Page:France and the Levant peace conference 1920.djvu/17

] When the "Most Christian King" had made his decision, he determined to extract all possible profit from the new alliance. The Turk was expected not only to furnish military aid, but to grant commercial privileges and to improve the position of his Christian subjects. The results of the alliance, however, proved disappointing to Francis, whose policy appeared sacrilegious to the Catholic sentiment of France. The antagonism of Christendom weakened the King's arm, and he declined cooperation on land; but Turkish corsairs ravaged the coasts of the Mediterranean, and in 1541 Toulon welcomed Turkish galleys rowed by thousands of Christian slaves. In 1553 the allies agreed to take Corsica as an armed base for an attack on Spain; but Turkish methods of waging war outraged French opinion, and the enterprise was abandoned. The Turks lost faith in the sincerity of France; and in 1557 the French Ambassador reported that he could not convince the Sultan or his Ministers that the alliance was or ever had been advantageous to Turkey. Henceforth, though France and Turkey remained enemies of the Habsburgs, they no longer cooperated in the attack, and France took no part in the battle of Lepanto (1571). The destruction of the Turkish navy rendered a Turkish alliance less attractive; and the religious zeal of the Counter-Reformation, which burned nowhere more fiercely than in France, forbade close association with Islam. The substitution of the Bourbons for the Valois broke another link in the chain; and the Grand Design of Henry IV proposed to secure the equilibrium of Europe at the expense of the Turk. Within half a century of the battle of Pavia the political association between France and Turkey was at an end; and French policy, when it gave a thought to the Eastern Question, reverted to the earlier principle of the defence of Christendom.

The second element in the transaction between Francis and Suleiman was the promise of commercial monopoly. By the pact of 1536 all nations desiring to trade with the Turks were compelled to transport their goods under the French flag. This privilege was