Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/370

292. The Christian strength was really overwhelming. Eighty Venetians, thirty-six Papal and thirty Spanish galleys, together with fifty sailing galleons, made up the formidable total of nearly two hundred ships of war, and they carried scarcely less than 60,000 men and 2,500 guns. Doria was in chief command, Capello and Grimano led the Venetian and Roman contingents. On September 25th the allied fleets appeared off the Gulf. Barbarossa had 122 ships of war. On the morning of the 27th the corsairs were amazed to see Doria sail away. Germano and Capello went on board the flagship and urged Doria to engage the enemy; they even implored him to depart himself, and allow them to fight the battle with their own ships, but in vain.

"The result was practically a victory, and a signal victory, for the Turks. Two hundred splendid vessels of three great Christian States had fled before an inferior force of Ottomans; and it is no wonder that Sultan Suleyman, when he learnt the news at Yamboli, illuminated the town, and added 100,000 piasters a year to the revenues of Barbarossa."

"It was," says Brantome, "a common opinion at the time that there existed a secret engagement between Barbarossa and Doria to avoid fighting each other on decisive occasions, so as to prolong the war, which gave both of them employment, and furnished them with means of acquiring wealth."

What seems to confirm this was the setting at liberty by Doria of the renegade corsair Dragut, who had been made prisoner, and who was a favourite of Barbarossa, and a scourge to the Christians. In 1547 a conspiracy of the Fieschi almost cost Andrew Doria his life. His nephew was murdered by them, but at the same time Giovanni Luigi Fieschi was