Empires of the Sea - the Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580 by Roger Crowley Read Free Book Online Page B

He sent honorific gifts—titles, caftans, and jeweled swords—and, more usefully, he dispatched two heavy war galleys with a full complement of troops, gunpowder, and cannon. It was a significant moment: this first contact with the imperial center was the start of a process that would soon draw the Maghreb into the Ottoman Empire.
    The following year Oruch seized control of Algiers in a stunning inter-Islamic coup. He strangled the city’s sultan in his bathhouse with his own hands and flooded the streets with his newly acquired Ottoman troops, heavily armed with muskets. It was the kind of colonial land grab that Spanish privateers were themselves conducting in the New World with a similar use of gunpowder.
    The Spanish were now thoroughly alarmed by this triangulation of power between the Ottoman corsairs, the Moriscos, and the sultan in Istanbul. Spanish forts on the North African shore were under continuous pressure. Oruch made two failed attempts on their outpost at Bougie; a Spanish counteroffensive to dislodge the Barbarossas from Algiers ended in hideous failure and the loss of most of the ships and men. Oruch and his Ottoman usurpers, now firmly entrenched, continued their territorial expansion inland. They captured Tlemcen, the old capital city of the central Maghreb, murdered seventy members of the ruling Arab dynasty, and further isolated the forts at the Peñón of Algiers and neighboring Oran. Oruch was quickly master of nearly all the land that constitutes modern Algeria. And the debilitating raids on shipping and coastlines went on; Muslim corsairs took to dumping mutilated captives on the Christian shore with the mocking instruction “Go and tell your Christian kings: ‘This is the crusade you have proclaimed.’” The Spanish felt severely threatened. After several years of warfare, their only triumph had been to smash Oruch’s arm with an arquebus ball at Bougie. Henceforth he gained another nickname: Severed Arm—or in yet another version that reflected the nightmarish image projected into the minds of Christians: Silver Arm. He was said to have had a forearm and hand of pure silver made to replace the amputated limb.
             
     
    IT WAS AT THIS MOMENT that the young Charles V received the petition from the marquis of Comares and his Arab ally, the deposed king of Tlemcen. The marquis explained the deteriorating situation in North Africa, the present and future danger to Spain. He now begged the young king to seize a rare moment of opportunity. Comares realized that Oruch had for once overreached himself in Tlemcen. The city lay two hundred miles inland from the corsair’s base at Algiers; his band of Turkish adventurers was small and they had inflamed Arab sentiment against them to the point of revolt. It was an ideal moment to strike back and rid the western seas of the pirates for good. It was a challenge that the young king, pledged to crush the infidel underfoot, could not refuse. He authorized his first Mediterranean venture.
    Charles granted Comares ten thousand men and the money to inspire a full-blown Arab revolt. For once the Spanish acted decisively. Moving fast, they cut the supply route to Algiers, blockaded Tlemcen, and subjected it to a long siege. As the defenses crumbled, Oruch played out his last act. With Arabic voices shouting “Kill him!” the corsair king slipped the city with a small band of followers and galloped away. They were spotted and pursued by Spanish troops. Oruch scattered the treasure of Tlemcen behind him in the dust. Many of the rank and file stopped to gather the trail of gems and coins, but a determined group pressed on and finally cornered Oruch in an arid stretch of upland country. Calling on Saint James for aid, they closed in for the kill. The Turks fought to the last man, Oruch wielding an axe with his one good arm until he was run through with a pike. He managed to inflict a last savage bite on the man who dispatched him; Don Garcia