He raised his oars to the sound of trumpet and tymbal, according to Barbary customs and accepted the battle. The numbers and weight of vessels were equal, and both parties had equal enthusiasm, courage and obstinacy. But a cannon ball from a Genoese galley opened the side of the corsair’s flag-ship, and a tempest of fire battered the rest into shapeless wrecks. Some of the pirates flung themselves desperately into the waves, and others turned the prows of their shattered vessels and attempted a new retreat. Among the latter was the terrible pirate Mami Rais de’ Monasteri, in Africa who had once before been a prisoner of Antonio Doria and had been liberated on payment of a ransom. Giorgio pursued him now without success; but with this exception the whole fleet was captured including the two vessels left by Torghud to guard his booty. These last were captured by Count Anguillara who was fighting under Doria’s flag.
The losses of Doria were small, but that of the enemy was terrible, since every one of them who swam to shore was mercilessly put to the sword by the Sicilians. Torghud was made prisoner and the chronicles say that “after having been well flogged he was put in chains.” He offered without avail fifteen thousand ducats for his ransom.
On the 22nd of June 1539, at vespers, Gianettino entered the port of Genoa with the galleys captured from the corsair. The citizens flocked in crowds to welcome the victors and two thousand christians who had been delivered from captivity, and to see the humbled lord of the main.
Torghud managed with such tact that he obtained admission to the presence of the Princess Peretta, and addressed her in proud and threatening terms of reproach for the harsh treatment which he had suffered; but he soon adopted a humbler tone and begged to be sent to Messina, where Andrea Doria still remained with his army. This favour he obtained, and he renewed to Andrea his offer of a heavy ransom, but still without success. A few years after, his countrymen, who valued him highly as a commander, offered new terms, and this time Andrea yielded to the temptation. The commission had not a sufficient sum to pay the ransom, and borrowed it in Genoa from the noble family Sopranis, giving as security the island of Tabarca. Thus Torghud, conquered by Genoese arms and ransomed by Genoese gold, recovered his liberty and renewed his piracies on the seas to the detriment of all Christendom.
It is needless to say that the success of Gianettino aroused a spirit of emulation in Count Lavagna. But he saw that the Dorias, accusing him to Cæsar of revolutionary opinions, had shut him out from honours and official position; and, not wishing to employ his talents in strengthening the Spanish power in Italy, he sought repose for his active spirit in domestic enjoyments.
He married Eleonora, of the family of Prince Cybo, though his mother at first strongly opposed the alliance, preferring for her son a more wealthy and illustrious bride. By this marriage Fieschi came into a certain relationship to Catherine de’ Medici, wife of Henry II.,—Catherine Cybo, duchess of Camerino and aunt of Eleonora, being of the blood of the Medici, and therefore of the queen of France.
The marriage contract was prepared on the 15th of September, 1542 in Milan by Galeazzo Visconti and Gerolamo Bertobio, notaries, in the presence of Francesco Guiducci and Giuseppe Girlandoni, representative of Cardinal Innocent Cybo (the same to whom Philip Strozzi bequeathed his blood to be made into a pudding) and of Lorenzo and Ricciarda Cybo, on the one side, and Paolo Pansa the attorney of Count Fieschi on the other. The dower amounted to hardly nine thousand gold crowns of the sun and two thousand more for the wedding outfit. The Strozzi papers contain an act under date of January 18th 1543 written by Bernardo Usodimare-Granello, scribe of the archepiscopal court of Genoa, by which Count Gianluigi acknowledges that Rev. Ambrogio Calvi, attorney and agent of Cybo, had paid four thousand gold crowns of the sun and deposited five thousand more with the brothers Giuliano and Agostino Salvaghi who had become securities for the dowry. The act further acknowledged the payment of one thousand crowns for jewellery and ornaments and provides that the other should be furnished by Cybo in silver, gold and gems. In the same act, Count Fieschi pledged as security for the dowry the castle of Cariseto and its appurtenances, which he had obtained by purchase, and he promised to obtain the consent of Cæsar to the transfer of the estate within one year from the date of the instrument.
The preparations for the wedding and the festivities connected with the espousals were on a splendid scale. The flower of the Genoese nobility came to congratulate the spouses at their residence in Vialata.
Two powerful families possessed the magnificent hill of Carignano, the Fieschi, and the Sauli. Each family had there a splendid palace. During the minority of Gianluigi, silence had reigned in his, while that of the Sauli had been greatly enlarged and embellished.
The Sauli were new nobles belonging to the popular party, like the Fieschi, Farnari, Promontori and Giustiniani; yet few of the nobility, old or new, equalled them in wealth and gentility of blood. Marcantonio Sauli, a grave priest, whose life Soprani wrote, had splendidly adorned his palace, and there the Genoese ladies were wont to meet for pleasure, and the elders of the city to debate on the affairs of the Republic.