Naples,
was said to be their object. But now they were undeceived, and on the
25th of August, Captain Pasha Barbarossa landed twenty-five thousand
men and thirty cannon under Lutfi Pasha, three miles from the castle
of Corfu. Four days later the Grand Vez[=i]r Ay[=a]s, with twenty-five
thousand more and a brilliant staff, joined the first-comers, and the
Akinji or light troops spread fire and sword around. A fifty-pounder
fired nineteen shots in three days, but only five struck the fortress:
the Turks fired too high, and many of their missiles fell harmlessly
into the sea beyond. In spite of storm and rain the Grand Vez[=i]r
would not desist from making the round of the trenches by night.
Suleym[=a]n offered liberal terms of capitulation, but the besieged
sent back his messenger with never an answer. Alexandro Tron worked
the big guns of the castle with terrible precision. Two galleys were
quickly sunk, four men were killed in the trenches by a single shot--a
new and alarming experience in those early days of gunnery--four times
the Fort of St. Angelo was attacked in vain; winter was approaching,
and the Sultan determined to raise the siege. In vain Barbarossa
remonstrated: "A thousand such castles were not worth the life of one
of his brave men," said the Sultan, and on the 17th of September the
troops began to re-embark.[34]

Then began a scene of devastation such as the isles of Greece have too
often witnessed,--not from Turks only, but from Genoese and Venetians,
who also came to the Archipelago for their oarsmen,--but never perhaps
on so vast a scale. Butrinto was burnt, Paxos conquered, and then
Barbarossa carried fire and sword throughout the Adriatic and the
Archipelago. With seventy galleys and thirty galleots, he raged among
the islands, most of which belonged to noble families of Venice--the
Venieri, Grispi, Pisani, Quirini. Syra, Skyros, Aegina, Paros, Naxos,
Tenos, and other Venetian possessions were overwhelmed, and thousands
of their people carried off to pull a Turkish oar. Naxos contributed
five thousand dollars as her first year's tribute; Aegina furnished
six thousand slaves. Many trophies did Barbarossa bring home to
Stambol, whose riches certainly did his own and the Sultan's, if not
"the general coffer, fill." Four hundred thousand pieces of gold, a
thousand girls, and fifteen hundred boys, were useful resources when
he returned to "rub his countenance against the royal stirrup."[35]
Two hundred