Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean Part 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On May 12th arrived Don Alvaro de Bazan, General of the Galleys of Spain.

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.]

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

The catalogue of those in the _Galera b.a.s.t.a.r.da_ makes one rather wonder how there was room for anything else of more practical usefulness when it came to fighting. There were in this galley twenty-four yellow damask banners, inscribed with the imperial arms; a pennon at the main of crimson taffeta of immense length and breadth, with a golden crucifix embroidered thereon.

Two similar ones bore s.h.i.+elds with the arms of the Emperor, and there was a huge flag of white damask sewn with representations of keys, communion chalices, and the cross of Saint Andrew, in crimson, with a Latin inscription. There were yet two others of scarlet damask "of the same grandeur," embroidered round the edge with "Plus Ultra," the device of Spain. Among a further varied a.s.sortment was one which bore the inscription: "Send, O G.o.d, thine angel to guard him in all his goings."

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

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

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

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

There was no artifice left untried by the despot of Tunis. To the African princes, Moors as well as Arabs and Berbers, did Kheyr-ed-Din send emba.s.sies. For these he chose cunning men well versed in the means of exciting the furious pa.s.sions of these primitive and ferocious peoples, and it was their mission to represent Muley Ha.s.san as an infamous apostate who was prompted by ambition and revenge, not only to become the va.s.sal of a Christian king, but to conspire with him to extirpate the Mohammedan faith.

The subtle policy inflamed these ignorant and bigoted Mohammedans to the point of madness, and from far and near they threw in their lot with the man who represented himself to be the rallying-point for all those in Africa who desired not only to preserve their holy religion but also their personal liberty. From Tripoli and Jerba, from Bougie and Bona, from the sh.o.r.es of Shott-el-Jerid, through all the dim hinterland that stretches from thence north-westwards to Algiers, the tribesmen came flocking in. The wild riders of the desert had been rounded up, and it is said that no less than twenty thousand hors.e.m.e.n, in addition to an innumerable crowd of infantry, responded to the call of the master schemer who was but using these guileless savages to further his own personal ends. The land-pirates of the desert, those stormy petrels whose lives only differed from those of the followers of Kheyr-ed-Din in that they carried on their depredations on the land instead of on the sea, camped in their thousands in the environs of Tunis and boasted of the deeds which they were about to perform.

Kheyr-ed-Din stimulated their enthusiasm with presents of the most costly description. Ever wise and politic, he knew when it was necessary to pay royally, and on this occasion surpa.s.sed himself in prodigality. For all this he himself cherished no illusions; he had the measure of the fighting men of his foes at his fingers' ends, and the most that he expected from these wild irregulars was that they might, perchance, stay an onset and worry the imperial army with das.h.i.+ng cavalry raids. But that they should hold their own with the incomparable infantry of Spain, or make head against the stolid valour of the German men-at-arms, was not contemplated by Barbarossa. In his Janissaries, in his hard-bitten fighting men from the galleys, he could expect much; but there were but some few thousands of these, while the disciplined host against which he was called upon to combat was at the least twenty-five thousand--the flower of the imperial forces. The situation was unique, one on which the world had never looked before--all the might of Christendom going up against one who, no matter by what t.i.tles he might choose to describe himself, was no more than a vulgar robber. He was, however, a robber on such a scale as had never before been equalled--a force which remained unsubdued during the whole of his extraordinary and unusually protracted career.

CHAPTER X

THE FALL OF TUNIS AND THE FLIGHT OF BARBAROSSA

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

The autocracy of the Emperor apparently stopped short where women were concerned, or else he was indifferent whether they came or not.

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

Although the army was landed, and with it artillery for the bombardment of the Goletta, there remained, of course, "the army of the sea," under the orders of the redoubtable Doria; and while the Marquis del Guasto, who was in supreme command on sh.o.r.e, prepared to batter down the defences of the fortress on the land side, the attack was carried on simultaneously from the sea by the galleys. The actual presence of the Emperor stimulated the various nationalities under his eyes to vie with one another in deeds of daring, and they contended among themselves for the posts of the most honour and danger. The attacks of the African hors.e.m.e.n were brushed on one side by the disciplined valour of the Andalusian cavalry, while the great guns thundered from land and sea against the walls of the doomed Goletta.

Sinan and his Ottoman soldiers performed prodigies in the way of repairing breaches in the walls as soon as they were made; but Kheyr-ed-Din from the city watched the progress of the bombardment gloomily, as he saw and knew that the fall of the Goletta was but a matter of days. All this time he was far from idle; sortie after sortie did the dauntless old warrior lead in person against those engaged in the task of bombardment. Time and again he heartened the Arab and Berber levies to attack, but the sallies were repulsed, and the lightly armed Africans were driven like chaff before the wind when they swooped down on the lines of investment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The preamble of the treaty runs as follows:

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

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

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: MULEY Ha.s.sAN, KING OF TUNIS.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

On August 17th Charles re-embarked his army and evacuated the country, leaving, however, one thousand Spanish veterans, under the command of Bernard de Mendoza, in charge of the Goletta, as a permanent memorial of the expedition, and as a guarantee that the wretched Muley Ha.s.san should fully comply with the treaty obligations which had been imposed upon him.

It is true that Barbarossa had not been captured, but his city had been taken, his fleet had been destroyed, and he himself was now a fugitive, unable any further to trouble the peace of Christendom or the dignity of the Emperor by whom he had been so soundly chastised. In consequence the Caesar departed well pleased with himself and with those who had been acting under his orders, to whom he distributed orders and t.i.tles, as a memento of the occasion upon which they had finally broken up the power of those by whom his peace had so long been troubled.

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

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