y to visit the Sublime Porte. He had to
provide for the safety and government of Algiers during his absence,
when exposed to the dangers both of foreign attack and internal
intrigue. He had to reckon with the galleys of the Knights of St.
John, who, after wandering homeless for a longer time than was at all
creditable to that Christendom which they had so heroically defended
at Rhodes, had finally settled in no less convenient a spot than
Malta, whence they had every opportunity of harassing the operations
of the Corsairs (1530). Moreover Andrea Doria was cruising about, and
he was not the sort of opponent Barbarossa cared to meet by hazard.
The great Genoese admiral considered it a personal duel with
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n. Each held the supreme position on his own side of the
water. Both were old men and had grown old in arms. Born in 1468, of a
noble Genoese family, Doria was sixty-five years of age, of which
nearly fifty had been spent in warfare. He had been in the Pope's
guard, and had seen service under the Duke of Urbino and Alfonso of
Naples, and when he was over forty he had taken to the sea and found
himself suddenly High Admiral of Genoa (1513). His appointment to the
command of his country's galleys was due to his zealous services on
shore, and not to any special experience of naval affairs; indeed the
commander of the galleys was as much a military as a naval officer.
Doria, however, late as he adopted his profession, possessed undoubted
gifts as a seaman, and his leadership decided which of the rival
Christian Powers should rule the Mediterranean waves. He devoted his
sword to France in 1522, when a revolution overthrew his party in his
own republic; and so long as he was on the French side the command of
the sea, so far as it did not belong to the Barbary Corsairs, belonged
to France. When in 1528 he judged himself and his country ill-used by
Francis I., he carried over his own twelve galleys to the side of
Charles V.; and then the Imperial navies once more triumphed. Doria
was the arbiter of fortune between the contending states. Doria was
the liberator of Genoa, and, refusing to be her king, remained her
idol and her despot. No name struck such terror into the hearts of the
Turks; many a ship had fallen a prey to his devouring galleys, and
many a Moslem slave pulled at his oars or languished in Genoese
prisons. Officially an admiral, he was at the same time personally a
Corsair, and used his private galleys to