King of Sicily, Naples, and Spain, as well as Emperor of Germany, in any direction he might turn he would find a trail of blood and fire over the fair face of his dominions in the Mediterranean.  Although it might gall his pride to admit that his enemy was formidable, Charles was too wise a man, too experienced a warrior to underrate his foe.  He repaired the fortifications of Naples and Sicily at great cost:  he wrote letters to the Pope, to Andrea Doria, to the Viceroys of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, to the Marquis de Vasto, and Antonio de Leyva to collect all the arms and munitions necessary for the attack on Barbarossa.  He sent orders to Don Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis de Mondejar, Captain-General of the Kingdom of Granada, to collect money and to have men ready in the ports of Andalusia.  He gave orders for eight thousand German soldiers to hold themselves in readiness; these were to be joined by the veterans of Coron and Naples, which body counted four thousand more; in Italy he also raised another eight thousand men.  All this was done under the seal of secrecy, which the Emperor most peremptorily ordered was to be observed.

But news travelled in the first half of the sixteenth century, although newspapers, war correspondents, and telegraphs were not; when all the feudatories of the greatest king in Christendom were busy it was impossible for the matter to remain hidden.  Even had it been within the range of possibility to conceal what was going on there was one circumstance which would have rendered all effort to this end nugatory.  Charles had invited Francis of France to join in this holy war against the scourge of Christendom:  not only did Francis refuse to join, but he had the incredible baseness to betray the scheme to Barbarossa.  It would be pleasanter to think that some mistake had been made in this matter, but unfortunately it is beyond dispute, as the facts have been placed on record by Sandoval, whose history, it must be remembered, was published in 1614.  In this matter he is quite precise, as he states that a “Clerigo Francese,” one Monsieur de Floreta, was sent with despatches from Francis to Barbarossa at Tunis, and that this treacherous envoy from Christendom gave the corsair king all the available information that he had been able to collect before starting.

This was typical of that “Golden Age of the Renaissance” in which it took place; when real devotion to all arts, sciences, and amenities of a higher civilisation went hand in hand with crime of the vilest and treachery of the basest description.  Well might Barbarossa, and such as he, laugh to scorn the pretension that his Christian enemies were one whit better than were they, when they could point to the fact that, to serve a private revenge, a great Christian king could betray his co-religionists to their Moslem foes.  Shamelessly did the Sea-wolves seek their prey wherever it was to be found; their methods were villanous and seemingly without excuse,