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CHAPTER IX

BARCELONA, MAY 1535; THE GATHERING OF THE CHRISTIAN HOSTS

Some idea of the terror inspired by the actions of the Sea-wolves at this date is contained in the following extract from "The Golden Age of the Renaissance," by Lanciani:

"The Bastione del Belvedere, which towers in frowning greatness at the north-east end of the Vatican Garden and commands the approach to the Borgo from the upper-end valley of the Tiber, was begun by Antonio de Sangullo the younger, and finished by Michel Angelo after the death of Antonio, which took place on September 30th, 1546. This great piece of military engineering must not be considered by itself, but as a part of a great scheme of defence conceived by Paul III, to protect the city against a hostile invasion from the sea. The Pope could not forget that, in August 1534, the fleet of infidels commanded by Barbarossa had cast anchor at the mouth of the Tiber to renew its supply of water, and that if its leader had thought fit they could have stormed, sacked, and plundered the city, and carried off the Pope himself into slavery without any possibility of defence on the Christian side. This point has not been taken into due consideration by modern writers; the fortifications of Rome, designed or begun or finished at the time of Paul III., have nothing to do with the sack of 1527, with the Connétable de Bourbon, or with the Emperor Charles V. All the bastions, that of the Belvedere excepted, point towards the sea-coast, which was perpetually harried and terrified by Turkish or Barbary pirates. These would appear with lightning-like rapidity in more than one place at a time, and carry off as many unfortunate men, women, and children as they could collect.... To prevent the recurrence of such disasters the sea-coast was lined with watch-towers, the guns of which could warn the peasants of the approach of suspicious vessels."

That Paul III. had good warrant for the precautions which he designed to take is not only instanced by the fact of Barbarossa anchoring in the mouth of the Tiber on the occasion of the raid with which we are at present concerned, but from what had occurred to his predecessor on the Papal throne in 1516. Pope Leo, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was accustomed to leave Rome in the autumn for hunting, and fishing in the sea, of which latter pastime he was particularly fond. One of his favourite resorts was the castle of Magliana, five miles from Rome, on the banks of the Tiber. On September 18th, 1516, he left Rome and proceeded to Civita Lavinia, on the Laurentian coast. Here he was waited for by the corsair Curtogali, who, with fifteen ships off the coast and an ambush on shore, was ready to carry him off. Curtogali is supposed to have derived his information as to the movements of the Pope from some traitor about the Papal Court who desired the downfall of "the fatal House of Medici."

Some one, however, warned the Pope, who fled, accompanied by his retinue, at a headlong gallop to Rome, never drawing bridle until he reached the safe seclusion of the Vatican.

We must now return, however, to that eagle who fluttered so sorely the dovecotes, both Christian and Moslem, and whose loudly proclaimed faith in the Prophet never permitted his religion to stand inconveniently in the way of his material advancement in the world. The soldiers and sailors of the corsair entered Bizerta shouting for Soliman and Barbarossa. There was no mention of Raschid, that Prince of the Hafsit dynasty, whom Kheyr-ed-Din had declared to the townspeople he had come to restore to the throne of his ancestors. Too late the town sprang to arms, under a chief named Abdahar, and in the first instance accomplished a considerable success. Barbarossa's men were unprepared, and a number of them were slain. Driven into a bastion of the walls, a party of the corsairs were desperately defending themselves, when one Baetio, a Spanish renegado, discovered that a cannon behind them pointing seawards was loaded. He succeeded, with the assistance of others, in slewing it round and discharged it at close quarters into the packed masses of the enemy. This caused a frightful demoralisation to set in; the corsairs rallied and soon swept all before them. The massacre turned from the one side to the other, and it is said that no less than three thousand of the unfortunate townspeople were slain. Barbarossa only called off his men when they were wearied out by the slaughter.

Kheyr-ed-Din now graciously accepted the submission of the townsfolk; that is to say, such of them as were left, and took charge of the entire kingdom as governor for the Sultan of Turkey. He sent out ambassadors to the neighbouring Arab and Berber chieftains of the hinterland, repaired fortifications, appointed magistrates--all ostensibly in the name of that phantom prince whom the Tunisians were destined never to see, and who never returned to his native country.

King of Algiers, _de facto_ King of Tunis, Admiralissimo to Soliman the Magnificent, his name a portent in Christendom, his fame reaching from Spartel to Tunis, and from the shores of France to the foothills of the Atlas, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa was at the height of his power. Never before had a corsair risen to such eminence, never again was there destined to be so magnificent a sea-robber. Thus it was that the year 1535 opened gloomily for all those Powers whose coasts were washed by the tideless sea. Italy, torn and bleeding, her strong men slain, her fairest matrons and maids carried off into the most odious captivity, was lamenting the terrible fate to which she had been exposed by the raids of the pirate admiral. In Catalonia, in Genoa, in Venice, along what is now known as the Riviera, men trembled and women wept; for who could say that it might not be upon them that the next thunderbolt might fall? In Venice taxation was raised to the breaking strain to provide galleys wherewith to combat the foe, while the Genoese fortified their coasts and poured out money like water upon arms, armaments, and ammunition. Says Sandoval:

"Desde el Estrecho de Meçina hasta el de Gibraltar ninguno de la parte de Europa pudiera tomer comida ni sueño seguro de lo que viviera en las riberas del mar." (From the Straits of Messina to those of Gibraltar none living in Europe on the shores of the sea were able to eat in peace or to sleep with any sense of security.)

The Emperor Charles V. was roused to action, stung by the intolerable humiliation of the position into which he had been placed by a mere corsair.

King of Sicily, Naples, and Spain, as well as Emperor of Germany, in any direction he might turn he would find a trail of blood and fire over the fair face of his dominions in the Mediterranean. Although it might gall his pride to admit that his enemy was formidable, Charles was too wise a man, too experienced a warrior to underrate his foe. He repaired the fortifications of Naples and Sicily at great cost: he wrote letters to the Pope, to Andrea Doria, to the Viceroys of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, to the Marquis de Vasto, and Antonio de Leyva to collect all the arms and munitions necessary for the attack on Barbarossa. He sent orders to Don Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis de Mondejar, Captain-General of the Kingdom of Granada, to collect money and to have men ready in the ports of Andalusia. He gave orders for eight thousand German soldiers to hold themselves in readiness; these were to be joined by the veterans of Coron and Naples, which body counted four thousand more; in Italy he also raised another eight thousand men. All this was done under the seal of secrecy, which the Emperor most peremptorily ordered was to be observed.

But news travelled in the first half of the sixteenth century, although newspapers, war correspondents, and telegraphs were not; when all the feudatories of the greatest king in Christendom were busy it was impossible for the matter to remain hidden. Even had it been within the range of possibility to conceal what was going on there was one circumstance which would have rendered all effort to this end nugatory. Charles had invited Francis of France to join in this holy war against the scourge of Christendom: not only did Francis refuse to join, but he had the incredible baseness to betray the scheme to Barbarossa. It would be pleasanter to think that some mistake had been made in this matter, but unfortunately it is beyond dispute, as the facts have been placed on record by Sandoval, whose history, it must be remembered, was published in 1614. In this matter he is quite precise, as he states that a "Clerigo Francese," one Monsieur de Floreta, was sent with despatches from Francis to Barbarossa at Tunis, and that this treacherous envoy from Christendom gave the corsair king all the available information that he had been able to collect before starting.

This was typical of that "Golden Age of the Renaissance" in which it took place; when real devotion to all arts, sciences, and amenities of a higher civilisation went hand in hand with crime of the vilest and treachery of the basest description. Well might Barbarossa, and such as he, laugh to scorn the pretension that his Christian enemies were one whit better than were they, when they could point to the fact that, to serve a private revenge, a great Christian king could betray his co-religionists to their Moslem foes. Shamelessly did the Sea-wolves seek their prey wherever it was to be found; their methods were villanous and seemingly without excuse, but, after all, there was some colour, some shadow of right in what they did, for their argument was that they were merely getting back from Christendom that which had been reft from them in the near past in the kingdoms of Còrdova and Granada. But who shall find excuse for the Christian kings, governors, and princes at this epoch? They sought their prey no less ravenously than did the pirates, and with just about the same amount of justification: witness the sacking of Rome by Charles V. in 1527, and the unexampled act of treachery just recorded of Francis of France.

Kheyr-ed-Din had lived all his turbulent life among wars and rumours of wars: the head of the tiller, the hilt of the scimitar, the butt of the arquebus, had been in his hand since early youth; bloodshed and strife were the atmosphere in which he lived and breathed. Desperate adventures by land and sea had been his ever since he could remember; there was no hazard that he had not run, no peril which he had not dared. But now even he, the veteran of far more than one hundred fights, was grave and preoccupied when he considered the greatness, the imminence of his peril. The "Clerigo Francese" had put him in possession of the fact that Carlos Quinto was exerting all his strength for the combat which was to come; and Barbarossa was far too old a fighter, far too wise a warrior, to underrate by one soldier or by one galley the forces that the Emperor could put into line against him; from far and near his foes were gathering for his destruction, and he did not deceive himself in the least as to what the fate of his followers and himself would be should the Christian hosts be victorious.

But, nevertheless, such an emergency as this found the man at his best: ready to take fortune at the flood when she smiled upon him, he was perhaps at his very greatest in adversity; and when all around him trembled and paid one of their infrequent visits to the Mosque to implore the aid of the Prophet, the veteran corsair was coolly reviewing the situation, seeking a way to weather the tempest before which lesser men shrank appalled, declaring that the end had come. The storm was coming in a squall of such violence as even he had never before experienced, but, thanks to his friend the King of France, he had been forewarned. He sent at once to his master, Soliman the Magnificent, at Constantinople, to impart to him the direful intelligence; then the bagnios were thrown open, and, under pitiless lash and scourge, the Christian captives toiled from dawn till dark to repair the fortifications of Tunis. Silent and unapproachable, conferring with none, the grim old Sea-wolf sat in his palace overlooking the bay and considered the question of whether he should give battle by land or sea when the time came. If it were possible, he came to the conclusion that it should be the latter; he had been evicted from his kingdom on land once before, but he knew that in the open ocean few cared to face Barbarossa, and he might fall on Doria first and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem second if matters turned out favourably for him. In any case, he must summon all the aid that was possible.

East and west flew the galleys of Kheyr-ed-Din, scudding before the wind if that were favourable, or churning the surface of the sea with straining, strenuous oars should the wind be foul or a calm prevail.

It was an appeal for aid to the Moslem corsairs from Algiers, from Tlemcen, from Oran, from Los Gelues (or Jerbah), and from all the countless islands of the Archipelago, where they lurked to seize their prey--Tunis, which flew the Crescent flag of the Prophet, was in danger--let them rally against the grandson of the man who expelled the Moors from Spain.

Grim and sinister, the corsairs came flocking to the standard of Barbarossa. Well they knew that, should he fall, it was but a matter of time for them all to be chased from off the face of the waters. Of cohesion there was but little among them, and, in spite of the bond of a common religion and a common hatred of the Christian, they were swayed far more by a lust for plunder than by such considerations as these. In times of imminent danger, however, men naturally crave for a leader, and in piratical circles all was now subordinated to the instinct of self-preservation.

Meanwhile, in Christendom their great enemy was maturing his plans. To the Marquis de Cañete, Viceroy and Captain-General of the Kingdom of Navarre, Charles wrote, confiding to his care the charge of the Empress, with instructions that her orders were to be implicitly obeyed during his absence. Having done this he journeyed to Barcelona, at which city he arrived on April 8th, 1535. Here he was immediately joined by the armada of Portugal--twenty caravelas raised, armed, and paid for by the King, Don Juan of Portugal. This fleet was commanded by the Infante Don Luis, brother to the Empress, and carried on board the vessels of which it was composed a whole host of nobles and gentlemen of quality, who had come to fight under the approving eyes of the Cæsar of the modern world.

On May 1st came Andrea Doria with twenty-two galleys, and those already in the harbour crowded the sides of their vessels to watch the arrival of the famous Genoese seaman.

Four abreast in stately procession the great galleys swept into the harbour. With that love of "spectacle" so inherent in the southern nature, everything was done to ensure the military pomp and circumstance of the coming of the first sea-commander of the Emperor. At first with furious haste, and then slowing down to make the approach more stately, the fleet of Andrea moved on. From mast and yard and jackstaff of the galleys of the admiral floated twenty-four great banners of silk and gold embroidered with the arms of the Emperor, with those of Spain, of Genoa, and of the Dorias, Princes of Oneglia. The principal standard bore upon it a crucifix, broidered at the sides with pictures of Saint John and the Virgin Mary; another represented the Virgin with her Son in her arms. With the sound of trumpets, clarions, chirimias, and atambours the fleet moved to within a short distance of the Portuguese and saluted them; then, as the thunder of the guns ceased and the light wind blew away the smoke, they circled round and stopped abreast of the royal vessel on which Charles had embarked. Once again the guns barked a royal salute, while knights and nobles, seamen and soldiers hailed their Emperor with frenzied shouts of "Imperio! Imperio!"

Then Andrea Doria stepped into his boat and was rowed across the shining water to visit the Emperor, who received him, we are told, "with great honour and many tokens of love."

On May 12th arrived Don Alvaro de Bazan, General of the Galleys of Spain. This magnificent caballero made an entrance in much the same state and circumstance as did Doria, and during the remainder of the stay of the armada in Barcelona there was much banqueting and feasting and drinking of healths to the Emperor and confusion to the Moslem foe. It was once again as it had been in those days in which Ferdinand and Isabella had descended upon the doomed city of Granada, and had built, in full sight of its defenders, the town which they called Santa Fe (or the Holy Faith) as an earnest that they would never leave until that symbol of their faith had triumphed. To witness this victory the best blood of Europe had flocked, and now, forty-three years later, when the audacious Moslem had raised his head once more, the descendant of the warriors who had followed "Los Reyes Católicos" rallied to that standard which Carlos Quinto, their grandson, had set up on the shores of Catalonia. Sandoval devotes pages of his work to the names, styles, and titles of the noble caballeros who joined the army for the destruction of Barbarossa.

On May 16th Charles embarked in the _Galera Capitana_ of Andrea Doria, accompanied by many grandees and caballeros of the Court, as well as illustrious foreigners like Prince Luis of Portugal, and held a review of the armada. There was much expenditure of powder in salutes to the Emperor, and all vied with one another in shouting themselves hoarse in honour of the great monarch who deigned to lead in person the hosts of Christendom against the infidel, who had defied his might and dared to offer him battle. On May 28th the Emperor travelled some leagues inland, starting before dawn, to visit the Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Monferrato, in which was kept a singularly holy image of the Virgin. Here he confessed and received the sacrament, and then returned to Barcelona.

[Illustration: THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.]

On May 30th he embarked in the Royal Galley, the _Galera Bastarda_, which had been prepared for him by Andrea Doria, his Captain-General of the Galleys. This vessel seems to have somewhat resembled the barge of Cleopatra in the magnificence of its appointments, as its interior was gilded, and it was fitted up with all the luxury that could be devised at this period. Silken carpets and golden drinking-vessels, stores of the most delicate food and of the rarest wines, were embarked to mitigate, as far as possible, the inevitable hardships of a sea-passage, and there were not lacking instruments of music wherewith to beguile the Cæesar with concord of sweet sounds. Perhaps that which strikes the modern seaman most in this recital of all the useless matters with which the vessels of the great were burdened at this period is the extraordinary number of flags and banners with which they went to sea.

The catalogue of those in the _Galera Bastarda_ makes one rather wonder how there was room for anything else of more practical usefulness when it came to fighting. There were in this galley twenty-four yellow damask banners, inscribed with the imperial arms; a pennon at the main of crimson taffeta of immense length and breadth, with a golden crucifix embroidered thereon. Two similar ones bore shields with the arms of the Emperor, and there was a huge flag of white damask sewn with representations of keys, communion chalices, and the cross of Saint Andrew, in crimson, with a Latin inscription. There were yet two others of scarlet damask "of the same grandeur," embroidered round the edge with "Plus Ultra," the device of Spain. Among a further varied assortment was one which bore the inscription: "Send, O God, thine angel to guard him in all his goings."

The fleet under the command of Andrea Doria numbered sixty-two galleys and one hundred and fifty nefs. There were also a miscellaneous assortment of small craft, known in those days as "brigantines," employed in the carriage of stores and ammunition. We have seen, on a former occasion, what terrible losses attended one of these armadas when really bad weather was encountered, and therefore it is not surprising that, on his second venture, Charles should have selected the finest season of the year for his descent upon the coast of Africa. They were brave men, these Mediterranean seamen, and the risks which they ran in their strangely formed, unseaworthy craft were of course much enhanced when they were loaded to the gunwale with stores, provisions, horses, banners, and last, but by no means least, a mob of seasick soldiery.

Into this armada were crowded twenty-five thousand infantry and six hundred lancers with their horses.

Cagliari, in Sardinia, was the last rendezvous of the expedition, and here it arrived in the early part of June, where a week was spent in making the final preparations; and at last, on June 10th, a start was made for the coast of Africa.

Meanwhile in Tunis Kheyr-ed-Din was working double tides. He was kept well informed by his spies of all that was going on, and his preparations for defence were as adequate as they could be made; the corsairs, as we have said, had come flocking in at his call. He had withdrawn as many of his fighting men from Algiers as he deemed prudent. Knowing that the attack was directed against him personally, he had not much fear that it would be diverted at the last moment. It would have been true strategy on the part of Charles to have done this, but the Emperor considered that his honour required that the attack should be an absolutely direct one, and so Algiers was left on one side, to the ultimate upsetting of his plans. We say this because, although in this case he was to take Tunis and to restore to the throne of that country the puppet King Muley Hassan, and although he was to rescue some twenty thousand Christian captives, he did not capture Barbarossa, who was to live for many years to continue and to carry on his unceasing war against the Christians.

There was no artifice left untried by the despot of Tunis. To the African princes, Moors as well as Arabs and Berbers, did Kheyr-ed-Din send embassies. For these he chose cunning men well versed in the means of exciting the furious passions of these primitive and ferocious peoples, and it was their mission to represent Muley Hassan as an infamous apostate who was prompted by ambition and revenge, not only to become the vassal of a Christian king, but to conspire with him to extirpate the Mohammedan faith. The subtle policy inflamed these ignorant and bigoted Mohammedans to the point of madness, and from far and near they threw in their lot with the man who represented himself to be the rallying-point for all those in Africa who desired not only to preserve their holy religion but also their personal liberty. From Tripoli and Jerba, from Bougie and Bona, from the shores of Shott-el-Jerid, through all the dim hinterland that stretches from thence north-westwards to Algiers, the tribesmen came flocking in. The wild riders of the desert had been rounded up, and it is said that no less than twenty thousand horsemen, in addition to an innumerable crowd of infantry, responded to the call of the master schemer who was but using these guileless savages to further his own personal ends. The land-pirates of the desert, those stormy petrels whose lives only differed from those of the followers of Kheyr-ed-Din in that they carried on their depredations on the land instead of on the sea, camped in their thousands in the environs of Tunis and boasted of the deeds which they were about to perform. Kheyr-ed-Din stimulated their enthusiasm with presents of the most costly description. Ever wise and politic, he knew when it was necessary to pay royally, and on this occasion surpassed himself in prodigality. For all this he himself cherished no illusions; he had the measure of the fighting men of his foes at his fingers' ends, and the most that he expected from these wild irregulars was that they might, perchance, stay an onset and worry the imperial army with dashing cavalry raids. But that they should hold their own with the incomparable infantry of Spain, or make head against the stolid valour of the German men-at-arms, was not contemplated by Barbarossa. In his Janissaries, in his hard-bitten fighting men from the galleys, he could expect much; but there were but some few thousands of these, while the disciplined host against which he was called upon to combat was at the least twenty-five thousand--the flower of the imperial forces. The situation was unique, one on which the world had never looked before--all the might of Christendom going up against one who, no matter by what titles he might choose to describe himself, was no more than a vulgar robber. He was, however, a robber on such a scale as had never before been equalled--a force which remained unsubdued during the whole of his extraordinary and unusually protracted career.

CHAPTER X

THE FALL OF TUNIS AND THE FLIGHT OF BARBAROSSA

Autocracy in the sixteenth century was a very real and concrete fact. The orders of great kings were, as a rule, implicitly obeyed, and, when they were not, there was likely to be trouble of the worst description for those by whom they had been contravened. It is this that causes us to regard as most extraordinary one of the happenings in the armada which sailed from Barcelona for the coast of Africa. A most peremptory order was issued that no women, no boys, no one, in fact, save fighting men of approved worth, should find a place in the ships. Says Sandoval, "No se consintiesen en la armada mugeres ni muchachos ni otra gente inutil, mas de aquellos solos que eran para pelear." (There were not allowed in the armada women, boys, or useless persons, but only those who were capable of fighting.) It appears, however, that the women paid no sort of attention to this ordinance, and the historian gravely relates that "it was no use turning them out of the ships as, as soon as you sent them down one side they returned and climbed up the other," It seems almost incredible, but is none the less a fact, that four thousand women accompanied the expedition and landed at Tunis. The autocracy of the Emperor apparently stopped short where women were concerned, or else he was indifferent whether they came or not.

On June 16th the armada arrived before Tunis, and the army disembarked to attack the fortress known as La Goletta. Into this strong place of arms Barbarossa had sent some six thousand of his best men, mostly Turkish soldiers, under the command of Sinan-Reis, a renegado Jew, and one of the fiercest and most faithful of his followers. To the camp of the Emperor came the fugitive King, Muley Hassan, in whose cause the armada had nominally been assembled--how nominal this was we shall see later by the light of the treaty concluded between him and the Emperor. Charles had complete command of the sea for the time being, and, in consequence, the ex-Sultan was amazed at the profusion and luxury which reigned in the camp of the Christians; and he concluded that these indeed must be the lords of the earth, as luxury and profusion was hardly the note of such courts as then existed in the northern portion of the African continent.

Although the army was landed, and with it artillery for the bombardment of the Goletta, there remained, of course, "the army of the sea," under the orders of the redoubtable Doria; and while the Marquis del Guasto, who was in supreme command on shore, prepared to batter down the defences of the fortress on the land side, the attack was carried on simultaneously from the sea by the galleys. The actual presence of the Emperor stimulated the various nationalities under his eyes to vie with one another in deeds of daring, and they contended among themselves for the posts of the most honour and danger. The attacks of the African horsemen were brushed on one side by the disciplined valour of the Andalusian cavalry, while the great guns thundered from land and sea against the walls of the doomed Goletta. Sinan and his Ottoman soldiers performed prodigies in the way of repairing breaches in the walls as soon as they were made; but Kheyr-ed-Din from the city watched the progress of the bombardment gloomily, as he saw and knew that the fall of the Goletta was but a matter of days. All this time he was far from idle; sortie after sortie did the dauntless old warrior lead in person against those engaged in the task of bombardment. Time and again he heartened the Arab and Berber levies to attack, but the sallies were repulsed, and the lightly armed Africans were driven like chaff before the wind when they swooped down on the lines of investment.

But the time came at last when Sinan and his gallant Turks could hold the place no longer; the walls were breached in six or seven places, and Spaniards, Germans, and Italians made a simultaneous attack. Sinan fighting to the last, evacuated the fortress, and retired actually through the water across a shallow part of the bay to the city, with the remnant of his once magnificent force; and now Barbarossa knew that the end was come, and that Tunis must pass from his hands to those of the Christian Emperor. It was not only the fall of the Goletta that troubled him, but the equally important fact that by this the fleet of the enemy was enabled to lay hands upon his own fleet, consisting of eighty-seven galleys and galliots, together with his arsenal, and no less than three hundred cannon, mostly brass guns of excellent construction, mounted on the walls and planted on the ramparts. The surprising amount of this artillery gives a measure of the strength of the fortress and the efforts it must have cost the besiegers with such a man as Sinan in command.

That the end was near was known to all, and not the least of their embarrassments was the presence within the city walls of some twenty thousand Christian captives. The city was large, the defences were spread out over a great area, it was abundantly evident that it could not be held, and, in consequence, Barbarossa summoned his principal officers and communicated to them his decision.

"We will not remain here to be slain like rats in a trap by the accursed of God by whom we are attacked. No, rather will we perish, sword in hand, as our fathers have done before us; but first there is a danger against which we have to guard. Within these walls are twenty thousand prisoners who will rise against us at the first opportunity; let us, then, first put them to death, and then we will leave this place and show our enemies how the true Moslems can die."

Even those hardened men of blood shrank before the horror which was proposed to them by their chief, and Sinan-Reis took up his parable and spoke the minds of all when he said that follow him to the death they would cheerfully do, but stain themselves with so awful a massacre was to place themselves outside the pale of humanity for ever. It was seldom that they crossed his mood, and Barbarossa listened in frowning silence, accepting as a partial excuse that time pressed, and to put to death twenty thousand persons would occupy longer time than they could spare. On the morrow a battle was fought which, as Kheyr-ed-Din anticipated, ended in the complete rout of the Moslems. Everywhere the Corsair King was in the forefront of the battle, and it is said that he disposed of fifty thousand men on this occasion; but this is probably an exaggeration, and in any case the bulk of his forces consisted of those African levies which, in a pitched battle against European troops, were practically useless owing to their want of discipline and cohesion. Very soon the hosts of the Emperor had prevailed, and the Arabs and Berbers had fled back into the wilderness from whence they had come and whither it was useless to pursue. Barbarossa, at the head of such of his corsairs and Turks as were left--a number estimated at some three to four thousand--burst through all opposition and also escaped, travelling so rapidly that pursuit was abandoned almost at once. And then the event happened which the Moslem leader had foreseen: some of the Christian captives managed to get free from their shackles within the city and released others; they overpowered those left to guard them, and threw open the gates to the soldiery of the Emperor.

Then occurred one of those awful horrors of which this time was so prolific: before Charles or his generals could prevent them the soldiery had swept into the town and commenced to slay, to plunder, and to ravish, without distinction of age, sex, or nationality. Ostensibly these Christian warriors had come to rescue the inhabitants of Tunis from the oppression of Barbarossa, but while that chieftain was in full flight across the mountains to Bona, those by whom he had been defeated entered the town, which they had come to save, and perpetrated a massacre so awful that it is said that no less than thirty thousand people perished. It is a terrible blot on the escutcheon of the Emperor; as, although he and his generals deprecated the massacre--and indeed to do them justice tried to prevent it--this is no excuse for allowing their men to get out of hand, when they must have been aware of the inevitable result: as the Moslem corsairs at their worst were equalled in their iniquities by the European soldiery, once the strong hand of discipline had relaxed its grip.

It may have been that the Emperor was displeased with this excess of zeal on the part of his army; but, if it were so, the chroniclers are silent concerning the matter, being far too busy singing the praises of the Cæsar to think of such a trifle as the massacre of most of the persons whom he had come to deliver. The wretched inhabitants of Tunis must have found it somewhat difficult to distinguish between the corsair, who killed three thousand of their fellow townsmen, and the Christian Emperor, who had massacred ten times that number. Charles, however, reaped great glory from an expedition which had but one good result, which was, that he succeeded in rescuing twenty thousand captives; these men, very naturally, on their return to their homes in every corner of Europe, magnified the wonderful deeds of that prince who had been instrumental in securing their release, and the massacre of the Tunisians was conveniently ignored. Charles had defeated Barbarossa and expelled him from Tunis; he had now displayed his magnanimity and altruism by the terms which he imposed on the miserable Muley Hassan. As far as that individual was concerned, he certainly deserved nothing better; but, as a _finale_ to an expedition blessed by the Pope, and looked upon almost in the light of a modern crusade, it certainly displays a remarkably keen eye for the main chance.

The preamble of the treaty runs as follows:

That the King of Tunis, recognising that he had been expelled from his kingdom by Barbarossa, and that the Emperor in person, with a powerful armada, had come and expelled this tyrant, taking from him the fortress and town of Tunis and restoring them to the King Muley Hassan: that this monarch is most grateful for so magnificent a service, and in recognition thereof contracts to liberate all Christian captives who may be in his realm, to give them a free passage to their homes, and from this time forward binds himself to extend to all Christians kind and generous treatment.

There can be no exception taken to this, which was the least which the Emperor had the right to expect; but this was only, as we have said, the preamble.

Muley Hassan was further made to contract to hold his kingdom in fee to the Spanish Crown, to covenant that no corsair should use his ports for any purpose whatsoever, that the Emperor should not only retain the Goletta but that all other fortified seaports should be put into his hands, that the King of Tunis should in future pay twelve thousand crowns per annum 'for the subsistence of the Spanish garrison of the Goletta, that he should enter into no alliance with the enemies of the Emperor, and should annually present, as an acknowledgment of his vassalage, six Moorish horses and six hawks.

Muley Hassan had exchanged the comparatively dignified position of a prince in exile, who has been expropriated by the strong hand, for that of the puppet of one of the greatest enemies of his religion. Neither he nor his people were one whit the better for the change, and, as far as vassalage was concerned, they would in all probability, in the state of religious feeling at the time, have sooner been subordinate to the Moslem corsair than to the Christian King.

[Illustration: MULEY HASSAN, KING OF TUNIS.]

Barbarossa, as we have seen, frankly acknowledged that he sought his own advantage, and, when he possessed himself of Tunis, made no pretence of any altruistic motive. The Emperor, on the other hand, having come in the guise of a Christian reformer, simply stole the kingdom from Barbarossa and kept it for himself. Incidentally he released the captives, which enabled him to pose once more as the great champion of the oppressed. But, however this may have been, there is no doubt that he had performed a notable feat of arms, and even the most mighty monarch then in Europe felt uplifted by the fact that he had defeated the greatest of the corsairs: accordingly, on July 25th Charles wrote to England, France, Portugal, Milan, Florence, Venice, Genoa, Siena, Mantua, and Naples: "De manera que en pocas dias se supo in toda Europa su buena fortuna." (So it was in a few days the whole of Europe was acquainted with his good fortune.)

Martin Nunez, "Caballero de Toledo," was sent on a special embassy to the Pope to acquaint the Pontiff at first hand of all that happened, and the success which had attended the arms of the Emperor, and also to thank his Holiness for the assistance which he had rendered by sending the Papal galleys. Jorge de Melo, a Portuguese caballero, was sent to his own country with despatches, and other nobles and high officials were despatched to the Emperor's Viceroys in the various parts of his dominions. In the long circular letter which Charles addressed to all these potentates--and which is reproduced in its entirety by Sandoval--he says "that the Christian captives found in Tunis amounted to something like eighteen to twenty thousand, that Barbarossa had escaped with some five thousand Turks, corsairs, and renegadoes, of which three thousand were on horseback and two thousand afoot; that, as they suffered from great scarcity of provisions, and the almost total lack of water, many were falling by the way, and many others were being murdered by their quondam allies for such goods as they possessed, or for the value of their arms and clothing."

We must now return to Kheyr-ed-Din. What the sufferings of that chieftain and the remnant of his gallant army must have been in their flight to Bona they alone knew. It was the height of summer, and burning tracks of desert and rugged mountain passes had to be surmounted; naturally they could have carried but very little food, and water they had to find on the way. In addition to this, as we have seen in the despatch of Charles, the tribesmen turned against them, cutting off stragglers and murdering and plundering as opportunity offered. Barbarossa himself was an old man, so old that it seems nothing short of a miracle that he should have survived the hardships of this awful march. Not only did he do this, but apparently arrived at Bona in condition to continue his journey by sea at once, had he cared to do so. He had lost his newly acquired kingdom, he had lost nearly his entire fleet, his arsenal and stores were in the hands of his enemies; if ever a man was completely crushed it was he on this memorable occasion. As we have said before, however, it was in times of the greatest stress when the indomitable character of this man rose to meet the occasion, and, while his foes were congratulating one another that at last there was an end of the scourge of the Mediterranean and the bugbear of Christendom, the hunted fugitive was merely preparing himself for fresh acts of aggression.

The real fact of the matter was that he was above all and before all a seaman. The defeat of Kheyr-ed-Din meant merely the transference of his malign activities from one sphere to another--from the sea to the land, or from the land to the sea. King he called himself, and king _de facto_ he was both in Algiers and Tunis, reigning with unexampled cruelty, a prototype of those other corsair kings by whom he was succeeded. But the real source of his power lay, not in stone walls and fortifications, nor in ill-trained levies of African tribes, but in his own genius for command at sea, and the manner in which he was able to inspire with his own dauntless and desperate spirit those hardy mariners who followed in his train, the descendants of the "Moriscoes" who hailed from the ancient Moorish kingdoms of Cordoba and Granada.

Thus it was in the present instance. He had been unable to withstand the might of Cæsar and his legions, but Tunis was not the whole of Northern Africa, nor had quite all his eggs been kept in that one basket. He had kept fifteen galleys in reserve at Bona, and, in consequence, on his arrival there, was able to embark at once. This he did, and hardly had he done so when there appeared upon the scene fifteen galleys commanded by Adan Centurion and John Doria. Kheyr-ed-Din had had enough of fighting just for the present; his men and he were wearied out by the hardships of their flight, and accordingly he drew up his galleys under the fort at Bona and awaited an attack, should the enemy care to deliver one. But Adan Centurion's heart failed him; to cut out the old Sea-wolf from under one of his own batteries was more than he had the stomach for, and he accordingly sailed away. "Fue sin duda la perdida grande" (this no doubt was a great pity), is the comment of Sandoval, who goes on to say that, had the Genoese been the men that they had been aforetime, this would never have been, and that they would have gone in and burnt or disabled the galleys of the corsair, slain their leader, or driven him ashore. Hot on the tracks of Adan Centurion and his nephew John came the veteran Andrea Doria with forty galleys, but he was too late, and the bird had flown; had it been he who had arrived in the first instance, then it is more than probable that matters would have turned out differently, and Kheyr-ed-Din had then and there terminated his career. It is true that Andrea possessed himself of Bona, and the Corsair King was shorn of yet another of his land-stations, but for the time he had cut himself adrift from the land, and had gone back to that element in which he was particularly at home.

Doria left Bona in the charge of Alvar Gomez and a company of Spanish troops and then sailed away, if possible to find and capture Barbarossa, thus to set the seal of completeness on the victory which had been won by his master the Emperor. Another stronghold of the corsairs was now in most competent hands, as Alvar Gomez Zagal was one of the most renowned caballeros of Spain, son of that Pero Lopez de Horusco on whom the Moors themselves had bestowed the title of "Al Zagal," or "The Valiant," on account of his extraordinary bravery.

On August 17th Charles re-embarked his army and evacuated the country, leaving, however, one thousand Spanish veterans, under the command of Bernard de Mendoza, in charge of the Goletta, as a permanent memorial of the expedition, and as a guarantee that the wretched Muley Hassan should fully comply with the treaty obligations which had been imposed upon him. It is true that Barbarossa had not been captured, but his city had been taken, his fleet had been destroyed, and he himself was now a fugitive, unable any further to trouble the peace of Christendom or the dignity of the Emperor by whom he had been so soundly chastised. In consequence the Cæsar departed well pleased with himself and with those who had been acting under his orders, to whom he distributed orders and titles, as a memento of the occasion upon which they had finally broken up the power of those by whom his peace had so long been troubled.

One of the difficulties in dealing with the career of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa is that, in times when he was unsuccessful, or when, as on the present occasion, he had received a severe setback, it is next to impossible to find out what he was doing or where exactly he was preparing for his next coup. In this case, in particular, the old-time historians were thanking God that the Emperor had rid the world of a particularly pestilent knave, and ceased to trouble themselves much about him until he forced himself once more upon their notice. Had Charles at this time recognised the greatness of the man whom he had just so signally defeated he might have changed the course of history. Had he, instead of sailing back to Europe, content with that which he had accomplished in Tunis, pushed his attack home on Algiers, he might have made himself master of the whole of Northern Africa, as, in the disorganised state in which the corsairs now found themselves, they could certainly have offered no effective resistance. But to the Emperor these rovers of the sea presented themselves merely in the light of robbers. Robbers, it is true, on a somewhat large scale, but still not persons of sufficient importance to detain him from the infinitely more pressing affairs which awaited him on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

In addition to the fifteen galleys which Kheyr-ed-Din picked up at Bona he had in reserve at Algiers some fifty others. Escaping the attention of Adan Centurion and John Doria, and the infinitely more formidable squadron of Andrea, he headed once more for Algiers, and for a time seems to have remained quiet, no doubt recuperating from the fatigues, disappointments, and physical hardships which he had so recently undergone. He was apparently undisturbed during the winter by his Christian enemies, and was in consequence able to think out his future plans of campaign and to collect and put heart into his scattered followers, who, in ones and twos, were gradually, such of them as were left, finding their way back to the headquarters of piracy and its indomitable chieftain.

That cool calculator of the chances of life knew that this must be so; the power of the corsairs generally had received the worst blow it had ever encountered since the dispossessed Moriscoes had taken to the sea for a living; those of them who remained alive were without ships--that is to say, without their only means of making a livelihood--and that they should gravitate towards Algiers and its master was as nearly a certainty as anything human could be. And, as was anticipated by the chief, so it came to pass. Into the city straggled broken, starving, sullen men who had lost their all, for whom the future held nothing but misery and despair unless they could get to sea once more.

It was on occasions such as this that the intellectual eminence of Barbarossa was so marked. Rough and cruel as he was, he possessed nevertheless a magnetic power over the minds of men, on which, when it so pleased him, he could play with the most extraordinary effect. And now, when the rank and file of the corsairs were ragged, hungry, and smarting under defeat, he dealt with them tenderly and graciously; and the sum of his teaching was to the effect that they had but to follow him once more and all the evils from which they were suffering would be presently remedied. So it came about that men who, before the defeat, had commanded ships of their own, were glad enough to become units on board the galleys of Kheyr-ed-Din, animated by the pleasing hope that soon again, under the leadership of this man, they might regain all, nay more, than they had lost. It must be remembered that Barbarossa argued from sound premises when he held out such hopes as these to the desperate remnant of the corsairs in Algiers in that sad winter of 1535. He was the greatest of them all, and they, as well as he, knew this to be a fact: if they had lost their all in the past battles, they had been fighting in a common cause to preserve their own lives and their liberty to plunder the Christian at sea. And now there was work and there was bread to eat for those who once again would throw in their lot with their old leader; and, although it may be said that these men had no alternative, still they threw themselves with heartiness into that which the master mind decreed should be their work, and this was none other than the preparation of the galleys for another campaign against the Christian.

"What matter, comrades?" said the veteran on one occasion when he was superintending the fitting out of the galleys. "These dogs have gone back from whence they came, and they have left that creature, Muley Hassan, to do their will in Tunis. It is true that there is Mendoza and his thousand Spaniards in the Goletta, but did not Martin de Vargas hold the Peñon here? And where is De Vargas, and in whose hands is the Peñon now? We know from whence the garrisons of Spain draw their supplies, and believe me that there will be hungry men in the Goletta in this coming year. Once we get to sea again, there will be more than enough for every good man who believes in the Prophet, and who has the sense to follow Barbarossa. For every ducat that you have lost see, in the coming year, if you do not gain ten; the Christians are off their guard now, and they think that they have done with me because they have captured Tunis." He laughed his great, jovial laugh. "By the beard of the Prophet--upon whom be peace!--they have yet to find out the man with whom they have to deal."

It took a master mind to instil heart of grace into men who so recently had had so bad a beating as these; but in the end they began to cheer up, and to recollect how Barbarossa had sooner or later always risen from defeat as strong or stronger than before; also they recalled the fact that he was the chosen of the Padishah, and that that potentate, the representative of the Prophet on earth, would assuredly come to his assistance now that Tunis, which had been taken in his name, had been reft from Barbarossa by the Christians. Gradually hope took the place of despair, and when the corsairs took to the sea in the early part of the following year it was with renewed confidence in both themselves and their leader.

CHAPTER XI

ROXALANA AND THE MURDER OF IBRAHIM

At the coming of spring Barbarossa was at sea again with thirty-two ships ready for any eventuality, his crews aflame with ardour for revenge against those by whom they had been so roughly handled. He chose for the scene of operations a place on the coast of Majorca some fifteen miles from Palma; from here he commanded the route of the Spaniards from their country to the African coast, and it was against this nation that he felt a great bitterness owing to recent events. Eagerly did the corsair and his men watch for the Spanish ships, the heavier vessels lying at anchor, but the light, swift galleys ranging and questing afar so that none might be missed. Very soon the vigilance of the Moslems was rewarded by the capture of a number of vessels, sent by Bernard de Mendoza laden with Turkish and Moorish slaves, destined to be utilised as rowers in the Spanish galleys. These men were hailed as a welcome reinforcement, and joyfully joined the forces of Kheyr-ed-Din when he moved on Minorca, captured the castle by a surprise assault, raided the surrounding country, and captured five thousand seven hundred Christians, amongst whom were eight hundred men who had been wounded in the attack on Tunis--all these unfortunates were sent to refill the bagnio of Algiers.

This private war of revenge was, however, destined soon to come to an end, as Soliman the Magnificent in this year became involved in disputes with the Venetian Republic, and recalled "that veritable man of the sea," as Barbarossa had been described by Ibrahim, to Constantinople.

In this city by the sea there had taken place a tragedy which, although it only involved the death of a single man, was nevertheless far-reaching in its consequences; for the man was none other than that great statesman Ibrahim, Grand Vizier, and the only trusted counsellor of the Padishah. He who had been originally a slave had risen step by step in the favour of his master until he arrived at the giddy eminence which he occupied at the time of his death. It is a somewhat curious commentary on the essentially democratic status of an autocracy that a man could thus rise to a position second only to that of the autocrat himself; and, in all probability, wielding quite as much power.

Ibrahim had for years been treated by Soliman more as a brother than as a dependent, which, in spite of his Grand Viziership, he was in fact. They lived in the very closest communion, taking their meals together, and even sleeping in the same room, Soliman, a man of high intelligence himself, and a ruler who kept in touch with all the happenings which arose in his immense dominions, desiring always to have at hand the man whom he loved; from whom, with his amazing grip of political problems and endless fertility of resource, he was certain of sympathy and sound advice. But in an oriental despotism there are other forces at work besides those of _la haute politique_, and Ibrahim had one deadly enemy who was sworn to compass his destruction. The Sultana Roxalana was the light of the harem of the Grand Turk. This supremely beautiful woman, originally a Russian slave, was the object of the most passionate devotion on the part of Soliman; but she was as ambitious as she was lovely, and brooked no rival in the affections of Soliman, be that person man, woman, or child. In her hands the master of millions, the despot whose nod was death, became a submissive slave; the undisciplined passions of this headstrong woman swept aside from her path all those whom she suspected of sharing her influence, in no matter how remote a fashion. At her dictation had Soliman caused to be murdered his son Mustafa, a youth of the brightest promise, because, in his intelligence and his winning ways he threatened to eclipse Selim, the son of Roxalana herself.

This woman possessed a strong natural intelligence, albeit she was totally uneducated; she saw and knew that Ibrahim was all-powerful with her lover, and this roused her jealousy to fever-heat. She was not possessed of a cool judgment, which would have told her that Ibrahim was a statesman dealing with the external affairs of the Sublime Porte, and that with her and with her affairs he neither desired, nor had he the power, to interfere. What, however, the Sultana did know was that in these same affairs of State her opinion was dust in the balance when weighed against that of the Grand Vizier.

Soliman had that true attribute of supreme greatness, the unerring aptitude for the choice of the right man. He had picked out Ibrahim from among his immense entourage, and never once had he regretted his choice. As time went on and the intellect and power of the man became more and more revealed to his master, that sovereign left in his hands even such matters as despots are apt to guard most jealously. We have seen how, in spite of the murmurings of the whole of his capital, and the almost insubordinate attitude of his navy, he had persevered in the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, because the judgment of Ibrahim was in favour of its being carried out. This, to Roxalana, was gall and wormwood; well she knew that, as long as the Grand Vizier lived, her sovereignty was at best but a divided one. There was a point at which her blandishments stopped short; this was when she found that her opinion did not coincide with that of the minister. She was, as we have seen in the instance of her son, not a woman to stick at trifles, and she decided that Ibrahim must die.

There could be no hole-and-corner business about this; he must die, and when his murder had been accomplished she would boldly avow to her lover what she had done and take the consequences, believing in her power over him to come scatheless out of the adventure. In those days, when human life was so cheap, she might have asked for the death of almost any one, and her whim would have been gratified by a lover who had not hesitated to put to death his own son at her dictation. But with Ibrahim it was another matter; he was the familiar of the Sultan, his _alter ego_ in fact, It says much for the nerve of the Sultana that she dared so greatly on this memorable and lamentable occasion.

On March 5th, 1536, Ibrahim, went to the royal seraglio, and, following his ancient custom, was admitted to the table of his master, sleeping after the meal at his side. At least so it was supposed, but none knew save those engaged in the murder what passed on that fatal night; the next day his dead body lay in the house of the Sultan.

Across the floor of jasper, in that palace which was a fitting residence for one rightly known as "The Magnificent," the blood of Ibrahim flowed to the feet of Roxalana. The disordered clothing, the terrible expression of the face of the dead man, the gaping wounds which he had received, bore witness that there had taken place a grim struggle before that iron frame and splendid intellect had been levelled with the dust. This much leaked out afterwards, as such things will leak out, and then the Sultana took Soliman into her chamber and gazed up into his eyes. The man was stunned by the immensity of the calamity which had befallen him and his kingdom, but his manhood availed him not against the wiles of this Circe. Ibrahim had been foully done to death in his own palace, and this woman clinging so lovingly around his neck now was the murderess. The heart's blood of his best friend was coagulating on the threshold of his own apartment when he forgave her by whom his murder had been accomplished. This was the vengeance of Roxalana, and who shall say that it was not complete?

The Ottoman Empire was the poorer by the loss of its greatest man, the jealousy of the Sultana was assuaged, the despot who had permitted this unavenged murder was still on the throne, thrall to the woman who had first murdered his son and then his friend and minister. But the deed carried with it the evil consequences which were only too likely to occur when so capable a head of the State was removed at so critical a time. Renewed strife was in the air, and endless squabbles between Venice and the Porte were taking place. With these we have no concern, but, in addition to other complaints, there were loud and continuous ones concerning the corsairs. Venice, "The Bride of the Sea," had neither rest nor peace; the pirates swarmed in Corfu, in Zante, in Candia, in Cephalonia, and the plunder and murder of the subjects of the Republic was the theme of perpetual representations to the Sultan. The balance of advantage in this guerilla warfare was with the corsairs until Girolame Canale, a Venetian captain, seized one of the Moslem leaders known as "The Young Moor of Alexandria," The victory of Canale was somewhat an important one as he captured the galley of "The Young Moor" and four others; two more were sunk, and three hundred Janissaries and one thousand slaves fell into the hands of the Venetian commander. There being an absence of nice feeling on the part of the Venetians, the Janissaries were at once beheaded to a man.

The whole story is an illustration of the extraordinary relations existing among the Mediterranean States at this time. Soliman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, had lent three hundred of his Janissaries, his own picked troops, to assist the corsairs in their depredations on Venetian commerce. Having done this, and the Janissaries having been caught and summarily and rightly put to death as pirates, the Sultan, as soon as he heard of what had occurred, sent an ambassador, one Yonis Bey, to Venice to demand satisfaction for the insult passed upon him by the beheading of his own soldiers turned pirates. The conclusion of the affair was that the Venetians released "The Young Moor of Alexandria" as soon as he was cured of the eight wounds which he had received in the conflict, and sent him back to Africa with such of his galleys as were left. There was one rather comical incident in connection with this affair, which was that when Yonis Bey was on his way from Constantinople to Venice he was chased by a Venetian fleet, under the command of the Count Grandenico, and driven ashore. The Count was profuse in his apologies when he discovered that he had been chasing a live ambassador; but the occurrence so exasperated Soliman that he increased his demands in consequence.

Barbarossa, who had spent his time harrying the Spaniards at sea ever since the fall of Tunis, was shortly to appear on the scene again. He received orders from the Sultan, and came as fast as a favouring wind would bring him. Kheyr-ed-Din had been doing well in the matter of slaves and plunder, but he knew that, with the backing of the Grand Turk, he would once again be in command of a fleet in which he might repeat his triumph of past years, and prove himself once more the indispensable "man of the sea."

Soon after his arrival his ambitions were gratified, and he found himself with a fleet of one hundred ships. Since the death of Ibrahim, and the incident which terminated with the despatch of Yonis Bey to Venice, the relations between the Grand Turk and the Venetian Republic had become steadily worse, and at last the Sultan declared war. On May 17th, 1537, Soliman, accompanied by his two sons, Selim and Mohammed, left Constantinople. With the campaign conducted by the Sultan we are not concerned here; it was directed against the Ionian Islands, which had been in the possession of Venice since 1401. On August 18th Soliman laid siege to Corfu, and was disastrously beaten, re-embarking his men on September 7th, after losing thousands in a fruitless attack on the fortress. He returned to Constantinople utterly discomfited. It was the seventh campaign which the Sultan had conducted in person, but the first in which the ever-faithful Ibrahim had not been by his side.

This defeat at the hands of the Venetians was not, however, the only humiliation which he was destined to experience in this disastrous year; for once again Doria, that scourge of the Moslem, was loose upon the seas, and was making his presence felt in the immediate neighbourhood of Corfu, where the Turks had been defeated. On July 17th Andrea had left the port of Messina with twenty-five galleys, had captured ten richly laden Turkish ships, gutted and burned them. Kheyr-ed-Din was at sea at the time, but the great rivals were not destined to meet on this occasion. Instead of Barbarossa, Andrea fell in with Ali-Chabelli, the lieutenant of Sandjak Bey of Gallipoli. On July 22nd the Genoese admiral and the Turkish commander from the Dardanelles met to the southward of Corfu, off the small island of Paxo, and a smart action ensued. It ended in the defeat of Ali-Chabelli, whose galleys were captured and towed by Doria into Paxo. That veteran fighter was himself in the thickest of the fray, and, conspicuous in his crimson doublet, had been an object of attention to the marksmen of Chabelli during the entire action. In spite of the receipt of a severe wound in the knee, the admiral refused to go below until victory was assured. He was surrounded at this time by a devoted band of nobles sworn to defend the person of their admiral or to die in his defence. His portrait has been sketched for us at this time by the Dominican Friar, Padre Alberto Gugliel-motto, author of "La guerra dei Pirati e la marina Pontifica dal 1500 al 1560." The description runs thus: "Andrea Doria was of lofty stature, his face oval in shape, forehead broad and commanding, his neck was powerful, his hair short, his beard long and fan-shaped, his lips were thin, his eyes bright and piercing."

Once again had he defeated an officer of the Grand Turk; and it may be remarked that Ibrahim was probably quite right in the estimation, or rather in the lack of estimation, in which he held the sea-officers of his master, as they seem to have been deficient in every quality save that of personal valour, and in their encounters with Doria and the knights were almost invariably worsted. For the sake of Islam, for the prestige of the Moslem arms at sea, it was time that Barbarossa should take matters in hand once more.

The autumn of this year 1537 proved that the old Sea-wolf had lost none of his cunning, that his followers were as terrible as ever. What did it seem to matter that Venetian and Catalan, Genoese and Frenchman, Andalusian and the dwellers in the Archipelago, were all banded together in league against this common foe? Did not the redoubtable Andrea range the seas in vain, and were not all the efforts of the Knights of Saint John futile, when the son of the renegado from Mitylene and his Christian wife put forth from the Golden Horn? What was the magic of this man, it was asked despairingly, that none seemed able to prevail against him? Had it not been currently reported that Carlos Quinto, the great Emperor, had driven him forth from Tunis a hunted fugitive, broken and penniless, with never a galley left, without one ducat in his pocket? Was he so different, then, from all the rest of mankind that his followers would stick to him in evil report as well as in the height of his prosperity? Men swore and women crossed themselves at the mention of his name.

"Terrible as an army with banners," indeed, was Kheyr-ed-Din in this eventful summer: things had gone badly with the crescent flag, the Padishah was unapproachable in his palace, brooding perchance on that "might have been" had he not sold his honour and the life of his only friend to gratify the malice of a she-devil; those in attendance on the Sultan trembled, for the humour of the despot was black indeed.

But "the veritable man of the sea" was in some sort to console him for that which he had lost; as never in his own history--and there was none else with which it could be compared--had the Corsair King made so fruitful a raid. He ravaged the coasts of the Adriatic and the islands of the Archipelago, sweeping in slaves by the thousand, and by the end of the year he had collected eighteen thousand in the arsenal at Stamboul. Great was the jubilation in Constantinople when the Admiralissimo himself returned from his last expedition against the infidel; stilled were the voices which hinted disaffection--who among them all could bring back four hundred thousand pieces of gold? What mariner could offer to the Grand Turk such varied and magnificent presents?

Upon his arrival Barbarossa asked permission to kiss the threshold of the palace of the Sultan, which boon being graciously accorded to him, he made his triumphal entry. Two hundred captives clad in scarlet robes carried cups of gold and flasks of silver behind them came thirty others, each staggering under an enormous purse of sequins; yet another two hundred brought collars of precious stones or bales of the choicest goods; and a further two hundred were laden with sacks of small coin. Certainly if Soliman the Magnificent had lost a Grand Vizier he had succeeded in finding an admiral!

All through the earlier months of 1538 the dockyards of Constantinople hummed with a furious activity, for Soliman had decreed that the maritime campaign of this year was to begin with no less than one hundred and fifty ships. His admiral, however, did not agree with this decision; to the Viziers he raged and stormed. "Listen," he said, "O men of the land who understand naught of the happenings of the sea. By this time Saleh-Reis must have quitted Alexandria convoying to the Bosphorus twenty sail filled with the richest merchandise; should he fall in with the accursed Genoese, Doria, where then will be Saleh-Reis and his galleys and his convoy? I will tell you: the ships in Genoa, the galleys burned, Saleh-Reis and all his mariners chained to the rowers' bench."

The Viziers trembled, as men did when Barbarossa stormed and turned upon them those terrible eyes which knew neither fear nor pity. "We be but men," they answered, "and our lord the Sultan has so ordained it."

"I have forty galleys," replied the corsair; "you have forty more. With these I will take the sea; but, mark you," he continued, softening somewhat, "you do right to fear the displeasure of the Sultan, and I also have no wish to encounter it; but vessels raised and equipped in a hurry will be of small use to me. In the name of Allah the compassionate and his holy Prophet give me my eighty galleys and let me go."

In Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa sound strategical instinct went hand in hand with the desperate valour of the corsair. To dally in the Golden Horn while so rich a prey was at sea to be picked up by his Christian foes was altogether opposed to his instincts: never to throw away a chance in the game of life had ever been his guiding principle.

Soliman, great man as he undoubtedly was, had not the adamantine hardness of character which enabled his admiral to risk all on the hazards of the moment; or possibly the Grand Turk was deficient in that clearness of strategical instinct which never in any circumstances forgoes a present advantage for something which may turn out well in a problematical future. Soliman, sore, sullen, and unapproachable, dwelt in his palace brooding over the misfortunes which had been his lot since the death of Ibrahim. Barbarossa, who so recently had lost practically all that he possessed, and who had reached an age at which most men have no hopes for the future, was as clear in intellect, as undaunted in spirit, as if he had been half a century younger: to be even once more with those by whom he had been defeated and dispossessed was the only thing now in his mind. The capture of Saleh-Reis and his convoy would be a triumph of which he could not bear to think. Further, it would add to the demoralisation of the sea forces of the Sultan, which were sadly in need of some striking success after the defeats which had so recently been their portion. The Sultan had decided that one hundred and fifty ships were necessary; his admiral thought otherwise. There was too much at stake for him to dally at Constantinople; his fiery energy swept all before it, and in the end he had his way. On June 7th, 1538, he finally triumphed over the hesitations of the Viziers and put to sea with eighty sail.

The Sultan, from his kiosk, the windows of which opened on the Bosphorus, counted the ships.

"Only eighty sail; is that all?" he asked.

The trembling Viziers prostrated themselves before him.

"O our Lord, the Padishah," they cried, "Saleh-Reis comes from Alexandria with a rich convoy; somewhere lurking is Andrea Doria, the accursed; it was necessary, O Magnificent, to send succour."

There was a pause, in which the hearts of men beat as do those who know not but that the next moment may be their last on earth.

The Sultan stared from his window at the retreating ships in a silence like the silence of the grave. At last he turned:

"So be it," he answered briefly; "but see to it that reinforcements do not lag upon the road."

If there had been activity in the dockyards before it was as nothing to the strenuous work that was to be done henceforward.

Before starting on this expedition Kheyr-ed-Din had made an innovation in the manning of some of the most powerful of his galleys, which was of the utmost importance, and which was to add enormously to the success of his future maritime enterprises. The custom had always been that the Ottoman galleys had been rowed by Christians, captured and enslaved; of course the converse was true in the galleys of their foes. There were, for the size of the vessels, an enormous number of men carried in the galleys of the sixteenth century, and an average craft of this description would have on board some four hundred men; of these, however, the proportion would be two hundred and fifty slaves to one hundred and fifty fighting men. That which Kheyr-ed-Din now insisted upon was that a certain proportion of his most powerful units should be rowed by Moslem fighting men, so that on the day of battle the oarsmen could join in the fray instead of remaining chained to their benches, as was the custom with the slaves. It is, however, an extraordinary testimony to the influence which the corsair had attained in Constantinople that he had been able to effect this change in the composition of some of his crews; it must have been done with the active co-operation of the Sultan, as no authority less potent than that of the sovereign himself could have induced free men to undertake the terrible toil of rower in a galley. This was reserved for the unfortunate slave on either side owing to the intolerable hardship of the life, and results, in the pace at which a galley proceeded through the water, were usually obtained by an unsparing use of the lash on the naked bodies of the rowers.

This human material was used up in the most prodigal manner possible, as those in command had not the inducement of treating the rowers well, from that economic standpoint which causes a man to so use his beast of burden as to get the best work from him. In the galley, when a slave could row no more he was flung overboard and another was put in his place.

The admiral, however, even when backed by the Padishah, could not man a large fleet of galleys with Moslem rowers, and, as there was a shortage in the matter of propelling power, his first business was to collect slaves, and for this purpose he visited the islands of the Archipelago. The lot of the unhappy inhabitants of these was indeed a hard one. They were nearer to the seat of the Moslem power than any other Christians; they were in those days totally unable to resist an attack in force, and in consequence were swept off in their thousands.

Seven islands cover the entrance to the Gulf of Volo. The nearest to the coast is Skiathos, which is also the most important; it was defended by a castle built upon a rock. This castle was attacked by Barbarossa, who bombarded it for six days, carried it by assault, and massacred the garrison. He spared the lives of the inhabitants of the island, and by this means secured three thousand four hundred rowers for his galleys. He had to provide motor-power for the reinforcements which he expected. In July he was reinforced from Constantinople by ninety galleys, while from Egypt came Saleh-Reis, who had succeeded in avoiding the terrible Doria, with twenty more; the fleet was thus complete.

Barbarossa ravaged Skios, Andros, and other islands, putting them under contribution, and in this manner raised some eight thousand ducats; from a pen of guinea-fowl to a king's ransom, nothing escaped the maw of this most rapacious of corsairs. Candia and some other islands yielded up some small spoil, but the sufferings of such insignificant folk as the wretched islanders were soon lost to the sight of the Christian world in the magnitude of the events which were now impending.

Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, Corsair, Admiral, and King, the scourge of the Mediterranean, and Andrea Doria, Prince of Oneglia, Admiral of the modern Cæsar, Charles V., Emperor and King, were at last to meet face to face.

CHAPTER XII

THE PREVESA CAMPAIGN; THE GATHERING OF THE FLEETS

Some thirty-five miles to the south-eastward of Cape Bianco (the southernmost point of the island of Corfu) lies Prevesa, at the entrance of the Gulf of Arta, or, as it was known in classic times, the Ambracian Gulf. In these seas, in the year 31 B.C., was fought one of the most memorable battles of antiquity, for it was here that Octavius, afterward Augustus Cæsar, defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra. There have been many controversies of late years as to whom the original idea of breaking the line in naval combats is due: anyhow, it can claim a respectable antiquity, as it was practised at the battle of Actium by Octavius, who by a skilful manoeuvre caused Antony to lengthen his line, which he then cut through and attacked the ships of Cleopatra, which were in support: this was too much for the lady, who fled with her sixty ships, followed by Antony, to his eternal disgrace. The remainder of his fleet fought bravely for a time, but was eventually defeated, the land army also surrendering to Octavius. The date of the actual battle of Actium was September 2nd, 31 B.C.: it was in September 1538 that the battle of Prevesa between Andrea Doria and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa took place, and the conditions of the battle were almost exactly similar.

To this very place came, 1569 years later, the Christian and the Moslem, the Crescent and the Cross, each under its most renowned leader, each side burning with an inextinguishable hate. It was one of the peculiarities of this warfare that into it entered so much actual personal feeling, each side hating the other for the love of God in the most poisonous fashion. Save and except the battle of Lepanto in 1571 (with which we shall deal later in the story of Ali Basha, or Occhiali as he was called by his Christian opponents) the contest at Prevesa was far the most important ever fought by those strange oar-propelled vessels known as galleys. It was memorable in many ways, but particularly so for the ages of the men in chief command. Andrea Doria was at this time seventy years of age; in fact, Guglielmotti gives the date of his birth as 1466, thus making him two years older. That amazing veteran Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, who died in his bed at Constantinople on July 4th, 1546, at the age of ninety, must have been eighty-two. Vicenzo Capello was sixty-eight, as the epitaph on his tomb at Venice in the church of Santa Maria Formosa says that he was seventy-two in the year of his death, 1542.

Once again Christendom was nerving itself for a supreme effort against the corsairs, and, during the time that Barbarossa was raiding and ravaging among the islands of the Archipelago, the Christian fleet was gradually assembling. At first it numbered some 150 galleys, 81 Venetian, 36 Pontifical, and 30 Spanish; Charles V. sent, at the last moment, 50 ships on which were embarked 10,000 troops. The force totalled altogether 59,000 to 60,000 men, 195 ships, and 2,594 cannons. This was no doubt a most formidable armada, but the policy of those by whom it was composed was not all directed to the same end. While Charles desired, above all things, to exterminate the corsairs for good and all, which was, in the circumstances, the only sound view of the matter, the Venetians were for fighting defensive actions to maintain their supremacy in the Ionian Islands, and were disposed to let the future take care of itself. There was not, in consequence, that absolute unanimity among the various commanders of the expedition as was necessary for its complete success.

The concentration of the Christian fleet took place at Corfu. The Venetians arrived first, with Vincenzo Capello in command; Marco Grimani brought thither the Papal contingent; they anchored and waited, but Andrea Doria did not appear. Days lengthened into weeks, and Grimani and Capelli chafed and fumed; provisions were running low and the dignity of Venice and of the Pope were flouted by this strange remissness on the part of the Admiral of the Emperor. At last, furious with impatience, Grimani made a raid into the Gulf of Arta, which was defended at the entrance by the fortress of Prevesa. The only result of this ill-timed attack was that two Papal captains and a number of soldiers were killed. Grimani then returned to Corfu, to find Capello irritated to the last extent by the non-appearance of Doria.

At last, on September 5th, the Imperial fleet hove in sight. It was composed of forty-nine galleys, but these were supplemented by a great number of sailing ships; the sailing craft, however, did not arrive till September 22nd. These vessels were gradually making way among the Spaniards since the discovery of the new world.

At this time the Venetians possessed fourteen nefs. Doria had augmented these by twenty-two of his own, and the total number of thirty-six was commanded by Franco Doria, a nephew of the admiral. The Venetian nefs were commanded by Alessandro Condalmiero, captain of the _Galleon of Venice_. This was the most formidable fighting vessel in the Mediterranean; she was reckoned an excellent sailor, she was by far the most heavily armed sailing ship then afloat; in fact, in the opinion of contemporary seamen, she was "an invincible fortress."

Doria, Grimani, and Capello had now nearly 200 ships carrying nearly 60,000 men. Such a force, in all ages, has been considered great. William the Conqueror conquered Britain with a less number; it is almost half the total of the personnel of the British fleet in the present day which has to defend a country with 40,000,000 inhabitants, and all this force had been raised, armed, and equipped to combat with a Moslem corsair.

Barbarossa had succeeded in assembling 122 ships. He was accompanied by all the most famous corsairs of the day, among whom was Dragut, who fell at the siege of Malta, and of whom we shall have more to say in due time. Far and wide ranged the swift galleys of the Ottoman fleet, for the plan of the commander of the Moslems was to locate and destroy his enemies in detail if possible. At last news came to him that Grimani's ships had been sighted in the Gulf of Arta. Not one moment did he lose; he would fall upon the Papal contingent with his whole force and destroy it utterly. Such, at least, was his plan when he sailed for Prevesa; but, notwithstanding his haste, he was too late. Happily for himself, Grimani had returned to Corfu before the arrival of his enemy.

At this juncture Barbarossa hesitated; had he not done so, and had he followed Grimani to Corfu, he might have destroyed both him and Vincenzo Capello in detail before the arrival of Doria. The Prevesa campaign is a curious study of hesitation on both sides, and the idea naturally occurs were not the corsair and the Christian commanders-in-chief too old for the work on which they were engaged? Men of over seventy are not impetuous, but grave and deliberate as a rule; but there is no rule without its exceptions, and Doria and Barbarossa were not as other leaders. Up to the present their dash and initiative had been unimpaired. There was no question that Barbarossa not only made a mistake in hesitating, but that by it he lost the game. Instead of striking at once he did what he had never done before in the whole of his career, which was to send to Constantinople for instructions. Some of his galleys had captured a fishing-boat off Corfu, the crew of which had seen Doria's fleet. The Moslem leader sent the fishermen themselves to report to Soliman exactly what they had seen, and to ask for and bring back instructions from that potentate. What Barbarossa had discovered was that the odds were very much against him; so much, in fact, that he would have to act on the defensive. In consequence, he steered for Prevesa and entered the Gulf of Arta, which is approached by a long narrow strait, dominated by the castle of Prevesa. Once inside he anchored his galleys in such a position that they could fire direct out to sea, thus overwhelming with their fire any vessel attempting to enter.

Barbarossa now occupied the same position as did Octavius in his combat with Antony. The rôle of the latter general was now taken by Doria. Antony, like Doria, had heavy ships which could not advance to the attack owing to their too great draught. Octavius, with his light-draught ships, could both attack and retreat into safety if overmatched.

On September 22nd Doria, having collected all his ships, gave orders to fill up with wood, water, and fresh provisions. On the 25th, to the sound of the trumpet, the Commander-in-Chief, with his fleet of two hundred sail, weighed anchor and sped before the wind rapidly southwards. Grimani commanded the advance-guard, Doria was in the centre, Vincenzo Capello, with his Venetians, brought up the rear. Formed in two columns, the nefs followed the galleys; the _Galleon of Venice_, commanded by Condalmiero, a squadron in herself, preceded them.

[Illustration: GALEASSE UNDER SAIL.]

From the anchorage at Corfu to the entrance of the Gulf of Arta is about fifty-eight miles, and, traversing this distance during the hours of daylight, the fleet anchored, as night fell, under Cape Prevesa. The Galleon which acted as what we should now call the guide of the fleet, anchored in sixteen feet of water, which was barely sufficient to keep her afloat.

The Gulf of Arta, in which, as we have said, the fleet of the Moslems were now anchored, presents very curious physical peculiarities: it is twenty-two miles in length from east to west, and fifteen miles in breadth from north to south. This sheet of water is formed into an immense bay by the configuration of the land, and its depth, in places, is from one hundred and thirty to two hundred feet. Inside it all the navies in the world might ride at anchor, were it not for the fact that the entrance is closed by a bar upon which the depth varies from six and a half to thirteen feet. With his light-draught ships Barbarossa occupied the interior position, while the heavy ships of Doria must in any event remain outside. A strong sea-breeze was blowing on shore; all night the nefs and the galleys were nearly rolling their gunwales under. In these packed and crowded vessels the misery and discomfort of their crews may be imagined. On the morning of the 26th, however, the west wind dropped, and a light wind sprang up from the northward.

The position at this time was one of surpassing interest. Here at long last the two most renowned sea-captains of the time were face to face. Each was aware that his antagonist was worthy of his steel, also that great issues, political and national, hung upon this conflict; which was no mere affair of outposts, but a struggle to the death as to whether the Crescent or the Cross was in time to come to be supreme in the tideless sea. And yet--such is the irony of fate--this battle proved indecisive, and it was not until thirty years later, at the battle of Lepanto, that this momentous question was set at rest for a time.

Would Doria, greatly daring, go in and risk all in attacking a fortified position; or would Barbarossa make a sally and fight it out to the death on the element on which he was so supremely at home?

But Doria had no mind to attack a fleet anchored under the guns of a fortress; Barbarossa would not risk all in an encounter with a foe possessed of great numerical superiority without orders from Constantinople. On Doria's side nothing but a disembarkation and a land-attack would offer a fair security for success, Kheyr-ed-Din, who held, as we have said, the interior position, was well aware of this fact, and in this supreme moment of his career was not disposed to give away any advantage. The situation occupied by Kheyr-ed-Din at the battle of Prevesa was, in a sense, different from any which he had held before, as he was in this case hampered by his sense of responsibility as Admiralissimo to the Grand Turk. What happened on the distant shores of Africa mattered but little to that monarch, and he had been content to allow his admiral an entirely free hand; here in Europe, on the shores of Greece, so close relatively to his own capital city, it was a very different matter, and Soliman was kept in touch with the happenings of his fleet as far as was possible in those days. But if the great corsair did not add to his reputation in this eventful campaign he still displayed an aptitude in realising the situation which, it is safe to say, was shown by none of those under his command.

Prevesa illustrates for us more than any other action the difficulties with which the path of the partisan leader in these days must always have been filled; and how it was that personal ascendancy was the only force to which such a leader had to trust Sheer dominance of the minds, the wills, and the bodies of others had placed Kheyr-ed-Din where he was; all his life he had commanded undisciplined pirates, and yet now, when he was the properly accredited officer of a mighty monarch, when he might have expected far more discipline and subordination than had ever been his lot in the past, he was met with a contumaciousness which he was unable to quell, and was forced into taking steps which, in his own unequalled knowledge of war, he knew to be doomed to disaster.

Around him the Reis, or captains of the Moslem galleys, clamorously demanded that he should take precautions against a land-attack. It was true that the raid which had been made by Grimani had been easily repulsed, but in present circumstances there was no question of a mere raid, as, should the Christian admiral so decide, he could land twenty thousand men. Sinan Reis, an old Osmanli warrior, furious with jealousy that the chief command should be in the hands of a corsair, sustained his opinion in a manner which augured ill for the hearty co-operation of all the Turkish forces. Sinan was just one of those blindly valiant fighters from whom the politic Ibrahim had desired to deliver his master when he had urged the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din: brave as a lion, keen as the edge of his own good scimitar, fanatical, as became a Hodja who had visited the Holy Places, Sinan was a type of the Turkish sea-officer: devoid of strategical instinct and tactical training, his one idea was a headlong attack, then victory or the houris of Paradise. It will be seen that Barbarossa had not only Doria and the Christian fleet and army against which to contend on this occasion.

The peril conjured up by Sinan Reis on this occasion was not altogether an imaginary one: the idea of a disembarkation had, in point of fact, been seriously discussed that very morning by Andrea Doria and his council of war, at which Hernando de Gonzaga, Generalissimo of the troops embarked, had advised a landing. His argument, embodied in a long and technical harangue, may be reduced to the following:

If we cannot go straight at the enemy and force our way through the entrance under his cannon why should we not reduce the fortress of Prevesa by a siege? Once masters of this height, we could close the strait by sinking in it vessels laden with stones, and we then have the Ottoman fleet at our mercy.

But Doria the sailor was not to be led by Gonzaga the soldier. He said:

The advice seems sound, but in reality it would prove most dangerous if followed. Barbarossa must have landed some of his men, the cavalry which defeated Grimani's raid will no doubt come again from the interior, if necessary. If we deprive our ships of their soldiers we expose ourselves to a sea-fight under most disadvantageous conditions. But most, important of all is the fact that time presses; the season is far advanced; at any time the fleet may be driven off these shores by a storm, in which case what would become of the troops left on shore? Again, if it comes on to blow a tempest from the westward we may lose not only our troops, but our ships, in fact the whole expedition.

At the battle of Actium, Octavius occupied the shore upon which Hernando Gonzaga wished to land and assault; but notwithstanding this fact Octavius did not attempt the passage of the gulf but waited for his enemy outside. Doria was therefore all the more justified in not sacrificing ships and men in attempting to force an entrance now that this same shore was in the hands of the enemy. He was asked, he said, to thrust his head into the mouth of the wolf, and this he was determined not to do.

In the meanwhile Barbarossa was using much the same language to his captains as was Doria.

"My brothers," said he, "you wish to transport cannon and raise redoubts on this uncovered shore because you think that the Christians will disembark and seize it: if you attempt this I tell you that the guns of the enemy will annoy you terribly., Not only this, supposing that Doria, profiting by the moment that our vessels are empty of troops, should attack in force, we cannot with five thousand men repulse twenty thousand. The fort of Prevesa will defend itself quite sufficiently well with its own garrison; our business is to think of the fleet and not to weaken in any way our means of attack and defence, If the infidels force, or attempt to force, an entry into the port, they will be most likely merely losing time and ammunition in cannonading us. You know that it is principally in this that these accursed dogs do trust, whereas we, O men of Islam, will place our confidence in God, in Mahomet his Prophet, in the strength of our right arms, in the keenness of our scimitars; we will carry them by boarding, therefore we must keep our crews on board,"

But Barbarossa had not that absolute domination of the forces under his command which should be the prescriptive right of any leader. Sinan-Reis, the implacable be-turbaned old Osmanli, held him in bitter scorn. "Your advice may be good," he retorted, "but we think our plan the better."

The admiral suggested a reconnaissance of the site, which was merely a ruse to gain time. This was carried out under his own supervision, and confirmed him in the idea that disembarkation was folly; but Sinan-Reis and the Janissaries held obstinately to their opinion, while the "Joldaks," or Turkish soldiers in the galleys, grumbled among themselves that Kheyr-ed-Din must indeed be full of vanity to reject the counsels of one like Sinan-Reis.

Both commanders-in-chief, Christian and Moslem, seem on this occasion to have taken an absolutely correct view of the problem as it was presented; but whereas Andrea Doria was a real commander-in-chief, Barbarossa was forced to consider and to defer to the opinions of men whom he knew to be in the wrong.

It was against his better judgment that Kheyr-ed-Din at last yielded; the men were backing up their officers, a spirit of disaffection was abroad in the armada: such a thing as this a wise chief must gauge at its true value, and stop before it goes too far. The Osmanli were murmuring against "the corsair"; it was time to let them see whether they or their war-worn leader possessed the greater wisdom.

According to Moslem chroniclers the valour of Kheyr-ed-Din was only equalled by his piety; consequently he murmured a prayer into that famous beard of his, which was now so much nearer to white than red, and gave orders that the cannon shall be immediately disembarked. "Let the will of God and of His Prophet be accomplished; that which is written is that which will take place," exclaimed this pious man as he watched the preparations being carried out under the supervision of Mourad-Reis.

That which "took place" was precisely and exactly what the Commander-in- Chief had predicted from the first: no sooner had Mourad-Reis landed upon the exposed beach, and attempted to open a trench, than he was met by a furious and concentrated fire from the galleys and nefs of the Christian fleet. To entrench themselves was impossible in the circumstances, as they had been told by the Admiral before they started on this harebrained adventure. There could be only one result, which was that, after a cruel and perfectly useless slaughter, the soldiers of Mourad-Reis had to retreat before the hail of shot poured upon them, and to return ignominiously to their vessels.

It is not on record what Kheyr-ed-Din said to Sinan, Mourad, and those other tacticians who had recommended the landing; which perhaps is a pity.

Doria then made a tentative movement against the strait by a detachment of galleys; Barbarossa told off an equal number to oppose them, and they mutually cannonaded and skirmished during the day. There was much noise and excitement, but practically no advantage was gained by either side, as Doria's men could not risk passing the guns of the fort, nor could those of Barbarossa the chance of being cannonaded by the heavy vessels lying in wait-for them outside. And so the day closed down with no success on either side, but with a decisive demonstration to the Moslems that, if they desired victory, to their admiral had better be left the organisation by which it was to be obtained.

Whether Doria really desired a pitched battle can never be known; that which is certain is that, during the whole time the fleets were in touch, all his dispositions make it appear there was nothing of which he was so much afraid. And yet it was the opportunity of his life; he had superiority in numbers, he had valiant and experienced leaders, and sixty thousand men thirsting for battle, under his command. Also he had his opportunity, which, had he seized upon, must have ended in victory, did those who were under his orders only fight as he had every reason to believe that they would. As it was, he threw away the gift of fortune, and left to the Osmanli the practical dominance of the Mediterranean Sea until that great day in 1571 when Don John of Austria, the natural son of Charles V., proved to the world at Lepanto that the Turk was not invincible upon the waters.

It is true that Doria was awkwardly situated; Kheyr-ed-Din held the interior position, and that leader was a great believer in the adage that "if Brag is a good dog, Holdfast is a better." He was well aware of his numerical inferiority, and in consequence refused to listen to the frenzied appeals of the excited Moslems to be led against the Christian dogs. It may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of the moral courage of a pirate; but if ever that quality were displayed to its fullest extent it was exhibited by Barbarossa in the Prevesa campaign. In his intellectual outlook on all that was passing, both inside and outside of the Gulf of Arta, in this September of 1538, we see Kheyr-ed-Din at his best. Ever a fighter, he knew when to give battle and when to refrain, when to sweep headlong upon the foe, but also when to hold back and to baffle by waiting till the psychological moment should arrive. Around him Sinan-Reis, Mourad-Reis, and half a hundred others of their kidney were clamouring; they hurled insults at his head, they heaped opprobrium on "the corsair," they practically incited their troops to mutiny in their mad appeals to be led against the foe.

But "the corsair" kept his head, and kept his temper, and saved the Ottoman fleet for his master from his great rival, Doria. That noble Genoese seaman was for once in his life "letting I dare not wait upon I would"; he would not order the attack for which his men were waiting, and no provocation, apparently, could tempt Barbarossa to play Antony to the Octavius of Doria; the Christian admiral was tempting Providence at that advanced season of the year in keeping the sea on an hostile coast on which at any time he might be driven by a tempest. His old and experienced antagonist was well aware that the winds and the waves might save him the trouble of destroying the fleet of the enemy; an equinoctial gale would do that far more effectually than could he. If Doria had an uneasy consciousness that he might at any time see the shore littered with oarless galleys and dismasted nefs, while the sea was filled with drowning men, the same vision had been vouchsafed to his imperturbable adversary. Had it been left to the entire initiative of Barbarossa, his Fabian tactics would assuredly have prevailed in the end; but as it was he was surrounded by a clamouring host of men, soldiers by trade, who, understanding nothing of the happenings of the sea, merely derided as cowardice any postponement of what they regarded as the inevitable battle. The admiral of the Sultan held out as long as it was possible, but at last, owing to a new factor in the case, was forced, against his better judgment, to offer the battle which it was in his power to have withheld.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BATTLE OF PREVESA

How Alessandro Condalmiero fought the _Galleon of Venice_--"The King of the Sea is dead."

There is something almost pathetic in the spectacle of a really great leader badgered and importuned by lesser men to adopt a course which he, with a superior insight, knows to be unsound. In the matter of the landing Barbarossa had demonstrated that it was he whose knowledge of war was superior to those who were so ready to thrust upon him their opinions; this, however, did not content them, and they now desired to close with the foe waiting for them outside. If ever a commander was justified in waiting on events it was Barbarossa at this juncture; the business of a commander-in-chief is to ensure victory, and if he sees, as did the Moslem admiral on this occasion, that more is to be gained by delay than by fighting, then he is justified in refusing battle: particularly is this the case when the enemy is in greatly superior force blockading on an open and dangerous coast at an inclement season of the year. Every day that Doria was kept at sea added to his difficulties, as fresh water and provisions would be running short, and the energies of the human engines by which his galleys were propelled would be weakened; naked men chained to a bench were suffering from the blazing heat of the days, the cold and drenching dews of the nights. All these things had the veteran seaman weighed in his mind, they all inclined him to wait still longer in that secure anchorage where he could not be touched by his foe.

There was one counsellor, however, whom even Kheyr-ed-Din could not resist, and who had hitherto kept silence; this was the eunuch Monuc, legal counsellor to Soliman, who had accompanied the armada. He now brought the weight of his influence to bear upon the side of Sinan-Reis and his colleagues.

"Are you going," he asked the admiral, "to allow the infidels to escape without a battle? Soliman can find plenty of wood to build new fleets, plenty of captains to command them; he will pardon you if this fleet is destroyed: that which he will never pardon is that you should allow Doria to escape without fighting. You have brave men in plenty; why not lead them to the attack?"

The patience of the veteran gave way at last; none who knew Barbarossa had ever seen him shrink from fighting--to this his whole career bore witness. He had delayed the issue from the soundest of strategical reasons, which those under his command were too stupid and too prejudiced to understand: what cared they for reason in their blind valour?--they wished only to do or die heedless of the fact that their lives might be spent in vain. Truly it was no thanks to the subordinates of Kheyr-ed-Din that this campaign did not end in disaster to the arms of the Ottoman Porte. Such backing as the admiral had came from among his own men, the corsairs whose lives had been spent at sea, but their opinions were but dust in the balance once the all-powerful Monuc ranged himself on the side of the malcontents.

"Let us then fight," said the admiral to Saleh-Reis, "or this fine talker who is neither man nor woman will accuse us before the Grand Turk and we shall all probably be hanged."

The Christian fleet during the night of September 26-7th had made some thirty miles to the southward; just before daybreak the wind freshened and drew right ahead; Doria approached the island of Santa Maura and anchored under the small islet of Sessola.

Barbarossa had now decided to leave his anchorage, but the veteran seaman did not disguise from himself the risks which he ran: a greater sea captain than he once said "only numbers can annihilate," and it was at annihilation that both the Moslem and the Christian aimed: in this case, however, he knew that he could but hope for a hard-won victory, and only that if Allah and his Prophet were unusually favourable to his cause. He assembled his captains, many of whom had served with him during long periods of his career, and directed them to form line: he said, "I have but one order to give, follow my movements attentively and regulate your own accordingly."

With fustas, brigantines, galleots, and galleys, the Ottoman fleet amounted in all to one hundred and forty sail. With shouts of joy the soldiers hailed the command to weigh the anchors, and in a very short time all were slowly moving seaward.

The die was cast: Doria from his anchorage at Sessola saw the sea white with the sails of the enemy, the blue water churning to foam beneath the strokes of his oars; the Ottoman fleet was issuing from the Gulf of Arta manoeuvring with precision and deploying into a single line abreast; which line being slightly concave, either from accident or design, resembled the form of a crescent. In advance came six great fustas commanded by Dragut; the left wing hugged the shore as closely as possible; the Ottoman commander-in-chief intended to commence operations on the first principles of strategy by flinging his whole force on a portion of that of the enemy.

Andrea Doria remained undecided: he was on a lee shore, and that shore was the coast of the enemy; although his foes were advancing to the attack it seemed as if he had no mind to fight: whether he had or had not he displayed a most remarkable sluggishness, hesitating for three hours before getting up his anchors; these he only weighed at last under pressure from the bellicose Patriarch of Aquilea, Vincenzo Capello, and the Papal captain, Antonio Grimani. Doria had counted on the support of the _Galleon of Venice_ and the nefs; but the galleon was becalmed four miles from the land and ten miles from Sessola, where Doria was at the beginning of the action.

Condalmiero sent a light skiff from the _Galleon of Venice_ to the commander-in-chief demanding orders and help from the galleys.

"Begin the fight," answered the admiral, "you will be succoured."

The position of Condalmiero was that of a modern battleship which is disabled and surrounded by foes in full possession of their motive power; the great galleon floated inert upon the waters while the galleys could fight or fly as they wished. The captain of the galleon, however, had no alternative save to surrender or fight; but there was no hesitation on his part, for a more gallant officer never trod the decks of a warship of the proud Republic to which he belonged.

The Moslem galleys were now close upon him, although as yet out of gun-shot; around him they wheeled and circled like a flight of great sea-birds, their ferocious crews shouting their war-cries calling upon Allah and the Prophet to give them the victory for which they craved; many a brave Venetian who heard for the first time the name of Barbarossa shouted in battle must have braced himself for the coming conflict, knowing all that was imported by that terrible name. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, the galleon lay becalmed in the middle of furious and ravening foes, the succour promised by Doria was ten miles away; they saw no movement which indicated help, and the odds against them were heavy indeed. But all the nervousness was not on one side, for the _Galleon of Venice_ was something new in the naval warfare of the time; she carried engines of destruction in the shape of great guns which the corsairs could by no means equal. Of this they were well aware, and the attack was delayed while the oarsmen in the galleys rested on their oars out of range to allow them breathing time before the supreme moment arrived. But the hounds were only held in leash; there came a signal which was answered by a concentrated yell of fury and of hate; then from right ahead, right astern, on the port side and the starboard, the galleys were launched to the attack. But all on board the great Venetian vessel was as still as that death which awaited so many of the combatants in this supreme struggle.

Condalmiero had caused the crew of the galleon to lie down upon her decks, and stood himself, a gallant solitary figure in his shining armour, a mark for the hail of shot so soon to be discharged. It came, and with it the mast of the galleon bearing the Lion Standard of St. Mark crashed over the side into the water; renewed yells of triumph came from the Moslems, but still that ominous silence reigned on board the galleon. Untouched, unharmed, the Osmanlis came on firing as rapidly as possible until they were absolutely within arquebuss range. Closer they came and closer; then the sides of the galleon burst into sheeted flame, and the guns levelled at point-blank range tore through the attacking host. Condalmiero was throwing away no chances; he had directed his gunners to allow their balls to ricochet before striking rather than to throw them away by allowing them to fly over the heads of the enemy.

The first broadside did terrible execution; a ball one hundred and twenty pounds in weight, fired by the chief bombardier, Francisco d'Arba in person, burst in the prow of a galley so effectually that all her people flew aft to the poop to prevent the water rushing in; but the vessel was practically split in twain, and sank in a few moments. All around were dead and dying men, disabled galleys, floating wreckage; the _Galleon of Venice_ had taken a terrible toll of the Osmanli; the order to retreat out of range was given, and never was order obeyed with greater alacrity.

With accuracy and precision the galleon played upon such vessels as remained within range, doing great execution. But she was now to be subjected to an even severer test than the first headlong attack. She had demonstrated to the Moslem leaders that here was no vessel to be carried by mere reckless valour; a disciplined and ordered offensive was the only plan which promised success; the Osmanli must use their brain as well as their courage if that tattered flag, rescued from the water, and nailed to the stump of the mast of the galleon, was ever to be torn down. There was something daunting in the very aspect of the solid bulk of the huge Venetian, something weird in the manner in which her crew never showed, save only the steadfast figure of her captain immovable as a statue of bronze, where he stood on her shot-torn poop.

This Homeric conflict was a triumph of discipline and gunnery on the part of the Venetians; alert, accurate, and cool, the gunners of the galleon threw away none of their ammunition: inspired by the heroic spirit of their captain, great was the honour which they did on this stricken field to the noble traditions of their forbears and the service to which they belonged.

The first attack had been most brilliantly repulsed, but this was only preliminary to a conflict which was to last all through the day; the Moslem galleys withdrew out of gunshot and re-formed; then a squadron of twenty advanced, delivered their fire, and retired; their place was then taken by a second squadron, which went through the same performance, and then came on a third. In this manner the attack, which began one hour after noon, and which was continued until sunset, was conducted. The galleon had thirteen men killed, and forty wounded; no doubt the slaughter would have been much greater had it not been for the enormous thickness of her sides and for the fact that the guns carried by the galleys were necessarily light. Notwithstanding, the galleon suffered terribly, she was a mass of wreckage; twice fire had broken out on board of her, she was cumbered by fallen masts, battered almost out of recognition, but still Condalmiero and her gallant crew fought on imperturbably with no thought of surrender. Covered with blood, wounded in the face and the right leg by flying splinters, her captain preserved his magnificent coolness, and his decimated crew responded nobly to his call. At eventide the fire from the galleon was almost as deadly as it had been at the first onslaught, and many galleys of the Turks were only saved from sinking by the activity and bravery of their carpenters, who, slung over their sides in "boatswains' chairs," drove home huge plugs of wood with their mallets into the shot-holes made by the Venetian guns.

At the hour when the sun dipped below the horizon all the Turkish fleet seemed assembled to assault the colossus which so long had resisted their attack; there was a pause in the combat, and the firing died down. Condalmiero and his men braced themselves for the assault which they felt to be inevitable: for now the darkness was swiftly coming, in which they could no longer see to shoot, and under cover of which their numerous foes could assail them by boarding in comparative safety. Now the moment had come for the last act in this terrible drama of the sea. They had held their own at long odds throughout the whole of a hot September day, and as the level beams of the setting sun shone on their shattered ship they were prepared to die, fighting to the last man for the honour of Venice and the glory of St. Mark.

Stiff and worn, wearied almost to the breaking strain, there was no man on board who even dreamt of surrender; all the guns were charged to the muzzle with bullets and broken stone, the artillerists match in hand stood grimly awaiting the order to fire, straining their eyes and their ears in the gathering darkness; in a few minutes at most they knew that the fate of the _Galleon of Venice_ must be decided.

On board his galley, decorated for this occasion with scarlet banners, Barbarossa himself directed the assaulting line. Never before when the battle was joined had the gallant corsair been known to draw back; and yet on this occasion he not only hesitated but actually hauled off. The Venetians saw to their amazement that the expected attack was not to be pushed home; for Barbarossa and his captains fell upon some lesser vessels: the _Galleon of Venice_ was victorious.

Meanwhile Doria was displaying his mastery of tactics when it was hard fighting that was wanted; he pretended that he wished to draw the Ottoman fleet into the high seas in order that he might destroy their galleys by means of the broadsides of his nefs; consequently he executed useless parade movements when he should by all the rules of warfare have closed with his enemy who was in distinctly inferior force; as he had a fair wind there is only one conclusion to be drawn, and that is that he did not want to fight.

His manoeuvres certainly mystified the Turks, who viewed his tactics with mistrust, thinking them the outset of some deeply laid scheme; it never entered into their calculations for one moment that the great Andrea Doria, the terror of the Mediterranean sea, and the victor in scores of desperate engagements, was anxious to avoid a fight.

Grimani and Capello, docile to the orders of their admiral, followed him full of uneasiness and distrust; they were fighting men of the most fiery description; to them the issue seemed of the simplest: there was the enemy in inferior force to themselves, they had the weather gauge, why delay the attack?

"For much less than this," says Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, "the English shot Admiral Byng in 1756." The conduct of Doria on this occasion has certainly never been explained; the two other leaders went on board and remonstrated with their commander-in-chief; they were neither of them men who could be treated as negligible quantities on the field of battle; both belonged to that brilliant Venetian nobility so renowned in commerce and in war. Marco Grimani was in command of the Papal galleys, in itself a mark of the highest esteem and confidence from a potentate second to none in his influence in the civilised world. To Vincenzo Capello, Henry the Seventh of England confided his royal person and the command of his fleet when he crossed the Channel to encounter Richard the Second at Bosworth field. Five times had he filled the office of Providiteur in Venice, twice had he been commander-in-chief of her fleet, he was in perpetuity Procureur of St. Mark, to him Venice owed her naval discipline. He wore on this day the mantle of crimson silk with which the Republic invested her generals. Bitter was the rage in his heart, and bitterly must he have spoken to Doria, who, in spite of all remonstrances, continued his futile manoeuvrings.

There was glory won on this day, but it was gained neither by Andrea Doria nor Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. The _Galleon of Venice_ with Alessandro Condalmiero and his gallant crew had shown to all a splendid example of disciplined valour unexcelled in sixteenth-century annals.

Barbarossa had captured a Venetian galley, a Papal galley, and five Spanish nefs, but he had recoiled from the assault on Condalmiero when the prize was actually within his grasp. For the rest it was a day of manoeuvring and tactics; tactics when sixty thousand men had been embarked on board two hundred ships for a specific and definite object on the side of the Christians and under the command of their most celebrated admiral; and yet the balance of advantage was actually gained by the inferior force. No subsequent glories can ever wipe this stain from the scutcheon of Doria, or can excuse the fact that at the most supreme moment of his career he failed to fight the battle that he was in honour, in conscience, and in duty bound to deliver. Next day the wind came fair for Corfu, and Doria, his ships untouched, unscathed, unharmed, put his helm up and sailed away followed by his fleet.

Sandoval records the fact that Barbarossa, roaring with laughter the while, was accustomed to say that Doria had even put out his lanterns in order that no one might see whither he had fled. This was an allusion to the fact--or supposition--that Doria extinguished on that night the great poop lantern carried by him as admiral.

When Soliman the Magnificent heard of the result of this battle he caused the town of Yamboli, where he was at the time, to be illuminated, and in the excess of his joy he added one hundred thousand aspres to the revenues of the conqueror; there were processions to the Grand Mosque, and all Islam rejoiced and sang the praises of the invincible admiral who had humbled to the dust the pride of the Christian and caused the dreaded Doria to fly from before the fleet of the Sultan.

This, the most historical, if not the greatest feat in the life of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, was for him a triumph indeed; with a vastly inferior force he had driven from the field of battle his "rival in glory," as he himself had denominated Andrea Doria, and he had accomplished this feat notwithstanding the almost mutinous condition of his own forces. In spite of this it is with Condalmiero and with him alone that the glory of this day must rest; alone, absolutely unsupported as we have seen, he fought one of those fights which bring the heart into the mouth when we read of them; the stern pride of the Venetian noble, who despised as canaille the pirate hosts by whom he was assailed, had its counterpart in the sturdy valour of Chief Bombardier Francisco d'Arba and the other nameless heroes of which that good company was composed; to them we render that homage which so justly is their due.

The whole campaign of Prevesa, as we have said, is a curious study in hesitation, in dilatoriness, in absolute lack of initiative and virility on the part of the two chief actors in the drama: that Doria should fly from the field of battle in an untouched ship is only one degree less incredible than that Barbarossa should have relinquished his attack on the _Galleon of Venice_. It would almost seem as if on this occasion each of the great rivals was hypnotised by the presence of the other; all their lives they had been seeking honour and riches on the sea, they knew, of course, that all men in both the world of Islam and that of Christendom looked upon them in the light of the special champions of the opposing sects, that the eyes of the entire world were fastened on this meeting of theirs in the classic waters of the Ambracian Gulf. In consequence neither man was at his best; indeed, we might go further than this, and say that on this occasion both lamentably failed. There is no fault to be found with the strategic preliminaries to the final conflict, each admiral acting with prudence and wisdom in the situation in which he found himself placed. That the perfectly correct idea of not giving battle to a superior force when he held so strong an interior position was given up by Barbarossa, was, as we have seen, not his fault; and when he issued from his anchorage, in deference to a sentiment among those under his command which he could no longer resist, his dispositions seem to have been made with his usual skill. Where he failed, however, was where, from all his previous history, we should least have expected failure, in his abandonment of the attack on the _Galleon of Venice_; this, of course, was inexcusable, and can only be set down to failure of nerve at the supreme moment. The ship had been battered by artillery all day long, a huge percentage of her company were dead and wounded, and the remainder worn out with fatigue. On the Moslem side we have seen that there were squadrons of galleys able to relieve one another with no interference from Doria, who was persisting in his futile manoeuvring miles away. Had the galleon been boarded, as she might and should have been, at nightfall, nothing could have saved Condalmiero and his crew: so strenuous, however, had been their resistance, that the Turkish seamen feared the issue; in consequence the battle between them and the Venetians was a drawn one, with all the honours on the Christian side.

It is here that we shall take leave of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, as although he was yet to live another eight years before he died in his bed at Constantinople in July, 1548, there are no further happenings of any great importance in his career.

"Valorous, yet prudent, furious in attack, far-seeing in preparation, he ranks as the first sea-captain of his time;"[1] as the story of his life has unfolded itself in these pages we have seen what manner of man it was who terrified Europe, who made for himself a reputation which stands out clear and distinct among all the great men of which this century was so prolific. One of the surest methods of estimating a strenuous man of action is to seek for the names of those by whom he was surrounded: the men selected by him to assist in the carrying out of the work of his life; thus in reading of Napoleon Bonaparte we interest ourselves in his marshals, in reading of Nelson we note the captains by whom he was supported. In the case of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, a great man of action if one ever lived, we find no trace of devoted adherents on that high plane of command we have indicated in the cases cited above. That he had devoted followers enough is absolutely certain, but of high officers we very seldom find a trace, and these he treated with contumely and offence on many occasions; witness the treatment meted out to Hassan and to Venalcadi. There is practically no trace of his domestic life to be found, we cannot discover that he possessed any intimate friend. There is none other in all history to whom he can be satisfactorily compared; there are few who in their generation have wielded such enormous powers, who have climbed so high from the sheer unassisted force of their own intellect and their own character.

[Footnote 1: Stanley Lane Poole.]

Physical strength such as is vouchsafed to one man in a million, a constitution nothing could impair, endurance incomparable, were his bodily attributes: an intellect cold, clear, and penetrating was his, joined to an imperturbability of temperament which enabled him to accept with a cheerful philosophy blows by which weaker men were absolutely prostrated; his outlook on life was not dimmed by any affections, and pity was a sensation which to him was entirely alien. In this record of his deeds the reader has been spared all mention of the atrocious tortures he was in the habit of inflicting on his victims for any or no provocation, and many of them are as incomprehensible as they are sickening. That in which he was supreme was his craft as a seaman in an age when real seamen were rare; on land he was frequently defeated, at sea there seems to be no record of such an occurrence. To sum up, he appears to us in the light of history as a body, a brain, and an intellect, without any trace of a heart. His path through life was one unending trail of blood and fire, moistened by the tears of his countless victims, followed by the curses of those whom he despoiled. Yet, in spite of this, it is impossible not to admire the man who, by his own superhuman energy, ever swept all obstacles from his path, and caused the whole of the civilised world to quail at the name of Barbarossa.

He died peacefully in his bed at Constantinople in July, 1546, to the grief of the world of Islam and the inexpressible joy of Christendom. "The king of the sea is dead," expressed in three Arabic words, gives the numerical value 953, the year of the Hegira in which he died.

For many years after his death no Turkish ship ever left the Golden Horn without her crew repeating a prayer and firing a salute over the tomb of Beshiktsah, where lie the bones of the first and greatest of Turkish admirals, the corsair who was at one and the same time admiral, pirate, and king.

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