Juan of Austria. The famous bastard of the Spanish Habsburgs
History Spanish kings of the Habsburg dynasty, who ruled this country during the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, can serve as an illustration of the thesis about the dangers of closely related marriages. Over a relatively short (by historical standards) time, literally before the eyes of contemporaries, this family degenerated. It all ended with the suppression of the family and the dynastic crisis, which caused the so-called "War of the Spanish Succession".
The extinction of the family of the Spanish Habsburgs
If the first of the Spanish Habsburgs, the Austrian Archduke Philip, was known by the nickname Handsome, then it is impossible to call the last representatives of this house beautiful even with a very strong desire. However, beauty is far from the most important quality of the ruler of any state. The problem was that the mind of the last Habsburgs did not shine at all. Moreover, their maternal heredity was not the best.
The aforementioned Philip I the Handsome became the husband of Juana the Mad, the daughter of the famous Catholic kings Isabella and Ferdinand, who, due to her insanity, spent the last 46 years of her life in virtual imprisonment in Tordesillas Castle. Their heir was Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in whose portrait the notorious hypertrophied lower jaw (“Habsburg lip”) is clearly visible - a characteristic feature of all Habsburgs.
Portrait of Charles V by Titian
It was Charles V who entered into the first closely related marriage. He was married to a cousin, the Portuguese princess Isabella.
Peter Paul Rubens. Double portrait of Charles V and Empress Isabella
Unlike many other royal couples, Charles and Isabella loved each other. After the death of his wife, the emperor imprisoned himself in one of the monasteries for 2 months. From Toledo to Granada, where Isabella was supposed to find her last shelter, the coffin with her body was accompanied by the Spanish grandee Francisco de Borja de Gandia (great-grandson of Pope Alexander Borgia, who during his lifetime was called the "pharmacist of Satan"). According to tradition, before burial, he had to testify to the authenticity of the body. The coffin was opened and the sight of the half-decomposed corpse made such an impression on the duke that he said:
“I can’t swear it’s the empress, but I swear it’s her corpse that we put here… I also swear to no longer serve a lord who might die.”
José Moreno Carbonero. Message from the Duke de Gandia
True, the duke was not in too much of a hurry to serve the immortal lord: he still managed to work as the viceroy of Valencia and the chief equerry of the Court of Charles V. He became a monk only in 1546 - after the death of his wife and 7 years after the funeral of Empress Isabella. Over time, he became a general of the Jesuit order and was canonized as a saint. His statue can be seen on the famous Charles Bridge in Prague.
Charles V's heir, Philip II, was already clearly inferior to his father intellectually and was a much less powerful and successful ruler.
Alonso Sanchez Coelho. Portrait of Philip II with a rosary
The son of Charles V was married 4 times - and the three spouses of Philip were his close relatives. Mary of Portugal is Philip's cousin both by father and mother. Mary, Queen of England is his own father's cousin. Anna of Austria is Philip's maternal niece and the daughter of a paternal cousin. The eldest son of Philip II, the infamous Don Carlos, was born Mary of Portugal. He turned out to have only six great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers out of sixteen possible.
It is not surprising that this child was born extremely weak, sickly, and besides, with obvious mental disorders and pronounced sadistic inclinations. His head seemed disproportionately large against the background of his small stature, his back was hunched, his arms and legs were thin. He started talking late and never got rid of his stutter. Three sons born from the last wife of Philip II (the bride of Don Carlos) died in childhood. The only surviving son, Philip III, was a complete nonentity, his reign brought Spain to the brink of permanent crisis. His grandson - King Charles II, who received the speaking nickname "Bewitched", was a severe invalid, barely able to walk and speak. He became the last Habsburg on the Spanish throne.
The offspring of Charles V from Barbara Blomberg (Blumenberg), the daughter of the burgomaster of the Bavarian city of Regensburg, turned out to be completely different. This illegitimate son of the emperor lived a short but bright life, having managed to become a generalissimo and an admiral. He was only 26 years old when he became famous throughout Europe, commanding fleet Holy League during the great naval battle of Lepanto. As you probably already guessed, we are talking about Juan of Austria.
Don Juan of Austria. Monument in Regensburg.
This is a copy of the statue that stands in Lepanto Square in the Italian city of Messina (Sicily).
Don Juan of Austria. Monument in Messina
Don Juan died of an illness before he was 32 years old. Without entering into a legal marriage, he had many mistresses. Two of them (Maria de Mendoza and Diana de Falangola) gave birth to healthy daughters from him. But the only son of Juan, born Zenobia de Saratosa, died in infancy.
Childhood of a bastard
The connection between Charles V and Barbara Blomberg was short-lived, but the emperor did not forget the boy born from this girl in 1545. At the age of 3, he was transferred to Spain and given to the education of Luis Mendez de Gejada. And his mother, having received a dowry from Karl, was married to a certain Rechem and moved to Antwerp.
Until the age of 14, the hero of our article did not even suspect about his origin. Everything changed after the death of Charles V, who went down in history as a man who managed to catch a cold to death ... at his own funeral (or rather, at their rehearsal). In September 1558, a document was found in the papers of the emperor, in which he recognized as his son Jeronimo, a pupil of Luis Mendez de Gehada. In this document, by the way, he suggested that the boy should become a clergyman.
I must say that Philip II recognized his younger brother (they had an age difference of 18 years): he gave him the title of an Austrian prince, presented him with a large house and assigned an annual allowance of 15 ducats.
Coat of arms of Juan of Austria
For some time, 14-year-old Juan was brought up at court along with the heir to the throne, Don Carlos, and Duke Alessandro Farnese (son of the illegitimate daughter of Charles V, Margarita of Parma, Juan's nephew and his future successor as governor of the Netherlands). These boys were a little older than him.
Alonso Sanchez Coello Portrait of Don Juan of Austria, 1559-1560. Juan is here for about 14 years
Alonso Sanchez Coello. Prince Don Carlos of Austria
Alessandro Farnese
According to the will of Charles V, Juan, preparing for a spiritual career, studied at Alcala University for three years, but it soon became clear that this young man would become anything but an abbot or bishop. Juan was noticeably superior to his peers in the ability to deal with weapons and rightly considered one of the best swordsmen of his time. At the same time, he was by no means a "blockhead" obsessed with military topics.
Contemporaries remember him as a well-educated and very erudite young man, besides a great chess lover. Brought up more freely than other Spanish princes of that time, young Juan conquered everyone with his cheerfulness and cheerfulness. Later, his character will deteriorate, but posterity will forget about the envious, conceited and cruel don Juan of the last years of his life. Everyone will remember the 26-year-old admiral, who, in anticipation of a ramming attack from an approaching enemy flagship, does not pray, but dances a galliard on the artillery platform of his ship. Gilbert Chesterton would call him "the last knight of Europe".
The contrast was especially great when comparing Juan with the heir to the throne - the ugly, weak, sickly and mentally unbalanced Carlos.
The beginning of the military service of Juan of Austria
In 1565, during the Great Siege of Malta by the Turks, Juan secretly left his home and reached Barcelona, where he wanted to get a job on one of the ships of the Spanish squadron that was going on a campaign against the Ottomans. He was intercepted and received the strictest royal order to return. Some authors claim that Juan was extradited by his half-brother, Don Carlos, and upon returning home he attacked the heir to the throne with a sword in his hands. If we assume that this message is true, we will have to admit that this episode is very revealing and important for understanding the character of the hero of the article.
Only three years later, in January 1568, he was allowed to fight at sea against the Barbary pirates. On this occasion, Juan was awarded the title of Capitan general de la mar.
Then Juan, after numerous requests in 1569, was assigned to Granada, where in April 1568 the Morisca revolted (the reason was the decree of January 1, 1567 banning Moorish customs, clothing and language). It was the time of the anti-Spanish uprising in the Netherlands, where, with great difficulty, it was necessary to constantly transfer all more or less combat-ready units. This was described in the article "The Spanish Road" of the Habsburgs.
Somehow, the assembled soldiers of don Juan's army were, as they say, third-class. Nevertheless, taking command of about 24 thousand people, in January 1570, Juan laid siege to the fortress of Galera, which fell on February 11. Then Albujara, Seron (here Juan was wounded in the head), Tipola, Turchas, province of Rio d'Almansora were taken. The bulk of the Moors left Spain. Most of the rest were sold into slavery, the rest were resettled to the north of the country.
Holy League against the Ottoman Empire
Meanwhile, in 1571, the Ottomans attacked Cyprus, which then belonged to Venice. The Venetians entered into an alliance with Philip II and Pope Pius V, which went down in history under the name of the Holy League. This union was also joined by Malta and many states of Italy - the Republic of Genoa, Naples, Sicily, Savoy, Tuscany, Parma. Together they managed to put up about 50 thousand infantrymen and 4,5 thousand cavalrymen. The most famous battle of the war that began was the naval battle of Lepanto. Different data are given about the balance of forces of the parties, but all historians agree that they were approximately equal.
For the war at sea, Spain sent 77 galleys, commanded by Giovanni Doria, the great-nephew of the famous Genoese admiral. The Venetian squadron, commanded by Sebastiano Venier (Venier), consisted of 106 galleys and 6 large galleasses. Another Venetian admiral was Agostino Barbarigo.
Venetian warships
Marc Antonio Colonna led 12 papal galleys. Malta sent 6 ships, Savoy - 3. Don Juan became the commander-in-chief of this fleet. The total number of crews of allied ships reached 80 thousand people, about 20 thousand of which were soldiers of the boarding teams. On the galley "La Marquesa" ("Marquis") was then a young Spaniard Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra, who in the upcoming battle will receive two bullets in the chest and one in the arm. He would spend six months in the hospital, and many years later, in 1614, he would write:
"I lost my left arm for the glory of my right."
Galley "Marquez" at the Battle of Lepanto
Took part in this battle and the brother of Cervantes - Rodrigo.
The 75-year-old Venetian admiral Sebastiano Venier openly showed distrust of the Spanish "upstart bastard". To ensure the execution of his orders, Juan, under the guise of reinforcement, had to put 4 Spanish and Neapolitan soldiers subordinate to him on Venetian ships. The Venetians, of course, were outraged, but Juan was able to insist on the execution of his order (although on some ships it came to skirmishes and fights).
The Ottoman fleet opposing the allies consisted of 210 galleys and 66 galliots. In addition to Turkish ships, it included squadrons of Maghreb pirates, who at that time were the real masters of the central and western waters of the Mediterranean Sea. They devastated the coasts of European countries, stormed large coastal cities and successfully defended the coast of North Africa from Christian armies.
The corsairs of Tortuga, Port Royal and the Bahamian island of New Providence, better known to the general public, in their wildest dreams could not imagine the scale of the operations carried out by the predatory fleets of Algeria and Tunisia (pirates of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean were described in separate series of articles). Even the famous Henry Morgan, perhaps, would have become only one of the squadron captains of truly serious people like Khair ad-Din Barbarossa, Turgut or Sinan. Some leaders of the Maghreb pirates held high positions in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish navy. The above-mentioned Khair-ad-Din Barbarossa, who died in 1546, and who died in 1565 on the island of Malta, Turgut-reis, was appointed to the position of Kapudan Pasha.
In 1571, the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman fleet was the commander (aha) of the Janissaries of Constantinople, Ali Pasha Muezzinzade. He received this post after the rebellion that brought Sultan Selim II to power. The XNUMXth-century Turkish historian Mehmed Solak-zade Hamdemi later wrote that this Kapudan Pasha:
"did not see a single sea battle and was not aware of the science of piracy."
But Ali Pasha knew no equal in archery.
But there were also people in the Ottoman fleet who were very experienced in maritime affairs. The most famous of them is Uluj Ali (Uluch Ali, Kylych Ali Pasha).
Monument to Giovanni Dionigi Galleni (Kılıc Ali Pasa) in his native Calabrian town of La Castella, Italy
His real name is Giovanni Dionigi Galeni, a Calabrian born in 1519 and at the age of 17 was taken prisoner by Barbary pirates flying the flag of the famous Khair ad Din Barbarossa. At first he was a slave - a galley rower, but then he converted to Islam and became a full member of the team.
His career developed rapidly: in 1550, a dashing Calabrian took the post of governor of the island of Samos, in 1565 he became the Beylerbey of Alexandria. He participated in the siege of Malta, where Turgut-reis, the successor of Khair ad-Din Barbarossa, very respected by Turkish sailors and Algerian pirates, died. It was Uluj who replaced Turgut as Pasha of Tripolitania. In this position, he plundered the coasts of Sicily and Calabria, ravaged the environs of Naples.
In 1568 he became Beylerbey and Pasha of Algiers, in October 1569 he expelled Sultan Hamid from the Hafsid dynasty from Tunisia. Shortly before the battle of Lepanto, he defeated a squadron of the Knights of Malta, boarding 4 galleys. Another well-known commander of the Ottoman squadron was Mohammed Sirocco (Sulik Pasha) - also a renegade, a Greek, born in the region of the Gulf of Patras, Bay of Alexandria.
Three more Europeans who converted to Islam were the captains of Algerian pirate ships: the Venetian Hassan, the French Jafar and the Albanian Dali Mami.
Ottoman fleet, fragment of a painting by Tommaso Dolabello (1632)
Turkish galeas (mavna). Reproduction from a Turkish manuscript
Venetian galeas who participated in the battle of Lepanto
The total number of crews of the Ottoman ships reached 88 thousand people, but only about 16 thousand of them were in boarding teams. In addition, the Turkish sailors did not have firearms. It was this advantage of the Europeans in the number and armament of the marines that became decisive in the battle of Lepanto.
Next time we will talk about the battle of Lepanto and the last years of the life of the hero of our article.
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