SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
[Illustration: KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA—CORSAIR,
ADMIRAL, AND KING.]
SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
THE GRAND PERIOD OF THE MOSLEM CORSAIRS
BY COMMANDER E. HAMILTON CURREY, R.N.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
“Ships are but boards, sailors but men:
There be land rats and water rats, land thieves and water thieves,
I mean pirates.”
_Merchant of Venice._
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W 1910
TO THAT GRACIOUS LADY
TO WHOSE COUNSEL AND ENCOURAGEMENT
I OWE SO MUCH
MORE THAN ANY ONE—SAVE I—CAN IMAGINE...
TO MY WIFE
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
PREFACE
When the ship is ready for launching there comes a moment of tense
excitement before the dogshores are knocked away and she slides down
the ways. In the case of a ship this excitement is shared by many
thousands, who have assembled to acclaim the birth of a perfected
product of the industry of man; the emotion is shared by all those
who are present. It is very different when a book has been completed.
The launching has been arranged for and completed by expert hands;
she like the ship gathers way and slides forth into an ocean: but,
unlike the ship which is certain to float, the waters may close over
and engulf her, or perchance she may be towed back to that haven of
obscurity from which she emerged, to rust there in silence and neglect.
There is excitement in the breast of one man alone—to wit, the author.
If his book possesses one supreme qualification she will escape the
fate mentioned, and this qualification is—interest. As the weeks
lengthened into months, and these multiplied themselves to the
tale of something like twenty-four, the conviction was strengthened
that that which had so profoundly interested the writer, would not
be altogether indifferent to others. For some inscrutable reason the
deeds of sea-robbers have always possessed a fascination denied to
those of their more numerous brethren of the land; and in the case
of the Sea-wolves of the sixteenth century we are dealing with the
very aristocrats of the profession. Circumstances over which they had
no control flung the Moslem population of Southern Spain on to the
shores of Northern Africa: to revenge themselves upon the Christian
foe by whom this expropriation had been accomplished was natural to
a warrior race; and those who heretofore had been land-folk pure and
simple took to piracy as a means of livelihood. It is of the deeds of
these men that this book treats; of their marvellous triumphs, of their
apparently hopeless defeats, of the manner in which they audaciously
maintained themselves against the principalities and the powers of
Christendom always hungering for their destruction.
The quality which Napoleon is said to have ascribed to the British
Infantry, “of never knowing when they were beaten,” seems to have also
characterised the Sea-wolves; as witness the marvellous recuperation
of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa when expelled from Tunis by Charles V.;
and the escape of Dragut from the island of Jerba when apparently
hopelessly trapped by the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria. All through
their history the leaders of the Sea-wolves show the resourcefulness
of the real seamen that they had become by force of circumstances, and
it was they who in the age in which they dwelt showed what sea power
really meant. Sailing through the Mediterranean on my way to Malta in
the spring of this year, as the good ship fared onwards I passed in
succession all those lurking-places from which the Moslem Corsairs were
wont to burst out upon their prey. Truly it seemed as if
“The spirits of their fathers might start from every wave,”
and in imagination one pictured the rush of the pirate galley, with its
naked slaves straining at the oar of their taskmasters, its fierce,
reckless, beturbaned crew clustered on the “rambades” at the bow and
stern. It might be that they would capture some hapless “round-ship,”
a merchantman lumbering slowly along the coast; or again they might
meet with a galley of the terrible Knights of St. John or of the
ever-redoubtable Doria. In either case the Sea-wolves were equal to
their fortune, to plunder or to fight in the name of Allah and his
prophet.
That which differentiated the Sea-wolves from other pirates was the
combination which they effected among themselves; the manner in which
these lawless men could subordinate themselves to the will of one whom
they recognised as a great leader. To obtain such recognition was no
easy matter, and the manner in which this was done, by those who rose
by sheer force of character to the summit of this remarkable hierarchy,
has here been set forth.
E. Hamilton Currey.
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAPTER I
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 13
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE CORSAIRS 28
CHAPTER III
URUJ BARBAROSSA 43
CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH OF URUJ BARBAROSSA 59
CHAPTER V
KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA 75
CHAPTER VI
THE TAKING OF THE PEÑON D’ALGER; ANDREA DORIA 91
CHAPTER VII
THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE CORSAIR KING 107
CHAPTER VIII
THE RAID ON THE COAST OF ITALY; JULIA GONZAGA 123
CHAPTER IX
BARCELONA, MAY 1535; THE GATHERING OF THE
CHRISTIAN HOSTS 139
CHAPTER X
THE FALL OF TUNIS AND THE FLIGHT OF BARBAROSSA 155
CHAPTER XI
ROXALANA AND THE MURDER OF IBRAHIM 172
CHAPTER XII
THE PREVESA CAMPAIGN; THE GATHERING OF THE FLEETS 189
CHAPTER XIII
THE BATTLE OF PREVESA 205
CHAPTER XIV
THE NAVY OF OARS; THE GALLEY, THE GALEASSE,
AND THE NEF 221
CHAPTER XV
DRAGUT-REIS 238
CHAPTER XVI
DRAGUT-REIS 254
CHAPTER XVII
DRAGUT-REIS 269
CHAPTER XVIII
THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN 286
CHAPTER XIX
DRAGUT-REIS 306
CHAPTER XX
THE SIEGE OF MALTA 324
CHAPTER XXI
ALI BASHA 344
CHAPTER XXII
LEPANTO 362
AUTHORITIES CONSULTED 383
LIST OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN,
SULTANS OF TURKEY, POPES OF ROME, AND GRAND
MASTERS OF MALTA FROM 1492 TO 1580 385
DISTANCES IN SEA MILES ON THE COAST OF NORTHERN
AFRICA 387
INDEX 389
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I wish to record my cordial recognition of the kindness shown to me at
Malta by Mr. Salvino Sant Manduca. The picture of the carrack opposite
to page 300 was a gift from him. The galley of the Knights of Malta is
a reproduction of a picture hanging in his house. I should also like to
thank him for the time and trouble which he took on my behalf during my
stay at Malta, and the keen interest he displayed in my subject.
R. HAMILTON CURREY.
KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA—CORSAIR, ADMIRAL, AND KING _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
URUJ AND KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA 44
ANDREA DORIA, PRINCE OF ONEOLIA, ADMIRAL TO CHARLES V. 92
SOLIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT 110
THE EMPEROR CHARLES V 150
MULEY HASSAN KING OF TUNIS 162
GALEASSE UNDER SAIL 194
GALLEY UNDER OARS 222
BRIGANTINE CHASING FELUCCA 236
GOZON DE DIEU-DONNÉ SLAYING THE GREAT SERPENT OF RHODES 294
CARRACK IN WHICH THE KNIGHTS ARRIVED AT MALTA, 1530 300
JEAN PARISOT DE LA VALETTE, GRAND MASTER OF THE KNIGHTS
OF MALTA, AT THE SIEGE OF THAT ISLAND BY THE TURKS IN 1565 324
DEATH OF DRAGUT AT THE SIEGE OF MALTA 340
A GALLEY OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA 354
DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA 362
SEBASTIAN VENIERO 364
SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
INTRODUCTORY
In all the ages of which we have any record there have been men who
gained a living by that practice of robbery on the high seas which
we know by the name of Piracy. Perhaps the pirates best known to
the English-speaking world are the buccaneers of the Spanish Main,
who flourished exceedingly in the seventeenth century, and of whom
many chronicles exist: principally owing to the labours of that John
Esquemelin, a pirate of a literary turn of mind, who added the crime
of authorship to the ill deeds of a sea-rover. The Sea-Wolves of the
Mediterranean in the preceding century did not raise up a chronicler
from among themselves: for not much tincture of learning seems to
have distinguished these desperate fighters and accomplished seamen,
descendants of those Spanish Moslems who had, during the Middle
Ages, lived in a land in which learning and culture had been held in
the highest estimation. Driven from their homes, their civilisation
crushed, their religion banned in that portion of Southern Spain in
which they had dwelt for over seven centuries, cast upon the shores
of Northern Africa, these men took to the sea and became the scourge
of the Mediterranean. That which they did, the deeds which they
accomplished, the terror which they inspired, the ruin and havoc which
they wrought, have been set forth in the pages of this book.
It was the age of the galley, the oar-propelled vessel which moved
independently of the wind in the fine-weather months of the great
inland sea. Therefore to the dwellers on the coast the Sea-wolves were
a perpetual menace; as, when booty was unobtainable at sea, they raided
the towns and villages of their Christian foes. During all the period
here dealt with no man’s life, no woman’s honour, was safe from these
pirates within the area of their nefarious activities. They held the
Mediterranean in fee, they levied toll on all who came within reach
of their galleys and their scimitars. Places unknown to the geography
of the sixteenth century became notorious in their day, and Christian
wives and mothers learned to tremble at the very names of Algiers and
Tunis. From these places the rovers issued to capture, to destroy, and
to enslave: in Oran and Tlemcen, in Tenes, Shershell, Bougie, Jigelli,
Bizerta, Sfax, Susa, Monastir, Jerbah, and Tripoli they lurked ready
for the raid and the foray. At one time all Northern Africa would
thrill to the triumph of the Moslem arms, at another there would go
up the wail of the utterly defeated; but in spite of alternations of
fortune the Sea-wolves abode in the localities of their choice, and
ended in establishing those pirate States which troubled the peace of
the Mediterranean practically until the introduction of steam.
The whole record of the sixteenth century is one of blood and fire,
of torture and massacre, of “punic faith” and shameless treason; the
deeds of the sea-rovers, appalling as they were, frequently found a
counterpart in the battles, the sieges, and the sacking of towns which
took place perpetually on the continent of Europe.
There was so much history made at this period, the stage of world
politics was occupied by so many great, striking, and dazzling
personalities, that the Sea-wolves and all they accomplished were to a
great extent overshadowed by happenings which the chroniclers of the
time considered to be of greater importance. In this no doubt they were
right in the main; but, in spite of this opinion which they held, we
find that time and again the main stream of events is ruffled by the
prows of the pirate galleys. Such men as the Barbarossas, as Dragut,
and Ali Basha could only have been suppressed and exterminated had the
whole might of Christendom been turned against them, for they held in
their hands two weapons, the keenest and most powerful with which to
attain the objects which they had in view.
The first and more powerful of these was the appeal in a rough and
warlike age to the cupidity of mankind. “Those who are content to
follow us,” they said in effect, “are certain to enrich themselves if
they are men stout of heart and strong of hand. All around us lie rich
and prosperous lands; we have but to organise ourselves, and to take
anything that we wish for; we can, if we like, gather a rich harvest at
comparatively small trouble.” Such counsels as these did not fall on
deaf ears. Driven from the land of plenty—from glorious Andalusia with
its fruitful soil, its magnificent cities, its vines and olives, its
fruit and grain, its noble rivers and wide-spreading _vegas_—the
Spanish Moslem of the day of the Sea-wolves was an outcast and a
beggar, ripe for adventure and burning for revenge on those by whom he
had been expropriated.
Great historians like William Hickling Prescott tell us that, in the
course of the seven centuries of the Moslem domination in Spain, the
Moors had become soft and effeminate, that “the canker of peace”
had sapped, if it had not destroyed, the virile qualities of the
race, that luxury and learning had dried up at their source those
primitive virtues of courage and hardihood which had been the leading
characteristics of those stark fighters who had borne the banner of
the Prophet from Mecca even to Cadiz. Tom by faction, by strife among
themselves, they had succumbed to the arms of the Northern chivalry; by
its warriors they had been driven out, never to return.
When this was accomplished, when the curtain fell on the final scene
of the tragedy, and the Moors, after the fall of Granada, were driven
across the sea into Africa, there came to pass a most remarkable change
in those who had been expropriated. The learning, the culture, the
civilisation, by which they had been so long distinguished, seemed to
drop away from them, cast away like a worn-out garment for which men
have no further use. In place of all these things there came a complete
and desperate valour, a bitter and headstrong fanaticism.
It was one of the attributes of the Moslem civilisation in Spain,
and one of the most enlightened thereof, that religious toleration
flourished in its midst. Jew and Christian were allowed to worship at
the altars of their fathers, no man hindering or saying them nay; one
rule, and one alone, had to be preserved: none must blaspheme against
Mahomet, the Prophet of God, as he was considered to be by the Moslems.
The penalty for infraction of this rule was death; otherwise, complete
liberty of conscience was accorded.
We have spoken of the two weapons held by the leaders of the
Sea-wolves. The first, as we have, said, was cupidity; the second
was fanaticism, the deadly religious hatred engendered, not only by
the wholesale expropriation of the Moslem population, but also by
the persecution to which the Moriscoes—as those Moslems were known
who remained in Spain—were subjected by their Christian masters. It
requires little imagination to see how these two weapons of avarice
and intolerance could be made to serve the purpose of those dominant
spirits who rose to the summit of the piratical hierarchy. Not only
did they dazzle the imaginations of those who followed in their train
by promises of wealth uncounted, but they added to this the specious
argument that, in slaying and robbing the Christian wheresoever he was
to be found, the faithful Moslem was performing the service of God and
the act most grateful to his holy Prophet.
Could any rule of life be at the same time more simple and more
attractive to the beggared Mohammedan cast on the sterile shores of
Northern Africa to starve?
With the main stream of history, to which we have before referred, we
have no concern in this book. He who would embark thereon must sail
a powerful vessel which must carry many guns. Also for the conduct
of this vessel many qualities are necessary: a commanding intellect,
acute perceptions, indefatigable industry, complete leisure, are among
those things necessary to the pilot. These must be supplemented by a
genius for research, a knowledge of ancient and modern languages, and
an unerring faculty for separating the few precious grains of wheat
from those mountains of chaff which he will have to sift with the
utmost care. There are, however, subsidiary rivulets which feed the
onward flow of events, and of such is the story of the Sea-wolves of
the Mediterranean. On these the adventurous mariner can sail his little
cockboat, discreetly retiring before he becomes involved and engulfed
in the main stream. That he cannot altogether avoid it is shown by
the fact that the men who are here chronicled took part in events of
first-class importance in the age in which they lived. Kheyr-ed-Din
Barbarossa fought the battle of Prevesa against his lifelong
antagonist, Andrea Doria. Dragut was killed at the siege of Malta, at
the moment almost of the fall of the castle of St. Elmo; had he lived
it is more than probable that Jean Parisot de la Valette and his heroic
garrison would have been defeated instead of being victorious. Ali
Basha was the one Moslem commander who increased his reputation at the
battle of Lepanto, because, as was usual in all maritime conflicts of
the time, the corsairs, who had the habit of the sea, were more than a
match for soldiers embarked to fight on an unfamiliar element.
We shall speak, later on, of the autocratic rule of these leaders who
possessed so absolute a domination over the men by whom they were
followed. The fact of this absolute supremacy on the part of the chiefs
is very curious, as theoretically in the confederacy of the Sea-wolves
all were equal; we are, in fact, confronted with pure democracy, where
every man was at liberty to do what seemed best in his own eyes. He
was a free agent, none coercing him or desiring him to place himself
under discipline or command. This, be it observed, was the theory. As
a matter of fact the corsairs, who were extraordinarily successful in
their abominable trade, abode beneath an iron and rigid discipline.
This was enforced by the lash, as we shall see later on when it is
related how Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa flogged one Hassan, a captain
who, he considered, had failed in his duty: or by the actual penalty
of death, which Uruj Barbarossa inflicted on one who had dared to act
independently of his authority.
The theory of equality obtained among the Mediterranean pirates; but
the Barbarossas, Dragut, and Ali believed that, in practice, the less
interference there was with their designs by those, whom Cardinal
Granvelle denominated in a letter to Philip II. as “that mischievous
animal the people,” the better it would be for all concerned. The
conception held of rights and duties of “the mischievous animal”
by these militant persons was, that it should behave as did those
others recorded of the Roman centurion in Holy Writ: if it did not,
and difficulties arose, the leaders were not troubled with an undue
tenderness either towards the individual or the theory. Of this we
shall see examples as we go on.
This period has been called “The Grand Period of the Moslem Corsairs”
cause it was in something less than a century, from the year of the
expulsion of the Moors from Granada in 1492 to the death of Ali Basha
in 1580, that the Sea-wolves were at the height of their power, that
the piratical States of the Mediterranean were in the making. That
subsequently they gave great cause of trouble to Christendom is
written in characters of blood and fire throughout the history of the
succeeding centuries; but the real interest in the careers of these
men resides in the fact that they established, by their extraordinary
aptitude for sea-adventure, the permanent place which was held by
their descendants. Time and again in the sixteenth century the effort
was made to destroy them root and branch: they were defeated, driven
out of their strongholds on shore, crushed apparently for ever. But
nothing short of actual extermination could have been successful in
this; as, no matter how severe had been the set-back, there was always
left a nucleus of the pirates which in a short time grew again into a
formidable force. The Ottoman Turk, magnificent fighter as he was on
land, seemed to lose his great qualities when the venue was changed
from the land to the sea. The Janissaries, that picked corps trained
as few soldiers were trained even in that age of iron, who never
recoiled before the foe but who fought only to conquer or die, seem to
have failed when embarked for sea-service. That which the hard teaching
of experience alone could show—that the man who fights best upon the
sea is he who has the habit of the sea—was at this time not generally
recognised, and this it was that rendered the corsairs so supreme on
the element which they had made their own. Some among the great ones of
the earth there were who appreciated this fact, who, like that great
statesman Ibrahim, Grand Vizier to Soliman the Magnificent, recognised
what it was to lay their hands upon “a veritable man of the sea”; but
the rule was to embark men from the shore and to entrust to them the
duty of fighting naval actions.
When “the Grand Period” came to an end, as it did about the date
already indicated, the corsairs had become a permanent institution;
they remained established at Algiers, Tunis, and other ports on
the littoral of Northern Africa as a recognised evil. Pirates they
remained to the end of the chapter, the scourge of the tideless sea;
but no longer did they array themselves in line of battle against
the mightiest potentates of the earth allied for their complete
destruction. It was the men of the sea who set up this empire; it was
they who defied Charles V., a whole succession of Popes, Andrea Doria
and his descendants, the might of Spain, Venice, Genoa, Catalonia, and
France. It was they who taught the so-called civilised world of the age
in which they lived that sea-power can only be met and checked by those
who dispose of navies manned by seamen; that against it the master of
the mightiest legions of the land is powerless.
This contention is by no means invalidated by the fact that frequently
the corsairs were defeated by land forces embarked on board ship.
Thus when Dragut was defending Tripoli against an expedition sent
against him in 1559 by the combined forces of Spain, Tuscany, Rome,
Naples, Sicily, and Genoa, of one hundred sail which embarked fourteen
thousand troops, he was relieved by Piali, the Admiral of Soliman
the Magnificent, who came to his assistance with eighty-six galleys,
each of which had on board one hundred Janissaries, and who gained
so striking a victory over the Christians that the Turkish Admiral
returned to Constantinople with no less than four thousand prisoners.
But in this case, as in so many others, the actual hostilities took
place on shore, where the troops had the opportunity of displaying
their sterling qualities.
There is very little doubt that critics will point out that the
corsairs were by no means universally successful; that, as in the
case of the attack by Hassem, the ruler of Algiers in 1563, on Oran
and Marzaquivir (a small port in the immediate vicinity of Oran), in
the end the Moslems were badly beaten. This undoubtedly was the case,
and there is no desire to magnify the deeds of the Sea-wolves or to
minimise the heroic defence of Marzaquivir by the Count of Alcaudete,
or that of Oran by his brother, Don Martin de Còrdoba, At the last
moment of their wonderful defence they were relieved by a fleet sent by
the King of Spain, and Hassem had to abandon his artillery, ammunition,
and stores and beat a hasty retreat to the place from whence he had
come.
There was nothing remarkable in the fact that the corsairs were
frequently defeated; what is really strange is that they should have
achieved so great a success—success vouched for by the concrete
instance that they established those sinister dynasties on the coast of
Northern Africa which were the outcome of their piratical activities.
In speaking of them, historians of later date than that at which they
flourished are apt to hold them somewhat cheaply, to dismiss them as
mere barbarians of no particular importance in the scheme of mundane
affairs; as men who caused a certain amount of trouble to civilisation
by their inroads and their plunderings. That which is certain is that
they were for centuries a standing shame and disgrace to the whole of
Christendom.
To those who may perhaps be called the pioneers—that is to say, the men
treated of in this book—a certain amount of sympathy and understanding
may be conceded; for they had been driven from the land which had
been theirs, it was their countrymen and their co-religionists who
were being ground to powder beneath the fanatical cruelty of the
Spanish Inquisition. That which they did was doubtless abominable,
but it cannot be contended that they had not received the strongest
provocation both from the material and the religious points of view.
Once the “Grand Period” was passed, that period in which such men as
the Barbarossas, Dragut, and Ali flourished, the chronicle of the
Moslem States founded by them sinks to the degraded level of sheer
robbery and murder; of a history of a tyranny established within one
hundred miles of the shores of Europe, and of great kings and princes
bargaining with piratical ruffians who held in thrall thousands upon
thousands of their subjects. How it came about that the Christian
States tolerated such an abuse is one of those mysteries which can
never be explained; and if subsequent centuries displayed a greater
refinement of manners, a more apt appreciation of all that is softer
and kindlier in the human relationships of nation towards nation and
of people towards people, they have not perhaps so much to plume
themselves upon as had their rude forefathers of the sixteenth century,
who, seeing the evil and feeling the effects thereof, did their best to
extirpate those by whom this evil was caused.
The question may be asked, how can it be that the lives and actions of
such men as these are worth chronicling? It is because, not only that
they modified profoundly the course of history in the age in which they
lived, but also because that, hidden deep down, somewhere, in these men
stained by a thousand crimes, ruthless, lustful, bloodthirsty, cruel as
the grave, was the germ of true greatness, some dim spark of the divine
fire of genius. Contending against principalities and powers, they held
their own; in the welter of anarchy in which they lived they proved
that there existed no finer fighting men, which alone give them some
claim to consideration; but that which is most interesting to watch is
the absolute domination obtained by the leaders over their followers.
There is no other record of pirates who commanded on so large a scale;
there is none which shows men such as these bargaining on equal terms
with the great ones of the earth.
CHAPTER I
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS
There is, in the deeds of men of action, an interest which is never
aroused by those persons of brains and capacity by whom the world
is really ruled. The statesman in his cabinet is the god within the
machine; it is he who directs the acts of nations, it is he who moves
the fleets and armies as if they were pieces on the chess-board; to
him, as a rule, is the man of action subordinate, obeying his behests.
Rule and governance are his, power both in the abstract and the
concrete. Seldom in the history of the world do we come across the men
who are at one and the same time statesmen and soldiers, who, taking
their destiny in their own hands, work it out to the appointed end
thereof. But, as we stray in the by-paths of history, we meet with
some who, in their day, have influenced not only the age in which they
lived themselves, but also the destinies of generations yet unborn. It
would seem incredible that mere pirates, such as the Moslem corsairs
of the Mediterranean, could be included in this category, and yet, as
their story is unfolded, we shall see how the Sea-wolves rose from
the humblest beginnings to trouble the peace of Europe, to found for
themselves dynasties which endured.
Uruj Barbarossa, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, Dragut Reis, and Occhiali, or
All Basha, were men who, in the sixteenth century, did much to change
the conditions of the times in which they lived: it was the time of
the Renaissance in Europe, a period of splendour in all the arts and
sciences. These men added nothing to the knowledge of the civilised
world as it then existed, save and except in one particular, which
was, as Kheyr-ed-Din explained to Soliman the Magnificent on a certain
memorable occasion, that he who rules on the sea will rule on the land
also. In the present day, when all the nations and languages sit at the
feet of Captain (now Rear-Admiral) Mahan, and acclaim his “Sea Power”
series of books, it is interesting to find that he was anticipated
in the most practical fashion possible by a corsair of the sixteenth
century.
This period was one in which great men abounded. The Emperor Charles
V., Francis I. of France, and Henry VIII. of England, were on the
thrones of their respective countries; in Hungary was John Hunyadi, at
Constantinople Soliman the Magnificent held rule, while in Rome the
“fatal house of Medici” were the successors of Saint Peter. War was a
commonplace state of the times, but until the Crescent began to sweep
the seas it had its manifestation in the perpetual quarrels of the
nations of Christendom, which represented, as a rule, the insatiable
ambitions of its rulers. But now new men forced themselves to the
front, a new power arose which was very imperfectly understood, and
which practically held the sea at its mercy. Gone were the halcyon
days of peaceful trade which had been pursued for generations by
Venetian and Genoese, by Spaniard and Frenchman; gone also, apparently
never to return, was all sense of security for the wretched dwellers on
the littoral of the Mediterranean, who lived in daily, and particularly
in nightly, dread of the falcon swoop of the pirate galleys.
It is amusing to read the old chroniclers, sticklers as they were for
“the dignity of history,” continually having to turn aside from the
main stream of their narrative of emperors, popes, and kings to descend
to the level of the Sea-wolves, and to be constrained to set down the
nefarious doings of these rovers of the sea. Bell, book, and candle
were invoked against them in vain, and mighty monarchs had to meet them
in the stricken field not merely once or twice—to their utter undoing
and discomfiture—but many times, while victory inclined first to one
side and then to the other.
The Osmanli had ever been warriors since the times of the Prophet, of
Abu-Bekr, of Othman, and of Ali; but so far their warlike achievements
had been always on land, their only sea experience being confined to
the crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar, when in the eighth century,
under Tarik, they had swarmed into Andalusia, conquered Roderick the
Goth, and set up that Moslem domination in Southern Spain which lasted
until 1492, just before the events set forth in this book took place.
Piracy in all ages is a thing in which a curious shuddering interest
has been taken, and the deeds of the outlaws of the sea have never
lacked chroniclers. There is for this a reason apart from the record
of robbery and murder, which is the commonplace of piratical deeds:
it resides in the perennial interest which men take in individual
achievement, in the spectacle of absolute and complete domination by
one man over the lives and the fortunes of others. This intense form of
individualism is nowhere so well exhibited as in the story of piratical
enterprise, where a band of men, outside of the law and divorced from
all human kind by the atrocity of their deeds, has had to be welded
into one homogeneous mass for the purpose of preying upon the world
at large. Therefore he who would hold rule among such outlaws must
himself be a man of no common description, for in him must be that
quality which calls for instantaneous obedience among those with whom
he is associated; behind him is no constituted authority, discipline is
personal, enforced by the leader, and by him alone. Beneath him are men
of the rudest and roughest description, slaves to their lusts and their
passions, prone to mutiny, suspicious, and—worst of all—stupid.
It is with these constituent elements that the piratical leader had to
deal, trusting to the strength of his own arm, the subtlety of his own
unassisted brain. Some among these leaders have risen to eminence in
their evil lives, most of them have been the captains of single ships
preying on commerce in an indiscriminate manner; but this was not the
case with the Sea-wolves of the Mediterranean, Primarily sea-robbers
they were of course, but as time and opportunity developed their
characters they rose to meet occasion, to take fortune at the flood, in
a manner that, had they been pursuing any other career, would most
certainly have caused them to rise to eminence. Into the fierce and
blood-stained turmoil of their lives there entered something unknown
to any other pirates: this was religious fanaticism—a fanaticism so
engrained in character, a belief held to with such passionate tenacity,
that men stained with every conceivable crime held that their passage
to Paradise was absolutely secure because of the faith which they
professed. Tradition, sentiment, discipline, were summed up in one
trite formula; but though we, at this distance of time, may hold it
somewhat in derision, it was a vital force in the days of Soliman the
Magnificent; and there was an added zest to robbery and murder in the
fact that the pirates, as good Mohammedans, were obeying the behests of
the Prophet every time that they cut a Christian throat, plundered a
Christian argosy, or carried off shrieking women into a captivity far
worse than death.
That a pirate should be a warrior goes without saying, that a pirate
should be a statesman is a thing almost incredible; but those who
will read the story of the life of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa will be
forced to admit that here, at least, was a pirate who achieved the
apparently impossible. Admiral Jurien de la Gravière has remarked that
the Moslem corsairs of the sixteenth century were great men, even when
measured by the standard of Henry VIII., of Charles V., of Soliman the
Magnificent, of Ibrahim, his Grand Vizier, or of Andrea Doria, greatest
among contemporary Christian mariners. To the seaman, of course, there
is much that is fascinating in the deeds of his forerunners, and
the ships of the corsairs had in them something distinctive in that
they were propelled by oars, and were in consequence, to a certain
extent, independent of the weather. Like the sailors of all ages, to
the Sea-wolves gales and storms of all sorts and descriptions were
abhorrent; and in consequence they had a well-marked piracy season,
which, as we shall see, covered the spring and summer, while they
carefully avoided the inclement months of autumn and winter.
In a later chapter an attempt has been made to place before the reader
pictures of the galley, the galeasse, and the nef, which were the names
attached to the ships then in use; the name brigantine, far from having
the significance attached to it by the sailor of the present day, seems
to have been a generic term to denote any craft not included in the
names already given.
Although the sixteenth century had outgrown the principle of the
general massacre of the enemy by the victors, still chivalry to the
fallen foe was far to seek, as all persons captured at sea were, no
matter what their rank and status, immediately stripped and chained to
the rowers’ bench, where they remained until ransom, good fortune, or
a kindly death, for which these unfortunates were wont to pray, should
come to their release. To a large extent this savagery may be traced
to the religious rancour which animated the combatants on both sides,
as the fanaticism of the Moslem, of which we have already spoken, was
fully matched on the side of the Christians by the bigotry of the
Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Knights of
Malta, who were vowed to the extermination of what they, on their
side, called “the infidel.” It was an age of iron, when men neither
gave nor expected grace for the misfortunes which might befall them in
the warrior life which they led. It was distinguished by many gallant
feats of arms on both sides, but pity formed no part of the equipment
of the fighting man bent on the death or capture of his enemy. Honestly
and sincerely each side believed that they were doing the service of
the Almighty in destroying the other party root and branch. The amount
of human misery and suffering caused by the rise and progress of the
Moslem corsairs was absolutely incalculable; the slavery of the rower
in the galley in the time of which we speak was an agony so dreadful
that in these days it is a thing which seems altogether incredible, a
nightmare of horror almost impossible even to imagine.
The life of the “gallerian” was so hard that his sufferings in many
cases were mercifully ended in death in a very short time, as none
save those of iron constitution could stand the strain imposed by the
desperate toil and wretched food. Yet there are cases on record of men
who had worked at the oar for actual decades, so unconquerable in their
strength that even such a life as this had not the power to break them
down.
To the peaceful mariner who wished merely to trade, to the individual
whose business called him overseas, this epoch must have been one of
terror unspeakable. The ordinary perils of the deep were quite enough
to keep timid folk at home in those days of clumsy, ill-found sailing
ships, which could by no means work to windward, and did not sail
remarkably well even with the most favouring breezes; when to this we
add that every ship which started on a voyage in the Mediterranean had
before her the chance of being captured by the corsairs, it was no
wonder that he whose business led him oversea should make his last will
and testament and bid a fond farewell to all his relatives.
There is a record in the Mémoires of the Rev. Frère Pierre d’An,
Bachelier en Théologie de la Faculté de Paris, etc., who wrote in a
most heartfelt manner concerning the danger of the sea and the perils
to be expected from the Barbary corsairs. He says, date 1637:
“An ancient writer, considering how little assurance
can ordinarily be placed in the sea, and how hazardous
it is to expose oneself and one’s goods to its mercy,
has remarked, with much reason, that it is infinitely
preferable to be poor on shore than to be rich at sea.
In which saying he mocks indeed at those ambitious,
avaricious, and mercenary men who, in order to gain false
glory and the things of this world, expose themselves
rashly to the manifest perils which are most of the time
the inevitable lot of the seaman. This same consideration
causes him also to utter these remarkable words: that
he repents himself of but one thing, and that is ever
to have travelled by sea when it was possible to have
done so by land. And, to say truth, he has good reason
to speak as he does, because it is impossible for the
most hardy navigators not to tremble with fear when it is
represented before their eyes that they must combat with
the winds, the waves, and the foam every time that they
adventure upon the deep.
“Because it is indisputable that this is the very Theatre
of the storms, and the place in the world most capable
of all sorts of violence and tragic adventure. This,
however, does not prevent those who covet the perishable
goods of this world from straying upon the sea, even in
unknown and untraversed regions, without ceasing and
without rest.
“If, however, they abandon the ocean for a time, it is
but to return to it again to seek once more war with
their ships, in order unjustly to make themselves masters
of the bodies and of the riches of others.
“Of such it may be remarked to-day are, in all the
maritime coasts, the implacable Corsairs of Barbary. For,
however great may be the dangers of which we have just
spoken, and no matter now many examples they may see of
the fury and inconstancy of Neptune, they cease not their
irritating performances, kindling warfare in all the
coasts of the Christian nations. It is there that they
exercise their infamous piracies, and there also that
they glory in the most shameful of all commerce—the trade
of the brigand.
“Which in all towns that are well policed have always met
with a swift and just retribution, because the law is
ordained against those who maintain such practices.
“But such does not happen among these pirates.
“On the contrary, it may truthfully be said that, while
in towns in which good persons dwell good actions receive
the palms and the crown, it is among the Corsairs but to
the wicked to whom are given recompense and praise.
“In effect the most determined among them—I mean the most
unworthy robbers who are best versed in all the infamies
of their trade and most accustomed to the practice of
violence—are those who are covered with honours, and
who pass in the estimation of their fellows for men of
heart and courage.
“Indeed experience has taught all Christian merchants
that the infidels of the coast of Barbary are all
brigands.
“Among these those of Algiers carry off the prize for
riches, for ships, for strength, and for villainy.”
The bachelor in theology is somewhat sweeping in his criticisms, and
his meaning is, perhaps, somewhat clearer than his grammar. One thing,
however, is perfectly plain, that, in the opinion of the reverend
brother, those who go to sea are to be divided into two categories,
rogues and fools, with a strong preponderance of the worse Element of
the two.
Of the corsairs dealt with in this record of their deeds the two
Barbarossas were the sons of a Mohammedan father and a Christian
mother. Dragut Reis was a pure Mohammedan, and Ali Basha was a
pure-blooded Italian. All these men, as will be seen, raised themselves
to eminence in the profession of piracy; in each and every separate
case starting at the very bottom rung of the ladder and rising, by
sheer stress of valour and character, to the very top. Each in turn
became Admiralissimo to the Grand Turk at Constantinople. Kheyr-ed-Din
Barbarossa commanded the Ottoman fleet at the great battle of Prevesa,
at which he met with his life-long competitor at sea, the famous
Genoese Admiral, Andrea Doria. Dragut Reis was killed at the siege
of Malta in 1565, and Ali Basha was the only Moslem commander who
increased his reputation at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, when Don
John of Austria shattered the power of the Moslem at sea for the time
being.
Although the “renegado” was very much in evidence in the vessels of
the Moslem corsairs, still of course the bulk of the fighting men, by
which the galleys were manned, were Mohammedans, the descendants of the
warriors who had swept through Northern Africa like a living flame in
the early days of the Mohammedan conquest.
Cut adrift from the homes which had been theirs for over seven
centuries—as we shall see in the next chapter—there was nothing left
for the erstwhile dwellers in Andalusia but to gain their living by the
strong hand. The harvest of the sea was the one which they garnered—a
harvest of the goods of their mortal enemies strung out in lines of
hapless merchant-vessels throughout the length and breadth of the
tideless sea.
It booted not that the great Powers of Europe sent expedition after
expedition against them; these they fought to the death with varying
fortune, ready, when the storm had passed over their heads, to start
once more on the only career which promised them the chance of
acquiring riches. Their whole history is a study of warfare, waged as a
rule on the petty scale, but rising at times, as in the cases already
mentioned, into events of first-class historical importance.
The deeds of the buccaneers of the next century in the Spanish Main
sink into comparative insignificance when compared with what was
accomplished by such a man as Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, who was known,
and rightly known, by his contemporaries, and for many generations
of Moslem seamen yet to come, as “the King of the Sea.” The capture of
Panama by Sir Henry Morgan in January 1671 was possibly as remarkable
a feat of arms as was ever accomplished, but it cannot rank in its
importance to civilised mankind on the same plane as those memorable
battles in the Mediterranean of which mention has been made as having
been fought by the Moslem corsairs.
Fighting for their own hand, the booty reaped by these men was
incredible in its richness. Sea-power was theirs, and they took the
fullest advantage of this fact, fearing none save the great community
of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, which, vowed to the
destruction of the infidel, neither gave nor accepted quarter.
We have said that the real interest in the lives of the corsairs arose
from the fact that it was personal ascendancy, and that alone, which
counted in the piratical hierarchy. Against Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa
plots arose again and again, only to be defeated by the address of the
man against whom they were directed.
It was one of the cruellest of ages, and rough cruelty was the
principal means adopted to ensure success; sheer terror was the weapon
of the leader. Thus when one Hassan, a subordinate of Kheyr-ed-Din,
failed to take a Spanish ship because she made too stout a resistance,
his chief caused him to be soundly flogged and then thrown into prison.
Such methods naturally raised up hosts of enemies in the wake of the
piratical commanders, ready at any time to do them a mortal injury, and
it is little short of miraculous that they should throughout a long
period of years have been able not only to maintain, but to increase,
their supremacy over the wild spirits of which their following was
composed. It was, however, the golden age of autocracy, when men
surrendered their judgment to some great leader, content to follow
where he led, to endorse his policy at the cost of their lives.
It is the autocrat who is made by the circumstances of his life who
ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried
by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from
the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more
desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when
they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could
begin to impose their will upon others. It was then that their real
trials began, as the undisciplined are ever prone to suspicion, much
given to murmuring against a leader who is not perpetually successful.
As a rule, however, there were but few to criticise, as the office of
critic was one fraught with far too much danger to be alluring. In
maintaining their authority the leaders stopped at nothing, and the
heads of the recalcitrant were apt to part with amazing suddenness from
their bodies if they repined overmuch. The Moslem leader was, it is
true, merely _primus inter pares_, and was distinguished by no outward
symbol of the power which he possessed; but life and death lay in his
hands, and life was cheap indeed.
We have spoken hitherto of the leaders, but what of the men of which
their following was composed? Rough, rude, and reckless, these latter
lived but to fight and to plunder; to them any other life would have
seemed impossible, and indeed this was practically the fact. In the
communities in which they lived the adult male had no other means of
gaining a livelihood. Since their expulsion from their ancient homes no
ordered and peaceful method of existence had been possible for them.
In the surroundings in which their forefathers had lived the arts of
peace had been carried on in a civilisation to which there had been
none comparable in the world as it then existed; on all this the Moslem
had now to turn his back, and to earn a precarious living by the strong
hand. War, sanguinary and incessant, was henceforward to be his lot,
and it must be said that he turned to this ancient avocation with a
zest which left but little to be desired from the point of view of
those by whom he was led. In the new life of bloodshed and adventure he
seemed to delight. Like the free-lance in all ages, he seems to have
squandered his booty as soon as it was acquired, and then to sea once
more, to face the desperate hazard of an encounter with the knights, to
raid defenceless villages, to lie _perdu_ behind some convenient cape,
dashing out from thence to plunder the argosy of the merchantman.
Intolerable conditions of heat and cold he endured, he suffered from
wounds, from fever, from hunger and thirst, from hope deferred, from
voyages when no plunder came his way.
His reward was the joy of the fight, the delight of the ambush
skilfully laid, to see the decks of the enemy a dreadful shambles, with
the Crescent flag of the Prophet above the detested emblem of the
Cross. Then the return to Algiers laden with spoil: to tow behind him
some luckless Christian ship, while aboard his own war-worn galley the
drums beat and the trumpets sounded, and the banners floated free to
the stainless Mediterranean sky. Then the procession of the captives
through the crowded streets laden with what a short time before
had been their own property—a mournful _cortège_ of men doomed to an
everlasting slavery and of women destined for the harems of the Bashas.
Thus was his life lived, and when death came it came as a rule from the
slash of a sabre or the ball from an arquebus or a bombard; and then
what matter, for had not Hassan Ali or Selim fallen in strife against
the enemies of his faith, and did not the portals of heaven open wide
to receive the man who had lost his life testifying to the fact that
there was but one God, and that Mahomet was the Prophet of God?
True in substance and in fact is that which was said by the Frère
Pierre d’An that “it is indisputable that the sea is the Theatre of
the storms and the place in the world most capable of all sorts of
violence and tragic adventure.” Those who “coveted the goods of others
straying on the sea,” called by the reverend brother “the implacable,
corsairs of Barbary,” were to make life intolerable on that element for
centuries to come, and if the Crescent did not supersede the banner of
the Cross in the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, it remained as a
portent and a dread symbol of human misery and unutterable suffering.