buffaloes harnessed singly, or two, four, or even six together; two waggons
laden with arquebuses for ships' boats; nine with about forty smaller
bombards (_bombardelles_) placed three, four, or even six on each waggon;
twelve with ordinary pieces of artillery; as many more for the service of
twelve big guns; thirty-seven carts of iron balls; three with gunpowder;
and finally five laden with nitre, darts, and bullets. Splendid artillery
of most excellent workmanship and great power escorted by two thousand men
under arms, without mentioning the companies who marched before and after
each waggon."

The French king had prepared a fleet and army under Count Philip of
Ravenstein; the Spaniards were under the command of Gonsalvo de Còrdoba,
the "Great Captain." The history of the "Alliance of Christian Princes" is
illustrative of the methods of those potentates at that time. After one or
two unimportant skirmishes with the Turks, in which no great harm was done
on either side, the French and Spaniards joined together, and seized the
Kingdom of Naples: the prudent king of this territory, having sold his
artillery to Lodovico del Mosca, did not await the coming of his Christian
brethren.

In the territory known to the Romans as Byzacena, which stretched from
Algiers to the confines of Tripoli, there was reigning at this period one
Abu-Abd-Allah-Mahomed, a Berber Moslem of the dynasty of Hafsit. Between
this dignitary and Genoa a treaty of commerce had been arranged and signed.
But treaties on the shores of the Mediterranean were capable of very
elastic interpretation; they never reckoned with the corsairs, and these
latter were in the habit of intruding themselves everywhere, and upsetting
the most carefully laid plans. Curtogali, a corsair who had collected a
great following, was now a power with which to reckon, and high in the
favour of the Grand Turk at Constantinople. This robber presented himself