Part 6 (2/2)

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

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

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

The fact of his known cruelty accounts for much of the dread which he inspired, but it was something far more than this which caused the son of the Albanian renegado to ride roughshod as he did over all with whom he was brought into contact. Men felt, in dealing with Barbarossa, that here was a rock against which they might dash themselves in vain. In all his enterprises he spared not himself. He asked no man to do that which he was not prepared to do, but if any failed him there was no mercy for that man; and, although in deference to modern susceptibility no mention is made of the tortures he so frequently caused to be inflicted on his victims, they were none the less a daily spectacle to those who lived under his rule. He possessed, it is true, the rough geniality of the fighting man, a certain ”Hail fellow, well met!” manner in greeting old comrades, and yet none of these men there were who did not tremble in an agony of fear when the bushy brows were bent, when the famous red beard bristled in one of his uncontrollable furies. The real secret of his success must have been that, no matter how uncontrollable did his pa.s.sions appear to be, the man was always really master of himself. Further, he possessed a marvellous insight as to where his own interests lay. He used as his tools the bodies and the minds of the men who were subject to him, and he carried his designs to an a.s.sured success by the aid of that penetrating, far-seeing mental power with which, above all else, he must have been gifted. He could drive men, he could lead them, he could invariably persuade when all else failed him.

In this we have had an instance when he was chased from Algiers by the combined efforts of Venalcadi and Ha.s.san, whom he had flogged; for no sooner did he meet with other corsairs than he persuaded them to take up his quarrel--which, it must be understood, was none of theirs--and to replace him on that precarious throne from which he had been so rudely thrust. We have already said that he was a man who never knew when he was beaten, and in the years which we have yet to chronicle this characteristic appears again and again; for age had no effect apparently, either mentally or physically, on this man of iron who had by this time reached the age of seventy-seven.

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

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

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

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

Ceremonial was the order of the day. Soliman the Magnificent was too wise a man not to know what was being said in his capital that day; it was his part to accustom the minds of men to the fact that he, Soliman, had chosen Barbarossa to command his fleet, and that there could be no looking back.

The decree had been signed, the invitation had been sent, the man had arrived, there could be no possible retreat from the situation. The anchors splashed into the placid waters close to the sh.o.r.e, and the s.h.i.+ps were soon so surrounded by boats as to be almost unapproachable; then came official persons from the Sultan with greetings to the famous seaman; also came Bashas and officers (”con carga de guerra,” says Sandoval), to offer a welcome and to stare in undisguised curiosity at the man chosen by their sovereign to make head against the famous Andrea Doria. This preliminary courtesy completed, there came the next act in the drama, which consisted in the immemorial custom of the East in the offering of gifts from Barbarossa to the Sultan, from the va.s.sal to his suzerain. The Janissaries, splendid in scarlet and gold, tall above the ordinary stature of man, bristling with weapons inlaid in gold and silver, cleared the common vulgar from the streets approaching the palace of the Sultan; they formed the spearhead of the procession clearing a way for the King of Algiers, who, mounted on a splendid bay stallion, the gift of the Sultan on his arrival, headed the captives who bore the gifts. Of these the exact number is not stated, but the procession was headed by two hundred women and girls, each of whom carried in her hand a gift of gold or silver; one hundred camels were loaded with silks and golden ornaments, and other ”curious riches”

(”con otras mil cosas de que hizo ostentacion”), says Sandoval. There were also lions and other animals, brocades and rich garments.

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

The Sultan Soliman was not called ”the Magnificent” without just cause; his life was splendid in its social prodigality, as it was in war and in statesmans.h.i.+p; yet even he was somewhat astonished at the amazing richness of the gifts which were laid at his feet by a man whom he knew to be, in spite of the kingly t.i.tle which he had a.s.sumed, merely a rover of the sea.

Therefore, in spite of himself, he was impressed. To him, it is true, in his splendour and magnificence, the intrinsic value of that which was brought to him by Barbarossa mattered but little; but the fact that the corsair was in a position to do so opened the eyes of the Sultan to the manner of man with whom he had to deal. Hitherto he had but known of him by hearsay, as the one Moslem seaman who was likely to be capable of making a stand against the terrible Doria, who had now become the plague of the Sultan's existence. He now knew that the man who disposed of such incredible riches must be, no matter what his moral character, a man who stood a head and shoulders over any commander in the Ottoman fleet sailing out of the Golden Horn.

Both materially and psychologically this man somewhat bewildered the despot: and his _alter ego_, the Grand Vizier, happening to be away on a mission to Aleppo, Soliman had no one with whom to confer in a strictly confidential manner; for, after the manner of autocrats, he had but few familiars, in fact it may be said none at all save the statesman mentioned.

His reception of the corsair lacked, however, nothing in cordiality. He inquired after the incidents of the voyage, interested himself graciously in all that he was told concerning Africa and the conflicting claims of Christian and Moslem in that region, and was generally courteous to his distinguished visitor. He placed at his disposal a palace and attendants on a scale commensurate with the state of a reigning sovereign, and sent his most distinguished generals to confer with Kheyr-ed-Din. The latter, for the first time in his life, was thoroughly out of his element. His had been the life of the seaman and the soldier to begin with, and of later years that of a rude and unquestioned despot on a savage coast, surrounded by myrmidons to whom his voice had been as the voice of a G.o.d. Never had it been his lot before to dwell within the limits of such a comparative civilisation as that which obtained in Constantinople at this date; never before had it been necessary for him to restrain that naturally fiery and impetuous temper of his and to speak all men fairly.

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

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

CHAPTER VIII

THE RAID ON THE COAST OF ITALY; JULIA GONZAGA

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

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

The man had been found; could he be forced on an unwilling and discontented populace? Who, it was asked in Constantinople, was this man who had been called in to command the s.h.i.+ps of the Ottomans at sea? They answered their own question, and said that he was a lawless man, a corsair: were there not good seamen and valiant men-at-arms like the Bashas Zay and Himeral, who should be preferred before him; this man who had come from the ends of the earth, and of whom n.o.body knew anything good? Again, could he be trusted?

Something of the history of the Barbarossas had penetrated to the capital of Turkey, and it was known that scrupulous adherence to their engagements had not always characterised the brothers: who should say that he might not carry off the galleys of the Grand Turk on some marauding expedition designed for his own aggrandis.e.m.e.nt? There was yet more to be urged against him: not only was he infamous in character, but he was no true Mussulman, for had not his father been a mere renegado, and--worst of all--had not his mother been a Christian woman?

It was thus that the talk ran in that blazing autumn in Constantinople.

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