Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean Part 10

Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, Corsair, Admiral, and King, the scourge of the Mediterranean, and Andrea Doria, Prince of Oneglia, Admiral of the modern Caesar, Charles V., Emperor and King, were at last to meet face to face.

CHAPTER XII

THE PREVESA CAMPAIGN; THE GATHERING OF THE FLEETS

Some thirty-five miles to the south-eastward of Cape Bianco (the southernmost point of the island of Corfu) lies Prevesa, at the entrance of the Gulf of Arta, or, as it was known in cla.s.sic times, the Ambracian Gulf.

In these seas, in the year 31 B.C., was fought one of the most memorable battles of antiquity, for it was here that Octavius, afterward Augustus Caesar, defeated the forces of Antony and Cleopatra. There have been many controversies of late years as to whom the original idea of breaking the line in naval combats is due: anyhow, it can claim a respectable antiquity, as it was practised at the battle of Actium by Octavius, who by a skilful manoeuvre caused Antony to lengthen his line, which he then cut through and attacked the ships of Cleopatra, which were in support: this was too much for the lady, who fled with her sixty ships, followed by Antony, to his eternal disgrace. The remainder of his fleet fought bravely for a time, but was eventually defeated, the land army also surrendering to Octavius. The date of the actual battle of Actium was September 2nd, 31 B.C.: it was in September 1538 that the battle of Prevesa between Andrea Doria and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa took place, and the conditions of the battle were almost exactly similar.

To this very place came, 1569 years later, the Christian and the Moslem, the Crescent and the Cross, each under its most renowned leader, each side burning with an inextinguishable hate. It was one of the peculiarities of this warfare that into it entered so much actual personal feeling, each side hating the other for the love of G.o.d in the most poisonous fashion.

Save and except the battle of Lepanto in 1571 (with which we shall deal later in the story of Ali Basha, or Occhiali as he was called by his Christian opponents) the contest at Prevesa was far the most important ever fought by those strange oar-propelled vessels known as galleys. It was memorable in many ways, but particularly so for the ages of the men in chief command. Andrea Doria was at this time seventy years of age; in fact, Guglielmotti gives the date of his birth as 1466, thus making him two years older. That amazing veteran Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, who died in his bed at Constantinople on July 4th, 1546, at the age of ninety, must have been eighty-two. Vicenzo Capello was sixty-eight, as the epitaph on his tomb at Venice in the church of Santa Maria Formosa says that he was seventy-two in the year of his death, 1542.

Once again Christendom was nerving itself for a supreme effort against the corsairs, and, during the time that Barbarossa was raiding and ravaging among the islands of the Archipelago, the Christian fleet was gradually a.s.sembling. At first it numbered some 150 galleys, 81 Venetian, 36 Pontifical, and 30 Spanish; Charles V. sent, at the last moment, 50 ships on which were embarked 10,000 troops. The force totalled altogether 59,000 to 60,000 men, 195 ships, and 2,594 cannons. This was no doubt a most formidable armada, but the policy of those by whom it was composed was not all directed to the same end. While Charles desired, above all things, to exterminate the corsairs for good and all, which was, in the circ.u.mstances, the only sound view of the matter, the Venetians were for fighting defensive actions to maintain their supremacy in the Ionian Islands, and were disposed to let the future take care of itself. There was not, in consequence, that absolute unanimity among the various commanders of the expedition as was necessary for its complete success.

The concentration of the Christian fleet took place at Corfu. The Venetians arrived first, with Vincenzo Capello in command; Marco Grimani brought thither the Papal contingent; they anch.o.r.ed and waited, but Andrea Doria did not appear. Days lengthened into weeks, and Grimani and Capelli chafed and fumed; provisions were running low and the dignity of Venice and of the Pope were flouted by this strange remissness on the part of the Admiral of the Emperor. At last, furious with impatience, Grimani made a raid into the Gulf of Arta, which was defended at the entrance by the fortress of Prevesa. The only result of this ill-timed attack was that two Papal captains and a number of soldiers were killed. Grimani then returned to Corfu, to find Capello irritated to the last extent by the non-appearance of Doria.

At last, on September 5th, the Imperial fleet hove in sight. It was composed of forty-nine galleys, but these were supplemented by a great number of sailing ships; the sailing craft, however, did not arrive till September 22nd. These vessels were gradually making way among the Spaniards since the discovery of the new world.

At this time the Venetians possessed fourteen nefs. Doria had augmented these by twenty-two of his own, and the total number of thirty-six was commanded by Franco Doria, a nephew of the admiral. The Venetian nefs were commanded by Alessandro Condalmiero, captain of the _Galleon of Venice_.

This was the most formidable fighting vessel in the Mediterranean; she was reckoned an excellent sailor, she was by far the most heavily armed sailing ship then afloat; in fact, in the opinion of contemporary seamen, she was "an invincible fortress."

Doria, Grimani, and Capello had now nearly 200 ships carrying nearly 60,000 men. Such a force, in all ages, has been considered great. William the Conqueror conquered Britain with a less number; it is almost half the total of the personnel of the British fleet in the present day which has to defend a country with 40,000,000 inhabitants, and all this force had been raised, armed, and equipped to combat with a Moslem corsair.

Barbarossa had succeeded in a.s.sembling 122 ships. He was accompanied by all the most famous corsairs of the day, among whom was Dragut, who fell at the siege of Malta, and of whom we shall have more to say in due time. Far and wide ranged the swift galleys of the Ottoman fleet, for the plan of the commander of the Moslems was to locate and destroy his enemies in detail if possible. At last news came to him that Grimani's ships had been sighted in the Gulf of Arta. Not one moment did he lose; he would fall upon the Papal contingent with his whole force and destroy it utterly. Such, at least, was his plan when he sailed for Prevesa; but, notwithstanding his haste, he was too late. Happily for himself, Grimani had returned to Corfu before the arrival of his enemy.

At this juncture Barbarossa hesitated; had he not done so, and had he followed Grimani to Corfu, he might have destroyed both him and Vincenzo Capello in detail before the arrival of Doria. The Prevesa campaign is a curious study of hesitation on both sides, and the idea naturally occurs were not the corsair and the Christian commanders-in-chief too old for the work on which they were engaged? Men of over seventy are not impetuous, but grave and deliberate as a rule; but there is no rule without its exceptions, and Doria and Barbarossa were not as other leaders. Up to the present their dash and initiative had been unimpaired. There was no question that Barbarossa not only made a mistake in hesitating, but that by it he lost the game. Instead of striking at once he did what he had never done before in the whole of his career, which was to send to Constantinople for instructions. Some of his galleys had captured a fishing-boat off Corfu, the crew of which had seen Doria's fleet. The Moslem leader sent the fishermen themselves to report to Soliman exactly what they had seen, and to ask for and bring back instructions from that potentate. What Barbarossa had discovered was that the odds were very much against him; so much, in fact, that he would have to act on the defensive. In consequence, he steered for Prevesa and entered the Gulf of Arta, which is approached by a long narrow strait, dominated by the castle of Prevesa. Once inside he anch.o.r.ed his galleys in such a position that they could fire direct out to sea, thus overwhelming with their fire any vessel attempting to enter.

Barbarossa now occupied the same position as did Octavius in his combat with Antony. The role of the latter general was now taken by Doria. Antony, like Doria, had heavy ships which could not advance to the attack owing to their too great draught. Octavius, with his light-draught ships, could both attack and retreat into safety if overmatched.

On September 22nd Doria, having collected all his ships, gave orders to fill up with wood, water, and fresh provisions. On the 25th, to the sound of the trumpet, the Commander-in-Chief, with his fleet of two hundred sail, weighed anchor and sped before the wind rapidly southwards. Grimani commanded the advance-guard, Doria was in the centre, Vincenzo Capello, with his Venetians, brought up the rear. Formed in two columns, the nefs followed the galleys; the _Galleon of Venice_, commanded by Condalmiero, a squadron in herself, preceded them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GALEa.s.sE UNDER SAIL.]

From the anchorage at Corfu to the entrance of the Gulf of Arta is about fifty-eight miles, and, traversing this distance during the hours of daylight, the fleet anch.o.r.ed, as night fell, under Cape Prevesa. The Galleon which acted as what we should now call the guide of the fleet, anch.o.r.ed in sixteen feet of water, which was barely sufficient to keep her afloat.

The Gulf of Arta, in which, as we have said, the fleet of the Moslems were now anch.o.r.ed, presents very curious physical peculiarities: it is twenty-two miles in length from east to west, and fifteen miles in breadth from north to south. This sheet of water is formed into an immense bay by the configuration of the land, and its depth, in places, is from one hundred and thirty to two hundred feet. Inside it all the navies in the world might ride at anchor, were it not for the fact that the entrance is closed by a bar upon which the depth varies from six and a half to thirteen feet. With his light-draught ships Barbarossa occupied the interior position, while the heavy ships of Doria must in any event remain outside.

A strong sea-breeze was blowing on sh.o.r.e; all night the nefs and the galleys were nearly rolling their gunwales under. In these packed and crowded vessels the misery and discomfort of their crews may be imagined.

On the morning of the 26th, however, the west wind dropped, and a light wind sprang up from the northward.

The position at this time was one of surpa.s.sing interest. Here at long last the two most renowned sea-captains of the time were face to face. Each was aware that his antagonist was worthy of his steel, also that great issues, political and national, hung upon this conflict; which was no mere affair of outposts, but a struggle to the death as to whether the Crescent or the Cross was in time to come to be supreme in the tideless sea. And yet--such is the irony of fate--this battle proved indecisive, and it was not until thirty years later, at the battle of Lepanto, that this momentous question was set at rest for a time.

Would Doria, greatly daring, go in and risk all in attacking a fortified position; or would Barbarossa make a sally and fight it out to the death on the element on which he was so supremely at home?

But Doria had no mind to attack a fleet anch.o.r.ed under the guns of a fortress; Barbarossa would not risk all in an encounter with a foe possessed of great numerical superiority without orders from Constantinople. On Doria's side nothing but a disembarkation and a land-attack would offer a fair security for success, Kheyr-ed-Din, who held, as we have said, the interior position, was well aware of this fact, and in this supreme moment of his career was not disposed to give away any advantage. The situation occupied by Kheyr-ed-Din at the battle of Prevesa was, in a sense, different from any which he had held before, as he was in this case hampered by his sense of responsibility as Admiralissimo to the Grand Turk. What happened on the distant sh.o.r.es of Africa mattered but little to that monarch, and he had been content to allow his admiral an entirely free hand; here in Europe, on the sh.o.r.es of Greece, so close relatively to his own capital city, it was a very different matter, and Soliman was kept in touch with the happenings of his fleet as far as was possible in those days. But if the great corsair did not add to his reputation in this eventful campaign he still displayed an apt.i.tude in realising the situation which, it is safe to say, was shown by none of those under his command.

Prevesa ill.u.s.trates for us more than any other action the difficulties with which the path of the partisan leader in these days must always have been filled; and how it was that personal ascendancy was the only force to which such a leader had to trust Sheer dominance of the minds, the wills, and the bodies of others had placed Kheyr-ed-Din where he was; all his life he had commanded undisciplined pirates, and yet now, when he was the properly accredited officer of a mighty monarch, when he might have expected far more discipline and subordination than had ever been his lot in the past, he was met with a contumaciousness which he was unable to quell, and was forced into taking steps which, in his own unequalled knowledge of war, he knew to be doomed to disaster.

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 ships 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 ships, 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 ships 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