Pedro Navarro

Pedro Navarro
Portrait of Pedro Navarro, engraving by Juan Brunetti from a drawing by José Maea for the collection Retratos de los españoles ilustres published by the Imprenta Real between 1791 and 1819
Born	1460 Garde? (Navarre)
Died	September 1528(1528-09-00) (aged 67–68) Naples
Military career
Allegiance	Spain (1500–1512) France (1515–1528)
Rank	General
Commands	General of infantry, artillery and sappers. Admiral
Conflicts	Italian Wars

Pedro Navarro (Garde?, Navarre, c. 1460 – Naples, c. September 1528), Count of Oliveto, was a condottiero, nobleman, sailor, soldier and engineer from the Kingdom of Navarre.

Pedro Navarro is famous for his actions in the Italian Wars and in North Africa, as well as for the invention of the land mine. He fought in the service of Naples, Aragon and France.

Life

Youth

Little is known about this period, and there is controversy regarding his place and date of birth and his parents. The most widespread opinion is that he was born in Garde (Navarre), around 1460, as Pedro Bereterra, and that he was the son of a hidalgo named Pedro del Roncal (the valley in which Garde lies). Some authors, such as José de Vargas Ponce and Martín de los Heros, suppose him to have been a Biscayan from Encartaciones, and believe that his name was Pereda or Beretta. According to the contemporary historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo:

This Count Pedro Navarro was Navarrese by birth, and the son of a hidalgo named Pedro de Roncal, whom I knew, and from boyhood he served the Marquis of Cortón, a knight of the Kingdom of Naples, who was taken prisoner by the Turks and carried off to Turkey; and in a ship of the Marquis this Pedro Navarro went privateering in the Mediterranean Sea, and did good things, for which the Marchioness, wife of the said Marquis, and Don Enrique his son, gave the ship to Pedro Navarro....

— Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo

During his youth he devoted himself to herding and the labors of the land, and he may also have worked in an iron mine in Biscay.

Mercenary and privateer

He went to Italy, in the service of some Genoese merchants whom he had reportedly met in Sangüesa, and later of Cardinal John of Naples (son of the King of Naples Ferdinand I), who died in 1485. It is also possible that he had some direct relationship (in the pay of a shipowner) or indirect one (acting as a fence) with privateering.

Be that as it may, it is known that he enlisted as a private in the Florentine troops that were fighting against Genoa over the territorial disputes between the two republics in the year 1487. It was in this war that his way of handling gunpowder made him famous. Under the command of the condottiero Piero del Monte he took part in the siege of Sarzanello Castle (1487), in Sarzana (La Spezia).

This battle is famous for the first use of military land mines, of which Navarro is considered the inventor in Europe. It consisted of using soldiers of the besieging army to dig tunnels up to the foundations of the walls of the fortifications, filling them with gunpowder (a technique used for this purpose for the first time by Navarro) and, upon detonating them, the walls collapsed and the subsequent assault was made easier. However, this first time it did not achieve the desired results, but it brought down part of the wall, for which his pay was doubled.

When the war ended he went to Naples, where he formed a relationship with the Valencian nobleman Antonio Centelles, holder of the Marquisate of Crotone and engaged in privateering, and entered his service. Sailing with two or more ships from the town of Crotone, Centelles and Navarro (who had military experience) attacked ships and ports, both on the Greek coasts (many of them under Ottoman rule) and in North Africa. They captured slaves whom they then sold in Italy, and they robbed the merchandise of Turkish and North African ships, as well as of the Europeans who traded with those ports.

In 1495, at the start of the first Italian War, in which the Catholic Monarchs, allied with the Papacy in the Holy League (1495), confronted Charles VIII of France for control of the Kingdom of Naples. Both sides hired privateers, and Centelles sided with the French, since he had suffered the expropriation of his lordship during the operations of the Great Captain in Calabria.

When the war ended in 1497, ownership of the marquisate was restored to Centelles, who returned to piracy together with Navarro, whose actions made him feared, and he became known as Roncal el Salteador ("Roncal the Raider") among the seafaring people of Italy and the Muslim coasts. He even assaulted the well-armed ships of the Republic of Venice, then the greatest naval power in the Adriatic, to the point that the matter was debated in the Senate of the Republic, which resolved to put an end to him. It entrusted the mission to a force of three hundred men in a flotilla under the command of Captain Loredano. For this purpose they landed at Roccella Ionica, where Navarro was, and he was able to resist the attack with the reinforcements that Centelles sent him from Crotone, taking refuge in the town's castle and withstanding the siege for several days until Loredano withdrew.

Shortly afterward Centelles was captured by the Turks, taken to Istanbul and executed. His possessions, including the marquisate and the ships, passed into the hands of his widow, who placed them at Navarro's disposal so that he could continue privateering.

In the service of the Great Captain

File:MonGranCapitan01.jpg

Monument in honor of the Great Captain in Córdoba (Spain)

In the year 1499 he unsuccessfully attacked a ship of Portuguese pirates and was wounded by an arquebus shot, so he decided to return to Civitavecchia, where he landed and kept to his bed for a swift recovery. While there he had time to think, and he decided not to return to the sea, but to devote himself to what he did best, which was the handling of gunpowder and military engineering. After recovering from his wounds he decided to enter the service of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the Great Captain, for whom he felt great admiration, and who put him in charge of the handling of gunpowder and of engineering.

In May 1500 he sailed from the port of Málaga bound for Messina, where the Spanish squadron and that of the Republic of Venice joined together, and together they began a naval war against the Turks to recover the Venetian possessions in Greece.

The objective of the expedition was Cephalonia, a stronghold that was placed under siege. At the fortress of Saint George in this city, defended by Janissaries under the command of an Albanian Captain named Gisdar, Navarro was able to test a new composition of gunpowder for the mines, in addition to sulfur, which was introduced burning into the embrasures, scorching the defenders and causing them to abandon the defenses to avoid its poisonous fumes.

He did not manage to bring down the wall entirely, but on 25 November 1500, by mining from boats at sea level the rocks on which the castle walls stood, he succeeded in bringing down a section of wall. Through this breach the attack on the castle began, which was bravely defended by the Turkish garrison. The accounts of the period vary the number of defenders between 300 and 700, and the duration of the taking of Cephalonia between 40 days and several months.

After the taking of those fortresses, in 1503 the Great Captain honored Pedro Navarro with the title of Count of Oliveto

Naples

When the war against the Turks ended, he followed Gonzalo de Córdoba in his second Neapolitan campaign with the rank of captain. There he again demonstrated his knowledge, contributing to the reform and modernization of the infantry as a key element of the new army that the Great Captain was structuring in those years.

In accordance with the provisions of the Spanish-French Treaty of Granada (November 1500), Spanish soldiers landed at Tropea (July 1501) to take possession of the regions of Calabria and Apulia and to subdue the pockets of local resistance. Navarro stood out in the ensuing operations. Also as a sailor, since he defeated a French squadron that was attempting to supply (in breach of the treaty) the besieged in Taranto (February 1502).

Once hostilities between Spaniards and French had openly begun after the repeated violations of the treaty, it fell to Navarro to repel the first great onslaught of the large French army sent by Louis XII to occupy the whole Kingdom of Naples. With only 500 men at the outset, he repulsed three attacks at Canosa (August 1502), preventing its loss at all costs; but he received the order from Don Gonzalo to abandon it, having managed to inflict many casualties on the enemy and delay its advance, giving the Great Captain time to organize the defense of Barletta. Thus, Navarro negotiated a capitulation with D'Aubigny to evacuate the 150 survivors of the siege, and to show that he was doing so in compliance with an order, he had his troops march out with banners unfurled and drums beating.

Castel Nuovo (Naples)

He took part as Captain of infantry and artillery in the victory of Cerignola (28 April 1503). He continued the conquest of the Italian peninsula, and on 15 May the city of Naples fell into Spanish hands, with the Castel Nuovo still remaining in the power of the French.

As this fortress was almost impregnable, Navarro was charged with preparing one of his mines, which at last worked just as Navarro wished. Under the cover of the artillery he set the sappers to work next to the wall and had barrels of gunpowder placed in the excavations (one of them beneath the French powder magazine) and then had them completely sealed. On 11 July the Great Captain deployed soldiers in the field to simulate an assault, and the French garrison took up positions on the battlements. Navarro then ordered the gunpowder to be set alight, and the resulting explosion brought down a section of the wall (carrying with it in its fall the defenders stationed there), through which the Spaniards then entered, finally forcing the surrender of the citadel the following day.

Castel dell'Ovo (Naples)

Next, Gonzalo de Córdoba headed with most of the troops to Gaeta to drive the French completely out of the kingdom, and left Navarro in charge of the conquest of the other fortress of the Neapolitan capital: the Castel dell'Ovo (Egg Castle), which he accomplished following the previous procedure, after which he rejoined him. All these events and the manner in which they were carried out, together with the massive destruction they produced, spread rapidly through Europe, so that Navarro gained recognition, and he even came to be called "the inventor of the modern military mine".

Aware of the entry of a new French army into Italy, Córdoba postponed the taking of Gaeta in order to intercept it on the banks of the Garigliano River. And in the engagement (from mid-October until the final Spanish offensive of 28 December 1503), Navarro was in command of infantry and sapper troops and set fire to the bridge over the river to cut off the French. He also took part in the rest of the subsequent operations until the complete pacification of the kingdom.

Once the Treaty of Lyon (February 1504) had been signed, in which Louis XII recognized the sovereignty of Ferdinand the Catholic over Naples, the new Viceroy Gonzalo de Córdoba distributed titles and properties among his most outstanding officers. Pedro Navarro received the town and county of Alvito.

When disagreements arose between Ferdinand and his Viceroy, Navarro traveled to Spain, sent by the latter, to attempt, unsuccessfully, a reconciliation. In September 1506, the King himself went to Naples. He organized the administration of the kingdom and removed Gonzalo de Córdoba and his captains from their posts, stripping the latter of their lordships, with the exception of Navarro. He, on 4 June 1507, being Admiral of the Neapolitan fleet, returned to Spain together with the Monarch. Navarro sailed ahead of the royal Armada with his 16 ships. After picking up the Great Captain in Genoa, they arrived on 28 June at Savona, from where they sailed four days later, after the King had met with Louis XII of France. On 14 June they reached Barcelona, but were unable to land because of a recent plague, so the King finally landed in Valencia on the 21st, where Navarro was already waiting for him.

Back in Spain

Shortly afterward he received a royal order from the Catholic King to take command of an army in order to bring back into line the Duke of Nájera, Regent of Castile and León, who was increasingly rebellious against the designs of the Aragonese, who had married for a second time, to Germaine of Foix, in fulfillment of the Treaty of Blois with France. When Navarro appeared with his forces, the Duke of Nájera did not think it wise to give battle against the renowned soldier, and so he urged him to open talks in order to reach an agreement and, with it, peace.

Because of Nájera's excellent response, and the swift conclusion that had been reached owing to Navarro's fame, the King appointed him Captain General of his Armada in 1508, with the mission of conquering strongholds in North Africa, which were of vital importance for keeping the Barbary pirates at bay.

African campaigns

The next important mission that the King entrusted to Navarro was to combat Barbary piracy and privateering, which were becoming a serious problem for merchant shipping. From the spring of 1508, Navarro commanded a flotilla capturing or sinking pirate and privateer vessels, generally light fustas or galliots.

On 23 July of the same year he reached the Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, located a little less than a hundred meters from the coastal town of the same name. Both places were an important center of privateers. Navarro placed all the ships within cannon range of the islet, and they fled to take refuge in Vélez. Once the peñón had been taken, he had the artillery brought up onto it, and with it he completely destroyed the town and its port. As the peñón was a strategic point, he ordered it fortified and left in it a garrison of thirty-two men under the command of the alcaide Juan de Villalobos.

A short time later he went to the aid of the Portuguese detachment at Arcila, which was being attacked by numerous troops of the King of Fez, and he forced them to lift the siege and withdraw after bombarding them from the ships.

The conquest of Oran

Main article: Conquest of Oran (1509)

Cardinal Cisneros at the taking of Oran. Mural painting by Juan de Borgoña in 1514, preserved in Toledo Cathedral.

In Spain, Cardinal Cisneros convinced King Ferdinand of the advisability of undertaking military incursions into North Africa, offering to finance them himself with the revenues of his ecclesiastical lordship. The Monarch appointed Cisneros himself Captain General of the campaign, and Navarro maese de campo in charge of directing operations in the field. Navarro accepted Cisneros's appointment with displeasure.

The forces were concentrated in the port of Cartagena: 90 ships (80 transports and 10 galleys) and 22,000 soldiers. Frictions soon arose between the Cardinal and the Count. The first of them was over the booty obtained, before departure, from the capture of several Moorish fustas, which Navarro distributed entirely among those who had taken part in the assaults, instead of allocating half of it to finance the expedition, as had been agreed.

The fleet sailed on 16 May 1509 and arrived the following day at Mazalquivir, the bridgehead (under Spanish control since 1505) from which, on the 18th, they would set out for the conquest of the first objective: Oran, a nearby and important coastal city of 10,000 inhabitants, well fortified and equipped with artillery.

Cisneros intended to march himself at the head of the formation, but in the end Navarro convinced him to remain in Mazalquivir, and planned an attack by sea and land that ultimately culminated in an easy victory. While the fleet bombarded the walls, the land force, which Navarro divided into four corps, engaged the enemy on the outskirts of the city. The Spanish artillery and cavalry forced the defenders to fall back until they had to shelter inside Oran. Once the siege positions had been consolidated, the assault with scaling ladders began, under artillery cover and with the help of mines. When it seemed that the battle was being decided on top of the walls, the attackers entered through the city gates. The fighting continued, for a short time, in the streets and in the port.

The final result, after barely two or three hours of combat, was 4,000 to 5,000 enemy casualties against only 300 of their own, and a great subsequent sack of the city and of the ships captured in the port by sailors and soldiers, who seized booty of 500,000 escudos in coins, merchandise, slaves and hostages. Navarro took possession of Oran in the name of the King, so that the stronghold passed into the hands of the Crown, thereby depriving Cisneros of command from then on, and he had to return to Spain.

Taking of Bougie and Tripoli

Despite Cisneros's complaints to the King about Navarro, the Monarch confirmed him in his post at the head of the campaign and sent him reinforcements to continue it. After spending the winter in Formentera, he prepared to capture the rich city of Bougie.

He arrived in its vicinity with 5,000 soldiers on 5 January 1510 and began the attack at dawn the following day. Facing him was a petty king named Abderrahmán with some 10,000 defenders, whom he hurled against the Spaniards as they were landing, while bombarding them from the city. However, the Spaniards repelled the attack thanks to the help of the naval artillery protecting them, and then began the siege, bombarding from land and sea. When they finally penetrated the city, most of the fighting took place in its streets, and the city surrendered at midday after the flight of Abderrahmán and his retinue and the death of many of its inhabitants.

Afterward Navarro took advantage of the disputes between Abderrahmán, in reality a usurper, and his nephew, the young King Muley Abdallá. The latter guided him to the nearby mountains where his uncle and the fugitives who had joined him had taken refuge. The man from Roncal attacked them at night with 500 Spaniards. Abderrahmán escaped once again, but 300 of his men died, another 600 were captured along with his first wife, his daughter and high officials of the city, and his camp, with its very valuable possessions, was plundered and then burned by the Spaniards. The latter, who increased their booty with the livestock and camels captured and the ransom collected for the hostages, suffered only one casualty in this incursion into the mountains.

The resounding military successes achieved by Navarro up to then intimidated the kings of the city-states of Algiers and Ténès (not to be confused with Tunis), who offered vassalage to the King of Spain and freed all the Christians they held captive.

After consolidating control in the region, the Count reorganized the fleet in July (1510) on the Sicilian islet of Favignana and embarked with more than 14,000 men for the conquest of Tripoli, where he would face a similar number of defenders protected by strong walls and bastions.

The battle took place on 25 July after the landing. After the artillery of both sides went into action, the walls were successfully stormed. Then began an exhausting house-to-house struggle that lasted well into the night, and which ended with some 200 or 300 Spanish dead and 5,000 Barbary dead, plus as many more of the latter captured as slaves. Once again the victors seized considerable booty, including that obtained from the capture of the ships in the port, among them five relief ships sent (too late) by the Turkish Sultan and Turkish, Albanian and Venetian or Genoese merchant ships that arrived (unaware of what had happened) at Tripoli to unload.

The failure of Gelves and the Kerkennah Islands

Encouraged by these victories, Navarro expressed to the King his willingness to continue at the head of the enterprise with new and more ambitious conquests. But his status as a hidalgo of humble origin worked against him, and he was displaced by the young and inexperienced García de Toledo, firstborn son of the second Duke of Alba, whom the Monarch had already appointed in April Captain General of Africa, with his seat in Bougie.

Island of Djerba (Tunisia)

At the beginning of August, under the command of Don García, some 7,000 men embarked on fifteen heavy naos were ready to sail from Málaga, but a North African epidemic of plague forced the departure to be postponed. Meanwhile, Navarro studied the possibility of attacking the island of Djerba (also called the island of Gelves), a well-known refuge of Barbary privateers off the eastern Tunisian coast. For this reason he left Tripoli at the beginning of the month with a reconnaissance expedition of eight galleys and a fusta. He tried to persuade the principal chiefs of the island to agree to render vassalage to the King of Spain in order to avoid confrontation. When they refused, he decided to await the arrival of reinforcements to begin the invasion.

Don García finally set sail, took possession in Bougie, left there part of his fleet with 3,000 men, and joined Navarro (who would be his second-in-command) on 23 August 1510 in Tripoli to prepare the expedition. The fleet arrived on the 29th and 8,000 men landed, who had to do so in boats because of the shallow waters along the coast. Once on land, the army was divided into seven squadrons, each under the command of a Colonel. Don García insisted on marching himself in the leading one, together with a hundred young men of the Castilian nobility.

The mission consisted of attacking a castle where the privateers were quartered, and the troops headed there across a sandy area and under stifling heat. The commanders, confident that they would achieve an easy and swift victory, did not order provisions or water to be carried. The soldiers, who also had to haul the artillery by hand, fell victim to the heat, thirst and exhaustion, and many fainted. On sighting vegetation, they made for it, and on arriving there the first men of the vanguard squadron discovered a well. As soon as word spread among the troops, they rushed impatiently and in disorder toward it, completely breaking up the formation despite the officers' attempts to restore order. At that moment a few hundred Barbary fighters lying in ambush took advantage of the situation to attack on foot and on horseback, killing all those who did not manage to escape. Approximately half of the Spaniards (some 4,000) lay dead in the sand, including Don García and other nobles. The rest fled in disorder toward the shore.

Outside the palm grove, the enemy was far more numerous (up to 4,000 men), and Navarro, with the help of Pedro de Luján and other colonels, tried to organize the rearguard squadrons to face them, understanding that otherwise the catastrophe could be total, but he could not stop the rout. Fortunately for the survivors, the Moorish horsemen and foot soldiers did not continue the pursuit. Some 3,000 Spaniards who were unable to re-embark that day had to wait all night on the beach for the arrival of the boats that picked them up.

The disaster did not end there, for on the 31st a strong storm wrecked several ships and scattered the sailing vessels, which were left at the mercy of the wind. The nao in which Navarro was traveling drifted to the coasts of Turkey and there almost sank when its frames opened up. The crew was saved thanks to the seamanship of the man from Roncal, who managed to heel the ship over onto one side and sail it that way to Tripoli. Having regrouped some time later, the thirty sailing ships and 5,000 men that remained wintered in Lampedusa.

Kerkennah Islands (Tunisia)

Despite all these great setbacks and the harshness of winter, Navarro still had the strength to undertake another incursion into Muslim territory. The objective was the Kerkennah Islands, rich in fresh water and pasture for livestock. He intended to supply the fleet with meat and water. After several failed attempts due to bad weather, on 20 February 1511 an advance party of 400 men landed on the largest of the islands under the command of the Venetian Colonel Jerónimo Vianelo (Girolamo Vianello). But the treachery of an Ensign, enraged by a quarrel with him, wrecked the mission: the local inhabitants who had taken refuge at one end of the island cut the throats of Vianelo and his men during the night while they slept. Navarro had to withdraw with the ships to the island of Capri.

Back in Italy

Although the disaster of Gelves earned Navarro many enemies at Court, the King again relied on him, although once more he was relegated from command in favor of a nobleman. He was ordered to go with his fleet to Naples and place himself at the disposal of the Viceroy Ramón de Cardona, Captain General of the allied armies of the Holy League (1511), which would fight in Italy against those of Ferrara, Florence and Louis XII of France.

Bologna and Ravenna

On 2 November 1511, with Cardona at its head and Navarro as General of infantry, an expedition left Naples with the intention of dislodging the French from Bologna. Before beginning the siege of this city, the man from Roncal took charge of forcing the surrender, first with mines and then with the infantry, of the fortress of Genivolo (end of December 1511). Afterward (16 January 1512) the aforementioned siege began with artillery, while Navarro attempted to blow up the city walls. However, owing to the dampness, the cold, the snowfall at the time and the soft, porous ground on which they stood, the mines did not work. When Gaston de Foix-Nemours, Captain General of the French in Italy, managed to reinforce the defense with 10,000 men, Cardona judged the taking of Bologna to be impossible and ordered the siege lifted.

The next major engagement between Foix and Cardona was the battle of Ravenna (11 April 1512). The Frenchman carried out an enveloping maneuver that allowed him to open artillery fire squarely on the allied heavy cavalry, inflicting heavy casualties and causing Fabrizio Colonna, in command of it, to launch a desperate attack on its French counterpart. Colonna's men, together with the light cavalry of the Marquis of Pescara, who came to their aid, were overrun by the experienced French heavy cavalry, much superior on the flat terrain where the clash took place. Seeing the battle lost, Cardona fled together with the rearguard troops.

The Spanish infantry, in the front line and under Navarro's command, held its position and managed to withstand successive onslaughts of the enemy infantry: of Landsknecht mercenaries, of the French and of that of Ferrara. Foix regrouped all the troops and launched a new attack with them. As it was impossible to repel it this time, Navarro organized an orderly retreat. In a cavalry charge against the men covering it, Foix himself was killed. The Count of Oliveto was wounded and captured by an enemy soldier.

Paradoxically, the Battle of Ravenna ended with more casualties on the victorious French side. In fact, had it not been for Cardona's withdrawal, the victory would have gone to the League, since after Navarro had managed to resolve the adverse situation, the troops of the third line with whom the Viceroy fled could have carried out a decisive counterattack. Despite this, Cardona and other generals blamed the man from Roncal for the defeat, reproaching him for not having attacked from the beginning (thus also covering the cavalry) instead of waiting.

Navarro remained a prisoner of the Duke of Longueville, who demanded a ransom of 20,000 gold escudos for him and confined him in his castle of Loches (October 1512). Ferdinand the Catholic attempted to free him without paying that sum, first by force, which the castle guard prevented, and then diplomatically (also without success), taking advantage of the truces signed with France.

In the service of France

Francis I, son-in-law and successor of Louis XII, aware of Navarro's valor and intelligence, proposed to him in 1515 that he enter his service with the rank of general. He accepted the offer, given that for three years the King of Spain had refused to pay the ransom Longueville demanded, and he returned the title of Count of Oliveto (which the Monarch would later award to Ramón de Cardona). Symbolically, Navarro had become a natural subject of King Ferdinand during his captivity, since from 1512 the Kingdom of Navarre was conquered by the Catholic Monarch, ceasing to depend on the House of Labrit and passing into the hands of the Trastámaras. However, the attempts to recover the Pyrenean kingdom dragged on until 1525. In those attempts his relatives and neighbors, the people of Roncal, were the most faithful and loyal supporters of the recovery of the kingdom for its legitimate owners, the house of Labrit or Albret, a fact that Spanish historiography tends to overlook.

Navarro began his new task by recruiting twenty companies of Gascons, Basques and Navarrese to support a new French incursion into Italy. In the summer of 1515, a large army (50,000 soldiers) crossed the Alps, easily took Novara, Vigevano and Pavia, and prepared to take full control of the Milanese. At the Battle of Marignano (13–14 September 1515) the French infantry he commanded prevailed over the Swiss thanks to the order and fire discipline he established in the ranks of arquebusiers and crossbowmen. On 4 October he brought down with artillery and mines the walls of the Sforza Castle in Milan, in which Duke Maximilian was holding out, although during the action he was wounded in the head by a stone splinter.

Brescia

The Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire and Spain had allied to confront France, which in turn had the support of Genoa and Venice. The latter had lost Brescia to the Imperials, who occupied the city with a Spanish garrison of a few hundred men.

In November 1515, the Venetian ambassador in Milan persuaded Navarro to command the conquest of that city, and he headed there with 8,000 soldiers, most of them Gascons, Basques and Navarrese whom he had recruited the previous year. In the same month the siege positions were already fixed. In December excavations began for the placement of mines next to the citadel. The Spaniards, who already knew the technique, having learned it from him, guided themselves by the noise of the picks and dug countermines which they then detonated. Besides frustrating the enemy's plans, they killed many of the sappers who were in the underground galleries, among them a Venetian officer whom they at first mistook for Navarro himself. The failure of the attack and news of the arrival of German reinforcements led him to lift the siege temporarily.

After collaborating with several high commanders in other military operations in northern Italy, in May 1516 he took command of 5,000 foot soldiers who joined the troops of Teodoro da Trivulzio to carry out a final assault on Brescia. After part of its defenders had deserted for lack of pay, and given their numerical inferiority, the French managed to force the surrender of the city by agreeing to a capitulation with the Spanish Captain of the garrison, the Catalan Lluís d'Icart, who was allowed to leave the place together with his men, carrying their weapons, equipment and possessions.

Brief privateering period

Once the war had ended (August 1516), and having been left without occupation as a result, Navarro decided to devote himself to privateering, establishing his base of operations in Marseille. He obtained 20,000 ducats from the French Court, with which he fitted out a fleet of 18 ships, in which he embarked 6,000 men to raid the coasts of Barbary. He set sail toward the end of the year with high expectations, but the cold, the lack of food and disease frustrated his intentions, and he had to return to France in January 1517.

In May of the same year he again set out from Marseille, this time to confront the Barbary privateers, with 15 vessels for the purpose, among them a galleon and a caravel. In October he bombarded Mehedia (Algeria), but the city's artillery defense sank one of his ships and tore the mast off another. In the subsequent landing disputes arose between the French and the Spanish mercenaries hired by Navarro, and this, together with the insufficient number of his troops, allowed him to do no more than make a small show of force before the enemy, after which he returned to Marseille.

At the end of the year he met with the Pope, to whom he expressed his desire to fight against the infidels under his auspices. With this purpose he obtained from the pontiff a small sum of funding (4,000 ducats), which helped him recruit 2,000 men. With them he sailed, in the summer of 1518, aboard nine galleons and five brigantines, but he was unable to achieve his main objective, the conquest of Monastir, because of the strong resistance put up by the defenders.

In December he obtained the support of Francis I to set out once more to fight against the North African privateers. The sovereign promised to place some twelve galleys at his disposal, but the preparation of the expedition was delayed throughout the following year by certain problems, among others the legal difficulties in recruiting galley oarsmen. When Navarro finally found himself, in October, in command of 10 ships, facing the squadron of the privateer Sinan off Mehedia, he was unable to defeat him and had to return to Provence. Hunger and disease had seriously depleted the crew. His last attempt, a year later, with four ships, would not give him the desired results either.

Rejection by Charles I

At the beginning of 1520 the French Monarch fitted out a powerful fleet in Provence and, contrary to expectations, did not give its command to Navarro, but to the brother of one of his mistresses. The man from Roncal, who had felt marginalized during the previous year, then decided to break his relationship with France and place himself at the disposal of Charles I of Spain (or Charles V as Emperor). To this end he submitted a request through the Pope and the Spanish ambassador in Rome, Juan Manuel, Lord of Belmonte, who addressed the sovereign in these terms:

The Pope has told me that Count Pedro Navarro has sent to beg him to commend him warmly to Your Majesty, which he says he will do with very good will, because it seems to him most fitting that Your Majesty should receive this man as your servant (...) I have learned that he is very discontented with the French and eager to anger them, and even more eager to serve Your Highness, which he had me informed of, should you wish to make use of him.

— Juan Manuel, Lord of Belmonte

In September, the man from Roncal specified his offer in Rome: he undertook to wrest Genoa from the Fregoso (allies of Francis I) in order to hand it over to the Adorno (associated with Charles V). The conquest would be financed by the latter, and would be carried out with some one thousand Spanish soldiers. However, and despite the good image of him conveyed by the ambassador ("he is a very distinguished person and very loyal as far as I understand"), Navarro's proposal was not taken into account by the Emperor.

Italian War of 1521–1526

Main article: Italian War of 1521–1526

When the Italian War of 1521–1526 broke out, Navarro again served Francis I, who sent him to reinforce the defense of Genoa with four galleys and 2,000 foot soldiers. Unfortunately for him, he reached the city just as the Imperials were entering it (30 May 1522), and he was captured by the maese de campo Juan de Urbina, who had been a soldier under his orders during the campaigns of the Great Captain.

The ambassador Don Juan Manuel again suggested to Charles V that he admit the man from Roncal into his service, pointing out the improvement that his leadership would mean for the Spanish fleet, thus solving the problems that had recently become evident in its operation. But this time too the Monarch refused, and ordered the prisoner to be transferred to the Castel Nuovo of Naples, the very fortress whose walls he had brought down two decades earlier. He would remain there for four years.

According to the Treaty of Madrid (14 January 1526), which put an end to the conflict, all prisoners were to be released, on condition that they return to the service of their natural lord. However, as regards Navarro, several voices at the Court of Charles V branded him a traitor, and it was evident that the sovereign wanted nothing to do with him. For this reason, he again placed himself under the orders of Francis I, who for his part very soon violated the treaty, resuming hostilities in Italy in what is known as the War of the League of Cognac.

War of the League of Cognac

Main article: War of the League of Cognac

Navarro took part in this conflict with the post of Admiral of the allied naval forces. As such he was personally directing the naval blockade of Genoa (1526) when he received news of the impending arrival of a Spanish relief fleet. He went out to intercept it with a number of ships superior to it, but failed completely when the enemy formation almost entirely evaded him. The King relieved him of the post and in exchange gave him a command on land.

Now as General of infantry, subordinate to Marshal Lautrec, the man from Roncal contributed to the taking of Genoa, Alessandria (using his mines to bring down the walls) and other lesser strongholds. The armies of the League spent the winter in Bologna and prepared for the spring campaign, with the objective of expelling from the peninsula their rival, who had fallen back on Naples.

Toward the end of February 1528, Navarro marched in the vanguard of the allied incursion into the Neapolitan kingdom. He took charge of subduing several areas and then joined Lautrec before the capital, to undertake the conquest of the last bastion of the Imperials. The siege and the camp, whose layout Navarro designed, were established on 9 April. The forecast was of a clear triumph for the League: 26,000 men against 10,000 Spaniards and Germans (in addition to a small Neapolitan infantry force and Albanian light cavalry).

The naval blockade, which was in the hands of Andrea Doria aided by his nephew Juan Andrea, seemed consolidated when the attempt by Hugo de Moncada to break it failed. However, during the siege the Genoese Admiral negotiated a change of sides with the Emperor. Thus, in the summer, after the signing of the new contract, the ships of uncle and nephew went from preventing the supply and reinforcement of the Spanish-German garrison to providing it, and began to attack the besiegers from the sea.

To deprive the besieged of water, Lautrec ordered the channels that carried it to the city to be broken. But this caused the surrounding ground, where his men were camped, to become waterlogged. And with the summer heat, mosquitoes and other insects proliferated in the area, and a virulent outbreak of plague arose among the allied troops. Despite this, the French Marshal still trusted that Naples would fall and refused to lift the siege. But he himself, like thousands of his soldiers, contracted the disease and died on 15 August. Shortly afterward Navarro began to feel its first symptoms. The Marquis of Saluzzo, Lautrec's replacement, ordered the immediate withdrawal of the army, which abandoned its artillery, tents and equipment (29 and 30 August). When the Imperials saw their enemies fleeing, they came out of the citadel in pursuit. With the light cavalry they caught up at Aversa with the largest group of them, in which Pedro Navarro was found, and he was captured by the Albanian Captain Socallo.

After spending some time in the lodging of the maese de campo Alarcón (a former comrade of his), during which his ailments improved slightly, Navarro was confined once again, by order of Charles V, in the Castel Nuovo. He was placed in the custody of the alcaide Lluís d'Icart (whom he had already encountered at Brescia in May 1516, when the latter was the Captain of the Spanish garrison he faced), who had a fireplace built in his chamber on seeing the shivering he suffered.

Pedro Navarro died in the aforementioned castle around September 1528. There are several hypotheses about this. One states that Charles V ordered him put to death. Accordingly, Captain Icart would have smothered the prisoner with a pillow: either to spare him the humiliation of a public execution, or to simulate a natural death, thereby avoiding a negative image of the King, since many soldiers who had known Navarro would have considered such an execution very degrading. Another theory is that his death was simply the logical consequence of the illness he suffered, to which one might add his already advanced age (nearly 70 years).

Navarro's body was buried beneath a slab in the Neapolitan church of Santa Maria la Nova, next to the remains of Lautrec, in a chapel owned by the Great Captain. Years later, the latter's grandson, the Duke of Sessa, had marble mausoleums carved and erected for both of them. The epitaph inscribed on Navarro's reads:

OSSIBUS ET MEMORIAE PETRI NAVARRI CANTABRI SOLERTI IN EXPUGNANDIS URBIBUS ARTE CLARISSIMI GOLSALVUS FERDINANDUS LUDOVICI FILIUS MAGNI GONSALVI NEPOS SUESSAE PRINCEPS DUCEM GALLORUM PARTES SECUTUM PIO SEPULCRI MUNERE HONESTAVIT QUUM HOS IN SE HABEAR PRAECLARA VIRTUS UT VEL IN HOSTE SIT ADMIRABILIS OBIIT AN. 1528. Aug.28

To the ashes and the memory of the Cantabrian Pedro Navarro, most illustrious in the ingenious art of storming cities. Gonzalo Fernández, son of Luis, grandson of the great Gonzalo, Prince of Sessa, honored with the pious gift of a tomb the commander who followed the party of the French, bearing in mind that outstanding valor, even in the enemy, must be admired. He died in the year 1528. August. 28

— Epitaph on Navarro's mausoleum in Naples

In Pamplona (Navarre) a central avenue of the city bears the name "Conde Oliveto".

Bibliography

Consulted

• Fernández Duro, Cesáreo: Armada Española, desde la unión de los reinos de Castilla y Aragón, published by the Naval Museum of Madrid in 1972.
• del Campo, Jesús Luis (1983). Pedro Navarro, Conde de Oliveto. Navarra. Temas de Cultura Popular (in español). Vol. 34 (3 ed.). Diputación Foral de Navarra, Dirección General de Turismo. ISBN 978-84-235-0363-6.
• Fernández de Navarrete, Martín: Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España [1] (pp. 5 to 86), Madrid, 1844.
• González de Vega, Gerardo: Mar Brava. Historias de corsarios, piratas y negreros españoles (Chapter III: Roncal el Salteador), Miraguano Ediciones, 2013, ISBN 978-84-7813-410-6
• Martín Gómez, Antonio L.: El Gran Capitán. Las Campañas del Duque de Terranova y Santángelo, Almena, 2000, ISBN 84-930713-1-5
• Priego López, Juan: Pedro Navarro y sus empresas africanas, Instituto de Estudios Africanos (CSIC), Madrid, 1953.
• Zurita y Castro, Jerónimo: Historia del rey Don Fernando el Católico. De las empresas, y ligas de Italia (PDF), 1580, especially Book IX (from the taking of Bougie to the Battle of Ravenna).

Additional

• Heros, Martín de los: Historia del conde Pedro Navarro, 1855.
• Vargas Ponce, José de: El Conde Pedro Navarro, 1808.

External links

• IZ4 (2021-11-09). "Pedro Navarro, Conde de Oliveto". IZ4 (in español). Retrieved 2023-12-31.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Portrait of Pedro Navarro with an epitome of his life included in the book Retratos de Españoles ilustres, published in 1791.
• Text adapted with the author's authorization, who permitted its reproduction in Wikipedia under the GFDL license: Foro de Historia Naval de España y Países de habla española (registration required).
• HISTORIA MILITAR DE ESPAÑA Ingenieros Militares Ilustres: PEDRO NAVARRO (1460 - 1528)
• Chronology of the life of Pedro Navarro at Condottieri di ventura (in Italian).
• Pedro Navarro, on the website of the Military Engineers of Spain.
• Navarro, Pedro, Conde de Oliveto, at www.mcnbiografias.com.