Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/125

110 act of pillage was hung to the trees by the roadside, whatsoever his rank or station. In 1532 Captain Rincon, the envoy of Francis, visited the prodigious camp of Soliman, thirty miles in extent. "Astonishing order, no violence. Merchants, women even, coming and going in perfect safety, as in a European town. Life as safe, as large and easy as in Venice. Justice so fairly administered that one is tempted to believe the Turks are turned Christians now, and the Christians Turks."

The Turks themselves were just, wise, moderate, and humane. But, alas! the Turkish armies were not all composed of Turks. The fierce Algerian pirates, slave-dealers, kidnappers of boys and women, were the allies of Soliman. The terrible Khair-Eddin Barbarossa bore the title of Turkish Admiral. This should have been the double and exacting task of Francis: to reassure Europe against the Turk, to secure Soliman while excluding Barbarossa.

The first step on this errand he had taken on the morrow of his capture at Pavia, when, drawing from his finger his last possession, he had said to his attendant, "Take this to the Sultan!" The second step was passed in this year 1536, when, on the eve of battle with Charles, Francis signed a secret treaty with Soliman. The third step, the open acknowledgment and precision of that treaty, was still to be taken, if ever it should be taken.

"The Venetians are nowe al Turkiche and alienated from th' Emperour utterly," writes Harvel, so late as the spring of 1539; "and I am of constant opinion that the French State seketh to perturbate the world in th' Emperour's detriment." Indeed, while Francis and Rincon and Du Bellay were welding the French