Part 7 (1/2)
Naturally there were plenty of persons who carried reports to Kheyr-ed-Din, and that astute individual soon made up his mind as to the most advantageous course for him to pursue. With the full concurrence of the Sultan, he left Constantinople and journeyed to Aleppo to see Ibrahim. The latter was both cunning and tenacious. Removed from the capital, the tide of gossip and discontent only reached him at second-hand; but he was not to be deterred by popular clamour even had he been in the midst of it. None knew better than he who and what was Barbarossa; in fact, it may be confidently a.s.serted that none in Constantinople had anything like the same knowledge of this man and all that concerned him. Ibrahim had not named Barbarossa to his sovereign without weighing all the pros and cons of the matter, and that which was now happening in the capital had been fully antic.i.p.ated by him. It pleased the Grand Vizier very much that Kheyr-ed-Din should take this long journey to see him; not from any ridiculous idea that this was an act of homage due to the dignity of his position--Ibrahim was far too great a man for such pettiness--but because it enabled him to see for himself what manner of man was this redoubtable pirate on whom he was relying to defeat the enemies of the Sublime Porte at sea. The corsair must have made the most favourable impression possible on the Grand Vizier, as that statesman wrote to Soliman:
We have put our hands on a veritable man of the sea. Name him without hesitation Basha, Member of the Divan, Captain-General of the Fleet.
The Grand Turk had no intention of going back upon the appointment already made, but he was none the less pleased to receive from his Vizier so strong an endors.e.m.e.nt of his policy; and now the time had come to stop the mouths of the murmurers and scandal-mongers of Constantinople. Accordingly he formally recalled Barbarossa from Aleppo, gave him, with his own hand, a sword and a royal banner, and invested him with plenary power over all the ports of his kingdoms, over all the islands owning his jurisdiction, command of all s.h.i.+ps, vessels, and galleys, and of all soldiers, sailors, and slaves therein. The die was cast, the erstwhile corsair, the son of the renegado of Mitylene and his Christian wife was henceforward the supreme head of the Ottoman fleet.
The following description of the famous corsair may be found interesting at this juncture.
Barbarossa was at this time seventy-seven years of age. Courageous and prudent, he was as far-seeing in war as he was subtle in peace. A tireless worker, he was, above all things, constant in reverse of fortune, for no difficulties dismayed him, no dangers had power to daunt his spirit. His ruddy skin, his bushy eyebrows, his famous red beard, now plentifully streaked with white, his square, powerful frame, somewhat inclined to stoutness, above all, his penetrating and piercing eyes, gave to his aspect a certain terror before which men trembled and women shrank appalled.
All this harmonised well with his reputation as a chief so resolute, so pitiless, that it was the boast of his followers that his very name shouted in battle put to flight the Christian vessels. His smile was fine and malicious, his speech facile, revealing beneath the rude exterior of the corsair the subtle man of affairs, who, from nothing, had made himself King of Algiers, and was now, by the invitation of Soliman the Magnificent, Admiralissimo of the Ottoman navy.
Well may Jurien de la Graviere say that ”in the sixteenth century even the pirates were great men.”
It has been stated that in speech Barbarossa was facile. He was not only so, but he possessed a power of addressing such a man as Soliman in terms which, while delicately flattering that mighty monarch, gave him also a lead which he might follow in the future disposition of such power as he possessed at sea.
On his return from Aleppo Kheyr-ed-Din was received in audience by the Sultan. We must be pardoned if we give the long speech which he addressed to his new master in its entirety; and we have to remember that the man who made it was now an old man who, all his life, had been absolutely free and untrammelled, owing allegiance to no one, following out his own caprices, and sweeping out of his path any whom he found sufficiently daring as to disagree with him. That this ruthless despot should have been able so to change the whole style and manner of his address so late in life is only one proof the more of the marvellous gifts which he possessed.
It was in the following words that the corsair addressed the Sultan:
Dread Sovereign, fortune itself has made it a law to second you in all your enterprises because that you are always ready to declare war upon the enemies of Mahomet the Prophet of G.o.d, on whom be peace. You have extended the limits of your vast possessions, you have vanquished and slain the King of Hungary, you have humiliated Charles V., this Emperor with whom the Christians dare hold you in comparison. These have been the recompenses received by you for the pure flame with which your zeal for the religion of Mahomet has ever burned.
”But these successes and these triumphs are not capable of contenting that thirst for glory with which your being is animated, and I am humbly desirous of indicating to you the means of culling fresh laurels.
Experience has taught me the way, and I can a.s.sert, without fear of being accused of vanity, that in this matter I can be of great a.s.sistance to your Majesty.
”That which fortune has done for me in the past that will it continue to do for me in the future. Age has not enfeebled me, continual exercise has but rendered me stronger; I can therefore promise to you the most ready service both by land and sea. The desire which has always been mine to persecute the Christians caused me to conceive the idea of serving in your sea-army.
”If Heaven is favourable to my vows, the Spaniards will soon be chased from Africa; the Carthaginians, the Moors, will soon be your very submissive subjects; Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, will obey your will. As for Italy, it will soon be desolated by famine when I attack it in formidable force, without fearing that the Christian Princes will come to its aid.
”Mahomet II., your ill.u.s.trious grandfather, formed the project of conquering this country; he would have succeeded had he not been carried off by death. If I counsel you, dread Sovereign, that you should carry war into Europe and Africa, it is not that I desire your arms should be turned back in Asia from against the Persians, the ancient enemies of the Ottomans. I require but your sea-army, which is no use against the Persians. While you shall be conquering Asia I shall be subduing Africa. The first enterprise which I shall undertake will be against Muley Ha.s.san, the King of Tunis; he has all the vices and possesses not one single virtue. He is a man of sordid avarice, of unexampled cruelty; he has rendered himself odious to the entire human race.
”He had twenty-two brothers, all of whom he has caused to be murdered.
That which is a common failing among tyrants is his: he dare not place himself at the head of his troops. He prefers to endure the outrages which he suffers at the hands of the Moors to taking up arms and inflicting upon them a salutary vengeance. He had the baseness to enter into an alliance with the Spaniards, and to favour their conquests in Africa. It will be all the easier for me to exterminate this wild beast because I have with me his brother, who prayed me to save him from the cruelty of Muley Ha.s.san.
”When I besiege Tunis I shall present him to the inhabitants, who love him as much as they hate Muley Ha.s.san. They will open their gates to me, and I shall gain the town without the loss of a single man: it will be then you who will be master. On my way thither I will do what harm I can to the Christians; I will endeavour to defeat Andrea Doria, who is my personal enemy and my rival in glory: should I succeed in defeating him your Majesty will possess the empire of the sea. Be then persuaded, great Prince, by me, and believe that he who is master of the sea will very shortly become master on land.”
It is somewhat difficult to fathom the reasons which induced Barbarossa to treat Soliman to his sanctimonious diatribe concerning the King of Tunis; coming, as it did, from a pirate, it was merely ludicrous, and could not for one instant have deceived the remarkably shrewd person to whom it was addressed. The corsair stated the facts correctly, but the reasons which led to an Eastern autocrat disposing of his family in this manner were so obvious at the time that, if Soliman felt any emotion at all concerning the event, it was probably one of admiration! Regarded from the practical, apart from the sentimental side, what the proposition amounted to was that Barbarossa should attack a king with whom the Grand Turk had no sort of quarrel, and that, once his territory had been reft from him, that it should be handed over to the ruler of Constantinople for the greater glory of the Sublime Porte. What mental reservations there were on the part of the corsair we are not told, but had Soliman known him better he would have been aware that never had Barbarossa pulled any chestnuts from the fire of life which were not intended for his own eating; and that it was extremely unlikely, at his time of life, that he was now going to alter the habits of his long and strenuous career.
There was one thing, however, that Kheyr-ed-Din was not; he was no bragger or boaster, and, whatever may have been his mental reservations in his interview with the Sultan, that which he stated he would do, that he did.
And now the time had come when the grim old Sea-wolf had done with intrigue and the unaccustomed atmosphere of a Court and went back to his native element, the sea.
Soliman, it must be said to his credit, was no man to deal in half-measures, and when once he had given his trust he gave it whole-heartedly, generously. In consequence he gave Barbarossa eighty galleys, eight hundred Janissaries, eight thousand Turkish soldiers, and eight hundred thousand ducats for expenses (some three hundred thousand pounds sterling of our money). All the necessary preparations were carried out under the orders of Barbarossa, who was given a roving commission to do what seemed best to him for the advancement of the glory of his master and the discomfiture of his Christian foes. The commission which he now received was practically that which had been given by Charles V. to Doria, the most flattering with which any man can be entrusted, as in his hands were left issues of peace and war usually only vested in the sovereign.
All through the early summer of 1534 the dockyards and the a.r.s.enals of Constantinople hummed with the note of preparation; Ibrahim had returned from Aleppo and threw himself, heart and soul, into these activities, which meant the sailing of the Ottoman fleet under the command of ”that veritable man of the sea,” Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. Stilled were the murmurs of the year before; the corsair, invested with plenary powers by the Sultan himself, was now in a position to make his authority felt; added to this, the more sensible of the malcontents had been won round by the Grand Vizier to the view that as, so far, the Ottoman navy had been conspicuously unsuccessful at sea, it was just as well to make use of the most capable Moslem seaman upon whom they could lay their hands. As to his moral character, that they could afford to discount, and as to the question of his faithfulness or the reverse, it was pointed out with irresistible logic by Ibrahim, that never before had the Sea-wolf had such glorious opportunities of plunder as now, when he could count ten s.h.i.+ps for every one that had followed in his wake before.
It was in July 1534 that the Ottoman fleet left Constantinople, and Kheyr-ed-Din began operations by a descent upon Reggio, which he sacked. On August 1st he arrived at the Pharos of Messina, where he burnt some Christian s.h.i.+ps and captured their crews; then he worked north from Reggio to Naples, ravaging the coast and depopulating the whole littoral, burning villages, destroying s.h.i.+ps, enslaving people. In this expedition he is said to have captured eleven thousand Christian slaves. There is perhaps nothing more amazing in the whole history of this epoch than the number of the slaves captured by the corsairs, and the d.a.m.nable cruelties exercised upon them; these were, of course returned by the Christians with interest whenever possible. As an instance of the treatment to which the slaves were subjected it is only necessary to mention the course taken by Barbarossa when he left Algiers in the previous year. There were at that time seven thousand Christian captives in his power; immediately before starting he had the entire number paraded before him, and, under the pretext of having discovered a plot, which in no circ.u.mstances could possibly have existed, owing to the supervision of the slaves, he caused twenty of them to be beheaded on the spot in order to strike terror into the remainder during his absence.
Back to the Golden Horn streamed s.h.i.+p after s.h.i.+p laden with plunder and with slaves. ”The veritable man of the sea” was proving the correctness of the choice of the Sultan, the ac.u.men of the Grand Vizier who had recommended his appointment. Barbarossa was determined to leave nothing undone to prove to Soliman that his choice had indeed been a worthy one when he had selected him as admiral of his fleet: also he had in his mind those others who spoke slightingly of him as ”the African pirate”; they should know as well as their master of what this pirate was capable.