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Garcilaso de la Vega, not only a poet but also an imperial spy in the war against the Turk

2022-10-13T10:46:27.570Z


An autograph manuscript not studied until now provides details about the writer's activity as a soldier and informer of Carlos V


Garcilaso de la Vega (circa 1501-1536) was a Renaissance poet, but also a high-ranking messenger, diplomat, soldier, and spy.

Although today espionage is usually associated with the Cold War, the novels of John le Carré, the activities of the US National Security Agency denounced by Edward Snowden or Russian

hackers

, in the 16th century the importance of intelligence services in around palace intrigues, political movements or military operations was not minor, in a world in which the transmission of information was much more difficult.

One of the agents who worked collecting and transmitting information for Emperor Charles V was Garcilaso, as evidenced by a manuscript by the poet himself that delves into this little-known facet.

The document had been cited once in the past, but had not been taken into account by biographers or scholars of his work, nor had it been edited.

Now Eugenia Fosalba, professor of Spanish Literature of the Golden Age at the University of Girona, is about to publish, with notes and a preliminary study, a research work on that text that she has carried out with her collaborator Adalid You snow.

It will be before the end of the year in the Bulletin of the Royal Spanish Academy.

“That was a time of great tension and Garcilaso was at the center of everything: not only in the midst of a very rich literary moment,

Garcilaso de la Vega, in an engraving from 1883.

After being banished by the emperor for attending the unauthorized wedding of his own nephew, the son of a comunero, Garcilaso ended up in Naples, then part of the Spanish empire, as a trusted man of Viceroy Pedro de Toledo.

The situation of the military troops in the area was disastrous as a result of the lack of resources and Garcilaso was entrusted with the task of rebuilding the army.

At the same time, he comes into contact with the network of spies and secret agents of Alfonso Castriota, Marquis of Atripalda, a nobleman of Albanian origin who lives in the area.

"Atripalda was a bizarre character, with long hair, a dyed beard, who managed a dense network of informers, among whom were Albanians, connoisseurs of the Turkish language, like him, Ottoman soldiers, renegade Christians and prisoners or travelers",

In the first half of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire was locked in a geostrategic struggle with Emperor Charles V against the backdrop of hegemony over Italy, as well as over the Mediterranean, and control of some of the main trade routes between Europe. and Asia.

When Viceroy Pedro de Toledo arrived with Garcilaso in Naples, in November 1532, one of his main tasks was to protect the entire southern coast of Italy, highly exposed to the enemy due to the aforementioned military shortcomings.

Perhaps the greatest of those shortcomings was that of their own army, extremely necessary in that context, but the emperor's precarious coffers could not afford it.

Since the spring of 1534 it was known that a gigantic army was sailing to Italy led by Barbarossa, the fearsome Ottoman pirate, nightmare of the Spanish empire, in cahoots with the Sultan Soleiman I. However, the viceroy considered that the Turk would not arrive that year and went down the guard.

Reality contradicted him: a few days later, the corsair headed for the region at the head of his fleet of 70 galleys and 12 whips, crossed the Strait of Messina, between the Italian peninsula and the island of Sicily, and made numerous raids on the Italian coast without encountering any opposition.

Engraving of the Ottoman pirate Barbarossa, by Agostino Veneziano.

It devastated the coast of Calabria, destroyed the port of Cetraro and the ships that were in it, passed by the island of Capri, burned Procida and bombarded several places in the Gulf of Naples.

There were places where the few defensive forces ran off, giving way to looting.

A predictable disaster, but no less traumatic for that.

Even Barbarossa raided the city of Fondi, on the Lazio coast, where was said to be the most beautiful woman in Italy, the young widow Julia Gonzaga, whom the pirate intended to kidnap to enter the harem of the sultan.

Unsuccessful: Gonzaga managed to escape her by riding half-naked at night.

After this campaign, Barbarossa traveled south and conquered Tunis.

At that time, the collection of a Spanish army began to be forged to ward off the danger posed by the persistent corsair and who would fight in the famous Tunisian campaign.

The square was recovered in the summer of 1535, in a company that combined all available forces to achieve revenge and thus extol the image of Emperor Charles V as protector of Christianity.

I return to spain

After this catastrophe, accounts had to be given to the emperor, whose court at that time was in Palencia.

Garcilaso was the person chosen by the viceroy to defend his management against Carlos V. They preferred to do it orally than with a text that could later be used against him.

Garcilaso had to ease tensions and provide all the information that he had obtained from the secret services and that he had memorized.

He traveled to Spain despite having fallen into disgrace and the exile that weighed on his figure.

"Garcilaso was more attached to his Toledo land than has been considered and, since exile, he multiplied to make merits before the emperor with the aim of granting him forgiveness and thus return to his longed for Tajo", says Fosalba.

But he died prematurely in 1536.

In his meeting with Carlos V, the spy-poet was in possession of information about the military operations, about the emperor's support in Italy against Francisco I (suspected of colluding with the Turk) or about the intrigues that were being launched before him. the agony of Pope Clement VII in Rome, where he had been collecting secret information.

It was such sensitive material that the Toledo did not have it written down, not even encrypted, but rather stored in his prodigious memory as a humanist: the educated poets of the time, Fosalba points out, carried in their heads a veritable library of classical authors, such as Horace or Virgilio , and also of the moderns of that time, such as the Neo-Latins.

“He only wrote that information after telling it to the emperor, with his privileged gift of speech.

A fragment of Garcilaso's writing goes like this, referring to the Turks in the Castilian of the time: "They passed through the Messina lighthouse and came along the Calabrian coast where they looted and burned Santo Lochito [San Lucido] and took the castle and made great damage.

They found the helpless environment of the people of the land and of the one that the viceroy had there to guard the place and they burned the six galleys that were being built there and part of the land.

Fosalba's research is part of a broader one: he is preparing a new biography of Garcilaso, which will be published in the publishing house Cátedra.

“The existing biographies are very old or focus on a local Garcilaso and not so much on the cosmopolitan poet who is forced to leave Toledo and start an itinerant life.

Much remains to be investigated around the exciting figure of the poet”, concludes Fosalba, “always bearing in mind that the places he visited or in which he lived outside of Spain left a deep mark on his poetry”.

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Source: elparis

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