breathed more freely. But while the "Drunkard" idled
in his seraglio by the Golden Horn, the old statesmen, generals, and
admirals, whom Suleiman had formed, were still living, and Europe had
lulled itself with false hopes of peace.

For the sake of their Eastern trade interests the Venetians had as far as
possible stood neutral in the wars between Turk and Christian, and had long
been in undisturbed possession of Cyprus. For eighty years they had held it
under a treaty that recognized certain rights of the Sultan to the island
as a dependency of Egypt. They had stood neutral while Suleiman took Rhodes
and besieged Malta, though on either occasion the intervention of the
Venetian fleet would have been a serious blow to the Ottoman power. The
Venetian Senate was therefore disagreeably surprised when an envoy from
Constantinople demanded the evacuation of Cyprus, and announced that the
Sultan intended to exercise his full rights as sovereign of the island. The
armaments of the Republic were at a low ebb, but Doge and Senate rejected
the Ottoman demand, and defied the menace of war that accompanied it.

The neutrality of Venice had been the chief obstacle to the efforts of
Pius V to form a league of the maritime powers of Southern Europe against
the common enemy of Christendom. When, therefore, the Venetian ambassadors
applied to the Vatican for help, the Pope put the limited resources of his
own states at their disposal, and exerted his influence to procure for them
help from other countries. Pius saw the possibility of at last forming a
league against the Turk, and was statesman enough to perceive that a more
effective blow would be struck against them by attacking them on the sea
than by gathering a crusading army on the Theiss and the Danube.

His own galleys were prepared for service under the orders of Prince
Colonna, and a subsidy was sent to Venice from the papal treasury to aid in
the equipment of the Venetian fleet. The papal envoys appealed to the
Genoese Republic, the Knights of Malta, and the Kings of France and Spain
to reinforce the fleets of Rome and Venice. But France and Spain were more
interested in their own local ambitions and jealousies, and even Philip II
gave at first very limited help. With endless difficulty a fleet of galleys
was at last assembled, Maltese, Genoese, Roman, Venetian, united under the
command of Colonna. By the time the Christian armament was ready a larger
Turkish fleet had appear