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 Gravière 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.