Franco-Ottoman alliance

Francis I (left) and Suleiman I (right) initiated the Franco-Ottoman alliance. They never met in person; this is a composite of two separate paintings by Titian, circa 1530.
Foreign alliances of France
Frankish–Abbasid alliance 777–800s
Franco-Mongol alliance 1220–1316
Franco-Scottish alliance 1295–1560
Franco-Polish alliance 1524–1526
Franco-Hungarian alliance 1528–1552
Franco-Ottoman alliance 1536–1798
Franco-English alliance 1657–1660
Franco-Indian alliance 1603–1763
Franco-British alliance 1716–1731
Franco-Spanish alliance 1733–1792
Franco-Prussian alliance 1741–1756
Franco-Austrian alliance 1756–1792
Franco-Indian Alliances 1700s
Franco-Vietnamese
alliance 		1777–1820
Franco-American alliance 1778–1794
Franco-Persian alliance 1807–1809
Franco-Prussian alliance 1812–1813
Franco-Austrian alliance 1812–1813
Franco-Russian alliance 1892–1917
Entente Cordiale 1904–present
Franco-Polish alliance 1921–1940
Franco-Italian alliance 1935
Franco-Soviet alliance 1936–1939
Treaty of Dunkirk 1947–1997
Western Union 1948–1954
North Atlantic Alliance 1949–present
Western European Union 1954–2011
European Defence Union 1993–present
Regional relations

The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also known as the Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between Francis I, King of France and Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire. The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the longest-lasting and most important foreign alliances of France, and was particularly influential during the Italian Wars. The Franco-Ottoman military alliance reached its peak with the Invasion of Corsica of 1553 during the reign of Henry II of France.[1][2]

As the first non-ideological alliance in effect between a Christian and Muslim state, the alliance attracted heavy controversy for its time and caused a scandal throughout Christendom.[3][4] Carl Jacob Burckhardt (1947) called it "the sacrilegious union of the lily and the crescent".[5] It lasted intermittently for more than two and a half centuries,[6] until the Napoleonic campaign in Ottoman Egypt, in 1798–1801.

  1. ^ Dimmock, Matthew; Dimmock, Professor of Early Modern Studies Matthew (January 4, 2005). New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England. Ashgate. ISBN 9780754650225 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ R.C. Spooner, "The Habsburg-Valois Struggle" in G.R. Elton, ed. The New Cambridge modern history: - v.2 The Reformation, 1520-1559 (2nd ed. 1990) pp 377-400, online
  3. ^ Kann, Robert A. (November 26, 1980). A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520042063 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Miller, William (January 4, 1923). "The Ottoman Empire and its successors, 1801-1922. Being a rev. and enl. ed. of The Ottoman Empire, 1801-1913". Cambridge [Eng.] : The University Press – via Internet Archive.
  5. ^ C. J. Burckhardt, Richelieu vol. 2 (1947; English edition 1970); cited after Avner Ben-Zaken, Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560–1660 (2010), p. 209. A contemporary Swiss song by Benedikt Gletting called it the union of "the dolphin and the crocodile". R. Schwarzenbach, Schweizerisches Archiv für Volksunde 74 (1978), p. 6
  6. ^ Merriman, p.132