In short, I took part in that glorious battle, having achieved the rank of captain of infantry, an honor due more to my good luck than my merits. And that day, which was so fortunate for Christendom because that was when the world and all the nations realized their error in thinking that the Turks were invincible at sea, on that day, I say, when Ottoman pride and arrogance were shattered, among all the fortunate men who were there (for the Christians who died there were more fortunate than those left alive and victorious), I alone was unfortunate; for, contrary to what I might have expected in Roman times, instead of a naval crown8 I found myself on the night following so famous a day with chains on my feet and shackles on my hands. This is how it happened.
Uchali,9 the king of Algiers, a daring and successful corsair, attacked and defeated the Maltese flagship, leaving only three knights alive, and they were badly wounded; the flagship of Juan Andrea,10 on which I and my company were sailing, came to her assistance, and doing what needed to be done on such an occasion, I jumped onto the enemy galley that then disengaged from our ship, which had grappled her, preventing my soldiers from following me; and so I found myself alone, surrounded by my enemies, who were so numerous I could not successfully resist them; finally, when I was covered with wounds, they took me prisoner. And, Senores, as you have probably heard, Uchali escaped with his entire squadron, and I was his captive, the one sad man among so many who rejoiced, the one captive among so many who were free, because on that day fifteen thousand Christians at the oars of the Turkish fleet attained the liberty they longed for. I was taken to Constantinople, where the Great Turk Selim made my master the commanding admiral of the sea because he had done his duty in the battle, having brought back as a trophy of his valor the standard of the Order of Malta. The following year, 1572, I found myself at Navarino, rowing in the flagship that displayed the three lighthouses.11 There I saw and noted the chance that was lost to capture the entire Turkish fleet while it was still in port, because all its sailors and janissaries were certain they would be attacked in the harbor itself, and they had their clothing ready, and their pasamaques, which are their shoes, so that they could escape immediately by land and not wait to do battle: that was how fearful they had become of our fleet. But heaven ordained otherwise, not through the fault or negligence of the commander of our forces but because of the sins of Christendom, and because it is God's will that there always will be scourges to punish us.
And so Uchali withdrew to Modon, which is an island near Navarino, and putting his people ashore, he fortified the entrance to the port, and remained there until Senor Don Juan left. On this voyage the galley La Presa, whose captain was a son of the famous corsair called Barbarossa, was captured by the flagship of Naples, La Loba, under the command of that lightning bolt of war, that father to his soldiers, that victorious and never defeated Don Alvaro de Bazan, the Marquis of Santa Cruz. I want to be sure to tell you what happened in the capture of La Presa. The son of Barbarossa was so cruel, and treated his captives so badly, that as soon as those on the oars saw La Loba approaching and overtaking them, they all dropped their oars at the same time and seized the captain, who stood at his post and shouted at them to row faster, and they threw him from bench to bench, from stern to bow, biting him so many times that by the time he passed the mast his soul had passed on to hell, so cruel was his treatment of them, as I have said, and so great their hatred of him.
We returned to Constantinople, and the following year, 1573, we heard how Senor Don Juan had conquered Tunis, capturing that kingdom from the Turks and turning it over to Muley Hamet, thereby destroying the hopes of Muley Hamida, the cruelest and most valiant Moor in the world, that he would return to the throne.12 The Great Turk felt this loss very deeply, and, making use of the sagacity that all those of his house possess, he made peace with the Venetians, who desired it much more than he did, and the following year, which was 1574, he attacked the Goletta13 and the fort that Senor Don Juan had left partially constructed near Tunis. During all these battles I was at the oar, without any hope of freedom; at least, I did not hope to obtain it by means of a ransom, because I had decided not to write the news of my misfortune to my father. In the end, the Goletta was lost, and the fort as well, attacked by seventy-five thousand regular Turkish soldiers and more than four hundred thousand Moors and Arabs from the rest of Africa, and this vast army had so many weapons and supplies, and so many sappers, that they could have picked up earth and covered over the Goletta and the fort using only their bare hands.
The Goletta, until that time considered impregnable, was the first to fall, not because of any fault in its defenders, who did in its defense everything they should have done and all that they could do, but because experience showed how easily earthworks could be built in that desert sand, for at one time water was found at a depth of two spans, but the Turks did not find it at a depth of two varas; 14 and so, with countless sacks of sand they built earthworks so high that they rose above the walls of the fort, and their soldiers could fire down on the fort, and no one could stay there or help in its defense. It was the general opinion that our forces should not have closed themselves inside the Goletta but waited for the landing in open country, and those who say this speak from a distance and with little experience of this kind of warfare, because inside the Goletta and the fort there were barely seven thousand soldiers, and how could so small a number, no matter how brave, have gone into open country and defended the forts at the same time against the far larger numbers of the enemy? And how is it possible not to lose a fort when there is no relief, and it is surrounded by so many resolute enemies fighting on their own land? But it seemed to many, and it seemed to me, that it was a special grace and mercy that heaven conferred on Spain when it allowed the destruction of that breeding ground and shelter for wickedness, that voracious, gluttonous devourer of infinite amounts of money spent there to no avail, yet serving no other purpose than to preserve the happy memory of its having been captured by the invincible Carlos V, as if those stones were necessary to make his fame eternal, as it is now and forever will be. The fort was lost, too, but the Turks had to take it a span at a time, because the soldiers who defended it fought so valiantly and fiercely that they killed more than twenty-five thousand of the enemy in twenty-two general assaults. Three hundred of our soldiers survived, every one of them wounded when he was taken prisoner, a sure and certain sign of their tenacity and valor and of how well they defended and protected their positions. A small fortress or tower in the middle of the lagoon, commanded by Don Juan Zanoguera, a famous gentleman and soldier from Valencia, surrendered on advantageous terms. They captured Don Pedro Puertocarrero, the general in command of the Goletta, who did everything possible to defend the fortress and felt its loss so deeply that he died of sorrow on the road to Constantinople, where he was being taken as a prisoner. They also captured the general in command of the fort, whose name was Gabrio Cervellon, a Milanese gentleman who was a great engineer and a very courageous soldier.
Many notable men died in those two forts; one was Pagan Doria, a knight of the Order of St. John, an extremely generous man who showed great liberality to his brother, the famous Juan de Andrea Doria; what made his death even sadder was that he died at the hands of some Arabs whom he trusted when he saw that the fort was lost; they offered to take him, dressed as a Moor, to Tabarca, a small port where the Genoese who engage in the coral trade along these shores keep a house; these Arabs cut off his head and took it to the commander of the Turkish fleet, who confirmed for them our Spanish proverb: 'For the treason we are grateful, though we find the traitor hateful.' And so, they say, the commander ordered the two who brought him the present to be hanged because they did not bring the man to him alive. Among the Christians captured in the fort, there was one named Don Pedro de Aguilar, a native of Andalucia, though I do not know the town, who had been an ensign, and a soldier of great note and rare intelligence; he had a special gift for what they call poetry. I say this because his luck brought him t
o my galley, and my bench, to be the slave of my master, and before we left that port this gentleman composed two sonnets as epitaphs, one for the Goletta and the other for the fort. The truth is I must recite them, because I know them by heart, and I believe they will give you more pleasure than grief."
When the captive named Don Pedro de Aguilar, Don Fernando looked at his companions, and all three of them smiled, and when the captive mentioned the sonnets, one of them said:
"Before your grace continues, I beg you to tell me what happened to this Don Pedro de Aguilar."
"What I do know," responded the captive, "is that after spending two years in Constantinople he escaped, disguised as an Albanian and in the company of a Greek spy, and I do not know if he obtained his freedom, though I believe he did, because a year later I saw the Greek in Constantinople but could not ask if they had been successful."
"Well, they were," responded the gentleman, "for Don Pedro is my brother, and he is now in our home, safe, rich, and married, with three children."
"Thanks be to God," said the captive, "for the mercies he has received; in my opinion, there is no joy on earth equal to that of regaining the freedom one has lost."
"What is more," replied the gentleman, "I know the sonnets my brother wrote."
"Then your grace should recite them," said the captive, "for I am certain you can say them better than I."
"I would be happy to," responded the gentleman. "The one to the Goletta says:
CHAPTER XL
In which the history of the captive continues
SONNET
O blissful souls, who from the mortal veil
freed and unconfined, flew from this low earth,
borne on the wings of brave and virtuous deeds
to the highest, holiest spheres of glorious heav'n,
ablaze with fury and with righteous zeal,
and summoning all your honor and your strength,
you colored the ocean and the sandy ground
with your own blood, and with the enemy's;
you lost your lives before you lost the valor
of your weary, battling arms; in death,
though you are vanquished, victory is yours.
Your mortal, melancholy fall, between
the ramparts and the attacking horde, brings you
fame in this world, blessed glory in the next."
"That is how I remember it, too," said the captive.
"And the one to the fort, if I remember correctly," said the gentleman, "reads like this:
SONNET
Up from this sterile, devastated ground,
these scattered clods of earth, these ruined stones,
the saintly souls of three thousand warriors
rose, immortal, to their glorious home,
after wielding, in vain, the emboldened might
of their courageous arms until, at last,
the exhausted few, too few to resist,
gave up their lives to the enemy's sharp blade.
This is ground that has been the constant home
of a thousand sad, heroic memories
in times long gone and in the present day.
From its hard bosom no more righteous souls
have risen to the shining gates of heaven,
nor has it held the bodies of braver men."
They liked the sonnets, the captive was glad to hear the news about his comrade, and, continuing with his story, he said:
"Having conquered the Goletta and the fort, the Turks ordered the Goletta to be dismantled, because it had been so damaged there was nothing left to raze, and in order to do this more quickly and easily, they mined it in three places; they could not blow up what had seemed its weakest part, that is, the old walls, but what was left standing of the new fortifications built by El Fratin1 came down easily. Then the fleet returned to Constantinople, triumphant and victorious, and a few months after that my master, Uchali, died;2 he was called Uchali Fartax--in the Turkish language it means "the Renegade with Scabies"--which is, in fact, what he was, for it is customary among the Turks to name people for some fault or virtue that they have, and this is because they have only four family names, and these come from the Ottoman house;3 the rest, as I have said, take their first and second names from physical defects or character traits. And this man with scabies rowed in the galleys as a slave of the Great Lord for fourteen years, and when he was past the age of thirty-four he became a renegade because of his fury at a Turk who slapped him while he was rowing: in order to take his revenge, he abandoned his faith; his valor was so great that, without using the vile and devious means that most of the Great Turk's favorites employ in order to succeed, he became king of Algiers and then admiral of the sea, which is the third position in that empire. He came from Calabria, and morally he was a good man who treated his captives very humanely; he had three thousand of them, and after his death they were divided, according to the terms of his will, between the Great Turk, who is the heir of everyone who dies and shares in the inheritance with the dead man's children, and his renegades; I was passed along to a Venetian renegade who had been a cabin boy when he was captured by Uchali, who was very fond of the boy and pampered him a good deal, yet he became the cruelest renegade anyone has ever seen. His name was Azan Aga, and he became very rich, and he also became king of Algiers;4 I came there with him from Constantinople, rather happy to be so close to Spain, not because I intended to write to anyone about my misfortunes, but to see if my luck would be better in Algiers than it had been in Constantinople, where I had tried a thousand different ways to escape, and none had been successful; in Algiers I intended to look for other means to achieve what I desired, for the hope of obtaining my freedom never left me, and when what I devised, planned, and attempted did not correspond to my intentions, I did not give up but sought out some other hope to sustain me, no matter how weak and fragile.
This was how I spent my life, locked in a prison or house that the Turks call a bagnio, where they hold Christian captives, those that belong to the king as well as some that belong to private individuals, and the ones they call 'stockpiled,' which is like saying 'public prisoners,' who serve the city in public works and in other employment for the general good; these captives find it very difficult to obtain their freedom, because they have no individual master, and there is no one with whom to negotiate their ransom even if a ransom is available. As I have said, some private individuals bring their captives to these bagnios, principally when they are ready to be ransomed, because there they can be kept, not working and in safety, until the ransom money arrives. The king's captives who are about to be ransomed do not go out with the work crews, either, unless payment of their ransom is delayed, and then, to make them write more urgently for the money, they are obliged to work and are sent out with the others for wood, which is no easy labor. I was one of those waiting for ransom, for when they learned that I was a captain, though I told them of my limited possibilities and lack of wealth, they put me with the gentlemen and the people awaiting ransom. They put a chain on me, more as a sign that I was to be ransomed than to hold me, and I spent my days in that bagnio, with many other gentlemen and people of note who had been selected to be held for ransom. Although hunger and scant clothing troubled us at times, even most of the time, nothing troubled us as much as constantly hearing and seeing my master's remarkably and exceptionally cruel treatment of Christians. Each day he hanged someone, impaled someone, cut off someone's ears, and with so little provocation, or without any provocation at all, that the Turks knew he did it merely for the sake of doing it and because it was in his nature to murder the entire human race. The only one who held his own with him was a Spanish soldier named something de Saavedra,5 who did things that will be remembered by those people for many years, and all to gain his liberty, yet his master never beat him, or ordered anyone else to beat him, or said an unkind word to him; for the most minor of all the things he did we were afraid he would be impaled, and more than once he feared
the same thing; if I had the time, I would tell you something of what that soldier did, which would entertain and amaze you much more than this recounting of my history.
In any case, overlooking the courtyard of our prison were the windows of the house of a wealthy and important Moor, and these, as is true in most Moorish houses, were more slits than windows, yet even these were covered with very heavy and tightly woven jalousies. One day I happened to be on a flat roof in our prison with three companions; we were passing the time by trying to see how far we could jump with our chains on, for we were alone, all the other Christians having gone out to work; by chance I looked up and saw that through one of those narrow little windows I've mentioned a reed appeared, with a handkerchief tied to the end of it, and the reed was moving about, almost as if it were signaling that we should come and take it. We thought about it, and one of the men who was with me went to stand under the reed to see if it would drop, or what would happen, but as soon as he reached the spot, the reed was raised and moved from side to side, as if shaking its head no. The Christian came back, and again the reed was raised and lowered with the same movements as before. Another of my companions approached, and again the same thing happened. Then the third man approached, the same thing was repeated, and seeing this, I wanted to try my luck, too, and as soon as I placed myself under the reed it was dropped inside the bagnio and fell at my feet. I immediately untied the handkerchief, which had a knot in it, and inside were ten cianiis, which are coins of base gold used by the Moors, each one worth ten of our reales. It goes without saying that I was delighted with this discovery, and my happiness was as great as my amazement at the thought of where that gift had come from, and why it was directed to me, since the signs of not wanting to drop the reed for anyone but me clearly indicated that I was the object of the favor.
I took the money, broke the reed, returned to the roof, looked at the window, and saw an extremely white hand emerge and open and close the window very quickly. With this we understood or imagined that a woman who lived in that house must have done us this kindness, and as a sign that we thanked her for it we made our salaams in the Moorish manner, bending our heads, bowing from the waist, and crossing our arms on our chests. A short while later a small cross made of reeds was dangled from the window and immediately pulled back in. This confirmed that a Christian woman was probably a captive in that house and was the one who had done us the good turn, but the whiteness of her hand and the bracelets we saw on it disabused us of the thought that she was a slave; then we imagined she must be a renegade Christian, for they are often taken as legitimate wives by their masters, who consider this good fortune since the men esteem them more than the women of their own nation. In all our speculations, however, we were very far from the truth of the matter, although from then on we spent all our time looking at the window where our north star of a reed had appeared; but two weeks went by, and we did not see it again, or the hand, or any other signal of any kind.