#头条创作挑战赛 #
Speaking of the maritime hegemons of the Age of Exploration in the 15th-17th centuries, there was first Spain, Portugal, there was the "sea coachman" Holland, and then there was the British Empire where the sun never sets! In addition, there was no shortage of maritime powers competing with it in the same era, such as the Ottoman Empire, which dominated the Mediterranean Sea in the 16th century and competed for the Indian Ocean!
For centuries from the 15th to the 17th century, countless new and old powers tried to compete for supremacy of the seas, but history left only Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain, and the Ottoman Empire was one of many failed competitors.
Ottoman Empire
Once upon a time, the Ottoman Empire, which dominated the Mediterranean, also tried to get a piece of the Indian Ocean and wanted to gain a place in the Age of Exploration, so it sent a large army to the Indian Ocean. But the Ottoman Turks were unfavorable and lost the first battle, so the great age of exploration of the Ottoman Empire did not begin and end! And this inconspicuous battle to end the hegemony of the Ottoman seas was the Second Battle of Diu in 1538!
1538 Second Battle of Diu
In the last issue, we told the background and causes of the Second Battle of Diu, as well as the preliminary preparations and battles for this battle, and finally on September 4, 1538, the Ottoman Expeditionary Force reached the island of Diu off the northwest coast of India, and a fierce battle was about to take place...
ill will
On 4 September, the commander of the expeditionary fleet, eunuch Hadham Suleiman Pasha, arrived on the island of Diu and immediately landed 500 Ghaniserian guards on the island. At this time, the western part of the island was controlled by the local Gujaratis, and only the eastern Portuguese fortress was an "enemy occupied area" that the Muslims could not break.
Gujarat in northwest India
But the Ottoman soldiers, who had come from afar and were accustomed to looting during the war, did not care about this, believing that the entire island of Diu was occupied by Christians, so they plundered the vicinity as soon as they landed. This made the local Gujarat people dissatisfied, after all, Diu Island is still a Gujarati after all.
Ottoman Guards
And while the Ottoman army was looting unscrupulously, some Ottoman warships had successfully blocked the waters near the Portuguese fortress on the island of Diu. In the end, only one Portuguese boat, before the blockade was completely completed, sneaked out and went to Goa, where the Portuguese Indian governor was located, for help.
The location relationship between Diu and Goa
After landing on the island of Diu, the Ottoman army quickly dragged the huge artillery pieces brought from the Isthmus of Suez to the island, built artillery positions and began to besiege the Portuguese fortress. Then the defenders of the fortress put up heroic resistance with the help of the inhabitants of the city, and the two sides fought.
Gujarat army
And while the battle was in place, the new ruler of the local Gujarati, Kadejar, heard about what the Ottoman fleet was doing in Aden: the Ottomans, in order to control the entrance to the Red Sea, tricked the local chief of Aden into boarding the ship and hanged him on the mast, thereby controlling and occupying Aden.
Gujarat Sultan riding a war elephant
When Kadjar heard this, he was afraid, coupled with the looting of the Ottoman soldiers after the landing, he feared that the Ottomans would pose a greater threat to the Gujarat sultanate than the Portuguese! So he refused to board the flagship of the Ottoman commander-in-chief Suleiman (after all, Chief Aden had been tricked into being hanged on a ship), and refused to supply the eunuch Suleiman's fleet as agreed.
Social landscape of the Gujarat Sultanate
In addition to the ruler Kadjar, the lords of Gujarat were also angry at the plundering of the Ottoman soldiers, and they were all afraid that the Ottomans would not leave after the victory, which was a more deadly threat than the Portuguese! Therefore, when the Ottomans fought fiercely, a wait-and-see policy was generally adopted.
Gujarati social landscape
But the Ottomans did not realize this, but also very boldly attacked the outer wall of the Portuguese fortress, as a result, after the resistance and counterattack of 50 Portuguese defenders, the arrogant and ignorant Ottomans were quickly repelled, and the Ottomans' plan to quickly take the fortress fell through.
Ottoman warriors
What was more serious than the failure of the attack was that the Ottoman expeditionary force at this time lost the trust and support of the local Gujaratis, and this eventually made the Ottoman army fighting overseas fall short, and ended up with a disadvantage and a defeat...
Guild wars
Originally, the Ottoman Empire had come to the aid of Bahadur Shah, the ruler of the Gujarat Sultanate, but after Bahadur's death, his successor Kadejar did not dare to deal with the Ottomans for the reasons mentioned above, and even defected to the Portuguese side at any time during the battle.
The drowning of Bahadur Shah
Faced with this situation, Hadem Suleiman Pasha could only attack hard, as long as the Portuguese fortress in the west of Diu was captured in time, everything would be solved. So on September 4, 1538, just after the Ottoman army landed, they attacked the newly built defensive fortress built by the Portuguese outside Diu, and sent more than 900 Janissaries to sack the city of Diu, and many Gujarat lords who were originally in a wait-and-see attitude also joined the battle.
Hadem Suleiman Pasha
Three days later, however, a storm struck, causing the Ottoman fleet to lose some of its ships and equipment that had not yet been removed. It just so happened that on September 7, the Ottomans attacked the city unfavorably, and they concentrated all the artillery and more than a thousand soldiers who came ashore, preparing to build a position here, gain a foothold, and slowly take the Portuguese fortress.
However, this made the local lords once again distrust the Ottomans, because in their opinion, the Ottomans had obviously slowed down the work and began to gain a foothold here, wanting to sit down and become kings after the city! As a result, the local lords began to refuse any assistance to the Ottomans.
Gujarat locals
And the hapless Ottomans, only under the distrustful eyes of the local Gujarati allies, began to build siege positions: they installed artillery emplacements; digging trenches besieging fortresses; Pile up chest walls with dug earth; Sea warships also carried out guard patrols near the fortress to prevent the defenders from attempting to escape.
Ottomans digging trenches
Even so, on 14 September, Portuguese rescue troops arrived from Goa. After several weeks of fighting, the two sides won and lost, but the Ottoman siege was never achieved. By September 28, the Ottoman army and navy simultaneously fired at the fortress with artillery, hoping to suppress the defenders with superior firepower.
Diu Island and Goa
And the tenacious Portuguese, in addition to returning fire, also engaged in a close shallow water naval battle with the Ottomans with their small warships, sinking 1 Calais battleship of the Ottoman fleet with the loss of 2 small boats. And after a long period of infallibility, the Ottomans began to lay siege to another fortress built by the Portuguese on the mainland.
Ottomanchalai battleship
On the mainland coast across the sea from Diu, only 40 Portuguese defenders held a small fortress, but because of the more advanced design of the ridge fortress, it was easy to defend and difficult to attack. It was also the focus of the local Gujarati army's offensive.
The Portuguese fortress of Diu with a fortress design
The Ottomans began to storm the area on September 10, investing nearly a thousand soldiers, and failed to take it for two weeks. It was not until October 1 that the exhausted Portuguese in the fortress agreed with the Ottomans to withdraw to the island of Diu.
Portrait of a Portuguese in India
The Portuguese detachment attempted to surrender honorably on 1 October as weapons and supplies ran out, and the eunuch Suleiman ostensibly acceded to the Portuguese's request to withdraw to Diu, but in fact captured them on Ottoman warships as soon as they left the city.
Small Ottoman galleons
The cunning Hadem Suleiman Pasha then detained the Portuguese detachment and forced them to write to the commander of the fortress of Diu, António da Silveira, urging him to surrender. Of course, Hadem Suleiman himself sent a threatening letter written in his own handwriting:
Portuguese soldier in the 16th century
In the letter, the eunuch Suleiman boasted that the Ottoman army had experienced a hundred battles and disdained the fortresses of Westerners, and said that whether it was Rhodes, where the Knights Hospitaller was stationed, or Belgrade, which was heavily defended by Hungary, they eventually fell under the great martial arts of the Ottoman Empire.
And the general Silvera was not ambiguous, decisively refused the request to surrender, and scolded the eunuch Suleiman for his treachery, calling him a "seedless woman" and a "stupid liar", and mockingly insulting Pasha for not being a man. This angered the eunuch Suleiman, who executed the captured Portuguese squad in a fit of rage and continued the siege.
The Ottomans siege and the Portuguese defend
In fact, the Portuguese garrison Antonio Silvera was not a whim, he knew very well that he, like the Ottomans, was fighting overseas far from home, and the numerical advantage that the Ottoman army was proud of was greatly weakened!
Small warships of the Portuguese
In particular, the local forces in India are very cooperative on the surface, but in fact they have their own ghosts. And the fortress of Diu had just been completed, absorbing the advanced prismatic fortress design of Western Europe, easy to defend and difficult to attack, and the advantages of the siege artillery that the Ottomans were proud of were also neutralized.
Portuguese fortress (left on the map)
And after weeks of fighting, the Ottomans still used the old style of play against medieval castles, giving Antonio Silvera more confidence that he could force the Ottomans back!
Tough winning
The enraged Hadem Suleiman Pasha, on October 5, 1538, launched a new onslaught, and after his sappers completed the blockade of the fortress of Diu, a new round of heavy artillery fire began...
The artillery used by the Ottomans to attack Diu
The offensive lasted 27 days, but had little success. Even during this period, 5 small boats from Goa arrived at the fortress to replenish ammunition for the defenders and defend the port. In the end, the Portuguese held the mouth of the Diu fortress with difficulty.
The silhouette shape of the island of Diu
In the nearly one month that followed, both sides basically repeated the operation of "Ottoman siege of the city during the day, Portuguese repair of the city at night", during which the two sides carried out tunnel warfare and anti-tunnel warfare, strong attack and counter-offensive warfare, sea blockade and sea breakthrough battles, in short, both sides were exhausted to the end!
Ruins of the fortress of Dium
Finally, on October 30, the Ottoman commander-in-chief Hadem Suleiman Pasha decided to make a final bold attempt, pretending to withdraw his troops and secretly ambushing the nearby seas, preparing to pour out the nest the next morning to attack the fortress of Diu.
Portuguese artillery in the fortress of Diu
But Silvera was also on guard, keeping the defenders alert and holding out. Seeing that the deception plan had failed, the eunuch Suleiman had to dispatch the whole army to carry out another melee. In this battle, the Portuguese annihilated more than 500 Ottoman soldiers who had attacked the city, and then fired heavily on the Ottomans below with artillery fire from the defenders.
Battle of Diu
At this time, the eunuch Suleiman finally said helplessly: This expedition is doomed to return without success! But it was not only the Ottomans who were on the verge of collapse, and the Portuguese defenders in the city were reduced from more than 600 to 40, half of them wounded.
Portuguese defenders in the fortress at the Battle of Diu
So in the last days of the Ottoman siege, almost all the fortress defenders plus the inhabitants of men, women and children went into battle to kill the enemy! Facing an Ottoman army several times their own, the Portuguese finally held the fortress of Diu with great tenacity.
After the Ottomans retreated, the Portuguese raided
In view of the fact that the fortress could not be taken for a long time and the relationship between the Ottomans and the local lords of Gujarat continued to deteriorate, it was especially heard that the Portuguese were gathering a fleet in Goa at this time, preparing to come to the rescue of the island of Diu. In the end, Hadem Suleiman Pasha led the expeditionary force to retreat on November 6th!
Dium fortress moat
It is said that the Ottoman army retreated in disarray, and the bodies of 1,200 dead and 500 wounded soldiers were lost in India, along with the heavy weight and weapons needed for the dismantling of the camp and the siege. Seeing the failure of the operation, the Gujarati also led their army to retreat, burning down the camp left by the Ottomans before leaving.
Gujarat soldier with wife
The Second Battle of Diu, which lasted three months, ended in a hard-won victory for the Portuguese! And as for the retreating eunuch Suleiman, he cautiously withdrew the fleet to the Red Sea. As he did in Aden, he killed the ruler of Yemen and placed the territory under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman governor.
Yemen
He then made a pilgrimage to Mecca, trying to make Sultan Suleiman still see himself as a jihadist. After everything was done, the eunuch Suleiman finally traveled via Cairo to the imperial capital Istanbul to meet the sultan. Despite his defeat and defeat in the first battle, Suleiman rewarded his loyalty and gave him a seat at the Diwan Conference (similar to the State Council), like the sultan's viziers.
Suleiman the Magnificent
Because the expedition of 1538 was unsuccessful, but not fruitless: Aden, for example, was annexed to Ottoman territory, and the Ottomans controlled the entrance to the Red Sea and drove the Portuguese out of the Red Sea, which was undoubtedly a major strategic victory.
But the defeat was also very harmful: the Portuguese, realizing that Ottoman power was a great threat in India, sent large expeditions to the Red Sea in the following years, and continued to harass and plunder cities along the Red Sea.
The route of the Ottomans in the Battle of Diu
In response to the constant harassment of the Portuguese, the Ottoman Empire considered a second expedition, of course, this is an afterthought. But after the defeat of the Second Battle of Diu in 1538, the Ottomans never again tried to expand their territory eastward as far as the Indian coast.
This siege completely dispelled the Ottomans from continuing to send large-scale troops to the Indian Ocean, and although the eunuch Suleiman had hoped for a second expedition to take revenge, it was never possible. After that, the Ottoman Empire gradually continued its long battle for the Indian Ocean with Portugal by directly sending troops to intervene, supporting proxies and sending military advisers.
Ottoman Indian Ocean Fleet
But even so, this expedition to the Indian Ocean and an attempt to join the Age of Exploration for a piece of the pie did not end, and the Ottomans completely lost the opportunity to participate in the Age of Exploration, and finally gradually abandoned by the times in the following hundreds of years, and finally decayed and gradually went to extinction...