171) Famous Americans Who Fought Turks

 

Sometimes I come across reports of  famous folks in American history with a Turkish connection. No extensive research has been done with the following, so the truth is up for grabs.

  
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH (1579-1632; or 1580-1631) 

 

Don't touch my paleface!

 

The Englishman who was supposedly saved by the love of an Indian princess wrote a lot about his own life, but many historians trust these personal accounts about as far as they can be thrown. Before he embarked upon the role of colonist in the New World that he is best known for, the young adventurer apparently had a yen to do onto the Terrible Turk. He claims that he went off to battle in Hungary and Transylvania, and so distinguished himself with daring exploits that a prince of Transylvania (Sigismund Bathori) presented Smith with a patent of nobility and a pension. After engaging in one bloody battle too many he was captured and sent as a slave to Istanbul. As we know from Disney’s POCAHONTAS where he was portrayed by Mel Gibson, few women could resist him, and he captured the heart of his Turkish mistress, a young woman of noble birth. For some reason, she sent him with a letter confessing her feelings for him, to a pasha on the Sea of Azov... who happened to be her brother. Resistant to Smith’s charms, the prince treated Smith none too kindly, until the prisoner beat out the Turk’s brains with a flail. Like Billy Hayes at the end of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, Smith put on the dead man's clothes, and finally reached a Russian garrison.
 

 

The Cap'n was quite a charmer... and so clean-shaven!

 

Smith also says that he was authorized to wear three Turks' heads in his arms, in token of three Turks killed by him in a series of remarkable single combats; "Sigismundus Bathor, Duke of Transilvania, etc.," gave him a patent to that effect afterward, in December, 1603. However, there is something fishy with Smith’s account as the Turks were reportedly Sigismund's allies in 1599-1602, and Siggy was not duke of Transylvania in December, 1603; neither was he king of Hungary, as " writ in the table" over Smith's tomb. Other accounts of these wars do not mention Smith, and the accounts furnished by himself are evidently untrustworthy.
 

 

John Smith: the reality

 

In 1607 Smith would lead a group of colonists in Virginia, only to be captured by another group of heathen savages. Chief Powhatan was about to do him in, when history repeated itself as another princess provided the means for escape, this time with her pleas. (There goes that Indian-Turkish connection, again. Although many historians question whether this story is actually true.) Contrary to lore, Pocahontas was only twelve at the time, and as irresistible as Cap’n John Smith apparently preferred to make himself out to be with the ladies, a romance was likely nowhere in sight. (Even though the Virginia tourist board would tell us in later years that Virginia is for lovers.) Pokey picked another white European colonist for a hubby seven years later, and died shortly afterwards on a trip to England... after exposure to one of those European diseases she tragically had no resistance to.

 

  JOHN PAUL JONES (1747-1792)

 

A true American hero was this other colonist, the 'Father of the American Navy.' Born in Scotland, he settled in Virginia; he would become most famous for raiding the British coast in 1779, in command of a French force. Two British warships would become toast as a result, after he had just “begun to fight�!

 

However, one man’s hero is another’s villain, and the English regarded him as a stinkin' low-down pirate. Early biographer Benjamin Disraeli wrote that the nurses of Scotland hushed their crying charges by the whisper of his name. (In true Armenian fashion! “For too many years Armenian mothers had lulled their children to sleep with songs whose theme was Turkish fierceness and savagery.� Ohanus Appressian, “Men Are Like That�)
 

 

John Paul Jones: self-described "Citizen of the World"

 

John Paul had a reputation for being a ladies’ man, although not quite the picture of a hunk, described as “slight and wiry in body, about 5'5" tall with a sharp, wedge shaped nose.� He also had an explosive temper. A ship’s carpenter accused Jones of having him flogged mercilessly with the cat o nine tails, wounds that he would die of afterwards.

 

When Jones returned to Paris during peacetime, American Ambassador Thomas Jefferson recommended the seaman for service with Russia, and he was subsequently made Rear Admiral in the Russian Navy (in 1788) by the Empress Catherine II, a rank higher than he had received in the United States. Jefferson wrote:

 

You are, I dare say, pleased, as I am, with the promotion of our country-man, Paul Jones. He commanded the right wing, in the first engagement between the Russian and Turkish galleys; his absence from the second proves his superiority over the Captain Pacha, as he did not choose to bring his ships into the shoals in which the Pacha ventured, and lost those entrusted to him. I consider this officer as the principal hope of our future efforts on the ocean. You will have heard of the action between the Swedes and Russians, on the Baltic; as yet, we have only the Swedish version of it. I apprehend this war must catch from nation to nation, till it becomes general.

 

Why did he hook up with the Russians? A writer put it this way (electricscotland.com/history/other/johnpaul.htm):
 

 

Avast, mateys!

 

After what he had performed, it would have been strange if the chevalier Jones had not felt some reluctance to enter into the service of Russia, where every maxim by which he had been guided during his exertions for liberty behooved to be reversed, and where, instead of being directed by the united voice of an intelligent people, he must regulate his conduct by the single will of a despot. It is one of the greatest evils of despotism, that the despot, once established, has the means of corrupting and enslaving even the most generous minds. The chevalier Jones saw many reasons for declining to enter into the service of Catharine; but, flattered by her attention and kind offers, he thought he could not do less than to wait upon and thank her in person for her friendly intentions.
 

 

Robert Stack slobbers over a landlubber in the 1959 film

 

“Though it produced little that is worthy of the notice of the historian,� the above writer opines, Jones performed well, but was a victim of jealousy and backbiting (he was falsely accused of molesting a 10 year old daughter of a German immigrant, while living in St. Petersberg) and “disgusted with the sordid selfishness and the low sensuality that reigned in the court of Catherine,� he took his leave of Russia in 1789.

 

What kind of damage did he cause the Turks? Another site reports: “He served with distinction under Prince Potemkin against the Turks in the Black Sea campaign. At the Battle of Liman he reconnoitred the Turkish Fleet in a rowboat during the night; repulsed the Turkish attacks killing about 3000 Turks,destroying 15 vessels and taking over 1600 prisoners at a cost to his squadron of one frigate and 18 killed.�

 

If that’s true, it was quite a spectacular victory. A chronology of his Russian exploits may be found at history.navy.mil/bios/jones_jp_chron.htm

 

What could have possessed Jones to hire himself out as he did, to a nation he probably had little sympathy for? While the above accounts rationalize his decision as having been somewhat “seduced� by Catherine the Great (who later eulogized Jones only as a "wrongheaded fellow"), it seems to me naval battle was in his blood, and the call for action and “glory� proved irresistible to his fighting ways. Besides, the enemy were only Turks. He probably didn’t have any idea of the history of the region, and had no reason to feel allegiance to the alien Russians. Worse, since Jones was likely the type to be fired up by such talk as “Give me liberty or death� during the American revolution, it seems he completely sacrificed his freedom-loving principles by aligning himself with a people known for their brutality and enslavement over others. Regardless, he must have had even less reason to feel compunction for the vastly more alien Turks. He didn’t care who he was killing, which doesn’t say much about his character... since it can’t be said he was fighting for a cause. (An argument could be made that he was fighting against a cause; the cause of his own principles.) Whatever little he knew about the Turks, the only thing that was probably enough for him was that the less-than-human Turks deserved whatever they got.

 

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© Holdwater 

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