Mediterranean to raids on Sicily, Italy's Adriatic coast and the seizure of various Venetian possessions, Christian shipping and Spanish fortresses at Tunis and elsewhere on the North African Coast. They did so in alliance with Muslim Barbary pirates, led during this period by the legendary corsair chieftain, Khaireddin Barbarossa, the scourge of the Mediterranean shipping lanes and later "a great naval commander in the service of the Turks" (Kinross 218). According to Lynch, by the 1530s, "the naval power of Islam was now doubled by the combined strength of the small but numerous fleets of the Mohammedan pirates of North Africa" (79). Padfield said that during the period 1530-1570 "the naval forces in the Mediterranean [on both sides] increased at least threefold" (79).
The threat posed by the Ottomans to western interests in the Mediterranean increased dramatically in the 1560s. Lynch called the years 1559 to 1565 a "period of undisputed Turkish supremacy" in the Mediterranean (238). In 1565 Suleiman mount
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