Later Years
After the Peace of Crépy between Francis and Charles in 1544, Doria hoped to end his days in quiet. However, his great wealth and power, as well as the arrogance of his nephew and heir Giannettino Doria, had made him many enemies, and in 1547 the Fieschi conspiracy to dislodge his family from power took place. Giannettino was killed, but the conspirators were defeated, and Doria showed great vindictiveness in punishing them, seizing many of their fiefs for himself. He was also implicated in the murder of Pier Luigi Farnese, duke of Parma and Piacenza, who had helped Fieschi.
Other conspiracies followed, of which the most important was that of Giulio Cybo (1548), but all failed. Although Doria was ambitious and harsh, he was a patriot and successfully opposed Emperor Charles's repeated attempts to have a citadel built in Genoa and garrisoned by Spaniards; neither blandishments nor threats could win him over to the scheme.
Nor did age lessen his energy, for in 1550, aged 84, he again put to sea to confront the Barbary pirates, but with no great success. In 1552 the Ottoman fleet under the command of Turgut Reis defeated the Spanish-Italian fleet of Charles V under the command of Andrea Doria in the Battle of Ponza (1552). War between France and the Empire having broken out once more, the French seized Corsica in the Invasion of Corsica (1553), then administered by the Genoese Bank of St George. Doria was again summoned, and he spent two years (1553–1555) on the island fighting the French with varying fortune.
He returned to Genoa for good in 1555, and being very old and infirm, he gave over the command of the galleys to his great-nephew Giovanni Andrea Doria, the son of Giannettino Doria, who conducted an expedition against Tripoli, but proved even more unsuccessful than his great-uncle had been at Algiers, barely escaping with his life after losing the Battle of Djerba against the Turkish fleet of Piyale Pasha and Turgut Reis. Andrea Doria left his estates to Giovanni Andrea. The family of Doria-Pamphili-Landi is descended from Giovanni Andrea Doria and bears his title of Prince of Melfi. Judged by the standards of his day, Doria was an outstanding leader.
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