Battle of Preveza (1538): Barbarossa's Naval Triumph

The Battle of Preveza was a naval battle fought on 28 September 1538 off the Ionian coast of north-western Greece. The Ottoman fleet of Hayreddin Barbarossa faced the larger combined fleet of the Holy League, an alliance of the Pope, Venice and Emperor Charles V led by the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria. The League withdrew after an indecisive but damaging engagement, a result that left the Ottomans the leading sea power in the Mediterranean for more than three decades.

Background

In the 1530s the Mediterranean became a major front in the struggle between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. In 1533 Sultan Suleiman appointed Hayreddin Barbarossa, the most successful corsair of North Africa, as grand admiral (kapudan pasha) of the Ottoman fleet. Charles V answered with the capture of Tunis in 1535, using a fleet led by Andrea Doria, the great Genoese admiral in Habsburg service.

Venice, the main Christian naval power in the eastern Mediterranean, tried to remain neutral. That changed in 1537, when an Ottoman army and fleet besieged the Venetian island of Corfu, while Barbarossa raided and seized Venetian islands in the Aegean. This campaign was linked to the Franco-Ottoman alliance, under which France was supposed to attack Habsburg Italy at the same time.

In February 1538 Pope Paul III brought Venice, Charles V and other Christian states into a Holy League against the Ottomans. They agreed to assemble a great fleet to take the war to the enemy.

The fleets

The allied fleet gathered at Corfu in September 1538. It is usually estimated at about 130 galleys, including Venetian, papal, Spanish and Genoese contingents, together with 50 or more large sailing ships (galleons and carracks) and many smaller vessels. Andrea Doria held overall command. The Venetian fleet was led by Vincenzo Cappello, the papal galleys by Marco Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia.

Barbarossa had roughly 120 galleys and galliots, lighter and faster oared ships. His captains included Turgut Reis, Salih Reis and Seydi Ali Reis, experienced corsairs and sea commanders.

The Ottoman fleet anchored inside the Gulf of Arta, the large bay behind the narrow strait at Preveza. This was the same waterway near Actium where Octavian had defeated Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC. The narrow entrance was protected by the Ottoman fortress at Preveza, making a direct allied attack dangerous.

The battle

Before Doria arrived, Grimani tried to land troops and attack the fortress of Preveza, but the attempt failed. When the full allied fleet appeared, Barbarossa held his position in the gulf while Doria stayed out at sea, unwilling to force the strait under the guns of the fortress.

On 27 September Doria moved south along the coast, perhaps hoping to draw the Ottomans out or to threaten their supply lines. Barbarossa then led his fleet out of the gulf. On 28 September the two fleets met off the coast.

Light and shifting winds strongly affected the battle. The allied sailing ships, which carried heavy guns, could not keep formation with the galleys, and some were left becalmed and isolated. The Venetian galleon commanded by Alessandro Condulmer resisted Ottoman galleys for hours with its artillery and survived badly damaged.

Doria did not commit his galleys to a full-scale fight. As evening came, the allies withdrew towards Corfu, leaving behind several ships that had been captured or destroyed. The Ottomans did not pursue far, partly because of a storm.

Galleys and sailing ships

Preveza was fought at a time of transition in Mediterranean naval warfare. The main warship was still the galley, a long, narrow vessel driven by oars, with a few heavy guns mounted in the bow. Galleys could move in any wind and were well suited to the coastal waters of the Mediterranean, but they carried large crews and needed frequent supplies of water and food.

The Holy League also brought heavily armed sailing ships, whose broadside guns gave them great firepower. In calm or light winds, however, they could not manoeuvre, and they were hard to coordinate with the galleys. At Preveza this mixed fleet proved difficult to control, while Barbarossa’s more uniform force of galleys and galliots could choose where to strike.

Losses and disputed figures

The numbers of ships lost are uncertain. Ottoman accounts claimed large numbers of captured ships and thousands of prisoners. Christian sources describe much smaller losses, in the range of a few galleys and some sailing ships. Ottoman losses in ships were very light, though they suffered casualties from allied gunfire.

Most historians agree that, in material terms, the battle was not a disaster for the League. Its significance lay in what happened next: the allies abandoned the campaign and their confidence in one another collapsed.

Key people

• Hayreddin Barbarossa (c. 1478–1546): Ottoman grand admiral and former corsair, the victor of Preveza.
• Andrea Doria (1466–1560): Genoese admiral in the service of Charles V and commander of the Holy League fleet.
• Vincenzo Cappello (1469–1541): commander of the Venetian fleet.
• Marco Grimani (c. 1494–1544): Patriarch of Aquileia and commander of the papal galleys.
• Turgut Reis (c. 1485–1565): one of Barbarossa’s captains, later a famous Ottoman admiral in his own right.

Consequences

The Holy League did not survive the defeat. The Venetians, who had borne heavy costs, suspected that Doria had deliberately held back to spare the emperor’s ships. In 1539 the Ottomans recaptured Castelnuovo (Herceg Novi) on the Adriatic from a Spanish garrison.

Venice opened negotiations with the Ottomans and signed a peace treaty in October 1540. It gave up its last strongholds in the Peloponnese, Nauplia and Monemvasia, as well as islands taken by Barbarossa, and paid an indemnity of 300,000 ducats.

The Ottoman fleet remained the dominant force in the Mediterranean for the next three decades. It cooperated with the French in 1543–44 and won another major victory at the Battle of Djerba in 1560. Only at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 did a new Holy League inflict a crushing defeat on the Ottoman navy.

Legacy

In Ottoman and later Turkish memory, Preveza became the greatest triumph of Hayreddin Barbarossa and a symbol of Ottoman naval glory. His tomb at Beşiktaş in Istanbul, close to the shore, became a landmark associated with the Ottoman navy.

In Venice and Spain the battle left bitterness and mutual blame. Andrea Doria’s conduct was argued over by contemporaries and remains debated by historians, many of whom conclude that caution, conflicting interests and poor coordination, rather than treachery, explain his behaviour.

Timeline

• 1533: Hayreddin Barbarossa becomes Ottoman grand admiral.
• 1535: Charles V captures Tunis with Doria’s fleet.
• 1537: The Ottomans besiege Venetian Corfu; Venice joins the war.
• 1538, February: Pope Paul III forms the Holy League.
• 1538, September: The allied fleet assembles at Corfu.
• 1538, 28 September: Battle of Preveza; the allies withdraw.
• 1539: The Ottomans retake Castelnuovo.
• 1540, October: Venice makes a separate peace with the Ottomans.

Why it matters

Preveza confirmed the Ottoman Empire as the leading naval power of the Mediterranean in the age of Suleiman the Magnificent. It showed the difficulty of holding together a coalition of rival Christian states, and it shaped the naval balance that lasted until Lepanto. Students of naval history also study it as an early example of the problems of combining oared galleys and gun-armed sailing ships in one fleet.