page_title: Franco-Ottoman alliance
section_title: Diplomatic and technical collaboration
hierarchical_section_title: Franco-Ottoman alliance / Continuation / Continued support from Louis XV to the Revolution / Diplomatic and technical collaboration
caption_attribution_description: English: Fortification_built_the_Baron_de_Tott_for_the_Ottoman_Empire.
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: Throughout the period, contacts were varied and multiple. France was willing to help in order to maintain strategic balance in Europe. Through its intervention and that of Ambassador Louis de Villenneuve in negotiating the 1739 Treaty of Belgrade, France effectively supported the Ottoman Empire into maintaining a strong presence in Europe against Austria for several more decades, and "re-emerged in its traditional role as the Ottomans' best friend in Christendom".
  Also, as the Ottoman Empire was losing ground militarily during the 18th century, it made numerous efforts to recruit French experts for its modernization. The French officer and adventurer Claude-Alexandre de Bonneval (1675–1747) went in the service of Sultan Mahmud I, converted to Islam, and endeavoured to modernize the Ottoman army, creating cannon foundries, powder and musket factories and a military engineering school. Another officer François Baron de Tott was involved in the reform efforts for the Ottoman military. He succeeded in having a new foundry built to make howitzers, and was instrumental in the creation of mobile artillery units. He built fortifications on the Bosphorus and started a naval science course that laid the foundation stone for the later Turkish Naval Academy.
caption: A fortification built by the Baron de Tott for the Ottoman Empire during the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774).
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