In the summer of 1512, Andrea Doria was invited by the Doge (Governor) of the maritime city state of Genoa, to come and advise on the defenses of the city. Andrea was a member of a minor branch of the great Doria family of Genoa, having been born there in November 1466. His father had died when he was but a lad, and his mother when he was 18, and, thereupon, he had accepted the invitation of his uncle and guardian, Nicolo Doria, then Captain of the Papal Guard at Rome, to become a member of that elite group. Young Andrea exhibited unusual skill in all branches of the profession of arms, and a liking for it. He served eight years as a member of the Papal Guard.
Subsequently, he became a professional soldier in the service of various principalities in Italy, including that of the King of Aragon at Naples, the Duke of Urbino in Northern Italy, and the Prefect of Rome, and he saw service in the Holy Land where he became a Cavalier of the Knights of Jerusalem, today’s Knights of Malta. Andrea, therefore, was quite surprised when the Doge offered him command of the Genoese seagoing forces with the title of “Captain of the Galleys and Prefect of the Port” for, although his ancient family had given Genoa her fleet commanders in four major victories during the 13th and 14th centuries, Andrea knew very little of combat at sea. Moreover, he was 46 years old—an age when many of his contemporaries were contemplating retirement.
Thus, it was with grave personal doubts that Andrea accepted the offer of the Doge to command the Genoese galleys.
Shortly after accepting his new command, Andrea had his first taste of fighting on the water. He besieged the French-held fort at the lighthouse at Genoa. The fort, a vestige of earlier French occupation, was an annoyance to the Genoese, made insulting by routine arrival of French replenishment squadrons, which brazenly pushed their way through weak Genoese forces. In a daring attack, using a light, fast sailing craft, Andrea boarded and captured the next arriving French supply vessel in a bloody encounter. The French retaliated by mounting a powerful expedition which reinvested Genoa, expelling the elected Doge and installing a government selected by the occupying force.
Andrea was able to extricate the Doge and his principal advisors with his little seagoing force and spirit them away to Lerici on the coast to the south. Fortunately for Andrea’s faction, France was severely defeated by Spain at Navarre the next year. Among the conditions of the peace treaty that followed, the French were obliged to abandon Genoa. The brother of the previous Doge was elected, and Andrea returned to resume his post as captain of the galleys and prefect of the port. His command then consisted of six galleys.
Thereafter, he cruised the nearby seas in command of the Genoese squadron, waging war on the Turks and the Barbary pirates. On one of these sweeps, he captured three galleys from the Barbary corsairs and two valuable Turkish merchantmen, which comprised the beginning of both the “Doria Fleet” and of his great personal wealth. In that era, the maritime city states of Italy gave the commander of their sea forces a title such as Andrea received from Genoa and such military means as were immediately available. Thereafter, the commander had to strengthen his forces and. literally, his fortunes, by military operations. The rewards for victory were great; the penalty for defeat was death or slavery.
From 1514 through 1516, the North African corsair Gad-ali, was ravaging the west coast of Italy and the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, striking terror into the hearts of all who lived near the sea. The stone watch-towers still standing today along the coast of Italy are stark reminders of an era when the fierce North African pirates swooped down upon small ports, with the fate of the town and of those who could not flee being horrendous. Most of the old men and women and small children were put to the sword. Able-bodied men were shackled for service in the galleys or for manual labor in North Africa. The attractive and the physically strong women were carried off to serve in the harems or become servants in the houses of the wealthy Arabs—perhaps the most attractive to be shipped on to Constantinople.
Andrea was anxious to cross swords with Gad-ali and, in time, word came of his operations in the area of the north Tyrrhenian sea near Corsica. Andrea put to sea with his galleys.
He personally took command of two new triremes, much faster than his remaining four galleys, and led them ahead. This would be his striking group, though he knew he would be numerically much inferior to the expected force of Gad-ali, who was known to have as his flagship a new papal galley which he had captured, and an additional force of seven fustes—small, fast, maneuverable, combined oar-and-sail-powered vessels—much used by the corsair raiders. Andrea placed his remaining four galleys—slower, but also well armed—under command of his cousin, Filippino Doria. Two of the latter’s ships had to be assisted by tows from the stronger vessels to maintain formation.
In the ensuing action, which occurred near the little island of Pianosa off Corsica, Andrea and his two galleys unhesitatingly pounced upon Gad-ali’s force. Although the initial attack went in Andrea’s favor, the fighting soon developed into a melee, in which five of Gad-ali’s ships attacked Andrea’s trireme, the remaining three, his companion galley. This second vessel was sunk. Andrea himself was wounded in the arm, and just as it seemed certain that his smaller force would be overwhelmed, Filippino arrived with the two faster of his galleys and joined the battle. His fresh ships, falling upon Gad-ali’s now tired and disorganized group, quickly turned the tide of battle. In this, Genoa’s first important victory over the corsair raiders in more than a decade, seven of the Arab ships, including Gad-ali’s flag galley, and the pirate leader himself were captured.
If there had been doubt in the minds of the Genoese leaders as to the decision to call Doria to command the city’s galleys, it was now dispelled. Andrea returned from this sweep an authentic hero, and the captured vessels became another increment to the growing Doria Fleet.
In 1516, with two Genoese galleys, he took part in a combined raid on the pirates’ haven of the two brothers, Ayub and Khair-ed-Din, at Bizerte. This was the first known meeting of Andrea and the legendary Khair-ed-Din, whom the Christians called “Barbarossa,” or “Red Beard.”
Andrea took part in the initial attack, and then, bored with the siege that followed, he engaged and captured several detached Turkish vessels with his two ships, but without consulting Archbishop Federico Fregosa, who commanded the Christian force. Though happy with the windfall victory which Andrea had won, the Archbishop sacked the overly independent Genoese, who then returned with his galleys to his native Genoa. There he resumed his operations against the corsairs and Turkish raiders in the central Mediterranean.
A few years later, in 1522, Andrea offered his services to King Francis I of France. Francis was then warring against the Spanish King, who was also Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. Andrea’s offer was quickly accepted and he soon proved his worth to the French King. Marseilles, besieged and blockaded by the Spanish, was close to surrender. Andrea forced the blockade and carried into the port a convoy of provision ships, thus guaranteeing continuation of the resistance.
In 1525, Francis I was able to resume military operations outside France and attacked in northern Italy. There he was defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia. During this campaign, Andrea surprised 15 Spanish galleys at Genoa, where the Spanish troops had disembarked, and captured all but two. When he learned of Francis’ impending voyage to Spain as a prisoner, he planned to rescue the monarch en route, and was only dissuaded by a message from Francis himself, informing him that ransom had already been arranged.
Some months later, in the absence of any financial remuneration for his services to France, Andrea, his force composed of six galleys and two brigantines, took service with Pope Clement VII. The Pontiff was determined to take action against the raids of the Barbary pirates, now intensified by the daring leadership of Khair-ed-Din, Barbarossa.
Intelligence reached Andrea that Barbarossa was cruising in the lower Tyrrhenian sea. Leaving Civitavecchia, in central Italy, with his six galleys and four of the papal government’s, he surprised Barbarossa between the Cape of Piombino and the Island of Elba.
In a quick assault, he captured 15 of Barbarossa’s 16 ships, while Barbarossa, seeing himself overwhelmed, successfully took flight in his small, fast, flag galliot.
A year later, the Pope arranged a league with King Francis I, the Republic of Venice, and the Duchy of Milan with an object of driving the Imperial forces of Charles V of Spain from northern Italy, specifically from Genoa. In July, a blockading force under Andrea took station before Genoa. Included were his own group numbering 11 ships, under contract to the Pope, 16 Venetian vessels, and 16 galleys and four galleons from France.
Intending to relieve the blockade, Charles sent from Spain under command of Antonio Lanney, Viceroy of Naples, a squadron of 20 galleys and 21 other ships.
On 19 November 1526, Andrea met the Spanish force with his combined fleet, commanding the right flank himself. In the middle of the battle, Andrea took his galley between two Spanish galleys, sinking one and demolishing the other. At the end of four hours of fierce fighting, the Viceroy retired with what was left of his force. In this encounter, Andrea, while again proving himself a stout individual fighter at sea, enhanced his reputation by successfully directing a combined force in combat.
Andrea’s galleys were much like the ships with which Rome and Carthage had engaged one another in the Punic Wars, 17 centuries earlier. In his time, they were larger, heavier, and armed now with cannon, but an ancient Roman would have felt quite at home on board.
Andrea’s galleys were perhaps 150 feet long with a maximum beam of about 19 feet. They had a low freeboard, and drew only 7 or 8 feet of water. Though galleys carried two, and sometimes three, large lateen- rigged sails to take advantage of the wind when favorable, the real power plant was the manpower on the rowing benches. On the lower deck of a Mediterranean war galley, four to six men toiled over one great oar, of which there were up to 30 on a side. Generally the rowers were either criminals or captured slaves, shackled to the benches for an indefinite period of service. To handle the great oars, a rhythm was developed wherein the rowers stepped forward on the deck in front of their benches, then leaned backward together, more or less falling against the benches as the shanks of the oars swept toward the bow of the galley on each stroke.
A well trained galley could make perhaps 4 to 5 knots for a period of several hours. Thereafter, either sail was used or the rowing crew was divided into shifts.
Contrary to the tales of brutal treatment of the galley slaves, some attention was given to their welfare. Men were hard to come by, even under the severe penal systems of the times, and the Moslems continually raided the Christian lands for galley slaves. The Christians reciprocated by enslaving any Moslem sea fighters or soldiers captured by them. There were on both sides—most notably among the North African pirates—volunteer rowers, or bonvoglia. Such men dropped their oars when a fighting galley crashed alongside an enemy galley, seized their swords, and reinforced the fighting deck men, giving a very distinct advantage to a small attacking force. This system was a great factor in the early success of the North African raiders.
A war galley carried up to 250 rowers and, crowded on the upper deck, an equal number of fighting men. Armament in Andrea’s time consisted of a bow cannon, aimed by pointing the vessel herself, and several smaller cannon along the sides of the galley. The accepted tactic of engaging was to hold fire of the bow cannon, which fired a 35- to 50-pound stone or lead ball, until just before crashing with the galley’s bow boom against the enemy vessel, thus to inflict the maximum death, destruction, and chaos. Soon thereafter, the enemy ships became completely entangled with their oars and top-hamper, and the battle became hand-to-hand combat, made the more dangerous to all by the fire of the arquebusiers in the rigging.
A battle had to be won by skillful maneuvering of the galleys to impose superior force on a portion of the enemy, and then by boarding and bold, hard fighting. Thus, Andrea’s earlier training with infantry and in the fast maneuver of cavalry were skills that he took with him to sea.
Andrea’s battle formation was controlled during daylight by flag signals. Various shapes, colors, and designs conveyed his orders. At night, arrays of lanterns, white and red, were displayed from the yardarm of the capitano—the flagship. In low visibility, signals were given by the firing of guns in various sequences. The signal method must have been reasonably effective, for as we shall note later, both Andrea and Barbarossa, at the height of their careers, were able to control in close formation their own wings of up to 35 to 40 galleys, while directing the general operation of their entire fleets, numbering overall as many as 250 individual vessels.
When Andrea’s commission with Pope Clement VII expired, he returned, with his now augmented fleet of 23 galleys, to the service of Francis I of France. His first assignment was to assist in expelling the Spanish from his native Genoa and re-establishing French authority there. The tides of conflict of the 16th century carried a professional warrior into strange philosophical waters—only a little over a decade before, Andrea had been helping his fellow countrymen expel the French from the city.
In August 1527, Andrea married Peretta Usodimare, niece of Pope Innocent VII, and widow of the Marquis Alfonso del Caretto. This felicitous marriage endured until Peretta’s death in 1550. By a fortunate coincidence, a special envoy of the French King arrived in Genoa during the wedding celebrations to bestow upon Andrea simultaneously the rank of admiral and the Order of St. Michael.
With such an auspicious and cordial renewal of his service as admiral for Francis I, one might have expected a long and fruitful relationship. This was not to be. The following year, Francis placed Andrea in command of a combined, French, Genoese, and Venetian force with orders to relieve the French garrison, besieged by a Spanish force at Naples, thereafter to proceed to attack and capture Sicily from the Spanish. The expedition went slowly, first operating around Corsica then near Sardinia with only minor successes. As the season continued, however, the weather worsened early and in time the expedition had to be dissolved without any real accomplishment. Andrea immediately came under sharp criticism at the French Court, where many were jealous of his high standing with the King. Perhaps because of this, the payments due him for his own salary and the expenses of his galleys were not forthcoming despite his repeated entreaties to Frances [sic] I.
It was while Andrea was ashore, treating with the French monarch, that Filippino, who was commanding his cousin’s Genoese galleys, crushed a Spanish naval squadron in a bloody four-hour battle off Cape d’Orso on the Amalfi coast near Salerno. In this battle, Filippino captured two Spanish galleys and numerous smaller vessels, as well as several senior Spanish officials embarked.
Filippino’s success was but one example of Andrea’s ability to choose and indoctrinate quickly to his methods, able subordinate commanders. Having chosen his commanders, some of whom were kinsman, he thereafter exercised that rarest of high command capabilities—delegating full command authority to subordinates in action—while, at the same time, being assured by his dominant personality of the loyal execution of his overall plan.
Reinforced by Filippino’s welcome victory. Admiral Doria boarded his victorious galleys at Genoa and proceeded with them and the captured Spanish vessels to Marseilles to renew his negotiations with King Francis for the overdue monies for his services. This effort proved of no avail; in fact, the French command sought instead to take possession of the captured Spanish vessels and prisoners and to seize Andrea himself. Andrea withdrew his force along with his captured Spanish group, and hastened to Genoa. After consultations with his distinguished Spanish prisoners, the Marquis del Guasto and Don Asconio Colonna, he sent his nephew, Arasmo Doria, to the Court of Charles V at Barcelona to offer his services to the Emperor. Charles V received Andrea with open arms.
Francis I realized too late the error in judgment, which his courtiers had foisted upon him, and implored the Pope, to no avail, to dissuade Andrea from his decision. Charles gained the sea commander he was seeking, and never again did King Francis enjoy an important victory at sea. One wonders what might have been the history of the wars between Charles’s Imperialists and those of Francis and his allies had the French King gained and held the loyalty of Admiral Doria.
Thus, in 1528, at the age of 62, Andrea began what might be considered his third career. His first act was to assault Genoa in an attempt to drive out the occupying French garrison which was weakened at the time by an attack of the plague. The operation, a carefully planned amphibious assault, commenced on 9 September. Filippino commanded one of the landing forces; the other was commanded by one Cristoforo Pallavicino, together with Lazaro Doria. Local French naval support was defeated during the night of 9-10 September. The success of the attack ashore was immediately evident. Andrea’s men, reinforced by some 300 of the Spanish soldiers taken at Cape d’Orso, attacked from two directions. By nightfall, he was in complete possession. Never again in his lifetime would the birthplace he shared with Cabot and Columbus fall under the domination of foreign troops.
A grateful city offered to make him perpetual Doge, but he refused. He accepted instead a post on the Doge’s council as one of the censors for life. The city awarded him the title “Senator Counsellor, Father of his Country.” In October of the same year, he expelled the French from nearby Savonna and annexed that port city for Genoa.
It appeared at last that there would be opportunity for Andrea to take up a pleasant life as an elder statesman of his native city. He had commenced work on the great Doria villa, the Palazzo Fassuolo, which still stands near the port.
It became necessary, however, within a short time to attack the Barbary strongholds to bring the ever-raiding corsairs somewhat under control once more. Andrea himself stormed the Arab base at Cherchel, west of Algiers, in a surprise raid which was so successful that the Moslems deserted the city leaving its Christian slaves and booty to the attacking Genoese. Meanwhile, developments in Central Europe were casting a shadow over all Christendom.
Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, invested Budapest in 1532 and was preparing to besiege Vienna, and Ferdinand of Austria, brother of Emperor Charles, sought massive military assistance for Vienna. Andrea proposed instead that the Emperor allow him to mount an amphibious operation against the outposts of the Ottoman Empire in the East Central Mediterranean, thus to draw Suleiman’s attacking forces away from their objective at Vienna. Charles accepted Andrea’s advice, and the target selected was the entrance of the Gulf of Patras in the Adriatic north of the Peloponnesus, which the Ottomans held, continually menacing southern Italy as well as Venice. Venice declined to participate even though she would be the principal beneficiary.
In the summer of the year, a combined fleet of 110 Spanish, Papal, Genoese ships, and vessels of the Knights of Malta was assembled at Messina. Embarked were 5,300 sailors, 12,000 soldiers, 8,000 rowers, 1,100 cannon and the other necessities for an amphibious attack. In addition to directing the operation, Andrea assumed command of the battle line of 38 galleys.
As Andrea was passing the Island of Zante, the Venetian Admiral, Vincenzo Capello, though not authorized by his city to support the operation, sallied forth in line abreast with 60 galleys and fired a great combined salvo in honor of the Christian fleet.
When Andrea’s fleet arrived off Coron, a fortress at the entrance of the Gulf of Patras, on the morning of 21 September, the Ottoman fleet had fled. An assault force of Italian infantry was immediately landed to storm the fort, but the Turkish defenders repulsed them.
At this juncture, Andrea directed a squadron of his galleys to attack the fortress. Several of his ships were warped close in under the towers of the fortress. The long yards of the lateen sails were allowed to fall upon the walls of the fort. Volunteer sailors, led by a young Genoese and protected by gunfire from the supporting galleys, made their way across this precarious assault bridge to the top of the central tower of the fort. The Turkish defenders were overcome, and soon the garrison was trapped in the center castle, which surrendered the following day.
Andrea quickly followed up his advantage by capturing the castle at Patras and those of Rio and Antirio, the remaining castle forts guarding the area of the entrance of the Gulf of Patras. These fortifications were destroyed; Coron itself was heavily garrisoned and strengthened. Thereafter, Andrea returned to Genoa. Historians agree that Suleiman’s retirement from Vienna that winter was strongly influenced by the Christian attack on the periphery of his own Mediterranean Empire.
Emperor Charles, grateful for the success and impressed by it, awarded Andrea the title of Prince of Melfi, specified that henceforth Spanish governors in Italy should undertake no important military action without consulting Admiral Doria, and gave him unlimited authority over such Spanish naval forces as should fall in with him at sea.
Only a year later, Andrea had to return to Coron. The Sultan in the interim had sent a squadron of 60 galleys and 30 smaller vessels under command of Admiral Lufti Pascia to recapture the fortress at Coron, which was hard-pressed by him by midsummer. Again, Emperor Charles and the Pope directed Andrea to proceed eastward, this time to relieve and replenish Coron. Andrea left Naples with 59 galleys, 2 galleons, and 30 cargo vessels. On 2 August, the Turkish fleet was sighted off Cape Gallo at the southwest tip of the Peloponnesus. Andrea disposed his cargo ships with the two great sailing galleons in one line, his large force of galleys under his own command in another. Lufti, instead of attacking, ranged along inshore, firing at the cargo ships and galleons at long range. The Turks did succeed in boarding the galleons, but when Andrea advanced with his entire force toward the Ottoman fleet, Lufti Pascia chose not to fight and retired.
Coron was secure again. On the other hand, the audacious approach of the hated Christians toward the Sultan’s own strongholds caused the Ottoman Emperor to reassess the importance of his sea forces. Suleiman, acting on the advice of his Grand Vizier, Ibrahim, his chief advisor and confidant, invited Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa to proceed from North Africa to take command of the Ottoman fleet. Lufti Pascia was discharged.
Khair-ed-Din, by then the self-styled “King of Algiers,” arrived in the Golden Horn with his own fleet of raiders in the manner of a Roman conqueror, his entire force magnificently decorated and loaded with gifts for the Sultan. Many of the Divan, the court at Constantinople, were opposed to Barbarossa’s forthcoming appointment. The Sultan sent Barbarossa to consult with Ibrahim, who was away on a mission, and the Grand Vizier wrote back, “We have put our hands on a veritable man of the sea. Name him without hesitation, Pasha, Member of the Divan, Captain-General of the Fleet.”
In his speech of acceptance, Barbarossa told the Sultan: “I will endeavor to defeat Andrea Doria, who is my personal enemy and my rival in glory; should I succeed in defeating him, your Majesty will possess the empire of the Sea.”
So the stage was set, when Barbarossa hoisted the golden crescent on the green field at the masthead of his flag galley as commander of the Ottoman fleet in 1534, for the fierce naval wars between the Christians and the Ottomans, which endured with only short respites until the classic Battle of Lepanto occurred nearly 40 years later.
Within a year, Khair-ed-Din had increased the Sultan’s fleet to a powerful force that included some 84 war galleys, supported by appropriate auxiliaries. The following spring, Barbarossa set forth on a devastating raiding expedition along the whole southern and western coast of Italy as far north as Civitavecchia. Reggio, Messina, Naples, Fundi, and many other cities wert sacked, and Barbarossa at one time anchored off the mouth of the Tiber near Rome. Thereafter, he fell upon Corsica and Sardinia before proceeding on to Tunis for wintering over.
By the following spring, the Christians were able to react. Under Andrea’s command, a combined amphibious force, numbering some 290 vessels, was assembled with the Emperor himself embarked.
Andrea was able to trap his old adversary at Tunis but the wily Barbarossa had secreted a small force of his best galleys at Bona, 200 miles to the west of Tunis. Leaving Tunis to be plundered by the Christian army, Khair-ed-Din set forth in the scorching desert heat and trekked overland to Bona, where he made good his escape. Within six months, Barbarossa resumed his raiding with a fierce descent upon Mahon, on the island of Minorca, which he sacked, sweeping into slavery the entire population of 5,500. Thus, Andrea’s military victory at Tunis, though complete, proved to be an empty one.
Three years later, Barbarossa departed from Constantinople’s Golden Horn at the head of a formidable fleet of 122 war galleys and supporting auxiliaries. He took position in the Gulf of Arta on the Greek coast north of the Peloponnesus, the same made everlastingly famous by the naval victory of Octavius at Actium over Anthony and Cleopatra so many centuries before. The Christians reacted as against earlier challenges. Slowly a large force was assembled to attack the Ottomans under Barbarossa’s command. The result of this effort was a great combined fleet made up of Spanish, Venetian, Genoese, and papal forces of 195 vessels, and the flag galley again flew the red cross on a white field of Admiral Doria’s Genoa.
Thereafter, what might have been the sea battle of the century, rather than Lepanto over three decades later, ended indecisively. The opening day produced only skirmishes among opposing galley groups, sent forward by Andrea and Barbarossa. On the second day, 26 September 1538, when Barbarossa debouched from the narrow straits with his entire force, Andrea approached and then maneuvered to seaward. Barbarossa worked his fleet back and forth inshore, but the sea battle all Europe awaited did not take place.
The hero of the day was the Venetian captain Condelmiero, commanding what was for the era an immense sailing vessel, the “Great Galleon of Venice” of some 1,000 tons, in a manner the forerunner of the ship-of-the-line of a hundred years later. When Condelmiero became becalmed and detached far from the combined Christian fleet, he fought off wave after wave of Ottoman galleys throughout the day, foretelling the superiority of truly heavy guns and armor over smaller, faster, but more flimsy adversaries.
At nightfall, Andrea (for reasons unexplained to this day) assembled his fleet and, to the vast disillusionment of the Venetians, sailed away for Messina. Some say he was under orders from Emperor Charles not to accept a major combat; others say he was concerned with fighting near an occupied shore in the advanced season of the year, when unfavorable weather could quickly bring disaster; still others intimate that Barbarossa and Andrea had some secret agreement not to engage in a major battle which would principally benefit Venice, with which neither was enamored. In any case, Andrea could claim little credit for the campaign, and opportunity was left open for the Ottomans to seize the Adriatic possessions of Venice within the coming decade. As Andrea was departing that evening, it is reported that Barbarossa roared with laughter, boasting that Andrea had even “put out his lanterns to show whence he has fled.” Barbarossa, though he returned with only one Venetian, and one papal galley and five smaller vessels as concrete evidence of his victory, was received as a hero by the Sultan.
Andrea did not lose the confidence of Emperor Charles. On the contrary, the Emperor directed him to assemble and command another major amphibious expedition three years later, this time against Algiers, the major stronghold of the corsairs. Charles hoped to destroy the pirates’ nest once and for all. At the same time, he hoped perhaps to influence the Sultan, attacking anew toward Vienna, to desist when he observed a large Christian force at large in the Mediterranean. The Algiers campaign proved to be a classic in its disregard of the principal of unified command and of the factor of weather on major operations. Over the protests of Admiral Doria and of the Pope, the campaign was undertaken at a time when the attack would have to be made in the bad weather season. In fact, the attack commenced on 20 October. Despite an early onset of squally weather, that caused a delay in the assault, the weather suddenly became so favorable a few days later that the entire force of some 30,000 troops, including 1,000 cavalry, all under the command of Hernando Cortez, the hero of Mexico, and accompanied by the Emperor himself, were landed so quickly that a minimum of ammunition and supplies—and no tentage—was landed on the initial day. Andrea seemed to have been overly cautious in his objections for, obviously, victory was at hand.
The night of the landing, however, a severe storm, accompanied by driving rains, set in and the army ashore was soon in desperate straits. Two weeks later, Andrea was able to re-embark the disorganized, defeated landing force, which had suffered a loss of 4,000 men. The losses sustained by the sea forces were equally disastrous—some 15 galleys and 125 miscellaneous vessels were dashed on the enemy shore.
The very next year, Khair-ed-Din appeared off Marseilles, commanding a powerful, well disciplined force that included 110 war galleys. On the Sultan’s order to aid his now quasi-ally, Francis I, by breaking a Spanish blockade of the port—a repetition of Andrea’s operation some 30 years earlier—Barbarossa did just that. He and the French quickly occupied Nice. Emperor Charles was conducting operations in Germany that year and was able to approach Nice from the north, at the head of a strong army. Charles had meanwhile ordered Andrea to proceed with all available naval forces to support the planned operation of relieving Nice from the sea. Once again, there was the chance that Khair-ed-Din and Andrea would face one another across open water, each commanding a powerful force. This time it was Barbarossa who retired, for he left Nice and sailed for the port of Antibes, west of Nice. It is now understood he had rumor of a forthcoming peace treaty at Crécy, between the Imperialists and the French.
A year later, Barbarossa, heavily laden with booty, proceeded to the eastward in a peaceful passage. As he passed off Genoa, he asked Andrea a favor which the latter quickly granted. In a gesture of strange camaraderie, later regretted, Andrea allowed Barbarossa to ransom his ex-lieutenant, Dragut, from service as a galley slave on Andrea’s flag galley. Dragut had been captured four years earlier by Andrea’s able assistant commander, his nephew, Giannettino Doria.
A year later, Barbarossa, the Moslem “King of the Sea” was dead at the court in Constantinople. For Andrea there was yet a decade and a half of fighting in support of Emperor Charles’s operations, subsequently those of Charles’s successor, his son, Phillip. Andrea invested the pirate stronghold at Djerba in 1550, whence Dragut had resumed his raiding activities. While the old Admiral was besieging the entrance forts, thinking Dragut was securely trapped in the Gulf de Gabés, the pirate chieftan [sic] was making good his plans for escape with most of his galleys by an ingenious engineering feat. He constructed a combined shallow canal and roller way across the impassable tidal flats on the side of the island opposite from the entrance, and was safely away on the high seas before his departure was sensed.
Later, when Andrea was over 85 years of age, he successfully directed the recapture of Corsica for the Imperial forces and Genoa. Too, during those years in Genoa, there were three separate plots on the old Admiral’s life, all of which he survived, but one of which cost the life of his trusted commander, his nephew Giannettino. Throughout his later years, he managed to thwart intrigues on the part of Spain to establish a garrison at Genoa. In his final days, he was to view from afar a bitter defeat of the Christian forces, once again at Djerba. There, a combined force, with his young grand-nephew, Giovanni Andrea Doria, commanding the naval elements, was trapped by a Turkish Force in the harbor and soundly defeated. It was only on his deathbed in November 1560 that the old Admiral, five days short of his 94th birthday, learned that Giovanni Andrea had escaped with a remnant of his once proud fleet. The Christians did not rise again to predominance in the Mediterranean until a decade later at the stunning victory at Lepanto in 1571.
What can we see, looking back at these troublous decades? The Moslem operations across North Africa in Andrea’s time are somewhat reminiscent of the campaigns we have observed in South Vietnam. Often the Spanish-led forces captured and established themselves at strongpoints along the coast from which the nearby littoral could be dominated. Just as often, the Moslems seemed to melt into the desert or into the surrounding seas. In time the Christian forces would gradually relax or release their grip, and the Ottoman-backed North African Moslems, led by their corsair leaders, would doggedly return, each time a little stronger. Finally, the Spanish strength was no more and all North Africa became a Moslem province and so remained for two centuries.
On contemplating the combat-filled time of Andrea Doria, his life, and that of Charles V and Frances I, the observer is forcibly impressed with the futility of the unending struggles between the Imperial forces and those allied with the French Kings in Europe. The Ottomans meanwhile had managed, despite many conspiracies around the throne, to maintain a unified thrust of power, reaching for the heart of Christendom, steadily expanding their western arm of Mediterranean power across North Africa where their descendants maintain themselves quite well even today.
And what of Andrea Doria himself? What kind of man was he? His biographers do not seem to agree. To some, he was the epitome of that rarity, the fighting admiral/statesman. Others brand Doria a most successful condottiere—soldier of fortune—whose interests were always centered on personal gain.
Certainly, however, Doria’s chief claim to fame as one of history’s great sea captains is derived from a single characteristic that comes through most clearly as his key to success: his ability to command and lead under pressure of combat—in victory and adversity.
By today’s standards, he must have been cruel. To operate successfully at sea with ships in which up to 250 human beings were chained to row under the lash demanded a toughness and an inurement to human suffering. He was also grasping and avaricious by 20th century standards, but in his day, fortunes were made and maintained by the sword. Today, when freedom, independence, and liberty of individual states are so prized, we must give the man a high mark. It was Andrea Doria who made it possible for the proud Genoese to taste freedom once again after over a century of domination by foreign powers. Seldom did the Cross of St. George ever fly more serenely over the towers of Genoa, la Superba—the proud—than during those decades when Andrea Doria so deeply influenced its history.
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A graduate of the Naval Academy with the Class of 1934, Captain Taylor served in the USS Nevada (BB-36), USS Bridge (AF-1), and the USS Reuben James (DD-245). During World War II, he saw service in the USS Harrison (DD-573) and in command of the USS Schenck (DD-159) and USS Conyngham (DD-371). He then served at the Naval Academy, as aide to Commander Second Fleet, and in two tours in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He also was Chief of Staff of Commander Middle East Force and commanded Destroyer Division 142, USS Aucilla (AO-56) and Destroyer Squadron 13. He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College, was a Fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and in 1960-1962 headed the Department of Naval Warfare at the Naval War College. He retired in 1964 following duty as U. S. Naval Attaché Rome, where he now resides.