Battle of Djerba

Background

Since losing against the Ottoman fleet of Hayreddin Barbarossa at the Battle of Preveza in 1538 and the disastrous expedition of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor against Barbarossa in Algiers in 1541, the major European sea powers in the Mediterranean Sea, the Spanish Empire and the Republic of Venice, felt more and more threatened by the Ottomans and their allies, the Barbary corsairs. Indeed, by 1558, Piali Pasha had raided the Balearic Islands, and, together with Dragut, raided the Mediterranean coasts of Spain.

King Philip II of Spain appealed to Pope Paul IV and his allies in Europe to organize an expedition to retake Tripoli from Dragut, who had captured the city from the Knights Hospitaller in August 1551 and had subsequently been made Bey (Governor) of Tripoli by Suleiman the Magnificent.

Forces

The historian William H. Prescott wrote that the sources describing the Djerba campaign were so contradictory it was impossible to reconcile them. Most historians believe that the fleet assembled by the allied Christian powers in 1560 consisted of between 50 and 60 galleys and between 40 and 60 smaller craft. For example, Giacomo Bosio, the official historian of the Knights of St John writes that there were 54 galleys. Fernand Braudel also gives 54 warships plus 36 supply vessels. One of the most detailed accounts is by Carmel Testa who evidently has access to the archives of the Knights of St. John. He lists precisely 54 galleys, 7 brigs, 17 frigates, 2 galleons, 28 merchant vessels, and 12 small ships. These were supplied by a coalition that consisted of Genoa, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States, and the Knights of S. John. Matthew Carr gives the number of 200 ships for the Christian Alliance. The joint fleet was assembled at Messina under the command of Giovanni Andrea Doria, nephew of the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria. It first sailed to Malta, where bad weather forced it to remain for two months. During this time some 2,000 men were lost to sickness.

On 10 February 1560, the fleet set sail for Tripoli. The precise numbers of soldiers aboard are not known. Braudel gives 10,000-12,000; Testa 14,000; older figures in excess of 20,000 are clearly exaggerations considering the number of men a sixteenth-century galley could carry.

Although the expedition landed not far from Tripoli, the lack of water, sickness and a freak storm caused the commanders to abandon their original objective, and on 7 March they returned to the island of Djerba, which they quickly overran. The Viceroy of Sicily, Juan de la Cerda, 4th Duke of Medinaceli, ordered a fort to be built on the island, and construction was begun. By that time an Ottoman fleet of about 86 galleys and galliots under the command of the Ottoman admiral Piyale Pasha was already underway from Istanbul. Piyale's fleet arrived at Djerba on 11 May 1560, much to the surprise of the Christian forces.

Battle

The battle was over in a matter of hours, with about half the Christian galleys captured or sunk. Anderson gives the total number of Christian casualties as 18,000, but Guilmartin more conservatively puts the losses at about 9,000 of which about two-thirds would have been oarsmen.

The surviving soldiers took refuge in the fort they had captured just days earlier, which was soon attacked by the combined forces of Piali Pasha and Dragut (who had joined Piali Pasha on the third day), but not before Giovanni Andrea Doria managed to escape in a small vessel. After a three-month siege, the garrison surrendered and, according to Bosio, Piyale carried about 5,000 prisoners back to Istanbul, including the Spanish commander, D. Alvaro de Sande, who had taken command of the Christian forces after Doria had fled. The accounts of the final days of the besieged garrison are irreconcilable. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the House of Habsburg ambassador from Austria to Constantinople, recounts in his famous Turkish Letters that, recognizing the futility of armed resistance, de Sande had tried to escape in a small boat, but was quickly captured. In other accounts, such as that of Braudel, he led a sortie on 29 July and was captured in that way. Through Busbecq's efforts, de Sande was ransomed and released several years later and fought against the Turks at the Great Siege of Malta in 1565.

Aftermath

The victory in the Battle of Djerba marked the apex of Ottoman naval domination in the Mediterranean, which had been growing since the Battle of Preveza 22 years earlier.

Of particular importance were the crippling losses of the Spanish fleet in experienced personnel: 600 skilled mariners (oficiales) and 2,400 arquebusier marines were lost, men who could not be quickly replaced.

The Ottomans had expelled the Knights from Rhodes in 1522. After Djerba, the Maltese channel lay open, and it was inevitable that the Ottomans soon turned on the new base of the Knights in the Great Siege of Malta in 1565, but did not succeed in taking it.

The victorious Ottomans erected the Borj el-Jemajem (), or pyramid of skulls, of the defeated Spanish defenders, which stood until the late nineteenth century. A small monument now stands in its place at Borj El Kebir in Houmt El Souk.

In literature

The Battle of Djerba is given a prominent place in The Course of Fortune by Tony Rothman (2015), a novel that concerns the events leading to the Great Siege of Malta, 1565.

The Battle of Djerba is featured in Falcon's Shadow: A Novel of the Knights of Malta by Marthese Fenech (2020) the second novel in Fenech's Siege of Malta trilogy.

Notes

References

Sources

References

1. Matthew Carr: ''Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain'', The New Press, 2009, {{ISBN
2. William Stewart: ''Admirals of the World: A Biographical Dictionary, 1500 to the Present'', {{ISBN. 0786438096, McFarland, 2009, page 240.
3. [http://www.nmhschool.org/tthornton/mehistorydatabase/safavid_and_ottoman_eras.htm Ted Thornton's History of the Middle East Database] {{webarchive. link. (February 20, 2006)
4. [[Hervé Coutau-Bégarie]]. (5 November 2013). "Naval Strategy and Power in the Mediterranean: Past, Present and Future". Routledge.
5. Giacomo Bosio, ''History of the Knights of St. John'', ed. by J. Baudoin, 1643, Book XV, p. 456.
6. Braudel, Fernand. ''The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II'' (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1995).
7. Carmel Testa,''Romegas'' (Midsea Books, Malta, 2002).
8. [http://www.dallog.com/savaslar/cerbe.htm Battle of Djerba] {{Webarchive. link. (2015-06-26 {{in lang). tr
9. {{Naval Wars in the Levant 1559–1853
10. John Guilmartin, ''Gunpowder and Galleys'' ([[Cambridge University Press]], Cambridge, 1974).
11. Anderson op cit.
12. Guilmartin op cit.
13. Oghier Ghiselin de Busbecq, ''Life and Letters'', volume I (Slatkine Reprints, Geneva, 1971).
14. John F. Guilmartin, Jr. (2002) ''Galleons and Galleys: Gunpowder and the Changing Face of Warfare at Sea, 1300-1650''. Cassell, p. 133
15. Christine Quigley, ''Skulls and Skeletons: Human Bone Collections and Accumulations'', McFarland 2001 p.172