It was at this time, in 1533, that Soliman bethought himself of Kheyr-ed-Din. There was no better seaman, there was no fiercer fighter, there was no man whose name was so renowned throughout the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, than was that of the corsair king who was vassal to the Sublime Porte. Soliman was confronted with a new, and, to him, an almost mysterious thing, for the onward conquering step of the Moslem hosts was being checked by that sea-power so little understanded of the Turk, and the imperious will of the Sultan seemed powerless to prevent the disasters conjured from the deep.



Soliman the Magnificent, who was not inaptly described by this title, for he was successful as both warrior and statesman, meditated both long and anxiously on the new development of affairs before he made up his mind to the step of calling to his assistance the corsair king. But he possessed that truest attribute of greatness in a ruler, the faculty of discerning the right man for any particular post. Brave and reckless fighters he possessed in super-abundance, but somehow—somehow—none of these fiery warriors had that habit of the sea which enabled them to make head against such a past-master in the craft of the seaman as Andrea Doria. The Genoese was chasing the Turkish galleys from off the face of the waters. Constantinople itself was a sea-surrounded city; it was necessary that a check should be administered to the arms of the Christians on this element. It is easy to imagine the preoccupations of the Turkish monarch. The despot rules by force, but he also holds his power by the address with which it is wielded, and he can by no means afford to disregard his personal popularity if he is to make the best use of his fighting men in such a turbulent epoch as was the first half of the sixteenth century. Soliman had the wit to know that he had no mariner who was in any way comparable to Doria; he was also aware that Kheyr-ed-Din had risen from nothing to his present position by his sheer ability as a seaman. It would appear, therefore, a very natural thing that he should invite the co-operation of the King of Algiers, but that with which he had to reckon was the furious jealousy that such an appointment must inevitably arouse among his own subjects.

It says much for the steadfast moral courage of the man that he eventually decided to take the risk; it says even more for the absolute correctness of his judgment that he never afterwards repented of the step which he then took.

Once the mind of the Grand Turk was made up he hesitated no longer. The Capitan de Rodas, one of his personal guard, was sent to Barbarossa to request him to come to Constantinople and take command of the Ottoman fleet. There were no conditions attached; the honour was supreme. Barbarossa loaded the messenger with rich gifts, and overwhelmed him with honours. For Kheyr-ed-Din this was in a sense the apotheosis of his career. The Grand Turk, the head of the Mohammedan religion, had not only recognised his kingship, but had conferred on him an honour unprecedented, unlooked for, and one of the highest value to a man of such an insatiable ambition. Into the cool and crafty brain of this prince among schemers instantly sprang the thought that now at last his kingdom was secure, that in future the whole of the Barbary coast would own no other lord than he.

Preparations for the voyage were immediately begun, and, as an earnest of the new importance which he derived from the advances of Soliman, the corsair actually sent presents to the King of France and proffered him his aid against his enemies. To such a pass as this had one of the most powerful monarchs in Christendom been reduced by the defection of Andrea Doria. Algiers he left in the keeping of his son Hassan, and in charge of Hassan his kinsman Celebi Rabadan and a captain of the name of Agi. In the middle of August, 1533, Barbarossa left Algiers, his fleet consisting of seven galleys and eleven fustas. Sailing northward, he fell in with a fleet which he at first feared was that of Doria, but which, fortunately for him, was that of a corsair named Delizuff from Los Gelues. Courtesies were interchanged between the two leaders, and Barbarossa succeeded in persuading Delizuff to accompany him to Sicily, where it was possible they might fall in with Doria, and with their combined forces inflict defeat upon the Christian admiral. Delizuff was nothing loath to join forces with so noted a commander as Kheyr-ed-Din, as he had no desire to tackle Doria single-handed, and at the same time wished to extend the sphere of his plunderings, which had been cruelly restricted recently by the wholesome fear instilled into the Sea-wolves by the new admiral of Charles V.

Accordingly, reinforced by the fifteen fustas and one galley of Delizuff, the Algerian fleet once more proceeded on its voyage. Although bound for Constantinople at the request of Soliman, at a time when it would have been thought that delay was not only dangerous but impolitic, and although the corsair was endeavouring to merge the pirate in the king who dealt on terms of equality with those whom he now regarded as his brother monarchs, still the old instinct of robbery was too strong to be resisted; the lust of gain and the call of adventure were still inherent in the man whose famous beard was now far more white than red. Advancing age had not tamed the spirit nor weakened the frame of this leader among the Moslems.

Sailing through the Straits of Bonifacio, they touched Monte Cristo, a small island where they found a slave who had formerly belonged to Delizuff. This man was base enough to betray his own native island of Biba into the hands of the corsairs, who sacked it thoroughly and carried off its inhabitants; they also captured thirteen large ships going to Sicily for wheat, and burnt them, making slaves of their crews. In the fight with these vessels Delizuff was killed. Shortly after this, some disagreement arising between the crews of the ships of Barbarossa and the men in Delizuff's fleet, the Algerian commander seized a man out of one of Delizuff's galleys and had him summarily shot. The death of Delizuff naturally caused some confusion in his command, and the high-handed proceeding of Kheyr-ed-Din caused great resentment, not unmixed with fear, as the terror inspired by the Barbarossas was a very real sentiment. Under their command no man knew when or at how short notice his life might not be required of him; but the glamour of success was ever around them, and they never, in consequence, lacked for followers. But the taking out and shooting of one of their comrades was too much for the pirates from the islands of Los Gelues, from whence Delizuff was in the habit of "operating." In the words of Sandoval, "they were not used to such tyranny and cruel usage." In consequence they concerted among themselves and one dark night sailed off, leaving Kheyr-ed-Din to continue his voyage with his original following.

That warrior, nothing disconcerted, pursued his way to the island of Zante, where he fell in with a Turkish "flota," under the command of the Bashas Zay and Himeral. To these officers of the Grand Turk Barbarossa used most injurious language, bitterly reproaching them with not having sought out and destroyed Andrea Doria, which he declared they ought to and should have done. This is yet another instance of the extraordinary character of the man. These persons were the highest officers in the fleet of the Ottoman Empire; it was more than possible that they would be placed under the command of Barbarossa as soon as his new position as Admiralissimo was adjusted at Constantinople; and yet, in spite of these facts, the corsair had taken the very first opportunity which presented itself grossly to insult these men. It is true, as we shall see, that his injurious words came home to roost in the future; but arrogant, conquering, contemptuous, Barbarossa seems to have shouldered his way through life, fearing none and feared by all.

The fact of his known cruelty accounts for much of the dread which he inspired, but it was something far more than this which caused the son of the Albanian renegado to ride roughshod as he did over all with whom he was brought into contact. Men felt, in dealing with Barbarossa, that here was a rock against which they might dash themselves in vain. In all his enterprises he spared not himself. He asked no man to do that which he was not prepared to do, but if any failed him there was no mercy for that man; and, although in deference to modern susceptibility no mention is made of the tortures he so frequently caused to be inflicted on his victims, they were none the less a daily spectacle to those who lived under his rule. He possessed, it is true, the rough geniality of the fighting man, a certain "Hail fellow, well met!" manner in greeting old comrades, and yet none of these men there were who did not tremble in an agony of fear when the bushy brows were bent, when the famous red beard bristled in one of his uncontrollable furies. The real secret of his success must have been that, no matter how uncontrollable did his passions appear to be, the man was always really master of himself. Further, he possessed a marvellous insight as to where his own interests lay. He used as his tools the bodies and the minds of the men who were subject to him, and he carried his designs to an assured success by the aid of that penetrating, far-seeing mental power with which, above all else, he must have been gifted. He could drive men, he could lead them, he could invariably persuade when all else failed him. In this we have had an instance when he was chased from Algiers by the combined efforts of Venalcadi and Hassan, whom he had flogged; for no sooner did he meet with other corsairs than he persuaded them to take up his quarrel—which, it must be understood, was none of theirs—and to replace him on that precarious throne from which he had been so rudely thrust. We have already said that he was a man who never knew when he was beaten, and in the years which we have yet to chronicle this characteristic appears again and again; for age had no effect apparently, either mentally or physically, on this man of iron who had by this time reached the age of seventy-seven.

Leaving the high officers of his future master, the Grand Turk, smarting under the opprobrium which he had heaped upon their heads, Barbarossa fared onward with his fleet to Salonica, capturing a Venetian galley on the voyage: from thence he made his way to the Dardanelles, where he anchored and remained several days, to make ready his fleet for the spectacular entry which he intended to make into Constantinople.

The city on the Golden Horn was all agog for the arrival of Barbarossa; no matter what private opinions the inhabitants might have had concerning him, of which we shall hear more presently, they were none the less all curious to a degree to catch sight of this man, so famous in his evil supremacy on that distant shore of Northern Africa.

Kheyr-ed-Din, among his other qualities, possessed in the highest degree that of a successful stage-manager; no pageant which he undertook was ever likely to fail from the want of the striking and the dramatic. It was now his business to impress the citizens of Constantinople with an idea of his greatness, and none knew better than he that it is the outward and visible sign which counts among the orientals, more perhaps than the inward and spiritual grace: he may also possibly have felt that he did not possess the latter to any overwhelming extent.

Even before he left Algiers this entry to the chief city of the Ottoman Empire had been in the mind of Barbarossa, who had caused to be embarked a quantity of flags and pennons for the decoration of his grim war-galleys when they should stream into the Golden Horn. There were also bands of music, which, it is to be presumed, utilised the delay in the Dardanelles to attain to something like "a concord of sweet sounds," as the incidents of the voyage from Algiers, so far, had hardly been conducive to much time to spare for band-practice. The galleys were scrubbed and gaily painted; round the ship of Kheyr-ed-Din ran a broad streak of gold on the outer planking to denote the presence of a King of Algiers, and at last all was ready. The fleet weighed anchor, and, with banners flying and bands playing, entered the harbour. The shores were black with spectators; even the Sultan himself deigned to look forth on the coming of the man from whom he expected such great things.

Ceremonial was the order of the day. Soliman the Magnificent was too wise a man not to know what was being said in his capital that day; it was his part to accustom the minds of men to the fact that he, Soliman, had chosen Barbarossa to command his fleet, and that there could be no looking back. The decree had been signed, the invitation had been sent, the man had arrived, there could be no possible retreat from the situation. The anchors splashed into the placid waters close to the shore, and the ships were soon so surrounded by boats as to be almost unapproachable; then came official persons from the Sultan with greetings to the famous seaman; also came Bashas and officers ("con carga de guerra," says Sandoval), to offer a welcome and to stare in undisguised curiosity at the man chosen by their sovereign to make head against the famous Andrea Doria. This preliminary courtesy completed, there came the next act in the drama, which consisted in the immemorial custom of the East in the offering of gifts from Barbarossa to the Sultan, from the vassal to his suzerain. The Janissaries, splendid in scarlet and gold, tall above the ordinary stature of man, bristling with weapons inlaid in gold and silver, cleared the common vulgar from the streets approaching the palace of the Sultan; they formed the spearhead of the procession clearing a way for the King of Algiers, who, mounted on a splendid bay stallion, the gift of the Sultan on his arrival, headed the captives who bore the gifts. Of these the exact number is not stated, but the procession was headed by two hundred women and girls, each of whom carried in her hand a gift of gold or silver; one hundred camels were loaded with silks and golden ornaments, and other "curious riches" ("con otras mil cosas de que hizo ostentacion"), says Sandoval. There were also lions and other animals, brocades and rich garments.

All of this reads no doubt somewhat too like the tales in the "Arabian Nights"; but we have to remember that, if you have led a long and eminently successful life as a robber, you have necessarily accumulated a store of riches. In the case of Barbarossa he had begun in extreme youth, and was now an old man; he had been quite in the wholesale way as a thief, and now desired to pay a good price for that which he coveted, namely, the post of Admiralissimo to the Grand Turk. It may be objected that he had already been offered and had already accepted the post; this is quite true, but there were certain conventions to be fulfilled on the side of the recipient of the bounty of the Sultan quite understood on both sides, although no word had passed on the subject. In those days the man who desired the favour of an Eastern potentate never dreamed of approaching him empty-handed, and the more liberal that he was in the matter of gifts the greater was the favour with which he was regarded. Therefore the principle acted upon by Kheyr-ed-Din on this occasion was both wise and politic; that is to say, he placed certain of his riches in a perfectly sound investment, certain to yield him an admirable percentage, not only in added personal prestige, but also in the placing under his command of such a force as he had never before commanded, with unlimited opportunities of preying on the detested Christian on a far larger scale than it had ever been his good fortune to do before.

The Sultan Soliman was not called "the Magnificent" without just cause; his life was splendid in its social prodigality, as it was in war and in statesmanship; yet even he was somewhat astonished at the amazing richness of the gifts which were laid at his feet by a man whom he knew to be, in spite of the kingly title which he had assumed, merely a rover of the sea. Therefore, in spite of himself, he was impressed. To him, it is true, in his splendour and magnificence, the intrinsic value of that which was brought to him by Barbarossa mattered but little; but the fact that the corsair was in a position to do so opened the eyes of the Sultan to the manner of man with whom he had to deal. Hitherto he had but known of him by hearsay, as the one Moslem seaman who was likely to be capable of making a stand against the terrible Doria, who had now become the plague of the Sultan's existence. He now knew that the man who disposed of such incredible riches must be, no matter what his moral character, a man who stood a head and shoulders over any commander in the Ottoman fleet sailing out of the Golden Horn.

Both materially and psychologically this man somewhat bewildered the despot: and his alter ego, the Grand Vizier, happening to be away on a mission to Aleppo, Soliman had no one with whom to confer in a strictly confidential manner; for, after the manner of autocrats, he had but few familiars, in fact it may be said none at all save the statesman mentioned. His reception of the corsair lacked, however, nothing in cordiality. He inquired after the incidents of the voyage, interested himself graciously in all that he was told concerning Africa and the conflicting claims of Christian and Moslem in that region, and was generally courteous to his distinguished visitor. He placed at his disposal a palace and attendants on a scale commensurate with the state of a reigning sovereign, and sent his most distinguished generals to confer with Kheyr-ed-Din. The latter, for the first time in his life, was thoroughly out of his element. His had been the life of the seaman and the soldier to begin with, and of later years that of a rude and unquestioned despot on a savage coast, surrounded by myrmidons to whom his voice had been as the voice of a god. Never had it been his lot before to dwell within the limits of such a comparative civilisation as that which obtained in Constantinople at this date; never before had it been necessary for him to restrain that naturally fiery and impetuous temper of his and to speak all men fairly.

The strain must have been great, the effort enormous, and he knew, as he was bound to know, that his coming had unloosed jealousies and heart-searchings innumerable, with which he could not deal in the usual drastic fashion common to him. The winter was coming on, which was, as we have before remarked, very much of a close season both for the pirate and the honest merchant seaman. In consequence there was not very much chance against the foes of Soliman for the present. When that opportunity offered he promised himself that the courtiers and the soldiers of the Grand Turk would very soon discover that the fame of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa was no empty matter, and that there existed no seaman in all the Ottoman dominions with whom they could compare the "African pirate," as he had reason to believe that he was scornfully called behind his back.

A weaker man would have been daunted by his surroundings, by the manifestly unfriendly atmosphere in which he lived, and by the dread that perhaps, after all, Soliman might go back upon his word. There were no lack of counsellors, he knew very well, who would advise the Sultan to his undoing, if that monarch gave them the opportunity; and, as time passed, so his anxiety grew. Soliman also could not have felt particularly comfortable at this juncture, with a sullen spirit possessing his men "con carga de guerra," bitterly resenting the step which he had taken, and the appointment which he had made. For the present, however, he made no sign, treating Kheyr-ed-Din with distinguished courtesy, but making no reference to the future. Soliman was revolving the problem in his acute mind, doubtless weighing the unpopularity of the step which he had taken against the services likely to be rendered to him by his strange guest. And thus several weeks passed at Constantinople, probably amongst the most trying of all those in the unusually prolonged life of Kheyr-ed-Din.



CHAPTER VIII

THE RAID ON THE COAST OF ITALY; JULIA GONZAGA

The Grand Turk had spoken, the appointment had been made, Barbarossa had arrived; but though autocrats can cause their mandate to be obeyed, they cannot constrain the inward workings of the minds of men. In spite of the awe in which Soliman the Magnificent was held, there were murmurs of discontent in the capital of Islam. The Sultan had been advised to make Barbarossa his Admiralissimo by his Grand Vizier Ibrahim, who was, as we have said, his alter ego. This great man had risen from the humblest of all positions, that of a slave, to the giddy eminence to which he had now attained by the sheer strength of his intellect and personality. The Grand Vizier it was who had pointed out to his master that which was lacking in the Ottoman navy: brave men and desperate fighters he had in plenty, but the seaman who cleared the Golden Horn and made his way through the archipelago into the open sea beyond had forces with which to contend against which mere valour was but of small avail. Out there, somewhere behind the blue line of the horizon, did Andrea Doria lie in wait; and if the Moslem seaman should escape the clutches of the admiral of the Christian Emperor, were there not those others, the Knights of Malta, who, under the leadership of Villiers de L'lsle Adam, swept the tideless sea in an unceasing and relentless hostility to every nef, fusta, and galley which flew the flag of the Prophet?

It had come to a pass when the Ottoman fighting man was by no means anxious to go to sea. He was still as brave as those marvellous fanatics of seven centuries before, who, in the name of God and of His Prophet Mahomet, had swept all opposition aside from the path of Islam, had conquered and proselytised in a manner never paralleled in the world before. At the call of the Padishah, for the honour of the Prophet, the sons of Islam were as ready to march and to fight as had ever been the warriors of the earlier Caliphs. But they had ever been soldiers; the habit of the sea was not theirs, and they found that, time after time, such sea-enterprises as they did undertake were shattered by the genius of Doria, or broken into fragments by the reckless, calculating assaults of the knights. And so it came about that there was but little heart in the navy of the Padishah, and those who served therein had but slight confidence in those by whom they were led. To use a metaphor from the cricket-field, it was time "to stop the rot" by sending in a really strong player. He was not to be found within the confines of orthodox Islam, and must be imported from outside.

The man had been found; could he be forced on an unwilling and discontented populace? Who, it was asked in Constantinople, was this man who had been called in to command the ships of the Ottomans at sea? They answered their own question, and said that he was a lawless man, a corsair: were there not good seamen and valiant men-at-arms like the Bashas Zay and Himeral, who should be preferred before him; this man who had come from the ends of the earth, and of whom nobody knew anything good? Again, could he be trusted? Something of the history of the Barbarossas had penetrated to the capital of Turkey, and it was known that scrupulous adherence to their engagements had not always characterised the brothers: who should say that he might not carry off the galleys of the Grand Turk on some marauding expedition designed for his own aggrandisement? There was yet more to be urged against him: not only was he infamous in character, but he was no true Mussulman, for had not his father been a mere renegado, and—worst of all—had not his mother been a Christian woman?

It was thus that the talk ran in that blazing autumn in Constantinople. Naturally there were plenty of persons who carried reports to Kheyr-ed-Din, and that astute individual soon made up his mind as to the most advantageous course for him to pursue. With the full concurrence of the Sultan, he left Constantinople and journeyed to Aleppo to see Ibrahim. The latter was both cunning and tenacious. Removed from the capital, the tide of gossip and discontent only reached him at second-hand; but he was not to be deterred by popular clamour even had he been in the midst of it. None knew better than he who and what was Barbarossa; in fact, it may be confidently asserted that none in Constantinople had anything like the same knowledge of this man and all that concerned him. Ibrahim had not named Barbarossa to his sovereign without weighing all the pros and cons of the matter, and that which was now happening in the capital had been fully anticipated by him. It pleased the Grand Vizier very much that Kheyr-ed-Din should take this long journey to see him; not from any ridiculous idea that this was an act of homage due to the dignity of his position—Ibrahim was far too great a man for such pettiness—but because it enabled him to see for himself what manner of man was this redoubtable pirate on whom he was relying to defeat the enemies of the Sublime Porte at sea. The corsair must have made the most favourable impression possible on the Grand Vizier, as that statesman wrote to Soliman:

We have put our hands on a veritable man of the sea. Name him without hesitation Basha, Member of the Divan, Captain-General of the Fleet.

The Grand Turk had no intention of going back upon the appointment already made, but he was none the less pleased to receive from his Vizier so strong an endorsement of his policy; and now the time had come to stop the mouths of the murmurers and scandal-mongers of Constantinople. Accordingly he formally recalled Barbarossa from Aleppo, gave him, with his own hand, a sword and a royal banner, and invested him with plenary power over all the ports of his kingdoms, over all the islands owning his jurisdiction, command of all ships, vessels, and galleys, and of all soldiers, sailors, and slaves therein. The die was cast, the erstwhile corsair, the son of the renegado of Mitylene and his Christian wife was henceforward the supreme head of the Ottoman fleet.

The following description of the famous corsair may be found interesting at this juncture.

Barbarossa was at this time seventy-seven years of age. Courageous and prudent, he was as far-seeing in war as he was subtle in peace. A tireless worker, he was, above all things, constant in reverse of fortune, for no difficulties dismayed him, no dangers had power to daunt his spirit. His ruddy skin, his bushy eyebrows, his famous red beard, now plentifully streaked with white, his square, powerful frame, somewhat inclined to stoutness, above all, his penetrating and piercing eyes, gave to his aspect a certain terror before which men trembled and women shrank appalled.

All this harmonised well with his reputation as a chief so resolute, so pitiless, that it was the boast of his followers that his very name shouted in battle put to flight the Christian vessels. His smile was fine and malicious, his speech facile, revealing beneath the rude exterior of the corsair the subtle man of affairs, who, from nothing, had made himself King of Algiers, and was now, by the invitation of Soliman the Magnificent, Admiralissimo of the Ottoman navy.

Well may Jurien de la Graviere say that "in the sixteenth century even the pirates were great men."

It has been stated that in speech Barbarossa was facile. He was not only so, but he possessed a power of addressing such a man as Soliman in terms which, while delicately flattering that mighty monarch, gave him also a lead which he might follow in the future disposition of such power as he possessed at sea.

On his return from Aleppo Kheyr-ed-Din was received in audience by the Sultan. We must be pardoned if we give the long speech which he addressed to his new master in its entirety; and we have to remember that the man who made it was now an old man who, all his life, had been absolutely free and untrammelled, owing allegiance to no one, following out his own caprices, and sweeping out of his path any whom he found sufficiently daring as to disagree with him. That this ruthless despot should have been able so to change the whole style and manner of his address so late in life is only one proof the more of the marvellous gifts which he possessed.

It was in the following words that the corsair addressed the Sultan:

Dread Sovereign, fortune itself has made it a law to second you in all your enterprises because that you are always ready to declare war upon the enemies of Mahomet the Prophet of God, on whom be peace. You have extended the limits of your vast possessions, you have vanquished and slain the King of Hungary, you have humiliated Charles V., this Emperor with whom the Christians dare hold you in comparison. These have been the recompenses received by you for the pure flame with which your zeal for the religion of Mahomet has ever burned.

"But these successes and these triumphs are not capable of contenting that thirst for glory with which your being is animated, and I am humbly desirous of indicating to you the means of culling fresh laurels. Experience has taught me the way, and I can assert, without fear of being accused of vanity, that in this matter I can be of great assistance to your Majesty.

"That which fortune has done for me in the past that will it continue to do for me in the future. Age has not enfeebled me, continual exercise has but rendered me stronger; I can therefore promise to you the most ready service both by land and sea. The desire which has always been mine to persecute the Christians caused me to conceive the idea of serving in your sea-army.

"If Heaven is favourable to my vows, the Spaniards will soon be chased from Africa; the Carthaginians, the Moors, will soon be your very submissive subjects; Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, will obey your will. As for Italy, it will soon be desolated by famine when I attack it in formidable force, without fearing that the Christian Princes will come to its aid.

"Mahomet II., your illustrious grandfather, formed the project of conquering this country; he would have succeeded had he not been carried off by death. If I counsel you, dread Sovereign, that you should carry war into Europe and Africa, it is not that I desire your arms should be turned back in Asia from against the Persians, the ancient enemies of the Ottomans. I require but your sea-army, which is no use against the Persians. While you shall be conquering Asia I shall be subduing Africa. The first enterprise which I shall undertake will be against Muley Hassan, the King of Tunis; he has all the vices and possesses not one single virtue. He is a man of sordid avarice, of unexampled cruelty; he has rendered himself odious to the entire human race.

"He had twenty-two brothers, all of whom he has caused to be murdered. That which is a common failing among tyrants is his: he dare not place himself at the head of his troops. He prefers to endure the outrages which he suffers at the hands of the Moors to taking up arms and inflicting upon them a salutary vengeance. He had the baseness to enter into an alliance with the Spaniards, and to favour their conquests in Africa. It will be all the easier for me to exterminate this wild beast because I have with me his brother, who prayed me to save him from the cruelty of Muley Hassan.

"When I besiege Tunis I shall present him to the inhabitants, who love him as much as they hate Muley Hassan. They will open their gates to me, and I shall gain the town without the loss of a single man: it will be then you who will be master. On my way thither I will do what harm I can to the Christians; I will endeavour to defeat Andrea Doria, who is my personal enemy and my rival in glory: should I succeed in defeating him your Majesty will possess the empire of the sea. Be then persuaded, great Prince, by me, and believe that he who is master of the sea will very shortly become master on land."

It is somewhat difficult to fathom the reasons which induced Barbarossa to treat Soliman to his sanctimonious diatribe concerning the King of Tunis; coming, as it did, from a pirate, it was merely ludicrous, and could not for one instant have deceived the remarkably shrewd person to whom it was addressed. The corsair stated the facts correctly, but the reasons which led to an Eastern autocrat disposing of his family in this manner were so obvious at the time that, if Soliman felt any emotion at all concerning the event, it was probably one of admiration! Regarded from the practical, apart from the sentimental side, what the proposition amounted to was that Barbarossa should attack a king with whom the Grand Turk had no sort of quarrel, and that, once his territory had been reft from him, that it should be handed over to the ruler of Constantinople for the greater glory of the Sublime Porte. What mental reservations there were on the part of the corsair we are not told, but had Soliman known him better he would have been aware that never had Barbarossa pulled any chestnuts from the fire of life which were not intended for his own eating; and that it was extremely unlikely, at his time of life, that he was now going to alter the habits of his long and strenuous career.

There was one thing, however, that Kheyr-ed-Din was not; he was no bragger or boaster, and, whatever may have been his mental reservations in his interview with the Sultan, that which he stated he would do, that he did. And now the time had come when the grim old Sea-wolf had done with intrigue and the unaccustomed atmosphere of a Court and went back to his native element, the sea.

Soliman, it must be said to his credit, was no man to deal in half-measures, and when once he had given his trust he gave it whole-heartedly, generously. In consequence he gave Barbarossa eighty galleys, eight hundred Janissaries, eight thousand Turkish soldiers, and eight hundred thousand ducats for expenses (some three hundred thousand pounds sterling of our money). All the necessary preparations were carried out under the orders of Barbarossa, who was given a roving commission to do what seemed best to him for the advancement of the glory of his master and the discomfiture of his Christian foes. The commission which he now received was practically that which had been given by Charles V. to Doria, the most flattering with which any man can be entrusted, as in his hands were left issues of peace and war usually only vested in the sovereign.

All through the early summer of 1534 the dockyards and the arsenals of Constantinople hummed with the note of preparation; Ibrahim had returned from Aleppo and threw himself, heart and soul, into these activities, which meant the sailing of the Ottoman fleet under the command of "that veritable man of the sea," Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. Stilled were the murmurs of the year before; the corsair, invested with plenary powers by the Sultan himself, was now in a position to make his authority felt; added to this, the more sensible of the malcontents had been won round by the Grand Vizier to the view that as, so far, the Ottoman navy had been conspicuously unsuccessful at sea, it was just as well to make use of the most capable Moslem seaman upon whom they could lay their hands. As to his moral character, that they could afford to discount, and as to the question of his faithfulness or the reverse, it was pointed out with irresistible logic by Ibrahim, that never before had the Sea-wolf had such glorious opportunities of plunder as now, when he could count ten ships for every one that had followed in his wake before.

It was in July 1534 that the Ottoman fleet left Constantinople, and Kheyr-ed-Din began operations by a descent upon Reggio, which he sacked. On August 1st he arrived at the Pharos of Messina, where he burnt some Christian ships and captured their crews; then he worked north from Reggio to Naples, ravaging the coast and depopulating the whole littoral, burning villages, destroying ships, enslaving people. In this expedition he is said to have captured eleven thousand Christian slaves. There is perhaps nothing more amazing in the whole history of this epoch than the number of the slaves captured by the corsairs, and the damnable cruelties exercised upon them; these were, of course returned by the Christians with interest whenever possible. As an instance of the treatment to which the slaves were subjected it is only necessary to mention the course taken by Barbarossa when he left Algiers in the previous year. There were at that time seven thousand Christian captives in his power; immediately before starting he had the entire number paraded before him, and, under the pretext of having discovered a plot, which in no circumstances could possibly have existed, owing to the supervision of the slaves, he caused twenty of them to be beheaded on the spot in order to strike terror into the remainder during his absence.

Back to the Golden Horn streamed ship after ship laden with plunder and with slaves. "The veritable man of the sea" was proving the correctness of the choice of the Sultan, the acumen of the Grand Vizier who had recommended his appointment. Barbarossa was determined to leave nothing undone to prove to Soliman that his choice had indeed been a worthy one when he had selected him as admiral of his fleet: also he had in his mind those others who spoke slightingly of him as "the African pirate"; they should know as well as their master of what this pirate was capable. Northward the devastating host of Barbarossa took its way; the fair shores of Italy smoked to heaven as the torches of the corsairs fired the villages. Blood and agony, torture and despair, followed ever on the heels of the Sea-wolves of the Mediterranean. And now a fresh pack had been loosed, as it was, of course, in enormously increased strength that Barbarossa returned to the scene of so many of his former triumphs.

Plunder and slaves were all very well in their way, and acceptable enough on the shores of the Golden Horn; but Kheyr-ed-Din had a pet project in view on this particular cruise, which was to capture Julia Gonzaga and to present her to Soliman for his harem. The lady destined by him for this pleasant fate was reported to be the loveliest woman in Europe, a fitting gift for such an one as the Grand Turk. The fame of her surpassing loveliness had reached even the corsairs. She was the widow of Vespasian Colonna, Duchess of Trajetto, and Countess of Fundi; she had now been a widow since 1528, and lived at Fundi, some ninety miles north-east of Naples. Barbarossa laid his plans with his accustomed acuteness, and it was only through an accident that they miscarried.

There was one undeniable advantage in the system which swept off into slavery the whole of the inhabitants of a country-side, and that was, if at any time you required a guide at any particular point on the coast, he was sure to be forthcoming from one of the vessels in the fleet. Now Barbarossa did not exactly know where Julia Gonzaga was to be found, so he set his captains to work to discover the necessary slave. This was soon accomplished, and there was really no occasion for a slave on this occasion, as a renegado of Naples knew the castle in which Julia Gonzaga was residing at the time, and readily agreed to act as guide to the expedition sent to accomplish her capture. Kheyr-ed-Din had made a sudden dash along the coast with some of the swiftest of his galleys for the purposes of this capture. In consequence the people in Naples and the neighbourhood were not even aware that the piratical squadron was on the coast before they anchored, as near as it was practicable to do, to the residence of the Duchess of Trajetto. The fleet actually arrived after dark, having kept out to sea and out of sight during the day.

As soon as the anchors were down a party of two thousand picked men were landed and marched silently and with all expedition to the castle of Fundi. The escape of the Duchess was really providential. She had already gone to bed, and the fierce marauders were actually within the grounds of the castle before her distracted people became aware of their presence. But fortunately some among them kept their heads, and it also so happened that her bed-chamber was the opposite side of the castle to that by which the pirates approached. A horse was brought round under the window of the room, and, in her night-dress with nothing but a shawl wrapped around her, was Julia Gonzaga lowered out of her window on to the back of her horse. As she galloped for dear life down the avenue of her home she heard the shrieks of her miserable household murdered in cold blood by the furious pirates who had thus been balked of their prey.

Dire was the vengeance taken by the corsairs. They sacked Fundi and burned the town; they killed every man on whom they could lay their hands, and carried off the women and girls to the fleet.

Kheyr-ed-Din was furious with anger and disappointment. "What is the value of all this trash?" he demanded, with a thundering oath, of the commander of the unsuccessful raiders, surveying as he spoke the miserable, shivering women and girls. "I sent you out to bring back a pearl without price, and you return with these cattle."

Thus balked of his prey, Barbarossa swung his fleet round to the southward and westward and sailed for Sardinia, where, from the Straits of Bonifacio to Cape Spartivento, he left no house standing that would burn, or man alive who was not swept in as a captive. The descent of the corsairs in force, such as Kheyr-ed-Din now had at his disposal, was one of the most awful calamities for a country that it is possible to imagine. When Sardinia had ceased to yield up either booty or slaves the fleet sailed for Tunis, where it arrived before Bizerta on August 15th. The arrival of the corsairs was totally unexpected, and caused the greatest consternation. The story which Barbarossa had told to Sultan Soliman concerning the reigning King Muley Hassan was correct in every detail, and there is no doubt that he was a bloody and cruel tyrant of the worst description.

Therefore when the wily Barbarossa sent on shore and informed the sheiks and ulemas of the place that he had come in the name of the head of the Mohammedan religion to free them from this monster by whom they were oppressed, and that he intended to place on the throne the brother of Muley Hassan, Raschid, who had miraculously escaped from the fate which had overtaken all the other members of his house, the townspeople were inclined to listen to his advances and to admire the picture which he drew of the peace and prosperity which would accrue to them should Raschid, and not Muley Hassan, be on the throne of their country. That which he inferred in all his dealings with these people was that he had Raschid with him ready to step into the shoes of his unpopular brother as soon as the latter should be deposed by a justly indignant populace. The fact of the matter was that Kheyr-ed-Din had taken the fugitive prince with him to Constantinople, thinking to make use of him, and that, when he was sailing, Soliman had absolutely forbidden him to remove Raschid from his capital.

Completely deceived, the townspeople allowed the landing of eight hundred Janissaries. The tyrant, who was, as Barbarossa had told the Sultan, a craven coward, waited for no further demonstration of force, but incontinently fled into the interior with such valuables as he could carry. As soon as this was reported to Barbarossa he landed in force and entered the town, and then the townspeople noticed that the soldiers were all shouting for Soliman and for Barbarossa. They then demanded that Raschid should be produced according to promise, but naturally he was not forthcoming. Those who had acclaimed the soldiers of Soliman as liberators now began to arm against them, and they very shortly discovered, from some Tunisians who had come in the fleet from Constantinople, that Raschid had been left behind in that city.



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 Connetable 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 Mecina hasta el de Gibraltar ninguno de la parte de Europa pudiera tomer comida ni sueno 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 Cordova 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 Canete, 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 Caesar 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 Catolicos" 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 Senora 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.



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 Caeesar 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 Caesar 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.



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.