The position at this time was one of surpassing 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 anchored 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 shores 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 shores 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 aptitude in realising the situation which, it is safe to say, was shown by none of those under his command.
Prevesa illustrates 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 circumstances 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 shores by a storm, in which case what would become of the troops left on shore? 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 shore upon which Hernando Gonzaga wished to land and assault; but notwithstanding this fact Octavius did not attempt the passage 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 shore 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.