DODECANESE CAMPAIGN (SEPTEMBER 9–NOVEMBER 22, 1943)

General Henry Maitland “Jumbo” Wilson was appointed commander in chief of the Middle East and, under orders from Winston Churchill, mounted an expedition to occupy the small Greek islands of Kos, Leros, and Samos in September 1943 with the object of creating a diversion during the Italian Campaign. The expedition was a bad idea, and Wilson’s forces sustained heavy casualties, for which Wilson was widely blamed.

A Bristol Beaufighter releases its bombs toward the further of two German flak vessels attacked by aircraft of No. 201 Group, south of the island of Kalymnos in the Dodecanese. Inadequate air support helped doom the British campaign in the Dodecanese. Imperial War Museum photo.

Maj. Gen. Wagner, commander of German forces in the Dodecanese, and two of his staff officers come alongside the destroyer HMS Kimberley on a motor launch which the Germans had captured from the British a few months previously. The Kimberley took Wagner to the island of Symi in the Aegean, where the unconditional surrender of German forces in the region was signed, May 18, 1945. The failure of the British Dodecanese campaign resulted in German control of the islands until the end of World War II. Imperial War Museum photo.

 
The islands of the southern Aegean Sea off the southwest coast of Anatolia were known through much of their history as the eastern or southern Sporades (“scattered”). The islands include Rhodes, Karpathos, Kassos, Haliki, Kastellorizo (Castlerosso), Alimia, Tilos, Symi (Simi), Nissyros, Kos (Cos), Pserimos, Astypalea, Kalymnos, Telendhos, Leros, Lipsi, Patmos, Arki, and Agnthonissi. Early in the twentieth century, the Young Turks revoked the historic privileges enjoyed by the islanders, who were part of the Ottoman Empire. Twelve islands (dhodkeka nisia) joined in a failed protest against the loss of these privileges, and the name of Dodecanese stuck as a term for all these islands, even though they exceeded 12 in number.

In 1912, as a consequence of the Italo-Turkish War, the Dodecanese Islands passed to Italian control. In 1941, the Germans joined their Italian allies in garrisoning the islands, which were inhabited chiefly by Greeks. The Italians had naval and air bases on Rhodes, the strategic key to the area. There was also an airfield on Kos, a seaplane base and naval batteries at Leros, and an air base on Scarpanto.

When Italy surrendered on 8 September 1943, the Dodecanese were occupied by two poorly equipped Italian divisions totaling 37,000 men; Italian morale was very low. The Germans had one division of 7,000 men, which was well equipped with tanks and artillery. The local Greek population was excited at the prospect of liberation by the Allied powers.

British Prime Minister Winston L. S. Churchill ordered that operations be conducted against the Dodecanese Islands. He believed that success there would open the way to the Dardanelles and the Balkans. He also sought to induce Turkey to join the war and to remove the stain of Britain’s defeat in World War I at Gallipoli. The original plan for an invasion of the Dodecanese, prepared by the Middle East Command, was known as Operation MANDIBLES, but it was subsequently renamed Operation ACCOLADE. Churchill appealed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and to General Dwight D. Eisenhower for aid to liberate the Dodecanese. The Americans, who were preparing a landing on the Italian peninsula at Salerno, rebuffed him. Roosevelt also suspected that the British hoped to open a new front in the Balkans. Coincidentally, the Combined Chiefs of Staff meeting in Quebec ordered most of the landing ships in the Middle East to the Indian Ocean, which starved the operation of needed assets.

When Italy surrendered on 8 September 1943, three British operatives led by Major Lord George Jellicoe parachuted onto Rhodes. They contacted Italian authorities there and urged them to take the Germans prisoner. However, Admiral Inigo Campioni, commander of Italian forces in the Aegean, hesitated. The Germans, meanwhile, acted swiftly and soon subdued the Italians.

The British nonetheless proceeded with some landings, and by October 1943—with a force of 5,000 men and a small flotilla—they secured several islands, among them Kos, Samos, Patmos, and Leros. They were not able, however, either to gain air superiority or take Rhodes, and as long as the Germans were secure at Rhodes, the British could not hold the Dodecanese.

German Response
When Italy surrendered to the Western Allies on September 9, 1943, 7,500 Germans of the “Sturm-Division Rhodos” overwhelmed and disarmed the Italian Dodecanese garrison of 30,000 men. Winston Churchill, fixated as always on military activity in the Mediterranean, ordered in British and Greek commandos with an eye to forcing the Germans from the Dodecanese and from Crete. By mid-October some 4,000 British commandos were spread over eight small islands, though none landed on Rhodes. Elements of the German 22nd Infantry Division from Crete crossed to Kos (Operation IRON BAR) on October 3 to eliminate the only British airfield in the Dodecanese. They forced the isolated British garrison of under 1,400 men to surrender, took an additional 4,000 Italian prisoners, and summarily executed over 100 Italian officers.

Churchill’s advisers recommended withdrawal from the Dodecanese, but the Prime Minister pressed ahead with the campaign, essentially reinforcing failure. In his defense, he hoped to provoke Turkey into the war against Germany. He also saw the island campaign as a preliminary to a larger and long-cherished Balkan campaign, a proposal repeatedly rejected by American military and political leaders. The Germans assaulted Leros (Operation LEOPARD) on November 12, overrunning the British garrison of 3,000 men and taking prisoner another 8,500 Italian soldiers and sailors. The campaign was over by November 22. Elements of the British and Greek navies took serious losses, mostly from Luftwaffe bombing but also strikes by new radio-controlled missiles used by the Germans for the first time.

Operations and Units
On 3 October 1943, the Germans went on the offensive, attacking Kos. Heavy bombing of the island by Stuka aircraft reduced the British defenses, and soon the British force there surrendered. Churchill refused to consider a withdrawal, instead ordering that Leros and Samos be held at all costs. Indeed, the British reinforced Leros. On 12 November, the Germans attacked Leros with overwhelming force, taking it four days later. The British troops remaining in the Dodecanese then withdrew.

Among British units involved were the Long Range Desert Group, the Special Boat Squadron, the Raiding Forces’ Levant Schooner Flotilla, the King’s Own, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and the Durham Light Infantry. The Greek navy provided 7 destroyers to assist the more numerous British vessels. In the offensive, the British lost 4 cruisers damaged and 2 submarines, 6 destroyers, and 10 small coastal vessels and minesweepers sunk. The Royal Air Force flew 3,746 sorties and lost 113 aircraft out of 288 involved. The British army lost in all about 4,800 men, while the Italians lost 5,350. German casualties totalled some 1,184 men, 35,000 tons of shipping (between late September and late November 1943), and 15 small landing craft and ferries. The operation failed as a consequence of Campioni’s hesitation, German aggressiveness, non-cooperation by the Americans, and the inadequacy of British resources. Holding the islands, however, stretched German resources, ultimately tying down some 60,000 Germans who might have been better employed elsewhere.
After the war, the British governed the Dodecanese until 1947. The islands were then turned over to Greece.

Suggested Reading: Jeffrey Holland, The Aegean Mission (1988).

French Conquest of Corsica

The French Conquest of Corsica took place during 1768 and 1769 when the Corsican Republic was occupied by French forces under the command of the Comte de Vaux.

France acquired the island of Corsica from the Genoese Republic with the Treaty of Versailles in 1768. Genoa still claimed ownership of the island, although since 1755 Corsicans had achieved virtual independence. After abandoning any hope of recovering Corsica by force, the Genoese chose to sell their rights over the island to France who were keen to gain new territory to replace territory lost during the Seven Years' War.

France's initial offensive failed after a significant defeat was suffered at the Battle of Borgo in October 1768. France despatched large numbers of reinforcements, swelling the size of their army there to 24,000. The Corsican army suffered a major setback at the Battle of Ponte Novu and the French forces soon overran the island although Corsican forces were not completely subdued until the following year and sporadic outbreaks of rebellion continued.

The French invasion triggered the Corsican Crisis in British politics. Although they sent secret aid to the Corsicans the British government chose not to act to prevent the island's occupation. The leader of the Corsican Republic, Pasquale Paoli, went into exile in Britain where he remained until the French Revolution allowed him to return to Corsica. British troops subsequently intervened in Corsica between 1794-1796, where they created the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom, and in 1814 when they agreed the Treaty of Bastia. Following the Congress of Vienna control of the islands were returned to the restored French monarchs.

Battle of Borgo

The Battle of Borgo was a battle between Corsican and French forces over control of the town of Borgo on 8 October 1768.

Prelude

In October 1768, Pascal Paoli tried to recapture U Borgu (Borgo), where a French force of 700 men under De Ludre was entrenched awaiting reinforcements. During this time. Pascal Paoli ordered his entire force to march on Borgo, whilst Clément Paoli kept a watch on Pascal's rear to prevent Grand-maison from descending from Oletta, where he had taken refuge. The main roads between Bastia and Borgo were also kept under surveillance by the Corsicans. The Marquis De Chauvelin learned of the fate awaiting his countrymen and sent Grand-maison towards Borgo. De Marbeuf and Chauvelin left Bastia with 3,000 men to join the force in Borgo. De Ludre and his 700 men entrenched themselves in Borgo awaiting the assault. Paoli inspired his troops by telling them "Patriots, recall the Corsican Vespers, when on this very spot you destroyed the French. The honour of the fatherland and public liberty today need all your valour. Europe is watching you.".

Course

Battle commenced on the morning of 8 October 1768 and lasted ten hours. Grand-maison tried in vain to defeat Clément Paoli and his men. Marbeuf and Chauvelin thought it best to retreat and De Ludre surrendered. 600 were dead, 1000 wounded and 600 taken prisoner, whilst 3 bronze cannon, 6 other cannon, a mortar, 1,700 fusils and other munitions were captured by the Corsicans. Louis XV of France was surprised by the defeat and even thought of making no further armed attempts to incorporate Corsica into France, but the Duc De Choiseul made every effort to continue the war and repair the damage the defeat had done to his reputation.

Balearic Islands

Aragonese army during the invasion of the Mallorca Island (1229-1230)

The Kingdom of Mallorca and the Crown of Aragon

The Balearic Islands (Sp. Islas Baleares) were the commercial crossroads of the western Mediterranean and, whether under Muslim or Christian domination, were coveted by a wide variety of people from the Mediterranean littoral. In the late Middle Ages, Mallorca’s merchants were as aggressive and acquisitive as any in Europe; its Jewish quarter, until the riots of 1391 and the community’s destruction in 1435, was large, prosperous, and renowned, especially for its cartographers, such as Abraham Cresques; and although its importance as an intellectual center was not on a par with its strategic and commercial importance, it was by no means a cultural backwater. The mystic and philosopher Ramon Llull was born on the island around 1232, learned Arabic from one of his Muslim slaves, assisted the Franciscans in founding a college at Miramar for the training of Christian missionaries, and wrote many of his several hundred Catalan (and apparently Arabic) works while resident there.

The Islands under Muslim Rule

The Balearic Islands form, geologically speaking, two separate groups of islands: a western group, the Balearics proper, comprising Mallorca (Majorca), Menorca (Minorca), and Cabrera; and an eastern group, the Pitusians, comprising Ibiza (Eivissa), Formentera, and nearby islets. The island of Mallorca, equidistant from Barcelona and Valencia at some 160 kilometers (100 mi.) from the Iberian coastline, occupies over three-quarters of the total landmass of the Balearics. Mallorca’s dominant physical feature is 300 kilometers (c. 188 mi.) of coastline, with several notable bays in the north and south and a number of other serviceable ports, as well as a scenically stunning northwest coastline where a chain of mountains falls steeply into the sea.

Many of the qualities and elements that made Mallorca attractive in the medieval and modern worlds were no less apparent in the ancient world, and evidence points to considerable penetration by Greek and Phoenician traders. All the islands were under Roman domination by 123 B.C., and the Vandals and subsequently the Byzantines left their marks. The most lasting mark for the medieval world was made in 902 (the same year that Sicily was conquered by Muslims from Tunis) when troops of the emir (later caliph) of Córdoba conquered the island. After the collapse of the caliphate, Mallorca was joined politically with Cartagena, Murcia, Alicante, and Denia to form one of the more than twenty independent Islamic states (the so-called Taifa kingdoms) then present in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). The emirate of Denia achieved considerable notoriety under Mujãhid (d. 1045), who attracted considerable talent to his court and raided Sardinia. For a brief period (1075–1115) after the end of the Denia emirate, the Balearic Islands constituted an independent Islamic state, two of its rulers even minting coins. In 1109 the islands successfully fended off Norse crusaders on their way to the Holy Land, but they were captured by a crusade consisting of forces from Pisa and Catalonia in 1114–1115, which, however, did not attempt to hold its conquests and withdrew.

Muslim control was reestablished in 1116 under the Banū Ghãniya family, who ruled in the name of the Almoravids. At mid-century, when political hegemony in Muslim Spain passed from the Almoravids to the Almohads, yet another North African Berber tribe, the Ghãniya, along with independent peninsular rulers such as Ibn Mardanïsh (d. 1172), resisted; and in 1185 the Ghãniya attacked and captured Bejaïa (Bougie) and Algiers in North Africa. The Almohads, however, conquered Mallorca in 1203, and the final years of Muslim domination were under a wãlï (governor) appointed from Marrakesh. Mallorca was a thoroughly Islamic state, inhabited by Muslims, with its dominant land-use patterns and human geography thoroughly Islamic; when the Pisans and Catalans arrived for their brief stay in 1114–1115, although they found an Arabized Jewish population living among the Muslims, they found no remnants of Mozarabs, or native, Arabized Christians living under Muslim rule. There can be little doubt that the vicissitudes of political leadership and the collapse of Almohad power, following the Almohads’ surprising defeat by Christian crusaders at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, offered propitious conditions for that rarest of overseas Christian crusades: a successful one.

The Aragonese-Catalan Conquest

The definitive Christian conquest of Mallorca took place in the years 1229–1232. James I, king of Aragon, count of Barcelona, and lord of Montpellier, won fame throughout Christendom and earned his sobriquet el Conqueridor (the Conqueror) by his conquests of Islamic Mallorca and Valencia. James was five years old when his father Peter II, a hero at Las Navas de Tolosa, fell on the battlefield at Muret (1213) in Occitania fighting the forces of the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), and James’s minority was both protracted and difficult. When he summoned the Catalan corts (parliament) to Barcelona in December 1228, announced his intention to conquer Mallorca, and was granted an extraordinary bovatge (a general tax, normally granted only once to a monarch upon ascension to the throne), these events marked James’s coming of age and his recovery from an earlier failed attempt to conquer Penyiscola.

The Mallorcan crusade was enthusiastically sanctioned by Pope Gregory IX; as early as 1203 his predecessor Innocent III had promised to establish a new diocese upon conquest. The crusade was preached and partially financed by international crusade mechanisms and led by the papal legate Cardinal John of Abbéville, who offered crusade indulgences to all who took the cross. It included troops and galleys from the archbishop of Tarragona, the bishops of Barcelona and Girona, and the abbot of San Feliu de Guixols. The most detailed primary account of the conquest is found in the Libre dels Feyts of James I, the first known autobiography by a European Christian monarch. The fleet of 150 ships and force of 1,300 knights made this the largest single military campaign mustered by the Crown of Aragon in the thirteenth century. The fleet set sail from Cape Salou on 5 September 1229 and arrived at what is today Sant Elm on the southwest coast a few days later. Part of the force disembarked with the king at Santa Pon0 on 11 September, and won a costly battle at Coll de Sa Batalla the next day, while the rest of the fleet proceeded to Porto Pi and fought Muslims there on 13 September. By 15 September the city of Mayurqa (mod. Palma de Mallorca) was under siege by land and sea, and on 31 December the crusaders successfully stormed the walls in a bloody assault that led to widespread slaughter and enslavement of Muslims. By the spring of 1230 all of the eastern sections of the island had been overrun, save Cabo Ferrutx in the north, incorporated the following spring in 1231, and the castle of Santueri, not taken until the autumn of 1231. In the northern sierra between Sóller and present-day Lluch, the Muslims held off the crusaders until June 1232, when they were finally subjugated. In June 1231, before final operations in the mountainous regions of Mallorca, James led a small fleet to Muslim Menorca, which agreed to pay tribute and homage to its new neighboring sovereign.

The first major act of James was to oversee the division of spoils. By right of conquest the king received half the land of the island: principally Montuiri in the southeast, Sineu and Petra in the center, Artà in the northeast, and Inca, Muntanyes, and Pollen0 in the north. He also took half of the houses, workshops, ovens, and baths in Mallorca City. The repartiment (land division) that survives describes the subdivision and distribution of this royal half. The major beneficiaries of royal largesse were nobles such as Ramon Aleman, Ramon de Plegaman, Guillem de Claramunt, and surviving scions of the Montcada family; citizens of Barcelona, Marseilles, Tarragona, Lleida (Lérida), and Montpellier, who received farms in the countryside and houses and shops in the city; and religious orders, especially the Templars, who were endowed with land in Mallorca City and in Inca and Pollen0. The royal distribution was primarily to a large number of small proprietors. Little is yet known about the subdivision of the seigneurial lands that comprised the other half of the island. Nunyo Sanç, lord of Roussillon and Cerdanya, was given Bunyola and Valldemossa in the northwest and Manacor in the east; the count of Empúries (Ampurias) received Muro in the northeast, and part of Sóller in the northwest; the bishop of Barcelona was given Andratx in the southwest corner of the island; and the viscount of Béarn obtained Canarossa in the center of the island, including the key castle of Alaró.

More complex than the military enterprise that seized the island or the politics dictating division of spoils was the government of the island, the importation of Christian settlers and institutions, and the transformation of this Islamic frontier. A key role was played by the church, especially by the pope, Gregory IX, who renewed indulgences, and eventually established Mallorca as an independent diocese, that is, not under a metropolitan but directly subject to the Holy See. James I, for his part, saw his opportunities on the Peninsula following the precipitous collapse of Almohad power. He pawned off many of his Mallorcan rights to Prince Peter of Portugal, granted the right of conquest for Ibiza and Formentera to him and to Nunyo Sanç, and reallocated this right in early 1235 to Guillem de Montgrí, sacristan of Girona cathedral and archbishop-elect of Tarragona; then he resolutely turned his attention from Mallorca to his lifelong project of conquering and settling Valencia.

Peter of Portugal eventually exchanged his Mallorcan lordship for a fief in Valencia, and when James’s firstborn heir died in 1260, the royal patrimony was divided in two: his son Peter III was to receive Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia, while his son James was to receive the Balearic Islands, Roussillon, Cerdanya, and Montpellier. On the death of James I (1276), James II became king of Mallorca, though he was forced to pay homage to his brother in 1279. In 1285 James II took sides against his brother by giving support to French invaders; these had the status of crusaders, owing to the Aragonese role in the uprising known as the Sicilian Vespers, which expelled the Angevin dynasty from Sicily. Thereupon Peter III vowed to conquer the Balearic Islands in retaliation, but fell ill and died shortly after setting out from Barcelona in November 1285. His heir Alfonso III continued the expedition, and the city of Mallorca surrendered within days, as did Ibiza, though nominal resistance continued for years. In January 1287 Alfonso conquered Menorca, enslaved the majority of the Muslim population there, which the chronicler Ramon Muntaner, describing the whole adventure, inflates to 40,000, and thereafter styled himself king of the Balearic Islands. In 1298 James II of Aragon, successor to Alfonso III after 1291, returned the Balearics to James II of Mallorca, who had held on to his southern French lands, which he ruled from his royal palace at Perpignan. This was done at papal insistence and as part of the agreement that brought the War of the Sicilian Vespers to a close. Mallorca’s greatest period of prosperity dates from after 1298, when the kingdom was ruled by James II for the second time (1298–1311) and his successors Sancho (1311– 1324) and James III (1324–1343), before it was permanently reincorporated into the Crown of Aragon by Peter IV of Aragon.

Institutions, Economy, and Society

None of the political, diplomatic, and constitutional upset and oscillation hampered Mallorca’s colonial progress; the reasons for this remain to be detailed, but the confined space of the island, the active role of the church, the peninsular successes of the crusades (almost the diametric opposite of the failures in the East), and a brutal colonialist regime characterized by slavery and apparently much conversion were certainly contributing factors, as were Mallorca’s demographic growth and economic development. By the early fourteenth century, the much-travelled writer Ramon Muntaner considered Mallorcans among the most prosperous peoples anywhere. In addition to Mallorcan consulates being located in ten North African ports, they are found in the early fourteenth century in Seville, Málaga, Naşrid Granada, Naples, Pisa, Genoa, Constantinople, and Bruges. Figs, raisins, honey, almonds, and olive oil were exported from Mallorca, as were cheese from Menorca and salt from Ibiza; slaves were both exported from and imported to all three islands in great abundance. During the reign of James II, Mallorca began minting its own coinage, including gold coins later at Perpignan. James also laid the foundations for or reorganization of eleven inland towns on the island, which he hoped would encourage agricultural development and the production of raw wool for Mallorca’s fledgling textile industry.

Mallorcan enthusiasm for crusading activity remained high throughout the Middle Ages. It was the papacy, in recognition of one of the causes for failure in the East, that accorded crusading status to settlers and acknowledged work that consolidated military conquests. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Mallorcans participated aggressively in the never-ending “crusade” at sea between Christendom and Islam. But over time Mallorcan energies were increasingly devoted to fortifying and defending their coastline. Mallorcans were well aware of Ottoman prowess at sea, and villages were occasionally attacked by raiders from the sea as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Mallorcans were, for strategic and commercial reasons, covetous of the North African coast. They followed with enormous interest the Mahdia Crusade of 1390; the designs on North Africa of Alfonso V “el Magnánimo” (1416–1458), the Aragonese king of Naples; and the designs on and conquests in North Africa of Ferdinand II of Aragon (1474–1516) after completion of the Granadan crusade of 1492. Two little-known, almost “lost” crusades were joint ventures by Valencians and Mallorcans. In 1398 the latter outfitted thirty-nine ships, including five galleys, and were led in their failed attack on Tedellis in North Africa (located almost due south of Menorca) by Viceroy Hug de Anglesola, who died in the operation. Nevertheless, in the following year, 1399, a joint Valencian-Mallorcan flotilla, the Mallorcans under the command of Berenguer de Montagut, sailed against Bona (located farther east along the African coast, almost due south of Sardinia), with almost equally dismal results, a fact contributing no doubt to the obscurity of the operation. The conquest and successful colonization of Mallorca had already secured its prominence in crusading annals.

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