Part 10 (2/2)
Around him the Reis, or captains of the Moslem galleys, clamorously demanded that he should take precautions against a land-attack. It was true that the raid which had been made by Grimani had been easily repulsed, but in present circ.u.mstances there was no question of a mere raid, as, should the Christian admiral so decide, he could land twenty thousand men. Sinan Reis, an old Osmanli warrior, furious with jealousy that the chief command should be in the hands of a corsair, sustained his opinion in a manner which augured ill for the hearty co-operation of all the Turkish forces.
Sinan was just one of those blindly valiant fighters from whom the politic Ibrahim had desired to deliver his master when he had urged the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din: brave as a lion, keen as the edge of his own good scimitar, fanatical, as became a Hodja who had visited the Holy Places, Sinan was a type of the Turkish sea-officer: devoid of strategical instinct and tactical training, his one idea was a headlong attack, then victory or the houris of Paradise. It will be seen that Barbarossa had not only Doria and the Christian fleet and army against which to contend on this occasion.
The peril conjured up by Sinan Reis on this occasion was not altogether an imaginary one: the idea of a disembarkation had, in point of fact, been seriously discussed that very morning by Andrea Doria and his council of war, at which Hernando de Gonzaga, Generalissimo of the troops embarked, had advised a landing. His argument, embodied in a long and technical harangue, may be reduced to the following:
If we cannot go straight at the enemy and force our way through the entrance under his cannon why should we not reduce the fortress of Prevesa by a siege? Once masters of this height, we could close the strait by sinking in it vessels laden with stones, and we then have the Ottoman fleet at our mercy.
But Doria the sailor was not to be led by Gonzaga the soldier. He said:
The advice seems sound, but in reality it would prove most dangerous if followed. Barbarossa must have landed some of his men, the cavalry which defeated Grimani's raid will no doubt come again from the interior, if necessary. If we deprive our s.h.i.+ps of their soldiers we expose ourselves to a sea-fight under most disadvantageous conditions. But most, important of all is the fact that time presses; the season is far advanced; at any time the fleet may be driven off these sh.o.r.es by a storm, in which case what would become of the troops left on sh.o.r.e?
Again, if it comes on to blow a tempest from the westward we may lose not only our troops, but our s.h.i.+ps, in fact the whole expedition.
At the battle of Actium, Octavius occupied the sh.o.r.e upon which Hernando Gonzaga wished to land and a.s.sault; but notwithstanding this fact Octavius did not attempt the pa.s.sage of the gulf but waited for his enemy outside.
Doria was therefore all the more justified in not sacrificing s.h.i.+ps and men in attempting to force an entrance now that this same sh.o.r.e was in the hands of the enemy. He was asked, he said, to thrust his head into the mouth of the wolf, and this he was determined not to do.
In the meanwhile Barbarossa was using much the same language to his captains as was Doria.
”My brothers,” said he, ”you wish to transport cannon and raise redoubts on this uncovered sh.o.r.e because you think that the Christians will disembark and seize it: if you attempt this I tell you that the guns of the enemy will annoy you terribly., Not only this, supposing that Doria, profiting by the moment that our vessels are empty of troops, should attack in force, we cannot with five thousand men repulse twenty thousand. The fort of Prevesa will defend itself quite sufficiently well with its own garrison; our business is to think of the fleet and not to weaken in any way our means of attack and defence, If the infidels force, or attempt to force, an entry into the port, they will be most likely merely losing time and ammunition in cannonading us. You know that it is princ.i.p.ally in this that these accursed dogs do trust, whereas we, O men of Islam, will place our confidence in G.o.d, in Mahomet his Prophet, in the strength of our right arms, in the keenness of our scimitars; we will carry them by boarding, therefore we must keep our crews on board,”
But Barbarossa had not that absolute domination of the forces under his command which should be the prescriptive right of any leader. Sinan-Reis, the implacable be-turbaned old Osmanli, held him in bitter scorn. ”Your advice may be good,” he retorted, ”but we think our plan the better.”
The admiral suggested a reconnaissance of the site, which was merely a ruse to gain time. This was carried out under his own supervision, and confirmed him in the idea that disembarkation was folly; but Sinan-Reis and the Janissaries held obstinately to their opinion, while the ”Joldaks,” or Turkish soldiers in the galleys, grumbled among themselves that Kheyr-ed-Din must indeed be full of vanity to reject the counsels of one like Sinan-Reis.
Both commanders-in-chief, Christian and Moslem, seem on this occasion to have taken an absolutely correct view of the problem as it was presented; but whereas Andrea Doria was a real commander-in-chief, Barbarossa was forced to consider and to defer to the opinions of men whom he knew to be in the wrong.
It was against his better judgment that Kheyr-ed-Din at last yielded; the men were backing up their officers, a spirit of disaffection was abroad in the armada: such a thing as this a wise chief must gauge at its true value, and stop before it goes too far. The Osmanli were murmuring against ”the corsair”; it was time to let them see whether they or their war-worn leader possessed the greater wisdom.
According to Moslem chroniclers the valour of Kheyr-ed-Din was only equalled by his piety; consequently he murmured a prayer into that famous beard of his, which was now so much nearer to white than red, and gave orders that the cannon shall be immediately disembarked. ”Let the will of G.o.d and of His Prophet be accomplished; that which is written is that which will take place,” exclaimed this pious man as he watched the preparations being carried out under the supervision of Mourad-Reis.
That which ”took place” was precisely and exactly what the Commander-in- Chief had predicted from the first: no sooner had Mourad-Reis landed upon the exposed beach, and attempted to open a trench, than he was met by a furious and concentrated fire from the galleys and nefs of the Christian fleet. To entrench themselves was impossible in the circ.u.mstances, as they had been told by the Admiral before they started on this harebrained adventure. There could be only one result, which was that, after a cruel and perfectly useless slaughter, the soldiers of Mourad-Reis had to retreat before the hail of shot poured upon them, and to return ignominiously to their vessels.
It is not on record what Kheyr-ed-Din said to Sinan, Mourad, and those other tacticians who had recommended the landing; which perhaps is a pity.
Doria then made a tentative movement against the strait by a detachment of galleys; Barbarossa told off an equal number to oppose them, and they mutually cannonaded and skirmished during the day. There was much noise and excitement, but practically no advantage was gained by either side, as Doria's men could not risk pa.s.sing the guns of the fort, nor could those of Barbarossa the chance of being cannonaded by the heavy vessels lying in wait-for them outside. And so the day closed down with no success on either side, but with a decisive demonstration to the Moslems that, if they desired victory, to their admiral had better be left the organisation by which it was to be obtained.
Whether Doria really desired a pitched battle can never be known; that which is certain is that, during the whole time the fleets were in touch, all his dispositions make it appear there was nothing of which he was so much afraid. And yet it was the opportunity of his life; he had superiority in numbers, he had valiant and experienced leaders, and sixty thousand men thirsting for battle, under his command. Also he had his opportunity, which, had he seized upon, must have ended in victory, did those who were under his orders only fight as he had every reason to believe that they would. As it was, he threw away the gift of fortune, and left to the Osmanli the practical dominance of the Mediterranean Sea until that great day in 1571 when Don John of Austria, the natural son of Charles V., proved to the world at Lepanto that the Turk was not invincible upon the waters.
It is true that Doria was awkwardly situated; Kheyr-ed-Din held the interior position, and that leader was a great believer in the adage that ”if Brag is a good dog, Holdfast is a better.” He was well aware of his numerical inferiority, and in consequence refused to listen to the frenzied appeals of the excited Moslems to be led against the Christian dogs. It may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of the moral courage of a pirate; but if ever that quality were displayed to its fullest extent it was exhibited by Barbarossa in the Prevesa campaign. In his intellectual outlook on all that was pa.s.sing, both inside and outside of the Gulf of Arta, in this September of 1538, we see Kheyr-ed-Din at his best. Ever a fighter, he knew when to give battle and when to refrain, when to sweep headlong upon the foe, but also when to hold back and to baffle by waiting till the psychological moment should arrive. Around him Sinan-Reis, Mourad-Reis, and half a hundred others of their kidney were clamouring; they hurled insults at his head, they heaped opprobrium on ”the corsair,”
they practically incited their troops to mutiny in their mad appeals to be led against the foe.
But ”the corsair” kept his head, and kept his temper, and saved the Ottoman fleet for his master from his great rival, Doria. That n.o.ble Genoese seaman was for once in his life ”letting I dare not wait upon I would”; he would not order the attack for which his men were waiting, and no provocation, apparently, could tempt Barbarossa to play Antony to the Octavius of Doria; the Christian admiral was tempting Providence at that advanced season of the year in keeping the sea on an hostile coast on which at any time he might be driven by a tempest. His old and experienced antagonist was well aware that the winds and the waves might save him the trouble of destroying the fleet of the enemy; an equinoctial gale would do that far more effectually than could he. If Doria had an uneasy consciousness that he might at any time see the sh.o.r.e littered with oarless galleys and dismasted nefs, while the sea was filled with drowning men, the same vision had been vouchsafed to his imperturbable adversary. Had it been left to the entire initiative of Barbarossa, his Fabian tactics would a.s.suredly have prevailed in the end; but as it was he was surrounded by a clamouring host of men, soldiers by trade, who, understanding nothing of the happenings of the sea, merely derided as cowardice any postponement of what they regarded as the inevitable battle. The admiral of the Sultan held out as long as it was possible, but at last, owing to a new factor in the case, was forced, against his better judgment, to offer the battle which it was in his power to have withheld.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BATTLE OF PREVESA
<script>