Spain in North America |
Spain in South America |
The Portuguese in Asia and Africa |
The End of Ottoman Expansion |
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Rather than journey to India by going around the southern tip Africa, as had the Portugual's Bartolomew Diaz, Queen Isabella of Spain sent Christopher Columbus with three ships westward, Columbus believing that the Far East was only a couple thousand miles in that direction. Columbus and his crew were at sea for seventy days, the crew saying their vespers and singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary every night before sleeping. They spotted a small island in the Caribbean Sea called Guanahani -- perhaps the island that today is called San Salvador. For three months Columbus and his crew explored the islands between Guanahani and the island they called Hispaniola, believing they were in the Far East. They found people on these islands friendly, while Columbus was concluding that they could be easily dominated and had the makings of what he described as "fine servants." Although deeply religious, like many others of his time, Columbus combined his faith with a lust for wealth and a belief in authoritarianism, including slavery. Columbus was impressed by the beauty of the islands, especially Hispaniola, with its forested mountains and river valleys. He was impressed too by the gold being worn by people on Hispaniola, especially the island's chiefs -- gold that lay in the island's rivers.
On December 24, Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria, wrecked on the coast of Hispaniola. The goods on board were taken ashore and a settlement created, called La Navidad (Christmas). Columbus left thirty-nine men at La Navidad and, on January 4, with his two remaining ships, he began his return journey to Spain. He assumed that the islands he found were his to declare for Spain's royalty: Isabella and Ferdinand. Isabella and Ferdinand petitioned Pope Alexander VI for sovereignty over the islands. Alexander granted them exclusive title in the papal bull of 1493 -- the island people having no say in the matter.
Columbus made his second voyage to the Caribbean, with seventeen ships and 1,500 men, horses and dogs, arriving at his base on the island of Hispaniola in 1494 and finding those he had left behind slaughtered. Some on the island had decided against being pushed around and to defend themselves against the Spanish. Columbus established another settlement, on the north shore of Hispaniola, called Isabella.
Columbus had been instructed to convert the islanders to Christianity, but he had promised to export wealth to Spain -- gold and spices -- and to pay the costs of his enterprise, in addition to having been promised ten percent of the wealth that he could gather. In the place of other wealth, Columbus transported islanders back to Spain to be sold as slaves. Unhappy about the kidnappings, the islanders rebelled again.
In 1496 a permanent base for Spain in the "New World" was established at Santo Domingo. Columbus began his fourth and last journey to the Caribbean in 1502. He had found all of the Caribbean's major islands, and he believed that these islands lay off the coast of India.
Columbus believed that he might come across half-human, half-monsters, in keeping with the view in Europe that such people existed in remote places outside of Christendom. No clear-cut differentiation between the human specie and non-humans had been established, and a popular travel book by Sir John Mandeville, written in the fourteenth century, had reported the existence of half-monsters -- a book written in several languages and published in numerous editions. Columbus found no monsters, but suspicion remained among the Spaniards that half-beasts existed nearby, especially cannibals, and people who ate insects -- the doings of the devil.
Columbus returned to Spain in 1504 and, in poor health, he died there in 1506. Carribean islanders working as slaves were also dying. By 1570, Hispaniola's population, today estimated at having been around 100,000 would be reduced to 300. Meanwhile, in place of the islanders, slaves were shipped from Africa to labor there for Europeans.
Some among the Spanish found the islanders with what they called "a beastly lack of shame of nakedness." They saw the islanders as primitive, but human enough, and in 1511, a Dominican friar, Antonio de Montesino, returned to Spain concerned about those called Indians. He persuaded King Ferdinand to summon a group of theologians and learned men to suggest a remedy for what was called the "Indian problem." From these discussions the Laws of Burgos were produced, which declared that the Indians were by nature idle and given to vice. Spaniards were instructed to congregate the Indians into villages near where Europeans had received grants of land. The Spaniards were to build churches and to support and maintain priests, who were to give Indians instruction in the rudiments of Catholicism. The Indians were to be forbidden from engaging in commerce. They were to be allowed only one wife, and they were to work in the fields and mines, but not overworked, and they were to be fed and not beaten.
Soldiers and colonists, including more than seventy married couples and twelve friars, had journeyed from Spain to Hispaniola, and there a successful colony was established. By 1515, the gold that could be mined in Hispaniola had dwindled. A search for gold elsewhere in the New World had begun. In 1519, Spain's authority in the Americas sent a 34-year-old adventurer, a former dropout from law school who had been in the Caribbean since 1504, Hernando Cortez (Cortéz), on a mission to Mexico. Cortez landed on the gulf coast of Mexico with 600 men, 17 horses and 12 cannon, and there he spent several months. He took sides in conflicts between local societies. He won presents from local people, including twenty women, one of whom became his mistress and interpreter. He founded the town of Villa Rica de las Vera Cruz (Veracruz), and he was selected by its town council as its chief military and judicial officer, establishing his independence from Spanish authority at Santo Domingo. From Vera Cruz, Cortez moved inland, toward the Aztecs at Tenochtitlan (Tenochtitlán). He was mindful that success against the Aztecs depended on making allies with the enemies of the Aztecs. He had to fight his potential allies, and he benefited from guns, light cannon, steel swords and horses. With his new allies he fought the independent republic of Tlaxcala, who were also enemies of the Aztecs, and, after initial skirmishes, Tlaxcala became his ally.
In Tenochtitlan the king of the Aztecs, Moctezuma had heard that Cortez was on his way, but rather than organize armed resistance against him, Moctezuma planned to welcome him and placate him with gifts. Responding to a myth, Moctezuma believed that Cortez was an incarnation of the god Quetzalcoatl returning to claim his people.
Cortez arrived with his small force and around 1,000 Tlaxcatecs. He and his fellow Spaniards were astounded by the size and beauty of Tenochtitlan, a city surrounded by water. Crowds of Aztecs came in their canoes to see the white gods and their supernatural animals. Moctezuma arrived in a sedan chair and treated the Spaniards as his guests. He gave them use of one of his castles and entertained them for a week. Cortez in turn took Moctezuma hostage. He received from Moctezuma gold and other presents, men and women slaves and the passivity of the Aztec nation. Cortez had become the master of Mexico City, passing himself off to the Aztecs as representing God and claiming that godly authority resided in Spain. And, offended by Aztec human sacrifices and paganism in general, Cortez encouraged moves against Aztec worship. The Spanish began driving Aztec priests from their temples and replacing stone images with a cross and the image of the Virgin Mary.
After the Spaniards had been in Tenochtitlan a few months, with Moctezuma still prisoner, one of Cortez' underlings led an attack against a crowd in Tenochtitlan central square, in an effort to break up a religious festival. Many Aztec nobles were killed. People were outraged, and to calm the anger the Spanish displayed Moctezuma on the palace roof. Apparently by now the crowd saw Moctezuma as a traitor, and they through stones, Moctezuma soon dying of his wounds. To escape from the angry Aztecs, Cortez and his 1300 men fought their way out of the city at night. About half of his force died, some of the Spaniards losing their life because they had overloaded themselves with precious metal.
Cortez and his force returned to Tlaxcala where they were well received. Aztec power having been challenged, various peoples whom the Aztecs had been ruling still saw opportunity in riding themselves of Aztec domination and continued to side with Cortez and Tlaxcala. Spanish reinforcements and supplies arrived to strengthen Cortez' force. From Tlaxcala, Cortez won domination over neighboring territory, and in August, 1521, Cortez with an enlarged army of Spaniards and Indians returned to Tenochtitlan. They surrounded the city, cut its outside supply of fresh water and food. They attacked the city on rafts with cannon, and in the city they fought block by block.
The people of Tenochtitlan fought without guns, and they were suffering from small pox, against which they had no immunity -- unlike the Spaniards who brought the disease to the Americas. Five-sixths of Tenochtitlan was destroyed. Moctezuma's nephew and heir, Cuautemoc (Cuauhtémoc), surrendered. Surviving Aztecs abandoned the corpse-ridden and disease-infested city, and what was left of the city was burned.
Cortez changed the name of Tenochtitlan to Mexico (Mexico City). In 1524, Cuauhtemoc was executed, ending the line of Aztec kings. Spanish men from the Caribbean flocked to Mexico, and they took Indian mistresses, who begat children, beginning the mix of Spaniard and Indian.
The lands that Columbus and Cortez had set foot upon they had claimed for the Spanish crown. And where lands had been claimed for them, Spain's monarchs claimed absolute authority. After Cortez, Spaniards roamed over northern Mexico and southern parts of what is now the United States, looking for another civilization as rich in precious metal as had been the Aztecs. By the mid-1500s Spanish authority was firmly established in Mexico, which had become known as New Spain. In New Spain the native populations had become a third what they were prior to the arrival of Columbus.
Conquest in Mexico encouraged the Spaniards to move into South America. In some villages in the great Inca Empire in South America, small pox was wiping out from fifty to ninety percent of the population. The Inca Empire became more vulnerable following the death of the Inca, Huayna Capac (Cápac), in 1527. The empire was divided between his two sons, and a quarrel between the two erupted and led to civil war. Then a measles epidemic began in both Mexico and Inca territory.
The brother who won the civil war was Atahuallpa. Atahuallpa held his brother prisoner and was consolidating his victory by warring against members of the royal family and some nobles who had sided with his brother, when, in 1532, a Spaniard in his mid-fifties, Francisco Pizzaro, arrived in Inca territory with 102 men, 62 horses and some interpreters.
Atahuallpa had been warned of Pizzaro's arrival. He knew of the Spanish and their horses and was unafraid of a force of 102 men. Atahuallpa agreed to meet Pizzaro at the central plaza of Cajamarca, a town in the northern half of the empire. Atahuallpa was accompanied by five to six thousand armed men, and his army of around 35,000 was nearby. He arrived carried aloft in a chair on the shoulders of his servants. Pizzaro's chaplain greeted the king with the announcement that King Charles V of Spain was the only true king and that the Christian god the only true god. Atahuallpa was handed a copy of the Christian Bible. The Inca king was not about to take instruction, believing as the Inca did that their gods had put them on the world to teach others and that their great God of the Sky, Virechocha, controlled all things. Atahuallpa looked at the Bible and threw it to the ground. A prearranged signal by the Spanish was given and Spaniards who had been hiding from the view of the Incas fired their harquebusiers (predecessor of the musket) and two light cannon into the Inca crowd, with the all important advantage of range, and in this instance, noise and shock. Then Pizzaro's cavalry charged. The Inca around Atahuallpa ran, and their panic frightened others farther back. The sight of men running and afraid frightened Atahuallpa's main force, and they too ran.
A few Spaniards had been superficially wounded, while at least 1,500 Inca had been killed. Pizzaro had taken Atahuallpa prisoner, and for months he used him as a hostage and pawn with which to govern, while Atalhallpa's generals feared that attacking the Spaniards would leave their king dead.
Atalhallpa offered Pizzaro gold and silver in exchange for his freedom, believing that with a great treasure Pizzaro and his men would go away. Pizzaro agreed, and Atahuallpa ordered agents to collect the treasure, mainly from areas that had supported his brother. Pizzaro and his men received their treasure: 13,420 pounds of 22 carat-gold and 26,000 pounds of pure silver. Spaniard reinforcements arrived -- 150 in number. Atahuallpa was accused of organizing an attack against the Spanish. He was charged with treason, plotting the murder of his brother, worshipping false gods and polygamy. Condemned to be burned at the stake, he was told that if he accepted Christianity he would only be strangled to death. Atahuallpa converted, submitted stoically, was strangled in the plaza of Cajamarca and given a Christian burial.
Pizzaro accepted another son of Huayna Capac as his puppet king of the Inca, and obedience to the god-king helped Pizzaro continue his rule, while people in some outlying areas of the empire remained hostile. Meanwhile, Spanish soldiers and colonists were flocking to South America in great number.
Pizzaro's puppet king died within the year, and he was replaced by another brother, Manco Inca. Pizzaro fought rebellions against his rule, and he had as allies some who been dominated by the Inca, and some who had been dominated by the Inca were at least passive toward the Spanish. Helping in this passivity was the continuing belief among local peoples that the Spaniards were agents of the gods, fulfilling a prophecy about times of trouble.
Pizzaro conquered the Inca capital, Cuzco. Remnants of Atahuallpa's once proud army fled north to Quito. Then in 1536 Manco Inca betrayed Pizzaro and led a rebellion. He and his followers were driven into the mountains, where an Inca rule-in-exile would remain hidden for generations. Pizzaro took revenge on Manco Inca. He had Manco Inca's wife stripped, beaten, shot with arrows and her body floated down the Yucay River for Manco Inca's forces to find.
Pizzaro defeated a Spaniard's attempt to grab power away from him. But Pizzaro had not had much time to enjoy his power and share of the new wealth. In 1551, while in his mid-sixties, followers of his defeated enemy took revenge and assassinated him. Inca meanwhile were being wiped out by the arrival of more disease, an epidemic of what might have been typhus had arrived in 1545. Then from Europe came a virulent form of influenza.
While heading to the East around the southern tip of Africa, some Portuguese ships were blown off course and landed at South America -- less than 2,600 kilometers (1,625 miles) at the most narrow gap from Africa. In South America they found Tupi people, who had settled their area centuries before and were still expelling earlier occupants. Unlike the Spanish experience with Aztecs and Incas, the Portuguese found the Tupi Indians with little wealth they could plunder. Portugal's king left the area to Portuguese adventurers and tradesmen to find what they could. A few settlements were established in what they called Terra da Vera Cruz (Land of the True Cross), and at first the only export by the Portuguese from the area was a red colored dyewood called brazil. "Brazil" was a shorter and more down to earth expression than "Terra da Vera Cruz," and Brazil was what the land would be called.
Portugal was a small country, but its ships had big cannon of good quality, and Portuguese had trained gunners of German and Flemish descent. At sea, the Portuguese had to contend with the Egyptians and their Venetian allies, but they were intent on gaining a monopoly on the spice trade -- largely pepper and ginger. To secure their ability to trade, the Portuguese seized ports and built fortifications on shore along their route to the East. These were men of daring who were led by the resourceful Afonso de Albuquerque, who was chivalrous, presented himself with dignity and believed in tearing down Mosques and cutting off the noses and ears as a way of punishing his enemies.
In 1507 the Portuguese captured the prosperous port city and trading center of Hormuz at the entrance to the Persian Gulf -- a city that was partly Arab and mostly Persian. In 1509 they defeated a large Muslim fleet in a naval battle in the Arabian Sea off the northwest coast of India, near Diu. In 1510 Portugal established a port at Goa, on India's western coast, a place that had acquired wealth from trade in horses, the only Port in Asia that had adequate dockyard facilities, which also had timber for ship building, and a point from which Muslims had been debarking for pilgrimages to Arabia. And in 1514 the Portuguese reached Indonesia, the center of spice production. While China's emperor did not care who dominated the seas of southeast Asia, the Portuguese captured a fort at Malacca, and this gave the Portuguese control over the narrow waterway that was the passage farther east.
The Portuguese benefited from a tenacity of purpose and from the warring of other powers. The Portuguese were hardly noticed in northern India while rival armies there were contending for power. The king of Gujarat in northwestern India saw wars at sea as merchant affairs and of no concern of his. And the Ottoman Empire was busy expanding into the Balkans, against Belgrade, Hungary and Vienna and warring with Persia.
In 1519 a Portuguese expedition, led by Ferdinand Magellan, headed west for the spice islands of Indonesia, a voyage that in three years would circumnavigate the world, proving that the earth was bigger than Columbus had believed.
In addition to the dyewood brazil, the Portuguese began transporting Indian slaves, parrots and monkeys from Brazil back to Portugal, and Portugal began sending convicts to Brazil. The wealth that Spain was taking out of their areas in the Americas inspired more interest in Brazil by opportunistic Portuguese, and in 1531 five vessels and four hundred colonists arrived on Brazil's coast. Those who emigrated to Brazil were looking for land and an easy life. They had no intention of doing manual work, expecting that they could have Indians doing their work for them. When the Indians refused to work for the colonists, the colonists made slaves of them, by taking those captured in the frequent wars between Indian tribes or by taking people in raids on Indian villages.
The Portuguese had been buying slaves and transporting them to Portuguese plantations on the islands of São Tomé and Principe, a couple of hundred miles off the coast of Kongo. In Kongo, King Afonso I and his successors objected to the Portuguese taking Congolese as slaves and tried to limit the slave trade with the Portuguese -- although they occasionally sent slaves as a present to the kings of Portugal. But the Portuguese were able to trade for slaves with others, with the Teke and Mpumbu kingdoms northeast of Kongo, and they could trade along the coast of Angola, where interloping slave traders could escape having to pay an export duty on their slaves. On the Atlantic Coast, wealth from selling captives was inspiring African rulers to overrun isolated communities and neighboring states. These rulers were gaining wealth by selling their captives to the Portuguese. And on the east coast of Africa the Portuguese continued to buy people who had had been captured in war or considered criminals.
The Portuguese were bringing manufactured goods from Europe and trading these for slaves; and in 1532 they began shipping slaves to Brazil. Africans had an immunity to tropical diseases that served them well in Brazil and they were believed to be able workers in mining and tropical agriculture. A circular trade was established, the Portuguese taking metal manufactured goods to Africa, trading these goods for slaves, shipping slaves to America and transporting from Brazil whatever they thought they could sell in Portugal.
In Ethiopia, meanwhile, a Muslim general, Ahmad ibn Ibrahim, was growing tired of the raids and counter-raids between Ethiopian Christians and his fellow Muslims. In 1526 he summoned Muslim unity for a Jihad against the Christians. The Muslims were supplied with up-to-date arms by the Ottoman Turks, and Ahmad's army overran southern Ethiopia, looting and burning churches, killing district governors and replacing them with Muslims. And just south of Ethiopia, the cattle herding Oromo people were expanding territorially and driving out local inhabitants.
The Portuguese, meanwhile, failed in their attempt to dominate the eastern coast of Africa north of Kilwa. The Sultan of Mombasa refused to pay the Portuguese tribute, and in 1528 the Portuguese sacked Mombasa, which held onto its trade with Arabia and the Persian Gulf.
A Portuguese ship arrived at Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China in 1517, and other ships arrived in years that followed, and the Portuguese annoyed China's imperial authorities by not behaving with the proper deference. The Portuguese were seen as a crude, barbaric and as thieves. Contempt for trade as a profession and traders as people still dominated officialdom in China. The Portuguese were expelled from Canton. China's monarchy attempted to limit trade with foreigners, especially with Japan, which led to smuggling along China's southern coast, and there the Portuguese continued to trade, receiving silks, porcelain and other goods from Chinese who were willing to defy Chinese law and to bribe local authorities.
In 1542, a storm blew some Portuguese to an island in southern Japan. Not since Marco Polo had Europe heard anything about Japan, and to the Japanese the red hair and blue eyes of the Portuguese made them appear demonic. The Portuguese had a matchlock musket with them, and the Japanese were fascinated by it. They treated the Portuguese with hospitality. The Portuguese gave the musket to a prince as a gift, and soon the Japanese were making copies of the musket -- Japan's first guns.
In 1549 three Catholic priests, Francis Xavier and two companions, arrived with the Portuguese, at Kagoshima in southern Japan. Frustrated at first, he thought of the Japanese language as having been invented by the devil to prevent him from preaching to the Japanese. He ventured out among the Japanese without success and learned that his humble dress made a bad impression on those Japanese who were benefiting from the prosperity that this part of Japan was enjoying. He dressed better and acquired a translator, but the translations were less than perfect and his listeners were inclined to believe he was preaching salvation through a brand of Buddhism. People patiently listened to the preaching of the Catholic priests. They were impressed by his remaining undisturbed by abuse hurled at him while he was preaching opposition to worship of gods that they knew. Enough of them were in search of salvation by whatever means, and around a hundred Japanese converted in the two years that Father Xavier remained in Japan.
In 1512 the aged Ottoman Sultan, Bayezid II, was ill, and his three sons were fighting each other for his throne at the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. Those special warriors, the Janissaries, were a power behind the throne and chose as the new sultan the son that was most warlike: Selim. Bayezid was dethroned, and Selim secured his rule by having his two brothers and their sons executed by strangulation, Selim becoming Selim I. Then he embarked on a war against what he saw as the heresy of Shi'ism. He is reported to have exterminated thousands of Shi'a Muslims in Asia Minor. Then he launched a war against the Shi'a king of Persia: Isma'il. Selim's armies advanced through northern Mesopotamia, and, in August 1514, with artillery, he defeated the Isma'il's army west of Tabriz, taking a thousand of that city's famous craftsmen for the empire and massacring some others. Next, Selim moved against the Mameluk rulers who had allied themselves with the Persians. In 1516 his troops moved southward and captured Damascus, Beirut, Gaza and Jerusalem. In 1517 the Ottomans defeated the Mameluk Sultan Tuman outside Cairo. In Egypt, Selim's forces confronted the last of Abbasid authority, the Abbasid caliph having moved to Egypt after the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols in1258. Under the Mameluks, the Abbasids had been making only a feeble show of authority in religious matters. Now the head of the Abbasid family was taken to Constantinople as prisoner. The Abbasids surrendered the title of caliph and the sword and mantle of Muhammad the Prophet, to Selim, who declared himself caliph. The Ottoman Empire now included all of Mesopotamia, Armenia, lands to the Caspian Sea, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. In nine years, Selim had almost doubled the size of the Ottoman Empire. He became known as a great conqueror. He was also an accomplished poet in three languages, but for the world it was his conquests, his use of violence, that was most celebrated.
Selim became ill in 1520. He died and was succeeded by his only son, Suleiman, who was twenty-six. Suleiman inherited a well organized nation, a treasury filled with taxes drawn from far and wide, and a disciplined army. In Europe he was to be called Suleiman the Magnificent because of wealth and grandeur, although amid his wealth he was thought to be a man of discipline and simplicity -- in the tradition of Abu Bakr and Umar ibn-al-Khattab -- aside from the harem that he had inherited, filled with 300 women under the age of twenty-five, almost all of them Christians, guarded by eunuchs. Suleiman was commander of the faithful, a man of sincere religious convictions, with more kindness and tolerance than his father. But he believed that he should conquer as had his father. He believed that he should unite the peoples of the East and West as had Alexander the Great.
During Suleiman's first year as sultan he moved against Belgrade. Europeans were too distracted by conflict amongst themselves to rally to Belgrade's defense. Suleiman surrounded the city and bombarded it with heavy cannon, and Belgrade fell to the Ottomans in August, 1521.
Next, Suleiman aimed at conquest of the Christian island of Rhodes. The Ottomans viewed the knights there as cutthroats and pirates and were annoyed with their attacks on Ottoman ships taking goods to Egypt and pilgrims to Mecca. The conquest over Rhodes was to eliminate all threats to Ottoman naval power in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas.
The assault on Rhodes began in 1522, Suleiman sending an armada of 400 ships to Rhodes and leading 100,000 men over land to a point just opposite the island. The Ottomans employed their artillery again -- known to be the best in the world -- and they reinforced their bombardments with sappers and explosives. And after a siege of 145 days, Rhodes capitulated. The island's inhabitants were allowed to depart if they wished, and those who stayed were promised freedom of worship and freedom from taxation for five years.
Four years after his victory over Rhodes, Suleiman aimed against at conquest in Europe. In 1526 he overran Buda and Pest on the Danube River in Hungary. He moved against Vienna, but lacking enough soldiers he returned to Constantinople and tried again in May,1529. His troops had to endure much rain. At Vienna's walls the Ottomans applied their light cannon, musketry and skilled archery. Suleiman's army made a gap 150 feet wide in Vienna's wall, but with ferocious resistance the Christians stopped the Ottomans from pouring through. Ottomans losses were heavy. Suleiman's army was essentially a summer force, and with winter approaching Suleiman lifted his siege against Vienna. The Ottomans set fire to their camps, massacred their prisoners except for those young enough to qualify for their slave markets and returned home, to be harassed by Christian cavalry and bad weather along the way. In Vienna, the sight of the Ottoman withdrawal was followed by the ringing of bells and great celebration. Suleiman had suffered his first defeat. Christian Europe saw itself as having been delivered from Islam and the Ottomans.
Under Suleiman, the Ottomans made further gains in empire along the coast of North Africa west of Egypt. In the early 1500s, Islamic pirates there, the most famous of which the Christians called Barbarossa, a Turk from Lesbos, had been in conflict with the Portuguese and Spanish. The pirates held territory along the coast of North Africa. Barbarossa's brother, Arüj, the ruling pirate, was killed by the Spanish in 1518. Barbarossa took over, assuming title of Khayr ad-Din, and fearing loss of territory to the Spanish he offered homage to Suleiman. That same year, Suleiman sent Khayr ad-Din reinforcements. In 1529, Khayr ad-Din took control of Algiers and made it the base for piracy. Suleiman made Khaya ad-Din admiral-in-chief of his navy, and in 1534 Khayr ad-Din captured Tunis. Charles V, the Habsburg emperor of Spain, sent a force that retook Tunis. Then in 1538 Khayr ad-Din defeated Charles' navy at the Battle of Préveza. Twice -- in 1533 and 1544 -- Khayr ad-Din defeated the Italian admiral Andrea Doria, giving the Ottomans control over the Mediterranean Sea until 1571. Khayr enjoyed a great presence at court until his death in 1546. Suleiman lived until 1566.