Part 19 - Go West! (1573-1581)
[video=youtube;7NZ04BG7TfA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NZ04BG7TfA&feature=related[/video]
[all credits go to the magnificent Village People for writing this song]
So despite the Ottoman attack on Epirus the session of Ali II and his Council was going on even during wartime and enacted several important decisions and extended reforms such as the foundation of a university in Tripoli, the increased responsibility of the Council in internal matters and the implementation of free religious practices for all Christians in Tripoli.
This meeting of reform continued on even after peace was signed between the Turks and the Corsairs as it had left some other matters to attend to. These things were mostly related to previous decisions and had minor influence over the whole country but there was one important act Ali wanted to be accepted by the Council before the whole session was over.
The last decision of the Long Seat (as it was called later) was the introduction of some basic institutes that could be a core for any general education system in the future - it was a rather radical thought that every child could have the same basic education regardless of their position in the society and the somewhat conservative Councilors were not pleased about this act at all but Ali ensured them that it is the only possible way of keeping the Corsair's Alliance of many different nations together. There were already a large number of immigrants in the Corsair cities and not only from other Muslim countries but from the other side of the Mediterranean as well because what they saw there was a whole different way of life - a life filled with much more freedom and much less oppression than in any other Mediterranean state.
Might as well the Long Seat was officially closed in late 1573 and the time for testing the new system had come - yet before it (and given the experience gained from the last wars that were much quicker than the ones before) some improvements for the navy and army were necessary. Governmental reforms or not the only thing standing between the freedom of the Corsair lands and the wrath of the Christian kings was the navy - thus neglecting it could easily be disastrous...
So in late 1574 a grand parade of the fleet was held in the port of Tripoli to strengthen the connection between the commoners and the seafaring men of the Corsairs.
After that a much longer (and certainly more heated) debate was started about the drill of the standing army. On one side there were the ones (including the Sultan himself) who thought that despite their recent accomplishments the role of the army is still secondary compared to that of the navy's. On the other side however were the leaders of the army and the mass of the people whose sons were serving in it: they claimed that the casualties of the recent land battles fought by Corsair forces were unacceptable.
The latter side had truth in what they said - that was without doubt but descendants of the fleet like Ali and his henchmen in the Council tended to not care about the land forces that were 'naturally inferior' to ships in the field of strategic warfare - or at least that was what they were convinced about. However it was not Ali's intention to fight his own soldiers in this matter so after a very long negotiation he (and the Council) agreed upon a new drilling and conscripting method that would lead to better trained soldiers and thus (hopefully) fewer casualties in future conflicts.
The next task at hand was the reorganization of the lower levels of the government. While the holders of the most important positions across the Corsair lands had accepted the new order (even if not so easily) there were dozens of cities and holdings (mainly islands) that were only recently freed from their former zealous despots so introducing them to the Corsair way of things seemed generally a good idea for Ali.
However it was not without exception that people resisted the envoys sent from Tripoli and then Ali had to chose between enforcing centralization or letting the people be in their freedom of doing so.
The Sultan generally favoured the latter over the former as he thought that it would bring more benefit to the country in the long run.
Speaking about benefits to the country: in early 1577 a delegation of rusty merchants appeared before Ali and told their tale about a journey across the Great Western Sea to a land that was formerly unknown to anyone in Tripoli. They said that these lands were several weeks of sailing from the Corsair outpost of Gebel al-Tarik (named after the great Muslim general
Tariq ibn Ziyad) and they added that the Crusaders of Iberia were already gained some footholds there enslaving and eradicating the defenseless locals in the name of their god.
After the merchant's departure Ali remained silent for a while - he had many thoughts in his mind all loosely connected to the others and after he reached a conclusion he called for the admiral of the fleet...
Ali had a cunning plan but before the execution of it he had to ensure that the fleet is capable of the task he was about to give them. There was a chain of islands in the eastern part of the Western Lands controlled by the Corsair's deadliest enemies: the Kingdoms of Castille, Portugal and England. Ali wanted the fleet to lead a surprise attack on those islands and seize the undefended and most vulnerable ones - the Sultan hated the thought that he fought the Crusaders for decades just to let them flee in the last moment and see them continuing their wretched practices a few thousand miles away.
After the consultation with the admiral orders were given and part of the fleet set sail - they reached the Western Lands by late fall of 1577 and when they get ashore on that land the Crusaders surely didn't know what hit them.
The poor, unprotected Portuguese colony of Saint Lucia fell quickly and the small Spanish garrison of Trinidad did not put up much of a fight either - so again it was Iberia where the war had to be decided.
Though it was more likely a raid than a full scale war as Ali had limited goals to achieve while the Crusaders had very limited ways to prevent him from doing so. In less than a month two Castilian fortress fell to the hands of the Corsairs and the Spanish army didn't even dare to engage the forces of Tripoli.
In early 1578 the Castilians capitulated - they gave up their colony of Trinidad and the Isles of Canarias just next to the Moroccan shores and paid a fair sum of gold just to have the Corsairs off their back.
By that time the Portuguese already lost Saint Lucia which was later renamed to 'Ali Amenokal'
in honour of the Sultan.
Ali II was satisfied by the success of the raid and even gave the governor title of the newly acquired lands to one of the captains who was the very first to step on the shores of the future Ali Amenokal.
With many people eager to go west, the government organized transports for them towards the Western Lands and thus the population on Saint Lucia rose quickly. The Portuguese colonist weren't expelled by force though many of them left the land towards other nearby islands that had colonies founded by their home country. Despite this (and due to the quantity of voluntary settlers) by spring 1579 Ali Amenokal had enough inhabitants to stand on its own. This was also the time when its name was officially changed.
But history didn't stop in Mediterranean too - and it was the Ottoman ambassador again who made the situation a bit more complicated. It seemed that the beatings the Turks had got from the Corsairs didn't make them see the light - namely that they do not have the force required to gain the upper hand in a conflict with us.
While the Sultan of the Ottomans agreed upon the renouncement of his claims upon the small Sultanate of Karaman, seeing that Tripoli had other interests and issues far from their homelands the Turks declared war upon the Karamanli once again - only this time without any valid cause for doing that.
Ali II was more and more convinced that this is just a test after all - the Ottomans are testing him if he got tired of waging war against them and maybe they expect that if they press this matter enough times Ali would finally give up on the Karamanli (and maybe on the Epirote too). They clearly didn't know Ali's personality too well...
While these wars were indeed costly, claimed many lives on both sides and drove away attention from other important matters Ali II definitely wasn't the man who admit defeat so easily. It was proved many times in the following year...
There were three major battles in 1580 between the forces of Tripoli and the Ottoman army on the various battlefields of Southern Greece - two of them was a defeat for Tripoli and the number of casualties showed that the generals were right: without proper training even the most fierce Corsair soldier is no match for a professional Ottoman recruit. Though in the end, in the third battle of Achaea the forces of Tripoli were finally victorious, by that time they had overwhelming superiority in numbers as the Ottoman supply lines were cut off and their fleet was defeated (and later sunk) by the allied navy.
In late 1580 news came from the recently silent Italia as well - though they were not very comforting at all: the burghers of Ancona, a protectorate of the Holy Roman Emperor sent a petition to their overlord in Austria in which they were complaining about the 'pagan neighbourhood' they 'had to endure'.
While this wasn't a direct threat to the Corsair protectorates in Toscana (at least for the time being) it gained a significant attention towards Italia in the Court. Though with the Ottoman situation still unresolved and the continuing exploration of the Western Lands the Sultan delayed this matter for a while...
Meanwhile the Turkish war was raging on though after the Ottoman defeat in Greece its intensity was much lower - with their fleet sunk their country was effectively cut in half so the Turks had lost it already. With no forces remaining in Rumelia while allied reinforcements were continuing to arrive the Ottomans finally gave up their fight - again.
Only this time Ali was a bit more permissive than before - he let the Ottomans keep the Karamanli lands which they had annexed before and in exchange he only demanded the freedom of the Epirote people and a token of monetary reparations for the Corsair war effort.
The truth was that Ali wasn't a young man anymore and he grew tired of fighting the Turks in the rest of his life - not to mention that he had more important matters to attend to on other lands. So it seemed that the Ottoman strategy of continuing the attacks to tire out Ali worked after all - yet there was another aspect of the war which they didn't realize in time: that the only thing the Holy Roman Emperor and his English allies were waiting for is to find them in a bad shape to finally initiate their plans on driving the Turks out of Europe once and for all...
expect update tomorrow! (it's 22:30 here right now so this means cca. 12 hours - currently all I need is yet another sleep to gather my thoughts together)
