Kheyr-ed-Din stimulated their enthusiasm with presents of the most costly
description. Ever wise and politic, he knew when it was necessary to pay
royally, and on this occasion surpassed himself in prodigality. For all
this he himself cherished no illusions; he had the measure of the fighting
men of his foes at his fingers' ends, and the most that he expected from
these wild irregulars was that they might, perchance, stay an onset and
worry the imperial army with dashing cavalry raids. But that they should
hold their own with the incomparable infantry of Spain, or make head
against the stolid valour of the German men-at-arms, was not contemplated
by Barbarossa. In his Janissaries, in his hard-bitten fighting men from the
galleys, he could expect much; but there were but some few thousands of
these, while the disciplined host against which he was called upon to
combat was at the least twenty-five thousand--the flower of the imperial
forces. The situation was unique, one on which the world had never looked
before--all the might of Christendom going up against one who, no matter by
what titles he might choose to describe himself, was no more than a vulgar
robber. He was, however, a robber on such a scale as had never before been
equalled--a force which remained unsubdued during the whole of his
extraordinary and unusually protracted career.
CHAPTER X
THE FALL OF TUNIS AND THE FLIGHT OF BARBAROSSA
Autocracy in the sixteenth century was a very real and concrete fact.
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