The Ottoman Empire was the poorer by the loss of its greatest man, the jealousy of the Sultana was assuaged, the despot who had permitted this unavenged murder was still on the throne, thrall to the woman who had first murdered his son and then his friend and minister.  But the deed carried with it the evil consequences which were only too likely to occur when so capable a head of the State was removed at so critical a time.  Renewed strife was in the air, and endless squabbles between Venice and the Porte were taking place.  With these we have no concern, but, in addition to other complaints, there were loud and continuous ones concerning the corsairs.  Venice, “The Bride of the Sea,” had neither rest nor peace; the pirates swarmed in Corfu, in Zante, in Candia, in Cephalonia, and the plunder and murder of the subjects of the Republic was the theme of perpetual representations to the Sultan.  The balance of advantage in this guerilla warfare was with the corsairs until Girolame Canale, a Venetian captain, seized one of the Moslem leaders known as “The Young Moor of Alexandria,” The victory of Canale was somewhat an important one as he captured the galley of “The Young Moor” and four others; two more were sunk, and three hundred Janissaries and one thousand slaves fell into the hands of the Venetian commander.  There being an absence of nice feeling on the part of the Venetians, the Janissaries were at once beheaded to a man.

The whole story is an illustration of the extraordinary relations existing among the Mediterranean States at this time.  Soliman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey, had lent three hundred of his Janissaries, his own picked troops, to assist the corsairs in their depredations on Venetian commerce.  Having done this, and the Janissaries having been caught and summarily and rightly put to death as pirates, the Sultan, as soon as he heard of what had occurred, sent an ambassador, one Yonis Bey, to Venice to demand satisfaction for the insult passed upon him by the beheading of his own soldiers turned pirates.  The conclusion of the affair was that the Venetians released “The Young Moor of Alexandria” as soon as he was cured of the eight wounds which he had received in the conflict, and sent him back to Africa with such of his galleys as were left.  There was one rather comical incident in connection with this affair, which was that when Yonis Bey was on his way from Constantinople to Venice he was chased by a Venetian fleet, under the command of the Count Grandenico, and driven ashore.  The Count was profuse in his apologies when he discovered that he had been chasing a live ambassador; but the occurrence so exasperated Soliman that he increased his demands in consequence.

Barbarossa, who had spent his time harrying the Spaniards at sea ever since the fall of Tunis, was shortly to appear on the scene again.  He received orders from the Sultan, and came as fast as a favouring wind would bring him.  Kheyr-ed-Din had been doing well in the matter of slaves and plunder, but he knew that, with the backing of the Grand Turk, he would once again be in command of a fleet in which he might repeat his triumph of past years, and prove himself once more the indispensable “man of the sea.”