FOOTNOTES

¹ See Chapter VI.

² Unless of course one was Odysseus; ten years between Troy and Ithaca must, even in his day, have been something of a record.

³ Though I wish someone would do something about her left eye.

⁴ In Roman times the Emperor Nero was to pass an edict restricting the wearing of this purple to himself alone. It remained an imperial colour–certain emperors were said to have been ‘born in the purple’–until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, and even today retains something of its old prestige. The principal drawback of the murex industry was the appalling smell that it created; the piles of broken shells were always sited downwind of the town.

⁵Odyssey, Book X.

⁶ Barely heard of before the end of the nineteenth century, the Hittites are now known to have created a powerful kingdom during the second millennium BC; their civilisation was related, however, more to the Anatolian uplands than to the Mediterranean.

⁷ The treasure was looted by the Russian army from the Berlin Museum during the Second World War. For many years it was thought to have gone forever–possibly melted down by some Russian soldier. Only recently have the Russians announced that they have it in safe keeping.

⁸ Self-contradiction, it must be said, is not unknown in modern literature either. All it proves is that Homer had a poor copy-editor.

⁹ Although the architect Harry Goodhart-Rendel, seeing it after the Second World War for the first time, remarked to Osbert Lancaster, ‘Well, I don’t think we can call it a complete success.’

¹⁰ It was in the Phrygian capital, Gordium, that Alexander was confronted with the Gordian knot, said to have been tied by Gordius, founder of the dynasty, to attach the yoke to the shaft of an ancient farm wagon. According to long tradition, whoever succeeded in unravelling it would become master of Asia. Alexander solved the problem by drawing his sword and slicing it down the middle.

¹¹ Our modern marathon race of 26 miles, 385 yards is based on the story of the messenger Pheidippides, who is said to have run that distance to carry news of the victory to Athens, but this story is in turn based on a misconception. Herodotus–our only authoritative source-tells us that Pheidippides in fact ran the 140 miles from Athens to Sparta, to seek its help. He is said to have covered the distance in two days.

¹² It was one of these satraps, Mausolus, governor of the province of Caria from 377 to 353 BC, whose sister-wife Artemisia built him the great tomb at Halicarnassus–the Mausoleum that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Its remains were removed in the early fifteenth century by the Knights of St John, to make room for the castle which still dominates the bay, but the great statue of Mausolus survived–more or less–and is now in the British Museum. The stepped tower on which the statue stood inspired Nicholas Hawksmoor when he designed the neighbouring church of St George’s, Bloomsbury (now magnificently restored); here, however, the statue is–rather less appropriately–of George I.

¹³Hellenistic is the word normally applied to the period immediately following the death of Alexander.

¹⁴ According to Herodotus, the Etruscans had arrived in Italy from Lydia in Asia Minor towards the end of the ninth century BC. Their language, which is not even Indo-European, has recently been largely deciphered, but the few Etruscan documents that remain give us all too little information. Much weightier evidence is provided by their surviving works of art-their sculptures (particularly on their tombs), paintings and exquisite jewellery. They were certainly far more gifted artistically than the Romans who expelled them.

¹⁵ These elephants–and Hannibal’s after them–were presumably African; and African elephants, unlike the Indian variety, are always said to be untamable. Did Pyrrhus and Hannibal know something that we don’t?

¹⁶ ‘Punic’ comes from the Latin poeni, which has the same root as ‘Phoenician’.

¹⁷ This area of western Asia Minor had been bequeathed to Rome in 133 BC by King Attalus III of Pergamum.

¹⁸ A Triumph was in essence a formal procession of a victorious Roman general to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol. It depended on a special vote of the people, with the additional advice of the Senate. The triumphator rode in a four-horse chariot; he was followed by eminent captives (probably destined for execution), freed Roman prisoners of war, the major spoils captured, the army and finally animals for sacrifice.

¹⁹ I use the word loosely and with a small ‘t’; though the three have often been dubbed ‘the First Triumvirate’, they were never so described at the time.

²⁰ Pompeia had been in charge of the rites of the Bona Dea. This goddess was worshipped in an annual service held at night, from which men were strictly excluded. In December 62 BC, one Publius Clodius Pulcher slipped in disguised as a woman–it was said in order to approach Pompeia in her husband’s absence. Caesar, who liked Clodius, stoutly proclaimed the innocence of both, but divorced Pompeia anyway on the grounds that she ‘must be above suspicion’.

²¹ It was in the following year, and again in 54 BC, that he invaded Britain, staying there for eighteen days and three months respectively. He achieved little, however, except a show of strength; Britain was to have almost a century’s grace before the Romans returned.

²² Surprisingly, this stream has never been certainly identified. The modern river Pisciatello is the most likely candidate.

²³ According to Suetonius, Caesar was so pleased with this remark that he had it emblazoned on a banner for his subsequent Triumph in Rome.

²⁴ It is hardly surprising that the most common Latin name for the Mediterranean was mare nostrum, ‘our sea’. No previous power had ever been in a position to make such a claim; nor has any been able to do so since.

²⁵ King Herod is known to have died in 4 BC.

²⁶ The English title is misleading. The Latin one, Carmina (‘Songs’), is a much better description of what are essentially lyrics.

²⁷ This sublime work, found in 1887 in the necropolis of Sidon, is thought to have been intended for the body of the city’s last king, Abdalonymous, who was appointed by Alexander in 332 BC. On its sides are representations of Alexander himself, in peace and at war.

²⁸ ‘It is not easy,’ he adds, ‘to express his vices with dignity, or even decency.’

²⁹ Such is the inspired phrase of Philemon Holland, translating Suetonius in 1606.

³⁰ Gibbon again: from the first sentence of The Decline and Fall.

³¹ All his life Hadrian was mocked for his Spanish accent.

³² It is said to have been an inspiration to–of all people–Cecil Rhodes.

³³ A Byzantine province extending from the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus along the southern coast of the Black Sea.

³⁴ In 307 Constantine had put away his first wife to marry Maximian’s daughter Faustina.

³⁵ The old bridge still stands. It has been restored many times, but much of its original second-century fabric remains.

³⁶De Vita Constantini, I, 28. The story is not quite as straightforward as it sounds; another version by the scholar Lactantius raises a number of intriguing points. I have gone into the matter a good deal more fully in Byzantium: The Early Centuries, pp. 38–43.

³⁷ Licinius was married to Constantine’s half-sister Constantia.

³⁸ Acts, i, 18.

³⁹ The scene is most enjoyably portrayed in Verdi’s opera Attila–despite the fact that Pope Leo is disguised–as was required by the censorship–as ‘an old Roman’.

⁴⁰ After its destruction in 146 BC, Carthage had remained virtually deserted for over a century, until in 29 BC Augustus made it the capital of his Roman province of Africa.

⁴¹ Sometimes known as Odovacar. He was a Scyrian, member of an obscure Germanic tribe which will not trouble us again.

⁴² To take but one example: ‘Often in the theatre…she would spread herself out and lie on her back on the ground. And certain slaves whose special task it was would sprinkle grains of barley over her private parts; and geese trained for the purpose would pick them off one by one with their beaks and swallow them…’

⁴³ From the early sixth century, the title of Patriarch was accorded to the bishops of the five chief sees of Christendom: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem. (The Bishop of Rome, being Pope, seldom if ever used it.) In more recent times the title has also been given to the heads of certain autocephalous Orthodox Churches (Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia) and also–in view of the city’s historical associations with Byzantium–to the Bishop of Venice.

⁴⁴ He had by then already built the ravishingly beautiful little church of St Sergius and St Bacchus, just below the southern end of the Hippodrome, which was to provide the model for his magnificent S. Vitale in Ravenna. It is now a mosque known as Little St Sophia–Küçük Ayasofya Camii.

⁴⁵ The smallest type of Byzantine warship, designed for lightness and speed, with a crew of about twenty oarsmen.

⁴⁶ The Emperor’s attitude towards Belisarius was always ambivalent. Jealousy obviously played its part, but so did suspicion. Despite countless proofs of loyalty given by the general, Justinian never quite trusted him. Robert Graves’s novel Count Belisarius–which is well worth reading for its insight into their two lives–is particularly interesting in this connection.

⁴⁷ E. M. Forster tells us that Amr was ‘an administrator, a delightful companion, and a poet–one of the ablest and most charming men that Islam ever produced’. He goes on to tell a lovely story of how, when Amr lay on his deathbed, ‘a friend said to him: “You have often remarked that you would like to find an intelligent man at the point of death, and to ask him what his feelings were. Now I ask you that question.” Amr replied, “I feel as if the heaven lay close upon the earth and I between the two, breathing through the eye of a needle.”’

⁴⁸ The theory, however, that the Muslims were responsible for the destruction of the great library is almost certainly without foundation. Everything we know about Amr suggests that he would have treated it with immense respect.

⁴⁹ The first of the two great Arab empires of the Middle Ages: the Umayyad, based in Damascus, which lasted from 661 to 750, and the Abbasid, based in Baghdad, which continued until its destruction by the Mongols in 1258.

⁵⁰ The rock was known to the Arabs as Jebel al-Tariq (Mount Tariq), whence comes its modern name of Gibraltar.

⁵¹ It was disgracefully vandalised in the early sixteenth century when a Christian chapel–now the cathedral–was erected in its centre. The Emperor Charles V, seeing it in 1526, made no secret of his feelings. ‘You have built here,’ he said to the assembled chapter, ‘what you or anyone might have built anywhere else, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world.’

⁵² It is often suggested that flamenco, the traditional music of Andalusia, is another legacy of the Muslim occupation. It may well contain Arabic elements, but it seems essentially to be the creation of the gypsies who began to settle in the area in the later fifteenth century.

⁵³Estoria del Cid, trans. P. E. Russell.

⁵⁴ His contemporary James I of Aragon had done the same at Valencia ten years before.

⁵⁵ Not, of course, to be confused with the Pope of the same name.

⁵⁶ The dynasty of Merovius, which ruled over the Franks from the sixth to the eighth century.

⁵⁷ The word ‘Saracen’ was applied by medieval writers to all Arabs.

⁵⁸ After the death of the last of the Carolingian line, Charles the Fat, in 888, the Empire of the West was dismembered and Berengar of Friuli was elected King of Italy; but he was in no sense a national ruler.

⁵⁹ The statue was subsequently moved by Michelangelo to his newly-designed Campidoglio, and has more recently been transferred to the Capitoline Museum.

⁶⁰ It is fascinating to speculate on how history would have been changed if he had survived, and if his expedition had been successful.

⁶¹ The word ‘admiral’ is derived from the Arabic emir al-bahr, ‘lord of the sea’. It comes down to us directly from Norman Sicily, where the title was first used.

⁶² Sicily did not, however, keep her African conquests long; all were lost by 1160.

⁶³ Alas, there are one or two more recent replacements, including an appalling representation of the Virgin in the centre of the apse that should be removed at once.

⁶⁴ See above, Chapter VI

⁶⁵ A small lozenge of black marble set in the pavement beneath the central doorway of the Basilica marks the precise place at which he did so.

⁶⁶ Which is presumably why we see, among the mosaic saints depicted in the apse of Monreale cathedral, the somewhat surprising figure of St Thomas of Canterbury. He must have been included at the Queen’s specific request, as further atonement for his murder. As a child, she would have known him well; it seems likely, therefore, that she would have described him to the artist and that the portrait is a fairly accurate likeness.

⁶⁷ He was actually the bastard son of Roger II’s eldest son, Duke Roger of Apulia, who had died before his father.

⁶⁸ They left behind them in Cairo the ninth-century mosque of Ibn Tulun, perhaps the loveliest in the city.

⁶⁹ It was to last a total of 176 years–until 1375, when Turks and Egyptian Mamelukes together drove out the last Armenian king, Leo VI, who ended his life an exile in Paris.

⁷⁰ It is now possible to speak of France as a political entity. The breakdown of Charlemagne’s empire had led to the formation of a number of minor principalities, one of which, centred on the Paris–Orleans axis, was later known as the Ile-de-France. Here there arose the Capetian dynasty of kings, the first of whom, Hugues Capet, came to the throne in 987. This was the nucleus of the France we know today, though it was to be another 300 years before it covered even approximately the same amount of territory.

⁷¹ A Turkoman dynasty whose founder, the Emir Danishmend, had appeared in Asia Minor some fifteen years before and ruled in Cappadocia and the regions round Sebasteia (now Sivas) and Melitene. Over the next century the Danishmends were to play a significant part in the history of the area, but after the Seljuk capture of Melitene in 1178 they vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.

⁷² Bohemund’s son, Prince Bohemund II of Antioch, had been killed in 1130, leaving his principality to his two-year-old daughter, Constance. She had been married off at the age of eight to Raymond of Poitiers, younger son of Duke William IX of Aquitaine.

⁷³ He was effectively the Holy Roman Emperor, but since he was never crowned in Rome he could not claim the title.

⁷⁴ Eleanor’s marriage to Louis VII had been duly annulled in 1152. Just two months later, she had married Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, the future Henry II. The relationship was stormy–she was released from prison only on her husband’s death–but she nevertheless bore him five sons and three daughters. Richard was her third son.

⁷⁵ The castle, which now houses the Medieval Museum, was rebuilt by the Templars in the thirteenth century. There is, however, some reason to believe that the altar in the present east chapel may be the one used for the double ceremony.

⁷⁶ See Chapter X.

⁷⁷ See Chapter VII.

⁷⁸ The descendants of the Lords of Boudonitza still survive in the distinguished Zorzi family of Venice. At Salona, the ruins of Thomas de Stromoncourt’s castle constitute the most majestic Frankish remains in the country.

⁷⁹ Mysterious because of its unique geographical character. At its narrowest only some thirty yards across, its currents change direction six or seven times a day, sometimes more. The cause is still not fully understood; Aristotle is said to have been so frustrated at his failure to solve the problem that he flung himself in.

⁸⁰ This medieval word for the Peloponnese is unknown before the early twelfth century. It is thought to have derived from the Greek word for a mulberry tree, either because of its shape or because of the number of mulberry trees that grow there.

⁸¹ Essentially, the northwestern Peloponnese.

⁸² The various fates of all the individual islands of the Aegean would be, for the general reader, hard going indeed. Those seeking further information should refer to W. Miller, The Latins in the Levant, pp. 40–45.

⁸³ See Chapter VI.

⁸⁴On the Art of Hunting with Birds.

⁸⁵ The political factions of Guelf and Ghibelline, which were to dominate Italian politics for almost two centuries, derived their names from those of the two great German clans, the house of Welf and that of Waiblingen (or Staufen). As time went on they came to be associated with the papal and imperial houses respectively.

⁸⁶ See Chapter VI.

⁸⁷ The Albigensian Crusade (Chapter VII.)

⁸⁸ She is also known as Isabella; in this book, however, she will be Yolande, if only to prevent confusion with Frederick’s third wife, Isabella of England.

⁸⁹ Even then, however, his career was not over. In 1224, when he was in his middle seventies, he became regent once again–in the Latin Empire of Constantinople, where the child Emperor Baldwin II had married John’s four-year-old daughter Maria. This time the old ruffian assumed the title of emperor rather than king–a title which he was to retain until his death in 1237.

⁹⁰ This was already an ominous sign: it was Gregory VII–the formidable Cardinal Hildebrand–who had brought Frederick’s great-great-great-uncle Henry IV to his knees at Canossa exactly 150 years before.

⁹¹ See Chapter VII.

⁹² Of the three great military orders–Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights–the last was the most recent, having been instituted only at the time of the Third Crusade. It too began with a hospital in the Holy Land, but from about 1230 onwards it was involved principally with the conquest of Prussia and the Baltic territories.

⁹³ It has been plausibly suggested that its octagonal shape may have been the model for Frederick’s magnificent hunting lodge, Castel del Monte in Apulia.

⁹⁴ Most probably by the Sicilian Giacomo da Lentini, at least twenty-five of whose sonnets have come down to us.

⁹⁵ She was the granddaughter of Henry II of England, whose daughter Eleanor had married Alfonso IX of Castile. She had already acted as regent during her son’s minority, when she had given ample proof of her statesmanship.

⁹⁶ Her sister Eleanor was married to the English King Henry III.

⁹⁷ The coinage struck at Tours, which in the thirteenth century was preferred to that struck in Paris.

⁹⁸ It continued to exist until the end of the century, but as little more than a Mongol puppet.

⁹⁹ The Nestorians held that Christ had two separate persons, the human and the divine. (The Orthodox view is that He was a single person, at once God and man.) A relatively small number survives today, mostly in Iraq, where they are known as Assyrian Christians.

¹⁰⁰ The famous story of Edward’s life being saved by his wife, Eleanor of Castile, who is said to have sucked out the poison from the wound, derives only from a single obscure Dominican chronicler, Ptolomaeus Lucensis. According to the old Dictionary of National Biography, it is ‘utterly unworthy of credit’; the new (Oxford) DNB is equally dismissive. Eleanor, in fact, had not even accompanied him on the Crusade.

¹⁰¹ He had bought the title in 1277 from Princess Maria of Antioch, granddaughter of King Amalric II of Jerusalem, and had immediately sent out to Acre a certain Roger of San Severino as his viceroy.

¹⁰² At this time the English kings still ruled over a considerable part of what is now France.

¹⁰³ By this time the titular Kings of Jerusalem were also Kings of Cyprus, where they understandably preferred to live.

¹⁰⁴ The best is that of Sir Steven Runciman in A History of the Crusades, vol. III, pp. 412–23.

¹⁰⁵ ‘The land of the three promontories’–a reference to Sicily’s triangular shape. The Greeks identified it with Homer’s Thrinacia, where Helios, the sun god, kept his sheep and cattle ( Odyssey, XI, 121).

¹⁰⁶ See Chapter XII.

¹⁰⁷ This is believed to be the origin of the grim reputation of the date.

¹⁰⁸ The French writer Maurice Druon, in his brilliant series of novels Les Rois Maudits, suggests that de Molay also cursed King Philip from the stake, and with some effect: Philip and his five immediate predecessors had reigned a total of 177 years, while the next six kings of France covered only sixty-six.

¹⁰⁹ Contrary to popular belief, they do not absolutely forbid it; the Persians never felt inhibited, nor very often did the Ottoman Turks. But in North Africa and Muslim Spain such productions by a Muslim artist would have been unthinkable.

¹¹⁰ See Chapter XI.

¹¹¹ ‘We want a Roman, or at least an Italian!’

¹¹² Othman did not live to see it, but Orhan had his father’s body brought there for burial in the citadel. The town thus became something of a shrine, and the burial place of all the early Ottoman Sultans.

¹¹³ In fact, since the serrata (looking) del Maggior Consiglio in 1298, when the Greater Council was closed to all but those families whose names were inscribed in the Golden Book of the Republic.

¹¹⁴ See Chapter XI.

¹¹⁵ The circumstances of his election and subsequent deposition have denied him a place on the canonical list of Popes. It was none the less somewhat surprising that Cardinal Angelo Roncalli should have adopted the same name on his election to the Papacy in 1958.

¹¹⁶ See Chapter VI.

¹¹⁷ In Rome Bessarion was to found an academy for the translation and publication of ancient Greek authors. By the time of his death in 1472 he had amassed an important library of Greek manuscripts, all of which he left to Venice, where they became the nucleus of the Biblioteca Marciana.

¹¹⁸ The Morea–better known to us as the Peloponnese–had seen its Frankish occupiers gradually wither away, and had been an autonomous despotate within the Byzantine Empire since the middle of the preceding century. It was usually entrusted to a senior member of the Emperor’s family.

¹¹⁹ Unlike the ancient vessels of the same name, Turkish biremes and triremes possessed a single bank of oars only. In the triremes there were three rowers to each oar, in the biremes they sat in pairs.

¹²⁰ It must sadly be recorded that, in defiance of their promise, on the night of 26 February seven Venetian ships, carrying some 700 Italians, slipped out of the Golden Horn and headed for home.

¹²¹ Columbus, who was just setting out on his historic voyage from Genoa, was obliged to alter course because the sea ahead of him was so crowded with Turkish ships bringing Jewish refugees to safety.

¹²² See Chapter I.

¹²³ The Pope ruled that the Catholic Kings were to be awarded all the land and islands, already discovered or thereafter to be discovered, that lay to the west of a line drawn from pole to pole, which itself ran 100 leagues to the west of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. Lands to the east of that line were allotted to Portugal (a concession which was later to allow the Portuguese to claim Brazil). This decision was ratified in 1494 by the Treaty of Tordesillas between the two countries.

¹²⁴ Not to be confused with Ferdinand of Spain, husband of Isabella.

¹²⁵ Venice had maintained a continuous embassy to the court of France since 1478–the first permanent diplomatic representation outside Italy.

¹²⁶ See Chapter X.

¹²⁷ Maximilian was never to receive his imperial coronation by the Pope. In 1508, however, he was to issue the Proclamation of Trent, which allowed him to assume the title of Emperor without it, and which was reluctantly accepted by Pope Julius II.

¹²⁸ See Chapter VIII.

¹²⁹ The Bolognesi celebrated their liberation by toppling Michelangelo’s magnificent bronze statue of the Pope and selling it for scrap to the Duke of Ferrara–who, in his turn, recast it into a huge cannon which he affectionately christened Julius.

¹³⁰ ‘Knight without fear and without stain’.

¹³¹ Now to be seen in the National Gallery, London.

¹³² After his defeat Cem (pronounced ‘Jem’) fled first to Egypt and later to Rhodes, where Bayezit paid the Knights 45,000 gold pieces annually to keep him out of the way. He was in fact an invaluable hostage in the hands of Christendom. He died in Naples in 1495–quite possibly poisoned by Pope Alexander VI, with the connivance of his brother the Sultan.

¹³³ ‘Extremely melancholic, superstitious and obstinate’.

¹³⁴ As always, numbers given by contemporary chroniclers at this period must be taken with a pinch of salt.

¹³⁵ Pope Leo X had died at the end of 1521. His successor, Adrian VI–a Dutchman from Utrecht and the last non-Italian Pope until John Paul II–lasted less than two years before being himself succeeded by Leo’s cousin, Giulio de’ Medici, as Clement VII.

¹³⁶ To describe them–as the Oxford English Dictionary does–as ‘German mercenary footsoldiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ is not to say the half of it. Their preposterous clothes, slashed and swashbuckling, are reflected in the court cards of a European pack, and inspired Michelangelo when he came to design the uniforms of the Swiss Pontifical Guard. There is still a French card game called lansquenet. See Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, pp. 84–86.

¹³⁷ Near the church of Santo Spirito, an inscription still commemorates the papal goldsmith, Bernardino Passeri, who fell at that spot in the defence of Rome.

¹³⁸ J. Hook, The Sack of Rome.

¹³⁹ The other principal Spanish enclave on the African coast, Ceuta, was to be appropriated only in 1580.

¹⁴⁰ Where polygamy is the rule, so large a family is less surprising than it would be otherwise.

¹⁴¹ Where the Emperor Tiberius had had a villa and had converted a neighbouring cave (which can still be seen) into a banqueting hall. One night, according to Suetonius, while he was feasting with his companions, part of the roof suddenly caved in. Many of his guests and serving-men were killed, but the Emperor escaped.

¹⁴² Both are commemorated in modern Istanbul: Ibrahim Pasha by his palace on the north side of the Hippodrome, now the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art; Rüstem Pasha by one of the loveliest small mosques in the city, built by the great architect Sinan in 1561, its walls covered with superb Iznik tiles.

¹⁴³ See Chapter VII.

¹⁴⁴ Jurien de la Gravière, Doria et Barberousse, Paris 1886. Quoted in Bradford, The Sultan’s Admiral. (Byng’s execution in fact took place in 1757.)

¹⁴⁵ Tripoli had fallen in 1510 to Spain, which in 1535 had offered it to the Knights to garrison.

¹⁴⁶ It is actually sandstone, and roughly eighteen miles by nine.

¹⁴⁷ This first hospital still stands in Triq Santa Scholastica. It is now a convent of Benedictine nuns.

¹⁴⁸ A galleass might be described as a cross between a galley and a galleon. It was basically a cargo ship, largely dependent upon sail but also fitted with oars and a fair weight of guns.

¹⁴⁹ The additional ‘l’ in the place name cannot be satisfactorily explained.

¹⁵⁰ Preti (1613–99) was a painter of the Neapolitan school who spent the last thirty-eight years of his life in Malta.

¹⁵¹ See Chapter XIII.

¹⁵² To remind the reader:
Galley: single deck, 120–180 feet long, 200-foot beam. Normally moved under sail, but always propelled by oars when in battle. Five guns mounted in bow, several smaller ones amidships. A metal beak of 10–20 feet was used for ramming.
Galleon: far heavier than galley, two decks, both thickly mounted with guns. No oars. Tall, unwieldy: a floating fortress.
Galleass: half-way between the two. High poop and forecastle (providing cover for oarsmen), 50–70 guns, lateen rigged.

¹⁵³ Among the Christian wounded was Miguel de Cervantes, aboard the Marquesa. He was struck twice in the chest, a third shot permanently maiming his left hand–‘to the greater glory,’ as he put it, ‘of the right.’ He was to describe Lepanto as ‘the greatest occasion that past or present ages have witnessed or that the future can hope to witness’, and to remain prouder of his part in it than of anything else in his life.

¹⁵⁴ On the unexpected death of Francesco II Sforza in 1535 the Milanese state had returned to the control of Charles V, who in 1540 had invested his son–later Philip II–with the duchy. Milan was to remain under Spanish rule until 1706.

¹⁵⁵ Gardiner, History of England, vol. 3.

¹⁵⁶ Readers hungry for the full details–if such there be–are advised to turn to Vol. II of Horatio Brown’s Studies in the History of Venice, pp. 245–95, where the whole story is set out in remorseless detail.

¹⁵⁷ It is still there, next to the Scuola di S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni.

¹⁵⁸ Until his accession in 1640, Ibrahim had spent his entire life a virtual prisoner in the Seraglio. After a brief reign marked only by cruelty, frivolity and vice, he was destined to be executed in 1648 by his own exasperated subjects.

¹⁵⁹ The name (the Greek word for cape) is given to the land jutting out to the northeast of Canea and protecting the anchorage of Soudha Bay just beyond.

¹⁶⁰ Philibert de Jarry, Histoire du siège de Candie.

¹⁶¹ Those former Muslims whose families had converted to Christianity–at least in theory–as a result of the persecutions by Queen Isabella. See Chapter XIII.

¹⁶² In the early part of the sixteenth century the Netherlands had, as we have seen, become a province of the Spanish Habsburgs. Then, during the Reformation, the northern provinces had been converted to Calvinism and Prince William of Orange (William the Silent) had led them in a revolt against Spain. In 1579 they shook off Spanish rule and became the United Provinces of the Netherlands–though Spain did not recognise their independence till 1648. The southern provinces remained Spanish.

¹⁶³ Born Marie-Anne de la Trémouille in 1642, she married in 1675 as her second husband Flavio degli Orsini, Duke of Bracciano; their palace in Rome became the centre of French influence in Italy. Widowed again in 1698, she returned to France, gallicised her name and became Mistress of the Robes to the Queen. From the day of her arrival in Spain she virtually ran the country.

¹⁶⁴ I.e. the southern provinces, which had remained Spanish after the secession of the northern.

¹⁶⁵ Prince Eugene (1663–1736) was the imperial field marshal who was known as the greatest soldier of his time. He had fought his first battle–during the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683–at the age of twenty. He was the teacher of Frederick the Great, and the only strategist whose campaigns Napoleon considered worthy of careful study.

¹⁶⁶ How Villeroi had become a marshal no one ever knew: he lost virtually every battle he ever fought. After his capture and for the rest of the war, French soldiers on the march would sing:
   Parsembleu! la nouvelle est bonne
   Et notre bonheur sans égal:
   Nous avons conservé Cremone
   Et perdu notre général.

¹⁶⁷ Cadiz is technically an Atlantic port rather than a Mediterranean one, but close enough to the straits to provide a base from which to control them.

¹⁶⁸ Formerly the Marquis de Ruvigny and member of an old Huguenot family, Galway had commanded a French regiment before settling in England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and becoming a British subject. Five years later he had entered the English service as a major-general of horse. In 1692 he had been appointed commander-in-chief in Ireland, and had soon afterwards been awarded a peerage.

¹⁶⁹ This is probably the only battle in history in which the British forces were commanded by a Frenchman, the French by a Briton.

¹⁷⁰ Cagliari itself was forced to surrender, but the British never conquered Sardinia as a whole. It was to become a major bargaining counter in the years following the Treaty of Utrecht.

¹⁷¹ Queen Anne had succeeded to the English throne on the death of William III in 1702.

¹⁷² ‘We have the promise of the King of Spain to leave Gibraltar to the English as a true safeguard for their commerce in Spain and in the Mediterranean.’

¹⁷³ It is this subtle distinction that forms the basis of the Spanish claim to the Rock: that it has been part of the sovereign territory of Spain since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, and that this status was not affected by the Treaty of Utrecht. The Spanish position is often accused of being hypocritical because of a supposed parallel between Gibraltar and the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the North African coast. Spaniards reply that these two cities are not colonies but have always been Spanish territories, just as much as the Balearics or the Canaries; they have never formed part of the Moroccan state.

¹⁷⁴ There was a brief interregnum in 1724, when in a fit of religious mania Philip abdicated in favour of his eldest son Luís; but he resumed the throne when Luís died of smallpox seven months later.

¹⁷⁵ Holland was technically a party to it, but in name only; the anti-war policy of the Dutch merchant class was too powerful.

¹⁷⁶ It was transferred during the British occupation of the island to its present position on the Esplanade.

¹⁷⁷ Prussia had become a nation in 1701, when Frederick, son of the Elector of Brandenburg, had crowned himself king at Königsberg.

¹⁷⁸ London in particular was delighted with the declaration. Frederick Prince of Wales, roistering with his friends in the Rose Tavern, drank lustily to the confusion of the Papists, and the church bells rang from all the steeples. This was the occasion on which the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was guilty of the lamentable pun by which he is chiefly remembered: ‘They now ring the bells; soon they will be wringing their hands.’

¹⁷⁹ She became Empress only in 1745. On the death of her father Charles VI the Empire had passed to her distant cousin from the Bavarian side of the family, who became Charles VII; only on his death was her husband Francis of Lorraine elected to the imperial throne.

¹⁸⁰ The Presidency of Charles de Brosses (1709–77) was only that of the parlement of Dijon; but he has somehow always managed to keep his title. President or not, he is a consistently interesting and amusing writer, whose views are always worthy of respect.

¹⁸¹ Some of the islands in the Caribbean were to be again redistributed by the terms of the Peace of Versailles in 1783.

¹⁸² One of the ships, the Prince George, numbered among its midshipmen Price William Henry, second son of George III and the future King William IV.

¹⁸³ Away in St Petersburg, Catherine the Great–advised by her counsellor-lover Prince Potemkin–is said to have suggested to George III that he might cede Minorca to Russia on condition that a Russian fleet went at once to its assistance: one of the many instances in history of Russia’s longing for a presence in the Mediterranean.

¹⁸⁴ Jack Russell, Gibraltar Besieged, from which much of the present account has been taken.

¹⁸⁵ ‘Crisis, contradiction, quarrel, jealousy!’

¹⁸⁶ East and West Florida extended well beyond the borders of the present state, comprising also parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

¹⁸⁷ He would sign his name Napoleone Buonaparte until 1796, when he translated it into French. It seems simpler however to stick to the French form for him and his family throughout this book.

¹⁸⁸ ‘Commanding character, imperious and opinionated,’ noted the examiner.

¹⁸⁹ The original Jacobin Club had been founded to protect the gains of the revolution against possible aristocratic reaction, but it soon became identified with extreme egalitarianism and violence, leading to the Revolutionary Government from mid-1793 to the fall of Robespierre in July 1794. By July 1790 there were 152 affiliate Jacobin Clubs all over France.

¹⁹⁰ Pozzo di Borgo, colleague of Paoli and mortal enemy of the Bonapartes.

¹⁹¹ ‘Reward this young man, and promote him; for if his services are not recognised, he will promote himself.’

¹⁹² Roughly comparable to a modern Cabinet, it was composed of thirteen members including the Doge himself. It functioned as the executive arm of the government. The chairman–a post which rotated weekly–was thus effectively Prime Minister of the Republic.

¹⁹³ The sole distinction of this otherwise footling state was to have chosen for its standard the red, white and green tricolour. It is curious indeed that one of the earliest manifestations of French conquest should have given rise to the Italian national flag.

¹⁹⁴ Talleyrand had dissociated himself from the revolution after the execution of the royal family in 1793 and gone into voluntary exile in America. He had returned in 1795 after the fall of the Jacobins and became Foreign Minister in 1797.

¹⁹⁵ Ships of the line were the largest category of naval vessels, being those fit to stand in the line of battle. They were three-masters, and were subdivided into six rates, only the first three of which, by the end of the eighteenth century, were considered solid enough for warfare. A first-rate ship of the line carried a hundred or more guns, a second-rate eighty-four to ninety-eight and a third-rate seventy to eighty, all with armaments on two or more decks. Frigates, corvettes and brigs were normally two-masted, with diminishing numbers of guns.

¹⁹⁶ It actually lasted less than fourteen months, owing to Napoleon’s indignation that the British had not left Malta immediately, and British concern at his having annexed Piedmont, Elba, Parma and Piacenza in 1802.

¹⁹⁷ The pillar in fact dates from the time of Diocletian at the end of the third century. The obelisk, dating from the reign of Thutmose III–nearly 1,500 years before Cleopatra’s day–was given to the British government by Mohammed Ali in 1819, although it did not reach London’s Embankment until 1878.

¹⁹⁸ In his despatches Nelson had reported that the engagement had taken place not far from the (Rosetta) mouth of the Nile, hence the slightly misleading name. It would have been more accurate to call it the Battle of Aboukir.

¹⁹⁹ The news of Napoleon’s victory at Marengo reached Rome some hours after the reports of his defeat. The sudden change from celebration to lamentation lends additional drama to Act II of Puccini’s Tosca.

²⁰⁰ Of Sicily he was Ferdinand III, of the Two Sicilies he was Ferdinand I. The historian–and his readers–must tread warily indeed.

²⁰¹‘Er ist ein recht guter Narr,’ (‘He’s a right good fool’) she remarked to her brother, the Emperor Joseph, when he came to Naples. Joseph left a hilarious account of his visit. (See H. Acton, The Bourbons of Naples, pp. 135–49.)

²⁰² His body was later exhumed and returned to Rome, where Canova designed him a splendid tomb.

²⁰³ Parthenope was an early Greek settlement on the site of Naples in the sixth century BC.

²⁰⁴ P. Mackesy, British Victory in Egypt, 1801, from which much of the material in this chapter has been taken.

²⁰⁵ It was in one of the towers of this fort that the French had discovered in 1799 the famous Rosetta Stone–now one of the most popular exhibits of the British Museum–which provided the key to the deciphering of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

²⁰⁶ On 17 June Menou had indulged his imagination still further, assuring the Minister of the Interior that Belliard had won a major victory over the British just outside Cairo and that Hely-Hutchinson had been killed.

²⁰⁷ Before condemning Nicol and his fellows as vandals, we should remember that ten years later Lord Byron was to do precisely the same at the Temple of Poseidon at Sunion.

²⁰⁸ The body was first taken to Kléber’s native city of Strasbourg, where it was kept for twenty years in the cathedral. It was then brought to Paris and buried beneath the monument in the Place that bears his name.

²⁰⁹ ‘When armies believe it possible to escape from a critical position with a convention that does them no dishonour, all is lost.’

²¹⁰ When Pius VII registered a somewhat nervous protest, he was put firmly in his place by a personal message from the Emperor: ‘Your Holiness will show the same respect for me in the temporal sphere as I bear towards him in the spiritual…Your Holiness is the Sovereign of Rome, but I am its Emperor.’

²¹¹ Until a few years ago there stood at the southern end of Maida Vale a pub named The Hero of Maida, with a portrait of General Stuart on its sign.

²¹² See Chapter VI.

²¹³ Such was the prevailing Anglophilia that the swells of Palermo affected to speak the Sicilian dialect with an English accent.

²¹⁴ He was married to the Emperor’s youngest sister, Caroline.

²¹⁵ After his departure it would be returned to Tuscany, with which it would pass in 1860 to a united Italy.

²¹⁶ Talleyrand, by now sixty, had had an astonishing career. Having first entered the Church, he had risen to the rank of bishop. Later he had represented his government in London, working hard in the cause of Anglo-French relations; but after the execution of the King and Queen he had sought refuge in America, where he had remained for two years. Returning to Paris, he was appointed Foreign Minister under the Directory, and soon became Napoleon’s principal adviser on foreign policy; eventually, however, disgusted by the Emperor’s insatiable ambition, he began secretly to plan for a Bourbon restoration. With the return of Louis XVIII in 1814, he had found himself once again Foreign Minister.

²¹⁷ Their joint membership of the Orthodox Church has always provided a close emotional link between Russia and Greece.

²¹⁸ For a fascinating summary of the lives of the previous seven, see Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani, p. 49.

²¹⁹ From the Phanar district of Constantinople, seat of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate.

²²⁰ In the early nineteenth century the Orthodox Church still used the Julian calendar (Old Style), which was twelve days behind the Gregorian (New Style). This latter had been instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582–though it was not generally adopted by the Protestant countries for a considerable time. (Britain went over to the New Style in September1752.) Since 25 March is so important a date in Greece, it would be pedantic–as well as confusing–to call it 6 April; in this chapter, therefore, Old Style dates are used throughout.

²²¹ Quoted by David Brewer, from whose superb history, The Flame of Freedom, I have drawn liberally in this chapter.

²²² See Chapter II.

²²³ It was bought by King Louis XVIII and is now in the Louvre.

²²⁴ Albanians from the wild Souli district southwest of Iannina, who lived on extortion and plunder. Byron had high hopes of them but they proved insufferable. ‘I will have nothing more to do with the Souliotes,’ he wrote, ‘they may go to the Turks or–the devil…they may cut me into more pieces than they have dissensions among them, sooner than change my resolution.’

²²⁵ Shortly afterwards Dr van Millingen was taken prisoner by the Turks, but was later released after urgent representations by Sir Stratford Canning, then British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. In 1827 he settled permanently in Constantinople, where he served as court physician to five successive Sultans.

²²⁶ Modone and Corone must henceforth be known by their Greek names.

²²⁷ He was, incidentally, the husband of Julia Ward Howe, author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. (‘Mine eyes have seen the glory…’)

²²⁸ The two judgements should almost certainly have been reversed.

²²⁹ The territory north of the Arta–Volos line was to remain part of the Ottoman Empire until May 1913, after the First Balkan War.

²³⁰ This was the Treaty of Unkiar–Skelessi, little known because short-lived. In July 1841 the powers guaranteed Ottoman independence and declared the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus closed to all nations in time of peace.

²³¹ The office of dey–the word actually comes from the Turkish, meaning maternal uncle–had been first instituted in 1671. In the early years the dey was elected by the corsair captains, taking over the duties of the pasha appointed by the Ottoman Sultan. It was he who nominated the beys as provincial chiefs.

²³² This free port on the coast of Morocco had first become independent in Byzantine days, but because of its importance as a trading post in ivory, gold and slaves, its ownership had always been bitterly contested. In 1415 Portugal gained control, but in 1580 it passed to Spain, to which it was legally assigned by the Treaty of Lisbon in 1688. With nearby Melilla, it has remained Spanish ever since. Never has it formed part of Moroccan territory.

²³³ See Chapter XXXI.

²³⁴ Ferdinand I had died in 1825, and was succeeded by his son Francis I, who reigned for only five years. His son Ferdinand II was to reign from 1830 to 1859.

²³⁵ It was this incident that gave Ferdinand the nickname King Bomba.

²³⁶ A very similar design is used in the arms of the Isle of Man. Here, however, the legs are armoured and spurred.

²³⁷ They were commemorated in Venice by the renaming of the former Campo S. Giovanni in Bragora, now known as Campo Bandiera e Moro in their honour.

²³⁸ Austria drew substantial revenue from Lombardy by heavy taxes on cigars. The Austrian army’s reply to this was to issue vast quantities of free cigars to both officers and men, with orders to puff the smoke in the Italians’ faces.

²³⁹ Radetzky had taken part in the very first Austrian campaigns against Napoleon more than half a century before, and had been Chief of Staff at the battle of Leipzig in 1813. He had fought in seventeen campaigns, had been wounded seven times and had had nine horses shot under him.

²⁴⁰ ‘Release Manin and Tommaseo!’

²⁴¹ ‘God doesn’t grant amnesties,’ growled Metternich, ‘God pardons.’

²⁴² Antonelli was largely responsible for enabling the Papacy to cling to its temporal power for as long as it did. He was a brilliant politician with immense charm and–as his countless bastards attested–an extremely mouvementé sex life. ‘When he stops in a salon near a pretty woman, when he stands close to speak to her, stroking her shoulders and looking deeply into her corsage, you recognise the man of the woods and you tremble as you think of post-chaises overturned at the roadside.’ (Edmond About, La question romaine, quoted by Holt, Risorgimento, p. 139.)

²⁴³ At this time it comprised not only the traditional territory of the ancient Dukes of Savoy, with its capital at Turin; there was also the island of Sardinia, the County of Nice and, since 1815, the city of Genoa.

²⁴⁴ Notorious even in England. On 4 September 1850, with two friends, Haynau visited Barclay’s Brewery in London. He was soon recognised by his grotesquely long moustaches and attacked by the employees, who threw buckets of dirt all over him. He fled down Bankside and, pursued now by a large mob, took refuge at the George Inn, where he was finally rescued by the police.

²⁴⁵ The area of Rome lying to the west of the Tiber.

²⁴⁶ ‘Wherever we are, there shall be Rome.’

²⁴⁷ San Marino, with its area of 23.5 square miles, is still an independent republic. It is completely surrounded by Italy, with the Romagna on the west and the Marche on the east. It remains the last relic of the self-governing city-states of the middle ages and Renaissance.

²⁴⁸ Prince Louis Napoleon had taken advantage of the fall of King Louis-Philippe in 1848, and in December of that year had been elected President of the Second Republic of France. In 1852 he had been confirmed as the Emperor Napoleon III.

²⁴⁹ ‘Alpine hunters’.

²⁵⁰ There was no mention of Romagna, Parma or Piacenza, for which neither emperor was directly responsible.

²⁵¹ He had never quite forgiven Cavour for his hard words after Villafranca, nor for having successfully opposed–after the death of Queen Maria Adelaide in 1855 at the age of only thirty-three–his marriage to his long-time mistress.

²⁵² He is described in the Enciclopedia Italiana as ‘serious, taciturn, melancholic, timid, awkward, eternally doubtful of himself and everyone else’.

²⁵³ It is something of a miracle that the church of S. Angelo was not destroyed. It is the grandest monument in all Campania, its interior walls covered in eleventh-century frescos in a quite astonishing state of preservation.

²⁵⁴ ‘Italy is made; now we have to make the Italians.’

²⁵⁵ The Pope had summoned it in 1868 to discuss a wide range of subjects, both theological and administrative.

²⁵⁶ Mazzini addressed the 700 bishops who attended: ‘Science goes forward, regardless of your doctrines, caring nothing for your denunciations and your councils, tearing up, with every new discovery, another page of the book that you call infallible.’

²⁵⁷ See Chapter XXIV.

²⁵⁸ The constitution of 1812–known as the Constitution of Cadiz–considerably restricted the powers of the monarchy, instituted a single-chamber parliament (with no special representation for the nobility or the Church) and introduced a modern system of administration based on provinces and municipalities.

²⁵⁹ After the death of Maria Francisca in 1834 he had married his Portuguese sister-in-law, the Princess of Beira.

²⁶⁰ Soon after–or perhaps before–Ferdinand’s death she had taken a lover: a corporal in the Guards named Fernando Muñoz. The two were secretly married on 27 December 1833, after which she named him Groom of the Bedchamber. Although they were to have four children, the marriage was not publicly admitted until 1845, when Muñoz was created Duke of Riánsares.

²⁶¹ According to the French Prime Minister François Guizot, who knew her well, ‘there were not six spoons left.’

²⁶² ‘The Queen has been nubile for two hours.’

²⁶³Asís is Assisi in Spanish.

²⁶⁴ During his youth in London he had been engaged to Miss Adeline de Horsey, who subsequently became the second wife of the Earl of Cardigan, leader of the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.

²⁶⁵ Who first accepted it, then refused. Had he turned it down at once, the Franco-Prussian War–which was fought entirely because Napoleon III was not prepared to contemplate a dynastic alliance between Prussia and Spain–would never have taken place. See Chapter XXVIII.

²⁶⁶ A less happy consequence was that Indian army officers were obliged to put away their native wives and bring their memsahibs out from Britain–often with disastrous results to British-Indian relations.

²⁶⁷ A rather more surprising reaction was that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, later Kaiser Wilhelm II: ‘How jolly!’

²⁶⁸ See Chapter XXIV.

²⁶⁹ Leucas (Lefkas) is the only one of the Ionian Islands that was for any length of time under Turkish rule.

²⁷⁰ For this section and those immediately following, I must record my thanks to Mr Alan Palmer, on whose compulsively readable history, The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, I have shamelessly drawn.

²⁷¹ His opinion may perhaps have been affected by the Sultan’s decision to confer upon Lady Salisbury–who had accompanied him–the Order of Chastity (Third Class).

²⁷² As it happened, Prince Louis of Battenberg was serving on the appropriately named HMS Sultan, while his brother Prince Alexander was a staff captain in the army of the Grand Duke. Alexander was given a warm welcome aboard the Sultan by its commanding officer, who chanced to be none other than Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria and husband of the Tsar’s only surviving daughter.

²⁷³ It will be remembered that the Orthodox Patriarch Grigorios had suffered a similar fate in Constantinople at much the same time (See Chapter XXV), as had hundreds, if not thousands, of Greeks, secular and priestly, throughout the Ottoman Empire.

²⁷⁴ By which individual entrepreneurs purchased from the government the right to levy taxes, and then bled the local populations.

²⁷⁵ Europe had also been profoundly shocked by the recent appalling massacres of the Sultan’s Armenian subjects. These had begun in 1894 and are believed to have accounted for at least 30,000 by the end of the following year.

²⁷⁶ Poor Abdul-Hamid was hurried with his family on board the German steamship Lorelei and returned to Istanbul, to spend his six remaining years in the Beylerbey Palace on the Bosphorus.

²⁷⁷ Alan Moorehead tells us that one of these was ‘subsequently torpedoed by a U-boat off Malta, and must have occasioned some surprise to the Germans. As the ship settled, her wooden turrets and her twelve-inch guns floated away on the tide.’

²⁷⁸ There is a superb account of the evacuation in Chapter XVII of Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli, to which for this all too brief account of the campaign I am hugely indebted.

²⁷⁹ The official British historian went further still: ‘Seldom in history,’ he wrote, ‘can the exertions of a single divisional commander have exercised, on three separate occasions, so profound an influence not only on the course of a battle but, perhaps, on the fate of a campaign and even the destiny of a nation.’

²⁸⁰ ‘One Colonel of the Royal Engineers was sick on the floor outside Allenby’s office after an interview; another officer had to be actually carried out of Allenby’s room, having collapsed on the floor before his desk.’ (Brian Gardner, Allenby, p. 177).

²⁸¹ Not many British officers during the Boer War, one suspects, would have written from South Africa asking to be sent a copy of A. N. Majestrat’s L’Art du Croire, ou Préparation Philosophique à la Foi Chrétienne.

²⁸² A statement made on 2 November 1917 by Arthur Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, in a letter to Lionel, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of British Jewry, informing him of British support for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, provided that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’.

²⁸³ How this promise accorded with the Sykes–Picot Agreement–or, later, with the Balfour Declaration–was never made entirely clear.