly if not entirely convincingly: ‘Car quelles loix sont celles qui ont defendu la liberte des traictez qui ne sont iniques, ne 2 la Republique, ne 2 aucun?’

The topic of justice is normally argued in the abstract, or by reference to precedent, but its neighbour, necessity, is altogether more immediate and practical. Defenders of the French position were on familiar and strong ground here. If the emperor’s own diplomacy provided a justifica- tion through precedent, French apologists set out to inculpate him further by pointing out that the Franco-Turkish alliance was necessary to frustrate Charles V’s ambition to conquer the world. There is scope here for fine displays of self-righteousness, such as that given by the bishop of Valence, Jean de Monluc, in a famous speech to the Venetian senate during the campaign of Ceresole in 1544. The French envoy scoffs at the emperor’s attempts to justify his attack: ‘pour dissoudre l’amitie qu’on dict [I] estre entre la majeste‘ du Roy et le Grand Seigneur. 0 les delicates consciences! 6 les sainctes propositions! 6 responses bien justifiees pour s’en servir toutes-fois envers quelques sots et ignorants!” ’ Monluc demands to know whether this can explain all the emperor’s other assaults on France, in Picardy, Genoa, Milan, Provence, and so on.

A few years later Pierre Dan& produced documentary evidence, from an unlikely source, to prove that the emperor was to blame for the in- stability in Europe; he quoted a letter from Suleiman himself, to the bishop of Waradin in Hungary, in which the sultan categorically describes his renewal of the war in Hungary (synchronized with a French descent into Italy) as a counter to the expansionist plans of Charles and his brother Ferdinand. Later in the century French historians and commen- tators regretted that the emperor’s ambition, alone, had prevented Francis I from emulating his forebears and undertaking a successful war against the Turk.I8 A remark made by Francis himself to a Venetian ambassador suggests that something a little more devious lay behind it all, but it con- firms the general thesis:

Monsieur l’ambassadeur, je ne puis pas nier que je desire vivement voir le Turc tr2.s-puissant et pr&t 2 la guerre, non pas pour lui, car c’est un infid&le, et nous autres nous sommes chretiens; mais pour affaiblir la

” See B. de Monluc, Commentaires, ed. P. Courteault (Paris, 1911-25), I , 147. ’‘ DanPs, Apologiefaicte par un selviteur du Roy (Paris, 1552; BL 9200 c 31), sig. b i-iv; the same

point was made later by BrantBme, Monluc, La PopeliniPre and La Noue.

308 Michael Heath

puissance de l’empereur, pour le forcer 2 de graves dCpenses [et] pour rassurer tous les autres gouvernements contre un ennemi si grand.”

As for the third topic, ‘ease’, it overlaps with ‘justice’ in the sense that pragmatists, including the international lawyers, increasingly recognized the Ottoman empire as a sovereign state, not a barbarian usurpation, and concluded that it was feasible, as well as legitimate, to conduct negotiations with it. Perhaps the most striking - and relevant - example of this trend is Jean Bodin’s diatribe against Habsburg pretensions in the Methodus historica. He is decrying their claim that the Holy Roman Empire is the fourth and last of the empires prophesied by Daniel; the Ottoman state, argues Bodin, has a more convincing claim, on both historical and territorial grounds, to be considered the heir to universal monarchy:

Quid habet Germania quod principi Turcarum opponat? Aut quis merito maiore monarcha dici potest? Patet hoc quidem omnium oculis; si enim est usquam terrarum ulla maiestas imperii ac verae monarchiae, in eo profecto elucet. Quanto verius est de Turcarum rege, qui Bizantium Imperii caput, Christianis, Babylonis regionem, qua de agitur apud Danielem, Persis ademit, et magnam suae domina- tionis partem ultra Danubium usque ad Borysthenis ostia, veteribus Romanorum provinciis coniunxit? Profecto Danielis oraculum de prin- cipe Turcarum interpretari aequius erit. 2o

If this seems far-fetched, sober historical fact tells us that even the Habsburgs were compelled at last to recognize the Ottoman empire as a sovereign state in the Treaty of Sitva-Torok (1606).

However, the most persuasive arguments in defence of France’s honour were to be found in the last topic, profit. Of course, all her apologists (except Bodin*’) were much too gentlemanly to point out the importance of the trading concessions granted by the sultans to France in a series of commercial treaties from 1528 onwards, although these were to prove of lasting benefit to the economic prosperity and geopolitical standing of France. They did not mind admitting that French emissaries had succeeded in salvaging irreplaceable manuscripts and artefacts from the wreck of the Byzantine empire: nothing like the argument ad humanis- mum for saving face! But better still, there were apparently no less than three spiritual advantages to be gained from the arrangement. First was the pious possibility that French diplomacy would succeed where her Crusaders had failed, and win the Turks for Christ. There was a wide- spread Reformation controversy over the possibility and desirability of

’’ Relations (note 12), I , 67. *’ Methodus historicu (Basle, 1576), 348-9. * ’ In La respome deJeun Bodin u M . de Mulestroit, ed. H. Hauser (Paris, 1932), 14.


converting the Turks, 2 2 but the subject also plays a role here as justifica- tion for the alliance. A news pamphlet, which looks like the result of what would now be called an unattributable lobby briefing, claims that:

Le Turc desire fort (ainsi que l’on dict) avoir amour avecques nostre sire le Roy, et bonne alliance, soy offrant luy donner ayde et secours contre tous ses ennemys; promettant luy et les siens soy faire baptiser. Dieu veuille par sa saincte grace mettre tout en bonne paix et dilec- tion ensemble, et reduire tous les infidelles en nostre saincte foy catholique. 2 3

Estienne Dolet made the same point in a more polemical way, obviously in reply to imperial calumnies: ‘Est-il defendu qu’ung Prince ne prenne alliance et intelligence avec ung aultre, de quelque creance et Loy qu’il soit? Ne le doibt-il faire, pour l’attirer, s’il peult, P la ~ i e n n e ? ’ ~ ~ Dolet’s eagerness to prove that Francis I was only performing his Christian duty rather blinds him to the double-edged nature of this argument! A French envoy to the pope, the comte de Sanzay, was more careful to guard against this possible objection to the alliance: ‘Et, je vous prie, ‘es Francoys embrassent-ils l’Alcoran, ou s’ils se veautrent en la circoncision et superstition du Mahometisme?’ And, lest this seem disrespectful to his master’s ally, he went on to point out that, by contrast with the shifty emperor, the sultan overflowed with virtues and had proved ‘loyal, traic- table, equitable, et si entier que pour sa perfection il ne luy reste rien plus que le Christianisme’. 2 5

The second more or less religious argument in favour of the alliance was that it moderated the effects of the Turkish assault on Christendom, ensuring much-needed truces at various times, and preserving Christians from the dangers of enslavement and apostasy. When a small French fleet sailed to the Aegean in 1537 and joined its larger Ottoman counterpart, the poet Bertrandon de La Borderie, who was present, maintained that the French presence had persuaded the Turks to raise their blockade of Christian Corfu:

Car nous estions (quelque chose qu’on tienne) Li envoyez pour un effet semblable, A tow Chrestiens utile et proufitable.26

We must consider La Borderie an unreliable witness, as in the same rather tasteless poem he described the agonies of the Turkish galley slaves but insisted that they could not compare with the pangs of love he felt at being separated from his mistress. But a few years later both Monluc and

See note 3 above and my C w a d i n g Commonplaces (note 6 ) , 13-17. 2’ Anon., L’Assault et prise d’une ville en Breban (Rouen, 1543; BN R& LbSO 244), fol. 4”. ’‘ Les Gestes de Franeoys de ValoL (Lyon, 1543), 84-5. 2s Quoted in F. de Belleforest, Harengues militaires (Paris, 1572), 1393-4. 26 Le Voyage de Constantinople, in Le Lime de plusieurs pieces (Lyon, 1549), fol. 5‘.

310 Michael Heath

Sanzay took an identical line in defending France’s use of Turkish forces against Nice and Corsica: it was to avoid worse befalling Christendom:

Qui sera celuy qui jugera que ceste armee, avec une si grande puissance, eust triomphe‘ d’une infinite‘ d’ames chrestiennes et de quelque ville d’importance, si nous ne l’eussions convertie 2 nostre profit? En cecy nostre utilite‘ privee estoit conjoincte avec le bien public de toute la ~hrestiente‘.~’

Neither troubled to explain why the French had Turkish forces at their disposal in the first place. Their bad faith is made clear by the terms of the secret treaty, which gave the Turks the right to enslave all captives taken in the joint operations.

Rather more compatible with France’s historic role was the third ele- ment in this line of defence: the alliance protected Christians under Ottoman rule and also the Holy Places in Palestine. Francis I and Henry I1 won what proved to be short-lived concessions for the Latin friars in Jerusalem, Christian slaves on Barbarossa’s galleys were exchanged at Marseille for Turkish and Moorish captives of the French; French am- bassadors ransomed Christian slaves at Istanbul, intervened in favour of captured Knights of St John, and so on. French apologists were not slow to seize on these examples, making no allowance, of course, for the religious tolerance which the sultans practised in their domains. A good summary of all these arguments is given by Francois de Belleforest:

Ny loy, ny raison, ny coustume ne deffendent que sa majeste‘ tienne et Embassadeurs et Agents pres la personne du grand Seigneur, comme ainsi soit que le reste des Princes Chrestiens font le semblable, estant tres bien faict de ne point irriter ce chien farouche affin qu’estant en- furie‘, il ne nous morde B la face, et se veautre au sang de noz freres.”

To sum up: one obvious result of France’s notorious alliance with the Ottomans was a vigorous political debate (most of the examples above are taken from French replies to detailed and often cogent attacks); in the course of the debate a number of principles of international jurisprudence and diplomacy were re-examined and refined. But there is a less positive side: humbug and propaganda became more than ever the currency of international diplomacy. This hypocrisy may be illustrated briefly by quoting the private utterances of some of the public defenders of France’s policy:

Jean du Bellay, to an envoy in Rome: ‘Servez vous des corps des Turcs, et laissez les ames aux Theologiens; et quand vous oyrez dire que le Pape parlera de foudres et tonnerres, faites semblant de ne rien ouyr,

’’ Monluc (note 17), I , 146-7; cf. Sanzay in Belleforest (note 25), 1395. On the secret treaty, see

*’ A comment in Belleforest’s edition of N. Gilles, Chroniques (Paris, 1573), fol. 479‘. Biblioth2que diplomatique, ed. I . de Testa (Paris, 1864), I, 43-6.

Unholy alliance: Valois and Ottomans 31 1

passez plus oultre, et faites vos affaires si vous pouvez, le servant tous- jours de filiales, humbles et devotes paroles.’

Monluc: ‘Mais contre son ennemy on peut de tout bois faire fleches. Quant 2 moy, si je pouvois appeller tous les esprits des enfers pour rompre la teste 2 mon ennemy qui me veut rompre la mienne, je le ferois de bon coeur. Dieu me le pardoint.’

Brant6me: ‘Contre les loups il se faut ayder des chiens . . . il est permis in omni mod0 se sauver et le sien.’”

Finally, to illustrate the development of quasi-official propaganda, let us look at the presentation of one particular incident in contemporary pamphlets and chronicles. Perhaps the most extraordinary example of armed co-operation between French and Muslim forces was the siege of Nice towards the end of 1543, which resulted in the capture and sacking of the town but not of the almost impregnable castle. The French troops were put to shame by the Turks’ discipline, sobriety - and hardware: they even had to borrow powder and shot from the Turks to continue their part of the bombardment. When the engagement was broken off, the Turkish fleet under Khaireddin Barbarossa wintered at Toulon, which had been cleared of most of its inhabitants; a detachment sailed off and harried the coast of Spain.” These events naturally provoked a storm of criticism from opponents of the Valois, ranging from the emperor to Calvin; Francis’ immediate reply was Jean du Bellay’s Defensio adversus maledicta, composed in Latin for foreign consumption, but immediately published in French as well, both versions being printed by the royal printer Robert Estienne. It is interesting to note in passing that there was even a version in French verse (of a kind) from the pen of Marot’s rival Frangois Sagon. 3 1 But instead of discussing this apologia, whose essential themes differ little from those outlined earlier, we may look at the way in which the episode was handled by the newsmen, in the chronicles and pamphlets which informed or disinformed the French public.

That distinguished Francophile chronicler Paolo Giovio gave a frank account in his Historiae of the negotiations by the French admiral Polin de La Garde which led to the dispatch of the Turkish fleet to Nice; Polin incidentally admitted in private that it was fear of Charles V, not of the French, which drove Suleiman into Francis 1’s But Giovio’s

” See, respectively, G. Dickinson, Du Bellay in Rome (Leiden, 1960), 124, Monluc (note 17), I,

lo For a full account, see C. de La Roncsre, Histozre de la murinef7ancuatje (Paris, 1906), III ,

Apologye ou defense pour le Roy (Paris, 1544; BN R& Ye 1448). For Calvin’s criticism, see J.

” Giovio, Histoires (Lyon, 1555), 743-50: Polin’s remark is recorded by Brant6me (note 29),

140, and Brantbme, Oeuvres complCtes, ed. L. Lalanne (Paris, 1864-82), v, 60.

376-94, summarized in Knecht (note 7) , 364-6.

Pannier, ‘Calvin et les Turcs’, Rev Hatjt, 180 (1937), 282.

v, 63.

312 Michael Heath

narrative of the subsequent operations is designed to exculpate the king; taking his cue from the French apologists, he claims that Francis attacked Nice in order to spare other Christians, even the emperor’s subjects, by unleashing Barbarossa against his own rebellious subjects (Nice was at the time governed by the duke of Savoy, but was subject to a strong French claim). Giovio’s translator follows his source in using a sort of style in- direct libre to convey the king’s repugnance for the measures the emperor had forced him to take:

I1 prevoyoyt que ce seroyt chose odieuse et entierement infame pour son renom, s’il envoyoyt ceste navire d’execrables Barbares qui appor- teroyt inexpiables et mortelles calamite‘s sur les rivages Crestiens, veu que les pertes des miserables peuples, ne meritans rien de tel, ne le re- compenseroyent point des torts que luy feroyt son adversaire et ennemi 1’Empereur.

Giovio added that, although Barbarossa was liberally entertained at Toulon, he was also encouraged and supplied by the emperor’s admiral Andrea Doria, nominally his direct adversary, ‘par quelque droit maritime’ (he says mysteriously). 3 3 Martin du Bellay’s chronicle also considered the defenders of Nice to be fair game since they were denying Francis one of his own towns, and both Jean de Monluc and Brant6me repeated the party line that the siege was instituted by Francis to prevent worse harm befalling Christendom. 34

These writers, publishing some time after these notorious events, could not hope to conceal them, and merely tried to put a favourable gloss on them. However, some immediately contemporary accounts do suggest an attempted cover-up. Three news pamphlets survive, the first of which merely added stop press news (on the title-page) of the Turkish landings at Nice to its account of the arrival of Polin and Barbarossa’s envoy at Lyon. No mention of French forces at all.35 The second pamphlet, a bizarre mixture of prose and verse, describes with patriotic relish the emperor’s difficulties on all fronts, including rumours that Vienna has fallen to the Turk. The latest news is that, on his southern flank,

Barberousse est encor 2 Nice, Avecques luy trente mille combatans Tous souldoyes soubz son service De par le Turc pour bien trois ans. Cinq cens pieces dartillerie Sont 2 son camp bien clos et bien ferme, Bien fourni de gendarmerie, De bastillons bien conforme.

” Giovio (note 32), 830 and 839. ’‘ M. and G. du Bellay, Memoires, ed. V:L. Bourrilly and F. Vindry (Paris, 1908-19), IV, 187-8;

” Lettres missives enuoyez[sic]en France (n.p. 1543; MusCe Condi IV B 94). Monluc (note 17), I , 146-7; BrantBme (note 29), IV, 142.

Unholy alliance: Valois and Ottomans

Plus, dessus l’eau sont les galleres, Munition de vins, de vivres et de gens: Pour faire honte et impropere A 1’Empereur sont diligens.

313

Neither here nor in the prose text is there any suggestion of French collu- sion; it appears simply that Barbarossa is acting on his own initiative and following up his success against Charles V at Algiers in 1541 .36 The next extant pamphlet on these campaigns, dated May 1544 and giving news of the great French victory of Ceresole, describes Barbarossa’s defeat of Andrea Doria off the Italian coast, without mentioning preceding events, least of all the wintering of the Turkish fleet at Toulon.”

But the best example of patriotic evasiveness occurs in Guillaume Paradin’s Discours des guerres du Roy et de L’Empereur, published at Paris early in 1544. Paradin’s account of this episode deserves to be quoted in full:

[Heading] Armee des grecz conduicte par Barberousse au port de Tholon. [Text] Durant ces guerres de Belges, survint 5 la part de France grande multitude de galleres sur la mer meditarrene soubz la conduicte de Ariadene Barbe rouse: lequel avec son armee print la ville de Nice, et laissant le chasteau, de nature de lieu et force presque inexpugnable, se retira au port de Tholon, et y est encores a n d , atten- dant qu’il puisse exploicter aucune chose P l’encontre de l’empereur son ennemy, ayant intelligences continuelles, et traffiquant avecques les Genevoys. (fol. lov)

Before putting this garbled story down to the difficulty of obtaining accurate information so close to the event, we should note that when Paradin incorporated the text in his Histoire de nostre temps, published many times from 1548 onwards, the only changes he made were to replace the Greeks by Turks and to omit some of the last part. It looks as though Paradin had two sources: the second news pamphlet mentioned earlier, with its implication that Barbarossa was acting quite independ- ently against his personal enemy the emperor, and secondly the presumably semi-official leak about the Genoese which was also used by Giovio.

The efforts of Paradin and the pamphlets to play down French involve- ment may account for the failure of later writers, who relied on this kind of source, to mention it. Jean Bouchet’s Annales d’Aquitaine quoted Paradin’s first version almost word for while another chronicle recorded that ‘Barberousse vint avec sa flotte en la coste de Provence, puis tira vers celle de Genes et de la Thoscane’, 39 which of course makes it

” La Deffaicte des Bourgui‘ons (Rouen, 1543), reprinted in A. de Montaiglon (note 6), VI, 209-

” La Deffaicte des Angloys (n.p., 1544; Muse’e Cond6 iv B 69). ’* Edition of Poitiers. 1557, fol. 304. ” Chronologze turcique, in J. de Lavardin, Histoire de Castriot (St Gervais, 1604), 21.

17).

314 Michael Heath

appear that he attacked France; and there are a number of similar examples of ignorance or evasion. Francois de Belleforest was the most audacious: he failed to mention the wintering at Toulon at all, and asserted that Barbarossa attacked Nice quite spontaneously, against the wishes of both Polin and Francis I; this was a claim which even Jean du Bellay and his press office had not dared to make.40

All these attempts to mitigate the dishonourable facts seem to reflect official policy, which is once more revealed by material unpublished at the time. The diarist Francois de Vieilleville was at court during the episode, and records many bizarre details, such as that thirty-two treasury officers stayed up all night at Toulon, counting into sacks the 800,000 crowns with which Barbarossa was paid off. His comment on the firing and sack of the town of Nice, mostly the work of the disgruntled and ill-disciplined French troops, shows official policy at work: 'Toutefois on rejetta cette m6chancetC sur le pauvre Barberousse, pour soutenir l'honneur et la reputation de France, voire de la Chre~tiente'.'~'

It is possible to construct a similar account of other episodes, notably the fall of Tripoli in 1551, where Rabelais was among the first to peddle the official line that Spanish negligence rather than French treachery was to blame,42 and the seizure of Corsica in 1553, when French and Turkish fleets just happened to attack the island from opposite sides at the same

But suffice it to say that the Franco-Turkish alliance, besides helping to thwart Charles V's designs and raising some important points of international law and diplomatic procedure, gave French publicists ex- cellent practice in the arts of the press release and the leak. As for 'cultural relations', they seem to have come a poor second behind the demands of realpolitik and, in the eyes of several commenta tor~ ,~~ the alliance was largely responsible for the economic, social and cultural disasters of the Wars of Religion. The Calvinist captain Francois de La Noue, in his lengthy denunciation of the alliance, made this bitter comment on the victims of Barbarossa and his allies:

Les desolations de ces barbares ont est6 lamentables, ayans brusl6, sac- cage, mesmes emmen6 un nombre merveilleux de pauvres chrestiens pour estre en servitude perpetuelle . . . 11 est vraysemblable que la juste douleur a arrach6 infinies plaintes, larmes et souspirs, qui paravanture ont frappe' 2 la porte du ~ i e l . ~ ~

'' Les Grandes Annales (Pans, 1579), 11, fol. 1519', and in his edition of N. Gilles (note 28), fol.

'' Mimozres, ed. Petitot (Paris. 1822), I , 119. " In the prologue to the Quart Lime, published early in 1552: ed. R. Marichal (Geneva, 1947),

'' See especially Jean Bouchet's Annales d'Aquztaine (note 38), fol. 370.

466".

18.

For example Belleforest ( A n d e s , note 40), fol. 1519', Monluc (note 17), I, 156, and F. de Rae- mond, La Naissance de l'heresze (Paris, 1605), 11, fols 211-12. " Discours politiques et militaires, ed. F. E. Sutcliffe (Geneva 1967), XXI, 428.


With the fall of the house of Valois in 1589, the rod of God finally descended on the authors of the unholy alliance.

King’s College, London

unholy alliance: valois and ottomans

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