Chapter 1

_THE CORSAIR ADMIRALS._

III.

UR[=U]J BARBAROSSA.

1504-1515.

The island of Lesbos has given many gifts to the world--Lesbian wine and Lesbian verse, the seven-stringed lyre, and the poems of Sappho; but of all its products the latest was assuredly the most questionable, for the last great Lesbians were the brothers Barbarossa.

When Sultan Mohammed II. conquered the island in 1462, he left there a certain Sip[=a]hi soldier, named Ya'k[=u]b--so say the Turkish annalists, but the Spanish writers claim him as a native Christian--who became the father of Ur[=u]j Barbarossa and his brother Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n. Various stories are told of their early career, and the causes which led to their taking to the sea; but as Lesbos had long been famous for its buccaneers, whether indigenous or importations from Catalonia and Aragon, there was nothing unusual in the brothers adopting a profession which was alike congenial to bold hearts and sanctioned by time-honoured precedent.[5] Ur[=u]j, the elder, soon became the reis, or captain, of a galleot, and finding his operations hampered in the Archipelago by the predominance of the Sultan's fleet, he determined to seek a wider and less interrupted field for his depredations. Rumours had reached the Levant of the successes of the Moorish pirates; prodigious tales were abroad as to great argosies, laden with the treasures of the New World, passing and repassing the narrow seas between Europe and Africa, and seeming to invite capture; and it was not long (1504) before Captain Ur[=u]j found himself cruising with two galleots off the Barbary coast, and spying out the land in search of a good harbour and a safe refuge from pursuit.

The port of Tunis offered all that a Corsair could wish. The Goletta in those days was but slightly fortified, and the principal building, besides the castle, was the custom-house, where the wealth of many nations was taxed by the Sultan of the House of Hafs. The very sight of such an institution was stimulating to a pirate. Ur[=u]j paid his court to the King of Tunis, and speedily came to an understanding with him on the subject of royalties on stolen goods. The ports of Tunis were made free to the Corsair, and the king would protect him from pursuit, for the consideration of a fixed share--a fifth--of the booty. The policy of the enlightened rulers of Tunis evidently no longer suited their latest representative.

The base of operations thus secured, Ur[=u]j did not keep his new ally long waiting for a proof of his prowess. One day he lay off the island of Elba, when two galleys-royal, belonging to his Holiness Pope Julius II., richly laden with goods from Genoa, and bound for Civita Vecchia, hove in sight. They were rowing in an easy, leisurely manner, little dreaming of Turkish Corsairs, for none such had ever been seen in those waters, nor anything bigger than a Moorish brigantine, of which the Papal marines were prepared to give a good account. So the two galleys paddled on, some ten leagues asunder, and Ur[=u]j Reis marked his prey down. It was no light adventure for a galleot of eighteen banks of oars to board a royal galley of perhaps twice her size, and with no one could tell how many armed men inside her. The Turkish crew remonstrated at such foolhardiness, and begged their captain to look for a foe of their own size: but for reply Ur[=u]j only cast most of the oars overboard, and thus made escape impossible. Then he lay to and awaited the foremost galley She came on, proudly, unconscious of danger. Suddenly her look-out spied Turkish turbans--a strange sight on the Italian coast--and in a panic of confusion her company beat to arms. The vessels were now alongside, and a smart volley of shot and bolts completed the consternation of the Christians. Ur[=u]j and his men were quickly on the poop, and his Holiness's servants were soon safe under hatches.

Never before had a galley-royal struck her colours to a mere galleot. But worse was to follow. Ur[=u]j declared he must and would have her consort. In vain his officers showed him how temerarious was the venture, and how much more prudent it would be to make off with one rich prize than to court capture by overgreediness. The Corsair's will was of iron, and his crew, inflated with triumph, caught his audacious spirit. They clothed themselves in the dresses of the Christian prisoners, and manned the subdued galley as though they were her own seamen. On came the consort, utterly ignorant of what had happened, till a shower of arrows and small shot aroused her, just in time to be carried by assault, before her men had collected their senses.

Ur[=u]j brought his prizes into the Goletta. Never was such a sight seen there before. "The wonder and astonishment," says Haedo,[6] "that this noble exploit caused in Tunis, and even in Christendom, is not to be expressed, nor how celebrated the name of Ur[=u]j Reis was become from that very moment; he being held and accounted by all the world as a most valiant and enterprizing commander. And by reason his beard was extremely red, or carroty, from thenceforwards he was generally called Barba-rossa, which in Italian signifies Red-Beard."[7]

The capture of the Papal galleys gave Ur[=u]j what he wanted--rowers. He kept his Turks for fighting, and made the Christian prisoners work the oars; such was the custom of every Corsair down to the present century, and the Christian navies were similarly propelled by Mohammedan slaves. The practice must have lent a strange excitement to the battle; for then, assuredly, a man's foes were of his own household. A Venetian admiral knew well that his two or three hundred galley slaves were panting to break their irons and join the enemy; and the Turkish Corsair had also his unwilling subjects, who would take the first chance to mutiny in favour of the Christian adversary. Thus it often happened that a victory was secured by the strong arms of the enemy's chained partizans, who would have given half their lives to promote a defeat. But the sharp lash of the boatswain, who walked the bridge between the banks of rowers, was a present and acute argument which few backs could withstand.

Ur[=u]j had made his first _coup_, and he did not hesitate to follow it up. Next year he captured a Spanish ship with five hundred soldiers on board, who were all so sea-sick, or spent with pumping out the leaky vessel, that they fell an easy prey to his galleots. Before five years were out, what with cruising, and building with the timber of his many prizes, he had eight good vessels at his back, with two of his brothers to help. The port of Tunis now hardly sufficed his wants, so he established himself temporarily on the fertile island of Jerba, and from its ample anchorage his ships issued forth to harry the coasts of Italy.

To be king of Jerba was all too small a title for his ambition. He aimed at sovereignty on a large scale, and, Corsair as he was by nature, he wished for settled power almost as much as he delighted in adventure. In 1512 the opportunity he sought arrived. Three years before, the Mohammedan King of Buj[=e]ya had been driven out of his city by the Spaniards, and the exiled potentate appealed to the Corsair to come and restore him, coupling the petition with promises of the free use of Buj[=e]ya port, whence the command of the Spanish sea was easily to be held. Ur[=u]j was pleased with the prospect, and as he had now twelve galleots with cannon, and one thousand Turkish men-at-arms, to say nothing of renegades and Moors, he felt strong enough for the attempt. The renown of his exploits had spread far and wide, and there was no lack of a following from all parts of the Levant when it was known that Ur[=u]j Reis was on the war-path. His extraordinary energy and impetuosity called forth a corresponding zeal in his men, and, like other dashing commanders, he was very popular.

Well supported, and provided with such a siege-train as the times permitted, he landed before Buj[=e]ya in August, 1512, and found the dethroned king expecting him at the head of three thousand mountain Berbers. The Spanish garrison was collected in the strong bastion, which the Count Don Pedro Navarro had fortified when he took the city, and for eight days the fortress withstood the battering of the Corsair's ordnance. Just when a breach began to be opened, Ur[=u]j was disabled; a shot took his left arm away above the elbow. In the absence of their leader's heroic example, the Turks felt little confidence in their superiority to Spanish steel; they preferred carrying their wounded captain to the surgeons at Tunis. Buj[=e]ya for the moment escaped, but the Corsairs enjoyed some little consolation in the capture of a rich Genoese galleot which they met on its voyage to the Lomellini's mart at Tabarka. With this spoil Ur[=u]j returned to recover from his wound, while his brother, Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, kept guard over the castle of the Goletta, and began to bring the galleots and prizes through the canal into the Lake of Tunis, where they would be safe from pursuit.

He was too late, however. The Senate of Genoa was highly incensed at the loss of the galleot, and Andrea Doria, soon to be known as the greatest Christian admiral of his time, was despatched with twelve galleys to exact reparation. He landed before the Goletta, and drove Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n before him into Tunis. The fortress was sacked, and half Barbarossa's ships were brought in triumph to Genoa. Thus ended the first meeting between Doria and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n: the next was less happy for the noble Genoese.

Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, well aware of his brother's fierce humour, did not dare to face him after this humiliation, but left him to fume impotently in his sickroom, while he stole away to Jerba, there to work night and day at shipbuilding. Ur[=u]j joined him in the following spring--the King of Tunis had probably had enough of him--and they soon had the means of wiping out their disgrace. The attempt was at first a failure; a second assault on the ominous forts of Buj[=e]ya (1514) was on the point of success, when reinforcements arrived from Spain. The Berber allies evinced more interest in getting in their crops after the rain than in forcing the bastion; and Barbarossa, compelled to raise the siege, in a frantic rage, tearing his red beard like a madman, set fire to his ships that they might not fall into the hands of the Spaniards.

He would not show himself now in Tunis or Jerba. Some new spot must shelter him after this fresh reverse. On his way to and from Buj[=e]ya he had noticed the very place for his purpose--a spot easy to defend, perched on inaccessible rocks, yet furnished with a good harbour, where the losses of recent years might be repaired. This was J[=i]jil, some sixty miles to the east of Buj[=e]ya; whose sturdy inhabitants owed allegiance to no Sultan, but were proud to welcome so renowned, although now so unfortunate, a warrior as Barbarossa. So at J[=i]jil Ur[=u]j dwelt, and cultivated the good-will of the people with spoils of corn and goods from his cruisers, till those "indomitable African mountaineers," who had never owned a superior, chose him by acclamation their king.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] The differences between the Turkish authority, H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, who wrote in the middle of the seventeenth century and used "Memoirs" partly inspired by Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n himself, and the two Spanish chroniclers, Haedo and Marmol, in their narratives of the early feats and experiences of Barbarossa and his brothers, are irreconcilable in details, though the general purport is similar. Von Hammer naturally follows H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, and modern writers, like Adm. Jurien de la Graviere, take the same course. For the period of his life when Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n was at Constantinople the Turkish writer may be reasonably preferred; but on all matters concerning the Barbary coast the Abbot Diego de Haedo, who lived many years in Algiers in the sixteenth century, was personally acquainted with many of the servants and followers of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n (who died in 1546), and published his _Topographia e historia de Argel_ in 1612, is undoubtedly the best informed and most trustworthy authority.

[6] Quoted by Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 225.

[7] It is possible that Barba-rossa is but a European corruption of Baba Ur[=u]j, "Father Ur[=u]j," as his men called him. At all events Ur[=u]j is the real Barbarossa, though modern writers generally give the name to his younger brother Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, who was only called Barbarossa on account of his kinship to the original.

IV.

THE TAKING OF ALGIERS.

1516-1518.

The new Sultan of J[=i]jil was now called to a much more serious enterprize than heading his truculent highlanders against a neighbouring tribe--though it must be admitted that he was always in his element when fisticuffs were in request. An appeal had come from Algiers. The Moors there had endured for seven years the embargo of the Spaniards; they had seen their _fregatas_ rotting before their eyes, and never dared to mend them; they had viewed many a rich prize sail by, and never so much as ventured a mile out to sea to look her over: for there were keen eyes and straight shots in the Penon which commanded the bay, and King Ferdinand the Catholic held a firm hand over the tribute which his banished subjects had to pay him for his condescension in ruining them. Their occupation was gone; they had not dragged a prize ashore for years; they must rebel or starve. At this juncture Ferdinand opportunely died (1516), and the Algerine Moors seized their chance. They stopped the tribute, and called in the aid of Salim, the neighbouring Arab sheykh, whose clansmen would make the city safe on the land side. "But what are they to do with the two hundred petulant and vexatious Spaniards in the fort, who incessantly pepper the town with their cannon, and make the houses too hot to hold them; especially when they are hungry? Little would the gallant Arab cavalry, with their fine Libyan mares and horses, rich coats-of-mail, tough targets, well-tempered sabres, and long supple lances, avail them against the Spanish volleys. And who so proper to redress this grievance as the invincible Barbarossa, who was master of a naval force, and wanted not artillery? Had he not been twice to reinstate the unfortunate King of Buj[=e]ya, and lost a limb in his service?

"Without the least deliberation Prince Salim despatched a solemn embassy to J[=i]jil, intreating Barbarossa, in whom he and his people reposed their entire confidence, to hasten to their assistance. No message whatever could have been more welcome to the ambitious Barbarossa than one of this nature. His new-acquired realm brought him in but a very scanty revenue; nor was he absolute.... He had been wretchedly baffled at Buj[=e]ya, but hoped for better success at Algiers, which, likewise, is a place of much greater consequence, and much more convenient for his purpose, which, as has been said, was to erect a great monarchy of his own in Barbary."[8]

With some six thousand men and sixteen galleots Ur[=u]j set forth by sea and land to the rescue of Algiers. First he surprised Shersh[=e]l, a strong position fifteen leagues to the west of Algiers, which had been occupied by Moors from Granada, and was now commanded by a bold Turkish Corsair, Kara Hasan, who, emulating his old comrade's success with the people of J[=i]jil, had induced the Shersh[=e]l rovers to accept him as their leader. Ur[=u]j had no liking for two Kings of Brentford, and took off Black Hasan's head as a friendly precaution, before exposing himself to the perils of another contest with the Spaniards.

Soon he was at Algiers, hospitably lodged and entertained, he and all his men, Turks and J[=i]jilis alike, by Sheykh Salim and the people of the town. There, at the distance of a crossbow-shot, stood the fortress he had come to reduce, and thither he sent a message offering a safe conduct to the garrison if they would surrender. The Spanish captain made reply that "neither threats nor proffered curtesies availed aught with men of his kidney," and told him to remember Buj[=e]ya. Upon which Ur[=u]j, more to please his unsuspicious hosts than with much prospect of success, battered the Penon for twenty days with his light field-pieces, without making any sensible breach in the defences.

Meanwhile, the Arabs and Moors who had called him to their aid were becoming aware of their mistake. Instead of getting rid of their old enemy the Spaniard, they had imported a second, worse than the first, and Ur[=u]j soon showed them who was to be master. He and his Turks treated the ancient Moorish families, who had welcomed them within their gates, with an insolence that was hard to be borne by descendants of the Abencerrages and other noble houses of Granada. Salim, the Arab Sheykh, was the first to feel the despot's power: he was murdered in his bath--it was said by the Corsair himself. In their alarm, the Algerines secretly made common cause with the soldiers of the Penon, and a general rising was planned; but one day at Friday prayers Barbarossa let the crowded congregation know that their designs were not unsuspected. Shutting the gates, the Turks bound their entertainers with the turbans off their heads, and the immediate decapitation of the ringleaders at the mosque door quelled the spirit of revolt. Nor was a great Armada, sent by Cardinal Ximenes, and commanded by Don Diego de Vera, more successful than the Algerine rebellion. Seven thousand Spaniards were utterly routed by the Turks and Arabs; and to complete the discomfiture of the Christians a violent tempest drove their ships ashore, insomuch that this mighty expedition was all but annihilate.

An adventurer who, with a motley following of untrained bandits and nomads, could overthrow a Spanish army was a phenomenon which the Christian States now began to eye with considerable anxiety. From the possessor of a strong place or two on the coast, he had become nothing less than the Sultan of Middle Barbary (_Maghrib el-Awsat_). When the Prince of Tinnis raised the whole country side against him, and a mighty host was rolling down upon Algiers, Ur[=u]j marched out with one thousand Turks and five hundred Moors, and never a cannon amongst them, and smote the enemy hip and thigh, and pursued them into their own city. The prince of Tinnis took to the mountains, and Ur[=u]j Barbarossa reigned in his stead (1517). Then Tilims[=a]n fell into his possession, and save that the Spaniards held Oran and two or three fortresses, such as the Penon de Alger and Buj[=e]ya, his dominions coincided with modern Algeria, and marched with the kingdoms of Tunis and Fez. He was in a position to form alliances with Fez and Morocco. His galleots were punctilious, moreover, in returning the call of Don Diego de Vera, and many an expectant merchant in Genoa, or Naples, or Venice, strained his eyes in vain for the argosy that, thanks to the Corsair's vigilance, would never again sail proudly into the harbour.

When all this came to the ears of the new King of Spain, afterwards the Emperor Charles V, he yielded to the prayer of the Marquis de Comares, Governor of Oran, and despatched ten thousand veterans to make an end of the Corsairs once and for ever. Ur[=u]j Barbarossa was then stationed at Tilims[=a]n with only 1,500 men, and when the hosts of the enemy drew near he made a bolt by night for Algiers, taking his Turks and his treasure with him. The news soon reached the enemy's scouts, and the Marquis gave hot pursuit. A river with steep banks lay in the fugitives' path: could they pass it, they would have the chances in their favour. Ur[=u]j scattered his jewels and gold behind him, vainly hoping to delay the greedy Spaniards; but Comares trampled over everything, and came up with the Turkish rear when but half their force had crossed the river. Their leader was already safe on the other side, but the cries of his rear-guard brought him back. The Corsair was not the man to desert his followers, and without an instant's hesitation he recrossed the fatal stream and threw himself into the fray. Hardly a Turk or a Moor escaped from that bloody field. Facing round, they fought till they dropped; and among them the vigorous figure of Barbarossa was ever to be seen, laying about him with his one arm like a lion to the last.

"Ur[=u]j Barbarossa, according to the testimony of those who remember him, was, when he died, about forty-four years of age. He was not very tall of stature, but extremely well set and robust. His hair and beard perfectly red; his eyes quick, sparkling and lively; his nose aquiline or Roman; and his complexion between brown and fair. He was a man excessively bold, resolute, daring, magnanimous, enterprizing, profusely liberal, and in nowise bloodthirsty, except in the heat of battle, nor rigorously cruel but when disobeyed He was highly beloved, feared, and respected, by his soldiers and domestics, and when dead was by them all in general most bitterly regretted and lamented. He left neither son nor daughter. He resided in Barbary fourteen years, during which the harms he did to the Christians are inexpressible."[9]

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 233. (1731.)

[9] Morgan, 257.

V.

KHEYR-ED-D[=I]N BARBAROSSA.

1518-1530.

Ur[=u]j Barbarossa, the gallant, impulsive, reckless, lovable soldier of fortune was dead, and it seemed as if all the power he had built up by his indomitable energy must inevitably vanish with its founder. The Marquis de Comares and the Spanish army held the fate of Algiers in their hands; one steady march, and surely the Corsairs must be swept out of Africa. But, with what would seem incredible folly, if it had not been often repeated, the troops were shipped back to Spain, the Marquis returned to his post at Oran, and the opportunity was lost for three hundred years. The Algerines drew breath again, and their leader began to prepare fresh schemes of conquest.

The mantle of Ur[=u]j had fallen upon worthy shoulders. The elder brother possessed, indeed, matchless qualities for deeds of derring-do; to lead a storming party, board a galleon,--cut and thrust and "have at you,"--he had no equal: but Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, with like courage and determination, was gifted with prudent and statesmanlike intelligence, which led him to greater enterprizes, though not to more daring exploits. He measured the risk by the end, and never exposed himself needlessly to the hazard of defeat; but when he saw his way clear, none struck harder or more effectual blows.[10]

His first proceeding was typical of his sagacious mind. He sent an ambassador to Constantinople, to lay his homage at the feet of the Grand Signior, and to beg his Majesty's favour and protection for the new province of Algiers, which was now by his humble servant added to the Ottoman Empire. The reply was gracious. Sel[=i]m had just conquered Egypt, and Algiers formed an important western extension of his African dominion. The sage Corsair was immediately appointed Beglerbeg, or Governor-General, of Algiers (1519), and invested with the insignia of office, the horse and scimitar and horsetail-banner. Not only this, but the Sultan sent a guard of two thousand Janissaries to his viceroy's aid, and offered special inducements to such of his subjects as would pass westward to Algiers and help to strengthen the Corsair's authority.

The Beglerbeg lost no time in repairing the damage of the Spaniards. He reinforced his garrisons along the coast, at Meliana, Shersh[=e]l, Tinnis, and Mustagh[=a]nim, and struck up alliances with the great Arab tribes of the interior. An armada of some fifty men-of-war and transports, including eight galleys-royal, under the command of Admiral Don Hugo de Moncada, in vain landed an army of veterans on the Algerine strand--they were driven back in confusion, and one of those storms, for which the coast bears so evil a name, finished the work of Turkish steel (1519). One after the other, the ports and strongholds of Middle Barbary fell into the Corsair's hands: Col, Bona, Constantine, owned the sway of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa, who was now free to resume his favourite occupation of scouring the seas in search of Christian quarry. Once or twice in every year he would lead out his own eighteen stout galleots, and call to his side other daring spirits whom the renown of his name had drawn from the Levant, each with his own swift cruiser manned by stout arms and the pick of Turkish desperadoes. There you might see him surrounded by captains who were soon to be famous wherever ships were to be seized or coasts harried;--by Dragut, S[=a]lih Reis, Sin[=a]n the "Jew of Smyrna," who was suspected of black arts because he could take a declination with the crossbow, and that redoubtable rover Ayd[=i]n Reis, whom the Spaniards dubbed _Cachadiablo_, or "Drub-devil," though he had better been named Drub-Spaniard. The season for cruising began in May, and lasted till the autumn storms warned vessels to keep the harbours, or at least to attempt no distant expeditions. During the summer months the Algerine galleots infested every part of the Western Mediterranean, levied contributions of slaves and treasure upon the Balearic Isles and the coasts of Spain, and even passed beyond the straits to waylay the argosies which were returning to Cadiz laden with the gold and jewels of the Indies. Nothing was safe from their attacks; not a vessel ran the gauntlet of the Barbary coast in her passage from Spain to Italy without many a heart quaking within her. The "Scourge of Christendom" had begun, which was to keep all the nations of Europe in perpetual alarm for three centuries. The Algerine Corsairs were masters of the sea, and they made their mastery felt by all who dared to cross their path; and not merchantmen only, but galleys-royal of his Catholic Majesty learnt to dread the creak of the Turkish rowlock.

One day in 1529 Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n despatched his trusty lieutenant "Drub-Devil" with fourteen galleots to make a descent upon Majorca and the neighbouring islands. No job could be more suited to the Corsair's taste, and S[=a]lih Reis, who was with him, fully shared his enjoyment of the task. The pair began in the usual way by taking several prizes on the high seas, dropping down upon the islands and the Spanish coasts, and carrying off abundance of Christians to serve at the oar, or to purchase their liberty with those pieces-of-eight which never came amiss to the rover's pockets. Tidings reaching them of a party of Moriscos who were eager to make their escape from their Spanish masters, and were ready to pay handsomely for a passage to Barbary. "Drub-Devil" and his comrades landed by night near Oliva, embarked two hundred families and much treasure, and lay-to under the island of Formentara. Unfortunately General Portundo, with eight Spanish galleys, was just then on his way back from Genoa, whither he had conveyed Charles V. to be crowned Emperor by the Pope at Bologna; and, being straightway informed of the piratical exploit which had taken place, bore away for the Balearic Isles in hot pursuit. "Drub-Devil" hastily landed his Morisco friends, to be the better prepared to fight or run, for the sight of eight big galleys was more than he had bargained for; but to his surprise the enemy came on, well within gun-shot, without firing a single round. Portundo was anxious not to sink the Turks, for fear of drowning the fugitive Moriscos, whom he supposed to be on board, and for whose recapture he was to have ten thousand ducats; but the Corsairs imputed his conduct to cowardice, and, suddenly changing their part from attacked to attackers, they swooped like eagles upon the galleys, and after a brisk hand-to-hand combat, in which Portundo was slain, they carried seven of them by assault, and sent the other flying at topmost speed to Ivica. This bold stroke brought to Algiers, besides the Moriscos, who had watched the battle anxiously from the island, many valuable captives of rank, and released hundreds of Moslem galley-slaves from irons and the lash.[11] "Drub-Devil" had a splendid reception, we may be sure, when the people of Algiers saw seven royal galleys, including the _capitana_, or flagship, of Spain, moored in their roads; and it is no wonder that with such triumphs the new Barbary State flourished exceedingly.

Fortified by a series of unbroken successes, Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n at last ventured to attack the Spanish garrison, which had all this time affronted him at the Penon de Alger. It was provoking to be obliged to beach his galleots a mile to the west, and to drag them painfully up the strand; and the merchantmen, moored east of the city, were exposed to the weather to such a degree as to imperil their commerce. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n resolved to have a port of his own at Algiers, with no Spanish bridle to curb him. He summoned Don Martin de Vargas to surrender, and, on his refusal, bombarded the Penon day and night for fifteen days with heavy cannon, partly founded in Algiers, partly seized from a French galleon, till an assault was practicable, when the feeble remnant of the garrison was quickly overpowered and sent to the bagnios. The stones of the fortress were used to build the great mole which protects Algiers harbour on the west, and for two whole years the Christian slaves were laboriously employed upon the work.

To aggravate this disaster, a curious sight was seen a fortnight after the fall of the Penon. Nine transports, full of men and ammunition for the reinforcement of the garrison, hove in sight, and long they searched to and fro for the well-known fortress they had come to succour. And whilst they marvelled that they could not discover it, out dashed the Corsairs in their galleots and light sheb[=e]ks, and seized the whole convoy, together with two thousand seven hundred captives and a fine store of arms and provisions.[12]

Everything that Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n took in hand seemed to prosper. His fleet increased month by month, till he had thirty-six of his own galleots perpetually on the cruise in the summer season; his prizes were innumerable, and his forces were increased by the fighting men of the seventy thousand Moriscos whom he rescued, in a series of voyages, from servitude in Spain. The waste places of Africa were peopled with the industrious agriculturists and artisans whom the Spanish Government knew not how to employ. The foundries and dockyards of Algiers teemed with busy workmen. Seven thousand Christian slaves laboured at the defensive works and the harbour; and every attempt of the Emperor to rescue them and destroy the pirates was repelled with disastrous loss.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n (pronounced by the Turks _Hare-udeen_), as has been said, is the Barbarossa of modern writers, and it is probable that the name was given to him originally under some impression that it was of the nature of a family name. Haedo, Marmol, and H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa all give him this title, though his beard was auburn, while Ur[=u]j was the true "Red-Beard." Neither of the brothers was ever called Barbarossa by Turks or Moors, and H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa records the title merely as used by Europeans. The popular usage is here adopted.

[11] Morgan, 264-6.

[12] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. I., ch. xxi.

VI.

THE OTTOMAN NAVY.

1470-1522.

No one appreciated better the triumphs of the Beglerbeg of Algiers than Sultan Suleym[=a]n. The Ottomans, as yet inexperienced in naval affairs, were eager to take lessons. The Turkish navy had been of slow growth, chiefly because in early days there were always people ready to act as sailors for pay. When Mur[=a]d I. wished to cross from Asia to Europe to meet the invading army of Vladislaus and Hunyady, the Genoese skippers were happy to carry over his men for a ducat a head, just to spite their immemorial foes the Venetians, who were enlisted on the other side. It was not till the fall of Constantinople gave the Turks the command of the Bosphorus that Mohammed II. resolved to create for himself a naval power.

That fatal jealousy between the Christian States which so often aided the progress of the Turks helped them now. The great commercial republics, Genoa and Venice, had long been struggling for supremacy on the sea. Venice held many important posts among the islands of the Archipelago and on the Syrian coast, where the Crusaders had rewarded her naval assistance with the gift of the fortress of Acre. Genoa was stronger in the Black Sea and Marmora, where, until the coming of the Turks, her colony at Galata was little less than an Oriental Genoa. The Genoese tower is still seen on the steep slope of Pera, and Genoese forts are common objects in the Bosphorus, and in the Crimea, where they dominate the little harbour of Balaklava. The Sea of Marmora was the scene of many a deadly contest between the rival fleets. In 1352, under the walls of Constantinople, the Genoese defeated the combined squadrons of the Venetians, the Catalonians, and the Greeks. But next year the Bride of the Sea humbled the pride of Genoa in a disastrous engagement off Alghero; and in 1380, when the Genoese had gained possession of Chioggia and all but occupied Venice itself, the citizens rose like one man to meet the desperate emergency, and not only repulsed, but surrounded the invaders, and forced them to capitulate. From this time Genoa declined in power, while Venice waxed stronger and more haughty. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, followed rapidly by the expulsion of the Genoese from Trebizond, Sinope, Kaffa, and Azov, was the end of the commercial prosperity of the Ligurian Republic in the East. The Black Sea and Marmora were now Turkish lakes. The Castles of the Dardanelles, mounted with heavy guns, protected any Ottoman fleet from pursuit; and though Giacomo Veniero defiantly carried his own ship under fire through the strait and back again with the loss of only eleven men, no one cared to follow his example.

When Mohammed II. issued forth with a fleet of one hundred galleys and two hundred transports, carrying seventy thousand troops, and ravished the Negropont away from Venice in 1470, he had only to repass the Hellespont to be absolutely safe. All that the Venetian admirals, the famous Loredani, could do was to retaliate upon such islands of the Archipelago as were under Turkish sway and ravage the coasts of Asia Minor. Superior as they were to the Turks in the building and management of galleys, they had not the military resources of their foe. Their troops were mercenaries, not to be compared with the Janissaries and Sip[=a]his, though the hardy Stradiotes from Epirus, dressed like Turks, but without the turban, of whom Othello is a familiar specimen, came near to rivalling them. On land, the Republic could not meet the troops of the Grand Signior, and after her very existence had been menaced by the near approach of a Turkish army on the banks of the Piave[13] (1477), Venice made peace, and even, it is said, incited the Turks to the capture of Otranto. The Ottoman galleys were now free of the Adriatic, and carried fire and sword along the Italian coast, insomuch that whenever the crescent was seen at a vessel's peak the terrified villagers fled inland, and left their homes at the mercy of the pirates. The period of the Turkish Corsairs had already begun.

There was another naval power to be reckoned with besides discredited Genoa and tributary Venice. The Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem, driven from Smyrna (in 1403) by Timur, had settled at Rhodes, which they hastened to render impregnable. Apparently they succeeded, for attack after attack from the Maml[=u]k Sultans of Egypt failed to shake them from their stronghold, whence they commanded the line of commerce between Alexandria and Constantinople, and did a brisk trade in piracy upon passing vessels. The Knights of Rhodes were the Christian Corsairs of the Levant; the forests of Caramania furnished them with ships, and the populations of Asia Minor supplied them with slaves. So long as they roved the seas the Sultan's galleys were ill at ease. Even Christian ships suffered from their high-handed proceedings, and Venice looked on with open satisfaction when, in 1480, Mohammed II. despatched one hundred and sixty ships and a large army to humble the pride of the Knights. The siege failed, however; D'Aubusson, the Grand Master, repulsed the general assault with furious heroism, and the Turks retired with heavy loss.[14]

Finding that the Ottomans were not quite invincible, Venice plucked up heart, and began to prepare for hostilities with her temporary ally. The interval of friendliness had been turned to good account by the Turks. Y[=a]ni, the Christian shipbuilder of the Sultan, had studied the improvements of the Venetians, and he now constructed two immense _kokas_, seventy cubits long and thirty in the beam, with masts of several trees spliced together, measuring four cubits round. Forty men in armour might stand in the maintop and fire down upon the enemy. There were two decks, one like a galleon's deck, and the other like a galley, each with a big gun on either side. Four-and-twenty oars a side, on the upper deck, were propelled each by nine men. Boats hung from the stern; and the ship's complement consisted (so says H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa)[15] of two thousand soldiers and sailors. Kem[=a]l Reis and Bor[=a]k Reis commanded these two prodigies, and the whole fleet, numbering some three hundred other vessels, was despatched to the Adriatic under the command of Da[=u]d Pasha. The object of attack was Lepanto.

Towards the end of July, 1499, they sighted the Venetian fleet, which was on the look-out for them, off Modon. They counted forty-four galleys, sixteen galleasses, and twenty-eight ordinary sail. Neither courted an action, which each knew to be fraught with momentous consequences. Grimani, the Venetian admiral, retired to Navarino; the Turks anchored off Sapienza. On August 12th Da[=u]d Pasha, who knew the Sultan was awaiting him with the land forces at Lepanto, resolved to push on at all costs. In those days Turkish navigators had little confidence in the open sea; they preferred to hug the shore, where they might run into a port in case of bad weather. Da[=u]d accordingly endeavoured to pass between the island of Prodano and the Morea, just north of Navarino. Perfectly aware of his course, the Venetians had drawn out their fleet at the upper end of the narrow passage, where they had the best possible chance of catching the enemy in confused order. The Proveditore of Corfu, Andrea Loredano, had reinforced the Christian fleet that very day with ten ships; the position was well chosen; the wind was fair, and drove full down upon the Turks as they emerged from the strait. But the Venetian admiral placed his chief reliance in his galleasses, and as yet the art of manoeuvring sailing vessels in battle array was in its youth. Bad steering here, a wrong tack there, and then ship ran against ship, the great galleasses became entangled and helpless, carried by the wind into the midst of the enemy, or borne away where they were useless, and the Turkish galleys had it all their own way. Loredano's flagship burnt down to the water, and other vessels were destroyed by fire. Y[=a]ni's big ships played an important part in the action. Two galleasses, each containing a thousand men, and two other vessels, surrounded Bor[=a]k Reis, but the smaller ships could not fire over the _koka's_ lofty sides, and were speedily sunk. Bor[=a]k Reis threw burning pitch into the galleasses, and burnt up crews and ships, till, his own vessel catching fire, he and other notable captains, after performing prodigies of valour, perished in the flames. Wherefore the island of Prodano is by the Turks called Bor[=a]k Isle to this day.[16] To the Christians the action was known as "the deplorable battle of Zonchio," from the name of the old castle of Navarino, beneath which it was fought.

In spite of his success at Zonchio, Da[=u]d Pasha had still to fight his way up to Lepanto. The Venetians had collected their scattered fleet, and had been reinforced by their allies of France and Rhodes; it was clear they were bent on revenge. The Turks hugged the land, dropped anchor at night, and kept a sharp look-out. It was a perpetual skirmish all the way. The Venetians tried to surprise the enemy at their moorings, but they were already at sea, and squally weather upset Grimani's strategy and he had the mortification of seeing his six fire-ships burning innocuously with never a Turk the worse. Again and again it seemed impossible that Da[=u]d could escape, but Grimani's Fabian policy delivered the enemy out of his hands, and when finally the Turkish fleet sailed triumphantly into the Gulf of Patras, where it was protected by the Sultan's artillery at Lepanto, the Grand Prior of Auvergne, who commanded the French squadron, sailed away in disgust at the pusillanimity of his colleague. Lepanto fell, August 28th; and Grimani was imprisoned, nominally for life, for his blundering: nevertheless, after twenty-one years he was made Doge.[17]

Venice never recovered from her defeat. The loss of Lepanto and the consequent closing of the gulfs of Patras and Corinth were followed by the capture of Modon, commanding the strait of Sapienza: the east coast of the Adriatic and Ionian seas was no longer open to Christian vessels. The Oriental trade of the republic was further seriously impaired by the Turkish conquest of Egypt (1517),[18] which deprived her of her most important mart; and the discovery of the New World brought Spanish traders into successful competition with her own. Venice indeed was practically an Oriental city; her skilled workmen learned their arts in Egypt and Mesopotamia; her bazaars were filled with the products of the East, with the dimity and other cloths and silks and brocades of Damietta, Alexandria, Tinnis, and Cairo, cotton from Ba'lbekk, silk from Baghd[=a]d, atlas satin from Ma'din in Armenia; and she introduced to Europe not only the products of the East, but their very names. Sarcenet is Saracen stuff; tabby is named after a street in Baghd[=a]d where watered silk was made; Baldacchini are simply "Baldac," _i.e._, Baghd[=a]d, canopies; samite is Sh[=a]m[=i], "Syrian," fabric; the very coat of the Egyptian, the _jubba_, is preserved in giuppa, jupe.[19] With the loss of her Oriental commerce, which the hostility of the Turks involved, Venice could no longer hold her own. She bowed to her fate and acknowledged the Turkish supremacy by sea as well as by land. She even paid the Sultan tribute for the island of Cyprus. When Suleym[=a]n the Magnificent succeeded Sel[=i]m and took Belgrade (1521), Venice hastily increased her payment and did homage for Zante as well. So meek had now become the Bride of the Sea.

Turkey still suffered the annoyance of the Rhodian Corsairs, and till they were removed her naval supremacy was not complete. Genoa and Venice had been humbled: the turn of the Knights of St. John was come. Sel[=i]m had left his son, the great Suleym[=a]n, the legacy of a splendid fleet, prepared for this very enterprize. One hundred and three swift galleys, thirty-five galleasses, besides smaller craft, and 107 transports, "naves, fustes, mahones, tafforees, galions, et esquirasses,"[20] formed a noble navy, and Rhodes fell, after an heroic defence, at the close of 1522. For six months the Knights held out, against a fleet which had swollen to four hundred sail and an army of over a hundred thousand men commanded by the Sultan in person. It was a crisis in the history of Europe: the outpost of Christendom was at bay. The Knights realized their duty nobly, but they had the best engineers in the world against them, and all the resources of a now mighty empire, wielded by a master-mind. Suleym[=a]n surrounded the city with his works, and made regular approaches for his advancing batteries and mines; yet at the end of a month not a wall was down, and the eight bastions of the eight Tongues of the Order--the English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Provencal, and Auvergnat--were so far unmoved. Gabriel Martinego of Candia superintended the countermines with marked success.[21] At last the English bastion was blown up; the Turks swarmed to the breach, and were beaten back with a loss of two thousand men. A second assault failed, but on September 24th they succeeded in getting a foothold, and the destruction of the Spanish, Italian, and Provencal bastions by the Turkish mines and the consequent exposure of the exhausted garrison rendered the defence more and more perilous. The Ottoman army too was suffering severely, from disease, as well as from the deadly weapons of the Knights, and in the hope of sparing his men Suleym[=a]n offered the garrison life and liberty if they would surrender the city. At first they proudly rejected the offer, but within a fortnight, finding their ammunition exhausted and their numbers sadly thinned, on December 21st they begged the Sultan to repeat his conditions, and, with an honourable clemency, Suleym[=a]n let them all depart unmolested in his own ships to such ports in Europe as seemed best to them.[22]

The fall of Rhodes removed the last obstacle to the complete domination of the Ottoman fleet in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Henceforward no Christian ship was safe in those waters unless by the pleasure of the Sultan. The old maritime Republics were for the time reduced to impotence, and no power existed to challenge the Ottoman supremacy in the Aegean, Ionian, and Adriatic Seas.

Almost at the same time the brothers Barbarossa had effected a similar triumph in the west. The capture of Algiers and the firm establishment of various strong garrisons on the Barbary coast had given the Turkish Corsairs the command of the western basin of the Mediterranean. Suleym[=a]n the Magnificent saw the necessity of combination; he knew that Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n could teach the Stambol navigators and ship-builders much that they ought to learn; his Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m strenuously urged a closer relation between the Turkish powers of the east and west; and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n received the Imperial command to present himself at Constantinople.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Story of Turkey_, 135.

[14] See _The Story of Turkey_, 136.

[15] _History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks_, 20.

[16] H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, 21.

[17] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. I., ch. xv.

[18] See the _Story of Turkey_, 158-163.

[19] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Art of the Saracens_, 239, &c.

[20] _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II., ch. vii.

[21] _Ibid._, Pt. II., ch. vii., p. 106 ff.

[22] See the _Story of Turkey_, 170; and the illustrations, pp. 137, 147, 171, 175, 177.

VII.

DORIA AND BARBAROSSA.

1533.

Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n was in no hurry to visit the Sublime Porte. He had to provide for the safety and government of Algiers during his absence, when exposed to the dangers both of foreign attack and internal intrigue. He had to reckon with the galleys of the Knights of St. John, who, after wandering homeless for a longer time than was at all creditable to that Christendom which they had so heroically defended at Rhodes, had finally settled in no less convenient a spot than Malta, whence they had every opportunity of harassing the operations of the Corsairs (1530). Moreover Andrea Doria was cruising about, and he was not the sort of opponent Barbarossa cared to meet by hazard. The great Genoese admiral considered it a personal duel with Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n. Each held the supreme position on his own side of the water. Both were old men and had grown old in arms. Born in 1468, of a noble Genoese family, Doria was sixty-five years of age, of which nearly fifty had been spent in warfare. He had been in the Pope's guard, and had seen service under the Duke of Urbino and Alfonso of Naples, and when he was over forty he had taken to the sea and found himself suddenly High Admiral of Genoa (1513). His appointment to the command of his country's galleys was due to his zealous services on shore, and not to any special experience of naval affairs; indeed the commander of the galleys was as much a military as a naval officer. Doria, however, late as he adopted his profession, possessed undoubted gifts as a seaman, and his leadership decided which of the rival Christian Powers should rule the Mediterranean waves. He devoted his sword to France in 1522, when a revolution overthrew his party in his own republic; and so long as he was on the French side the command of the sea, so far as it did not belong to the Barbary Corsairs, belonged to France. When in 1528 he judged himself and his country ill-used by Francis I., he carried over his own twelve galleys to the side of Charles V.; and then the Imperial navies once more triumphed. Doria was the arbiter of fortune between the contending states. Doria was the liberator of Genoa, and, refusing to be her king, remained her idol and her despot. No name struck such terror into the hearts of the Turks; many a ship had fallen a prey to his devouring galleys, and many a Moslem slave pulled at his oars or languished in Genoese prisons. Officially an admiral, he was at the same time personally a Corsair, and used his private galleys to increase his wealth.

Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's fame among Christians and Turks alike was at least as great and glorious as his rival's. He had driven the Spaniards out of Algiers and had inflicted incalculable injuries upon the ships and shores of the Empire. Though the two had roved the same sea for twenty years, they had never met in naval combat: perhaps each had respected the other too much to risk an encounter. Long ago, when Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n was unknown to fame, Doria had driven him from the Goletta (1513); and in 1531 the Genoese admiral made a descent upon Shersh[=e]l, which Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had been strengthening, to the great detriment and anxiety of the opposite coast of Spain. The Imperialists landed in force, surprised the fort, and liberated seven hundred Christian slaves. Then, contrary to orders and heedless of the signal gun which summoned them on board, the soldiery dispersed about the town in search of pillage, and, being taken at a disadvantage by the Turks and Moriscos of the place, were driven in confusion down to the beach, only to perceive Doria's galleys rapidly pulling away. Nine hundred were slaughtered on the seashore and six hundred made prisoners. Some say that the admiral intended to punish his men for their disobedience; others that he sighted Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's fleet coming to the rescue. At all events he drew off, and the two great rivals did not meet. The Genoese picked up some Barbary vessels on his way home to console him for his failure.

In the following year he retrieved his fame by a brilliant expedition to the coasts of Greece. With thirty-five sail and forty-eight galleys he attacked Coron, by way of making a diversion while Sultan Suleym[=a]n was invading Hungary,[23] and after a heavy bombardment succeeded in landing his men on the curtain of the fort. The Turkish garrison was spared and marched out, and Mendoza was left in command, while Doria bore up to Patras and took it, occupied the castles which guard the Gulf of Corinth, and returned in triumph to Genoa before the Turkish fleet could come up with him. This was in September, 1532. In the following spring a yet more daring feat was accomplished. Coron was running short of supplies, and a Turkish fleet blockaded the port. Nevertheless Cristofero Pallavicini carried his ship in, under cover of the castle guns, and encouraged the garrison to hold out; and Doria, following in splendid style, fought his way in, notwithstanding that half his fleet, being sailing galleons, became becalmed in the midst of the Turkish galleys, and had to be rescued in the teeth of the enemy. Lutfi Pasha was outmanoeuvred and defeated. This revictualling of Coron, says Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, was one of the skilfullest naval operations of the sixteenth century.[24]

It was clear that, while Doria had effected almost nothing against the Barbary Corsairs, he always mastered the Turks. The Sultan was eager to discover Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's secret of success, and counted the days till he should arrive in the Golden Horn. The Corsair, for his part, had heard enough of Doria's recent exploits to use more than his habitual caution, and he was not disposed to cheapen his value in the Sultan's eyes by a too precipitate compliance with his Majesty's command. At last, in August, 1533, having appointed Hasan Aga, a Sardinian eunuch, in whom he greatly confided, to be viceroy during his absence, Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n set sail from Algiers with a few galleys; and after doing a little business on his own account--looting Elba and picking up some Genoese corn-ships--pursued his way, passing Malta at a respectful distance, and coasting the Morea, till he dropped anchor in the Bay of Salonica.[25] By his route, which touched Santa Maura and Navarino, he appears to have been looking for Doria, in spite of the smallness of his own force (which had, however, been increased by prizes); but, fortunately, perhaps, for the Corsair, the Genoese admiral had returned to Sicily, and the two had missed each other on the way.

Soon the eyes of the Sultan were rejoiced with the sight of a Barbary fleet, gaily dressed with flags and pennons, rounding Seraglio Point, and, in perfect order, entering the deep water of the Golden Horn; and presently Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n and his eighteen captains were bowing before the Grand Signior, and reaping the rewards due to their fame and services. It was a strange sight that day at Eski Serai,[26] and the divan was crowded. The tried generals and statesmen of the greatest of Ottoman emperors assembled to gaze upon the rough sea-dogs whose exploits were on the lips of all Europe; and most of all they scrutinized the vigorous well-knit yet burly figure of the old man with the bushy eyebrows and thick beard, once a bright auburn, but now hoary with years and exposure to the freaks of fortune and rough weather. In his full and searching eye, that could blaze with ready and unappeasable fury, they traced the resolute mind which was to show them the way to triumphs at sea, comparable even to those which their victorious Sultan had won before strong walls and on the battle plain. The Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m recognized in Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n the man he needed, and the Algerine Corsair was preferred before all the admirals of Turkey, and appointed to reconstruct the Ottoman navy. He spent the winter in the dockyards, where his quick eye instantly detected the faults of the builders. The Turks of Constantinople, he found, knew neither how to build nor how to work their galleys.[27] Theirs were not so swift as the Christians'; and instead of turning sailors themselves, and navigating them properly, they used to kidnap shepherds from Arcadia and Anatolia, who had never handled a sail or a tiller in their lives, and entrust the navigation of their galleys to these inexperienced hands.[28] Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n soon changed all this. Fortunately there were workmen and timber in abundance, and, inspiring his men with his own marvellous energy, he laid out sixty-one galleys during the winter, and was able to take the sea with a fleet of eighty-four vessels in the spring. The period of Turkish supremacy on the sea dates from Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's winter in the dockyards.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] See the _Story of Turkey_, 191.

[24] _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II. ch. xxv.

[25] The Spanish historians are silent on the subject of this expedition: or, rather, Haedo positively denies it, and says that Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n sent an embassy to the Sultan, but did not go in person. H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, however, is clear and detailed in his account of the visit.

[26] For an account of Stambol and the old Seraglio see the _Story of Turkey_, 260 ff.

[27] See Chapter XVI., below.

[28] So says Jean Chesneau, French secretary at Constantinople in 1543. See Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 13.

VIII.

TUNIS TAKEN AND LOST.

1534-1535.

The dwellers on the coasts of Italy soon discovered the new spirit in the Turkish fleet; they had now to dread Corsairs on both hands, east as well as west. In the summer of 1534 Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n led his new fleet of eighty-four galleys forth from the Golden Horn, to flesh their appetite on a grand quest of prey. Entering the Straits of Messina, he surprised Reggio, and carried off ships and slaves; stormed and burnt the castle of S. Lucida next day, and took eight hundred prisoners; seized eighteen galleys at Cetraro; put Sperlonga to the sword and brand, and loaded his ships with wives and maidens. A stealthy inland march brought the Corsairs to Fondi, where lay Giulia Gonzaga, the young and beautiful widow of Vespasio Colonna, Duchess of Trajetto and Countess of Fondi. She was sister to the "heavenly Joanna of Aragon," on whose loveliness two hundred and eighty Italian poets and rimesters in vain exhausted the resources of several languages;--a loveliness shared by the sister whose device was the "Flower of Love" amaranth blazoned on her shield. This beauty Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n destined for the Sultan's harem, and so secret were the Corsairs' movements that he almost surprised the fair Giulia in her bed. She had barely time to mount a horse in her shift and fly with a single attendant,--whom she afterwards condemned to death, perhaps because the beauty revealed that night had made him overbold.[29] Enraged at her escape the pirates made short work of Fondi; the church was wrecked, and the plundering went on for four terrible hours, never to be forgotten by the inhabitants.

Refreshed and excited by their successful raid, the Turks needed little encouragement to enter with heartiness upon the real object of the expedition, which was nothing less than the annexation of the kingdom of Tunis. Three centuries had passed since the Sultans of the race of Hafs had established their authority on the old Carthaginian site, upon the breaking up of the African empire of the Almohades. Their rule had been mild and just; they had maintained on the whole friendly relations with the European powers, and many treaties record the fair terms upon which the merchants of Pisa, Venice, and Genoa were admitted to the port of Tunis. Saint Louis had been so struck with the piety and justice of the king that he had even come to convert him, and had died in the attempt. Twenty-one rulers of their line had succeeded one another, till the vigour of the Ben[=i] Hafs was sapped, and fraternal jealousies added bloodshed to weakness. Hasan, the twenty-second, stepped to the throne over the bodies of forty-four slaughtered brothers, and when he had thus secured his place he set a pattern of vicious feebleness for all sovereigns to avoid. A rival claimant served as the Corsair's pretext for invasion, and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had hardly landed when this miserable wretch fled the city, and though supported by some of the Arab tribes he could make no head against the Turkish guns. Tunis, like Algiers, had been added to the Ottoman Empire, against its will, and by the same masterful hands. It may be doubted whether the Sultan's writ would have run in either of his new provinces had their conqueror gainsaid it.

Tunis did not long remain in the possession of Barbarossa. The banished king appealed to Charles V., and, whatever the emperor may have thought of Hasan's wrongs, he plainly perceived that Barbarossa's presence in Tunis harbour was a standing menace to his own kingdom of Sicily. It was bad enough to see nests of pirates perched upon the rocks of the Algerine coast; but Tunis was the key of the passage from the west to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and to leave it in the Corsairs' hands was to the last degree hazardous. Accordingly he espoused the cause of Hasan, and at the end of May, 1535, he set sail from Barcelona with six hundred ships commanded by Doria (who had his own grudge to settle), and carrying the flower of the Imperial troops, Spaniards, Italians, and Germans. In June he laid siege to the Goletta--or _halk-el-w[=e]d_, "throat of the torrent," as the Arabs called it--those twin towers a mile asunder which guarded the channel of Tunis. The great carack _St. Ann_, sent, with four galleys, by "the Religion" (so the Knights of Malta styled their Order), was moored close in, and her heavy cannon soon made a breach, through which the Chevalier Cossier led the Knights of St. John, who always claimed the post of danger, into the fortress, and planted the banner of "the Religion" on the battlements[30] (14 July). Three desperate sallies had the besieged made under the leadership of Sin[=a]n the Jew; three Italian generals of rank had fallen in the melley; before they were driven in confusion back upon the city of Tunis, leaving the Goletta with all its stores of weapons and ammunition, and its forty guns, some of them famous for their practice at the siege of Rhodes, and more than a hundred vessels, in the hands of the enemy. Barbarossa came out to meet the emperor at the head of nearly ten thousand troops; but his Berbers refused to fight, the thousands of Christian slaves in the Kasaba (or citadel), aided by treachery, broke their chains and shut the gates behind him; and, after defending his rampart as long as he could, the Corsair chief, with Sin[=a]n and Ayd[=i]n "Drub-Devil," made his way to Bona, where he had fortunately left fifteen of his ships. The lines of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's triple wall may still be traced across the neck of land which separates the lake of Tunis from the Mediterranean. Fifteen years ago this rampart was cut through, when nearly two hundred skeletons, some Spanish money, cannon balls, and broken weapons were found outside it.[31]

For three days Charles gave up the city of Tunis to the brutality of his soldiers. They were days of horrible license and bloodshed. Men, women, and children were massacred, and worse than massacred, in thousands. The infuriated troops fought one with the other for the possession of the spoil, and the luckless Christians of the Kasaba were cut down by their deliverers in the struggle for Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's treasures. The streets became shambles, the houses dens of murder and shame: the very Catholic chroniclers admit the abominable outrages committed by the licentious and furious soldiery of the great Emperor. It is hard to remember that almost at the very time when German and Spanish and Italian men-at-arms were outraging and slaughtering helpless, innocent people in Tunis, who had taken little or no hand in Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's wars and had accepted his authority with reluctance, the Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m was entering Baghd[=a]d and Tebr[=i]z as a conqueror at the head of wild Asiatic troops, and not a house nor a human being was molested. _Fas est et ab hoste doceri._

So far as Tunis was concerned the expedition of Charles V. was fruitless. Before he sailed in August he made a treaty with Hasan, which stipulated for tribute to Spain, the possession of the Goletta by the crown of Castile, the freeing of Christian slaves, the cessation of piracy, and the payment of homage by an annual tribute of six Moorish barbs and twelve falcons; and he and the Moor duly swore it on Cross and sword. But the treaty was so much parchment wasted. No Moslem prince who had procured his restoration by such means as Hasan had used, who had spilt Moslem blood with Christian weapons and ruined Moslem homes by the sacrilegious atrocities of "infidel" soldiers, and had bound himself the vassal of "idolatrous" Spain, could hope to keep his throne long. He was an object of horror and repulsion to the people upon whom he had brought this awful calamity, and so fierce was their scorn of the traitor to Islam that the story is told of a Moorish girl in the clutch of the soldiers, who, when the restored King of Tunis sought to save her, spat in his face; anything was better than the dishonour of his protection. Hasan pretended to reign for five years, but the country was in arms, holy Kayraw[=a]n would have nothing to say to a governor who owed his throne to infidel ravishers; Imperial troops in vain sought to keep him there; Doria himself succeeded only for a brief while in reducing the coast towns to the wretched prince's authority; and in 1540 Hasan was imprisoned and blinded by his son Ham[=i]d, and none can pity him. The coast was in the possession of the Corsairs, and, as we shall see, even the Spaniards were forced ere long to abandon the Goletta.

Nevertheless, the expedition to Tunis was a feat of which Europe was proud. Charles V. seldom suffered from depreciation of his exploits, and, as Morgan quaintly says, "I have never met with that Spaniard in my whole life, who, I am persuaded, would not have bestowed on me at least forty _Boto a Christo's_, had I pretended to assert Charles V. not to have held this whole universal globe in a string for four-and-twenty hours; and _then it broke_: though none had ever the good nature or manners to inform or correct my ignorance in genuine history, by letting me into the secret when that critical and slippery period of time was."[32] Naturally admirers so thoroughgoing made the most of the conquest of Tunis, the reduction of the formidable Goletta, the release of thousands of Christian captives, and, above all, the discomfiture of that scourge of Christendom, Barbarossa himself. Poets sang of it, a painter-in-ordinary depicted the siege, a potter at Urbino burnt the scene into his vase; all Europe was agog with enthusiasm at the feat. Charles posed as a crusader and a knight-errant, and commemorated his gallant deeds and those of his gentlemen by creating a new order of chivalry, the Cross of Tunis, with the motto "Barbaria," of which however we hear no more. Altogether "it was a famous victory."

The joy of triumph was sadly marred by the doings of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n. That incorrigible pirate, aware that no one would suspect that he could be roving while Charles was besieging his new kingdom, took occasion to slip over to Minorca with his twenty-seven remaining galleots; and there, flying Spanish and other false colours, deceived the islanders into the belief that his vessels were part of the Armada; upon which he rowed boldly into Port Mahon, seized a rich Portuguese galleon, sacked the town, and, laden with six thousand captives and much booty and ammunition, led his prize back in triumph to Algiers. In the meanwhile Doria was assiduously hunting for him with thirty galleys, under the emperor's express orders to catch him dead or alive. The great Genoese had to wait yet three years for his long-sought duel.

Having accomplished its object, the Armada, as usual, broke up without making a decisive end of the Corsairs. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, waiting at Algiers in expectation of attack, heard the news gladly, and, when the coast was clear, sailed back to Constantinople for reinforcements. He never saw Algiers again.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Von Hammer, _Gesch. d. Osm. Reiches_, ii. 129.

[30] Broadley, _Tunis, Past and Present_, i. 42, quoting a narrative by Boyssat, one of the Knights of Malta, written in 1612.

[31] On Charles's expedition to Tunis, consult Marmol, H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, Robertson, Morgan, Von Hammer, and Broadley. In the last will be found some interesting photographs of Jan Cornelis Vermeyen's pictures, painted on the spot during the progress of the siege, by command of the Emperor, and now preserved at Windsor. All the accounts of the siege and capture show discrepancies which it seems hopeless to reconcile.

[32] _Hist. of Algiers_, 286.

IX.

THE SEA-FIGHT OFF PREVESA.

1537.

When Barbarossa returned to Constantinople Tunis was forgotten and Minorca alone called to mind: instead of the title of Beglerbeg of Algiers, the Sultan saluted him as Capudan Pasha or High Admiral of the Ottoman fleets. There was work to be done in the Adriatic, and none was fitter to do it than the great Corsair. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had acquired an added influence at Stambol since the execution of the Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m,[33] and he used it in exactly the opposite direction. Ibrah[=i]m, a Dalmatian by birth, had always striven to maintain friendly relations with Venice, his native state, and for more than thirty years there had been peace between the Republic and the Porte. Barbarossa, on the contrary, longed to pit his galleys against the most famous of the maritime nations of the Middle Ages, and to make the Crescent as supreme in the waters of the Adriatic as it was in the Aegean. Francis I. was careful to support this policy out of his jealousy of the Empire. The Venetians, anxious to keep on good terms with the Sultan, and to hold a neutral position between Francis and Charles V., found themselves gradually committed to a war, and by their own fault. Their commanders in the Adriatic and at Candia were unable to resist the temptation of chasing Ottoman merchantmen. Canale, the Proveditore of Candia, caught a noted Corsair, the "Young Moor of Alexander," as his victims called him, sunk or captured his galleys, killed his Janissaries, and severely wounded the young Moor himself;--and all this in Turkish waters, on Turkish subjects, and in time of peace. Of course when the too gallant Proveditore came to his senses and perceived his folly, he patched the young Moor's wounds and sent him tenderly back to Algiers: but the Sultan's ire was already roused, and when Venetian galleys actually gave chase to a ship that carried a Turkish ambassador, no apologies that the Signoria offered could wipe out the affront. War was inevitable, and Venice hastily made common cause with the Pope and the Emperor against the formidable host which now advanced upon the Adriatic.

Before this, some stirring actions had been fought off the coasts of Greece. Doria, sallying forth from Messina, had met the governor of Gallipoli off Paxos, and had fought him before daybreak. Standing erect on the poop, conspicuous in his cramoisy doublet, the tall figure of the old admiral was seen for an hour and a half directing the conflict, sword in hand, an easy mark for sharpshooters, as a wound in the knee reminded him. After a severe struggle the twelve galleys of the enemy were captured and carried in triumph to Messina. Barbarossa was sorely wanted now, and in May, 1537, he sailed with one hundred and thirty-five galleys to avenge the insult. For a whole month he laid waste the Apulian coast like a pestilence, and carried off ten thousand slaves, while Doria lay helpless with a far inferior force in Messina roads. The Turks were boasting that they might soon set up a Pope of their own, when the war with Venice broke out, and they were called off from their devastation of Italy by the Sultan's command to besiege Corfu. The Ionian islands were always a bone of contention between the Turks and their neighbours, and a war with Venice naturally began with an attack upon Corfu. The Senate had shut its eyes as long as possible to the destination of the huge armaments which had left Constantinople in the spring: Tunis, or perhaps Naples, was said to be their object. But now they were undeceived, and on the 25th of August, Captain Pasha Barbarossa landed twenty-five thousand men and thirty cannon under Lutfi Pasha, three miles from the castle of Corfu. Four days later the Grand Vez[=i]r Ay[=a]s, with twenty-five thousand more and a brilliant staff, joined the first-comers, and the Akinji or light troops spread fire and sword around. A fifty-pounder fired nineteen shots in three days, but only five struck the fortress: the Turks fired too high, and many of their missiles fell harmlessly into the sea beyond. In spite of storm and rain the Grand Vez[=i]r would not desist from making the round of the trenches by night. Suleym[=a]n offered liberal terms of capitulation, but the besieged sent back his messenger with never an answer. Alexandro Tron worked the big guns of the castle with terrible precision. Two galleys were quickly sunk, four men were killed in the trenches by a single shot--a new and alarming experience in those early days of gunnery--four times the Fort of St. Angelo was attacked in vain; winter was approaching, and the Sultan determined to raise the siege. In vain Barbarossa remonstrated: "A thousand such castles were not worth the life of one of his brave men," said the Sultan, and on the 17th of September the troops began to re-embark.[34]

Then began a scene of devastation such as the isles of Greece have too often witnessed,--not from Turks only, but from Genoese and Venetians, who also came to the Archipelago for their oarsmen,--but never perhaps on so vast a scale. Butrinto was burnt, Paxos conquered, and then Barbarossa carried fire and sword throughout the Adriatic and the Archipelago. With seventy galleys and thirty galleots, he raged among the islands, most of which belonged to noble families of Venice--the Venieri, Grispi, Pisani, Quirini. Syra, Skyros, Aegina, Paros, Naxos, Tenos, and other Venetian possessions were overwhelmed, and thousands of their people carried off to pull a Turkish oar. Naxos contributed five thousand dollars as her first year's tribute; Aegina furnished six thousand slaves. Many trophies did Barbarossa bring home to Stambol, whose riches certainly did his own and the Sultan's, if not "the general coffer, fill." Four hundred thousand pieces of gold, a thousand girls, and fifteen hundred boys, were useful resources when he returned to "rub his countenance against the royal stirrup."[35] Two hundred boys in scarlet, bearing gold and silver bowls; thirty more laden with purses; two hundred with rolls of fine cloth: such was the present with which the High Admiral approached the Sultan's presence.

Suleym[=a]n's genius was at that time bent upon three distinct efforts: he was carrying on a campaign in Moldavia; his Suez fleet--a novelty in Ottoman history--was invading the Indian Ocean, with no very tangible result, it is true (unless a trophy of Indian ears and noses may count), save the conquest of Aden on the return voyage, but still a notable exploit, and disturbing to the Portuguese in Gujerat; and his High Admiral was planning the destruction of the maritime power of Venice.

In the summer of 1538, Barbarossa put off to sea, and soon had one hundred and fifty sail under his command. He began by collecting rowers and tribute from the islands, twenty-five of which had now been transferred from the Venetian to the Turkish allegiance, and then laid waste eighty villages in Candia. Here news was brought that the united fleet of the Emperor, Venice, and the Pope was cruising in the Adriatic, and the Captain Pasha hastened to meet it. The pick of the Corsairs was with him. Round his flagship were ranged the galleys of Dragut, Mur[=a]d Reis, Sin[=a]n, S[=a]lih Reis with twenty Egyptian vessels, and others, to the number of one hundred and twenty-two ships of war. The advance guard sighted part of the enemy off Prevesa--a Turkish fortress opposite the promontory of Arta or Actium, where Antony suffered his memorable defeat.

The Christian strength was really overwhelming. Eighty Venetian, thirty-six Papal, and thirty Spanish galleys, together with fifty sailing galleons, made up a formidable total of nearly two hundred ships of war, and they carried scarcely less than sixty thousand men, and two thousand five hundred guns. Doria was in chief command, and Capello and Grimani led the Venetian and Roman contingents. Barbarossa had fortunately received but an imperfect report of the enemy's strength and so boldly pursued his northerly course up the Adriatic. When he reached Prevesa, the combined fleets had gone on to Corfu, and he was able to enter unopposed the spacious gulf of Arta, where all the navies of the world might safely anchor and defy pursuit.

On September 25th, the allied fleets appeared off the entrance to the gulf, and then for the first time Barbarossa realized his immense good fortune in being the first in the bay. Outnumbered as he was, a fight in the open sea might have ended in the total destruction of his navy; but secure in an ample harbour, on a friendly coast, behind a bar which the heavier vessels of the enemy could not cross, he could wait his opportunity and take the foe at a disadvantage. The danger was that Doria might disembark his guns and attack from the shores of the gulf, and to meet this risk some of the Turkish captains insisted on landing their men and trying to erect earthworks for their protection; but the fire from the Christian ships soon stopped this manoeuvre. Barbarossa had never expected Doria to hazard a landing, and he was right. The old admiral of Charles V. was not likely to expose his ships to the risk of a sally from the Turks just when he had deprived them of the men and guns that could alone defend them.

The two fleets watched each other warily. Doria and Barbarossa had at last come face to face for a great battle, but, strange as it may seem, neither cared to begin: Barbarossa was conscious of serious numerical inferiority; Doria was anxious for the safety of his fifty big sailing vessels, on the heavy artillery of which he most relied, but which a contrary wind might drive to destruction on the hostile coast. As it was, his guideship on the extreme left had but a fathom of water under her keel. Each felt keenly the weighty responsibility of his position, and even the sense that now at last the decisive day of their long rivalry had come could not stir them from their policy of prudence. Moreover, it was no longer a question of the prowess of hot-blooded youth: Doria and Barbarossa and Capello were all men of nearly seventy years, and Doria was certainly not the man he once was; politics had spoilt him.

So the two great admirals waited and eyed each other's strength. Will Barbarossa come out? Or must Doria risk the passage of the bar and force his way in to the encounter? Neither event happened: but on the morning of the 27th the Corsairs rubbed their eyes to feel if they were asleep, as they saw the whole magnificent navy of Christendom, anchor a-peak, sailing slowly and majestically--_away!_ Were the Christians afraid? Anyhow no one, not even Barbarossa, could hold the Turks back now. Out they rushed in hot pursuit, not thinking or caring--save their shrewd captain--whether this were not a feint of Doria's to catch them in the open. "Get into line," said Barbarossa to his captains, "and do as you see me do." Dragut took the right wing, S[=a]lih Reis the left. Early on the 28th the Christian fleet was discovered at anchor, in a foul wind, off Santa Maura, thirty miles to the south. Doria was not at all prepared for such prompt pursuit, and eyed with anxiety the long battle line of one hundred and forty galleys, galleots, and brigantines, bearing down upon him before the wind. His ships were scattered, for the sails could not keep up with the oars, and Condulmiero's huge Venetian carack was becalmed off Zuara, a long way behind, and others were in no better plight. Three hours Doria hesitated, and then gave the order to sail north and meet the enemy. Condulmiero was already fiercely engaged, and soon his carack was a mere unrigged helmless waterlog, only saved from instant destruction by her immense size and terrific guns, which, well aimed, low on the water, to gain the _ricochet_, did fearful mischief among the attacking galleys. Two galleons were burnt to the water's edge, and their crews took to the boats; a third, Boccanegra's, lost her mainmast, and staggered away crippled. What was Doria about? The wind was now in his favour; the enemy was in front: but Doria continued to tack and manoeuvre at a distance. What he aimed at is uncertain: his colleagues Grimani and Capello went on board his flagship, and vehemently remonstrated with him, and even implored him to depart and let them fight the battle with their own ships, but in vain. He was bent on tactics, when what was needed was pluck; and tactics lost the day. The Corsairs took, it is true, only seven galleys and sailing vessels, but they held the sea. Doria sailed away in the evening for Corfu, and the whole allied fleet followed in a gale of wind.[36]

So, after all, the great duel was never fairly fought between the sea-rivals. Barbarossa was willing, but Doria held back: he preferred to show his seamanship instead of his courage. The result was in effect a victory, a signal victory, for the Turks. Two hundred splendid vessels of three great Christian states had fled before an inferior force of Ottomans; and it is no wonder that Sultan Suleym[=a]n, when he learnt the news at Yamboli, illuminated the town, and added one hundred thousand aspres a year to the revenues of the conqueror. Barbarossa had once more proved to the world that the Turkish fleet was invincible. The flag of Suleym[=a]n floated supreme in all the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] See the _Story of Turkey_, 195.

[34] Von Hammer, _Gesch. d. Osm. Reiches_, ii. 142.

[35] H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, 58.

[36] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II., ch. xlii.-xlv.; H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, 62; Von Hammer, ii. 155; Morgan, 290.

X.

BARBAROSSA IN FRANCE.

1539-1546.

Barbarossa's life was drawing to a close, but in the eight years that remained he enhanced his already unrivalled renown. His first exploit after Prevesa was the recapture of Castelnuovo, which the allied fleets had seized in October, as some compensation on land for their humiliation at sea. The Turkish armies had failed to recover the fortress in January, 1539; but in July Barbarossa went to the front as usual, with a fleet of two hundred galleys, large and small, and all his best captains; and, after some very pretty fighting in the Gulf of Cattaro, landed eighty-four of his heaviest guns and bombarded Castelnuovo, from three well-placed batteries. On August 7th, a sanguinary assault secured the first line of the defences; three days later the governor, Don Francisco Sarmiento, and his handful of Spaniards, surrendered to a final assault, and were surprised to find themselves chivalrously respected as honourable foes. Three thousand Spaniards had fallen, and eight thousand Turks, in the course of the siege.

One more campaign and Barbarossa's feats are over. Great events were happening on the Algerine coasts, where we must return after too long an absence in the Levant and Adriatic: but first the order of years must be neglected that we may see the last of the most famous of all the Corsairs. To make amends for the coldness of Henry VIII., Francis I. was allied with the other great maritime power, Turkey, against the Emperor, in 1543; and the old sea rover actually brought his fleet of one hundred and fifty ships to Marseilles. The French captains saluted the Corsair's _capitana_, and the banner of Our Lady was lowered to be replaced by the Crescent. Well may a French admiral call this "the impious alliance." On his way Barbarossa enjoyed a raid in quite his old style; burnt Reggio and carried off the governor's daughter; appeared off the Tiber, and terrified the people of Civita Vecchia; and in July entered the Gulf of Lyons in triumph. Here he found the young Duke of Enghien, Francois de Bourbon, commander of the French galleys, who received him with all honour and ceremony.

Barbarossa had hardly arrived when he discovered that his great expedition was but a fool's errand. The King of France was afraid of attempting a serious campaign against the Emperor, and he was already ashamed of his alliance with the Musulmans: his own subjects--nay, all Europe--were crying shame. Barbarossa grew crimson with fury, and tore his white beard: he had not come with a vast fleet all the way from Stambol to be made a laughing-stock. Something must evidentially be done to satisfy his honour, and Francis I. unwillingly gave orders for the bombardment of Nice. Accompanied by a feeble and ill-prepared French contingent, which soon ran short of ammunition--"Fine soldiers," cried the Corsair, "to fill their ships with wine casks, and leave the powder barrels behind!"--Barbarossa descended upon the Gate of Italy. The city soon surrendered, but the fort held out, defended by one of those invincible foes of the Turk, a Knight of Malta, Paolo Simeoni, who had himself experienced captivity at the hands of Barbarossa; and as the French protested against sacking the town after capitulation on terms, and as Charles's relieving army was advancing, the camps were broken up in confusion, and the fleets retired from Nice.

The people of Toulon beheld a strange spectacle that winter. The beautiful harbour of Provence was allotted to the Turkish admiral for his winter quarters. There, at anchor, lay the immense fleet of the Grand Signior; and who knew how long it might dominate the fairest province of France? There, turbaned Musulmans paced the decks and bridge, below and beside which hundreds of Christian slaves sat chained to the bench and victims to the lash of the boatswain. Frenchmen were forced to look on, helplessly, while Frenchmen groaned in the infidels' galleys, within the security of a French port. The captives died by hundreds of fever during that winter, but no Christian burial was allowed them--even the bells that summon the pious to the Mass were silenced, for are they not "the devil's musical instrument"?[37]--and the gaps in the benches were filled by nightly raids among the neighbouring villages. It was ill sleeping around Toulon when the Corsair press-gangs were abroad. And to feed and pay these rapacious allies was a task that went near to ruining the finances of France.

The French were not satisfied of the Corsair's fidelity, and it must be added that the Emperor might have had some reason to doubt the honesty of Doria. The two greatest admirals of the age were both in the Western Mediterranean, but nothing could tempt them to come to blows. The truth was that each had a great reputation to lose, and each preferred to go to his grave with all his fame undimmed. Francis I. had a suspicion that Barbarossa was meditating the surrender of Toulon to the Emperor, and, improbable as it was, some colour was given to the King's anxiety by the amicable relations which seemed to subsist between the Genoese Corsair and his Barbary rival. Doria gave up the captive Dragut to his old captain for a ransom of three thousand gold crowns--a transaction on which he afterwards looked back with unqualified regret. The situation was growing daily more unpleasant for France. From his easy position in Toulon, Barbarossa sent forth squadrons under S[=a]lih Reis and other commanders to lay waste the coasts of Spain, while he remained "lazily engaged in emptying the coffers of the French king."

At last they got rid of him. Francis was compelled to furnish the pay and rations of the whole crews and troops of the Ottoman fleet up to their re-entry into the Bosphorus; he had to free four hundred Mohammedan galley slaves and deliver them to Barbarossa; he loaded him with jewellery, silks, and other presents; the Corsair departed in a Corsair's style, weighed down with spoil. His homeward voyage was one long harrying of the Italian coasts; his galley sailed low with human freight; and his arrival at Constantinople was the signal for the filling of all the harems of the great pashas with beautiful captives. Barbarossa, laden with such gifts, was sure of his welcome.

Two years later he died, in July, 1546, an old man of perhaps near ninety, yet without surviving his great fame. "Valorous yet prudent, furious in attack, foreseeing in preparation," he ranks as the first sea captain of his time. "The chief of the sea is dead," expressed in three Arabic words, gives the numerical value 953, the year of the Hijra in which Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa died.

Long afterwards no Turkish fleet left the Golden Horn without her crew repeating a prayer and firing a salute over the tomb at Beshiktash, where lie the bones of the first great Turkish admiral.

FOOTNOTE:

[37] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Speeches and Tabletalk of the Prophet Mohammad_, 168.

XI.

CHARLES AT ALGIERS.

1541.

When Barbarossa left Algiers for ever in 1535 to become the High Admiral of the Ottoman Empire, the Corsairs lost indeed their chief; but so many of his captains remained behind that the game of sea roving went on as merrily as ever. Indeed so fierce and ruthless were their depredations that the people of Italy and Spain and the islands began to regret the attentions of so gentlemanly a robber as Barbarossa. His successor or viceroy at Algiers was a Sardinian renegade, Hasan the Eunuch; but the chief commanders at sea were Dragut, S[=a]lih Reis, Sin[=a]n, and the rest, who, when not called to join the Captain Pasha's fleet, pursued the art of piracy from the Barbary coast. Dragut (properly Torgh[=u]d) worked measureless mischief in the Archipelago and Adriatic, seized Venetian galleys and laid waste the shores of Italy, till he was caught by Giannettino Doria, nephew of the great admiral, while unsuspectingly engaged in dividing his spoils on the Sardinian coast (1540). Incensed to find his vast empire perpetually harassed by foes so lawless and in numbers so puny, Charles the Emperor resolved to put down the Corsairs' trade once and for ever. He had subdued Tunis in 1535, but piracy still went on. Now he would grapple the head and front of the offence, and conquer Algiers.

He had no fears of the result; the Corsair city would fall at the mere sight of his immense flotilla; and in this vainglorious assurance he set out in October, 1541. He even took Spanish ladies on board to view his triumph. The season for a descent on the African coast was over, and every one knew that the chance of effecting anything before the winter storms should guard the coast from any floating enemy was more than doubtful; but "the Spaniards commonly move with gravity"; and besides, Charles had been delayed during a busy summer by his troubles in Germany and Flanders, and could not get away before.

Now at last he was free; and, in spite of the earnest remonstrances of Doria and the entreaties of the Pope, to Algiers he would go. Everything had long been prepared--a month, he believed, at the outside would finish the matter--in short, go he would. At Spezzia he embarked on Doria's flagship; the Duke of Alva, of sanguinary memory, commanded the troops, many of whom had been brought by the Emperor himself from the German highlands. Ill-luck attended them from the outset: a storm, no unusual phenomenon with November coming on, drove the ships back into shelter at Corsica. At length the seas subsided, and the fleet, picking up allies as it went along, cautiously hugged the land as far as Minorca, where the mistral, the terror of seamen, rushed down upon the huge armada--masts strained, yards cracked, sails were torn to rags, and there was nothing for it but to row--row for their lives and for Charles. They were but seven miles from Port Mahon, yet it took half the night to win there--an endless night which the panting crews never forgot.

In the bay of Palma, at Majorca, the fleet was assembled. There were the Emperor's hundred sailing vessels carrying the German and Italian troops, commanded by such historic names as Colonna and Spinosa; there were Fernando Gonzago's Sicilian galleys, and a hundred and fifty transports from Naples and Palermo; there were the fifty galleys of Bernadino de Mendoza, conveying two hundred transports with the arms and artillery, and carrying the corps of gentlemen adventurers, mustered from the chivalry of Spain, and including one only who had climbed up from the ranks--but that one was Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico. Over five hundred sail, manned by twelve thousand men, and carrying a land force of twenty-four thousand soldiers, entered the roads of Algiers on October 19, 1541.

At last the great Emperor set eyes upon the metropolis of piracy. On the rocky promontory which forms the western crest of the crescent bay, high up the amphitheatre of hills, tier upon tier, in their narrow overshadowed lanes, the houses of the Corsairs basked in the autumn sun, crowned by the fortress which had known the imperious rule of two Barbarossas. On the right was the mole which Spanish slaves had built out of the ruins of the Spanish fort. Two gates fronted the south and north, the Bab Az[=u]n and Bab-el-W[=e]d.

Avoiding the promontory of Cashina, the galleys, with furled sails, drew up before the low strand, backed by stretches of luxuriant verdure, south of the city, and out of range, at the spot which is still called the "Jardin d'essai." A heavy swell prevented their landing for three days, but on the 23rd, in beautiful weather, the troops disembarked. The Berbers and Arabs, who had lined the shore and defied the invaders, hastily retired before the guns of the galleys, and the Spaniards landed unopposed. The next day they began the march to the city some few miles off. The Spaniards formed the left wing on the hill side; the Emperor and the Duke of Alva with the German troops composed the centre; the Italians and one hundred and fifty knights of Malta marched on the right by the seashore. Driving back the straggling bands of mounted Arabs, who ambushed among the rocks and ravines, and picked off many of the Christians, the invaders pushed steadily on, till Algiers was invested on all sides save the north. Its fate appeared sealed. A brief bombardment from Charles's heavy cannon, and the Spaniards would rush the breach and storm the citadel. Hasan Aga, within, with only eight hundred Turks, and perhaps five thousand Arabs and Moors, must almost have regretted the proud reply he had just made to the Emperor's summons to surrender.

Then, when the end seemed close at hand, the forces of Nature came to the rescue. The stars in their courses fought for Algiers: the rains descended and the winds blew and beat upon that army, till the wretched soldiers, with neither tents nor cloaks, with barely food--for the landing of the stores had hardly begun--standing all night knee-deep in slush in that pinguid soil, soaked to the skin, frozen by the driving rain and bitter wind, were ready to drop with exhaustion and misery. When morning dawned they could scarcely bear up against the blustering gale; their powder was wet; and a sudden sally of the Turks spread a panic in the sodden ranks which needed all the courage and coolness of the Knights of Malta to compose. At last the enemy was driven out of the trenches and pursued, skirmishing all the way, to the Bab Az[=u]n. It looked as though pursuers and pursued would enter together; but the gate was instantly shut, and a daring Knight of Malta had barely struck his dagger in the gate to defy the garrison, when the Christians found themselves under so heavy a fire from the battlements, that they were forced to beat a retreat: the Knights of Malta, last of all, their scarlet doublets shining like a fresh wound, and their faces to the foe, covered the retreat.

Hasan then led out his best horsemen from the gate, and driving their heels into their horses' flanks, the cloud of Moslems poured down the hill. The Knights of Malta bore the shock with their iron firmness, though they lost heavily. The Italians ran for their lives. The Germans whom Charles hurriedly despatched to the rescue came back at the double without drawing a sword. The Emperor himself put on his armour, spurred his charger into the midst of the fugitives, sword in hand, and with vehement reproaches succeeded in shaming them into fight. "Come, gentlemen," then said he to the nobles around, "forwards!" And thus he led his dispirited troops once more to the field; this time the panic alarm of the rank and file was controlled and banished by the cool courage of the cavaliers, and the Turks were driven back into the town. The skirmish had cost him three hundred men and a dozen Knights of Malta. All that day the Emperor and his officers, great signiors all, stood at arms in the pouring rain, with the water oozing from their boots, vigilantly alert.

Had Charles now run his ships ashore at all hazard, and dragged up his heavy siege train and stores and tents and ammunition, all might yet have been won. But several precious days were wasted, and on the morning of the 25th such a storm sprang up as mortal mariner rarely encountered even off such a coast--a violent north-easterly hurricane--still known in Algiers as "Charles's gale"--such as few vessels cared to ride off a lee shore. The immense flotilla in the bay was within an ace of total destruction. Anchors and cables were powerless to hold the crowded, jostling ships. One after the other they broke loose, and keeled over to the tempest till their decks were drowned in the seas. Planks gaped; broadside to broadside the helpless hulks crashed together. Many of the crews threw themselves madly on shore. In six hours one hundred and fifty ships sank. The rowers of the galleys, worn out with toiling at the oar, at last succumbed, and fifteen of the vessels ran on shore, only to be received by the Berbers of the hills, who ran their spears through the miserable shipwrecked sailors as soon as they gained the land.

The worst day must come to an end: on the morrow the storm was over, and Doria, who had succeeded in taking the greater part of the fleet out to sea, came back to see what new folly was in hand. He was indignant with the Emperor for having rejected his advice and so led the fleet and army into such peril; he was disgusted with his captains, who had completely lost their coolness in the hurricane, and wanted to run their vessels ashore, with the certainty of wreck, sooner than ride out the storm--and yet called themselves sailors!

He found Charles fully aware of the necessity for a temporary retreat, till the army should be revictualled and reclothed. The camp was struck: the Emperor himself watched the operation, standing at the door of his tent in a long white cassock, murmuring quietly the Christian's consolation: "Thy will be done"--_Fiat voluntas Tua!_ Baggage and ordnance were abandoned; the horses of the field artillery were devoured by the hungry troops; and then the march began.

To retreat at all is humiliation, but to retreat as this luckless army did was agony. Deep mud clogged their weary feet; when a halt was called they could but rest on their halberts, to lie down was to be suffocated in filth; mountain torrents swollen breast-high had to be crossed, the wading men were washed away till they built a rude bridge--O crowning humiliation!--out of the wreckage of their own ships. Hasan and a multitude of Turks and Arabs hung forever on their flanks. The dejected Italians, who had no stomach for this sort of work, fell often into the hands of the pursuers; the Germans, who could do nothing without their customary internal stuffing, were mere _impedimenta_; and only the lean Spaniard covered the retreat with something of his natural courage.

At last the dejected army reached the Bay of Temendefust (Matifoux), where the remains of the fleet were lying at anchor. It was resolved, in view of the approach of winter and the impossibility of sending supplies to an army in stormy weather, to reembark. Cortes in vain protested: the council of war agreed that it was too late in the year to attempt retaliation. Then a new difficulty arose: how was room to be found in a flotilla, which had lost nearly a third of its ships, for an army which was but a couple of thousand less than when it landed? Regretfully Charles gave orders for the horses to be cast into the sea, and, despite their masters' entreaties, favourite chargers of priceless value were slaughtered and thrown overboard. The famous breed of Spanish horses was well-nigh ruined. It was but one tragedy more. On the 2nd of November most of the troops were on board. Charles resolved to be the last to leave the strand; but the wind was getting up, the sea rising, and at last he gave the order to weigh anchor. Often is the story told in Algiers how the great Emperor, who would fain hold Europe in the palm of his hand, sadly took the crown from off his head and casting it into the sea said, "Go, bauble: let some more fortunate prince redeem and wear thee."

He did not sail a moment too soon. A new and terrific storm burst forth. The ships were driven hither and thither. Where the tempest drove them, there they helplessly wandered, and many men died from famine and exposure. Some of the Spanish vessels were wrecked at Algiers, and their crews and troops were sent to the bagnios. Charles himself and Doria arrived safely at Buj[=e]ya--then a Spanish outpost--with part of the flotilla. Here the unexpected visitors soon caused a famine--and still the tempest raged. The half-starved rovers in vain tried to make head against the waves, and carry the Emperor back to Spain: eighty miles out they gave in, and the ships returned disconsolately to the harbour. Twelve days and nights the storm bellowed along the treacherous coast, and not till November 23rd could the Imperial fleet set sail for the coast of Spain.

There was mourning in Castile that Yuletide. Besides eight thousand rank and file, three hundred officers of birth had fallen victims to the storm or the Moorish lance. Algiers teemed with Christian captives, and it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a fair barter for an onion.

So ended this famous expedition. It was begun in glory, and ended in shame. The whole of Christendom, one might say--for there were English knights there, like Sir Thomas Challoner, as well as Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians in the army--had gone forth to destroy a nest of pirates, and behold, by the fury of the elements and the foolishness of their own counsels, they were almost destroyed themselves. They had left behind them ships and men and stores and cannon: worse, they had left Algiers stronger and more defiant than ever.

The Algerines, for their part, never forgot the valour of the Knights of Malta, and the spot where they made their stand is still called "The Grave of the Knights." High up on the hillside may be seen "the Emperor's Castle," which marks the traditional place where Charles' great pavilion was pitched on the morning of the fatal 23rd of October.

"The climate of Africa"--it is the caustic comment of Admiral Jurien de la Graviere--"was evidently unsuited to deeds of chivalry."

XII.

DRAGUT REIS.

1543-1560.

The name of Dragut has already occurred more than once in this history: it was destined to become as notorious as Barbarossa's as the century advanced. Dragut--or Torgh[=u]d--was born on the Caramanian coast opposite the island of Rhodes. Unlike many of his colleagues he seems to have been the son of Mohammedan parents, tillers of the earth. Being adventurous by nature, he took service as a boy in the Turkish fleet and became "a good pilot and a most excellent gunner." At last he contrived to purchase and man a galleot, with which he cruised the waters of the Levant, where his intimate acquaintance with all the coasts and islands enabled him to seize and dispose of many prizes. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa soon came to hear of his exploits, and welcomed him heartily when he came to pay his respects at Algiers, in so far that he gave him the conduct of various expeditions and eventually appointed him his lieutenant with the command of twelve galleys. "From thenceforward this redoubtable Corsair passed not one summer without ravaging the coasts of Naples and Sicily: nor durst any Christian vessels attempt to pass between Spain and Italy; for if they offered it, he infallibly snapped them up: and when he missed any of his prey at sea, he made himself amends by making descents along the coasts, plundering villages and towns, and dragging away multitudes of inhabitants into captivity."[38]

In 1540, as we have seen, Dragut was caught by Giannettino Doria, who made him a present to his great kinsman Andrea, on whose galleys he was forced to toil in chains. La Valette, afterwards Grand Master of Malta, who had once pulled the captive's oar on Barbarossa's ships and knew Dragut well, one day saw the ex-Corsair straining on the galley bank: "Senor Dragut," said he, "_usanza de guerra!_--'tis the custom of war!" And the prisoner, remembering his visitor's former apprenticeship, replied cheerfully, "_Y mudanza de fortuna_--a change of luck!" He did not lose heart, and in 1543 Barbarossa ransomed him for 3000 crowns,[39] and made him chief of the galleys of the western Corsairs. Imprisonment had sharpened his appetite for Christians, and he harried the Italian coasts with more than his ancient zeal. Surrounded by bold spirits and commanding a fleet of his own, Dragut had the Mediterranean in his grasp, and even ventured to seize the most dreaded of all foes, a Maltese galley, wherein he found 70,000 ducats intended for the repair of the fortifications of Tripoli, which then belonged to "the Religion." As the Turkish annalist says, "Torgh[=u]d had become the drawn sword of Islam."

Dragut's lair was at the island of Jerba, which tradition links with the lotus-eaters, perhaps because of the luxuriant fertility of the soil. The people of Jerba, despite their simple agricultural pursuits, were impatient of control, and, as often as not, were independent of the neighbouring kingdom of Tunis or any other state. Here, with or without their leave, Dragut took up his position, probably in the very castle which Roger Doria, when lord of the island, began to build in 1289; and from out the wide lake at the back the Corsair's galleots issued to ravage the lands which were under the protection of Roger Doria's descendants. Not content with the rich spoils of Europe, Dragut took the Spanish outposts in Africa, one by one--Susa, Sfax, Monastir; and finally set forth to conquer "Africa."

It is not uncommon in Arabic to call a country and its capital by the same name. Thus Misr meant and still means both Egypt and Cairo; El-Andalus, both Spain and Cordova. Similarly "Africa" meant to the Arabs the province of Carthage or Tunis and its capital, which was not at first Tunis but successively Kayraw[=a]n and Mahd[=i]ya. Throughout the later middle ages the name "Africa" is applied by Christian writers to the latter city. Here it was that in 1390 a "grand and noble enterprize" came to an untimely end. "The Genoese," says Froissart, "bore great enmity to this town; for its Corsairs frequently watched them at sea, and when strongest fell on and plundered their ships, carrying their spoils to this town of Africa, which was and is now their place of deposit and may be called their warren." It was "beyond measure strong, surrounded by high walls, gates, and deep ditches." The chivalry of Christendom hearkened to the prayer of the Genoese and the people of Majorca and Sardinia and Ischia, and the many islands that groaned beneath the Corsairs' devastations; the Duke of Bourbon took command of an expedition (at the cost of the Genoese) which included names as famous as the Count d'Auvergne, the Lord de Courcy, Sir John de Vienne, the Count of Eu, and our own Henry of Beaufort; and on St. John Baptist's Day, with much pomp, with flying banners and the blowing of trumpets, they sailed on three hundred galleys for Barbary. Arrived before Africa, not without the hindrance of a storm, they beheld the city in the form of a bow, reaching out its arms to the sea; high were its ramparts; and a colossal tower, armed with stone-projectiles, guarded the harbour. Nevertheless the Knights landed in good heart, after a cup of Grecian or Malmsey wine, on the Vigil of Magdalen Day (July 22nd), unopposed, and each great lord set up his pennon before his tent over against the fortress, with the Genoese crossbows on the right. Here they remained nine weeks. The Saracens never offered battle, but harassed the enemy with their skirmishers, who fired their arrows, then dropped down behind their targets of Cappadocian leather to avoid the enemy's return volley; then, rising again, cast their javelins with deadly aim. What was to be done? The Duke of Bourbon spent his time in sitting crosslegged before his tent; the nobles and knights had plenty of excellent wine and food; but it was very hot and uncomfortable--the assault had failed--many had died--the Genoese wanted to get their galleys back safe in port before the autumn gales came on; so they packed up their baggage, and re-embarked, blowing their horns and beating their drums for very joy.[40]

This was the city which Dragut took without a blow in the spring of 1550. Mahd[=i]ya was then in an anarchic state, ruled by a council of chiefs, each ready to betray the other, and none owing the smallest allegiance to any king, least of all the despised king of Tunis, Ham[=i]d, who had deposed and blinded his father Hasan, Charles V.'s _protege_. One of these chiefs let Dragut and his merry men into the city by night, and the inhabitants woke up to find "Africa" in the possession of the bold Corsair whose red and white ensign, displaying a blue crescent, floated from the battlements.

So easy a triumph roused the emulation of Christendom. Where the Duke of Bourbon had failed, Dragut had conspicuously succeeded. Don Garcia de Toledo dreamed of outshining the Corsair's glory. His father, the Viceroy of Naples, the Pope, and others, promised their aid, and old Andrea Doria took the command. After much delay and consultation a large body of troops was conveyed to Mahd[=i]ya, and disembarked on June 28, 1550. Dragut, though aware of the project, was at sea, devastating the Gulf of Genoa, and paying himself in advance for any loss the Christians might inflict in Africa: his nephew, His[=a]r Reis commanded in the city. When Dragut returned, the siege had gone on for a month, without result; a tremendous assault had been repulsed with heavy loss to the besiegers, who were growing disheartened. The Corsair assembled a body of Moors and Turks and attempted to relieve the fortress; but his ambuscade failed, His[=a]r's simultaneous sally was driven back, and Dragut, seeing that he could do nothing, fled to Jerba. His retreat gave fresh energy to the siege, and a change of attack discovered the weak places of the defence. A vigorous assault on the 8th of September carried the walls, a brisk street fight ensued, and the strong city of "Africa" was in the hands of the Christians.

The Sultan, Suleym[=a]n the Great, was little pleased to see a Moslem fortress summarily stormed by the troops of his ally, the Emperor. Charles replied that he had fought against pirates, not against the Sultan's vassals; but Suleym[=a]n could not perceive the distinction, and emphasized his disapproval by giving Dragut twenty galleys, which soon found their way to Christian shores. The lamentations of his victims roused Doria, who had the good fortune to surprise the Corsair as he was greasing his keels in the strait behind Jerba. This strait was virtually a _cul-de-sac_. Between the island and the great lake that lay behind it, the sea had worn a narrow channel on the northern side, through which light vessels could pass, with care; but to go out of the lake by the southern side involved a voyage over what was little better than a bog, and no one ever thought of the attempt. Doria saw he had his enemy in a trap, and was in no hurry to venture in among the shoals and narrows of the strait. He sent joyous messages to Europe, announcing his triumph, and cautiously, as was his habit, awaited events.

Dragut, for his part, dared not push out against a vastly superior force; his only chance was a ruse. Accordingly, putting a bold face on the matter, he manned a small earthwork with cannon, and played upon the enemy, with little or no actual injury, beyond the all-important effect of making Doria hesitate still more. Meanwhile, in the night, while his little battery is perplexing the foe, all is prepared at the southern extremity of the strait. Summoning a couple of thousand field labourers, he sets them to work; here a small canal is dug--there rollers come into play; and in a few hours his small fleet is safely transported to the open water on the south side of the island. Calling off his men from the illusive battery, the Corsair is off for the Archipelago: by good luck he picks up a fine galley on the way, which was conveying news of the reinforcements coming to Doria. The old Genoese admiral never gets the message: he is rubbing his eyes in sore amazement, wondering what had happened to the imprisoned fleet. Never was admiral more cruelly cheated: never did Doria curse the nimble Corsair with greater vehemence or better cause.

Next year, 1551, Dragut's place was with the Ottoman navy, then commanded by Sin[=a]n Pasha. He had had enough of solitary roving, and found it almost too exciting: he now preferred to hunt in couples. With nearly a hundred and fifty galleys or galleots, ten thousand soldiers, and numerous siege guns, Sin[=a]n and Dragut sailed out of the Dardanelles--whither bound no Christian could tell. They ravaged, as usual, the Straits of Messina, and then revealed the point of attack by making direct for Malta. The Knights of St. John were a perpetual thorn in the side of the Turks, and even more vexatious to the Corsairs, whose vessels they, and they alone, dared to tackle single-handed, and too often with success. Sultan and Corsair were alike eager to dislodge the Knights from the rock which they had been fortifying for twenty years, just as Suleym[=a]n had dislodged them from Rhodes, which they had been fortifying for two hundred. In July the Turkish fleet appeared before the Marsa, wholly unexpected by the Knights. The Turks landed on the tongue of promontory which separates the two great harbours, and where there was as yet no Fort St. Elmo to molest them. Sin[=a]n was taken aback by the strong aspect of the fortress of St. Angelo on the further side of the harbour, and almost repented of his venture. To complete his dejection, he seems to have courted failure. Instead of boldly throwing his whole force upon the small garrison and overwhelming them by sheer weight, he tried a reconnaissance, and fell into an ambuscade; upon which he incontinently abandoned all thought of a siege, and contented himself with laying waste the interior of Malta, and taking the adjacent island of Goza.

The quantity of booty he would bring back to Constantinople might perhaps avail, he thought, to keep his head on his shoulders, after so conspicuous a failure; but Sin[=a]n preferred not to trust to the chance. To wipe out his defeat, he sailed straight for Tripoli, some sixty-four leagues away. Tripoli was the natural antidote to Malta: for Tripoli, too, belonged to the Knights of St. John--much against their will--inasmuch as the Emperor had made their defence of this easternmost Barbary state a condition of their tenure of Malta. So far they had been unable to put it into a proper state of defence, and with crumbling battlements and a weak garrison, they had yearly expected invasion. The hour had now come. Summoned to surrender, the Commandant, Gaspard de Villiers, of the Auvergne Tongue, replied that the city had been entrusted to his charge, and he would defend it to the death. He had but four hundred men to hold the fort withal.

Six thousand Turks disembarked, forty cannons were landed, Sin[=a]n himself directed every movement, and arranged his batteries and earthworks. A heavy cannonade produced no effect on the walls, and the Turkish admiral thought of the recent repulse at Malta, and of the stern face of his master; and his head sat uneasily upon his neck. The siege appeared to make no progress. Perhaps this venture, too, would have failed, but for the treachery of a French renegade, who escaped into the trenches and pointed out the weak places in the walls. His counsel was taken; the walls fell down; the garrison, in weariness and despair, had lain down to sleep off their troubles, and no reproaches and blows could rouse them. On August 15th Gaspard de Villiers was forced to surrender, on terms, as he believed, identical with those which Suleym[=a]n granted to the Knights of Rhodes.[41] But Sin[=a]n was no Suleym[=a]n; moreover, he was in a furious rage with the whole Order. He put the garrison--all save a few--in chains, and carried them off to grace his triumph at Stambol.

Thus did Tripoli fall once more into the hands of the Moslems, forty-one years after its conquest by the Count Don Pedro Navarro.[42]

The misfortunes of the Christians did not end here. Year after year the Ottoman fleet appeared in Italian waters, marshalled now by Sin[=a]n, and when he died by Pi[=a]li Pasha the Croat, but always with Dragut in the van; year by year the coasts of Apulia and Calabria yielded up more and more of their treasure, their youth, and their beauty, to the Moslem ravishers; yet worse was in store. Unable as they felt themselves to cope with the Turks at sea, the Powers of Southern Europe resolved to strike one more blow on land, and recover Tripoli. A fleet of nearly a hundred galleys and ships, gathered from Spain, Genoa, "the Religion," the Pope, from all quarters, with the Duke de Medina-Celi at the head, assembled at Messina. Doria was too old to command, but his kinsman, Giovanni Andrea, son of his loved and lost Giannettino, led the Genoese galleys. The Fates seemed adverse from the outset. Five times the expedition put to sea; five times was it driven back by contrary winds.[43] At last, on February 10, 1560, it was fairly away for the African coast. Here fresh troubles awaited it. Long delays in crowded vessels had produced their disastrous effects: fevers and scurvy and dysentery were working their terrible ravages among the crews, and two thousand corpses were flung into the sea. It was impossible to lay siege to Tripoli with a diseased army, and when actually in sight of their object the admirals gave orders to return to Jerba.

A sudden descent quickly gave them the command of the beautiful island. The Arab sheykh whose people cultivated it was as ready to pay tribute to the Spaniard as to the Corsair. Medina-Celi and his troops accordingly set to work undisturbed at the erection of a fortress strong enough to baffle the besieging genius even of the Turks. In two months a strong castle was built, with all scientific earthworks, and the admiral prepared to carry home such troops as were not needed for its defence.

Unhappily for him, he had lingered too long. He had wished to see the defences complete, and had trusted to the usual practice of the Turks, not to put to sea before May was advanced. He was about to prepare for departure when news came that the Turkish fleet had been seen at Goza. Instantly all was panic. Valiant gentlemen forgot their valour, forgot their coolness, forgot how strong a force by sea or land they mustered: one thought alone was uppermost--the Turks were upon them! Giovanni Doria hurried on board and embarked his Genoese; Medina-Celi more methodically and with something like _sang froid_ personally supervised the embarcation of his men; but before they could make out of the strait, where Dragut had so narrowly escaped capture, the dread Corsair himself, and Ochiali, and Pi[=a]li Pasha were upon them. Then ensued a scene of confusion that baffles description. Despairing of weathering the north side of Jerba the panic-stricken Christians ran their ships ashore, and deserted them, never stopping even to set them on fire. The deep-draught galleons stuck fast in the shallow water. On rowed the Turks; galleys and galleons to the number of fifty-six fell into their hands; eighteen thousand Christians bowed down before their scimitars; the beach, on that memorable 11th of May, 1560, was a confused medley of stranded ships, helpless prisoners, Turks busy in looting men and galleys--and a hideous heap of mangled bodies. The fleet and the army which had sailed from Messina but three months ago in such gallant array were absolutely lost. It was a _dies nefas_ for Christendom.

Medina-Celi and young Doria made good their escape by night. But when the old Genoese admiral learnt the terrible news, the loss of the fleet he loved, the defeat of the nephew he loved yet more, his dim eyes were wet. "Take me to the church," he said; and he soon received the last consolations of religion. Long as he had lived, and many as had been the vicissitudes of his great career, he had willingly been spared this last most miserable experience. On November 25, 1560, he gave up the ghost: he was a great seaman, but still more a passionate lover of his country;--despotic in his love, but not the less a noble Genoese patriot.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 439.

[39] Brantome, _Hommes illustres etrangers_. [OE]uvres, i. 279.

[40] Froissart's _Chron._, transl. T. Johnes (1844) ii. 446, 465, ff.

[41] See the _Story of Turkey_, 170.

[42] See Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 193-215.

[43] _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 266.

XIII.

THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA.

1565.

When Sultan Suleym[=a]n reflected on the magnanimity which he had displayed towards the Knights of Rhodes in allowing them to depart in peace in 1522, his feelings must have resembled those of Doria when he thought of that inconsiderate release of Dragut in 1543. Assuredly the royal clemency had been ill-rewarded; the Knights had displayed a singular form of gratitude to the sparer of their lives; they had devoted themselves to him, indeed, but devoted themselves to his destruction. The cavaliers whom Charles V. suffered to perch on the glaring white rock of Malta, in 1530, proved in no long time to be a pest as virulent and all-pervading as even Rhodes had harboured. Seven galleys they owned, and never more, but the seven were royal vessels, splendidly armed and equipped, and each a match for two or three Turkish ships.[44] Every year they cruised from Sicily to the Levant, and many a prize laden with precious store they carried off to Malta. The commerce of Egypt and Syria was in danger of annihilation; the Barbary Corsairs, even Dragut himself, shunned a meeting with the red galleys of "the Religion," or their black _capitana_; and the Turkish fleet, while holding undisputed sway over the Mediterranean, was not nimble enough to surprise the Maltese squadron in its rapid and incalculable expeditions. Jean de la Valette Parisot, General of the Galleys and afterwards Grand Master, Francis of Lorraine, Grand Prior of France, Romegas, prince of knights-errant, scoured the seas in search of prey:--they were as true pirates as ever weathered the "white squall." The Knights lived by plunder as much as any Corsair; but they tempered their freebooting with chivalry and devotions; they were the protectors of the helpless and afflicted, and they preyed chiefly upon the enemies of the Faith.

Meanwhile they built and built; Fort St. Elmo rose on the central promontory, Forts St. Michael and St. Angelo were strengthened; bastions were skilfully planned, flanking angles devised, ravelins and cavaliers erected, ditches deepened, parapets raised, embrasures opened, and every device of sixteenth-century fortification as practised by Master Evangelista, chief engineer of the Order, was brought into use. For the Knights knew that Suleym[=a]n lived and was mightier than ever. Their cruisers had wrought sad havoc among his subjects, and the Sultan would not long suffer the hornets of Rhodes to swarm at Malta. They lived in constant expectation of attack, and they spent all their strength and all their money in preparing for the day of the Sultan's revenge. At last the time came: Suleym[=a]n swore in his wrath that the miscreants should no longer defy him; he had suffered them to leave Rhodes as gentlemen of honour--he would consume them in Malta as one burns a nest of wasps.

At the time of the siege of 1565 the city or fortress of Malta was situated, not as Valetta now stands on the west, but on the east side of the Marsa or great harbour. To understand even the briefest narrative of one of the most heroic deeds of war that the world has seen, the position of the forts must be understood. (See the Plan.) On the northern coast of the rocky island a bold promontory or rugged tongue of land, Mount Sceberras, separates two deep bights or inlets. The eastern of these was called Marsa Muset, or "Middle Port," but was unoccupied and without defences at the time of the siege, except that the guns of St. Elmo, the fortress at the point of the Sceberras promontory, commanded its mouth. The Marsa Kebir, or simply La Marsa, the "Great Port," was the chief stronghold of the Knights. Here four projecting spits of rock formed smaller harbours on the western side. The outermost promontory, the Pointe des Fourches, separated the Port de la Renelle or La Arenela, from the open sea; Cape Salvador divided the Arenela from the English Harbour; the Burg, the main fortress and capital of the place, with Fort St. Angelo at its point, shot out between the English Harbour and the Harbour of the Galleys; and the Isle of La Sangle, joined by a sandy isthmus to the mainland, and crowned by Fort St. Michael, severed the Galley Harbour from that of La Sangle. All round these inlets high hills dominated the ports. Behind Fort St. Elmo, the Sceberras climbed steeply to a considerable height. Behind the Arenela and English Harbour rose Mount Salvador, Calcara, and further back the Heights of St. Catherine. The Burg and Fort St. Michael were overtopped by the Heights of St. Margaret, whilst the Conradin plateau looked down upon the head of the Marsa and the Harbour of La Sangle. To modern artillery and engineering the siege would have been easy, despite the rocky hardness of the ground, since the Knights had not had time to construct those field-works upon the surrounding heights which were essential to the safety of the forts. Even to the skilled but undeveloped artillery of the Turks, the destruction of Malta ought not to have been either a difficult or lengthy operation, had they begun at the right place.

To those who were acquainted with the ground, who had heard of the siege of Rhodes, and knew that the Turks were not less but more formidable in 1565 than in 1522, the issue of the struggle must have appeared inevitable, when the huge Ottoman fleet hove in view on the 18th of May, 1565. One hundred and eighty vessels, of which two-thirds were galleys-royal, carried more than thirty thousand fighting men--the pick of the Ottoman army, tried Janissaries and Sip[=a]his, horsemen from Thrace, rough warriors from the mountains of Anatolia, eager volunteers from all parts of the Sultan's dominions. Mustafa Pasha who had grown old in the wars of his master, commanded on land, and Pi[=a]li was admiral of the fleet. Dragut was to join them immediately, and the Sultan's order was that nothing should be done till he arrived.

The Knights had not remained ignorant of the preparations that were making against them. They sent to all Europe for help, and the Pope gave money, and Spain promises: the Viceroy of Sicily would send Spanish reinforcements by the 15th of June. They worked unceasingly at their defences and did all that men could do to meet the advancing storm. All told, they mustered but seven hundred Knights, and between eight and nine thousand mercenaries of various nations, but chiefly Maltese, who could only be trusted behind walls.

The Order was fortunate in its Grand Master. Jean de la Valette, born in 1494, a Knight of St. John before he was of age, and a defender of Rhodes forty-three years ago, though now an old man retained to the full the courage and generalship which had made his career as commander of the galleys memorable in the annals of Mediterranean wars. He had been a captive among the Turks, and knew their languages and their modes of warfare; and his sufferings had increased his hatred of the Infidel. A tall, handsome man, with an air of calm resolution, he communicated his iron nerve to all his followers. Cold and even cruel in his severity, he was yet devoutly religious, and passionately devoted to his Order and his Faith. A true hero, but of the reasoning, merciless, bigoted sort: not the generous, reckless enthusiast who inspires by sympathy and glowing example.

When he knew that the day of trial was at hand, Jean de la Valette assembled the Order together, and bade them first be reconciled with God and one another, and then prepare to lay down their lives for the Faith they had sworn to defend. Before the altar each Knight foreswore all enmities, renounced all pleasures, buried all ambitions; and joining together in the sacred fellowship of the Supper of the Lord, once more dedicated their blood to the service of the Cross.

At the very outset a grave mischance befell the Turks; Dragut was a fortnight late at the rendezvous. His voice would have enforced Pi[=a]li's advice, to land the entire force and attack the Burg and St. Michael from the heights behind. Mustafa, the Seraskier, was determined to reduce the outlying Fort of St. Elmo on the promontory of Sceberras before attacking the main position, and accordingly landed his men at his convenience from the Marsa Muset, and laid out his earthworks on the land side of St. Elmo. He had not long begun when Ochiali arrived with six galleys from Alexandria, and on June 2nd came Dragut himself with a score or more galleys of Tripoli and Bona. Dragut saw at once the mistake that had been made, but saw also that to abandon the siege of St. Elmo would too greatly elate the Knights: the work must go on; and on it went with unexampled zeal.

The little fort could hold but a small garrison, but the force was a _corps d'elite_: De Broglio of Piedmont commanded it with sixty soldiers, and was supported by Juan de Guaras, bailiff of the Negropont, a splendid old Knight, followed by sixty more of the Order, and some Spaniards under Juan de la Cerda:--a few hundred of men to meet thirty thousand Turks, but men of no common mettle. They had not long to wait. The fire opened from twenty-one guns on the last day of May and continued with little intermission till June 23rd. The besiegers were confident of battering down the little fort in a week at most, but they did not know their foes. As soon as one wall crumbled before the cannonade, a new work appeared behind it. The first assault lasted three hours, and the Turks gained possession of the ravelin in front of the gate; so furious was the onset that the defenders sent to the Grand Master to tell him the position was untenable; they could not stand a second storming party. La Valette replied that, if so, he would come and withstand it himself: St. Elmo must be held to keep the Turks back till reinforcements arrived. So of course they went on. Dragut brought up some of his largest yards and laid them like a bridge across the fosse, and a tremendous struggle raged for five terrible hours on Dragut's bridge. Again and again Mustafa marshalled his Janissaries for the attack, and every time they were hurled back with deadly slaughter. As many as four thousand Turks fell in a single assault. St. Elmo was little more than a heap of ruins, but the garrison still stood undaunted among the heaps of stones, each man ready to sell his life dearly for the honour of Our Lady and St. John.

The Turks at last remedied the mistake they had made at the beginning. They had left the communication between St. Elmo and the harbour unimpeded, and reinforcements had frequently been introduced into the besieged fortress from the Burg. On June 17th the line of circumvallation was pushed to the harbour's edge, and St. Elmo was completely isolated. Yet this prudent precaution was more than outweighed by the heavy loss that accompanied its execution: for Dragut was struck down while directing the engineers, and the surgeons pronounced the wound mortal. With the cool courage of his nation, Mustafa cast a cloak over the prostrate form, and stood in Dragut's place.

Five days later came the final assault. On the eve of June 23rd, after the cannonade had raged all the forenoon, and a hand-to-hand fight had lasted till the evening, when two thousand of the enemy and five hundred of the scanty garrison had fallen, the Knights and their soldiers prepared for the end. They knew the Grand Master could not save them, that nothing could avert the inevitable dawn. They took the Sacrament from each other's hands, and "committing their souls to God made ready to devote their bodies in the cause of His Blessed Son." It was a forlorn and sickly remnant of the proudest chivalry the world has ever known, that met the conquering Turks that June morning: worn and haggard faces, pale with long vigils and open wounds; tottering frames that scarce could stand; some even for very weakness seated in chairs, with drawn swords, within the breach. But weary and sick, upright or seated, all bore themselves with unflinching courage; in every set face was read the resolve to die hard.

The ghastly struggle was soon over: the weight of the Turkish column bore down everything in its furious rush. Knights and soldiers alike rolled upon the ground, every inch of which they had disputed to the last drop of their blood. Not a man escaped.

Dragut heard of the fall of St. Elmo as he lay in his tent dying, and said his Moslem _Nunc Dimittis_ with a thankful heart. He had been struck at the soldier's post of duty; he died with the shout of victory ringing in his ears, as every general would wish to die. His figure stands apart from all the men of his age:--an admiral, the equal of Barbarossa, the superior of Doria; a general fit to marshal troops against any of the great leaders of the armies of Charles V.; he was content with the eager rush of his life, and asked not for sovereignty or honours. Humane to his prisoners, a gay comrade, an inspiriting commander, a seaman every inch, Dragut is the most vivid and original personage among the Corsairs.

St. Elmo had fallen: but St. Angelo and St. Michael stood untouched. Three hundred Knights of St. John and thirteen hundred soldiers had indeed fallen in the first, but its capture had closed the lives of eight thousand Turks. "If the child has cost us so dear," said Mustafa, "what will the parent cost?" The Turkish general sent a flag of truce to La Valette, to propose terms of capitulation, but in vain. Mutual animosity had been worked to a height of indignant passion by a barbarous massacre of prisoners on both sides, each in view of the other. The Grand Master's first impulse was to hang the messenger of such foes: he thought better of it, and showed him the depth of the ditch that encircled the twin forts: "Let your Janissaries come and take that," he said, and contemptuously dismissed him.

A new siege now began. The forts on the east of La Marsa had been sorely drained to fill up the gaps in the garrison at St. Elmo, and it was fortunate that Don Juan de Cardona had been able to send a reinforcement, though only of six hundred men, under Melchior de Robles, to the Old Town, whence they contrived to reach Fort St. Michael in safety.[45] Even six hundred men added materially to the difficulties of the siege: for, be it remembered, six hundred men behind skilfully constructed fortifications may be worth six thousand in the open. It was very hard for the besiegers to find cover. The ground was hard rock, and cutting trenches was extremely arduous work, and the noise of the picks directed the fire of the forts by night upon the sappers. Nevertheless by July 5th four batteries were playing upon St. Michael from the heights of St. Margaret and Conradin, while the guns of Fort St. Elmo opened from the other side; and soon a line of cannon on Mount Salvador dominated the English Port. An attempt to bring a flotilla of gun-boats into the Harbour of the Galleys failed, after a vigorous conflict between a party of Turkish swimmers, who strove with axes to cut the chain that barred the port, and some Maltese who swam to oppose them, sword in teeth. The battle in the water ended in the flight of the Turks.

Ten distinct general assaults were delivered with all the fury of Janissaries against the stronghold. First, a grand assault by sea was ordered on July 15th. Three columns simultaneously advanced by night on Fort St. Michael: one landed in the Arenela and marched to attack the eastern suburb La Bormula; the second came down from the heights of St. Margaret and made straight for the bastion defended by De Robles; the third advanced from Conradin on the south-west, and assaulted the salient angle at the extreme point of the spit of land on which the fort was built. In vain the Turks swarmed up the scaling-ladders; company after company was hurled down, a huddled mass of mangled flesh, and the ladders were cast off. Again the escalade began:--the Knights rolled huge blocks of masonry on the crowded throng below; when they got within arms' reach the scimitar was no match for the long two-handed swords of the Christians. At all three points after a splendid attack, which called forth all the finest qualities of the magnificent soldiery of Suleym[=a]n the Great, the Turks were repulsed with terrible loss. The Knights lost some of their bravest swords, and each one of them fought like a lion: but their dead were few compared with the unfortunate troops of Barbary, who had cut off their retreat by dismissing their ships, and were slaughtered or drowned in the harbour by hundreds. The water was red with their blood, and mottled with standards and drums and floating robes. Of prisoners, the Christians spared but two, and these they delivered over to the mob to be torn in pieces.

After the assault by water came the attack by mines; but the result was no better, for the Knights were no novices in the art of countermining, and the attempt to push on after the explosion ended in rushing into a trap. Mustafa, however, continued to work underground and ply his heavy artillery, with hardly a pause, upon the two extremities of the line of landward defences--the Bastion of De Robles, and the Bastion of Castile: both were in ruins by the 27th of July, as S[=a]lih Reis, son of Barbarossa's old comrade, satisfied himself by a reconnaissance pushed into the very breach. An assault was ordered for midday of August 2nd, when the Christians were resting after the toils of the sultry morning. Six thousand Turks advanced in absolute silence to Melchior de Robles' bastion; they had almost reached their goal when the shout of the sentry brought that gallant Knight, readily awakened, to the breach, followed by Munatones and three Spanish arquebusiers. These five warriors held twenty-six Janissaries and Sip[=a]his in check till reinforcements came; and they killed fifteen of them. Their valour saved the fort. Four hours longer the struggle lasted, till neither party could deal another blow in the raging August sun; and the Turks at last retired with a loss of six hundred dead.

Nothing daunted, the 7th of August saw them once more scaling the walls and rushing the breaches of the two bastions, this time with nearly twenty thousand men. They poured over the ravelin, swarmed up the breach, and were on the point of carrying the fort. All was nearly lost, and at that supreme moment even the aged Grand Master, whose place was to direct, not to imperil his life, came down to the front of battle, and used his sword and pike like a common soldier. Eight long hours they fought, six times came fresh reserves to the support of the Turks; the Christians were exhausted, and had no reserves. One rush more and the place would be carried.

Just then a body of cavalry was seen riding down from the direction of the Old Town. The Turks took them to be the long-expected reinforcements from Sicily. They are seen to fall upon stray parties of Turks; they must be the advance guard of Philip's army. Pi[=a]li in alarm runs to his galleys; the Turks who had all but carried the long-contested bastion pause in affright lest they be taken in rear. In vain Mustafa, in vain the King of Algiers shows them that the horsemen are but two hundred of the Old Town garrison, with no army at all behind them. Panic, unreasoning and fatal as ever, seizes upon the troops: the foothold won after eight hours of furious fighting is surrendered to a scare; not a Turk stays to finish the victory. The lives of their two thousand dead need not have been sacrificed.

Still Mustafa did not despair. He knew that the main defences of the bastions had been destroyed--a few days more, a heavy cannonade, the explosion of a series of mines which thousands of his sappers were preparing would, he was certain, ensure the success of a final assault. The day came, August 20th, and Mustafa himself, in his coat of inlaid mail and robe of cramoisy, led his army forward; but a well-directed fire drove him into a trench, whence he emerged not till night covered his path. When at last he got back, he found his army in camp; another assault had been repulsed. The next day they went up again to the fatal embrasures, and this time the failure was even more signal; repeated repulses were telling on the spirits of the men, and the veteran Janissaries went to their work with unaccustomed reluctance. Nevertheless, the trenches, cut in the hard rock, continued to advance slowly, and the cavalier behind the ravelin was taken after a severe struggle:--just taken, when La Valette's mines blew the victorious assailants into the air. On the 30th another well-planned assault was repelled. One more effort--a last and desperate attempt--was to be made on the 7th of September; but on the 5th the news arrived that the Spanish army of relief had at length, after inconceivable delays and hesitations, actually landed on the island. The worn-out Turks did not wait to reconnoitre, they had borne enough: a retreat was ordered, the siege was abandoned, the works that had cost so much labour and blood were deserted, and there was a general stampede to the galleys. It is true they landed again when they learnt that the relieving army numbered but six thousand men; but their strength was departed from them. They tried to fight the relieving army, and then again they ran for the ships. The Spaniards cut them down like sheep, and of all that gallant armament scarce five thousand lived to tell the tale of those terrible three months in Malta.

No more moving sight can be imagined than the meeting of the new-come Brethren of the Order and their comrades of St. Michael's Fort. The worn remnant of the garrison, all told, was scarcely six hundred strong, and hardly a man was without a wound. The Grand Master and his few surviving Knights looked like phantoms from another world, so pale and grisly were they, faint from their wounds, their hair and beard unkempt, their armour stained, and neglected, as men must look who had hardly slept without their weapons for more than three memorable months. As they saw these gaunt heroes the rescuers burst into tears; strangers clasped hands and wept together with the same overpowering emotion that mastered relievers and relieved when Havelock and Colin Campbell led the Highlanders into Lucknow. Never surely had men deserved more nobly the homage of mankind. In all history there is no record of such a siege, of such a disproportion in the forces, of such a glorious outcome. The Knights of Malta live for ever among the heroes of all time.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] See an excellent account of the galleys and discipline of the Knights of St. John in Jurien de la Graviere, _les Derniers Jours de la Marine a Rames_, ch. ix.; and _Les Chevaliers de Malte_, tome i.

[45] Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Chevaliers de Malte et la Marine de Philippe II._, ii. 71.

XIV.

LEPANTO.

1571.

The failure of the siege of Malta was a sensible rebuff, yet it cannot be said that it seriously injured the renown of the Turks in the Mediterranean. They had been resisted on land; they had not yet been beaten at sea. Nor could they look back on the terrible months of the siege without some compensating feeling of consolation. They had taken St. Elmo, and its fall had aroused general jubilation in every Moslem breast; the Moors of Granada went near to rising against the Spaniards on the mere report of this triumph of the Turkish arms. Though they had failed to reduce St. Michael, the cause was to be found, at least in part, in a false alarm and an unreasoning panic. To be defeated by such warriors as the Knights of St. John was not a disgrace; like the Highlanders in the Crimean War, these men were not so much soldiers, in their opponents' eyes, as veritable devils; and who shall contend against the legions of the Jinn? Moreover, forced as they were to abandon the siege, had they not left the island a desert, its people reduced by half, its fortifications heaps of rubbish, its brave defenders a handful of invalids?

So reasoned the Turks, and prepared for another campaign. They had lost many men, but more were ready to take their place; their immense fleet was uninjured; and though Dragut was no more, Ochiali--as the Christians called 'Ali _El-Ul[=u]ji_ "the Renegade"--the Turks dubbed him _Fart[=a]s_, "Scurvied," from his complaint--was following successfully in his old master's steps. Born at Castelli (Licastoli) in Calabria about 1508,[46] Ochiali was to have been a priest, but his capture by the Turks turned him to the more exciting career of a Corsair. Soon after the siege of Malta he succeeded Barbarossa's son Hasan as pasha or Beglerbeg of Algiers (1568), and one of his first acts was to retake Tunis (all but the Goletta) in the name of Sultan Sel[=i]m II., who, to the unspeakable loss of the Mohammedan world, had in 1566 succeeded his great father Suleym[=a]n. In July, 1570, off Alicata, on the southern coast of Sicily, Ochiali surrounded four galleys of "the Religion"--they then possessed but five--and took three of them, including the flagship, which Saint-Clement, the general of the galleys, abandoned in order to throw himself and his treasure on shore at Montichiaro. One galley alone, the _St. Ann_, made a desperate resistance; the others surrendered. Sixty Knights or Serving Brothers of the Order were killed or made prisoners on this disastrous day, and so intense was the indignation in Malta, that the Grand Master had much ado to save Saint-Clement from being lynched by the mob, and was obliged to deliver him up to the secular court, which at once condemned him to death. He was strangled in his cell, and his body thrown in a sack into the sea. Such a success went far to atone for Mustafa Pasha's unfortunate siege.

A far more important triumph awaited the Turks in 1570-1:--a siege, and a conquest. The new Sultan, like his father, saw in the island of Cyprus a standing affront to his authority in the Levant. Then, as now, Cyprus was a vital centre in all maritime wars in the Eastern Mediterranean; a convenient depot for troops and stores; a watch-tower whence the movements of the Turkish fleet could be observed; a refuge for the numberless Christian Corsairs that infested the coast of Syria. Cyprus belonged to Venice, and on the score of her protection of piracy the Sultan found no difficulty in picking a quarrel with the Senate. War was declared, and Pi[=a]li Pasha transported a large army under Lala Mustafa (not the Seraskier who commanded at Malta) to lay siege to Nicosia, the capital of the island. After forty-eight days, the city fell, September 9th, and became a shambles. The catastrophe might have been averted, had the Christian fleet owned a single competent chief; but unhappily the relief of Cyprus was entrusted to the least trustworthy of all instruments--a coalition.

Pope Pius V., a man of austere piety, full of the zeal of his high office, and in energy and intellect a born leader, spared no effort to support the Venetians as soon as war became inevitable. Few of the states of Europe found it convenient to respond to his appeal, but Philip of Spain sent a numerous fleet under Giovanni Andrea Doria, and the Pope himself, aided in some degree by the Italian princes, added an important contingent, which he confided to the care of the Grand Constable of Naples, Mark Antony Colonna. Giovanni Zanne commanded the Venetian fleet. The whole force, when united, amounted to no less than two hundred and six vessels, of which eleven were galleasses, and nearly all the rest galleys; while the soldiers and crews numbered forty-eight thousand men. So dire was the dread then inspired by the Turks that this vast armament dared not move till it was known that Ochiali had left the neighbourhood of Italy, and even then the rivalries of the different admirals tended rather to war between the contingents than an attack upon the enemy's fleet. While the Christians were wrangling, and Doria was displaying the same Fabian caution that had led his grand-uncle to lose the battle of Prevesa, Pi[=a]li Pasha, wholly regardless of danger, had bared his galleys almost entirely of soldiers, in order to aid Lala Mustafa in the final assault on Nicosia. Had the allied fleets attacked him on the 8th or 9th of September it is doubtful whether a single Turkish galley could have shown fight. But Colonna and Doria wasted their time in wrangling and discussing, while the foe lay powerless at their feet. Finally they sailed back to Sicily, for fear of bad weather. Such were the admirals who furnished the gibes of Ochiali and his brother Corsairs. Famagusta surrendered August 4, 1571, and despite the promise of life and liberty, the garrison was massacred and the Venetian commander, Bragadino, cruelly burnt to death. Cyprus became a Turkish possession thenceforward to this day.

Meanwhile, the Turkish and Barbary fleets, commanded by 'Ali Pasha, the successor of Pi[=a]li, and Ochiali, ravaged Crete and other islands, and coasting up the Adriatic, worked their will upon every town or village it suited their pleasure to attack. Thousands of prisoners, and stores and booty of every description rewarded their industry. At length, in September, they anchored in the Gulf of Lepanto. They had heard that the united Christian fleets were on the move, and nothing would suit the victors of Cyprus better than a round encounter with the enemy. Flushed with success, they had no fear for the issue.

Many a Christian fleet had gathered its members together before then in the waters of the Adriatic. The great battle off Prevesa was in the memory of many an old sailor as the galleys came to the rendezvous in the autumn of 1571. But there was an essential difference between then and now. Prevesa was lost by divided counsels; at Lepanto there was but one commander-in-chief. Pope Pius V. had laboured unceasingly at the task of uniting the Allies and smoothing away jealousies, and he had succeeded in drawing the navies of Southern Europe on to another year's campaign; then, warned by what he had learned of the wranglings off Cyprus, he exerted his prerogative as Vicar of God, and named as the sole commander-in-chief of the whole fleet, Don John of Austria.

Son of the most illustrious monarch of the age, Don John was born to greatness. His mother was the beautiful singer, Barba Blomberg; his father was Charles V. The one gave him grace and beauty; the other, the genius of command. He was but twenty-two when his half-brother, Philip, confided to him the difficult task of suppressing the rebellion of the Moors in the Alpuxarras.[47] Where the experienced veterans of Spain had failed, the beardless general of twenty-two succeeded to admiration. And now, two years later, he was called to the command of the whole navy of Southern Europe. He accepted the post with joy. He had all the hopeful confidence of youth, and he longed to fight one of the world's great battles. His enthusiasm glowed in his face: one sees it in his portraits and on the medals struck to commemorate his victory. "Beau comme un Apollon, il avait tout le prestige d'un archange envoye par le Seigneur pour exterminer les ennemis de la Foi."

Squadron after squadron begins to crowd the Straits of Messina. Veniero, the Venetian admiral, is already there with forty-eight galleys, and sixty more expected, when Colonna enters, in July, with eighteen vessels and moors alongside. Don John has not yet arrived. He has had much ado to get his squadron ready, for no nation understands better than the Spanish the virtue of the adage _festina lente_. At last he puts off from Barcelona, and laboriously crosses the Gulf of Lyons. One may smile now at the transit, but in those days, what with the mistral and the risk of Corsairs, to cross the Gulf of Lyons was a thing to be thought about. At Genoa Don John is entertained by G. Andrea Doria, and attends a fancy ball in a gay humour that becomes his youth and buoyancy with all his perils still ahead. As he proceeds, he hears how the Turks are laying waste Dalmatia, and how the Allies are quarrelling at Messina, but he hastens not: he knows that a galley on a long voyage has as much a fixed pace as a horse, and that flogging is of no use except for a short course. At Naples he reverently receives the standard blessed by his Holiness himself, and on August 23rd he joins the fleet at Messina. Time is still needed for the other ships to come up, and for the commander-in-chief to mature his plans; before they start, each captain of a galley will have a separate written order, showing him his place during the voyage and his post in any engagement, whereby the risk of confusion and hasty marshalling is almost done away. On the 16th of September the signal is given to weigh anchor. Don John is off first, in his _Reale_, a splendid _capitana_ galley of sixty oars, with a poop carved with allegorical designs by Vasquez of Seville. After him come two hundred and eighty-five vessels, comprising six galleasses and two hundred and nine galleys, carrying twenty-nine thousand men, and commanded by the most famous names of the great families of Spain, Genoa, Venice, Naples, Rome, Vicenza, Padua, Savoy, and Sicily.[48] Don Juan de Cardona leads the van with seven galleys; Don John himself, between Marcantonio Colonna and Veniero, commands the centre of sixty-two large galleys; G. A. Doria has fifty in the right wing; Barbarigo of Venice fifty-three in the left; Don Alvaro de Bazan commands the reserve of thirty galleys: the galleasses are ranged before the lines, each with five hundred arquebusiers on board. After ten days rowing and sailing they reach Corfu, and the castle greets them with thunders of joy-guns, for the fear of the Turk is removed.

'Ali Pasha, hard by in the Gulf of Lepanto, sent out scouts to ascertain the enemy's strength. A bold Barbary Corsair pushed his bark unseen by night among the Christian galleys, but his report was imperfect, and till the day of conflict neither side knew the exact strength of his opponent. The Turkish fleet numbered about two hundred and eight galleys and sixty-six galleots, and carried twenty-five thousand men. Constantinople furnished ninety-five galleys; twenty-one came from Alexandria, twenty-five from Anatolia, ten from Rhodes, ten from Mitylene, nine from Syria, twelve from Napoli di Romania, thirteen from the Negropont, and eleven from Algiers and Tripoli. The galleots were chiefly Barbary vessels, more useful for piracy than a set battle.

The two fleets unexpectedly came in sight of each other at seven o'clock on the morning of October 7th, at a point just south of the Echinades, and between Ithaca and the Gulf of Patras or Lepanto. A white sail or two on the horizon was descried by Don John's look-out on the maintop; then sail after sail rose above the sea-line, and the enemy came into full view. Don John quickly ran up a white flag, the signal of battle, and immediately the whole fleet was busily engaged in clewing up the sails to the yards, and making all snug for the conflict. The central banks were removed to make room for the soldiers, and the slaves were served with meat and wine. Old seamen, who had met the Turks again and again from their youth up, prepared grimly for revenge; sanguine boys, who held arms in set fight for the first time that day, looked forward eagerly to the moment of action. Even to the last the incurable vacillation of the allied admirals was felt: they suggested a council of war. Don John's reply was worthy of him: "The time for councils is past," he said; "do not trouble yourselves about aught but fighting." Then he entered his gig, and went from galley to galley, passing under each stern, crucifix in hand, encouraging the men. His calm and confident mien, and the charm of his address, excited universal enthusiasm, and he was met on all hands with the response: "Ready, Sir; and the sooner the better!" Then Don John unfurled the Blessed Standard with the figure of the Saviour, and falling on his knees commended his cause to God.

About eleven o'clock a dead calm set in. The Turks shortened sail and took to their oars: in perfect order and with matchless speed and precision they formed in line of battle, while drums and fifes announced their high spirits. The Christian fleet was slower in falling into line; some of the galleys and most of the galleasses were behindhand. Don John let drop some pious oaths, and sent swift vessels to hurry them up. At last they began to get into order. Barbarigo, the "left guide," hugged the coast with the left wing; Don John with the centre _corps de bataille_ kept touch with him; but where was the "right guide"? Giovanni Doria, infected with the tactical vanity of his family, resolved to show these landsmen how a sailor can manoeuvre. Conceiving that Ochiali, on the Ottoman left, was trying to outflank the Christian fleet, he bore out to sea in order to turn him. In vain Don John sent to recall him; he had gone out of reach, and the battle had to be fought without the right wing. Doria's precious manoeuvring went near to losing the day.

The Ottoman fleet was marshalled in the same order as the Christian, except that there were no galleasses. The line of battle, nearly a mile long, was divided into centre, and right and left wing, and behind the centre was the reserve. Mohammed Shaluk (called by Europeans Scirocco) commanded the right wing, opposed to Barbarigo's left; 'Ali Pasha opposed Don John in the centre; Ochiali was over against the post where Doria should have been. Between the two lines stood forth the heavy galleasses, like great breakwaters, turning aside and dividing the flowing rush of the Ottoman galleys. The fire of these huge floating castles nearly caused a panic among the Turks, but they soon pulled past them, and a general melley ensued. In the Christian left, after a deadly struggle, in which both Barbarigo and Scirocco lost their lives, the Turks were repulsed, and, deprived of their chief, took to the shore, but not before the Christians had lost many galleys and a host of brave men. Soon after the left had been engaged, the centre came into action. 'Ali Pasha made straight for Don John's _Reale_, and his beak rammed it as far in as the fourth bank of oars. Close by were Pertev Pasha and the _capitanas_ of Colonna and Veniero. The ships became entangled, and formed one large platform of war. Twice the Spaniards of the _Reale_ boarded the _Fanal_ of 'Ali Pasha as far as the mainmast, and twice they were driven back with terrible loss. 'Ali himself was preparing to leap upon Don John's galley when Colonna rammed him on the poop, penetrating as far as the third oar, and delivered a withering fire from his arquebuses. The Christians had all the advantage of armour and firearms, and fired behind bulwarks; the Turks were unprotected by cuirass or helmet or bulwark, and most of them had bows instead of guns. Colonna's volleys decided the fate of the _Fanal_, and 'Ali Pasha departed this life. An hour and a half had sufficed to disperse the Ottoman right and to overpower the flagship in chief. When the fleet saw the Christian ensign at the peak of the Turkish _capitana_ they redoubled their efforts: Veniero, severely wounded, still fought with the Seraskier Pertev Pasha; the Turks fled, and Pertev took to the land. In half an hour more Don John's centre was completely victorious. Then a new danger arose: Ochiali, seeing that Doria was well away to sea, sharply doubled back with all the right wing, and bore down upon the exhausted centre. He rushed upon the _capitana_ of Malta, and massacred every soul on board. Dragut is avenged! Juan de Cardona hastened to the rescue, and of his five hundred soldiers but fifty escaped; on the _Fiorenza_ seventeen men alone remained alive; and other terrible losses were incurred in the furious encounter. Upon this the ingenious Doria perceived that he had outwitted only his own cause, and at last turned back. The Marquis de Santa Cruz was already upon the enemy; Don John was after him with twenty galleys; Ochiali was outnumbered, and after a brilliant effort, made off in all haste for Santa Maura, bearing with him the Standard of "the Religion" to be hung up in St. Sophia. The battle of Lepanto is fought and won: the Turks have been utterly vanquished.[49] Well might the good Pope cry, as the preacher cried in St. Stephen's a century later when Sobieski saved Vienna,[50] "_There was a man sent from GOD, whose name was JOHN_."

The Turkish fleet was almost annihilate: one hundred and ninety galleys were captured, besides galleots, and fifteen more burnt or sunk; probably twenty thousand men had perished, including an appalling list of high dignitaries from all parts of the empire. The Christians lost seven thousand five hundred men, including many of the most illustrious houses of Italy and Spain. Cervantes, who commanded a company of soldiers on board the _Marquesa_, fortunately escaped with a wound in his left arm; and to many the Battle of Lepanto is familiar only from the magical pages of _Don Quixote_. Seventeen Venetian commanders were dead, and among them Vicenzo Quirini and the valiant, chivalrous, and venerable Proveditore Barbarigo. Sixty Knights of the diminished Order of St. John had given up the ghost. Twelve thousand Christian slaves were freed from the Ottoman galleys.

The brilliant young conqueror did not wear his well-earned laurels long. His statue was erected at Messina; his victory was the subject of Tintoret and Titian; he was received with ovations wherever he went. Two years later he recaptured Tunis. Then he was employed in the melancholy task of carrying on Alva's detestable work in Flanders. He inflicted a sanguinary defeat upon the Dutch at Gembloux, and then, struck down by fever, the young hero died on October 1, 1578, in his thirty-first year, the last of the great figures of medieval chivalry--a knight worthy to have been commemorated in the Charlemagne _gestes_ and to have sat at Arthur's Round Table with Sir Galahad himself.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] H. de Grammont, _La course, l'esclavage, et la redemption_; _Un pacha d'Alger_; _Hist. d'Algerie_.

[47] See _The Story of the Moors in Spain_, p. 278.

[48] See the complete list in Girolamo Catena, _Vita del gloriosissimo Papa Pio Quinto_, 1587.

[49] Read the admirable and graphic description of the battle in Jurien de la Graviere, _La Guerre de Chypre et la Bataille de Lepante_, ii., 149-205.

[50] See the _Story of Turkey_, 237.