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 passing, 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 noble 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 shore 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 assuredly 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

How Alessandro Condalmiero fought the Galleon of Venice—
“The King of the Sea is dead.”

There is something almost pathetic in the spectacle of a really great leader badgered and importuned by lesser men to adopt a course which he, with a superior insight, knows to be unsound. In the matter of the landing Barbarossa had demonstrated that it was he whose knowledge of war was superior to those who were so ready to thrust upon him their opinions; this, however, did not content them, and they now desired to close with the foe waiting for them outside. If ever a commander was justified in waiting on events it was Barbarossa at this juncture; the business of a commander-in-chief is to ensure victory, and if he sees, as did the Moslem admiral on this occasion, that more is to be gained by delay than by fighting, then he is justified in refusing battle: particularly is this the case when the enemy is in greatly superior force blockading on an open and dangerous coast at an inclement season of the year. Every day that Doria was kept at sea added to his difficulties, as fresh water and provisions would be running short, and the energies of the human engines by which his[206] galleys were propelled would be weakened; naked men chained to a bench were suffering from the blazing heat of the days, the cold and drenching dews of the nights. All these things had the veteran seaman weighed in his mind, they all inclined him to wait still longer in that secure anchorage where he could not be touched by his foe.

There was one counsellor, however, whom even Kheyr-ed-Din could not resist, and who had hitherto kept silence; this was the eunuch Monuc, legal counsellor to Soliman, who had accompanied the armada. He now brought the weight of his influence to bear upon the side of Sinan-Reis and his colleagues.

“Are you going,” he asked the admiral, “to allow the infidels to escape without a battle? Soliman can find plenty of wood to build new fleets, plenty of captains to command them; he will pardon you if this fleet is destroyed: that which he will never pardon is that you should allow Doria to escape without fighting. You have brave men in plenty; why not lead them to the attack?”