THE OTHER ARMADA – PART 1

When people hear the phrase “the Spanish Armada,” they invariably think of the great fleet of ships sent by the Spanish King Philip II to invade and conquer England in the summer of 1588—an invasion attempt which, as everybody knows, ended in failure. Famous as it may be, though, this was not the only great Spanish Armada. Philip’s father, Charles V, also gathered together a massive fleet of ships to launch against an enemy—in his case, Algiers.

Philip II sent an impressive force against England. His Armada consisted of 130 ships, of which something like 40 were ship-of-the-line warships and the rest transports. No less than 8,000 seamen manned these ships, and they had close to 20,000 soldiers onboard. It was, in other words, a very serious expedition.

The force sent to Algiers was even more serious.

Estimates vary, but Charles’ Armada consisted of close to 500 ships. According to Muslim accounts, when the feet first appeared at Algiers it seemed “so large that the number of ships could not be counted.” There were close to 100 warships, almost the same number of oared galleys, and 300 transports of varying sizes. Between them, these ships carried 24,000 soldiers—Spanish infantry, German and Italian mercenaries, even a contingent of the Knights of Malta.

Philip had not himself taken part in the failed invasion of England. Charles, however, personally led his Armada.

They arrived at Algiers in the middle of October, 1541. This was risky. Autumn and winter are a time of storms along the North African coast. Wooden sailing ships were particularly vulnerable to such storms, especially if they were anchored close to shore where the stormwinds could blow them onto the unforgiving coastal rocks. For a variety of reasons, however—political, financial, tactical—Charles had decided to take that risk. In the first half of the sixteenth century, Algiers had gone from a sleepy little port town to a corsair capital—a nest of sea-going vipers. The place had become such a thorn in Charles’ imperial side that he was willing to take almost any risk to eradicate it.

Dropping anchor in a bay several miles south of the city, the Armada started preparing to disembark. Heavy seas kept them there for three days, but eventually they began the process of ferrying men and supplies landward. Raggedy bands of mounted Arabs harried them as they came ashore, but they pressed on, landing more and more men, extending their perimeter, and eventually making their way to the walls of Algiers itself.

In the 1540s, Algiers was a relatively new addition to the Ottoman Empire. It had become part of that sprawling empire through the maneuverings of the (in)famous Barbarossa brothers. By the time of Charles’ attack, Oruç, the elder Barbarossa brother had been dead for over 20 years (killed by Spanish troops at Tlemcen), and Hayreddin, the younger brother, ruled Algiers as a subject of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan. In the autumn of 1541, though, Hayreddin Barbarossa was in Constantinople. In his stead, Algiers was ruled by one of his lieutenants, Hassan Agha. Hassan had only about 1,000 janissaries and 5,000 local militia with which to defend the city—not much when faced with the approach of 24,000 troops and the multitude of Spanish warships maneuvering into position in the bay.

Charles’s land forces flowed up to the city like a tide, surrounding it on three sides.

The plan was to pummel the city with cannon fire from the sea and then swarm across the shattered city walls and overwhelm the hapless inhabitants.

It ought to have worked. It very nearly did work.

Except for one thing…

The weather.

One of the contributing factors to the defeat of Philip’s Armada had been severe storms. The same thing happened to Charles’ forces.

Just as the sea bombardment was about to commence, dark clouds came crowding in from the sea. Torrents of cold rain swept down. Charles’ massed forces were caught out in the open with neither food nor shelter, since there hadn’t yet been time to unload any kitchen supplies or tents. They had to spend a miserable night simply standing there—better to stay upright than to sit or lie in the thick, cold mud under their feet—enduring the situation as best they could, soaked by blustery squalls of rain, frozen by the bitter wind blowing in from the sea. Their gunpowder was soaked, too, till it became no more than so much useless sludge.

Early the next morning the weather broke. Hassan Agha launched a counter attack, sending out a squadron of cavalry against Charles’ shivering, exhausted troops. The mud bogged the horses down, though, and Charles’s forces managed not only to repel the charge but to drive the cavalry back into the city. A well-known story has it that one of the Knights of Malta managed to plunge his dagger audaciously into the wooden portal of the city gate as it was slammed shut behind the last of the retreating cavalry (see the image above left). Musket fire from the city walls then drove Charles’ troops off.

After this, Hassan Agha launched another, larger and more intense counter attack. His cavalry crashed into the frayed ranks of Charles’ weary forces, causing immediate panic. A complete route was prevented only by the steadfast resistance of the Knights of Malta, combined with Charles’ own urging—he donned armor and harangued the troops himself.

After heavy fighting, the Algiers cavalry retreated.

At this point, the battle was still not really in doubt. Charles’ forces had such an overwhelming advantage in men and supplies (once they could get them unloaded) that Algiers didn’t really stand much chance of surviving, no matter how heroic a resistance the city might mount.

But then the weather interfered again.

A huge storm came thundering in off the sea. The hundreds of Spanish ships anchored in the bay were thrown about like so much driftwood. Torn from their anchors, many of them smacked into each other, spun about, capsized, were driven onto the shore. In something like six hours, almost 150 ships—130 carracks and nearly 20 galleys, close to a third of the Armada—were sunk outright or driven onto the shore and shattered. For miles, the strand was littered with broken ships, scattered cargo, and floundering men. As those who survived crawled or staggered ashore, they were ridden down or clubbed or run through with spears. Those who weren’t killed were taken captive.

And so the great Armada of Charles V disintegrated, torn to pieces by a storm.

It took Charles and his land forces three days to march to the spot where the remainder of their battered fleet was anchored. So many ships had been destroyed in the storm that there was no longer enough room for all those onshore. Even killing every single one of the fine cavalry horses they had brought along and pushing their corpses into the sea didn’t create enough space aboard the ships. As the weather turned once again and another storm approached from the sea, Charles stepped aboard his flagship and gave the order to sail away, abandoning a significant portion of his men.

It is difficult to get exact numbers, but Muslim chroniclers claim that 12,000 of Charles’ men were killed either in front of the Algiers city walls, on the retreat back to the ships, or along the shore during and after the great storm. The same sources claim that 1,300 men, women, and children were taken captive (large-scale military expeditions  in those days typically included a “baggage train” containing not only supplies but also women and children, the servants, mistresses, wives, and family of the soldiers).

One persistent story has it that, thanks to the glut on the market, European captives sold that winter in the Badestan, the Algiers slave market, could be had for the price of an onion a head.

There is also a persistent story told about Charles’s final moments before his ship sailed away. According to this story, as Charles stood at the gunwale, surveying the wreckage of his grand invasion, he took the crown from his head and dropped it into the sea, saying, “Go, bauble. Let some more fortunate prince redeem and wear thee.”

There are, of course, many stories told about Charles’s ill-fated attempt to conquer Algiers. It’s particularly interesting to look at the Muslim accounts of what happened, and why events happened the way they did—especially in relation to the storm, which proved so disastrous for the Armada and so providential for Algiers.

We’ll look at that in The Other Armada – Part 2.

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An interesting side note: A colleague of mine is at present working with an archeological team carefully dredging the waters in and around Algiers to see if they can find any remnants of the sunken hulks of Charles V’s ill-fated Armada.  Surely there must be something left of all those ships…