Andrea Doria

Andrea Doria, Prince of Melfi (; ; 30 November 146625 November 1560) was an Italian statesman, ', and admiral, who played a key role in the Republic of Genoa during his lifetime.

From 1528 until his death, Doria exercised a predominant influence in the councils of the Genoese republic, and was considered the foremost naval leader in Europe at his time. He became Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's grand admiral, a position he employed both to protect Genoa's independence and to maintain his own control over the city. He also acted as a privateer with the ships he owned in order to increase his wealth. His fleet helped secure the imperial naval lines between Spain and Italy, although he had a mixed success against the eminent threat of the Ottoman navy.Christina Shaw, ''Barons and Castellans: The Military Nobility of Renaissance Italy'' 2014, Brill, ISBN 9789004282766, p. 133-134

As the ruler of Genoa, Doria reformed the Republic's constitution. Originally elected for life, the Doge's office was reduced to two years. At the same time, plebeians were declared ineligible, and the appointment of the doge was entrusted to the members of the great and the little councils. His reformed constitution of the Republic of Genoa would last until the end of the republic in 1797.

Several ships were named in honour of the admiral, the most famous being the Italian passenger liner , launched in 1951, which sank following a collision in 1956.

Early life

Doria was born at Oneglia from the ancient Genoese family the Doria di Oneglia, a branch of the noble Doria family, who played a major role in the history of the Republic since the 12th century. His parents were related: Ceva Doria, co-lord of Oneglia, and Caracosa Doria, of the Doria di Dolceacqua branch. Orphaned at an early age, he became a soldier of fortune, serving first in the papal guard and then under various Italian princes. He soon gained enough renown for Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the age's premier general, to tempt him to join him.

In the service of France

In 1503, he fought in Corsica in the service of the Genoese Navy, at that time under French vassalage. However, after the Battle of Ravenna of 1512, he turned against the Francophile government of Genoa represented by Gian Fregoso. With 46, despite having no previous naval experience, Doria was appointed admiral and took upon him reorganizing the existent Genoese fleet. A French invasion of Genoa forced him and his fleet to escape to La Spezia. With the French defeat in Novara the following year, Doria returned and conquered the local French garrison in Briglia, expelled them from Genoa and helped Ottaviano Fregoso to become the new Doge.

Doria also scoured the Mediterranean in command of the Genoese fleet, waging war on the Turks and the Barbary pirates. When a fleet led by the brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa, coming from a failed siege of the Spanish port of Béjaïa, captured a Genoese ship in 1512, Doria attacked the brothers' base in La Goulette with twelve galleys, sacking the place and destroying the ships in port. In the meanwhile, however, Genoa was recaptured by the French, as a new change of tide in Marignano forced Fregoso to pledge Genoa to King Francis I of France in 1515. Doria focused in his actions against Muslims, defeated another Turk fleet led by Caid Ali or Cadolin in at Pianosa in 1519, capturing his ships for his own fleet.

Italian Wars

In 1522, during the Italian War between France and the empire of Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, Genoa was conquered and sacked by imperial troops under the command of Prospero Colonna and Fernando d'Ávalos, forcing Doria to escape with the fleet again. Taking refuge in Monaco, he helped the French defend Marseille, but the war came to an abrupt end when Francis I was captured by the imperial army in Pavia. Doria prepared a plan to try to rescue him, but Francis ordered him to refrain.

Doria then clashed with Francis' regent, Anne de Montmorency, and abandoned French service, forming a naval mercenary fleet. However, he ended up siding with France again when Pope Clement VIII formed the League of Cognac to oppose Charles V, for which Doria was hired to command their armada while Giovanni delle Bande Nere did the same in their land army. Doria defeated a bigger Spanish fleet in Corsica and planned to conquer Genoa, still under imperial rule, but it was never carried on. With Giovanni's death in action and the sack of Rome by mutinied imperial troops, the situation worsened for the League of Cognac, who depended on Doria more than ever.

In 1528, the League's armada, under the command of Doria and his nephew, Filippino Doria, crushed a Spanish fleet on 28 April 1528 at the Battle of Capo d'Orso, capturing the enemy commanders Alfonso d'Avalos and Ascanio Colonna. However, Andrea became dissatisfied with his treatment at the hands of Francis, who was mean about payment and replaced Doria for the French admiral Antoine de La Rochefoucauld. Meanwhile, d'Avalos capitalized on the chance to try convince Doria to switch sides, with Doria refusing to hand d'Avalos and Colonna to Francis as the king asked. Charles V and Doria exchanged letters, and although Francis found about it and attempted to compensate the Genoese, the latter deserted the French for the emperor on June 1528.

In the service of Charles V

Without Doria's fleet, the League collapsed. The Genoese lifted the siege of Naples, chasing La Rochefoucauld until Provence and capturing four of his ships. In September, Doria and his forces drove the French out of Genoa and were triumphantly received by the city. Charles appointed him grand admiral, prince of Melfi and Marquis of Tursi in reward for his services. He found Doria an invaluable ally in the wars with Francis I, and through him extended his domination over the whole of Italy. He continued to serve the emperor in various wars, in which he was generally successful and always active.

Ruling the Genoese republic

Doria reformed the constitution in an aristocratic sense, eliminating the factions that had plagued the republic in the past centuries, and constituted a new oligarchic form of government composed of the city’s principal aristocratic families, creating 28 Alberghi or "clans". The 28 Alberghi that formed this new ruling class included the Cybo, Doria, Fieschi, Giustiniani, Grimaldi, Imperiale, Pallavicino, and Spinola families.

He refused offers to take the lordship of Genoa and even the dogeship, but accepted the position of "perpetual censor", and exercised predominant influence in the councils of the republic until his death. The title "censor" in this context was modelled on its meaning in the Roman Republic, ''i.e.'', a highly respected senior public official (see Roman censor), rather than its modern meaning having to do with censorship. He was given two palaces, many privileges, and the title of (Liberator and Father of His Country). He established himself in his newly-renovated villa in Fassolo, a Renaissance masterpiece known as Villa del Principe, in an area just outside the now demolished Porta di San Tomaso, where he resided until his death.

To protect the restored republic from future foreign attacks, Andrea Doria sponsored the construction of a new city wall, which was built in the third decade of the sixteenth century, on a design by the military engineer Giovanni Maria Olgiati. This new city wall actually followed the path of the previous 14th-century walls but replaced the old square-plan towers and walls with new curtain-shaped curtain walls and triangular bastions.

War against the Ottoman Empire

Actions against the Ottomans and Barbary pirates occupied again much of Doria's time. In 1529, Spanish captain Rodrigo de Portundo was defeated by Aydin and Salih, lieutenants of Hayreddin Barbarossa. Finding out Barbarossa had Cádiz on his sights, Doria launched an attack on Cherchell, where Barbarossa was planning to supply his fleet. The raid went awry by the inexperience of Doria's freshly recruited troops, many of them French, who disbanded to sack the place and were abandoned to their luck, possibly by Barbarossa being near, but the operation succeeded in capturing a large part of the corsair's fleet in port and thwarting the campaign against Cádiz.

In summer 1532, in response to the Turk invasion of Hungary in April, Andrea attacked the Ottoman positions in the Aegean Sea with a Spanish-Genoese fleet of 48 galleys and 35 vessels. He headed to Morea, capturing Corone by way of a novel system of cannons and ladders in his masts to assault the coastal bulwark. Doria followed by taking and sacking Patras, destroying fortresses around the Gulf of Corinth, and reached to the Dardanelles. Doria returned to Genoa with booty of 60.000 ducats, having helped to force the Ottomans abort a possible conquest of Hungary.

The Ottomans attempted to recover Corone the following year with a 110-ship armada captained by Lütfi Pasha. Doria rendzvoused in Messina with Álvaro de Bazán the Elder, gathering together 27 galleys and 30 ships, and lifted the siege. Doria defeated Lufti despite its numbers, outmaneuvering the Turks with his galleys despite absence of wind having becalmed his other ships, and losing only three galleys in the battle. The relief of Corone would be called by Edmond Jurien de La Gravière one of the most skillful naval operations of the 16th century.

Barbarossa, now turned into grand admiral of the Ottoman Empire, launched his own offensive from Constantinople with 80 galleys and French support, sacking around Naples and Sicily. In 1535, Charles V called for the conquest of Tunis, which Barbarossa had just conquered and made his base. The fleet, with Doria sharing main command with Bazán the Elder, succeeded in taking Tunis and capturing Barbarossa's entire 42-ship fleet, although the corsair managed to escape. Doria persecuted Barbarosa to Bona, which the Genoese stormed, but Barbarossa had fled and taken refuge in Algiers. Charles intended to continue the campaign taking Algiers next, but the weather impeded it.

Italian War of 1536–1538

After the death of Francesco I Sforza death in 1535, Charles V and Francis I clashed again for the succession of the Duchy of Milan. Doria was vital for the emperor to secure the friendship of the Médicis of Florence, favoring the ascension of Cosimo I. Doria and Bazán the Elder captured cities along the French Riviera, although stopping in Marseille. Shortly after, Babarossa attacked and sacked the Balearic Islands with 27 galleasses he gathered in Algiers, leading Doria to give him chase unsuccessfully with 30 galleys, with orders of Charles V to bring the Turk privateer dead or alive. In a shocking move, Francis allied with the Ottomans in 1536, installing Barbarossa with a Franco-Turk fleet in Marseille, although the defenses built by Doria dissuaded them from trying to take Genoa.

In April 1537, Barbarossa appeared in front of Italy with 170 ships, but he had come to negotiate, and through a Spanish prisoner he proposed the emperor a possible desertion of the Ottoman Empire, citing his enmity with Lütfi and the political turmoil after the killing of Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha. Nothing came from it.

In July, due to the outbreak of the Ottoman–Venetian War, Doria sailed off at the head of 28 galleys from Messina. He captured a fleet of 10 Ottoman supply ships, after which he faced off with Ali Zelif and his 12 galleys near Paxos. Doria took all of his vessels, while Zelif died in the battle. Upon finding out Barbarossa was now coming for him with a huge fleet of 135 galleys to avenge the defeat, Doria retreated to Messina, where he was forced to hear how Barbarossa sacked Apulia. The Ottomans boasted they might be able to choose their own Pope some day, although in reality their fleet had to be diverted against Venice. After finally gathering 100 ships, Doria marched to lift the Turk siege of the Venetian colony of Corfu, but the Ottomans had lifted it themselves.

In February 1538, Pope Paul III called for peace among the Christians and the formation of a Holy League (comprising the Papal States, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Republic of Venice, and the Maltese Knights) against the Turks. Although Francis did not join, the Italian War came to its end with the Truce of Nice, and he accepted to break his alliance with the Ottomans.

Holy League

In 1538, being given command of the Holy League, Doria sailed off with 80 Venetian galleys, 36 from the Vatican States, 30 from Spain, as well as 50 naos, with the goal to seek the encounter with Barbarossa's fleet and defeated him. He tracked Barbarossa and his lieutenants, which included Sinan, Salah and Dragut or Turgut Reis, to the strait of Corinth, where he blockaded them. However, infighting within the League or inscrutable orders on Doria's part, depending on the sources, caused the rout of their fleet in the subsequent Battle of Preveza in September 1538. This victory secured Turkish dominance over the eastern Mediterranean for the next 33 years, until the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

Doria was harshly criticized for his lack of strategy, which might have obeyed to Spain and Genoa being unwilling to commit themselves in defense of the politically distant Venice, not any less to the fact that Doria owned many of the ships employed. To compensate the defeat, they captured Castelnuovo, but Charles and Venice argued about who would keep the place, causing the practical disbandment of the Holy League. The garrison, initially conceived as the beachhead of an invasion of the Ottoman Balkans, was besieged and defeated by Barbarossa in the notorious Siege of Castelnuovo.

In 1540, his nephew Giannettino Doria obtained a big victory in the Battle of Girolata, capturing Dragut, the most eminent Turkish captain other than Babarossa. Andrea had him as a galley slave in his flagship during four years. Around this time, an usual partner to Doria, Bernardino de Mendoza, achieved another victory over Ottoman privateers in the Battle of Alborán.

Andrea, Giannettino and Mendoza were recruited by Charles V in 1541 to launch an expedition to Algiers, a new attempt to capture Barbarossa. Doria tried to warn the emperor of the terrible timing of the move, as it was autumn and the Mediterranean weather was dangerous, but he was not heeded, and the Genoese reluctantly accepted to participate anyways. The result was a fiasco, as a storm disintegrated he imperial fleet, although the Dorias managed to secure the rereat of a large part of the fleet, taking a large effort to reorganize the other Genoese captains.

Italian War of 1542–1546

In 1542, the now allied French and Ottomans sacked Nice

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