I’ve touched a bit about how to become a spy in the Ottoman Empire, which can be quite easy as long you have the capability to do so. Ottoman spies ranged from spies coming from spy families, corsairs, merchants, or mere informants who are willing to collaborate with a spymaster. The primary task of a spy is after all, to gather information. The Ottoman Empire maintained an extensive and effective spy networks in Habsburg territories, as they strove hard to keeping themselves informed of political developments in Europe and the Habsburg territories. Some of these spies are soldiers or corsairs with basic knowledge about the territory or language of the place they’re sent to, some are agents with experience in espionage who are able to easily cross cultural barrier or even manipulate important political figures, some used their occupations as cover for their espionage activities, some are locals who are willing to share information to the Ottomans. Ottoman spies sent by Ottoman spymasters usually achieved this by infiltrating enemy territories dressed as non-Muslims, or they themselves are themselves are European or non-Muslim renegade who entered enemy territories by pretending to re-convert to Christianity.

Examples of corsair and soldier spies are Constantino Mehmed and an unnamed Sipahi from Bursa. Constantino was a Greek from Candia who converted to Islam and becomes a corsair. At some point, he was entrusted by corsair captain Ali Reis to infiltrate the city of Trapani with an Ottoman Genoese spy. After disembarking, they donned Christian attire and successfully infiltrated and contacted Ottoman agents in the city. Some years later in 1561, Turgut Reis ordered Constanino (who presumably was known to be an experienced spy at this point) to spy on the city of Syracuse. Turgut gave him a fusta and promised him if he can enter Syracuse and observe the city’s walls, guns, and garrisons, he would be rewarded with 1000 escudos (gold coins) and 5 slaves, a huge sum even for that time. He was joined by Ahmed, a North African janissary who had previously been held captive in Syracuse, and so knew the city. They both set sail and successfully reached Syracuse, after which he counted the number of ships defending the city shores. Unfortunately upon reaching the gate one of the soldiers who happens to know Constantino recognized him and he was promptly arrested.

A second was a sipahi hailing from Bursa who was captured in 1552. A little bit of background first, in the 16th century, the Ottomans maintained a close contact with Ferrante de Sanseverino, the Prince of Salerno who planned to rebel against the Habsburgs. With a supposedly large Ottoman support and spy network in Salerno, the Ottoman navy was expected to support a revolt attempted by the Prince if it ever happened. According to the sipahi, he has been a soldier for 12 years and managed to learn Spanish from mingling with Spaniards in Istanbul. Around six months before he was captured, he was called up to join the fleet of Piri Reis (not to be confused with another, more famous Piri Reis) with the pay of 5 akçe (bronze coins) per day. When anchored at Inebahtı, Piri, probably recognizing the sipahi’s knowledge of Spanish called him up for an operation. He was ordered to deliver a message to an Ottoman informant named Juan Felipe in Salerno. Additionally, Piri also prepared questions that the sipahi must find out during his time in Salerno: What do the people of Salerno think about the Ottoman navy? Are the Habsburgs expected to send navy? If so, where is this navy expected? Are the people pleased with the prince? Are there preparations being made against the Ottoman navy in Naples? Are there any news from Emperor Charles? Is it true that Charles's brother Ferdinand killed 12,000 Ottoman soldiers in Hungary? Except for the last one, these are logical questions to prepare against possible Habsburg retaliation if rebellion did occur. Afterwards, he’s supposed to receive a reply from Felipe and return to Piri. If he succeeded, he’ll be given 50 escudos and two slaves, more than what he will receive from campaigning for 500 days. He was sent with Niccolo, Piri’s slave who had a brother in Salerno as his guide. He pretended to be a Christian Spaniard and boarded a ship to Salerno. When they’ve landed in Salerno, the guide left him on his own, much to his annoyance. He then proceeded to wander until he met Juan Felipe in the harbor of Cetara. Felipe then took the sipahi to his house in the mountains and introduced the agent to three other Ottoman spies and collaborators: Juan Domenico, Juan Sardo, and Micer Juanilo. The five of them then talked and answered the sipahi’s questions: It is true that Ferdinand killed 12,000 Ottoman soldiers, and the emperor ordered the regent of the King of Naples, Pedro de Toledo, three times to go out to sea with the navy, but the regent repeatedly refused. To fight against Franco-Ottoman navy, 9 galleys and 4,000 soldiers were prepared from the Kingdom of Naples. There are rebellions everywhere, the people hated the Habsburgs and expect their prince to rebel with support from the Ottoman navy. After passing the letter to Felipe and stayed for about a month, the agent proceeded to return to Piri, but somehow his covers blew up and he got arrested by the Habsburg authorities.

Other than sending spies, the Ottomans also maintained a spy network in the territories of their rivals. These spies are mostly composed of disgruntled communities, spies-for-hire, or agents of Ottoman spymasters. As we’ve seen in Salerno, the Ottomans also maintained a network of collaborators in Syracuse who not only provided the Ottomans information about the weakness of the city’s defenses, but also offered to revolt in case an Ottoman attack would took place. Astrume Elia, a Jewish spy working in Ibrahim Pasha’s network in Naples confessed about a spy network composed of spies on Ottoman payroll. In Spain, disgruntled Moriscos also frequently shared information to the governor-general of Algeria and Ottoman agents stationed in Spain. In the Eastern frontier against the Safavids, Kurds living in the frontiers or within Persian territory were frequently employed as spies to be send disguised as pilgrims, travelers, or merchants or to share information from their cities. One example of Kurdish spymaster is Idris Bitlisi, whose Kurdish agents provided important strategical information to Selim I.

Week 131

 

After his critical take on Mario Carli's openings to the “socialist vanguards” - right at the time when the clear distinction between interventionists and Official Socialists, with their “anti-national”, “Bolshevik” propaganda, had to be upheld without any ambiguity – Mussolini concluded his speech of July 19^th with a broader, and summary, examination of his proposals for the new problems of national and international politics; what was meant to be, for the “democratic-interventionist” audience, the “outline of our program of unity and action”.

It was necessary, first and foremost, to clarify that the “interventionist” criticism of the Peace of Versailles wasn't the same of the socialist criticism of the Treaty. The interventionists demanded “a revision” of the Treaty:

A “revision” of the peace must not lead to a condemnation of war.

Concerning economical and political matters, since “after throwing away the old dogmatic attire, I refuse to put on a new one”, his proposals were summed up in the simplicity of the productivist formula:

Maximum of production: maximum of well being.

The means to achieve this will vary according to times. The organization will practice class collaboration, class fight, class expropriation. It won't always be collaborationist, but it won't always be classist either and, when expropriating, it will be in order to socialize, not misery, like it would happen today, but prosperity. For the purpose of conquering a colonial market, for certain issues of tariff protection, bourgeoisie and proletariat can work together – when there's plunder to share, then: class conflict; but class conflict in periods of underproduction, that's destructive nonsense.

As for the political matters proper, given that “the electoral reform is going to pass”, brining forward the introduction of proportional representation, the formation of an interventionist concentration was again of the utmost urgency.

This will determine, for obvious reasons, the formation of large coalitions. A socialist-leninist one, a clerical popular one and at last our own, which could be named “Alliance for the Constituent”, republican alliance or concentration of the interventionist left.

Program: to bring candidates who commit […] to raise the issue of a constitutional revision, and to push for its resolution in a republican sense.

This is the Constituent as I understand it. This is the minimum denominator which we all can commit to and around which we may be able to form our unity. […] The matter is to “nationalize” this attempt, to make it universal to the whole of Italy. In the present extremely sensitive situation of Italy, I refuse any course of action which may open the way for Bolshevism and ruin. Our victory can't, must not be sabotaged.

I understand the impatience of some, but please consider that, if the life of men is counted in years, the life of peoples is counted in centuries […] Good strategy means counting and daring. We have no desire to rule on the strength of our bayonets, because then our rule would become that same dictatorship which we condemn. First we wish to feel the masses, by means of the imminent large electoral consultation. Once we have their consensus for our postulates, we'll begin our action.

The revolution we wished for and made in 1915 will be once again our own, in our victorious peace, and its name will be: Well being; and it will be Liberty; and, in synthesis and above all, it will be ITALY.

 

The “great assembly of the Committee of Unity and Action” had earned a place in page two, on July 20^th – the news from Milan – with a summary of the various interventions (Decio Bacchi for the Unione Sindacale Milanese, Elio Jona for the Unione Socialista Milanese, Mario Gibelli for the Milanese section of the Republican Party, and Alceste De Ambris) together with a promise to publish Mussolini's speech the next day.

As we have seen, the speech had to wait until the 23^rd on account of the much more urgent matters the Italian press, and especially the Popolo d'Italia, had to attend to. Indeed what mattered most, on practical grounds and even more in the public eye, was the failure of the “scioperissimo”, the general strike announced a few days before by the direction of the Italian Socialist Party as expression of the Italian participation to the international solidarity of labor against the Allied interventions in Russia and Hungary. It might have been this apparent setback in the advance of the “Italian Bolsheviks” to inspire Mussolini's choice to publish his speech of a few days before, offering it as a “national-democratic” counterpoint to the socialist propaganda. But even Mussolini's dubious attempts to resuscitate the interventionist front – or, here especially, the front of “left”, or “democratic” interventionism – were, in their timing and formulation, as well as in their framing within contemporary political discourse, subordinated to the irreducible opposition of the “national” forces, democratic or not, to the “anti-national” action of the Official Socialists. And Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia appeared much more committed to promote and maintain the image of a shameful, total collapse of the socialist front, due to the reaction of the “true” active proletarian minorities, than to any elaboration of how those forces could be practically mobilized in a “democratic” direction. Rather, most of Mussolini's openings remained tied to a broad and generic sense of “national productivism”, opposed to the “false internationalism” of the Official Socialists; something closely mirrored by the collection of fragments which formed the Popolo d'Italia's coverage of the scioperissimo.

From a purely numerical perspective, the general strike had been, in Italy at least, a moderately successful one: there had been, in fact, a significant participation throughout the Peninsula, workers had kept out of their workplaces, red flags had colored the cities, rallies and manifestations had taken place without major incidents. Nonetheless, the strike, far from being the opening act of a proletarian revolution – something which both the maximalist and bourgeois propaganda of the days before had often painted as an imminent and threatening development – had been characterized by a substantial emptiness of political content; something closer to a large festival, than to organized action.

And notable – albeit far less dramatic than those in the UK and France, where the CGdT had definitively dropped out less than forty eight hours to the opening day – had been the defections of organized labor. Especially – a point of pride for the “national” press – that of the more “conscious” categories of organized labor: railway workers, and post and telegraphs employees, whose strategic functions and special stature as public employees (categories which had furthermore recently benefited from the introduction of the eight hours workday) made their choice whether to abstain from work or not one of discriminating political significance. The fact that those groups had offered only sporadic, individual participation to the general strike was duly emphasized in the many reports published by the Popolo d'Italia, starting with the early news of unions defecting during the preparation stages, their communications being extensively reproduced one after the other and usually in the front page (a slightly less attentive coverage was provided to the Post and Telegraphs organizations, which I mostly omit in the following). Among the first to distance themselves from the strike, had been the unions where the socialist presence was less significant:

The National Union of Railway Employees […] appeals to all railway workers in order for them to reject the invitation to go on strike […] in order to avoid becoming the unwilling accomplices to an action imposed by a thuggish minority. […] It's all lies, deceit and betrayals committed by those who, taking advantage of your honest enthusiasms, still pose as “champions” of the railway proletariat. [July 17^th – front page]

The railway workers from Gallarate […] protest against the arbitrary imposition of the strike, contrary to the general interests of the Nation and of proletariat [July 17^th – front page]