Ettore Pignatelli, 1st Duke of Monteleone

[1] In the war of the French against the Republic of Venice, 1511–1513, he was taken prisoner to France in the defeat, for the Spaniards, known as Battle of Ravenna, 10 April 1512, while the acting Viceroy of Naples was Ramón de Cardona.

In 1517, the now 17 years old king Charles I of Spain on advice of his international war counselors awarded him the title of Viceroy of Sicily, 1517 - 1535.

The Mediterranean Sea side capital of Libya, Tripoli, conquered for Spain by Navarrese Pedro Navarro, count of Oliveto, had been assigned in 1523 by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor to the Knights of St. John who had lately been expelled by the Ottoman Turks from their stronghold on the island of Rhodes.

From 1523 - 1530 the same was done with the Sicilian ruled islands of Gozo and Malta, with the character of suzerain's as a perpetual fief, of the Emperor and the Viceroy of Sicily, namely, Ettore Pignatelli e Caraffa.

In 1532, Suleiman the Magnificent besieged Vienna unsuccessfully again, as in 1529, and it were Pignatelli e Caraffa and Genovese Admiral Andrea Doria, who had changed in 1528 his contract as a mercenary condottiero at the service of France to fighting under king Charles I of Spain the Holy Roman Emperor, who went in a conquering expedition to what is now Greece.