The Battle of Capo d'Orso, sometimes known as the Battle of Cava and the Battle of Amalfi, was a naval engagement taking place over two days, on April 28 and April 29, 1528, during the War of the League of Cognac. A French fleet inflicted a crushing defeat on the fleet of the Kingdom of Naples under Spanish command in the Gulf of Salerno, where Spanish forces trying to break the French blockade of the city met the French fleet.
The battle gave the French complete command of the sea. Tactically, it showed the superiority of the chosen Genoese galleys over the slower and less agile Spanish ones, despite the presence aboard of a large party of veteran Spanish soldiers. As noted by a witness, Paolo Giovio, "the victory came from crafty seamanship rather than brute force".
Background
Francis I of France, after his humiliating defeat at Pavia in 1525, rekindled the war in Italy, this time with the support of Pope Clement VII, the Republic of Venice, the Kingdom of England, the Duchy of Milan, and the Republic of Florence, all parties to the League of Cognac and worried about the ascendancy of Charles V in Italy and in Europe. The conflict began in 1526.
Despite some important initial successes such as the sack of Rome in 1527, the Spanish army was quickly disintegrating due to a dramatic lack of funding. By the end of 1527, a French army under the viscount of Lautrec was moving southwards from Central Italy, capturing cities one by one and rapidly pushing the Spaniards out of their prized possession in the region, the Kingdom of Naples. If the city of Naples were to fall into French hands, Charles V would lose his last foothold in the peninsula and France would become the dominating power in the central Mediterranean.
Blockade of Naples
Mid-April, the French forces under the viscount of Lautrec reached the walls of Naples. The city was well defended and attempts to seize it by force by land and sea were pushed back, and a real siege began. The French cut the aqueducts bringing fresh water to Naples and, as the city had but a few wells, thirst quickly became a problem for the besieged. Food supplies were also fairly low. The Spaniards had but twenty days worth of wine and meat and between three and five months of grain. The French had also captured the main mills of the region and there were none in the city, forcing the Spaniards to use the extremely labour-intensive hand-mills. Spies notified the Venetians of several mutinies in the army among German, Italian, as well as Spanish regiments.
Naples could also be supplied from the sea as Sicily was rich in grains and still in Spanish hands. The French dispatch to Naples part of their fleet, namely a squadron of galleys belonging to the mercenaries shipowners Andrea Doria and Antonio Doria hired by the French since 1522. This squadron was under the command of the nephew of Andrea Doria, Filippino, and with the Genoese nobleman Nicolò Lomellino as second in command. The patrols of the French navy prevented the arrival of supplies from Sicily – two ships carrying wheat for the besieged Neapolitans were intercepted by Filippino Doria mid-April. The fleet also captured several points along the coastline (Capri, Pozzuoli, Castelammare, and Procida). The number of vessels in the French fleet was however insufficient to keep the blockade completely tight as the galleys could not spend more than a few hours at sea at the time and the French galleys needed to return to their base near Salerno every night. The French refused to allow Andrea Doria to send more galleys in reinforcement to Southern Italy as they were expecting the prompt reinforcement of the Venetian fleet, then sailing around Apulia, to seal off the city completely. But the Venetians were delayed by the sore state of their galleys and several operations against Spanish strongholds in Apulia such as Monopoli, Otranto, and Lecce.