That summer, Selim the Blond, aware of the mayhem Ivan was creating, dispatched his tough grand vizier, Mehmed Sokollu (a Serb, born Sokolovic´, a former grand admiral) to invade Muscovy, seize Astrakhan and build a Volga–Don canal to link the Caspian and Black Seas, but Ivan’s garrison held out and the campaign failed. With the Ottomans already fighting from Sumatra to the Mediterranean, it was just one adventure among many at the zenith of their empire. Selim had inherited his father Suleiman’s worldly ambitions, if not his glacial hauteur and the serene acumen, to run wars on three continents.
Four years earlier, the seventy-year-old Suleiman had reluctantly joined Sokollu, Prince Selim and the army in a thrust into Hungary. During a battle, Suleiman died in his tent. Sokollu won the battle, sent the news to Selim, who was now in Serbia, executed any witnesses of the sultan’s death and, propping up the cadaver in his carriage, kept the news secret for forty-eight days – quite a performance.
Selim reappointed Sokollu as grand vizier and granted his Jewish adviser, Joseph Nasi, monopolies on wine and beeswax as well as appointing him duke of Naxos and the Seven Isles (the only Jewish prince since the Khazars).* The two grandees loathed each other, but Selim regarded both as indispensible.
Selim, guided by Joseph and Sokollu, directed a world war against the Spanish and Portuguese. He had just dispatched a fleet to Sumatra to aid the sultan of Aceh against the Portuguese and another flotilla to back the sultan of Gujarat. Joseph, who after his aunt’s death lived in the sumptuous Istanbul palace of Belvedere, negotiated with the Habsburg emperor, the kings of France and Poland and the
Selim was keen to expand his father’s mastery of the Mediterranean. When Joseph heard that the Venetian arsenal had blown up, he advised Selim to conquer Cyprus, launching an expedition that finally took the island. This was a challenge that the Habsburgs could not ignore but first Philip needed peace in the north – and a new wife.
In 1559, he got both when he negotiated the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with the French, marking the end of the Habsburg–Valois war for Italy, won by the Habsburgs. Philip’s new wife was French, Isabel, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Henri II and his Italian wife, Catherine de’ Medici, who escorted her to the frontier. The marriage was part of the Catholic counter-attack against Protestantism, but when Philip saw her he was delighted: Isabel was chic, extravagant, addicted to gambling and full of Gallic fun.* Philip fell in love, visiting her in the middle of the night. Isabel was surprised by his passion; her mother advised her to be grateful. Soon, the birth of their two daughters softened Philip, who finally experienced the joys of family life.
But Isabel tried to influence Philip in the French interest, trained by Catherine de’ Medici, the outstanding female politician of her time, and one so hated she was nicknamed the Maggot from Italy’s Tomb.
* Manco’s brother Paullu enthusiastically embraced Spanish rule and the Christian faith, wearing Spanish clothes, receiving lands and palaces from the Crown and fostering a Hispanicized Inca aristocracy that would form the foundation of a new Peruvian society. In 1538, Pizarro granted Inés her own estates and married her to his ex-page in church while he himself took a new Inca mistress, Atahualpa’s queen, Cuxirimay Ocllo, baptized as Angelina Yupanqui. She had been raped as a child by Pizarro’s interpreter but had won his favour by leading him to a priceless gold statue. Together they had two sons. Both women lived long afterwards: Inés had three children with her husband Francisco de Ampuero, whom she hated and tried to poison, only to be caught and forgiven by him. In 1547 she sued him for mismanaging her dowry and won. Her descendants included Bolivian and Dominican presidents. Cuxirimay, granted estates by Pizarro, later married Juan de Betanzos, who wrote a history of the Incas.
* The Lad was later hunted down and killed by assassins who then sought refuge with Manco Inca in his jungle kingdom. Manco trusted them but, hoping to win a pardon from Spain, they then assassinated him. He was succeeded as Inca by his son; their kingdom survived for another thirty years before the Spanish finally stormed it and ended the rule of the Incas.
