SEA-WOLVES OF THE
MEDITERRANEAN

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[viii] 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

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.

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[2] 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.

CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE CORSAIRS

The rise and progress of the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean is a most curious and interesting historical fact. The causes which led to results so deplorable to commerce, civilisation, and Christianity are set forth in this chapter in order that some idea may be formed of the state of affairs in that region at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and also that the reflex action of the great triumph of the Christian armies in Spain may be more fully understood.

The maritime Christian States of the Mediterranean at this epoch were at the height of their power and prosperity, but were faced by the might of the Ottoman Empire, against which they waged perpetual warfare. Bitter and unceasing was the strife prosecuted by the Cross against the Crescent, and by the Crescent against the Cross; and riding, like eagles on the storm came the corsairs in their swift galleys ready to strike down the luckless argosy of the merchantman wheresoever she was to be met. But this was not all, as the shore as well as the sea yielded up to them its tribute in the shape of slaves and booty, and Christian mothers trembling in the insecurity of their homes would hush their wailing children with the terror of the names of Barbarossa, of Dragut, or of Ali Basha.

Popes and emperors, kings and princes, found themselves compelled to form leagues against these Sea-wolves who devoured the substance of their subjects, and great expeditions were fitted out to fight with and destroy the corsairs. Had Christendom been united no doubt the object would have been attained; but, as will be seen at the end of this chapter, an “Alliance of Christian Princes against the Turks”—which generic term included the corsairs—was not always used in the manner best calculated to injure those common enemies.

When in 1492 Granada was yielded up to “Los Reyes Catolicos,” Ferdinand of Aragon, and Isabella of Castile, by that luckless monarch known as Boabdil el Chico (or “the little”), the last remnant of the power of the Moors in Spain had gone never to return. On that small hill on the way to the coast still known as “el ultimo suspiro del Moro” (the last sigh of the Moor), Boabdil, as he looked for the last time on his lost capital of Granada, is said to have burst into tears. His fierce mother Ayesha had, however, no sympathy for her fallen son: “Thou doest well to weep like a woman for that which thou daredst not defend as a man,” was her biting—and totally unjust—comment, and the cavalcade pursued its miserable journey to the coast, from whence it embarked for the kingdom of Fez.

Great was the jubilation in Christendom; for more than seven centuries the followers of the Prophet had dwelt in the land from which Tarik had expelled Roderick the Goth in the eighth century. There they had dwelt and held up a lamp of learning and comparative civilisation which shone brightly through the miasmatic mists of cruelty and bloodshed in the Middle Ages, and none can question that, under Moorish rule in Spain in those centuries, the arts of peace had flourished, and that science, agriculture, art, and learning had found generous and discriminating patronage in the courts of Còrdoba and Granada.

And now all was over the iron chivalry of the North had broken in pieces the Paynim hosts. They were expelled for ever from Christian soil, or else were forced to live in a state of degrading servitude, sore oppressed by an alien rule, in the land which their forbears had won and kept by the sword.

There was jubilation, as has been said, in Christendom, but the knights and nobles who flocked from all parts of Europe to join the standard of the Catholic monarchs had no prevision of the consequences, no idea of the legacy that they were leaving to their descendants.

It is of this legacy that we have to speak, and there has been none more terrible, none fraught with more awful suffering for the human race. The broken hosts of the Moslem chivalry became the corsairs of the Mediterranean: ruthless pirates freed from all restraint of human pity, living only to inflict the maximum of suffering upon their Christian foes, who, having sown the wind at the taking of Granada, reaped in the coming centuries a whirlwind of blood and agony which continued down to the bombardment of Algiers by Lord Exmouth in 1816, and even later than that date.

Warriors to a man, the hosts of Boabdil crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into Africa; warriors but now broken men, from whom had been reft not only their lands and houses but even the chance of remaining in their native country. Religious toleration had been the rule of the Moslem States in Spain. In the name of religion they had been expropriated; therefore toleration was slain, and to exalt the Crescent above the Cross became the duty of every fighting Mohammedan. Into all the ports and harbours of the North African littoral the Moslems intruded themselves, their one preoccupation to revenge themselves upon the Christians, of no matter what race or nationality. There was at this date but small opposition from the rulers of the Pagan States who held in their weak and inefficient hands such strong places of arms as Algiers and Tunis.

Very soon the Moslems acquired the habit of the sea, and very soon the Christian States discovered how different was the Mohammedan dwelling at peace in Andalusia, or at worst fighting with his co-religionists, to the desperate corsairs created by their own act who now ravaged the shores of the tideless sea.

In the years succeeding to the conquest of Granada the corsairs became the scourge of the Mediterranean. France, Spain, Genoa, Venice, were all at odds with them; as the trading vessels, which had hitherto passed to and fro unmolested, were now captured, haled into North African ports, their cargoes sold, and their hapless crews forced to labour, naked and chained to the benches of the pirate galleys, until death came and mercifully put an end to their sufferings.

From Reggio to Genoa, from Venice to Taranto, the cry of rage and fear went up; it was re-echoed from the coasts of France and of the Balearic Islands, while Southern Spain seethed with disaffection, and the Moriscoes, as those Moors who remained in the country were known, were ever on the lookout to assist their bold brethren, the rovers of the sea. Christendom was completely bewildered: hitherto the relations between the nations and the Kings of Tunis, Tlemcen, Fez, and others of the North African potentates, had been of the most agreeable description. Both parties had denounced piracy, and had as far as in them lay done all in their power to discourage this form of robbery. But now all was changed, and, as has been said in the previous chapter, a situation arose analogous to that of the Spaniards in the West Indies a century and a half later when Morgan and the buccaneers were at the height of their maleficent prowess. The situation was analogous, but whereas Morgan, Scott, L’Ollonais, and others terrorised only such forces as Spain possessed in far-distant colonies, the corsairs were a terror to all the great nations of the world.

Granada fell, as has been said, in 1492 amid the rejoicings of the Christian States; but it had been well for Christendom as a whole if the Caliphs of Còrdova and Granada had never been defeated, and they and their subjects driven from their homes: to form the nucleus of those piratical States which existed from this date until well into the nineteenth century, as the scourge and the terror of all those who, during those ages, desired to “pass upon the seas on their lawful occasions.” The capture of Granada was separated from the fall of the Byzantine Empire by a period of thirty-nine years, as it was in the year 1453 that Constantinople was captured by the Caliph Mahomet II. Byzantium fell, and perhaps nothing in the records of that Empire became it so well as that last tremendous struggle; and when on May 29th, 1453, the Ottoman legions were victorious, the body of the last Emperor of Byzantium was found beneath a mountain of the slain only recognisable by his purple mantle sewn with golden bees. The Cross which Constantine the Great had planted on the walls 1125 years before was replaced by the Crescent, and the Christian Cathedral became that Mosque of St. Sophia which still endures.

From the earliest days of the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean they were in close communication with their co-religionists of the Ottoman Empire; and this for a very good reason, which was that the Turk had not the habit of the sea, but was essentially a land warrior, and, as the story of the Sea-wolves progresses, we shall see how in a sense the Grand Turk and the pirates became interdependent in the ceaseless wars which were waged in the epoch of which we treat.

The fall of Constantinople resounded throughout Christendom as though it had been the crack of doom, and all men held their breath wondering what next might portend. So stunned were the maritime States that they took no action, letting “I dare not wait upon I would.” Their indecision was fatal. Had the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Catalans at this juncture formed an alliance, they might have chased the Turks from off the face of the waters; but to mutual jealousy and indecision was added fear—fear of this new and mighty power which had arisen and had swept away one of the landmarks of Europe. So it fell out that Genoa entered into an arrangement with the Grand Turk, and Venice concluded a treaty of commerce on April 18th, 1454. It was the Caliph Mahomet who first fortified the Dardanelles, where he mounted thirty heavy guns before which Jacques Loredano, the Venetian admiral, recoiled, reporting to the Republic that henceforward none could pass the Straits. We have, however, nothing to do with the Grand Turk in these pages, save, and except in so far, as he had an effect on the lives of the corsairs. This effect will develop itself as we proceed.

There is one body of men, however, concerning whom it may be as well to treat of briefly in this place, as the lives which they led and the deeds which they performed were inextricably entangled with those of the corsairs. These men were the members of that association first known as the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, later as the Knights of Malta. Between them and the corsairs it was war to the death; and not only with these robbers, but also with any ship which sailed beneath the insignia of the Crescent.

In 1291 the Soldan of Egypt chased the Knights Hospitallers, as they were also known, from the soil of the Holy Land; Philip IV. of France welcomed them in the island of Cyprus, and gave them the town of Limasol as an asylum. This for the time the knights were bound to accept, but they were impatient of charity, resentful of tutelage, proud and independent. Considering their own order as the greatest and most stable bulwark of the Christian faith, they bowed before neither King nor Kaiser; and the only boon they asked of great potentates, when allied temporarily with them in their eternal warfare, was that on all occasions theirs should be the post of the greatest danger.

This, indeed, they did not ask as a favour, but claimed as a right. It is easily understood that such desperate warriors, who fought only to conquer or die, were allies sought for eagerly by all professing the same faith.

Fulke de Villaret, Grand Master of the order in 1310, seized upon Rhodes, which, though nominally belonging to Greece, was at this time a refuge for bad characters of all nationalities. This island was in the most advantageous position, as it commanded the sea-route from Constantinople to Egypt and the ports of Asia Minor, and was also in close proximity to the coast of Caramania, from whence the order could draw the necessary timber for the building of their galleys and incidentally their motive power—in the shape of slaves—for the oars by which they were propelled.

The knights fortified the island until it was practically unassailable in that age. In the meanwhile their navy grew so rapidly that, in 1436, they were actually in a position to fight the Turks in line of battle. To Rhodes came the younger sons of noble families from every nation in Europe, all aflame with ardour to fight for “the religion”; and the great nobles themselves did not disdain to take service in so chivalrous an order.

Their former enemy, the Soldan of Egypt, made a descent on the island in 1440, and in 1444 besieged the place in form; but he was beaten off, after forty-two days’ ceaseless fighting, with great slaughter.

“Soldier and sailor too” were the bold Knights of Saint John; for them no toil was too arduous, no danger too great. In heat and cold, in storm and tempest, they plied their trade of war, their holy crusade to extirpate the infidel from off the face of the waters. They looked for no material reward, and riches and honours they contemptuously rejected. Strong in their marvellous faith that on their shoulders rested the propagation of Christianity in these latter days, they swept the seas with a calm assumption of victory which caused it to be half assured before the fight began. And when the battle was joined, where could be found such paladins as these men who claimed it as an inalienable right to head the hurricane rush of the boarders from the decks of their galleys, to be ever the leaders when the forlorn hope should mount the breach? Life for the knights of this order was looked at literally with a single purpose—the advancement of Christianity and the downfall of that pestilent heresy which proclaimed that Mahomet was the prophet of God. Against all who bowed the knee in the mosques of the false prophet their lives were vowed, and it is but the barest justice to them to record that on the altar of this their faith these were ungrudgingly poured forth.

Naturally reprisals were the order of the day. Equally fanatical was he who held to the Moslem faith; in consequence many were the attempts to stamp out, once and for all, the prime enemies of the Ottoman Empire. In 1480 a Turkish fleet of one hundred and forty ships issued from the Dardanelles, an army awaited it on the coast of Caramania which was rapidly embarked, and on May 23rd the fleet anchored a few miles from the town of Rhodes. Here, then, was a trial of strength in which the Hospitallers delighted. After repeated attacks in detail, on July 28th a grand assault was made which the Turks considered would be absolutely decisive: it was decisive, but not in the fashion which they anticipated.

The standard of the Janissaries already floated on the first curtain of the rampart when Pierre D’Aubusson rallied the knights for one last desperate effort. “Shall it be said in days to come that ‘the Religion’ recoiled before a horde of Moslem savages; that the banner of Saint John was soiled by their infamous touch? But this is no time for talk. Ye have swords, Messires; use them!”

Thus the Grand Master; and then the knights, in their battered armour and with their hacked and dinted swords, flung themselves once more upon the foe. The Janissaries closed in around them; but these fine troops were not what they had been two months before, and the close contact with the Hospitallers, which had endured sixty-five days, had been to them a lesson fraught with disaster: they had already lost six thousand men, and their adversaries were still absolutely undismayed. His helmet gone, his banner held aloft over his head, Pierre D’Aubusson was ever in the thickest of the fray unconquered, unconquerable; and pressing close behind him came the knights, each jealous for the glory of his “Auberge.” French, Venetian, Catalan, Genoese German, none can tell who fought best that day; but the Janissaries were beaten, and three thousand of their corpses cumbered the ditch into which they were hurled by their foes; there were besides fifteen thousand wounded in the Turkish camp.

The heart was out of that great army which had embarked to the sound of trumpets and the blessings of the Mullahs but ten weeks before, and they sailed away a beaten force. Mahomet II. swore to avenge his defeat, but his days were numbered, and he died at Scutari on May 3rd, 1481, at the age of fifty-two, and in the thirteenth year of his reign.

In the year 1499 Daoud Pasha, Admiralissimo to Bajazet, the successor to Mahomet II., defeated Antonio Grimani the Venetian admiral in that combat known to the Republic as “La deplorabile battaglia del Zonchio.” The populace of Venice demanded that Grimani should be instantly beheaded, but he not only escaped their vengeance but lived to be nominated as Doge on June 6th, 1521, at the age of eighty-seven: certainly a curious record for an unsuccessful admiral of that date.

In 1500 was formed the “Alliance of Christian Princes” at the initiative of the Borgia Pope Alexander VII. Louis XII., King of France, and Ferdinand V. of Spain announced their adherence to this effort against the Turk, and Pierre D’Aubusson, the veteran Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John, was nominated as Captain-General of the Christian armies. For the purposes of this war the admiral of the Papal galleys in the Mediterranean, Lodovico del Mosca, purchased from Ferdinand, King of Naples, all his artillery, of which a description is given by the Padre Alberto Guglielmotti, a Dominican friar, author of a work entitled, “La Guerra dei Pirati e la Marina Pontifica dal 1500 al 1560 A.D.” “There were thirty-six great bombards, with eighty carts pertaining to them; some drawn by horses, some drawn by 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 at Bizerta—one of the ports of Abd-Allah-Mahomed—with a squadron of thirty ships, and demanded hospitality. As Curtogali disposed of thirty ships and some six thousand fighting men it would probably have been impossible for Abd-Allah to have refused his request in any case; but he was far from wishing to do so, as, by a convenient interpretation of the Koran, the pirate had to deliver up one-fifth part of all the booty which he reft from the Christians to the ruler of the country in whose harbours he sheltered. There was no place so convenient for the purposes of the pirate as Bizerta: from here he could strike at Sicily, at the Balearic Islands, at Rome, Naples, Tuscany, and Liguria, while at the same time he held the trade slowly sailing along the North African littoral at his mercy. Great were the depredations of Curtogali, and even Pope Leo X. trembled on his throne, while Genoa, Venice, and Sicily seethed with impotent fury.

In the meanwhile who so happy as Abu-Abd-Allah-Mahomed? We cannot do better than to take the description of his position from the pages of the good Padre Alberto Guglielmotti. The Franciscan says: “He [that is, Abd-Allah] desired peace with all and prosperity for his own interests. Friendly to the merchants in their commerce; friendly to the corsairs in their spoils. Let all hold by the law: the former contentedly paying customs dues, the latter cheerfully handing over a fifth part of their robberies, and Abd-Allah—their common friend—would ever continue at peace with them all. Outside his ports the merchants and the pirates might fall by the ears if they would: that was no reason for him to trouble his head. On the contrary, he would joyfully await them on their return either with customs dues or tribute of the fifth as the case might be.”

However well this state of affairs may have suited Abd-Allah, the Genoese held that the situation was far from satisfactory. In consequence they sent an army against Curtogali, and on August 4th, 1516, they captured Bizerta, set free a number of Christian captives, and plundered the town. But they did not capture Curtogali, who, only five weeks after, made a daring attempt to carry off the Pope in person from the sea-shore in the neighbourhood of Rome. Curtogali ended his days as the Governor of Rhodes, from which the Knights of Saint John were finally expelled by Soliman the Magnificent on December 22nd, 1522. This was the greatest blow which the fraternity ever received. On December 24th the Turks made a triumphal entry into the town, and it was said that “Sultan Soliman was not insensible to the sorrowful position of his vanquished enemies, and when he saw the Christian Commander, Prince Philippe Villiers L’Isle Adam, he remarked: ‘It weighs upon me somewhat that I should be coming hither to chase this aged Christian warrior from his house.’” At the beginning of the following year the knights left the island, never to return. On the day of this desolate embarcation the herald blew upon his trumpet the “Salute and Farewell” and the identical instrument upon which this call was sounded is still preserved in the armoury at Malta, to which barren island the knights were forced to retreat.

CHAPTER III
URUJ BARBAROSSA

In the year 1457 an obscure Roumelian or Albanian renegado named Mahomedi was banished from Constantinople by the Grand Turk; he established himself in the island of Mitylene and there married a Christian widow named Catalina, by whom he had two sons, Uruj and Khizr. The father had been a sailor and both sons adopted the same profession. It is from the pages of El Maestro Don Fray Prudencio de Sandoval that we glean these bare facts concerning the birth and parentage of these men who, in after-years, became known to all the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean as the “Barbarossas,” from their red beards. Sandoval, Bishop of Pampluna, published in the year 1614 his monumental history of the Emperor Charles V., and through his splendid volumes the deeds of the Moslem corsairs run like the scarlet thread which is twisted through a Government rope. It is evident that the fact of having to deal with such rascals annoys the good Bishop not a little, as his severe and caustic comments frequently display. There was incident and accident enough in the life of the famous “Carlos Quinto” without the historian having to turn aside to chronicle the deeds of the pirates; but their exploits were so daring, the consequences thereof were so far-reaching, that the ominous crimson thread had to be woven into any narrative of the times in despite of the annoyance of the man by whom the rope was twisted.

Of Mahomedi we possess no record save the remark concerning him to the effect that “el qual fue gran marinero”: in what way he displayed his gifts as a seaman we are not told. We have remarked before on the curious fact of how the “renegado,” or Christian turned Mohammedan, became the most implacable foe of his former co-religionists. We see in the case of the two Barbarossas that they had no drop of Moslem blood in them, as both parents came from Christian stock: and yet no greater scourges ever afflicted the people from whom both their father and mother originally sprang than did Uruj and Khizr Barbarossa.

URUJ AND KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA.

The characters of the two brothers were widely different. The elder was no doubt a “first-class fighting man,” a fine seaman, a born partisan leader; but here his qualities came to an end. Rough, cruel, imperious, brutal, he imposed himself upon those who became his followers; but in him were to be found none of the statesmanlike qualities which distinguished his far greater younger brother. His was the absolutely finite intellect of the tactician as opposed to the strategist, who, seeing his objective, was capable of dealing with circumstances as they immediately arose; but, partly no doubt from defective education, but principally from the lack of intellectual appreciation of the problems of the time in which he lived, could never rise to the heights which were scaled by Khizr, better known by the title conferred upon him later on by the Grand Turk as “Kheyr-ed-Din,” or “The Protector of Religion.”

The sons of Mahomed, that “gran marinero,” naturally took to the sea, and as a young man Uruj became possessed of a ship—how we do not know, and it were better perhaps not to inquire. In this small craft he repaired to the coast of Caramania to make war upon the Christians; or, in other words, to begin an independent piratical career. Uruj in these days was young and inexperienced, or he would not have chosen this locality for his first venture, as this coast was in close proximity to the island of Rhodes, from whence the great galleys of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem set forth to exterminate the enemies of their faith.

So it came about that Uruj, sailing out in his little ship from under the shadow of a wooded point, came in full sight of Our Lady of the Conception. There was nothing for it but immediate flight, and Uruj put his helm up and scudded before the breeze; but the great galley “goose-winged” her two mighty lateen sails, and turned in pursuit. The ship which carried Uruj and his fortunes was both fast and handy, and for a time she held her own; but it was only for a time, as those on board Our Lady of the Conception, finding that they were not gaining on the chase, put forth their oars and soon changed the aspect of affairs. The galley of the knights carried twenty-seven oars a-side, and each of these oars was manned by nine Moslem slaves. The sea was smooth and favourable for rowing, and soon the ravening pursuit closed in on the doomed corsair. As the interval between chaser and chased became less and less, those on board the pirate ship could see for themselves the fate which was awaiting them, as on the central gang-plank, which separated the rowers’ benches, the boatswain and his mates were unmercifully flogging the bare backs of the straining oarsmen to urge them to greater exertions. He who was captured at sea in those days was set to row until he died, and the calculating mercy which causes a man to feed and treat his beast well in order that it may do the better work was not to be relied upon here, as life was cheap and slaves were plentiful. Very soon the beak of the galley overhung the stern of the little ship. Escape was impossible, to fight would have meant the massacre of all on board; the choice was instant submission or a watery grave. Uruj lowered his sail, and he and his little company were ironed and flung into the depths of the galley until such time as they should be wanted to take their turn at the oars. In this ignominious fashion ended his first attempt at independent piracy.

But a storm was brewing, and a heavy sea got up. The sails of the galley were lowered, her beak was put head-on to the wind, and she made for the shore. In this noisome confinement Uruj could hear above the crash of the seas and the whistling of the wind the shrieks of the hapless slaves as the whips of their taskmasters bit through skin and flesh: the galley-slave rowed stark naked chained to his bench. This was to be his fate, and he was well aware of the fact.

At last, after nightfall, the galley anchored under the Isle of Castel Rosso, at the entrance of the Gulf of Satalie. It still blew hard, but, in the comparative peace of the anchorage, sounds hitherto hidden by the war of the elements now made themselves manifest. There were the snores of the sleepers, the clank of the leg-chains as the wretched slaves shifted their positions in the attempt to gain an easier place on the bench, there was also the sound of men carousing with loud laughter in the stern of the vessel; but above them all rose the hollow groaning as of one in mortal agony. This proceeded from a slave who was quite close to Uruj. There came a spell in the laughter and loud voices in the stern, and presently an imperious voice spoke: “That noise disturbs me; see that it ceases at once.” An obsequious answer came from out of the prevailing darkness: “It shall cease at once, Excellency.” Then came men with lanterns, who unshackled the wretch who groaned and—flung him overboard.

The night grew worse, the wind backed, and the galley began to drag her anchors. The slaves were roused, and the oars got ready to shift her from her dangerous position on what had now become a lee-shore. Uruj had managed to slip his shackles, a defective bolt having given him his liberty; for him it was now or never, and he was a bold swimmer. He had seen enough and heard enough of Our Lady of the Conception, and, as the great oars plunged once more into the sea, the corsair, preferring the mercy of the elements to that of the knights, slipped over the side unobserved and swam for the shore. He reached dry land by a miracle, and from Satalie he found his way to Egypt, where he took service as a mariner in a ship of the Soldan of Egypt which was bound for the coast of Caramania, from which province the Egyptians, as well as the knights, drew the timber which they required for shipbuilding. But again this neighbourhood proved disastrous to Uruj, as the ship in which he sailed was attacked by a Christian galley, and he once more had to save himself by swimming on shore. There was no lack of incident in the life of a corsair of the sixteenth century.

This time he presented himself to Khorkud, the Governor of Caramania, brother to Sultan Selim, the Grand Turk. The Governor, recognising him as an intrepid mariner, ordered the Basha of Smyrna to furnish him with a ship fitted for that guerre de course, which he desired to pursue against the Christians. The value of the corsair as an auxiliary was beginning to be recognised among the high Turkish officials. For the complaisance of Khorkud there were two reasons: in the first place, he was acting in the interests of his brother in sending to sea any really capable man to make head against his enemies, and the fact that Uruj was a pirate pure and simple did not weigh for a feather in the balance; in the second place, it was a decidedly good mercantile speculation as he ordered his inferior, the Basha of Egypt, to bear the expense of fitting out the necessary ship—which came to some 5,000 ducats—and doubtless received a handsome percentage on all captures from his grateful protégé.

This latter, as may easily be imagined, had had quite enough of the Caramanian coast, which had turned out a veritable nest of hornets; also, he had no desire at present to cultivate the further acquaintance of the knights, and therefore put the whole width of the Ionian Sea between himself and them, and succeeded in taking several rich prizes. He avoided Mitylene and returned to Egypt, wintering at Alexandria. It may here be remarked that the corsairs, as a rule, regarded the winter as a close season, as in those early days the mariner did not, if he could avoid it, risk his ship by sailing her at this period of storm and tempest. In consequence there was nothing to tempt the pirates to range the seas during these months, and if they had had a successful summer and autumn, as they generally did, they could well afford to lay up and await the coming of spring.

But when storm and rain gave way to the smooth waters and balmy breezes, the Sea-wolves were certain of their prey, as the whole length and breadth of the tideless sea was sure to be filled with the ships of the detested Christians trafficking in every direction. In the ethics of the Moslem all ships which sailed under the banner of the Cross, no matter to what nation they belonged, were fair game, even supposing that her insignia were the Crescent—well, supposing the spot to be sufficiently remote, dead men tell no tales, and the pirates were to be trusted to see to it that none escaped.

But, however this might have been, it is quite certain that no qualms of conscience troubled Uruj concerning those others: Genoese, Neapolitans, Catalans, Andalusians, French, or the dwellers of the Balearic Islands, were all fish sent by a bountiful Providence to be enclosed in his net, and he seized upon them without distinction. When in the full tide of his success there was but one thing which preoccupied the mind of the corsair, which was to find a ready market for his spoils and a convenient place in which to rid himself of an embarrassing number of captives. This, however, did not present an insuperable difficulty, as we have already seen in the case of Curtogali, and a similar arrangement was carried out by Uruj Barbarossa and his brother.

Uruj now established himself at the island of Jerba, on the east coast of Tunis, which formed an admirable base from which to “work” the Mediterranean from the piratical point of view. Jerba had originally been conquered and occupied by the Spaniards in 1431, but the occupation had been allowed to lapse, and the island was lying derelict when the Barbarossas made it their headquarters. Here Uruj was joined by his younger brother Khizr, destined to become so much the more famous of the two; he had already made himself some reputation in piratical circles, and now brought his cool judgment and wise counsel to the assistance of that fiery fighting man his elder brother. The first question to be decided was that which we have already mentioned, namely, the disposal of spoil from prospective captures, and with this end in view the corsairs approached the Sultan of Tunis. This potentate made a gracious response to their overtures, and wished them all success in their enterprises. He promised them succour and support on the same terms which Curtogali had obtained, namely, one-fifth of all the spoil landed in his dominions.

The price to be paid was a stiff one, and was so regarded by the active partners in this arrangement; they were, however, young and unknown, and had not the least intention of holding to their bargain when more favourable circumstances presented themselves. Now they held fair speech with the puppet princes of North Africa; the day was to come when they should chase them from their insecure thrones. It was at this time, shortly after the treaty with the Sultan of Tunis was concluded, that the younger Barbarossa received from the Grand Turk the glorious name of Kheyr-ed-Din, or “The Protector of Religion.” It was a somewhat remarkable title for a pirate, but perhaps its bestower was slightly deficient in a sense of humour.

Sailing from Tunis in the spring of the year 1512, the brothers, with three galleys, fell in with The Galley of Naples, an enormous nef with a crew of three hundred. They instantly attacked, but were repulsed, night falling without either side having gained an advantage. This audacious proceeding illustrates the hardihood of the Moslem corsairs at this time. They were amply strong enough to range the Mediterranean and to capture, with no risk to themselves, the weak and unprotected argosies plying their trade in this sea; but this was not the method of the Barbarossas. Villains they may have been according to modern standards, pirates they were unquestionably; but they were grim, hard-bitten, fighting men, who shrank from no dangers in the pursuit of their prey, who reckoned that the humiliation and defeat of their Christian antagonists was as sweet a morsel as the booty reft from their hands. All night the three Moslem galleys and the great nef lay becalmed awaiting the conflict which was to come with the break of day; and it is easy to imagine that there was not much quiet sleep on board of either the Moslem or the Christian ships, for both on the one side and the other the issues loomed large. The corsairs had, so far, made no such important capture as this, which, could it be accomplished, would add enormously to their prestige, in addition to such spoils as they might acquire; but the combatants were fairly evenly matched in the matter of numbers, and the fight was one to a finish. The advantage on the side of the corsairs lay in the fact of their being three to one, and their being thus enabled to attack in three separate places at the same time. Terrible must have been that night of waiting for the unfortunates on board The Galley of Naples; there was no escape, and on board of her among her passengers were many women, whose fate was too terrible to contemplate should the day go against them. The first assault had been beaten off, it is true, but the struggle had been hard and bitter; would they be equally successful when the assault was renewed?

Even such a night as this, however, comes at last to an end, and the prospect of action must have been welcomed by the men on both sides; of the women with so horrible a fate impending one can hardly bear to think. The ghostly fingers of the dawn touched the grey sea with a wan yellow light, outlining the nef and the slender, wicked-looking galleys with their banks of oars; over the surface of the deep a slight mist hovered, as though some kindly spirit of the sea would hide, if such a thing were possible, the deeds which were to come. The three galleys lay close together, and Uruj and his brother held a few last words of counsel.

“It is agreed, then,” said the elder; “you, my brother, attack the starboard side and I on the port side, while Hassan Ali [indicating the captain of the third galley] will await the time when we are fully engaged, and will then board over the stern.”

“It is agreed,” answered Kheyr-ed-Din, and Hassan Ali.

As the strong sun of a perfect May morning in the Mediterranean leapt above the horizon, Uruj loosed his hounds upon their prey; the oars of the galleys churned the clear blue waters into foam, and the air was filled with the yells of the corsairs. “Allah! Allah!” and “Barbarossa! Barbarossa!” they cried. It was a war-cry that was destined to re-echo over many a conflict, both by land and sea, in the years that were to come.

In a simultaneous, and as we have seen a concerted attack, the beaks of the galleys crushed into the broadsides of The Galley of Naples, and, ever foremost in the fray, Uruj and Kheyr-ed-Din were the first two men to board. Then, when men were hand to hand and foot to foot, when Moslem scimitar rang on Christian sabre, and the air was filled with the oaths and shouts of the combatants, the third remaining pirate craft grappled The Galley of Naples by the stern, and a tide of fresh, unwounded men burst into the fray. This was the end; the Christians were both outnumbered and outfought, for among them were many who were not by profession warriors, whereas no man found a footing among the Sea-wolves, or was taken to sea as a fighting man, unless he had approved himself to the satisfaction of his captain that he was a valiant man of his hands. We have no record or list of the dead and wounded in this battle, but among the latter was Uruj, who was severely hurt. Not so Kheyr-ed-Din, who escaped scatheless and took command now that his brother was incapacitated. The dead were flung overboard with scant ceremony, and the wounded patched up as best might be, and then The Galley of Naples was taken in tow, and the corsairs returned in triumph to Tunis. Faithful to their treaty, so far, they laid one-fifth of their spoils at the feet of the Sultan.

A great procession was formed of Christian captives marching two and two. Four young Christian girls were mounted on mules, and two ladies of noble birth followed on Arab horses sumptuously caparisoned. These unfortunates were destined for the harems of their captors. The Sultan was greatly pleased at the spectacle, and as the mournful procession defiled before him cried out, “See how heaven recompenses the brave!” Jurien de la Gravière remarks: “Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century. A man leaving Naples to go to Spain might end his days in a Moorish bagnio and see his wife and daughters fall a prey to miscreants of the worse description.”

It was not till the following spring that Uruj was fit once more to pursue his chosen calling, so severe had been his wounds; but once he was whole and sound again he put to sea accompanied by Kheyr-ed-Din, and this time he had conceived a singularly bold and desperate enterprise. Two years before the famous Spanish captain, Pedro de Navarro, had seized upon the coast town of Bougie, and had unfortunately left it in the hands of a totally insufficient garrison. This departure from the sound rules of warfare had already been punished as it deserved, as the garrison was perpetually harassed and annoyed by the surrounding Arab tribes. The idea of Uruj was to seize upon Bougie by a coup de main. The corsair, however, was a far finer fighter than he was a strategist, and was possessed of a most impatient temper. All went well to begin with, as he managed to intercept and to capture a convoy of Spanish ships sent to revictual the place, and had he been content to wait he might have counted with certainty on reducing the garrison by starvation, as it depended on this very convoy for its supplies. In vain the wary and cool-headed Kheyr-ed-Din counselled prudence and delay, but these words were not to be found in the vocabulary of his elder brother. “What had to be done,” he replied, “had better be done at once,” and at the head of only fifty men landed and assaulted the still uncompleted ramparts of Bougie.

But if Uruj were rash and headstrong, so was not the commander of the Spanish garrison, who, massing his men for the repulse of the assault, waited till the last moment, and then received them with a volley of arquebuses, which laid many of them low, and so badly wounded their leader that he had to have his arm amputated on the spot: it says much for his constitution that he survived the operation.

For the time being the brothers had had enough of shore enterprises, and confined themselves strictly to their piratical business at sea, which prospered so exceedingly that they became exceedingly rich and their fame and power increased day by day. As time went on and the wealth of the brothers and partners increased, there entered into the calculating brain of Kheyr-ed-Din the idea that the payment of one-fifth share to the Sultan of Tunis was but money thrown away. Twenty per cent, was eating into the profits of the firm in an unwarrantable manner, he considered, and now that the active partners therein had established so good a business connection, they were quite strong enough to dispense with a sleeping partner. Times had changed for the better, and Kheyr-ed-Din was anxious to take full advantage of the fact; if possible he determined to seize upon and hold some port, in which, not only would they be exempt from tribute, but also in which he and his brother Uruj should be the supreme arbiters of the fate of all by whom it might be frequented.

Of Bougie and its stout Spanish garrison the brothers had had quite enough for the present: they sought, in consequence, for some harbour which presented equal advantages of situation, and their choice fell upon Jigelli, then belonging to the Genoese, who occupied a strong castle in this place.

Jigelli lies well outside the confines of the kingdom of Tunis, about equi-distant from Bougie and Cape Bougaroni, some forty miles from each. It would appear that on this occasion it was the younger of the two brothers who took charge of the enterprise, and there were no slap—dash, unconsidered methods employed. By this time the fame of the Barbarossas had gone abroad from Valencia to Constantinople, from Rome to the foot—hills of the Atlas Mountains, and, to circumvent the Genoese garrison of Jigelli, Kheyr-ed-Din called to his aid the savage Berber tribes of the hinterland of this part of Northern Africa.

Turbulent, rash, unstable as water, were these primitive dwellers of the desert; but they were fighters and raiders to a man, and ready for any desperate encounter if only it held out the promise of loot: they were as veritably the pirates of the land as were the Barbarossas pirates of the sea.

Small chance, indeed, had the five hundred Genoese soldiers by which Jigelli was garrisoned when attacked from the sea by the Barbarossas and by land by an innumerable horde of Berbers who were reckoned to be as many as 20,000. Invested by land and sea, the garrison did all that it was possible for men to do. Provisions and water ran short, ammunition was failing, the ring of their enemies was encircling them day by day closer and ever closer. From the land nothing could be expected but an augmentation of their foes, and day by day the commander of the garrison strained his eyes seaward to watch if haply the proud Republic, to which he and his men belonged, would send succour, or the redoubtable Knights of Saint John would come to his aid.

But the days lengthened into weeks, and the soldiers were gradually becoming worn out by the perpetual strain imposed upon them. There was one chance left, and one alone, which was to cut their way out through the besieging lines. Massacre to a man was their fate in any case, and thus it was that the commander, whose name has not come down to us, mustered his men for the last supreme effort. At dead of night the garrison, having destroyed as far as possible all that might be of use to the enemy, sallied out to their doom. They fought as men fight who know that the end has come; but valour could not avail against the numbers arrayed on the side of the enemy, and they were wiped off the face of the earth. The tribes looted the castle of everything portable, and then retired from whence they had come. For this Kheyr-ed-Din cared nothing; they were welcome to the poor possessions of some hundreds of half-starved Italian soldiers—let them take the shell, for him remained the kernel in the shape of a strong place of arms.

Hardly, however, had the brothers succeeded in this enterprise when that tireless fighter Uruj again attempted the capture of Bougie; but his second attempt was even more disastrous than his first, and he lost half his flotilla. Then he asked for succour from Tunis; but the Sultan, much offended at the idea of the brothers setting up in a piratical business in which he was no longer a sleeping partner, angrily refused.

CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH OF URUJ BARBAROSSA

The events recorded in the last chapter bring us down to the end of the year 1515, and while every endeavour has been made to present affairs in chronological sequence, it must be remembered that the dates of piratical expeditions are often impossible to obtain: the wrath of the chroniclers at the nefarious deeds of the corsairs greatly exceeding their desire for a meticulous accuracy in the matter of the exact time of their occurrence. Uruj, as has been seen, had by his headstrong folly once again placed his brother and himself in a decidedly awkward situation. By the losses which he had incurred in his second ill-advised attempt on Bougie he had so weakened the piratical confederation that the countenance of some potentate had again become necessary for their continued existence, and the Sultan of Tunis had now repudiated all connection with these ingrates.

But, if craft and subtlety were not to be found in Uruj there was one who never failed to exhibit these qualities when they became necessary, and Kheyr-ed-Din once more came to the front. The Russian peasantry have a saying that “God is high and the Czar is far away.” In the sixteenth century the Grand Turk was in every sense “far away” from the struggling corsairs on the littoral of Northern Africa, and was a sovereign of such great and mysterious might that any man with a less fine instinct into the psychology of the times in which he lived than Kheyr-ed-Din would have hesitated long and anxiously before addressing him directly; would probably in the end not have done so at all. But desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and the politic corsair well knew that even the moral support of such an one as the Sultan of Constantinople was worth more than even material aid from a Sultan of Tunis.

Consequently, greatly daring, he sent an embassy to the Sublime Porte with one of his most trusted captains at its head to lay the homage of the corsairs at the feet of Selim I. Very naturally these ambassadors did not go empty-handed, but took with them rich presents and numerous slaves. Selim was much pleased at the attention, coming as it did from such a distance—we have to remember that the coast of North Africa was an immense journey from Constantinople in those days—and the insight of Kheyr-ed-Din was triumphantly vindicated. Not only did the Sultan send a gracious reply in return, but—what was far more to the purpose—he sent a reinforcement of fourteen vessels to the corsairs bidding them to go on and prosper in their efforts to spread the true faith among the Christian heretics.

There is nothing more curious in the history of the corsairs than the perpetual ups and downs of their lives. Thus in the present instance the ill-advised attack of Uruj on Bougie had reduced them to terrible straits; immediately afterwards the action of the Grand Turk once more set them upon their feet and enabled them to pursue an unchecked career of devastation. Aided by the reinforcements sent by Selim, their depredations assumed ever larger proportions, and, had they continued to receive this assistance, the course of history itself might have been changed. Ground to powder beneath the iron heel of their ruthless conquerors, the Moriscoes of Southern Spain were ever waiting the chance to rise and shake off the yoke by which they were so sore oppressed; from far and near reports were coming to hand of the continued successes of the corsairs, and all Andalusia seethed with passionate hope that the day of deliverance was at hand.

But, alas for the vanity of human wishes! in the opening months of the year 1516 Selim recalled his ships and the chance was gone, never again to arise.

It may have been that “the sorrowful sighing of the captives” never reached the ears of the successor of Othman in his palace on the shores of the Golden Horn; in any case, the Sultan was preparing for the conquest of Egypt, and in consequence recalled the ships which he had lent to assist the corsairs. The Moriscoes were thus left without hope, but so far as the corsairs were concerned they were enabled to strike another bargain with the Sultan of Tunis. This monarch had now got over his fit of the sulks, and discovered that customs dues from the peaceful trading mariners, although desirable enough, were not by any means so lucrative a form of revenue as was the one-fifth share of the booty of the pirates. Uruj and Kheyr-ed-Din for their part, although they had captured Jigelli, were totally unable to hold it: the capture had indeed been principally due to the assistance which they had received from the Berber tribesmen, but these nomads had disappeared into the deserts from whence they came, once the looting of the town and fortress had been completed.

The corsair had to be armed at all points, in the moral as well as the material sense, as he was the enemy of all men, and all were vowed to his destruction. Every cruise which he took raised up against him fresh hatred and a more bitter animus, and we must remember that it was not only men individually, but Principalities and Powers that were arrayed in line of battle for his destruction. At the present juncture Spain was specially hostile, for not only had her possession of Bougie been twice attacked by the Sea-wolves, but a valuable convoy had been captured. An expedition, in consequence, was sent by the Spaniards against the Barbarossas, but this effort did not result in much damage being done to the offenders. The Spaniards destroyed four piratical vessels which had been abandoned by their crews at Bizerta, and pushed a strong reconnaissance into the Bay of Tunis itself. Here shots were exchanged between the Spanish fleet and the forts—under which Kheyr-ed-Din had drawn up his ships—and the Spaniards then abandoned the enterprise and returned from whence they had come.

In the year 1510 the Spaniard, Count Pedro Navarre, had seized upon Algiers, which town was at this time one of the principal refuges of the Moorish fugitives, who had been driven from Granada, from Còrdoba, and from Southern Spain generally by Ferdinand and Isabella eighteen years previously. To say that the condition of these people was desperate is to speak but the bare truth, for what could exceed the misery of the situation in which they were left after the successful incursion of their Christian foes? What we are apt to lose sight of in the light of present-day circumstances is the fact that these Spanish Moors were a most highly civilised people, far more so indeed than their Christian contemporaries; that they had been driven with fire and sword from the land in which they and their forefathers had dwelt for over seven centuries, and that they now had been cast out literally to starve on the inhospitable shores of Northern Africa. So it came about that the common people exchanged the life of the peaceful and prosperous artisan or husbandman for that of the hand-to-mouth pirate, and the case of knight and noble among them was no better—perhaps rather worse—than the meanest among those who had been expropriated.

Those who know the region in which these unhappy folk lived are aware of the material monuments which still exist and testify to the glorious past; and, seeing what they have seen, it is no great stretch of the imagination to picture to themselves the comfort, the elegance, and the luxury with which the inhabitants of Granada and Còrdoba lived surrounded. Over there, away across some few leagues of shining blue water, were the ruined homes of which many of the banished people still possessed the keys, awaiting the day when Allah and the Prophet should vouchsafe to them that return which they so naturally and ardently desired. To this day the key of the great Mosque at Cordoba is preserved at Rabat as a sacred relic of former dignity and power—a symbol to the Moslem of his perpetual banishment. If Cordoba with its mosque—still one of the wonders of the world, with its eleven hundred marble columns—were the principal shrine and holy of holies to these people, there were in addition hundreds of other temples of their faith now for ever desecrated in their eyes by the misfortune which had placed them in Christian hands. In Andalusia were the dishonoured graves of their kinsfolk, and, last and worst of all, in this land still dwelt thousands upon thousands of their co-religionists held in a degrading bondage by their implacable enemies.

The capture of Algiers by Count Pedro Navarro was a crowning misfortune for the exiles, and when this commander seized upon the place he extracted from the inhabitants an oath of fidelity to the Spanish crown; he further erected a strong tower to overawe the town, and to keep its turbulent inhabitants in order. But such an oath as this, extracted at the point of the sword, was writ in water; it meant, of course, the suppression of piracy, and it also meant the starvation of most of those persons who dwelt in the vicinity. How the Moslem population existed for the six years after the incursion of Navarro is a mystery; but they probably moved their galleys, of which they possessed some twenty, further along the coast out of the range of the guns from Navarro’s Tower, and secure from the observation of those who held it for the Spanish king.

In the year in which Selim descended upon Egypt the King of Spain, Ferdinand V., died, and grave troubles immediately broke out in Spain. This was an opportunity too good to be missed, as no reinforcements could possibly be expected for the garrison in Algiers as long as these disturbances lasted, and the Algerines took counsel together as to the best means of driving out their enemies. It is a commentary on the detestation in which they held the Spaniards that they should have allied themselves for this purpose with the savages of the hinterland. This, however, was what they did. As in the case of Jigelli, these people could always be relied upon to go anywhere in search of booty, and one Selim Eutemi entered the town at the head of his tribe. But sheer, stark, savage valour could make no impression on Navarro’s Tower and the ordnance that was mounted on its walls. The result was a stalemate, as the Spaniards could by no manner of means get out, and neither could their enemies, who swarmed innumerable in the town and the surrounding country, get in. In time, of course, they might hope to bring the garrison to surrender by starvation; but time pressed, and no man knew when the troubles in Spain might be adjusted and help come to the beleaguered. In the meanwhile Selim Eutemi and his men, who had been taught some rude lessons in the power of firearms, kept out of range of the cannon, while the Algerines held yet another council of war, the result of which was that they decided to ask help from Uruj and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, and to them they appealed. By this time their fame was known to all men, and they could supply that which was lacking—namely ships, artillery, a first-class fighting force, and last, and best of all, the moral support which would stiffen and put heart into the motley horde which at present surged around the gates of the fortress of Navarro.

The Algerines did not appeal in vain, and an instant promise of succour was forthcoming. Kheyr—ed—Din was away at sea, but Uruj, that indomitable fighter, started at once. From whence we are not told, but he must have been somewhere in the neighbourhood, as he and his men marched along the shore; while, keeping pace with them, came a fleet of eighteen galleys and three barques laden with stores.

But before proceeding to the assistance of the Algerines Uruj had a personal matter to which to attend, and he wished to combine pleasure with serious business. One of his old companions had seceded from his command and had established himself at Shershell, where he lived the life of an independent corsair within easy striking distance of the Balearic Islands and the coast of Spain, his following composed of a horde of those broken men of whom mention has been made. Shershell was an unfortified town, and surrendered unconditionally upon the arrival of Uruj and his army. Kara-Hassan, for such was the name of this independent corsair, came out to greet his old-time chief; he was met with violent reproaches, and the altercation ended by Uruj having him beheaded on the spot. It was ill to quarrel with the Barbarossas.

Freed from this rival, the Mitylene corsair had now uncontested supremacy on the coast, a supremacy none was likely to contest in the future, as he brooked no opposition, and had come to consider that independent piracy in the Mediterranean was in some sort an infringement of the rights of himself and his brother. One of the most salient peculiarities of the corsairs at this time was the apparent recklessness with which they assailed others who were participants in their nefarious business. Self-interest and policy would seem, to the observer in the present day, to have dictated quite a different course of action; but we shall see, when we come to deal with the life-history of Kheyr-ed-Din, that this infinitely wiser and more intellectual man apparently allowed himself to be swayed by gusts of passion, in which he savagely maltreated those with whom he was associated, and from whom dangerous hostility was certainly to be feared if they escaped with their lives. At this distance of time it is impossible to gauge the motives by which men such as these were actuated, more particularly in the case of Kheyr-ed-Din, whose character was a blend of the deepest subtlety and calculated ferocity.

Having settled with Kara-Hassan, Uruj continued his march along the coast. Arrived at Algiers, he opened in form a siege of Navarro’s Tower; but, being unable to make any impression on its defences, he abandoned the siege after twenty days’ fruitless fighting, during which he lost a number of men in his assaults. Baffled and furious, he turned on the Berber chieftain, the luckless Selim Eutemi, and caused him to be assassinated, regarding him as being responsible for the failure. The Spanish chroniclers relate, with some wealth of detail, how Uruj personally fell upon Selim Eutemi, when that chieftain was in his bath, and strangled him with his own hands. However this may have been, the Spanish records of the deeds of the corsairs cannot well be taken au pied de la lettre; there is no doubt that Selim was murdered, and from that time the Berbers recognised that he who had come to help was now remaining to plunder. Uruj now established himself in the town, and set to work making raids into the adjoining country, carrying off sheep, cattle, and slaves. For the Berbers this was a true awakening. He who now oppressed them had come in the guise of a champion to assist them in the sack and plunder of Navarro’s Tower; they had exchanged King Log, who dwelt securely locked up, for a King Stork of the most active description. Although we cannot sympathise with such people, it is quite possible to understand their very natural annoyance at the turn which things had taken, and it does not surprise us (in this age of “punic faith”) that a conspiracy was set on foot between the dwellers of the hinterland and the Spaniards of the fortress.

Uruj was informed of all that was going on through his own spies, and, although he kept his finger on the pulse of the conspiracy, he acted as though the tribesmen were still his very faithful friends and allies. The corsair was more patient than his wont. In this affair he wished for ample proof of delinquency, and also for a vengeance adequate to the occasion when he should discover all the guilty parties; and so some weeks went by while the plot was maturing, apparently, from the point of view of the conspirators, to a successful conclusion. But Uruj had bided his time with a subtlety and finesse which would have done credit to Kheyr-ed-Din himself.

It was the custom of the corsair and his chief adherents to attend the principal mosque on Fridays; and therefore, when the conspirators were cordially invited to attend on the following Friday, and, after the service was over, to attend Uruj to his dwelling and there confer with him, they went, nothing doubting, to their deaths. As the discourse of the Mullah came to an end a crash resounded throughout the building: six stalwart swordsmen had flung the great gates of the mosque together, and barred all exit. Excepting the conspirators, twenty-two in number, the remainder of the edifice was filled with the galley’s crews of the corsair, men who, had he given the order, would have cheerfully set alight to the sacred building itself and roasted the Mullahs themselves in the flames.

To the corsairs, after they were seated in the mosque, the word had been passed that the Berber tribesmen had meditated this treachery against them, which, had it succeeded, would have meant the death or enslavement of them all. It was therefore a trap of a singularly deadly description into which the countrymen of Selim Eutemi walked on this Friday morning.

The doors being closed, the conspirators were one by one dragged before Uruj, who, bitterly reproaching them, gave order for their instant death. They were haled out through rows of jeering pirates, and beheaded in the street immediately in front of the principal entrance of the mosque. When the slaughter of the twenty—two was accomplished Uruj strode from the mosque over the weltering corpses of the traitors amid the plaudits of his own men, ever ready to acclaim deeds of blood and cruelty. After this there were no more plots against the corsair in Algiers. News of all these desperate doings in Algiers had by this time filtered across into Spain, and El Maestro Don Fray Prudencio de Sandoval recounts how, when the tidings came to Fray Francisco Ximenes, the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, that that prelate, much scandalised that the might of Imperial Spain should be flouted by a mere pirate, sent Don Diego de Vera with some fifteen thousand men to recapture the town, and relieve the beleaguered garrison in the tower. This was in the month of September 1516.

Don Diego landed “en el dia de San Hieronymo,” and threw up entrenchments within gunshot of the town. Great things were expected of this expedition, as Sandoval notes that in 1513 Don Diego de Vera, in the war against the French, had gained the approval of Count Pedro Navarro (“avia bien aprovado con el Conde Pedro Navarro”), and it was not expected that a mere pirate rabble would ever make head against the Spanish troops. De Vera opened fire on the walls of the town from his entrenchments, but hardly had he done so when Uruj, leading his corsairs, which formed the spearhead to an innumerable army of Berbers and Arabs, made a sortie.

“Upon them one day did Barbarossa make an onslaught, and when he saw that the Spanish soldiers were ill commanded, he flung his forces upon them with loud cries. And so great was the fear inspired by Barbarossa that they were routed almost without loss to the Moors; and with much ease did these latter slay three thousand men and capture four hundred on the day of San Hieronymo in this year.”

(“Salio un dia à el Barbarossa y como vio los soldados Españoles desmandados diò en ellos con gran gritos. Y fue tan grande el miedo que vieron que Barbarossa los desbaratò casi sin daño y con mucho facilidad mato tres mil hombres y cautivo quatro cientos dia de San Hieronymo deste año.”)

This quotation is given in full to set out the amazing fact that in this battle over three thousand were killed while only four hundred were captured, which shows that it must have been in the nature of an indiscriminate massacre; the only captive of any note was the captain, Juan del Rio. Diego de Vera had had enough of the corsairs, and sailed away with the remainder of his force. Of what became of him or of them there is no record, but he must have been a singularly incompetent commander when he could not make head against a rabble of pirates and Moors with the army at his disposition. Sandoval does not attempt to minimise the defeat, which, of course, would have been impossible; he contents himself with the following delightfully quaint reflection: “But many, many times Homer nods; this disaster must have come upon us for our sins, upon which it is most important that we should always think and meditate.”

Who so triumphant now as Uruj Barbarossa? It is true that the fortress of Pedro Navarro still remained in the hands of its splendid and undaunted garrison, and was destined so to remain for some years to come; but they were impotent for harm, and the conqueror of Don Diego now turned his arms in another direction. Kheyr-ed-Din was at Jigelli when he heard of the victory gained by his brother, and sailed at once with six ships to his support. The town of Tenes fell into the hands of the brothers, with an immense booty, and then Uruj marched on Tlemcen. The Sultan of Tlemcen, the last of the royal race of the Beni-Zian, did not await the coming of the corsair. All through the northern coasts of Africa the name of Barbarossa was a synonym of terror; the sad fate of Selim Eutemi, of Kara-Hassan, of the twenty-two conspirators of the mosque, had been noised abroad, and the superstitious tribesmen firmly believed that these red-bearded corsairs were the accomplices of Shaitan, even if they did not represent him themselves in their own persons. Who were these men, they asked one another tremblingly, who feared neither God nor devil, and who caused even the redoubtable Spaniards to fly before them like the leaves in front of an autumn gale?

When men begin to talk and to think like this there is not much fight left in them, and so it came about that, after the most feeble of resistances, the Sultan of Tlemcen fled to Fez. Thus, almost without striking a blow, Uruj found himself master of a province from which the Spaniards were accustomed to draw the necessary provisions for the upkeep of the garrison of Oran. But Tlemcen is but some seventy miles from Oran, and Oran is so close to Spain as to be easily reinforced; in consequence Uruj was soon blockaded by the Spaniards, and remained so for seven months. But no blockade could keep Uruj Barbarossa for long within stone walls; sortie after sortie did the gallant corsair lead against the foe, and it was in one of these that he characteristically came by his death. Ever rash and impetuous, he allowed himself to be drawn too far away from possible shelter or support; and, as there was something dramatic in the whole life of this man, so also was there in the manner of his death. They had him trapped at last, this grim Sea-wolf, and he stood at bay in a stone corral used for the herding of goats.

As the wolves in winter circle round the leaguer on the heath, So the greedy foe glared upward panting still for blood and death.

By his side was his faithful lieutenant Venalcadi. In a breathless mêlée Christian sword and Moslem sabre clashed and rang. His turban gone, his great curved scimitar red to the hilt, the undaunted corsair fought his last fight as became the terror of his name. Almost had he succeeded in breaking through the ring of his foes when Garzia de Tineo, alferez (or lieutenant) to Captain Diego de Andrade, wounded him severely with a pike. Uruj stumbled, was struck on the head with another weapon; he reeled and fell. The fight was over, and one of the Barbarossas bit the dust. Garzia de Tineo leaped upon the fallen man and cut off his head. It is recorded that Garzia de Tineo was wounded in the finger by Uruj in the course of the combat, and that for the rest of his life he proudly exhibited the scar as a sign that it was none other than he who had killed the famous corsair.

Uruj Barbarossa was undoubtedly a remarkable man. At a time when the Mediterranean swarmed with warriors none was more feared, none was more redoubtable than he. By sheer valour and tenacity he had fought his way to the front, and the son of the obscure renegado of Mitylene died a king. It is true that his sovereignty was precarious, that it was maintained at the edge of the sword; none the less, in that welter of anarchy in which he lived he had forced himself to the summit, and, pirate, sea-wolf, and robber as he was, we cannot withhold from him a meed of the most hearty admiration.

CHAPTER V
KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA

Uruj had arrogated to himself the title of King of Tlemcen, but with his death this shadowy sovereignty came to an end, and the Spaniards seized upon the province. This, however, did not avail them much, as the Sultan of Fez sent against them an innumerable army, and they in their turn were dispossessed. It was in the year 1518 that Uruj fell beneath the pike of Garzia de Tineo, and now the first place in the piratical hierarchy was taken by Kheyr-ed-Din. In this man the genius of the statesman lay hidden beneath the outward semblance of the bold and ruthless pirate; ever foremost in the fight, strong to endure, swift to smite, he had by now long passed his novitiate, had established an empire over the minds of men which was to endure until the end of his unusually prolonged life. With a brain of ice and a heart of fire, he looked out, serene and calm, upon the turbulent times in which he lived, a monstrous egotist desiring nothing but his own advancement, all his faculties bent upon securing more wealth and yet more power.

He played a lone hand, for he brooked even less than did his truculent brother any approach to an equality with himself among the men who followed in his train. Absolute supremacy was his in the life which he lived, but none knew better than he upon what an unstable basis his power rested. He now called himself the King of Algiers, but still that lean, sun-dried garrison held with desperate tenacity to the tower of the redoubtable Navarro, and any moment a fresh Spanish relieving force might be upon him and chase him forth even as Uruj had been chased from Tlemcen. He saw that he must consolidate his power, must for the present, at any rate, have some force at his back which would provide that material and moral backing which was essential to his schemes. Once before he had successfully approached the Grand Turk, the Padishah, the head of the Mohammedan religion, and from him he had received that which he had asked; on this former occasion, however, he had not been in the same position as he now occupied.

The corsair must have meditated long and anxiously on the best way in which to approach the autocrat of Constantinople; in the end he probably hit upon the best solution of the problem by again sending an ambassador with precise instructions as to the manner in which he was to act. For this important service his choice fell upon one of his captains, Hadj-Hossein by name, and to him he imparted all that he was to say, and—what was almost as important—what he was not to say.

The duty of the ambassador was to magnify the importance of his master, but to do so in such a manner that the Padishah was not to imagine that a rival to his own greatness had arisen at Algiers. Selim was at this time in Egypt, where he had just completed the conquest of the Mamelukes, and thither did Hadj-Hossein repair. He laid at the feet of the conqueror the respectful homage of the King of Algiers, who, he assured Selim, desired nothing better than to become the vassal of the Commander of the Faithful. Also, he informed him, that in the name of Selim public prayer was offered in the mosques on Fridays, that his image and superscription were struck on the coins, that in every manner possible recognition was made of the fact that he, and he alone, was the chosen of God upon earth. This manner of stating the situation was both delicate and politic. A less wise man than Kheyr-ed-Din might have assumed a note of equality from one Moslem potentate to another, but the corsair was perfectly conscious of his limitations—he knew exactly how the Grand Turk could be useful to him, and he was not going to mar his chance by the display of an untimely arrogance.

Hadj-Hossein proved himself to be a tactful and successful ambassador. The Sultan accepted the homage offered, and made many inquiries concerning the war prosecuted by Hossein’s master against the enemies of the true faith in the distant region of Algiers. His queries were all answered with deep submission and the most subtle of flattery, much of which latter was no doubt a perfectly honest expression of opinion. As to the average Mohammedan of this period the Padishah was a being set apart by Heaven to fulfil the decrees of the Prophet.

The ambassador, when he rejoined his master, must have been a proud man, as so well had he fulfilled his mission that he carried back with him to Algiers not only a gracious message, but the insignia of the Sanjak, Scimitar Horse and Tambour, conferred upon that loyal Moslem Kheyred-Din Barbarossa, who, in the words of the Padishah, “abandoning a sterile independence, sought in all the bloody hazards of his life nought but the glory of God and His Prophet” To us this hyperbole, addressed to a pirate, seems merely ridiculous, but in those days of fanaticism the beliefs of men, both Christians and Moslems, are something which it is impossible for us to realise. On either side the way of salvation was the path of conquest, and the man who was heretic to the faith which you professed was rightly served if you could cut him and his off from among the congregation.

It was well for the corsair to make as many friends as possible, as among his enemies he counted all the kings of Christendom; and, looking back on his career, it seems but little short of a miracle that he was not crushed out of existence, not once but a hundred times. But, as has been said already, the root of true statesmanship was in Kheyr-ed-Din. He watched with eager eye the quarrels of the great kings on the continent of Europe; he saw his life-long rival at sea, the greatest of all Christian mariners, Andrea Doria, the Genoese admiral, transfer his allegiance from the French King Francis I. to the Emperor Charles V. He noted and took full advantage of the perpetual squabbles between the Genoese and Venetian Republics, and all the time was in touch with the Sea-wolves, who swarmed on the coasts of Africa, and lurked in every creek and harbour of the Ionian Sea. “In all the bloody hazards of his life,” to quote once again the words of the Grand Turk, “he could, in the end, depend more or less on the corsairs, whether they ostensibly sailed beneath his banner or whether they did not, as when danger threatened what name was so potent as that of Barbarossa, which his followers asserted to be worth ten thousand men, when shouted on the day of battle!”

That which is most extraordinary in the life of Kheyr-ed-Din is the perpetual danger and stress in which it was lived. Time and again the heavy menacing clouds gathered around his head; strenuous and unceasing were the efforts made by his enemies to destroy his power, to capture the person of this militant robber who flung an insolent defiance to the whole of Christendom. The storms gathered and broke with various effects, which sometimes sent the corsair flying for his life a hunted fugitive, as others saw him once more victorious. But no reverses had the power to damp his ardour, or to render him less eager to arise, like some ill-omened phoenix, from the ashes of defeat: to vex the souls of those who held themselves to be the greatest men on earth.

It was shortly after the death of his brother Uruj that the storm arose which bade fair to sweep, not only Kheyr-ed-Din but all the corsairs of the North African coast, clean out of their strongholds, for the Emperor Charles V., at this time young, eager, and enthusiastic, gave orders for their destruction. These robbers troubled the peace of Europe; they did more than this, they insulted the Majesty of the Emperor, and Charles regarded their perpetual incursions in the light of an affront to his personal dignity. The divinity which hedged such a monarch as the grandson of “Los Reyes Cathòlicos,” Ferdinand and Isabella, was a very real thing, and, if offended, was likely to find concrete expression in the most vigorous form. Charles, much annoyed at the necessity for chastising a band of robbers, determined that he would make an end of them once and for all. To Don Hugo de Moncada, the Viceroy of Sicily, to Don Perisan de Ribera at Bougie, to the Marquis de Comares at Oran, orders were sent to prepare their forces for an attack on Algiers.

There was no lack of good-will on the part of the Christian princes, nobles, and governors. The Spanish veterans in Sicily were rusting for want of employment, the levies on the African littoral welcomed anything in the way of war as a distraction from the deadly monotony of their lives. The soldier in these days who rested too long upon his arms became in time practically useless for the purpose for which he existed; but such rulers as Charles V. gave their fighting men but small cause of complaint in the matter of want of employment. The Pope sent his blessing and a contingent, and, to show how serious was the purpose of the Emperor, who took the command in person, let us set forth the total of the expedition which was to utterly destroy and root out the corsairs and their leader:

We now come to the military side of the expedition, which consisted of:

We next come to the Armament of the Fleet:

It was late autumn when the expedition at last set sail, and the imperious temper of Charles was such that he refused to be governed by the advice of the seasoned mariners, such as Andrea and Antony Doria, and others who dreaded the effect of the gales which the armada was likely to encounter on the coast of Africa. The Emperor was not to be gainsaid, and the fleet set sail. They arrived, says Sandoval, “en el dia de San Hieronymo,” Saint Bartholomew’s day; and there then arose such a storm as the Mediterranean seldom sees. Some of the army had landed, some were still afloat, the corsairs accounted for the luckless soldiers ashore, the elements destroyed many left in the ships: 26 ships and 4,000 men were lost.

Bitterly mortified, Charles, who had personally displayed valour and conduct of unusual distinction in this disastrous expedition, returned to Europe to turn his attention to his everlasting quarrels with the King of France. Meanwhile Don Hugo de Moncada had escaped with a remnant of his forces to Iviza, in the Balearics, where he wintered, and where his men mutinied because he was unable to pay them.

As there was depression almost amounting to despair in the camps of Christendom, so was there concurrently the widest rejoicing in the tents and on board of the galleys which flew the Moslem flag. What mattered it that it was the elements which had saved Kheyr-ed-Din from annihilation? was it not a cause the more for jubilation, as had not the Prophet of God himself come to the assistance of those who were upholding his holy standard? Were not his favours made manifest in that he had sent, to lead his votaries to victory, such an one as Kbeyr-ed-Din Barbarossa?

Pope and Emperor, King, Duke, and Viceroy had tried conclusions with the pirates, and their fleet and army had melted away as the mists melt in the hot sunshine on the Mediterranean; truly were the descendants of the dispossessed Moors of Còdoba and Granada taking a terrible revenge on those by whom they had been expropriated.

Barbarossa was never one to let the grass grow under his feet; he had the Christians on the run, and he intended to take full advantage of this pleasing circumstance. Accordingly he despatched a trusted lieutenant, one Hassan, with instructions to harass the coast of Valentia, to ravage with fire and sword all those unfortunate towns and villages which he could reach. This corsair entered the Rio de Ampasta and destroyed all before him, the inhabitants fleeing as the news was carried by escaped fugitives and by the red glare of the villages flaming to heaven in the night. Satiated with blood, laden with spoil, and burdened with many wretched captives, Hassan put to sea once more in triumph.

It may here be mentioned how terrible was the damage wrought by the piratical fraternity in the Mediterranean, and the manner in which it has been brought to light in somewhat remarkable fashion quite recently. Since the French occupation of Tunis it was charged against them that they had taken away from the natives of the country those fertile lands which lay upon the shores of the sea, and had given them to French subjects. The facts of the case were that for centuries these lands had been entirely out of cultivation, the reason being that, until the complete suppression of piracy in the Mediterranean took place, none dared to dwell within raiding distance of the sea for fear of being carried off into slavery.

But to return to Hassan. That warrior, having cleared the Spanish coast, got separated from three of his consorts during the night. The next day, at dawn, he sighted a Spanish sailing-vessel, which he thought to make an easy prize. The wind was light, and the galleys—that is to say, the one on which Hassan was aboard and his remaining consort—were soon churning up the waters in pursuit as fast as their oars could carry them. Hassan reckoned on an easy capture, as he made certain she was but a peaceful trader with some score or so of throats to cut. He was, however, badly out of his reckoning, as on board of her was a veteran company of Spanish infantry, stark fighters to a man, who feared no odds, and who were skilfully commanded by Captain Robeira, grown grey in the Moorish wars. With bloodcurdling yells the galleys swept alongside with the fighting men massed on the high poops and forecastles of their vessels. Behind the high bulwarks of the “round ship” (as the sailing craft of the day were denominated to distinguish them from the long ships, or galleys) crouched the Spaniards, their muskets in their hands. Captain Robeira had them perfectly in hand, and not a piece was discharged until the beaks of the galleys crashed into her sides.

Robeira then gave the order to fire, and at the short range into packed masses of men the volley did terrible execution. Completely surprised, the corsairs attempted to board, but were repulsed and driven back with more slaughter. His men becoming demoralised, Hassan withdrew amidst the ferocious taunts of the Spaniards, who had escaped almost unscathed. Sore and angry, the corsairs continued their voyage for another three days, at the expiration of which they arrived at Algiers. Hassan, who had acquired quite a considerable booty, expected a warm reception; this he received, but hardly in the way that he expected. He told his tale to Kheyr-ed-Din, which that commander received in frowning silence; when he had finished the storm burst.

“O miserable coward! dost thou dare to stand in my presence and to confess that thou hast been whipped like a dog by those sons of burnt fathers, the Spaniards?”

The miserable Hassan attempted to justify himself by reference to the booty which he had obtained and the number of captives with which he had returned; but this, far from assuaging the wrath of Barbarossa, only made it worse.

“Dastard and slave! thou boastest that, thou hast destroyed defenceless villages and brought back many captives, but that shall avail thee nothing. No profit shalt thou derive from that. Let the captives be brought before me.”

This was done, and to the horror even of those hardened men of blood who followed in the train of Barbarossa, they were all executed. Even this wholesale massacre did not assuage the wrath of the corsair. Standing and surveying the weltering shambles which tainted the air, he pulled ferociously at his red beard, and commanded that they should whip Hassan till the blood ran; when this was done thoroughly and to the satisfaction of the despot, he gave orders that he should be chained and thrust into the prison of the fortress.

Terror stalked abroad in Algiers. No man knew when his turn might come after this awful example of what it meant to incur the wrath of Barbarossa. The corsair gave orders for the execution of Venalcadi, who, it will be remembered, was with Uruj when that warrior came by his death; but Venalcadi was popular among the pirates, and they connived at his escape.

For so cool and politic a man as Kheyr-ed-Din this outburst is wholly inexplicable. Judged by our standards, the flogging of Hassan was not only brutal but silly, as raising up to himself enemies of the most bitter description in the midst of his own followers; and yet cruelty was so engrained in this man that he never forewent his revenge. It is a standing miracle that he escaped assassination in the age in which he lived, and the only explanation would appear to be that men were too much afraid of him to make the attempt.

The immediate result of the flogging of Hassan and the attempted murder of Venalcadi was that the latter collected a following and made war upon Kheyr-ed-Din, who, with incredible folly, then released Hassan, and sent him with five hundred men to fight against Venalcadi. The result was what might have been anticipated: Hassan joined forces with Venalcadi, and together they attacked the tyrant and drove him out of his stronghold.

Kheyr-ed-Din had the one supreme merit of never knowing when he was beaten. Driven from the shore, there was for him always the sea to which to retire; so on this occasion he embarked his family and such of his riches as were portable, and took to the sea once more. “Yendo a buscar nuevos asientos y nuevos amigos” (seeking a new home and new friends), says Sandoval.

It was well for the corsairs that the Christians had selected the previous year for their attack, as, had they fallen upon them when Barbarossa was no longer in power at Algiers and the pirates were fighting among themselves, the latter would have been wiped out of existence. It was ill fighting with Kheyr-ed-Din, whether you professed the religion of Christ or that of Mahomet, and this the revolting corsairs were very soon to discover. Barbarossa sailed away from Algiers a hunted fugitive, only to return again as a conqueror.

Eastward the dispossessed ruler of Algiers took his course, and very soon discovered that which he sought—allies to assist him against the revolted Venalcadi and the recalcitrant Hassan. Lurking in the neighbourhood of Bizerta, he discovered El Judeo (the Jew), Cachidiablo (Hunt the Devil), Salaerrez, Tabas, and other corsairs, who collectively composed a formidable force. These were all old acquaintances and some old followers of Kheyr-ed-Din, and to them did he relate the piteous tale of the cowardice of Venalcadi, whom he accused of having deserted his brother Uruj in his direst necessity, thereby causing his death; the abominable conduct of Hassan, who had turned and bitten the hand that fed him. With tears in his eyes did this accomplished actor reluctantly reveal the base ingratitude of which he had been the recipient; so much did he contrive to work upon the feelings of his auditors that they one and all vowed to stand by him, and to replace him as ruler of Algiers, from which he had been thrust by men whose shameful treachery was only equalled by their ingratitude.

Forty sail in strength, they set out to avenge the wrongs of the gentle and long-suffering Kheyr-ed-Din, that master of craft in every sense of the word. Reaching Algiers, they disembarked artillery and stores and began an attack in form; but Venalcadi, whose forces were equal, in fact slightly superior, to those of his antagonists, made a sally, and battle was joined in the open. A most sanguinary combat ensued, in which the forces of Kheyr-ed-Din were decidedly worsted. For a considerable period his fate hung in the balance. Then occurred one of those singular and remarkable things only possible in such an age of anarchy and bloodshed. Barbarossa had in his train sixty Spanish soldiers captured by him from the force of Don Hugo de Moncada. Well did the corsair know their value: there were no finer fighting men in all the Christian armies. Hastily summoning them, he promised them their freedom if they would now throw in their lot with him and assist in the downfall of Venalcadi.

The offer was no sooner made than accepted, and the Spanish veterans, fresh and unwearied, threw themselves into the heart of the fray. Shoulder to shoulder and blade to blade in their disciplined valour, they broke through all opposition; they fought for liberty as well as life, to exchange the noisome confinement of the piratical galley for the free air of their homes and their country. Soon the soldiers of Venalcadi turned and fled back to the city; the day was once again with Kheyr-ed-Din. For four days longer did Algiers hold out, and then a traitor betrayed Venalcadi into the hands of his enemies. Instantly his head was struck off, placed on a pole, and paraded in full sight of the garrison, who were promised their lives on condition of surrender.

The city opened its gates once more, and Barbarossa entered in triumph. The corsair was as good as his word to his Spanish captives, and restored to them their liberty. He went even further, and was liberal in his largesse to those who had fought so well for him. If he can be credited with such an emotion as gratitude, he must have felt it for Moncada’s stout infantrymen, as, had it not been for them, it would have been his head and not that of Venalcadi which would have decorated the pole. The Spaniards departed to their own country—that is to say, such of them as desired to do so; but one Hamet, a Biscayan, declared that life was so intolerable for a common man such as he in his own country that he desired to throw in his lot with Barbarossa. Thirty-nine others followed his example, abjuring the Christian faith and becoming renegadoes.

Those of the garrison left alive were glad enough to return once more to their allegiance to their former master. The episode of the mutiny of Venalcadi and Hassan was a lesson not only to them: the fame of it spread far and wide throughout the Mediterranean. Who now could be found to combat Barbarossa? and all along the coasts of the tideless sea echo shudderingly answered—Who?

With the new accession to his strength Kheyred-Din had no difficulty in making himself master of Tunis, and he sent Cachidiablo with seventeen galleys to harry once more the coast of Spain.

CHAPTER VI
THE TAKING OF THE PEÑON D’ALGER; ANDREA DORIA

Although Kheyr-ed-Din had made himself master of Algiers, there still remained the fortress of Pedro Navarro in the hands of the Spaniards. This strong place of arms had now been in their practically undisputed occupation for twenty years; from out of its loopholed walls and castellated battlements the undaunted garrison had looked forth while the tide of war both by land and sea had swept by. They had been unmolested so far, but now their day was to come.

In command of the Peñon d’Alger, as it was called by the Spaniards, was a valiant and veteran cavalier, by name Martin de Vargas. For twenty years, as we have said, the gold-and-crimson banner of Spain had floated from its crenulated bastions; since the days of Pedro Navarro it had held its own against all comers. It must have been with a sinking heart that Martin de Vargas and his brave garrison beheld the town fall once again into the hands of Kheyr-ed-Din; they knew, as by this time did all the Mediterranean and the dwellers on the coasts thereof, the implacable enmity of the corsair to the Christians, and how short a shrift would be theirs should they fall into his hands.

On his side Kheyr-ed-Din looked with longing eyes on this remnant of the power of Spain in Africa. Could he but dislodge Martin de Vargas, he had the whole of Northern Africa practically at his disposal; Algiers would then be really his, to fortify for all time against the inroads of his foes. He was master by land and sea, the time was propitious; the corsair decided that the hour had come. He had seen the repulse of his brother Uruj, none knew better than did he the temper of the men by whom the Peñon was held, or the valiance and the unswerving fidelity of that caballero of Spain, Martin de Vargas. He tried to induce that officer to surrender to him, offering every inducement to the Spanish commander to come to terms. He was met with a haughty refusal, couched in the most contemptuous language. He tried the most blood-curdling threats, which were no empty menaces, as his adversary well knew: these were received in silence.

One more embassy he tried, and to this he received the following answer:

“I spring from the race of the De Vargas, but my house has never made it a practice to boast of the glory of their long descent: they professed merely to imitate the heroism of their ancestors. Spurred forward by this worthy desire, I await with calmness all your efforts, and will prove to you, with arms in my hands, that I am faithful to my God, my country, and my king.”

ANDREA DORIA, PRINCE OF ONEGLEA, ADMIRAL TO CHARLES V.

Barbarossa summoned to his palace his kinsman and trusted adherent Celebi Rabadan, and they mutually decided that there was nothing they could do save take up arms against this most insolent and uncompromising warrior. In the meanwhile they would try what craft would do; and accordingly two young Moors were introduced into the Peñon, under the pretext that they had seen the error of their ways and were anxious to embrace the Christian religion. Martin de Vargas, like all Spanish caballeros, was an ardent proselytiser, and he ordered the two young men to be taken into his own house and instructed by the chaplain of the garrison. The next day was Easter Day, and the two young Moors, while the entire garrison were at Mass, signalled to their co-religionists a prearranged sign indicating that now was the time to attack. Unfortunately for them, a woman in the employment of De Vargas saw them, and they were immediately hanged from the battlements in full view of Barbarossa. That potentate was filled with fury at what he considered an insult to the Mohammedan religion, and again consulted with Celebi as to the feasibility of another assault. It was true, he said, that his messengers had been hanged, but they had made the prearranged signal. Still, the walls were hardly sufficiently breached, he thought, and his own men were singularly disheartened by the ill success of their previous efforts. Did Celebi Rabadan think another attempt desirable?

That person was in a quandary, because he could not gather what it was that Barbarossa wished him to say. He knew that if he recommended an assault, and that it proved once again unsuccessful, that the full fury of the tyrant would fall upon his head; at the same time he was almost equally afraid to broach the idea which had been prevalent in Algiers for some time that Martin de Vargas must assuredly be in league with Shaitan, or he could never have held out in the way that he had done. In consequence he temporised and hesitated, while Barbarossa pulled at his famous red beard and regarded him with scowling brows.

The situation was saved for Celebi Rabadan by an accident. There swam off to the ship a traitor from the Spanish garrison, and this man informed them that his whilom comrades were positively at their last gasp, ammunition all but exhausted, and the food-supply barely sufficient to last another two days.

“To such an end come those who deny the Prophet of God,” exclaimed Barbarossa, and gave orders that this news be communicated to all his men, who were to prepare for the final assault on the morrow. He further offered a reward for the capture of Martin de Vargas alive.

On May 16th, 1530, the corsairs once again advanced to the assault. By this time the walls had been battered until a practicable breach had been formed, and over this swarmed thirteen hundred of the starkest fighters of the Mediterranean, In the breach, bareheaded, his armour hacked and dinted, stood the undaunted chieftain of the Spaniards: over his head floated that proud banner which had never cast its shadow on a worthier knight of Spain. The garrison, worn to a shadow by their hardships and their hunger, most of them wounded, and all of them sore spent, were in no case to resist this, the most formidable attack to which they had been subjected. It was all over in a very short time, and a dreadful massacre ensued.

Martin de Vargas, though sorely wounded, was taken alive and conducted to the presence of Barbarossa. Wounded, shaken, bruised, his fortress in the hands of his enemy, the dying shrieks of his murdered garrison still ringing in his ears, the amazing spirit of the man was still utterly unsubdued. “It is to the treason of a ruffian that you owe your triumph,” he said to his captor, “and not to your valour: had I received the smallest relief I could still have repulsed and kept you at bay. You have my maimed and mutilated body in your possession, and I hope that you are satisfied. But my body is accustomed to pain, and I therefore defy you and your dastardly cruelty.”

To do Barbarossa justice he admired the undaunted spirit of his prisoner, and he replied:

“Fear nothing, De Vargas, I will do all in my power to ease your hurts if you will do that which I ask of you.”

De Vargas replied:

“As an earnest of your faith, I demand the punishment of the traitor through whose information you were enabled to take the citadel.”

Barbarossa ordered the soldier to be brought before them, and, having nearly flogged him to death, had him beheaded. He then presented the head to De Vargas, saying:

“You observe my complaisance. I now ask you to embrace the Mohammedan faith; then I will overwhelm you with benefits and honours, and make you the Captain-General of my guards.”

De Vargas looked at him in indignation and replied:

“Dost thou believe that I, who but now demanded the just punishment of a man who had forsworn himself, could stoop to such an act of baseness as this? Keep your ill-gotten riches; confer your dignities on others; insult not thus a caballero of Spain.”

There was a breathless pause. None had ever used such language to Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa and lived to tell the tale. Nor was it to be so in this case.

“You and yours have caused me too much trouble,” he answered indifferently. He made a sign to the executioner who had beheaded the soldier, and the next moment the head of De Vargas was swept from his body.

The gallant Spaniard, it is to be hoped, came by his end in the way just narrated; but the chroniclers disagree among themselves, and “El Señor Don Diego de Haedo, Arcobispo de Palermo y Capitan General del Reyno de Sicilia por El Rey Felipe nuestro señor,” states that Barbarossa kept De Vargas in confinement for three months and then had him beaten to death. One can only sincerely hope that the first account is the true one; but Haedo was nearer to the time of the occurrence, and, as he wrote in the reign of Philip II., is more likely to have known the facts. But however this may have been, there was an end for all time of Spanish domination on the north coast of Africa, and from this we may date the permanent establishment of those piratical States in that part of the world.

The star of Kheyr-ed-Din was once more in the ascendant. Not only had he crushed out the incipient mutiny of Venalcadi and taken his life, but he had consolidated his power by the taking of the Peñon d’Alger. He celebrated this occasion in the most practical manner possible: a stop was put to the indiscriminate massacre of the garrison, and five hundred of the Spaniards were captured alive; it was their dreary fate to pull down entirely the tower of Pedro Navarro, which they had defended so gallantly and to utilise the material in making a causeway from the Peñon to the shore. Barbarossa was determined that on no future occasion should his enemies have the chance of dominating his town of Algiers. He was now a sovereign in fact and in deed, regarding even so mighty a monarch as Charles V. with comparative equanimity. Terrible was the wrath of the latter when the news of the fall of the Peñon, the massacre of the garrison, and the death of his trusty servant De Vargas, was brought to him. The Sea-wolves seemed to exist but to exasperate him, and this latest news came just at one of the most prosperous epochs of his career.

The titles of “Carlos Quinto,” as recorded by Sandoval, read like the roll of some mighty drum. Nor were these titles mere vain and empty boastings, as was so often the case at that time among the minor rulers of the earth. On February 22nd, 1580, just before the fall of the Peñon, he had placed on his own head the iron crown of Lombardy; his viceroys ruled in Naples and Sicily, his dukes and feudatories in Florence and Ferrara, in Mantua and in Milan; there was no more Italy. All these recent acquisitions had been rendered possible by the defection of Andrea Doria, the Genoese seaman, from Francis I. of France to the side of the Emperor. From henceforward it was against this modern Cæsar that Barbarossa had to contend; the monarch under whose banner swarmed the terrible Schwartz-Reiters of Germany, for whose honour marched the incomparable infantry of Spain, for whom the fleets of the gallant Genoese sailed in battle-array under the orders of the greatest admiral of the day, Andrea Doria. All these disciplined legions of Christendom were arrayed against the corsair king; banded together for the destruction of that daring pirate whose flag floated in insolent triumph above the white walls of Algiers.

As from this time onwards we shall hear much concerning Andrea Doria, it is fitting that some account should here be given of this great patriot, great soldier, and still greater seaman. Andrea Doria, of the family of the Princes of Oneglia, of Genoa, was born at Oneglia on November 30th, 1468, and was the son of Andrea Coeva and Marie Caracosa, both of the family of Doria. At the death of his mother the young Andrea, then nineteen years of age, was sent to Rome, where his kinsman Dominique Doria, of the elder branch of the family, was captain of the Papal Guard of Pope Innocent VIII. Here he rose rapidly: owing to his extraordinary address in all military exercises, he was marked out for preferment, and would probably have succeeded his kinsman as grand officer, had it not been for the death of Innocent VIII. The successor to Innocent, Alexander VI., was not favourable to the claims of the Dorias; so young Andrea, acting on the advice of Dominique, repaired to the court of Duke Urbino, then regarded as the best school for young nobles desirous of following a military career. After some time spent at the court of Urbino, Dominique counselled that Andrea should enter some other service, as there was no glory to be obtained under a prince who was never at war. Accordingly Andrea passed into the service of the King of Aragon, who, having invaded Naples, was giving plenty of employment to all would-be warriors.

In the record of his early days we find that in the year 1495 he made a journey to Jerusalem to visit the holy places, and that he then returned to Italy, where Ferdinand of Aragon was attempting to recover the kingdom of Naples. “The Great Captain,” Gonsalvo de Cordoba, was warring against Doria’s kinsman, Juan Roverejo; this commander had rendered a great service to the Dorias by rescuing David Doria from imprisonment at Ancona, and Andrea decided to throw in his lot with him. He accordingly armed twenty-five cavaliers at his own expense, and joined Roverejo, who put him in charge of the fortress of Rocca Guillelma. In this place Andrea was besieged by Gonsalvo de Cordoba, the first warrior of the age; here he displayed such extraordinary ability in defence that, on the occasion of a truce, Gonsalvo urged upon Andrea to join the Spaniards. Andrea made answer that honour bound him to Roverejo, but, could he be released from his arrangement with him, he might then consider the proposition of “The Great Captain.” Roverejo refused, but, as Charles VIII. immediately afterwards evacuated Italy, Andrea was free to follow his own inclinations, and took service with Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.

From this time onward until 1503 Andrea was constantly employed in war, and made for himself such a reputation that in this year the Republic of Genoa requested him to take command of their navy. This offer he refused, as he said that he knew nothing about the sea. They pressed him, saying that to a man of his genius nothing was impossible, and in the end he gave a somewhat reluctant consent. He soon proved his competence in his new sphere of activity, as his first act was to capture the Fort of the Lantern, in the neighbourhood of Genoa, which was then held by the French for Louis XII. The Republic confirmed his appointment as General of the Galleys with many compliments, and he put to sea and captured three of the war-galleys of the corsairs, also two Turkish ships laden with valuable merchandise. He fitted out the galleys for his own service, sold the merchantmen, and made an immense sum of money.

His next act was to defeat the corsair, Cadolin, who had eight galleys to Doria’s six; these he added to his own fleet, which now consisted of fourteen vessels, he having begun with three. As Cadolin was one of the most famous corsairs of the day, this capture made an immense sensation, and all men, Moslems as well as Christians, were asking one another, “Who was this Doria?”

They had their answer, as time passed, in the career of this astonishing warrior, who in his time played so many parts, who served under so many flags, and yet who remained consistently a patriot all the time. As this is not a history of Doria, we have no space to trace out his life step by step as it was lived; suffice it to say that, disapproving of the government of his native Republic under the family of the Adorno, Andrea offered his sword and his fleet to the King of France, Francis I. His offer was received with joy, and he was made Captain-General of the Galleys of France. In his new capacity he sailed for the coast of Provence, which was being devastated by the fleet of Charles V. He sank several of the Spanish vessels, captured others, and secured sufficient booty to pay his soldiers and sailors—a fact most welcome to Francis, who was in desperate straits for money.

Eventually, however, a dispute arose between Francis and Doria, which was to have disastrous effects for the King. At this time Charles V. was suzerain of Genoa, which was held for him by the Adorno. Philippin Doria, nephew of the admiral, met at sea with Hugo de Moncada outside the Gulf of Salerno; a battle ensued, in which Philippin was victorious and Moncada was slain. Amongst others who were captured was the Marquis de Guasto and Camille Colonna; these high officers, together with three of the captured galleys, were sent by Philippin to his uncle at Genoa.

In the meantime some malcontents reached the Court of France and complained to the King that Andrea Doria had not captured Sicily, which they averred he could easily have done. These men were backed up by a certain number of the courtiers, who were bitterly jealous of the fame of Doria and the esteem in which he had been held by Francis. The monarch, easily swayed by any determined and persistent attack, decided to levy a fine on the inhabitants of Genoa as a punishment for the supineness of their countryman, who was his Captain-General of the Galleys; his argument being that they must pay him for the plunder Doria had missed by not taking Sicily when he should have done so.

This was worse than a crime—it was blunder of the very first magnitude, and such a blunder as could only have been made by a very stupid as well as a very arrogant man. Doria by this time was a warrior of European celebrity, and one to whom even kings used the language of persuasion; to attempt to browbeat him was to court disaster.

Francis sent the Vicomte de Tours to Genoa to levy the fine, but the Vicomte did not prosper on his mission. Outside of Genoa he was met by the outraged admiral on horseback at the head of some fifty Genoese nobles and a numerous company of foot-soldiers. De Tours reported that the name and authority of the King of France was held in derision by the fierce old admiral, who so alarmed the envoy himself that he thought it prudent to retire to Florence, from whence he wrote a long letter to his master complaining of his reception by Doria.

This attempt to levy a fine on Genoa was not, however, the only deadly blow which the King of France was aiming at her. The children of Francis were at this time in Madrid, as hostages for the good behaviour of their father, and that monarch was in treaty secretly with Charles to restore Italy to the status quo ante bellum, which would have had the effect of handing over Genoa to Antony Adorno. He also began the fortification of Savona, in order that from there he might be in a position to strike at the Genoese—from a military point of view, if necessary—but in any event to cripple the trade of that city. Andrea Doria, as soon as he became aware of this latter action on the part of Francis, was thoroughly roused, and wrote him the letter quoted below, which illustrates the fact that he was quite aware of his own great importance in Europe. It was not a time in which men held such language as did Doria on this occasion unless they were very sure of themselves and their followers.

“GREAT PRINCE,

“It is an ill use of power to reverse order in human affairs. Genoa has always been the capital of Liguria, and posterity will see with astonishment that your Majesty has deprived it of this advantage with no plausible pretext. The Genoese are well aware how inimical to their interests are your projects with regard to Savona. They beg of you that these may be abandoned, and that you will not sacrifice the general good to the views of a few courtiers. I take the liberty to add my prayers to theirs, and to ask of you this grace as the price of the services I have rendered to France. Should your Majesty have been put to expense, I shall join to my request the sum of forty thousand gold crowns.

“With the humble duty of Andrea Doria,

Captain-General of the Galleys of France.”

Theodore Trivulce, who held Savona for the King of France, was roundly told by Doria that “the people of Genoa would never suffer the taking of Savona by the King of France, as it had from time immemorial belonged to them,” and added, “for myself I will sacrifice the friendship of the King in the interests of my fatherland.”

The last straw came, however, when the Marshal de Lautrec demanded from Andrea the prisoners taken by Philippin Doria at Salerno. To this Doria returned a curt negative, whereupon Francis sent one Barbezieux to supersede Doria and to seize upon the person of the veteran admiral. But that seaman, now sixty years of age, was not to be taken by any king or soldier. He moved his twelve galleys from Genoa to Lerici, on the east coast of the Gulf of Spezzia, and when Barbezieux arrived he sarcastically told him to take the galleys. Barbezieux had no better fortune than his predecessor, the Vicomte de Tours, and retired discomfited and boiling over with rage to report matters to the King.

It has been said that among the prisoners of Philippin Doria was the Marquis de Guasto. This nobleman had been an interested spectator of the quarrel, and now approached Doria suggesting that he should throw in his lot with Charles. The admiral, who all through had been acting in the interests of his native country, seeing its ruin approaching from the ambitions of Francis, consented, and wrote to his nephew Philippin telling him of his decision, and his reasons for that which he proposed to do. Philippin therefore rejoined his uncle at Lerici with his eight galleys. The negotiations were short, sharp, and decisive, and were conducted through the medium of De Guasto. Charles offered the admiral sixty thousand ducats a year; this was accepted. The only other stipulation made by the Emperor was natural enough, which was that all the Spanish galley-slaves in the fleet of Andrea should be released and their places taken by men of other nationalities. This was of course conceded, and the transaction was complete. Henceforward the most formidable force at sea on the Christian side was at the disposal of the Spanish King.

This transference took place in the year 1528, and it was in the same year that the citizens of Genoa, in recognition of the unexampled services of the admiral to the State, elected him perpetual Doge.

This honour Doria declined, declaring that it was more glorious to have deserved than to possess the honour, and that he considered he could be of more use to his fellow citizens by gaining for them the protection of great princes than by remaining as chief judge in his own country.

The Senate of Genoa, astonished by his noble modesty, hailed him as the father and liberator of his country, ordered that a statue of him should be erected in the public square, that in the same place a palace should be built for him at the public expense, and that it should be called Plaza Doria; further, that he and his posterity should be for ever exempted from taxation, and that a device should be engraved on a plate of copper and attached to the walls of the palace, where it could be seen of all men, announcing to posterity the services that this great man had rendered to his fellow citizens, to be for ever a memorial of their gratitude.

The chronicler of these events draws a parallel between Doria and Themistocles, who, when discontented with the Athenians, passed into Persia and offered his services to Xerxes, to the great joy of that monarch, who cried aloud, “I have Themistocles, I have Themistocles.”

CHAPTER VII
THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE CORSAIR KING

If Charles V. made no such outward manifestation of his joy as did the Persian monarch, he possibly was no less pleased than Xerxes; this he showed by his acts, and the value that he attached to the services of Doria was instanced in the directions which he gave. He ordered the Governors of all his possessions in Italy to do nothing without first consulting the admiral; to lend him prompt aid, whether he demanded it in his own name or in that of the Republic of Genoa. He made him Admiralissimo of his navy, with power to act as he liked without even consulting him, as his Emperor. It will be seen that Charles had in him sufficient greatness to trust whole-heartedly when he trusted at all; the faith which he reposed in the Genoese seaman was amply justified by events, and no action of his during the whole of his singularly dramatic reign was ever to result so entirely to his profit. When in after-life Charles had received from the Pope the Imperial Crown, and when, on his return, he put into Aigues-Mortes in Doria’s galley, he there met with Francis, who, in a burst to confidence, advised the Cæsar never to part with his admiral.

On that stage, which was the blue waters of the tideless sea, we shall, from this time forward, watch the fortunes of those two great sea-captains, Andrea Doria and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. With them the ebb and flow of conquest and defeat alternated. Great as was the one, it cannot be said that he was greater than the other; but when the supreme arbitrament was within the grasp of both, as it was at the naval battle of Prevesa, neither the Christian admiral nor the Moslem corsair would reach out his hand and grasp the nettle of his fate. Hesitation at this moment, when, in the fulness of time, the rivals stood face to face with arms in their hands, was the last thing that would have been expected of such dauntless warriors, such born leaders of men! and the battle of Prevesa presents a psychological problem of the most baffling and perplexing description. We are, however, anticipating events which will fall into their proper sequence as we proceed.

Kheyr-ed-Din, now firmly established in Algiers, devoted his energies to the undoing of his Christian foes by the systematic plunder of their merchant-vessels. At this period he, personally, seems to have remained ashore, and sent his young and aspiring captains to sea to increase his wealth by plunder, his consequence by the hordes of slaves which they swept into the awful bagnios of Algiers; and Sandoval, that quaint and delightful historian, is moved to indignation and complains with much acrimony of “las malas obras que este corsario hizo a la Christiandad” (the evil deeds done to Christianity by this corsair). These were on so considerable a scale at this time that he had to devote to them far more space than he considered consonant with the dignity of history.

But if all were going on well on the coast of Africa for the Crescent, such was far from being the case in the northern waters of the Mediterranean; for Andrea Doria, serving His Most Catholic Majesty at sea, had defeated the Turks at Patras and again in the Dardanelles, which unpleasant fact caused no little annoyance to Soliman the Magnificent. On land the Sultan was sweeping all before him; at sea this pestilent Genoese was dragging into servitude all the best mariners who sailed beneath the banner of the Prophet. There was wrath and there was fear at Constantinople, and the captains of the galleys which sailed from the Golden Horn felt that their heads and their bodies might at any moment part company—the Grand Turk was in an ill humour, which might at any moment call for the appeasement of sacrifice; so it was that men trembled.

It was at this time, in 1533, that Soliman bethought himself of Kheyr-ed-Din. There was no better seaman, there was no fiercer fighter, there was no man whose name was so renowned throughout the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, than was that of the corsair king who was vassal to the Sublime Porte. Soliman was confronted with a new, and, to him, an almost mysterious thing, for the onward conquering step of the Moslem hosts was being checked by that sea-power so little understanded of the Turk, and the imperious will of the Sultan seemed powerless to prevent the disasters conjured from the deep.

SOLIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT.