The Last Crusaders

THE LAST CRUSADERS is narrative history at its richest and most compelling. It is about the carnage of Lepanto, the conquests of Don Juan, the pyramid of Spanish skulls that Dragut built in Jerba, about how the Spanish stabled their horses on a litter of Korans, the life of galley slaves, gunpowder, the casting of cannon and gold. This book is about the last great conflict between the East and the West. It is about the titanic struggle between Hapsburg-led Christendom and the Ottoman empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Though it focuses on the great naval campaigns and the ferocious struggle to dominate the North African shore it was also, in its way, the first world war. The conflict spread out along trade routes into the Atlantic, Red Sea, Persian Gulf and across the Sahara. There was even a plan hatched for taking the war into the Caribbean. It consumed nations and cultures, destroyed dynasties, flattened cities and depopulated provinces. Yet the borders they fought for stand to this day as defining frontiers - the dividing lines between languages, nations and religions.

ISBN 0316861243   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780316861243 (What's this?)   Pages 512 Publisher Little, Brown & Company   Published in New York Imprint Little, Brown & Company   Height (mm) 240 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 160 Publication date 30 Apr 2009   Spine width (mm) 40 DEWEY 909.07   Academic level General

		Maps
		Introduction		1
Pt. I		Birth of New Powers
1		The Crusader Prince of Portugal: Henry the Navigator, 1415-60		13
2		The Navigator's Nephew: King Afonso the African, 1455-81, and King John II, 1481-95		42
3		The Great Eagle: Mehmet the Conqueror of Constantinople, 1450-80		63
4		Reconquista: The Crusade of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile Against Muslim Granada, 1480-1510		114
5		Barbarossa: The Emergence of the Muslim Corsairs, 1480-1510		148
6		The Just and the Grim: The Transformation of the Ottoman Empire Under Sultans Bayezid II and Selim I, 1480-1520		165
Pt. II		Struggle
7		Conquest of Commerce: King Manuel, Hammer of Morocco, Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest of the Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India, 1499-1515		187
8		Sharifs, Sheikhs, Sufis, Sultans and Smugglers: The Moroccan Struggle Against the Portuguese Crusade, 1515-50		205
9		The Rivals: The Division of Christendom Between Charles V and Francis I		230
10		The Ottoman Golden Age: Suleyman the Magnificent and the Five Victories: Belgrade, Rhodes, Mohacs, Tabriz and Baghdad, 1520-36		260
11		Corsair Kingdoms: The Barbarossa Brothers, Uruj and Khizr, and Condottiere Andrea Doria, 1512-34		273
12		Emperors and Sultans: Conquests, Crusades and Family Killings		289
Pt. III		Destruction
13		Skull Islands: The Battle of Djerba and the Siege of Malta, 1560-70		341
14		A Beard for an Arm: The Conquest of Cyprus and the Holy League's Victory of Lepanto, 1570-4		367
15		The Last Crusade the Battle of the Three Kings		399
		Key Characters		423
		Comparative Timelines		432
		More...

'Remarkable - Barnaby Rogerson has succeeded in isolating all the different strands of North Africa and weaving them into a clear and comprehensive narrative' - John Julius Norwich on A TRAVELLER'S HISTORY OF NORTH AFRICA.

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