Hadj-Hossein proved himself to be a tactful and successful ambassador. The Sultan accepted the homage offered, and made many inquiries concerning the war prosecuted by Hossein’s master against the enemies of the true faith in the distant region of Algiers. His queries were all answered with deep submission and the most subtle of flattery, much of which latter was no doubt a perfectly honest expression of opinion. As to the average Mohammedan of this period the Padishah was a being set apart by Heaven to fulfil the decrees of the Prophet.
The ambassador, when he rejoined his master, must have been a proud man, as so well had he fulfilled his mission that he carried back with him to Algiers not only a gracious message, but the insignia of the Sanjak, Scimitar Horse and Tambour, conferred upon that loyal Moslem Kheyred-Din Barbarossa, who, in the words of the Padishah, “abandoning a sterile independence, sought in all the bloody hazards of his life nought but the glory of God and His Prophet” To us this hyperbole, addressed to a pirate, seems merely ridiculous, but in those days of fanaticism the beliefs of men, both Christians and Moslems, are something which it is impossible for us to realise. On either side the way of salvation was the path of conquest, and the man who was heretic to the faith which you professed was rightly served if you could cut him and his off from among the congregation.
It was well for the corsair to make as many friends as possible, as among his enemies he counted all the kings of Christendom; and, looking back on his career, it seems but little short of a miracle that he was not crushed out of existence, not once but a hundred times. But, as has been said already, the root of true statesmanship was in Kheyr-ed-Din. He watched with eager eye the quarrels of the great kings on the continent of Europe; he saw his life-long rival at sea, the greatest of all Christian mariners, Andrea Doria, the Genoese admiral, transfer his allegiance from the French King Francis I. to the Emperor Charles V. He noted and took full advantage of the perpetual squabbles between the Genoese and Venetian Republics, and all the time was in touch with the Sea-wolves, who swarmed on the coasts of Africa, and lurked in every creek and harbour of the Ionian Sea. “In all the bloody hazards of his life,” to quote once again the words of the Grand Turk, “he could, in the end, depend more or less on the corsairs, whether they ostensibly sailed beneath his banner or whether they did not, as when danger threatened what name was so potent as that of Barbarossa, which his followers asserted to be worth ten thousand men, when shouted on the day of battle!”