page_title: Franco-Ottoman alliance
section_title: Military alliance under Henry II
hierarchical_section_title: Franco-Ottoman alliance / Military alliance under Henry II
context_page_description: The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between the king of France Francis I and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Suleiman the Magnificent. The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the most important foreign alliances of France, and was particularly influential during the Italian Wars. The Franco-Ottoman military alliance is said to have reached its peak around 1553 during the reign Henry II of France.
  The alliance was exceptional, as the first non-ideological alliance between a Christian and Muslim state, and caused a scandal in the Christian world. Carl Jacob Burckhardt called it "the sacrilegious union of the lily and the crescent". It lasted intermittently for more than two and a half centuries, until the Napoleonic campaign in Ottoman Egypt, in 1798–1801.
context_section_description: The son of Francis I, Henry II, also sealed a treaty with Suleyman in order to cooperate against the Austrian Navy. This was triggered by the 8 September 1550 conquest of Mahdiya by the Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria, for the account of Charles Quint. The alliance allowed Henry II to push for French conquests towards the Rhine, while a Franco-Ottoman fleet defended southern France.
caption: Henry II, here standing on an oriental carpet, an example of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting, continued the policy of alliance of his father Francis I. Painting  by François Clouet.
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