you should carry war into Europe and Africa, it is not that I desire your arms should be turned back in Asia from against the Persians, the ancient enemies of the Ottomans.  I require but your sea-army, which is no use against the Persians.  While you shall be conquering Asia I shall be subduing Africa.  The first enterprise which I shall undertake will be against Muley Hassan, the King of Tunis; he has all the vices and possesses not one single virtue.  He is a man of sordid avarice, of unexampled cruelty; he has rendered himself odious to the entire human race.

“He had twenty-two brothers, all of whom he has caused to be murdered.  That which is a common failing among tyrants is his:  he dare not place himself at the head of his troops.  He prefers to endure the outrages which he suffers at the hands of the Moors to taking up arms and inflicting upon them a salutary vengeance.  He had the baseness to enter into an alliance with the Spaniards, and to favour their conquests in Africa.  It will be all the easier for me to exterminate this wild beast because I have with me his brother, who prayed me to save him from the cruelty of Muley Hassan.

“When I besiege Tunis I shall present him to the inhabitants, who love him as much as they hate Muley Hassan.  They will open their gates to me, and I shall gain the town without the loss of a single man:  it will be then you who will be master.  On my way thither I will do what harm I can to the Christians; I will endeavour to defeat Andrea Doria, who is my personal enemy and my rival in glory:  should I succeed in defeating him your Majesty will possess the empire of the sea.  Be then persuaded, great Prince, by me, and believe that he who is master of the sea will very shortly become master on land.”

It is somewhat difficult to fathom the reasons which induced Barbarossa to treat Soliman to his sanctimonious diatribe concerning the King of Tunis; coming, as it did, from a pirate, it was merely ludicrous, and could not for one instant have deceived the remarkably shrewd person to whom it was addressed.  The corsair stated the facts correctly, but the reasons which led to an Eastern autocrat disposing of his family in this manner were so obvious at the time that, if Soliman felt any emotion at all concerning the event, it was probably one of admiration!  Regarded from the practical, apart from the sentimental side, what the proposition amounted to was that Barbarossa should attack a king with whom the Grand Turk had no sort of quarrel, and that, once his territory had been reft from him, that it should be handed over to the ruler of Constantinople for the greater glory of the Sublime Porte.  What mental reservations there were on the part of the corsair we are not told, but had Soliman known him better he would have been aware that never had Barbarossa pulled any chestnuts from the fire of life which were not intended for his own eating; and that it was extremely unlikely, at his time of life, that he was now going to alter the habits of his long and strenuous career.