DRAGUT-REIS
How he became Lieutenant to Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa—His
capture by Jannetin Doria—His four years as a galley
slave—His ransom by his old chief.
In character, in capability, in strategic insight, in tactical
ability, not one of the predecessors or the successors of Kheyr-ed-Din
Barbarossa can be compared to him; he was the greatest and most
outstanding figure of all those corsairs of whose deeds we hear so
much during the sixteenth century, the man above all others who was
feared and hated by his contemporaries in Christendom. He lived, as we
have said, for another eight years after the battle of Prevesa, but
his great age prevented him from pursuing a very active career. There
were, however, other and younger men, trained in the terrible school
of hardship in which his life had been passed, who proved themselves
to be his very worthy successors, even if they did not display the
same genius in war and statecraft. The conditions of this period are
somewhat remarkable when we come to consider them; Europe, which had
been sunk in a rude and uncultured barbarism during the middle ages,
was emerging under the influence of the Renaissance into a somewhat
higher and nobler conception of life. It is true that the awakening
was slow, that morally the plane on which the peoples stood was far
from being an elevated one, that altruism was far from being the note
of the lives lived by the rulers of the so-called civilised nations.
For all this they had emerged from that cimmerian darkness in which
they had lived so long, and the dawn of better things, of more stable
government, of some elementary recognition of the rights of those
governed, was beginning to show above the murky horizon.
But if the sun of European progress was slowly and painfully struggling
through the clouds, the light which had shone brightly for over seven
centuries of Moslem advance was certainly and surely dying. Beneath the
mail-clad heel of the Christian warrior the torch of learning which
had burned so brightly in Cordova and Granada had been extinguished
and ground into the dust, and the descendants of the alumni of those
universities were seeking their bread in the Mediterranean Sea in the
guise of bloodthirsty and desperate pirates.
There were no longer among the Moors of Andalusia learned philosophers,
expert mathematicians, wise astronomers, and practical agriculturists;
there was among them but one art, one science, one means of gaining a
livelihood—the practice of war—and their very existence depended on the
spoils which could be reft from the hereditary enemy. The corsair who
grew to man’s estate, brought up in Algiers, Tunis, Tenes, Jerba, or
any other of the lurking places in which the sea-wolves congregated,
had as a rule no chance but to follow the sea, to exist as his father
had existed before him; he must fight or starve, and in a fighting
age no youngster was likely to be backward in taking to the life of
wild excitement led by his elders. Unless following in the train of
one of the leaders, such as Barbarossa, the Moslems were apt to take
to the sea in a private capacity; a certain number of them joining
together to man a small craft which was known as a brigantine. As has
been said in a previous chapter, this word must not be understood in
the light of the terminology of the modern seaman: the brigantines of
the Moslem corsairs were really large rowing boats, carrying fourteen
to twenty-six oars, and made as seaworthy as the small size of such
craft would allow. Should the venture of the crew of a brigantine prove
successful, then the reis, or captain, might blossom out into the
command of a galley, in which his oars would be manned by his slaves;
but, in the first instance, he would man his brigantine with a crew of
Moslem desperadoes working on the share system and dividing anything
that they could pick up; in this manner most of those corsairs who
became famous commenced their careers, and rose as we have seen from
the thwart of a brigantine to the unstable eminence of a throne in
Algiers, Tunis, or Tlemcen.
This life which they led made of them what they were, namely desperate
swordsmen, efficient men at arms, incomparably skilful in the
management of the craft in which they put to sea; but it did nothing
else for them in the way of education; in consequence he who would rise
to the top, who aspired to be a leader amongst them and not to remain a
mere swash-buckling swordsman all his life, was bound to acquire that
dominance necessary for control of the wild spirits of the age. Nor
was this ascendancy by any means easy to obtain, as the rank and file
led lives of incredible bitterness, almost inconceivable to modern
ideas. What they suffered they alone knew, but it was compounded of
hunger, thirst, heat, cold, sickness unrelieved by care or tending,
wounds which festered for lack of medicaments, death which ever stared
them in the face, and last, and worst of all, the risk of capture by
some Christian foe, by whom they would be chained to the rowers’ bench
and taste of a bitterness absolutely unimaginable. As a set-off to
this the man who aspired to lead must offer to his followers at least
a record of success in small things; also he had to be something of an
enthusiast, something of an orator, some one subtly persuasive. Against
all the disagreeables of the strenuous life of the corsair he had to
hold before the dazzled eyes of Selim, Ali, or Mahomet the promise of
fat captures of the merchant vessels of the foe; when they had but
to slit a few throats and to return with their brigantines laden to
the gunwale with desirable plunder. Again he had to hearten them for
possible encounters with Spaniards, with the terrible Doria, or worst
of all with the dreaded Knights of St. John themselves; to point out
that to die in conflict with the infidel was a sure passport to heaven
and its houris, and to invoke great names, such as that of Barbarossa
to show to what dizzy heights the fighting Moslem could climb. In such
an age and among such men as these it was no mean feat to become a
leader by whom men swore and to whom they yielded a ready obedience.
Fashioned by the hammer of misfortune on the anvil of racial
expropriation, such leaders arose among the Moslems, men of iron,
before whom all who worshipped at the altars of Islam bowed the knee.
These men, whose fame extended throughout all the length and breadth
of the Mediterranean, taught to European rulers something of the value
of that great force which is known to us under the modern name of “Sea
Power.”
Next in importance to Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa himself and in many ways
his very worthy successor, was Dragut Reis. We have it on the authority
of Messire Pierre de Bourdeille, the Seigneur de Brantôme, that Dragut
was born at a small village in Asia Minor called Charabulac, opposite
to the island of Rhodes, and that his parents were Mahommedans. Being
born within sight and sound of the sea, the youthful Dragut naturally
graduated in the school of the brigantine and completed his education
on board of a galley. His training was that which makes the best of
fighting seamen, as from contemporary records he appears to have passed
all his life actively engaged on board ship. At a very early age he
entered the service of a master gunner who served on board the galleys
of the Grand Turk. Under his auspices the youngster became an expert
pilot in his own home waters, and likewise a most excellent gunner.
Dragut was evidently a youth of ability and determination, as almost
before he reached man’s estate he had succeeded in buying a share in
a cruising brigantine where his venture prospered so exceedingly that
he was soon able to become sole proprietor of a galeasse. Here again
fortune favoured the enterprising young man; his name began to be
known as a formidable corsair in the Levant, where he was remarkable
for his knowledge of that portion of the Mediterranean.
To better his condition he offered his services to Barbarossa at
Algiers, who accepted this new subordinate with joy, delighted to have
so valiant and capable a man under his orders.
“During some years,” says J. Morgan in his _Compleat History of Algiers_,
1728, “he was by that basha intrusted in the direction of sundry
momentous expeditions; in which he acquitted himself much to the
satisfaction of his principal: as having never once been unsuccessful.”
When we remember the treatment meted out by Barbarossa to some of his
unsuccessful lieutenants, Dragut must be esteemed a very fortunate
man. His master, we are told, advanced him to all the military offices
of the State—it would be interesting to know what these were in a
purely piratical confederation ruled by a pirate! In the end Dragut
was appointed to be kayia, or lieutenant, and given entire command of
twelve galleys.
“From thenceforward this redoubtable corsair passed not one summer
without ravaging the coasts of Naples and Sicily; nor durst any
Christian vessel attempt to pass between Spain and Italy; for if
they offered it he infallibly snapped them up, and when he missed
his prey at sea, he made himself amends by making descents along the
coasts plundering villages and towns and dragging away multitudes of
inhabitants into captivity.”
That “no vessel durst pass from Spain to Italy” is no doubt a
picturesque form of exaggeration on the part of the historian; at
the same time, when Dragut was at the height of his activities there is
no doubt that any one passing through those seas ran a great risk of
capture; so much so in fact that at this period, from 1538, the date
of the battle of Prevesa, until Lepanto in 1571, all maritime commerce
in the Mediterranean was greatly circumscribed. At the beginning of
this epoch, which saw the rise of the Moslem corsairs, these robbers
perforce confined themselves more to the North African coast than
was the case later on. The pioneers of the piratical movement, after
the fatal date 1492, which saw the wholesale expulsion of the Moors
from Spain, were comparatively speaking inexpert practitioners in the
art and mystery of piracy; they had not the habit of the sea, and in
consequence confined their depredations to the neighbourhood of their
own selected ports in Africa, which dominated that sea lane running
east and west through the Mediterranean, which then, as now, was one of
the greatest highways of commerce of the world. Gradually, as we have
seen, under the able guidance of the two Barbarossas, but particularly
that of the second and greater of the two, piracy became a commonplace
in the north, as well as in the south, of the tideless sea; the
corsairs, as time went on, even devoting more time and attention to
the coast of Italy and the islands of the archipelago than they did to
the recognised trade routes. These latter had become by 1540 similar
to an estate which has been shot over too frequently; birds had become
both wild and scarce, it was hardly worth while to go over the ground,
except now and again on the chance of picking up a straggler. Towns
and islands, on the other hand, even if they did not yield much in
the way of actual plunder, were always good cover to beat for slaves,
which had a certain value in the markets of Algiers and Tunis. Another
circumstance which had led to the now frequent raids on the littoral of
the European countries was the countenance and support accorded to the
corsairs by the Grand Turk: so admirably did they fit into the scheme
of his ambitions, that by the time Dragut arrived at a commanding
position they were, so to speak, officially recognised as a fighting
asset of the Sublime Porte; and, as we have seen, the Sultan did not
hesitate to lend his picked troops, the Janissaries, to the corsairs
when engaged in their ordinary piratical business. To the Grand Turk
the corsairs were Moslems who were prepared to fight on his side,
and who, taking it all in all, really cost him hardly anything; in
fact, at this date, owing to the magnificent gifts made to the Sultan
by Kheyr-ed-Din, the Padishah must have made something out of his
association with the sea-wolves.
By the year 1540 Dragut had distinctly “arrived”; that is to say, he
had succeeded in making himself so dreaded that Charles V. ordered
Andrea Doria to seek him out and destroy him at any cost. The Christian
admiral was “to endeavour by all possible means to purge the sea of so
insufferable a nuisance.”
Andrea got ready a fleet, which he entrusted, together with the care
and management of this affair, to his nephew Jannetin Doria. This was
the nephew who, in the disastrous attack by Charles on Hassan Aga
at Algiers in the following year, was so nearly lost in the storm
which destroyed the fleet of the emperor; and of whom Andrea Doria is
reported to have said, “It was decreed that Jannetin should be reduced
to such an extremity purposely to convince the world that it was not
impossible for Andrea Doria to shed a tear.” Certainly from what we
know of the celebrated Genoese admiral it is hard to imagine him in a
tearful mood. Jannetin Doria put to sea, and, after a long hunt, found
the object of his quest at Andior on the coast of Corsica; Dragut was
at anchor in the road of Goialatta, under a castle situated between
Cabri and Liazzo. The corsair knew nothing of his enemies being at sea,
and was in consequence keeping no particular look-out. Although we are
not told the composition of the fleet of Jannetin Doria, it must have
been a large one, as Dragut had under his orders thirteen galleys, and
was unable to withstand the attack to which he was subject. He was also
assailed from the shore, as well as the sea, as the castle under which
he was at anchor opened fire upon him as soon as it was discovered by
its garrison that the new arrivals were Christians. The fire was too
hot for the corsair to withstand, and, to add to his embarrassments,
the beach soon became lined by hundreds of the fierce Corsi, awaiting
the inevitable end when they should be able to fall upon the defeated
Moslems and wipe them from off the face of the earth; it was a warfare
in which there was no mercy, and if the pirates were to fall into the
hands of the islanders they knew well that they would be exterminated.
In all his venturesome life things had never gone so badly with Dragut
as upon this occasion. On the one side, should he and his men land
they would be massacred; on the other hand, his road to the open sea
was barred by an immensely superior force. Recognising the logic of
circumstances, and seeing no way of escape, the white flag was hung out
by the Moslem leader. The only terms, however, which he could obtain
were immediate surrender or instant death. It must have been a moment
of anguish to the man who hitherto had always ridden on the crest of
the wave of success and achievement to be thus trapped like a rat;
and to have the added bitterness of the thought that had he exercised
seamanlike care and precaution in keeping a good look-out he might
have escaped. As it was, he was allowed no time for reflection, but
had to decide on the instant: he did the only thing possible in the
circumstances, which was to haul down his flag and to become the thrall
of his lifelong foes.
The principal captives were made to pass before young Doria. When
Dragut beheld him he cried out in a fury: “What! Am I a slave to that
effeminate Caramite?” for Doria was but a beardless youth. These
opprobrious epithets being interpreted to the young nobleman, “highly
incensed he flew at Dragut, tore out his beard and moustaches, and
buffeted him most outrageously: nay his passion was so great it is said
that had he not been prevented, he certainly would have sheathed his
sword in the bowels of that assuming prisoner.”
For four long years Dragut rowed in Doria’s galley. No distinctions
were made in those days, and knight or noble, companion or grand
master, basha or boy, was, if caught, condemned to the rowers’ bench to
slave at the oar beneath the boatswain’s lash, perchance alongside some
degraded criminal, filthy and swarming with vermin. While Dragut was
employed as a galley slave there came on board the craft in which he
rowed Monsieur Parisot, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. This high
officer, recognising his old enemy, called out to him in Spanish:
“Hola, Señor Dragut, usanza de guerra” (“The usage of war, Señor
Dragut”).
To which the undaunted corsair merely replied with a laugh:
“Y mudanza de fortuna” (“And a change of luck”).
The Grand Master, who had known the chain and lash himself, smiled and
passed on—there was no pity in those days.
But Dragut was not destined to end his life as a galley slave, for,
when indeed hope must have died within him, after more than four years
of this veritable hell upon earth, there sailed one day into the
harbour of Genoa the great Kheyr-ed-Din himself. The Admiralissimo of
the Grand Turk, full of years, honours, and booty, was on his last
cruise, and one of the last acts of his active life was the rescue of
Dragut, the man who had served him so well, and for whom he had so high
a regard as a resourceful mariner, from the degrading servitude into
which he had fallen. The Spanish historian, Marmol, recounts that the
sum of three thousand ducats was paid by Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa for
the redemption of Dragut. As this history was published in 1573, we
must conclude that the author who wrote of these events so soon after
they had happened is correct; at the same time, Barbarossa was in
command of one hundred galleys of the Grand Turk, and it was never his
custom to pay for anything which he could take by force. However this
may have been, and the point is not one of very great importance, the
Genoese Senate was terrified lest their territory should be ravaged;
they wrote accordingly to their Grand Admiral, requesting that Dragut
might be released and sent on board of the galley of the admiral basha.
This was immediately done, and the man who for four years had tugged at
the Christian oar was once again in a position to make war on those who
had been for that period his masters.
Not only had he tugged at the Christian oar, but also he had tasted of
the Christian whip—and of very little else, as the food of the rower
was as scanty as it was disgusting; in consequence, if he had been an
implacable foe to Christendom before this event, he was not likely to
have become less so while toiling in the Genoese galley.
The practical retirement of Barbarossa from that sphere of activity in
which his life had been passed now left Dragut-Reis the most feared and
the most formidable of all the Moslem corsairs in the Mediterranean.
From the time of his release by Barbarossa until the day of his death
at the siege of Malta in 1565, he followed the example shown him by
that prince among pirates with so much assiduity as to render him only
second to Kheyr-ed-Din in the detestation in which he was held.
Says Morgan: “The ill-treatment he had met with during his four years’
captivity was no small addition to the Innate Rapaciousness of his
Disposition.”
In the year 1546, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa died, and to replace him the
Sultan Soliman ordered all the mariners in his dominions to acknowledge
Dragut-Reis as their admiral, and to obey him in the same manner as
they had obeyed his predecessor. From this date he was the foremost
corsair in the Mediterranean, and the feats which were performed by him
showed that the Padishah had not erred in his selection.
The ambition of Dragut increased with his power, and he determined,
following the example of the Barbarossas, to seize and hold some strong
place of arms possessed of a commodious port in which he might be the
supreme ruler. Accordingly, in the depth of winter in the year 1548, at
a time which was, as we have pointed out, a close season for piratical
enterprises, and during which attack from the sea was not expected,
he collected all the corsairs whom he could gather, and fell upon the
Spaniards on the coast of Tunis, at Susa, at Sfax, and at Monastir.
These places had been taken from the corsairs in the previous summer
by Andrea Doria; they formed a sort of regular battle-ground when the
combatants were in want of something to do, and were held alternately
by the King of Tunis, the Spaniards, and the corsairs.
Dragut was well aware that as soon as the spring arrived he would be
attacked; he also knew that the attack would come in sufficient force
to drive him out, as none of these towns was really strong or easily
defended; in consequence he concentrated his attention on the town of
“Africa,” otherwise known as Mehedia, and in the Roman histories as
Adrumentum.
This great city lay some leagues to the east of Tunis on a tongue of
land projecting into the sea; its fortifications were regular, its
walls of great thickness, height, and solidity, and were strengthened
by many towers and bulwarks; the guns were large, numerous, and in
good condition. At the back of the town, on an eminence, stood a large
fortress, the citadel of the place; the harbour was large and secure,
with an inner basin forming a port for galleys; the entrance to this
was closed by a strong chain. The sea washed the walls of the city;
indeed, it was entirely surrounded, except where by a narrow neck of
land it joined the shore.
The inhabitants, natives of the place, had shaken off the yoke of the
King of Tunis, and had formed themselves into a kind of independent
republic. They admitted neither Turk nor Christian within their walls,
trusting neither party, and fearing from them the fate which befell
Susa, Sfax, and Monastir.
“Africa” was the goal of the desires of Dragut-Reis: once in possession
of this, by far the strongest city on the littoral of Northern Africa,
he thought that he might abide secure against the attacks of Charles
and of Andrea Doria. He had seen the enormous expedition of 1541
against Algiers come to naught on account of the wholesale wrecking of
the fleet in which it had sailed by a tempest of unexampled violence.
But he was too level-headed a man to think that a miracle like this
would be likely to come to pass a second time for his own special
behoof, and preferred to act the part of the strong man armed who
keepeth his goods in peace. He had, however, first to gain over the
inhabitants of “Africa” to his views, and they proved anything but
anxious to listen to his blandishments. The more he tried to ingratiate
himself the less inclined did these people seem to listen.
“My ambition,” said the silver-tongued corsair, “is to become a
citizen of your great and beautiful city. If you will admit me to its
privileges it shall be my business to render you the richest people in
the whole Mediterranean, and your city the most dreaded place in the
world.”
The “Africans,” however, were obdurate; they knew a pirate when they
saw him quite as well as any one else, and they were quite aware that,
should they open their gates to Dragut, sooner or later they would have
to stand a siege from the Christian forces, which was a thing they by
no means desired.
But Dragut was not yet at the end of his resources; he was rich, and
he spent money freely in order to gain over to his side those men of
importance by whom such a question as this was bound to be decided.
By rich presents and other blandishments he succeeded in securing the
friendship of one Ibrahim Amburac, who was not only a leader among
the inhabitants, but also governor of one of the towers by which the
city was surrounded. Through him he approached the Council by which
the town was ruled, only to receive a very decided negative: the
Council observed the outward forms of politeness to this formidable
person who was speaking them so fair: in reality, they hated and feared
the corsairs only one degree less than they did Andrea Doria and his
Christians. To admit the one was to bring upon themselves the vengeance
of the other; therefore if they could keep them both out they intended
so to do. The ill-omened courtesy of the corsair filled their hearts
with apprehension, and they viewed his immediate departure, after the
refusal of the council had been conveyed to him, with undisguised
relief. Had they but known their man a little better, their uneasiness
would have been far greater than their joy at his temporary absence.
Those things desired by Dragut which he could not obtain by fair means
he usually seized by the strong hand; and when he left so hurriedly,
and at the same time so unostentatiously, he had already entered into a
plot with Ibrahim Amburac. This leader, furious at the rebuff which he
had received at the hands of his fellow councillors on the subject of
the admittance of Dragut to the citizenship of “Africa,” was now ready
to deliver that city into the hands of the corsairs by treachery.