Spain and Venice, the major European sea…
March 1560 CE
Spain and Venice, the major European sea powers in the Mediterranean, feel increasingly threatened by the Ottomans and their corsair allies since losing against Barbarossa Hayreddin's Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Preveza in 1538 and the disastrous expedition of Emperor Charles V against Barbarossa in Algiers in 1541.
Indeed, Piyale Pasha had by 1558 captured the Balearic Islands and together with Turgut Reis raided the Mediterranean coasts of Spain.
King Philip II of Spain had appealed to Pope Paul IV and his allies in Europe to organize an expedition to retake Tripoli from Turgut Reis, who had captured the city from the Maltese Knights in August 1551 and had subsequently been made Bey (Governor) of Tripoli by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
Most reputable historians believe that the fleet assembled by the allied Christian powers in 1560 consisted of between fifty and sixty galleys and between forty and sixty smaller craft.
The joint fleet, a coalition that consists of Genoa, Tuscany, the Papal States, and the Knights of S. John, had been assembled at Messina under the command of Giovanni Andrea Doria, nephew of the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria.
It had first sailed to Malta, where bad weather had forced it to remain for two months.
During this time some two thousand men have been lost to sickness.
The fleet sets sail for Tripoli on February 10, 1560; the precise numbers of soldiers aboard are not known.
Although the expedition had landed not far from Tripoli, the lack of water, sickness and a freak storm had caused the commanders to abandon their original objective, and on March 7 they return to Djerba, North Africa’s largest island, located in the Gulf of Gabes, off the coast of Tunisia, which they quickly overrun.
The Viceroy of Sicily, Juan de la Cerda, 4th Duke of Medinaceli, orders a fort to be built on the island, and construction is begun.
By this time, a Turkish fleet of about eighty-six galleys and galliots under the command of the Ottoman admiral Piyale Pasha is already underway from Istanbul.