DON QUIXOTE – THE CAPTIVE’S TALE – PART 2

(This post is a continuation of Don Quixote – The Captive’s Tale – Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s probably best to read that post before continuing on here.)

In last week’s post, the captive began his story, telling his listeners about his participation in and capture during the famous Battle of Lepanto—a massive naval battle involving hundreds of oared galleys that was fought between the Holy League, a coalition of European forces, and the Ottoman navy in October, 1571 (the contest between galleys is illustrated in the image at the top of this post).

The Holy League was victorious in the Battle of Lepanto, and the captive ended last week’s excerpt with the following: “I alone was miserable. For, instead of some naval crown that I might have expected had it been in Roman times, on the night that followed that famous day, I found myself with fetters on my feet and manacles on my hands.”

We pick up the captive’s first-person narrative at that point.

Here is how I was taken captive at the Battle of Lepanto and clapped in chains.

El Uchali, the King of Algiers, a daring and successful corsair, attacked and took the leading Maltese galley (only three knights being left alive in it, and they badly wounded). The chief galley of John Andrea, on board of which I and my company were placed, came to its relief. Doing as I was bound to do in such a case, I leaped on board the enemy’s galley, which, sheering off from that which had attacked it, prevented my men from following me. So I found myself alone in the midst of my enemies, who were in such numbers that I was unable to resist. In short, I was taken, covered with wounds.

El Uchali, as you know, made his escape with his entire squadron, and I was left a prisoner in his power, the only sad being among so many filled with joy, and the only captive among so many free, for there were fifteen thousand Christians, all at the oars in the Turkish fleet, that regained their longed-for liberty that day.

They carried me to Constantinople, where the Grand Turk, Selim, made my master General at Sea for having done his duty in the battle and carried off as evidence of his bravery the standard of the Order of Malta.

The following year, which was 1572, I found myself at Navarino, rowing in a galley. There I saw how the opportunity of capturing the whole Turkish fleet was lost, for all the marines and janissaries that belonged to it made sure that they were about to be attacked inside the harbor, and had prepared their kits and shoes, ready to flee at once on shore without waiting to be assailed, in so great fear did they stand of our fleet.

But Heaven ordered it otherwise, not for any fault or neglect of the general who commanded on our side, but for the sins of Christendom, and because it was God’s will and pleasure that we should always have instruments of punishment to chastise us.

As it was, El Uchali took refuge at Modon, which is an island near Navarino, and landing forces fortified the mouth of the harbor and waited quietly until Don Juan retired.

On this expedition was taken the galley called The Prize, whose captain was a son of the famous corsair Barbarossa. It was taken by the chief Neapolitan galley called The She-Wolf, commanded by that thunderbolt of war, that father of his men, that successful and unconquered captain, Don Álvaro de Bazan, Marquis of Santa Cruz. I cannot resist telling you what took place at the capture of The Prize.

The son of Barbarossa was so cruel, and treated his slaves so badly, that, when those who were at the oars saw that The She-Wolf was bearing down upon them and gaining upon them, they all at once dropped their oars and seized their captain who stood on the stage at the end of the gangway shouting to them to row faster. Passing him on from bench to bench, from the poop to the prow, they so bit him that before he had got much past the mast, his soul had already got to hell. So great, as I said, was the cruelty with which he treated them and the hatred they felt for him.

We returned to Constantinople, and the following year, 1573, it became known that Don Juan had seized Tunis and taken the kingdom from the Turks. The Grand Turk took the loss greatly to heart, and with the cunning which all his race possess, he made peace with the Venetians (who were much more eager for it than he was), and the following year, 1574, he attacked the Goletta and the fort which Don Juan had left half built near Tunis.

While all these events were occurring, I was laboring at the oar without any hope of freedom. At least I had no hope of obtaining it by ransom, for I was firmly resolved not to write to my father telling him of my misfortunes. At length, the Goletta fell, and the fort fell, before which places there were seventy-five thousand regular Turkish soldiers, and more than four hundred thousand Moors and Arabs from all parts of Africa, and in the train of all this great host such munitions and engines of war.

The first to fall was the Goletta, until then reckoned impregnable, and it fell, not by any fault of its defenders, who did all that they could and should have done, but because experiment proved how easily entrenchments could be made in the desert sand there, for by means of a quantity of sandbags, they raised their works so high that they commanded the walls of the fort, so that no one inside it was able to make a stand or maintain the defense.

It was a common opinion that our men should not have shut themselves up in the Goletta, but should have waited in the open at the landing-place, but those who say so talk at random and with little knowledge of such matters, for if in the Goletta and in the fort there were barely seven thousand soldiers, how could such a small number, however resolute, sally out and hold their own against numbers like those of the enemy? And how is it possible to help losing a stronghold that is not relieved, above all when surrounded by a host of determined enemies in their own country?

But many thought, and I thought so too, that it was special favor and mercy which Heaven showed to Spain in permitting the destruction of that source and hiding place of mischief, that devourer, sponge, and moth of countless money, fruitlessly wasted there to no other purpose save preserving the memory of its capture by the invincible Charles V, as if to make that eternal, as it is and will be, these stones were needed to support it.

The fort also fell, but the Turks had to win it inch by inch, for the soldiers who defended it fought so gallantly and stoutly that the number of the enemy killed in twenty-two general assaults exceeded twenty-five thousand. Of three hundred defenders who remained alive, not one was taken unwounded, a clear and manifest proof of their gallantry and resolution, and how sturdily they had defended themselves and held their post.

A small fort or tower which was in the middle of the lagoon under the command of Don Juan Zanoguera, a Valencian gentleman and a famous soldier, capitulated upon terms. They took prisoner Don Pedro Puertocarrero, commandant of the Goletta, who had done all in his power to defend his fortress and who took the loss of it so much to heart that he died of grief on the way to Constantinople, where they were carrying him as a prisoner. They also took the commandant of the fort, Gabrio Cerbellon by name, a Milanese gentleman, a great engineer and a very brave soldier.

In these two fortresses perished many persons of note, among whom was Pagano Doria, knight of the Order of St. John, a man of generous disposition, as was shown by his extreme liberality to his brother, the famous Juan Andrea Doria. What made his death the more sad was that he was slain by some Arabs to whom, seeing that the fort was now lost, he entrusted himself, and who offered to conduct him in the disguise of a Moor to Tabarca, a small fort or station on the coast held by the Genoese employed in the coral fishery.

These Arabs cut off his head and carried it to the commander of the Turkish fleet, who proved on them the truth of our Castilian proverb, that “though the treason may please, the traitor is hated,” for they say he ordered those who brought him the present to be hanged for not having brought Pagano Doria in alive.

For a further installment of The Captive’s Tale, see the next post in this blog.

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A bit of background explanation…

The man named El Uchali whom the captive mentions was a famous Italian renegade, known as Ali Reis, when he was a corsair captain operating out of Algiers, as Uluç Ali Paşa, when he was Beylerbey (Governor) of Algiers), and as Kılıç Ali Paşa, after he was made Kapudan Pasha (Grand Admiral; the captive uses the term General at Sea) of the Ottoman navy by the Ottoman Sultan. Uluç Ali Paşa led a contingent of galleys at the Battle of Lepanto. He managed to escape the carnage and flee to safety with many of his fleet.

Navarino—the port that the captive refers to—is the Italian name for Pylos, a harbor town located on the southwestern coast of the Peloponnese (Greece was a possession of the Ottoman Empire in those days). The Ottomans lost hundreds of ships in the Battle of Lepanto. By the next year, however, they had rebuilt their navy and launched over 200 new ships. A large fleet of these new Ottoman ships, under the command of nine other than Kılıç Ali Paşa, was temporarily trapped at Navarino/Pylos by the Holy League, but friction among the Holy League commanders enabled Kılıç Ali Paşa to get his ships out of harm’s way—hence the captive’s comment that “the opportunity of capturing the whole Turkish fleet in harbor was lost.”

The “Goletta” mentioned by the captive was La Goulette, the harbor of the city of Tunis (the city itself sat at the back of a sort of lagoon behind the harbor; see the illustration below ). In 1535, the Spanish King Charles V captured Tunis (the illustration below depicts the attack). Tunis was then captured and recaptured several times until Ottoman forces retook it for good in 1574, which is the attack the captive refers to.