At This Time He Was Eighty Years
Of Age, And He Obtained This Command More By Dint Of His Wealth Than
Merit, As He Offered To Be At The Entire Charge Of The Expedition.
To
enable him to perform this, he put many rich men to death and seized
their wealth.
Among others he strangled Mir Daud, king or bey of the
Thebaid, and seized his treasure. It might be said therefore that this
fleet was equipped rather by the dead than the living. It consisted of
70 sail, most of them being large gallies, well stored with cannon,
ammunition, and provisions; on board of which he embarked 7000 soldiers,
part Turkish janizaries and part Mamelukes; besides a great number of
choice sailors and galley-slaves, many of the latter being taken from
the Venetian gallies then at Alexandria, which were seized in
consequence of a war breaking out between the Turks and the republic of
Venice.
Solyman, who was both a tyrant and a coward, set out from Suez on the
22d of June 1538, ordering four hundred of the soldiers to assist at the
oars, and as they resisted this order as contrary to their privileges,
he put two hundred of them to death. At Jiddah he endeavoured to take
the sheikh, but knowing his tyrannical character, he escaped into the
interior. At Zabid, after receiving a rich present, he put the sheikh
to death. He did the same thing at Aden; and arrived at Diu about the
beginning of September 1538, losing six of his vessels by the way.
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