ic-stricken Christians ran
their ships ashore, and deserted them, never stopping even to set them
on fire. The deep-draught galleons stuck fast in the shallow water. On
rowed the Turks; galleys and galleons to the number of fifty-six fell
into their hands; eighteen thousand Christians bowed down before their
scimitars; the beach, on that memorable 11th of May, 1560, was a
confused medley of stranded ships, helpless prisoners, Turks busy in
looting men and galleys--and a hideous heap of mangled bodies. The
fleet and the army which had sailed from Messina but three months ago
in such gallant array were absolutely lost. It was a _dies nefas_ for
Christendom.

Medina-Celi and young Doria made good their escape by night. But when
the old Genoese admiral learnt the terrible news, the loss of the
fleet he loved, the defeat of the nephew he loved yet more, his dim
eyes were wet. "Take me to the church," he said; and he soon received
the last consolations of religion. Long as he had lived, and many as
had been the vicissitudes of his great career, he had willingly been
spared this last most miserable experience. On November 25, 1560, he
gave up the ghost: he was a great seaman, but still more a passionate
lover of his country;--despotic in his love, but not the less a noble
Genoese patriot.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 439.

[39] Brantome, _Hommes illustres etrangers_. [OE]uvres, i. 279.

[40] Froissart's _Chron._, transl. T. Johnes (1844) ii. 446, 465, ff.

[41] See the _Story of Turkey_, 170.

[42] See Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 193-215.

[43] _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 266.

XIII.

THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA.

1565.

When Sultan Suleym[=a]n reflected on the magnanimity which he had
displayed towards the Knights of Rhodes in allowing them to depart in
peace in 1522, his feelings must have resembled those of Doria when he
thought of that inconsiderate release of Dragut in 1543. Assuredly the
royal clemency had been ill-rewarded; the Knights had displayed a
singular form of gratitude to the sparer of their lives; they had
devoted themselves to him, indeed, but devoted themselves to his
destruction. The cavaliers whom Charles V. suffered to perch on the
glaring white rock of Malta, in 1530, proved in no long time to be a
pest as virulent and all-pervading as even Rhodes had harboured. Seven
galleys they owned, and never more, but the seven were royal vessels,
splend