The Franco Ottoman Alliance

The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between the king of France Francis I and the Turkish sultan of the Ottoman Empire Suleiman the Magnificent. The alliance has been called "the first non-ideological diplomatic alliance of its kind between a Christian and non-Christian empire". It caused a scandal in the Christian world, and was designated as "the impious alliance", or "the sacrilegious union of the Lily and the Crescent"; nevertheless, it endured since it served the objective interests of both parties. The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the most important foreign alliances of France and lasted for more than two and a half centuries, until the Napoleonic Campaign in Egypt, an Ottoman territory, in 1798--1801. The Franco-Ottoman alliance was also an important chapter of Franco-Asian relations.

Following the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmet II and the unification of the Middle East under Selim I, Suleiman, the son of Selim, managed to expand Ottoman rule to Serbia in 1522. The Habsburg Empire thus entered in direct conflict with the Ottomans.

Some early contacts seem to have taken place between the Ottomans and the French. Philippe de Commines reports that Bayezid II sent an embassy to Louis XI in 1483, while Djem, his brother and rival pretender to the Ottoman throne was being detained in France at Bourganeuf by Pierre d'Aubusson. Louis XI refused to see the envoys, but a large amount of money and Christian relics were offered by the envoy so that Djem could remain in custody in France. Djem was transferred to the custody of Pope Innocent VIII in 1489.

France had signed a first treaty or Capitulation with the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt in 1500, during the rules of Louis XII and Sultan Bayezid II, in which the Sultan of Egypt had made concessions to the French and the Catalans, and which would be later extended by Suleiman.

France had already been looking for allies in Central Europe. The ambassador of France Antonio Rincon was employed by Francis I on several missions to Poland and Hungary between 1522 and 1525. At that time, following the 1522 Battle of Bicoque, Francis I was attempting to ally with king Sigismund I the Old of Poland. Finally, in 1524, a Franco-Polish alliance was signed between Francis I and the king of Poland Sigismund I.

A momentous intensification of the search for allies in Central Europe occurred when the French ruler Francis I was defeated at the Battle of Pavia on February 24, 1525, by the troops of Emperor Charles V. After several months in prison, Francis I was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Madrid, through which he had to relinquish the Duchy of Burgundy and the Charolais to the Empire, renounce his Italian ambitions, and return his belongings and honours to the traitor Constable de Bourbon. This situation forced Francis I to find an ally against the powerful Habsburg Emperor, in the person of Suleiman the Magnificent.

The alliance was an opportunity for both rulers to fight against the rule of the Habsburg. The objective for Francis I was clearly to find an ally in the struggle against the House of Habsburg, although this policy of alliance was in reversal of that of his predecessors. The pretext used by Francis I to seal an alliance with a Muslim power was the protection of the Christians in Ottoman lands, through agreements called "Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire".

King Francis was imprisoned in Madrid when the first efforts at establishing an alliance were made. A first French mission to Suleiman seems to have been sent right after the Battle of Pavia by the mother of Francis I Louise de Savoie, but the mission was lost on its way in Bosnia. In December 1525 a second mission was sent, led by John Frangipani, which managed to reach Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, with secret letters asking for the deliverance of king Francis I and an attack on the Habsburg. Frangipani returned with an answer from Suleiman, on 6 February 1526: