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By Root 895 0

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 Uchalí withdrew to Modón, which is an island near Navarino, and putting his people ashore, he fortified the entrance to the port, and remained there until Señor 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 Álvaro de Bazán, 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 Señor 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 Señor 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