The French king had prepared a fleet and army under Count Philip of Ravenstein; the Spaniards were under the command of Gonsalvo de Cordoba, the “Great Captain.”  The history of the “Alliance of Christian Princes” is illustrative of the methods of those potentates at that time.  After one or two unimportant skirmishes with the Turks, in which no great harm was done on either side, the French and Spaniards joined together, and seized the Kingdom of Naples:  the prudent king of this territory, having sold his artillery to Lodovico del Mosca, did not await the coming of his Christian brethren.

In the territory known to the Romans as Byzacena, which stretched from Algiers to the confines of Tripoli, there was reigning at this period one Abu-Abd-Allah-Mahomed, a Berber Moslem of the dynasty of Hafsit.  Between this dignitary and Genoa a treaty of commerce had been arranged and signed.  But treaties on the shores of the Mediterranean were capable of very elastic interpretation; they never reckoned with the corsairs, and these latter were in the habit of intruding themselves everywhere, and upsetting the most carefully laid plans.  Curtogali, a corsair who had collected a great following, was now a power with which to reckon, and high in the favour of the Grand Turk at Constantinople.  This robber presented himself at Bizerta—­one of the ports of Abd-Allah-Mahomed—­with a squadron of thirty ships, and demanded hospitality.  As Curtogali disposed of thirty ships and some six thousand fighting men it would probably have been impossible for Abd-Allah to have refused his request in any case; but he was far from wishing to do so, as, by a convenient interpretation of the Koran, the pirate had to deliver up one-fifth part of all the booty which he reft from the Christians to the ruler of the country in whose harbours he sheltered.  There was no place so convenient for the purposes of the pirate as Bizerta:  from here he could strike at Sicily, at the Balearic Islands, at Rome, Naples, Tuscany, and Liguria, while at the same time he held the trade slowly sailing along the North African littoral at his mercy.  Great were the depredations of Curtogali, and even Pope Leo X. trembled on his throne, while Genoa, Venice, and Sicily seethed with impotent fury.

In the meanwhile who so happy as Abu-Abd-Allah-Mahomed?  We cannot do better than to take the description of his position from the pages of the good Padre Alberto Guglielmotti.  The Franciscan says:  “He [that is, Abd-Allah] desired peace with all and prosperity for his own interests.  Friendly to the merchants in their commerce; friendly to the corsairs in their spoils.  Let all hold by the law:  the former contentedly paying customs dues, the latter cheerfully handing over a fifth part of their robberies, and Abd-Allah—­their common friend—­would ever continue at peace with them all.  Outside his ports the merchants and the pirates might fall by the ears if they would:  that was no reason for him to trouble his head.  On the contrary, he would joyfully await them on their return either with customs dues or tribute of the fifth as the case might be.”