[Menydh]

Conclusions

The development of Ottoman sea power reconfigured the early sixteenth-century balance of power, which culminated in the subordination of the Venetian Republic. A series of naval conquests, starting with Lepanto, Modon, Coron and Navarino in the late fifteenth century, then proceeding with the conquests of Rhodes, Preveza and Cyprus throughout the sixteenth century, stripped the Venetians of all major commercial zones that were pivotal for their merchant networks in long distance trade. True, the Venetians emerged victorious from the confrontation at Lepanto. However, they had consumed all their wealth during their expensive wars with the Ottomans since 1570; thus they accepted a new treaty with the Ottomans in 1573, in which they agreed to cede all the fortresses they had recently conquered in Albania and Bosnia, return all Ottoman prisoners without ransom, limit their fleet to 60 galleys and pay 300,000 sequins in reparations. Thus it would not be wrong to argue that the victory at Lepanto bore no fruit nor served any purpose whatsoever for the Venetians. The gradual disappearance of the Venetians from the Ottoman commercial world was made up for initially by the merchants of Marseilles and Ragusa. This development encouraged England, which until then had remained outside the periphery of the Ottoman world, to enter directly into commercial contact with the Ottomans. Although the English celebrated the Ottoman defeat at Lepanto with bonfires and «banqueting and great rejoicing» as the victory of the Venetians and the Spanish was of «so great importance to the whole state of the Christian commonwealth»³³, England’s interest in the Ottomans continued to develop despite personal resentment of certain kings such as James I. On the Ottoman side, such interest was not without support. Since the Ottomans saw the Venetian-Spanish-papal coalition as a formidable threat to their very existence, their interest in approaching the Western and Northern countries became a vital policy following the disaster of Lepanto. The Ottoman approach to England went as far as allowing the English pirates to use Ottoman ports in Northern Africa, Albania and Morea, and in certain instances cooperating with them. Only one year after the defeat, the Ottoman Sultan Selim II sent an envoy to the king of France, offering the assistance of the Ottoman fleet against Spain and suggesting a concerted attack by France and England and the princes of the Low Countries.³⁴ Another major outcome of the defeat was felt on the traditional Ottoman policy of extending capitulary privileges to the Western nations with a view to acquiring an ally within Christendom. Venice had been neutralized via such commercial privileges during the sixteenth century and thus prevented from putting its powerful navy at the service of the crusading popes. Lepanto stands alone as a source of disruption in this long pragmatic and perhaps somewhat symbiotic relationship. As mentioned above, the Venetians received yet another capitulary document from the Ottomans only two years after the Lepanto incident.³⁵ However, their share in the foreign trade of the Ottoman Empire sharply declined. As a result of the defeat at Lepanto, the real change came in the fact that the Ottomans now looked to Europe and specifically began to pay more attention to their relations with England, France and the Dutch whom, the Ottomans believed, were “fighting against idolatry” and common enemies, the Habsburgs and the Pope.

As far as the early reaction of the Ottoman political leadership to the defeat at Lepanto is concerned, they were unprepared for such a disastrous defeat, and therefore stunned by it but certainly not overwhelmed by its short-term consequences. They labored to undo its potential long-term effects by mobilizing all their resources to rebuild the fleet in a period of five months. Here the fear of new attacks by the victorious allied fleet on new Ottoman targets, including the capital city, must have prompted the political leadership to direct all its resources and energies to rebuilding the fleet in such a short time. From the naval point of view, the reconstruction of the Ottoman fleet over a period of five months demonstrates the resilience of the Ottoman state in relation to such an incident. The launching of new expeditions to La Goletta and Tunis and the successful conquests of these places testify to the quick recovery of the Ottoman sea power from the effects of such a tragic event. The concern on the part of the political leadership about the general public opinion should also be given some credit in explaining the quick recovery from the defeat. Large festivities and processions were organized to celebrate the completion of the construction of the new fleet with a view to influencing the public opinion. During these celebrations, the newly constructed ships sailed over the sea of Marmara under the leadership of the Grand Admiral to cultivate the confidence of the capital city’s populations, who might have been the only group to observe the return of the shattered fleet from Lepanto.

As for the effect of the defeat on Ottoman military activities, the defeat prompted the Ottomans to reconsider their naval projects but it hardly had any effect on the Ottoman policy of expansionism. On the contrary, the event aggravated Ottoman zeal as the Ottoman army intensified its activities towards Central Europe in the west and Iran in the east.

So how important was the defeat of Lepanto to the Ottomans? The best answer to this question is offered by the late Ottomanist Ronald Jennings, who states that «probably the Ottoman commander at Lepanto lacked decisiveness and resolution, for which he was dismissed, but remembering the long, uninterrupted succession of military and naval victories, which had been achieved in the previous century, the success in Cyprus at that very time, and the successes which would occur for the next decade or more, it is hard to adjudge the defeat at Lepanto as decisive in any way, even as a portent of misfortune which might follow later. It seems obvious that the conquest of Cyprus was much more important than the battle of Lepanto».³⁶ This is best attested by a conversation between the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmed Paşa and the Venetian ambassador Barbaro in Istanbul who was not allowed to return to Venice during the Cyprus campaign and the following Lepanto incident. When the Venetian ambassador asked Sokullu about the Ottoman plans after the defeat at Lepanto, Sokullu is quoted as having said: «As you have been observing, our courage has not faded away after the Battle of Lepanto; there is a discrepancy between your losses and ours’. We ceded from you a land [referring to Cyprus] where you can build a kingdom, thus cut off one of your arms. [Whereas] you defeated our fleet which meant nothing more than shaving our beard. A missing arm can not be replaced but a shaved beard grows thicker».³⁷

The only major impact of the defeat at Lepanto was on the tax-paying populations of the Empire. The long period of naval warfare culminating in the Lepanto campaign placed constant financial burdens upon the peasantry, particularly those living in the maritime provinces, which contributed immensely to their discontent with the central and provincial authorities. The fact that after the defeat, the Ottomans felt obliged to maintain a powerful fleet in the Mediterranean as a counterweight to the allied fleet only added to the financial strain. Thus, the defeat at Lepanto was not the prime cause but one of the factors that accelerated the discontent, which turned into one of the most important social movements throughout Ottoman history.

Finally, where the impact of the defeat on the Ottoman perception of Europe, particularly their feeling of superiority, is concerned, the defeat had no major effect. If we need to identify one event that marked the end of the superiority complex on the part of the Ottomans towards Europe, it was more the failure of the second siege of Vienna against a combined Habsburg-Polish army in 1683 than the Battle of Lepanto. The defeat at the gates of Vienna opened the way for a series of humiliating peace treaties that came one after another. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 marked the beginning of the long and slow retreat of the Ottomans from their European conquests. By the end of the eighteenth century, Europe, particularly Western Europe, with its military revolution and superior naval technology, was no longer vulnerable to the Ottoman power that had once been considered invincible. Consequently, as the Ottoman Empire became politically and economically dependent on Europe, it began to adapt itself to the challenge of Western superiority.