Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: the Grand Period of the Moslem Corsairs

CHAPTER XXII. Lepanto 362

LEPANTO 362

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED 383

LIST OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN, SULTANS OF TURKEY, POPES OF ROME, AND GRAND MASTERS OF MALTA FROM 1492 TO 1580 385

DISTANCES IN SEA MILES ON THE COAST OF NORTHERN AFRICA 387

INDEX 389

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I wish to record my cordial recognition of the kindness shown to me at Malta by Mr. Salvino Sant Manduca. The picture of the carrack opposite to page 300 was a gift from him. The galley of the Knights of Malta is a reproduction of a picture hanging in his house. I should also like to thank him for the time and trouble which he took on my behalf during my stay at Malta, and the keen interest he displayed in my subject.

R. HAMILTON CURREY.

KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA—CORSAIR, ADMIRAL, AND KING Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

URUJ AND KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA 44

ANDREA DORIA, PRINCE OF ONEOLIA, ADMIRAL TO CHARLES V. 92

SOLIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT 110

THE EMPEROR CHARLES V 150

MULEY HASSAN KING OF TUNIS 162

GALEASSE UNDER SAIL 194

GALLEY UNDER OARS 222

BRIGANTINE CHASING FELUCCA 236

GOZON DE DIEU-DONNÉ SLAYING THE GREAT SERPENT OF RHODES 294

CARRACK IN WHICH THE KNIGHTS ARRIVED AT MALTA, 1530 300

JEAN PARISOT DE LA VALETTE, GRAND MASTER OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA, AT THE SIEGE OF THAT ISLAND BY THE TURKS IN 1565 324

DEATH OF DRAGUT AT THE SIEGE OF MALTA 340

A GALLEY OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA 354

DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA 362

SEBASTIAN VENIERO 364

SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

INTRODUCTORY

In all the ages of which we have any record there have been men who gained a living by that practice of robbery on the high seas which we know by the name of Piracy. Perhaps the pirates best known to the English-speaking world are the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who flourished exceedingly in the seventeenth century, and of whom many chronicles exist: principally owing to the labours of that John Esquemelin, a pirate of a literary turn of mind, who added the crime of authorship to the ill deeds of a sea-rover. The Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean in the preceding century did not raise up a chronicler from among themselves: for not much tincture of learning seems to have distinguished these desperate fighters and accomplished seamen, descendants of those Spanish Moslems who had, during the Middle Ages, lived in a land in which learning and culture had been held in the highest estimation. Driven from their homes, their civilisation crushed, their religion banned in that portion of Southern Spain in which they had dwelt for over seven centuries, cast upon the shores of Northern Africa, these men took to the sea and became the scourge of the Mediterranean. That which they did, the deeds which they accomplished, the terror which they inspired, the ruin and havoc which they wrought, have been set forth in the pages of this book.

It was the age of the galley, the oar-propelled vessel which moved independently of the wind in the fine-weather months of the great inland sea. Therefore to the dwellers on the coast the Sea-wolves were a perpetual menace; as, when booty was unobtainable at sea, they raided the towns and villages of their Christian foes. During all the period here dealt with no man’s life, no woman’s honour, was safe from these pirates within the area of their nefarious activities. They held the Mediterranean in fee, they levied toll on all who came within reach of their galleys and their scimitars. Places unknown to the geography of the sixteenth century became notorious in their day, and Christian wives and mothers learned to tremble at the very names of Algiers and Tunis. From these places the rovers issued to capture, to destroy, and to enslave: in Oran and Tlemcen, in Tenes, Shershell, Bougie, Jigelli, Bizerta, Sfax, Susa, Monastir, Jerbah, and Tripoli they lurked ready for the raid and the foray. At one time all Northern Africa would thrill to the triumph of the Moslem arms, at another there would go up the wail of the utterly defeated; but in spite of alternations of fortune the Sea-wolves abode in the localities of their choice, and ended in establishing those pirate States which troubled the peace of the Mediterranean practically until the introduction of steam.

The whole record of the sixteenth century is one of blood and fire, of torture and massacre, of “punic faith” and shameless treason; the deeds of the sea-rovers, appalling as they were, frequently found a counterpart in the battles, the sieges, and the sacking of towns which took place perpetually on the continent of Europe.

There was so much history made at this period, the stage of world politics was occupied by so many great, striking, and dazzling personalities, that the Sea-wolves and all they accomplished were to a great extent overshadowed by happenings which the chroniclers of the time considered to be of greater importance. In this no doubt they were right in the main; but, in spite of this opinion which they held, we find that time and again the main stream of events is ruffled by the prows of the pirate galleys. Such men as the Barbarossas, as Dragut, and Ali Basha could only have been suppressed and exterminated had the whole might of Christendom been turned against them, for they held in their hands two weapons, the keenest and most powerful with which to attain the objects which they had in view.

The first and more powerful of these was the appeal in a rough and warlike age to the cupidity of mankind. “Those who are content to follow us,” they said in effect, “are certain to enrich themselves if they are men stout of heart and strong of hand. All around us lie rich and prosperous lands; we have but to organise ourselves, and to take anything that we wish for; we can, if we like, gather a rich harvest at comparatively small trouble.” Such counsels as these did not fall on deaf ears. Driven from the land of plenty—from glorious Andalusia with its fruitful soil, its magnificent cities, its vines and olives, its fruit and grain, its noble rivers and wide-spreading vegas—the Spanish Moslem of the day of the Sea-wolves was an outcast and a beggar, ripe for adventure and burning for revenge on those by whom he had been expropriated.

Great historians like William Hickling Prescott tell us that, in the course of the seven centuries of the Moslem domination in Spain, the Moors had become soft and effeminate, that “the canker of peace” had sapped, if it had not destroyed, the virile qualities of the race, that luxury and learning had dried up at their source those primitive virtues of courage and hardihood which had been the leading characteristics of those stark fighters who had borne the banner of the Prophet from Mecca even to Cadiz. Tom by faction, by strife among themselves, they had succumbed to the arms of the Northern chivalry; by its warriors they had been driven out, never to return.

When this was accomplished, when the curtain fell on the final scene of the tragedy, and the Moors, after the fall of Granada, were driven across the sea into Africa, there came to pass a most remarkable change in those who had been expropriated. The learning, the culture, the civilisation, by which they had been so long distinguished, seemed to drop away from them, cast away like a worn-out garment for which men have no further use. In place of all these things there came a complete and desperate valour, a bitter and headstrong fanaticism.

It was one of the attributes of the Moslem civilisation in Spain, and one of the most enlightened thereof, that religious toleration flourished in its midst. Jew and Christian were allowed to worship at the altars of their fathers, no man hindering or saying them nay; one rule, and one alone, had to be preserved: none must blaspheme against Mahomet, the Prophet of God, as he was considered to be by the Moslems. The penalty for infraction of this rule was death; otherwise, complete liberty of conscience was accorded.

We have spoken of the two weapons held by the leaders of the Sea-wolves. The first, as we have, said, was cupidity; the second was fanaticism, the deadly religious hatred engendered, not only by the wholesale expropriation of the Moslem population, but also by the persecution to which the Moriscoes—as those Moslems were known who remained in Spain—were subjected by their Christian masters. It requires little imagination to see how these two weapons of avarice and intolerance could be made to serve the purpose of those dominant spirits who rose to the summit of the piratical hierarchy. Not only did they dazzle the imaginations of those who followed in their train by promises of wealth uncounted, but they added to this the specious argument that, in slaying and robbing the Christian wheresoever he was to be found, the faithful Moslem was performing the service of God and the act most grateful to his holy Prophet.

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