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Introduction 371

some 300 vessels required vast expenditure. Yet, surprisingly, at
present we know very little about the cost of the campaign, and rather
more about the booty that the emperor and his leading commanders
seized. The figures for the overall cost given to date are more or less
convincing estimates, some based on contemporary assessments by
observers, or by using project proposals which sometimes included
calculation of notional costs. Miguel Ángel de Bunes Ibarra searched
multiple archives to advance our knowledge of this aspect, only to find
that there are relatively few surviving documents, whether relating to
ordinary taxes, loans, or the treasure from Peru that Charles V seized
to finance the expedition. In the archives of the kingdom of Navarre, the
municipal archives of Málaga, and the state archives at the Archivo
General de Simancas, he found only partial series of accounts from
paymasters and government accountants. He offers guidance as to what
can be gleaned from this limited and diverse documentation and gives
details of the multiple materials that were provided to fit out part of the
galley squadron. He gives a rare insight into real-time needs and
problems of provision faced by the rapidly mustered royal officials in
Barcelona.
While historians agree that the long-term impact of the 1535 imperial
campaign was slight, there has been a general assumption that
contemporaries considered it as much of a success as it appears in
imperial propaganda and in subsequent historiography. María José
Rodríguez-Salgado set out to investigate this by analysing how the news
of the campaign and the emperor’s victory were viewed in a number of
Christian courts. The main focus is on the emperor’s attempts to control
information and the response of Francis I of France and the English
king Henry VIII to the news. As Christian monarchs officially at peace
with the emperor they were constrained in terms of what they could say
or do in public when faced with an expedition which the pope confirmed
as a Christian campaign against the Infidel, but both were fearful of an
increase in Charles V’s power. The article illustrates the widespread
manipulation of information by all courts; the problems of presenting
inter-faith alliances; and the deliberate use of various tactics to give or
deprive news of publicity. Even the emperor’s allies participated in
playing down the victory in order to persuade him to attend to their own
needs. It also highlights how short-lived interest in the campaign was
in a world as avid for the latest news as we are now, and mostly keen to
highlight imperial weakness.
The alliance and friendship that bound Charles V and Mulay Hassan
is a subject much in need of study, and the subject of Rubén González
Cuerva’s article. Despite the scant aid he provided to the imperial forces,
Mulay Hassan was reinstated as the ruler of Tunis in 1535, save for La

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)