262 Murgia
Mediterranean and Europe. In fact, after the peace treaty with France drawn
up in Vervins in 1598, the Spanish Crown—under the leadership of Philip III
and the duke of Lerma,17 to whom as prime minister the sovereign had given
the responsibility of governing—took a decisive step towards military disen-
gagement across the entire European chessboard, a move favored by inter-
national circumstances.18 This helped ease financial risk, caused by serious
instability in the state’s accounts (due to a decline in the import of precious
metals from the American colonies), which were weighed down by a legacy
of insurmountable debts and revenues preemptively bound for many years to
mostly Genoese bankers.19 This strategy, outlined in both the 1604 Treaty of
London and the Twelve-Year Truce with the United Provinces of 1609, assured
the island a long period of peace. In these same years, Prince Andrea Doria
unsuccessfully attempted to attack Algiers in order to ease the war with pi-
rates in the western Mediterranean basin and then conquer the city with the
confirmed support of the king of Cuco and the tribes of inland North Africa.20
Consequently, the politics of territorial expansion were altogether abandoned
due to financial problems. After the repeal of the embargo on English and
Flemish ships (which could now pass through the Strait of Gibraltar), a period
of relative tranquility began in the western Mediterranean, as piracy, practiced
on a vast scale by North Africans and others, began to abate. Algiers and Tunis,
cities in constant need of provisions, could now be freely supplied with ships
that operated under various European flags: French, Italian, Flemish, Genoese,
Tuscan, Venetian, and Ragusan. The markets could be furnished with grain,
rice, biscuits, cheese, oil, tuna and cured fish, hides, textiles, raw wool, linen,
silk, lumber, pickled olives, almonds, hazelnuts, iron, lead, gunpowder and fire-
arms, earning attractive profits.
17 Antonio Feros, El duque de Lerma. Realeza y privanza en la España de Felipe III (Madrid,
2002).
18 Paul C. Allen, Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 1598–1621. The Failure of Grand Strategy
(New Haven, 2000); Bernardo José García García, La Pax Hispanica. Política exterior del
Duque de Lerma (Leuven, 1996).
19 Claudio Costantini, La repubblica di Genova (Turin, 1986).
20 Miguel Angel De Bunes Ibarra, La imagen de los musulmanes y del Norte de Africa en la
España de los siglos XVI y XVII. Los caracteres de una hostilidad (Madrid, 1989); Carmen
Trillo San José, ed., Relaciones entre el Mediterráneo cristiano y el Norte de Africa en época
medieval y moderna (Granada, 2004); and Giovanni Murgia, “Cerdeña, entre el miedo-
corsario y los problemas defensivos de los siglos XVI y XVII,” in Islas y sistemas de naveg-
ación durante las edades media y moderna, ed. Adela Fábregas García (Granada, 2010),
pp. 439–507.