On board his galley, decorated for this occasion with scarlet banners, Barbarossa himself directed the assaulting line. Never before when the battle was joined had the gallant corsair been known to draw back; and yet on this occasion he not only hesitated but actually hauled off. The Venetians saw to their amazement that the expected attack was not to be pushed home; for Barbarossa and his captains fell upon some lesser vessels: the Galleon of Venice was victorious.
Meanwhile Doria was displaying his mastery of tactics when it was hard fighting that was wanted; he pretended that he wished to draw the Ottoman fleet into the high seas in order that he might destroy their galleys by means of the broadsides of his nefs; consequently he executed useless parade movements when he should by all the rules of warfare have closed with his enemy who was in distinctly inferior force; as he had a fair wind there is only one conclusion to be drawn, and that is that he did not want to fight.
His manoeuvres certainly mystified the Turks, who viewed his tactics with mistrust, thinking them the outset of some deeply laid scheme; it never entered into their calculations for one moment that the great Andrea Doria, the terror of the Mediterranean sea, and the victor in scores of desperate engagements, was anxious to avoid a fight.
Grimani and Capello, docile to the orders of their admiral, followed him full of uneasiness and distrust; they were fighting men of the most fiery description; to them the issue seemed of the simplest: there was the enemy in inferior force to themselves, they had the weather gauge, why delay the attack?
“For much less than this,” says Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, “the English shot Admiral Byng in 1756.” The conduct of Doria on this occasion has certainly never been explained; the two other leaders went on board and remonstrated with their commander-in-chief; they were neither of them men who could be treated as negligible quantities on the field of battle; both belonged to that brilliant Venetian nobility so renowned in commerce and in war. Marco Grimani was in command of the Papal galleys, in itself a mark of the highest esteem and confidence from a potentate second to none in his influence in the civilised world. To Vincenzo Capello, Henry the Seventh of England confided his royal person and the command of his fleet when he crossed the Channel to encounter Richard the Second at Bosworth field. Five times had he filled the office of Providiteur in Venice, twice had he been commander-in-chief of her fleet, he was in perpetuity Procureur of St. Mark, to him Venice owed her naval discipline. He wore on this day the mantle of crimson silk with which the Republic invested her generals. Bitter was the rage in his heart, and bitterly must he have spoken to Doria, who, in spite of all remonstrances, continued his futile manoeuvrings.
There was glory won on this day, but it was gained neither by Andrea Doria nor Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. The Galleon of Venice with Alessandro Condalmiero and his gallant crew had shown to all a splendid example of disciplined valour unexcelled in sixteenth-century annals.
Barbarossa had captured a Venetian galley, a Papal galley, and five Spanish nefs, but he had recoiled from the assault on Condalmiero when the prize was actually within his grasp. For the rest it was a day of manoeuvring and tactics; tactics when sixty thousand men had been embarked on board two hundred ships for a specific and definite object on the side of the Christians and under the command of their most celebrated admiral; and yet the balance of advantage was actually gained by the inferior force. No subsequent glories can ever wipe this stain from the scutcheon of Doria, or can excuse the fact that at the most supreme moment of his career he failed to fight the battle that he was in honour, in conscience, and in duty bound to deliver. Next day the wind came fair for Corfu, and Doria, his ships untouched, unscathed, unharmed, put his helm up and sailed away followed by his fleet.
Sandoval records the fact that Barbarossa, roaring with laughter the while, was accustomed to say that Doria had even put out his lanterns in order that no one might see whither he had fled. This was an allusion to the fact—or supposition—that Doria extinguished on that night the great poop lantern carried by him as admiral.
When Soliman the Magnificent heard of the result of this battle he caused the town of Yamboli, where he was at the time, to be illuminated, and in the excess of his joy he added one hundred thousand aspres to the revenues of the conqueror; there were processions to the Grand Mosque, and all Islam rejoiced and sang the praises of the invincible admiral who had humbled to the dust the pride of the Christian and caused the dreaded Doria to fly from before the fleet of the Sultan.
This, the most historical, if not the greatest feat in the life of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, was for him a triumph indeed; with a vastly inferior force he had driven from the field of battle his “rival in glory,” as he himself had denominated Andrea Doria, and he had accomplished this feat notwithstanding the almost mutinous condition of his own forces. In spite of this it is with Condalmiero and with him alone that the glory of this day must rest; alone, absolutely unsupported as we have seen, he fought one of those fights which bring the heart into the mouth when we read of them; the stern pride of the Venetian noble, who despised as canaille the pirate hosts by whom he was assailed, had its counterpart in the sturdy valour of Chief Bombardier Francisco d’Arba and the other nameless heroes of which that good company was composed; to them we render that homage which so justly is their due.