Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
By this time the fame of the Barbarossas had gone abroad from Valencia to Constantinople, from Rome to the foot hills of the Atlas Mountains, and, to circumvent the Genoese garrison of Jigelli, Kheyr-ed-Din called to his aid the savage Berber tribes of the hinterland of this part of Northern Africa.
The real fact of the matter was that he was above all and before all a seaman. The defeat of Kheyr-ed-Din meant merely the transference of his malign activities from one sphere to another from the sea to the land, or from the land to the sea.
Cagliari, in Sardinia, was the last rendezvous of the expedition, and here it arrived in the early part of June, where a week was spent in making the final preparations; and at last, on June 10th, a start was made for the coast of Africa. Meanwhile in Tunis Kheyr-ed-Din was working double tides.
"Terrible as an army with banners," indeed, was Kheyr-ed-Din in this eventful summer: things had gone badly with the crescent flag, the Padishah was unapproachable in his palace, brooding perchance on that "might have been" had he not sold his honour and the life of his only friend to gratify the malice of a she-devil; those in attendance on the Sultan trembled, for the humour of the despot was black indeed.
It was provoking to be obliged to beach his galleots a mile to the west, and to drag them painfully up the strand; and the merchantmen, moored east of the city, were exposed to the weather to such a degree as to imperil their commerce. Kheyr-ed-dīn resolved to have a port of his own at Algiers, with no Spanish bridle to curb him.
But however this may have been, there was an end for all time of Spanish domination on the north coast of Africa, and from this we may date the permanent establishment of those piratical States in that part of the world. The star of Kheyr-ed-Din was once more in the ascendant.
The Spaniards destroyed four piratical vessels which had been abandoned by their crews at Bizerta, and pushed a strong reconnaissance into the Bay of Tunis itself. Here shots were exchanged between the Spanish fleet and the forts under which Kheyr-ed-Din had drawn up his ships and the Spaniards then abandoned the enterprise and returned from whence they had come.
Soliman had the wit to know that he had no mariner who was in any way comparable to Doria; he was also aware that Kheyr-ed-Din had risen from nothing to his present position by his sheer ability as a seaman.
Selim was much pleased at the attention, coming as it did from such a distance we have to remember that the coast of North Africa was an immense journey from Constantinople in those days and the insight of Kheyr-ed-Din was triumphantly vindicated.
Despots as were such men as Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa and Dragut, they were none the less dependent on the goodwill of their followers. If, therefore, they decided on a desperate enterprise, they appealed to the fighting instincts, the cupidity, and the fanaticism of these men.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking