Crusade or cooperation? Savary de Brèves’s treatises on the Ottoman Empire

ABSTRACT

This article examines two treatises by François Savary de Brèves, French ambassador to Constantinople (1589-1605) and to the Holy See (1608-14), one promoting a crusade against the Ottoman Empire and the other championing the Franco-Ottoman alliance. By closely reading these ostensibly paradoxical texts, which were published in the same volume, I argue that de Brèves’s true intent was to advocate cooperation between France and the Ottoman Empire as a long-term foreign policy objective. This article draws attention to the significant roles played in the political, diplomatic and intellectual worlds of early-seventeenth-century France by Savary de Brèves, a largely forgotten figure. It highlights the ambivalent image of the Ottomans in early modern Europe and contributes to recent scholarship on the interactions between the Islamic East and Christian West.

KEYWORDS:

• Savary de Brèves
• Franco-Ottoman alliance
• Franco-Ottoman relations
• crusade plans

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The only modern study of de Brèves is an unpublished doctoral thesis which is concerned solely with his time as ambassador in Constantinople: Petitclerc, “François Savary de Brèves, ambassadeur”. His scholarly work has attracted some attention: Duverdier, “Savary de Brèves et Ibrahim Müteferrika”. He has recently been mentioned as a formative influence on the intellectual Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, and André du Ryer, the first person to translate the Qu’ran into French (indeed the first to translate it into any vernacular language). See Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World, and Hamilton and Richard, André du Ryer. Miller calls de Brèves "the éminence grise behind a number of scholars and a variety of initiatives" (39).

2. Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World, 36-7.

3. Panaite, “French Capitulations and Consular Jurisdiction,” 71. For a description of the documents, see Panaite, “A French Ambassador”.

4. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning, 30.

5. Ibid., 30.

6. Ben-Zaken, Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges, 143.

7. MacLean, Re-Orienting the Renaissance.

8. Key studies include Jardine, Worldly Goods, which put trade between east and west at the centre of the history of the Renaissance, and Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar, which explored the influence of cultural cross-fertilisation on art and learning.

9. MacLean, “Introduction”. Rouillard’s classic work (The Turk in French History, Thought and Literature) highlighted the cordial relations between France and the Ottoman Empire. More recent work has dealt with Franco-Ottoman relations during this period: Mansel, “The French Renaissance in Search of the Ottoman Empire”, and Barthe, French Encounters with the Ottomans.

10. For a fuller account of the development of Franco-Ottoman relations over the course of the sixteenth century see Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel, 23-48.

11. Isom-Verhaaren offers a comprehensive response to such historiography, tracing how closely the Ottoman Empire was involved in the military and diplomatic affairs of Christian powers following their capture of Constantinople in 1453 and subsequent expansion into the Mediterranean (Allies with the Infidel, 23-48).

12. Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel, 25-7.

13. Ibid., 35.

14. Ibid., 43-4.

15. Heath, Crusading Commonplaces, 41-3. Rouillard has written of "the traditional talk of a new crusade which persisted with surprising vitality throughout the period [1520-1660]" (The Turk in French History, Thought and Literature, 355).

16. Discours politiques et militaires, 430.

17. In a speech reported by his brother, Monluc, Commentaires, 85-6.

18. Thomas et al., Western and Southern Europe, 415.

19. The edition, which also included the articles of the treaty and a third treatise which offered an account of de Brèves’s time as Gaston’s governor (Discours veritable fait par le sieur de Brèves, du procédé tenu lorsqu’il remit entre les mains du roi la personne de Monseigneur le duc d’Anjou, frère unique de Sa Majesté) is undated. Duverdier judges the date of publication to be 1618 (“Les circonstances favorables,” 177). Publishing the treaty and the three treatises in one volume offered a public demonstration of de Brèves’s utility to French diplomacy and court life.

20. That did not, however, prevent the texts from circulating independently. The Discours abrégé, for example, was published in a 1666 collection of texts about the Ottoman Empire: Dumay, Recueil historique.

21. De Brèves, Discours sur l’alliance, 1. All editions of the text I have consulted paginate the two tracts separately. For all future references to both texts I shall use the pagination to be found in the posthumous Relation des voyages de Monsieur de Brèves of 1628, which can be found online and is thus the most accessible volume for the reader. The Relation was edited by Jacques du Castel and consists of an account of de Brèves’s journey through North Africa after quitting Constantinople for France, likely written by de Brèves’s secretary Jean-Baptiste Vinois de Bavon. Following the travel account, which runs to 383 pages, are the articles of the 1604 treaty and the three discourses penned by de Brèves. The ordering remains the same as in the editions published by de Brèves; the treaty is followed by the Discours abrégé, then the Discours sur l’alliance, with the Discours veritable placed at the end. Curiously, though the order was unchanged, the contents page of the Relation lists the Discours sur l’alliance before the Discours abrégé.

22. Heath, Crusading Commonplaces, 9.

23. For a study of Erasmus’s views of a war against the Turks see Ron, “The Christian Peace of Erasmus”.

24. Heath examines these two works at length in Crusading Commonplaces.

25. For an overview of seventeenth-century French crusade plans see Bilici, “Les projets de croisade français”.

26. Heath, Crusading Commonplaces, 21.

27. Ibid., 69.

28. La Noue, Discours politiques et militaires, 440.

29. Crouzet provides a good assessment of the term in “Sur le concept de barbarie”.

30. Heath, Crusading Commonplaces, 63-4.

31. Le Roy, De la vicissitude ou varieté des choses, 92^v – 96^v.

32. Heath, Crusading Commonplaces, 74-75.

33. However, scholars who have written about the Discours abrégé tend not to refer to the Discours sur l’alliance. This is true of Petitclerc’s examination of de Brèves’s Ottoman embassy and Heath’s study of crusade texts. Bilici notes that the two tracts appeared in the same volume but he does not consider the implications of the Discours sur l’alliance in his discussion of the Discours abrégé (“Les projets de croisade français,” 321-4). By contrast, Duverdier calls the treatises "les deux faces d’une même politique" (“Les circonstances favorables,” 178), arguing that de Brèves hoped for an eventual crusade but supports an alliance as a temporary expediency. I argue the contrary, that de Brèves was not a champion of crusade but of cooperation.

34. Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World, 38.

35. Ibid., 38-9. Franco-Habsburg rivalry would eventually lead to France’s intervention in the Thirty Years’ War.

36. For an examination of the conflict between secular and religious imperatives in seventeenth-century French foreign policy see Church, Richelieu and Reason of State. A more recent study is Sturdy, Richelieu and Mazarin: A Study in Statesmanship.

37. As has been mentioned, travellers to the Ottoman Empire often held positive views of the culture they encountered. For a comprehensive study see Rouillard, The Turk in French History, Thought and Literature.

38. De Brèves, Mémoires politiques et diplomatiques, 2^r.

39. Copies des letres et despesches de Monsieur de Brèves.

40. Rouillard writes: "all the evidence of his embassy indicates that the latter [alliance] represented his own feeling, while the crusade project was composed after his recall in accord with the short-lived grand dessein of Henri IV and the Pope" (The Turk in French History, Thought and Literature, 362-3). I argue that the textual evidence also supports this view and moreover, indicates that the juxtaposition of the two treatises serves to undermine the desirability of crusade.

41. Thomas et al., Western and Southern Europe, 417-8.

42. Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World, 39.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number 1354652]. I am further grateful to the Society for Seventeenth Century French Studies (now the Society for Early Modern French Studies) for the award of an Amy Wygant Research Bursary, and to the St Mary's College Society for their support.