The Story of the Barbary CorsairsLane-Poole, Stanley
History
The Story of the Barbary Corsairs
Lane-Poole, Stanley
Africa, North -- History -- 1517-1882; Pirates
[31] On Charles's expedition to Tunis, consult Marmol, Hājji Khalīfa,
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-dīn had
acquired an added influence at Stambol since the execution of the
Grand Vezīr Ibrahīm,[33] and he used it in exactly the opposite
direction. Ibrahīm, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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