[Menydh]

The Battle of Lepanto and its Impact on Ottoman History and Historiography

by Onur Yildirim

All the Muslims, shocked and worried about this defeat which, to them, was reminiscent of the day of reckoning, begged to God, sighing «Praise be to the Almighty [and] the Wisest, the Hour of Reckoning is indeed a great event!»

K. Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l Kibar fi Esfari’l Bihar, Darü’t Tıbaati’l Mamureti’s Su, Istanbul, 1141 (1728), p. 95

Introduction

The triumph of the allied Christian fleet over the Ottoman galleys at Lepanto created great repercussions upon European society and culture, well-covered by a large corpus of literary and historical material since the occurrence of this event. In their scholarly and artistic endeavors, historians, poets, painters, philosophers and theologians celebrated the victory of the Christian alliance against the hereditary enemy, the Ottoman Turk, who championed Islam and defied Christianity. The Ottoman side of the story remained largely an uncharted terrain, covered briefly by a few Ottoman chroniclers and examined only by a small number of contemporary historians. Those Ottoman chroniclers who devoted a few pages to this event in their accounts limited their coverage to the material aspects of the naval confrontation and generally adopted an indifferent attitude towards the broader consequences of this event. Contemporary Turkish historians are divided in their assessment of the event. Some of them, carried away by the paradigm of the golden age, tend to view it as the most concrete manifestation of the beginning of a long decline that was to hold sway over the Ottoman Empire in the centuries to come. Some others, on the other hand, allude to its inhibiting effect on the expansion of the Ottoman Empire rather than surmising a definite treatise of demise. By and large, the event failed to receive the kind of recognition and publicity that it found in Europe.

In his seminal work, Braudel considered the victory of the allied Christian fleet at Lepanto as marking «the end of a period of pro- found depression, the end of a genuine inferiority complex on the part of Christendom and a no less real Turkish supremacy». ¹ Given the fact that what Braudel considers «a genuine inferiority complex on the part of Christendom» reciprocated a genuine feeling of superiority on the part of Islam – championed by the Ottomans – the immediate impact of this event on the Ottoman Empire and on Ottoman society and culture, both official and popular, merits special attention. How did the defeat at Lepanto affect the psychology of the Ottoman political leadership in Istanbul? Did it really do away with the feeling of superiority on the part of the Ottomans? What lessons, if any, did they draw from this event? Since the defeat at Lepanto was the first major defeat of the Ottoman navy vis-à-vis its contemporaneous European rivals and the second greatest military defeat of the Ottoman army since the destruction of the Ottoman land forces in the hands of the Mongols in the opening years of the fifteenth century, the questions of how the Ottomans reacted to the defeat at Lepanto and whether or not they viewed it as a disastrous defeat appear to be legitimate topics of research.

The first defeat in the hands of Mongol conquerors had set going a period of interregnum to be recovered two decades later with the help of political conjuncture as well as special efforts by capable sultans; the defeat at Lepanto, however, took its major toll on Ottoman naval capacity, with effects on the socio-political framework comparable with those of the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. Perhaps more importantly the occurrence of this defeat in a long history of victories, before and after the battle, made it look like an anomaly, if not an accident, caused by the miscalculations of an incompetent commander inexperienced in naval affairs. As one Ottoman chronicler put it, «the grand admiral of the Ottoman navy had not commanded a single rowboat in his life»² and according to another chronicler «he has not seen a naval battle nor was he informed of the science of piracy».³

Be that as it may, the battle of Lepanto is one of those rare events that have not received the kind of attention they deserve in Ottoman and Turkish historiography.⁴ Thus the questions referred to above remain for the most part unanswered, if not unaddressed. The current paper attempts to fill in this lacuna by looking at the broader implications of this event for Ottoman history and historiography. It starts out with a brief assessment of the place where the battle occurred, then moves on to place the event within the broader context of the post-Suleymanic phase of Ottoman history, and recounts the details of the event from the Ottoman point of view. Then it examines the impact of this event upon Ottoman naval history, which saw with this event its golden age coming to an end. The second part of the paper, which is largely a historiographic assessment of this event, brings the writings of a select group of Ottoman chroniclers under the magnifying lens, showing the elements of continuity and rupture in their respective narratives of this event. This section gauges out the reactions of Ottoman intelligentsia to the disastrous defeat and the way they perceived and represented the Christian world in their accounts. In the final analysis, the present author hopes to provide a thorough assessment of the consequences of the naval defeat on the Ottoman Empire on the one hand, and shed some light on the reactions of the Ottomans to this defeat on the other.


The Place, the Context, the Event

Located at the mouth of the Gulf of Patras (Corinth), Lepanto came under Venetian rule in 1407 and remained under it until 1499. It was conquered – after an unsuccessful attempt in 1483 – by the Ottomans in 1499 and turned into one of the eleven districts (liva) in the Province of Cezayir (Eyalet-i Cezayir) within the Ottoman administrative system.⁵ The conquest of Lepanto, together with Modon, Coron and Navarino, gave the Ottomans not only a new frontier well to the west but also near control of the whole eastern half, except Crete, of the Mediterranean Sea, which was the fundamental basis of fortune and power of the Venetian Republic, the only important Christian power in the region. Upon the conquest, the Ottomans implemented the routine procedures, conducting a census (tahrir) with a view to enlisting the resources of the district and making a valuation of the lands therein. The sultan reserved a certain portion of the lands for his personal property and established 13 zeamet⁶ and 287 tımars⁷. After the division of these lands into various fiscal units, the government proceeded with the assignment of these units to the tımariot cavalry (people of devshirme origins) in return for military service. The appointment of high-ranking government officials such as sanjak bey and kadı (judge) etc. completed in due course the annexation of this region into the Ottoman administrative system. Since Lepanto was a strategic frontier – situated on a belt cutting the Mediterranean commercial and cultural space into halves (Muslim/Ottoman and Christian/European) – it was subjected to a special administrative and financial status.⁸ Having placed a janissary garrison in each of the Venetian-erected fortifications (Kastro Moréas in the south and Kastro Roumelias in the north), the Ottoman central administration carried out periodic checks on the soldiers and maintained their unremitting provisioning all year long. From the moment the administrative status of Lepanto was conferred, the Ottomans began recruiting oarsmen and warriors for naval and land campaigns. The burden upon the shoulders of the local populations only got worse as time went by. As a maritime district, Lepanto constantly furnished the imperial navy with oarsmen and warriors during the sixteenth century, a period during which the Ottoman fleet was relentlessly in action from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.⁹ Oarsmen were drawn mainly from the local Greek populations who were experienced in maritime affairs (piracy, corsair activity), in return for various tax exemptions (cizye, kharaj, avariz etc.). When the need arose, the state authorities demanded the construction of ships with the supplies provided by the populations of the district. Urgent taxes (akçe-i avariz), which began to be extracted in the early years of the sixteenth century¹⁰, became regular taxes in maritime districts, such as Lepanto, long before they were turned into regular taxes throughout the imperial territories during the late sixteenth century. On the eve of the naval battle off their coast, the local populations of Lepanto had already become weary of supplying the Ottoman army with men and provisions during the seventy years of continuous warfare.¹¹ Thus they began to turn a deaf ear to new demands. As attested by several Ottoman chroniclers, the grand admiral of the Ottoman fleet failed to recruit from this traditional center for galley labor warriors and oarsmen in numbers sufficient to staff the ships participating in the campaign.¹² Furthermore, the timariot cavalry of the district, expected to support the navy, failed to attend to their duties since many of them had departed from the district because of the season. The evidence suggests that following the defeat of the Ottoman naval forces at Lepanto the religious leaders of Greek communities in and around Janina and Karlıeri began to communicate with the Venetians.¹³ The Orthodox bishops of Salonica went one step further and dispatched an envoy to the Russian Tsar and Polish king, asking them to organize a joint action against the Ottomans. The envoy was stopped in Walachia (Eflak) by Ottoman forces.¹⁴ Nevertheless, the leaders of the Orthodox Greek communities disregarded the traditional conflict between the Patriarchate in Istanbul and the Papacy and continued to invest their resources and energy for the purpose of uprooting the Ottoman rule from the region. Although the Battle of Lepanto did not bring an end to the Ottoman rule in the region, that goal was accomplished by the first serious assault of the Venetians during the next century. Lepanto was recaptured by the Venetians in 1687 to be handed back in 1699 to the Ottomans, who lost the place for good during the Greek independence movement in the 1820s.

The event occurred at a time when the Ottomans were consolidating their imperial power at home and abroad. On the diplomatic plane, they had just signed a truce with Austria (1568), revised the terms of peace with Poland (1568), captured Tunisia (1569) and nearly completed the conquest of Cyprus (1570). Furthermore, the diplomatic relations with Iran, the principal eastern rival, had just begun to smoothen out with the visit of an Iranian delegation (1568).¹⁵. Last but not the least, a series of victories (Tunisia, Cyprus) that the Ottoman navy won in the Mediterranean had paved the way for rapprochement with the arch-rivals, namely the Venetians, in the early months of 1571, disrupted momentarily with the confrontation in Cyprus. Thus on the eve of the Lepanto defeat, the Ottomans still maintained their diplomatic relations with the principal political powers of their time in terms favorable to enhancing their superiority against their eastern and western neighbors. Much to the dissatisfaction of the Ottomans, however, the negotiations with the Venetians were aborted owing to the conquest of Cyprus, alienating the Venetians from their side and stimulating them to join the Holy League (Spain, the Papacy, Princes of Tuscany, Parma, Malta, Savoy, Genoa, Ferrara) organized through the initiative of the Pope Pius V. The crushing Ottoman defeat by the Christian allied fleet at Lepanto occurred in this atmosphere, striking a major blow to the ongoing process of consolidation of Ottoman imperial power on the diplomatic front and thus causing a major disappointment on the part of the Ottoman political leadership. The post-Lepanto era saw a swift change of direction in Ottoman political, economic and diplomatic relations with Europe. The Ottomans turned their eyes away from Latin Christendom to England, France and the Dutch, who were prepared to take over the role of the Venetians in Mediterranean commerce.

On the domestic scene, the consolidation efforts via constant warfare took their toll on the subject populations, placing further financial burdens on their shoulders. The effects of this development, coupled with the impact of the price fluctuations caused by the inflow of American silver, triggered a process of rural-urban migration that altered the dynamics of the Ottoman social and economic system. The peasantry became increasingly squeezed between the demands of the state and obligations to local notables. This dilemma resulted in peasant flight and depopulation of the countryside, which exacerbated the problem of taxation. As an agriculture-based state, the Ottoman Empire failed to maintain its revenue base owing to the depopulation of the countryside despite the demographic upsurge that characterized the whole European continent at the time. Increasing tax burdens on a constantly shrinking rural population also affected the loyalty of the subject populations, particularly the nomads, to the Ottoman dynasty. The Ottoman-Safavid conflict was nurtured for the most part by growing resentment on the part of the Turcoman tribes – forced to settle for tax purposes – as well as the rural populations of central Anatolia towards the Ottoman dynasty. Since the mid years of the century, various segments of the Ottoman society had shown signs of discontent via different forms of reaction. To illustrate the extent of this discontent, one could mention the situation of the religious schools (madrases) which produced people to man the bureaucracy. Due to the increasing shortage of positions in bureaucracy and tightening of promotion schemes, the number of students in religious schools had sharply increased since the mid years of the century and madrase students in major imperial cities like Bursa had begun to show their feelings through different types of actions (e.g., brigandage, kidnapping etc.) that caused havoc and disorder. The movement of students forms only one aspect of the wholesale social movement, the so-called Celali Rebellions, which the Anatolian peasants, soldiers and notables would be involved in at the end of the century. To the worsening situation of the tax-paying subjects was added the efforts of the Ottoman central administration to suppress the rebellions in such distant provinces as Yemen and the Hedjaz (1567-1571).¹⁶ The fiscal burdens on the shoulders of tax payers mounted as time went by. The preparations of the Ottoman land army for the campaigns against the Safavid state in the east and the Habsburgs in the west required vast resources. To the increasing pressure on the tax-paying subjects the Lepanto incident made yet another addition, since immediately after the Lepanto defeat the Ottoman Sultan Selim II and his grand vizier Sokullu Mehmed Paşa launched an ambitious project to rebuild the navy with a view to recouping the losses at Lepanto.

Having examined the specific conditions of the place where the battle took place and outlined the general context, we will provide a factual survey of the Ottoman side of the naval confrontation at Lepanto, often neglected in the literature on the subject.¹⁷ In the early months of 1571, the Ottomans had intelligence from their sources in Bosnia and Delvina that the Venetians were assembling their forces near Corfu, and waiting for the Spanish fleet. The news about the Christian fleet caused great concern and excitement in Istanbul and the government took drastic measures to meet the imminent danger, since they thought this large allied fleet was bound to break the ongoing siege of Magosa (Famagosta). The following decision, written in a highly religious tone, was taken to attack the Christian fleet: «when the news about the infidels’ intention to attack became known by every body, here the ulema (religious scholars) and all the Muslim community found it most proper and necessary to find and immediately attack the infidels’ fleet in order to save the honor of our religion and state, and to protect the Land of the Caliphate, and when the Muslims submitted their petition to the feet of my throne I found it good and incontestable. I remain unshakeable in my decision».¹⁸ As the language of the document suggests, the Ottomans from the beginning saw the confrontation as one between two faiths, reciprocating in this regard the motivations of the architects of the Holy League, Pope Pius V and the Spanish King Philip II. The decision was put into action all at once and all the naval and land forces were summoned to join the operation.

The Ottoman naval forces, misinformed of the whereabouts of the allied fleet, moved on to confront it at Crete where they were joined by the fleet of Uluç Ali Paşa, the governor (beylerbeyi) of Algiers. However, the allied fleet appeared in the Adriatic Sea with a view to attacking the Ottoman possessions on the Adriatic coasts. The Ottoman fleet reached the coast of Lepanto in September – one month before the confrontation – and raided some Venetian-held fortresses (Dulcigno and Antivari in Albania) in the neighboring regions. As we learn from Ottoman chroniclers, many of the Ottoman combatants who had landed to fight deserted and never returned to their ships.¹⁹ Many ships were thus left without soldiers. The land troops that had been recruited from the provinces of Albania and Bosnia in order to support the navy in the case of confrontation began to disband owing to bad weather conditions and a dearth of provisions. Many timariot cavalrymen returned to their home provinces (they would serve as a rule only during the campaign season that is from spring to autumn). The Ottoman political leadership did not intervene to stop the disintegration of military troops. This development is interpreted by a prominent Ottomanist, Halil Inalcık, as meaning that the Ottoman government did not seriously expect an enemy attack at that time and that the battle came rather as a surprise.²⁰ As a matter of fact, one of the Ottoman chroniclers of the time wrote that «the [Ottoman] fleet cruised for a long time on the sea. No one appeared. The Ottomans believed that the Christians lacked the courage to meet them. The winter approached. The corsairs and beys of the coastal provinces asked the Porte for permission to return home. Thus the army disintegrated».²¹ Be that as it may, the news about the movement of the allied Christian fleet to the bay of Lepanto arrived a little too late. By then many soldiers on the ships and on land had left. Not knowing that they would face such an organized assembly of galleys led by the Papacy, Venice and Habsburg forces under the flag of the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottomans were caught unprepared. The Allied fleet comprised some 200 galleys whose total complement numbered around 44,000 seamen, including rowers. In addition there were some 28,000 soldiers aboard.²² They were armed with the harquebus, the precursor of the musket. Furthermore, the Holy League fleet was attended by a train of 24 sailing cargo vessels which were there to provide logistic support when needed. The Ottoman fleet (numbering about 224 vessels) succumbed to the Holy League fleet. Some 194 Ottoman ships were either sunk or captured by the Christian alliance. The grand admiral was killed, together with his sons, while another commander saved his own life by simply fleeing. The only commander, who survived the battle was Uluç Ali Paşa, more experienced in maritime affairs than the other two commanders, who managed to bring back to Istanbul a small squadron of galleys. An imperial decree issued on October 28, 1571 has the following reflection on the event: «Now a battle can be won or lost. It was destined to happen this way according to God’s will».²³

The Naval Impact

The engagement of the Ottoman fleet with the fleet of the Holy League off the coast of Lepanto on 7 October 1571 gave the Ottoman imperial fleet its first major defeat at sea in the Mediterranean. This event is registered in Mediterranean history as the last major battle of galleys, marking the end of long and heavy oar-ships and the beginning of light and fast rigged sailing ships. But perhaps more importantly, this last major battle of galleys also brought to an end the communication between the Ottoman world and the West in the area of shipping technology. The Ottoman galleys which were pitted against those of their European rivals at Lepanto were found wanting, especially as regards firepower, and as a consequence the Ottoman navy immediately embarked on a measure of restructuring in an effort to retain the control of its possessions in the Mediterranean. The Ottoman Imperial Arsenal worked to its utmost capacity to rebuild the imperial fleet along somewhat improved lines. Within the space of 5-6 months the Ottoman Imperial Arsenal completed the construction of the navy, bringing all the construction material and labor via a harsh policy of taxation from the provinces. All these ships were fully equipped with artillery, guns and other war instruments and manned by oarsmen and warriors. The Grand Vizier, Sokullu Mehmed Paşa, is quoted as having said «this is such a [powerful] state that if it wishes, it would have no difficulty in casting anchors from silver, making rigging from silk and cutting the sails from satin; if I am unable to prepare on time the equipment and sail of a ship I am here to be held accountable for that».²⁴ That the Ottomans rebuilt their navy in a short time after the defeat can be considered a way of confronting the defeat and getting over its effects at once. However, the great financial sacrifices made by the Porte to protect the empire by building a new fleet signaled the end of Ottoman sea power. Andrew Hess, taking into consideration Ottoman naval accomplishments in the Mediterranean after the defeat of Lepanto, asserts that Ottoman sea power survived the defeat.²⁵ The eventual success of the Tunis campaign (1569-1574) can be considered as a testimony to the quick recovery of the Ottoman navy from the disastrous naval defeat and the restoration of Ottoman control over eastern Mediterranean waters. However, the financial burdens introduced by the crushing defeat and the advent of the English and Dutch on the Mediterranean made a full recovery of Ottoman sea power impossible. As a matter of fact, after the completion of the conquest of Tunis and La Goletta, Ottoman naval affairs entered an idle period until about the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Ottomans mounted another major expedition against Crete, the last Venetian possession in the eastern Mediterranean. Unlike earlier campaigns, the campaign of Crete lasted for nearly twenty-five years to be completed in 1669 with the capture of Candia. In this regard, the defeat at Lepanto can be considered as a benchmark in Ottoman naval history in that it ended the period of swift naval campaigns that the Ottoman navy had been executing since the later years of the fifteenth century.

The defeat at Lepanto had also had a major impact on the Ottoman policy in the Indian Ocean. Prior to the defeat at Lepanto, the Ottomans had managed to restore their rule over Yemen and Aden (1569-70) and prepared to launch a comprehensive attack against the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. As I·nalcık notes, «if the Ottomans had not had a shattering blow to their naval power at Lepanto, they might have continued their aggressive policy in the Indian Ocean» implying that the Ottomans, using Yemen as a strategic base, could extend their authority far into the Indian Ocean.²⁶ However, the defeat at Lepanto prompted the Ottomans to reconsider such comprehensive naval projects and eventually rule them out in favor of large-scale land campaigns.

As for the immediate impact of the Lepanto defeat on the political situation in the eastern Mediterranean, «it merely reconfirmed a naval stalemate according to which naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean remained in Muslim hands while the western Mediterranean remained predominantly under Christian control».²⁷ As the late Ronald Jennings states, «none of the parties which emerged victorious out of Lepanto occupied any territories, won any strategic advantages, or were able to follow up that single isolated success. The Ottomans not only stripped Venice of its richest and wealthiest possession, that is Cyprus, and its most important naval bases but also deprived Latin Christian pirates of their most important base»²⁸.