Kheyr-ed-Din, among his other qualities, possessed in the highest degree that of a successful stage-manager; no pageant which he undertook was ever likely to fail from the want of the striking and the dramatic. It was now his business to impress the citizens of Constantinople with an idea of his greatness, and none knew better than he that it is the outward and visible sign which counts among the orientals, more perhaps than the inward and spiritual grace: he may also possibly have felt that he did not possess the latter to any overwhelming extent.
Even before he left Algiers this entry to the chief city of the Ottoman Empire had been in the mind of Barbarossa, who had caused to be embarked a quantity of flags and pennons for the decoration of his grim war-galleys when they should stream into the Golden Horn. There were also bands of music, which, it is to be presumed, utilised the delay in the Dardanelles to attain to something like “a concord of sweet sounds,” as the incidents of the voyage from Algiers, so far, had hardly been conducive to much time to spare for band-practice. The galleys were scrubbed and gaily painted; round the ship of Kheyr-ed-Din ran a broad streak of gold on the outer planking to denote the presence of a King of Algiers, and at last all was ready. The fleet weighed anchor, and, with banners flying and bands playing, entered the harbour. The shores were black with spectators; even the Sultan himself deigned to look forth on the coming of the man from whom he expected such great things.
Ceremonial was the order of the day. Soliman the Magnificent was too wise a man not to know what was being said in his capital that day; it was his part to accustom the minds of men to the fact that he, Soliman, had chosen Barbarossa to command his fleet, and that there could be no looking back. The decree had been signed, the invitation had been sent, the man had arrived, there could be no possible retreat from the situation. The anchors splashed into the placid waters close to the shore, and the ships were soon so surrounded by boats as to be almost unapproachable; then came official persons from the Sultan with greetings to the famous seaman; also came Bashas and officers (“con carga de guerra,” says Sandoval), to offer a welcome and to stare in undisguised curiosity at the man chosen by their sovereign to make head against the famous Andrea Doria. This preliminary courtesy completed, there came the next act in the drama, which consisted in the immemorial custom of the East in the offering of gifts from Barbarossa to the Sultan, from the vassal to his suzerain. The Janissaries, splendid in scarlet and gold, tall above the ordinary stature of man, bristling with weapons inlaid in gold and silver, cleared the common vulgar from the streets approaching the palace of the Sultan; they formed the spearhead of the procession clearing a way for the King of Algiers, who, mounted on a splendid bay stallion, the gift of the Sultan on his arrival, headed the captives who bore the gifts. Of these the exact number is not stated, but the procession was headed by two hundred women and girls, each of whom carried in her hand a gift of gold or silver; one hundred camels were loaded with silks and golden ornaments, and other “curious riches” (“con otras mil cosas de que hizo ostentacion”), says Sandoval. There were also lions and other animals, brocades and rich garments.
All of this reads no doubt somewhat too like the tales in the “Arabian Nights”; but we have to remember that, if you have led a long and eminently successful life as a robber, you have necessarily accumulated a store of riches. In the case of Barbarossa he had begun in extreme youth, and was now an old man; he had been quite in the wholesale way as a thief, and now desired to pay a good price for that which he coveted, namely, the post of Admiralissimo to the Grand Turk. It may be objected that he had already been offered and had already accepted the post; this is quite true, but there were certain conventions to be fulfilled on the side of the recipient of the bounty of the Sultan quite understood on both sides, although no word had passed on the subject. In those days the man who desired the favour of an Eastern potentate never dreamed of approaching him empty-handed, and the more liberal that he was in the matter of gifts the greater was the favour with which he was regarded. Therefore the principle acted upon by Kheyr-ed-Din on this occasion was both wise and politic; that is to say, he placed certain of his riches in a perfectly sound investment, certain to yield him an admirable percentage, not only in added personal prestige, but also in the placing under his command of such a force as he had never before commanded, with unlimited opportunities of preying on the detested Christian on a far larger scale than it had ever been his good fortune to do before.
The Sultan Soliman was not called “the Magnificent” without just cause; his life was splendid in its social prodigality, as it was in war and in statesmanship; yet even he was somewhat astonished at the amazing richness of the gifts which were laid at his feet by a man whom he knew to be, in spite of the kingly title which he had assumed, merely a rover of the sea. Therefore, in spite of himself, he was impressed. To him, it is true, in his splendour and magnificence, the intrinsic value of that which was brought to him by Barbarossa mattered but little; but the fact that the corsair was in a position to do so opened the eyes of the Sultan to the manner of man with whom he had to deal. Hitherto he had but known of him by hearsay, as the one Moslem seaman who was likely to be capable of making a stand against the terrible Doria, who had now become the plague of the Sultan’s existence. He now knew that the man who disposed of such incredible riches must be, no matter what his moral character, a man who stood a head and shoulders over any commander in the Ottoman fleet sailing out of the Golden Horn.
Both materially and psychologically this man somewhat bewildered the despot: and his alter ego, the Grand Vizier, happening to be away on a mission to Aleppo, Soliman had no one with whom to confer in a strictly confidential manner; for, after the manner of autocrats, he had but few familiars, in fact it may be said none at all save the statesman mentioned. His reception of the corsair lacked, however, nothing in cordiality. He inquired after the incidents of the voyage, interested himself graciously in all that he was told concerning Africa and the conflicting claims of Christian and Moslem in that region, and was generally courteous to his distinguished visitor. He placed at his disposal a palace and attendants on a scale commensurate with the state of a reigning sovereign, and sent his most distinguished generals to confer with Kheyr-ed-Din. The latter, for the first time in his life, was thoroughly out of his element. His had been the life of the seaman and the soldier to begin with, and of later years that of a rude and unquestioned despot on a savage coast, surrounded by myrmidons to whom his voice had been as the voice of a god. Never had it been his lot before to dwell within the limits of such a comparative civilisation as that which obtained in Constantinople at this date; never before had it been necessary for him to restrain that naturally fiery and impetuous temper of his and to speak all men fairly.
The strain must have been great, the effort enormous, and he knew, as he was bound to know, that his coming had unloosed jealousies and heart-searchings innumerable, with which he could not deal in the usual drastic fashion common to him. The winter was coming on, which was, as we have before remarked, very much of a close season both for the pirate and the honest merchant seaman. In consequence there was not very much chance against the foes of Soliman for the present. When that opportunity offered he promised himself that the courtiers and the soldiers of the Grand Turk would very soon discover that the fame of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa was no empty matter, and that there existed no seaman in all the Ottoman dominions with whom they could compare the “African pirate,” as he had reason to believe that he was scornfully called behind his back.
A weaker man would have been daunted by his surroundings, by the manifestly unfriendly atmosphere in which he lived, and by the dread that perhaps, after all, Soliman might go back upon his word. There were no lack of counsellors, he knew very well, who would advise the Sultan to his undoing, if that monarch gave them the opportunity; and, as time passed, so his anxiety grew. Soliman also could not have felt particularly comfortable at this juncture, with a sullen spirit possessing his men “con carga de guerra,” bitterly resenting the step which he had taken, and the appointment which he had made. For the present, however, he made no sign, treating Kheyr-ed-Din with distinguished courtesy, but making no reference to the future. Soliman was revolving the problem in his acute mind, doubtless weighing the unpopularity of the step which he had taken against the services likely to be rendered to him by his strange guest. And thus several weeks passed at Constantinople, probably amongst the most trying of all those in the unusually prolonged life of Kheyr-ed-Din.