Captain Juan Vasquez Coronado journeyed to Naples carrying with him letters from Andrea Doria to Don Pedro de Toledo, requesting that the Viceroy would send him all the galleys in Naples, carrying as many soldiers as possible, pointing out that he had Dragut in a trap, from which he could not possibly escape, but that this time he wished to make security doubly secure. Letters to the same purport were also sent to Don Juan de Vega, the Viceroy of Sicily, and to Marco Centurion at the admiral’s own city of Genoa. Doria was leaving nothing to chance this time. Meanwhile, great earthworks had been thrown up at the Bocca de Cantara at the entrance of the harbour by Dragut, and any ship which approached within range was most furiously bombarded. This served to amuse Andrea Doria, who, confident that the jaws of the trap had closed, kept a sharp look-out for vessels issuing from the harbour, but otherwise concerned himself not at all about the entrenchments. Was not Naples humming with the note of preparation? Would not the Genoese come in their thousands to the summons of their renowned chieftain? Could not the Viceroy of Sicily be trusted to work his best to gain the favour of his Imperial master?
“Time and I are two” was the favourite expression of King Philip II. of Spain; the same idea might have crossed the mind of Doria on this memorable occasion. He had only to wait; the longer he waited the more secure he would be of success, the more certain would he be of the complete undoing of his enemy. But even yet the admiral did not know the man to whom he was opposed; in all the years in which he had done battle against Dragut, he had never gauged the limitless resource and calculated audacity of this lineal successor of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. While the admiral had been sending his despatches, and idly watching that which he considered to be the futile construction of earthworks on the shore at the Bocca de Cantara, his enemy was preparing for him that surprise which was shortly afterwards to make of him the laughing-stock of the whole of Europe. Dragut was in a trap, and he was quite aware of the fact; by way of the Bocca de Cantara escape was impossible, and neither a tame surrender nor complete annihilation was by any means to the taste of the pirate leader. Had Doria gone in and attacked at once, the fate of the corsair had been sealed; the policy of delay adopted by the Christian admiral was his salvation.
A man less able, less determined, than Dragut, might well have despaired; but he brought to bear on the problem with which he was confronted all the subtlety of his nature, all the resourcefulness of the born seaman that he was. His mind had been made up from the very beginning: the earthworks at the Bocca de Cantara, the movements of troops, the furious cannonading, had all been nothing but a blind to hide the real design which he had in view. In addition to his fighting men he had at his command some two thousand islanders, stout Mohammedans to a man, ready and willing to assist him in his design of cheating the Christians of their prey. Day and night, with ceaseless silent toil, had garrison and islanders been at work on the scheme which the leader had devised. From the head of the harbour Dragut had caused a road to be made right across the island to the sea on the opposite side: on this road he caused planks to be laid, bolted to sleepers and then thickly greased. The vessels of the day were of course comparatively speaking light, and capable of being manhandled, supposing that you had sufficient hands. At dead of night Dragut assembled his forces, and before morning every galley, galeasse, and brigantine had been dragged across the island and launched in the sea on the opposite side. There was then nothing left to do but to embark stores, guns, and ammunition and to sail quietly away, and this was what happened. Once again Dragut faded away beyond the skyline, “leaving Andrea Doria with the dog to hold,” in the quaint language of the chronicler of these events, Don Luys de Marmol Caravajal.
Not only did the indefatigable corsair get clear away without any suspicion on the part of the admiral, but his first act on gaining the open sea was to capture the Patrona galley sent from Sicily by Don Juan de Vega to say that reinforcements were on the road. In this ill-fated craft was Buguer, the son of Muley Hassan, King of Tunis, who was sent as prize to Soliman at Constantinople, where the Sultan caused him to be shut up in the “Torre del Mar Negro.” Here he remained till he died, as a punishment for that he, a Mussulman, had aided the Christians.
Never again was Dragut to be in such sore straits as he was on this occasion at the island of Jerbah, when, by sheer wit and cunning, he escaped from the trap in which he had been held by Doria. What the emotions of the admiral must have been when he found that once again he had been fooled, it is not difficult to imagine, as by no possible means could the story be hushed up; and, in spite of the annoyance of Christendom generally at the escape of Dragut, no one could help admiring his extraordinary cleverness, or roaring with laughter at the discomfiture of Doria and the viceroys of Naples and Sicily.
Dragut now returned to Constantinople to receive congratulations upon his escape, and to take part in a fresh design of stirring up the Sultan against the Christians. All who professed this faith were naturally obnoxious to the corsair; but his private and personal hatred was entirely directed against the Knights of Malta, with whom he had been at war all his life. The present preoccupation of the Sultan was to regain the towns on the coast of Africa which had been taken by the Spaniards; but it was represented to him by Dragut that “until he had smoked out this nest of vipers he could do no good anywhere.” The Bashaws and the Divan, heavily bribed by the corsair, held the same language, until Soliman heard of nothing from morning till night but the ill deeds of the Knights of Malta. They were represented to him as corsairs who ruined his commerce and defeated his armadas, who let slip no opportunity of harrying the Moslem wheresoever he was to be found. In this there was more than a grain of truth, as we shall see when we come to the next chapter, which will be devoted to a sketch of this militant order. Suffice it to say here that the Knights fought for what they termed “the Religion” (it was in this manner they designated their confederacy), and to harry and enslave the Mussulman, to destroy him as a noxious animal wherever he was to be found, was the reason for which they existed. It is true that they plundered not for individual gain, but many was the rich prize towed into Malta past St. Elmo and the ominously named “Punta delle Forche” (the “Point of the Gallows,” where all captured pirates were hanged), the proceeds of which went to the enrichment of the Order; to buy themselves the wherewithal to fight with the Mahommedan again.
The abuse of the Knights fell upon sympathetic ears; in his early days Soliman the Magnificent had expelled the Knights from Rhodes; since then Charles V. had given them the islands of Malta and Gozo, and the town of Tripoli in Barbary as their abiding place; from Malta they had never ceased their warfare against the corsairs, and incidentally against the Sultan and his subjects. Therefore, in this year 1551, Soliman ordained that an expedition should be prepared with the object of crushing once and for all these troublers of the peace of Islam. The preparations were on so large a scale that very soon it became noised abroad in Europe that something really serious was in the wind: in Constantinople, however, men kept their own counsel; it was ill talking of the affairs of the Padishah, and, further than that, beyond Dragut and the proposed leaders of the expedition, the Sultan took no one into his confidence. Charles V., well served as he was by his spies, was as much in the dark as to the destination of this new armada as were humbler folk; in it he recognised the hand of Dragut again, and Doria had standing orders to catch that mischievous person if he could. At present, however, there was no chance of so desirable a thing happening, as Dragut was superintending the fitting out of the new expedition at Constantinople.
Anxious and suspicious of the designs of the Turks, Charles ordered a concentration of his fleet at Messina.
The Grand Master of the Knights of Malta at this time was a Spaniard, one Juan d’Omedes; he was, says de Vertot, “un Grand Maître Espagnol,” meaning by this that he was completely under the domination of the Emperor and ready at any time to place the galleys of “the Religion” under the orders of that monarch. The Knights, like every one else, had watched with anxiety the preparation of this great expedition in Constantinople, and when the Grand Master proposed to send the galleys of the Order to join forces with Doria at Messina, there was great dissatisfaction at the Council Board. That which it behoved them to do, the members informed the Grand Master, was not to help a great potentate like Charles, but to make provision for their own security by attending to their fortifications, which were in anything but a satisfactory condition. D’Omedes maintained that this expedition was destined to serve with the King of France against the Emperor, and that Malta was not the objective. He accordingly sent away the galleys of “the Religion” under the Chevalier “Iron-Foot,” the General of the Galleys, to join the fleet which had its rendezvous at Messina. Hardly had he done so when news came from the Levant that the fleet of the Grand Turk was at sea heading for Sicily. The fleet was composed of one hundred and twelve royal galleys, two great galeasses, and a host of brigantines and transport vessels. Sinan-Reis was in command with twelve thousand Janissaries, numerous pioneers and engineers, and all the necessary appliances for a siege.
The embarkation of so large a number of Janissaries was the measure of the serious purpose of the expedition, as the Sultan did not readily part with the men of this corps d’élite unless he was in person taking the command. It may be as well to explain here exactly what the Janissaries were, and it cannot be better done than by an extract from the famous historian Prescott: