The Story of the Barbary Corsairs

PART I.. _the Corsair Admirals._

THE CORSAIR ADMIRALS.

III.

UR[=U]J BARBAROSSA.

1504-1515.

The island of Lesbos has given many gifts to the world--Lesbian wine and Lesbian verse, the seven-stringed lyre, and the poems of Sappho; but of all its products the latest was assuredly the most questionable, for the last great Lesbians were the brothers Barbarossa.

When Sultan Mohammed II. conquered the island in 1462, he left there a certain Sip[=a]hi soldier, named Ya'k[=u]b--so say the Turkish annalists, but the Spanish writers claim him as a native Christian--who became the father of Ur[=u]j Barbarossa and his brother Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n. Various stories are told of their early career, and the causes which led to their taking to the sea; but as Lesbos had long been famous for its buccaneers, whether indigenous or importations from Catalonia and Aragon, there was nothing unusual in the brothers adopting a profession which was alike congenial to bold hearts and sanctioned by time-honoured precedent. Ur[=u]j, the elder, soon became the reïs, or captain, of a galleot, and finding his operations hampered in the Archipelago by the predominance of the Sultan's fleet, he determined to seek a wider and less interrupted field for his depredations. Rumours had reached the Levant of the successes of the Moorish pirates; prodigious tales were abroad as to great argosies, laden with the treasures of the New World, passing and repassing the narrow seas between Europe and Africa, and seeming to invite capture; and it was not long (1504) before Captain Ur[=u]j found himself cruising with two galleots off the Barbary coast, and spying out the land in search of a good harbour and a safe refuge from pursuit.

(Sphère des deux Mondes, 1555.)]

The port of Tunis offered all that a Corsair could wish. The Goletta in those days was but slightly fortified, and the principal building, besides the castle, was the custom-house, where the wealth of many nations was taxed by the Sultan of the House of Hafs. The very sight of such an institution was stimulating to a pirate. Ur[=u]j paid his court to the King of Tunis, and speedily came to an understanding with him on the subject of royalties on stolen goods. The ports of Tunis were made free to the Corsair, and the king would protect him from pursuit, for the consideration of a fixed share--a fifth--of the booty. The policy of the enlightened rulers of Tunis evidently no longer suited their latest representative.

The base of operations thus secured, Ur[=u]j did not keep his new ally long waiting for a proof of his prowess. One day he lay off the island of Elba, when two galleys-royal, belonging to his Holiness Pope Julius II., richly laden with goods from Genoa, and bound for Cività Vecchia, hove in sight. They were rowing in an easy, leisurely manner, little dreaming of Turkish Corsairs, for none such had ever been seen in those waters, nor anything bigger than a Moorish brigantine, of which the Papal marines were prepared to give a good account. So the two galleys paddled on, some ten leagues asunder, and Ur[=u]j Reïs marked his prey down. It was no light adventure for a galleot of eighteen banks of oars to board a royal galley of perhaps twice her size, and with no one could tell how many armed men inside her. The Turkish crew remonstrated at such foolhardiness, and begged their captain to look for a foe of their own size: but for reply Ur[=u]j only cast most of the oars overboard, and thus made escape impossible. Then he lay to and awaited the foremost galley She came on, proudly, unconscious of danger. Suddenly her look-out spied Turkish turbans--a strange sight on the Italian coast--and in a panic of confusion her company beat to arms. The vessels were now alongside, and a smart volley of shot and bolts completed the consternation of the Christians. Ur[=u]j and his men were quickly on the poop, and his Holiness's servants were soon safe under hatches.

Never before had a galley-royal struck her colours to a mere galleot. But worse was to follow. Ur[=u]j declared he must and would have her consort. In vain his officers showed him how temerarious was the venture, and how much more prudent it would be to make off with one rich prize than to court capture by overgreediness. The Corsair's will was of iron, and his crew, inflated with triumph, caught his audacious spirit. They clothed themselves in the dresses of the Christian prisoners, and manned the subdued galley as though they were her own seamen. On came the consort, utterly ignorant of what had happened, till a shower of arrows and small shot aroused her, just in time to be carried by assault, before her men had collected their senses.

Ur[=u]j brought his prizes into the Goletta. Never was such a sight seen there before. "The wonder and astonishment," says Haedo, "that this noble exploit caused in Tunis, and even in Christendom, is not to be expressed, nor how celebrated the name of Ur[=u]j Reïs was become from that very moment; he being held and accounted by all the world as a most valiant and enterprizing commander. And by reason his beard was extremely red, or carroty, from thenceforwards he was generally called Barba-rossa, which in Italian signifies Red-Beard."

(Jurien de la Gravière.)]

The capture of the Papal galleys gave Ur[=u]j what he wanted--rowers. He kept his Turks for fighting, and made the Christian prisoners work the oars; such was the custom of every Corsair down to the present century, and the Christian navies were similarly propelled by Mohammedan slaves. The practice must have lent a strange excitement to the battle; for then, assuredly, a man's foes were of his own household. A Venetian admiral knew well that his two or three hundred galley slaves were panting to break their irons and join the enemy; and the Turkish Corsair had also his unwilling subjects, who would take the first chance to mutiny in favour of the Christian adversary. Thus it often happened that a victory was secured by the strong arms of the enemy's chained partizans, who would have given half their lives to promote a defeat. But the sharp lash of the boatswain, who walked the bridge between the banks of rowers, was a present and acute argument which few backs could withstand.

Ur[=u]j had made his first coup, and he did not hesitate to follow it up. Next year he captured a Spanish ship with five hundred soldiers on board, who were all so sea-sick, or spent with pumping out the leaky vessel, that they fell an easy prey to his galleots. Before five years were out, what with cruising, and building with the timber of his many prizes, he had eight good vessels at his back, with two of his brothers to help. The port of Tunis now hardly sufficed his wants, so he established himself temporarily on the fertile island of Jerba, and from its ample anchorage his ships issued forth to harry the coasts of Italy.

To be king of Jerba was all too small a title for his ambition. He aimed at sovereignty on a large scale, and, Corsair as he was by nature, he wished for settled power almost as much as he delighted in adventure. In 1512 the opportunity he sought arrived. Three years before, the Mohammedan King of Buj[=e]ya had been driven out of his city by the Spaniards, and the exiled potentate appealed to the Corsair to come and restore him, coupling the petition with promises of the free use of Buj[=e]ya port, whence the command of the Spanish sea was easily to be held. Ur[=u]j was pleased with the prospect, and as he had now twelve galleots with cannon, and one thousand Turkish men-at-arms, to say nothing of renegades and Moors, he felt strong enough for the attempt. The renown of his exploits had spread far and wide, and there was no lack of a following from all parts of the Levant when it was known that Ur[=u]j Reïs was on the war-path. His extraordinary energy and impetuosity called forth a corresponding zeal in his men, and, like other dashing commanders, he was very popular.

(From a Map in the British Museum.)]

Well supported, and provided with such a siege-train as the times permitted, he landed before Buj[=e]ya in August, 1512, and found the dethroned king expecting him at the head of three thousand mountain Berbers. The Spanish garrison was collected in the strong bastion, which the Count Don Pedro Navarro had fortified when he took the city, and for eight days the fortress withstood the battering of the Corsair's ordnance. Just when a breach began to be opened, Ur[=u]j was disabled; a shot took his left arm away above the elbow. In the absence of their leader's heroic example, the Turks felt little confidence in their superiority to Spanish steel; they preferred carrying their wounded captain to the surgeons at Tunis. Buj[=e]ya for the moment escaped, but the Corsairs enjoyed some little consolation in the capture of a rich Genoese galleot which they met on its voyage to the Lomellini's mart at Tabarka. With this spoil Ur[=u]j returned to recover from his wound, while his brother, Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, kept guard over the castle of the Goletta, and began to bring the galleots and prizes through the canal into the Lake of Tunis, where they would be safe from pursuit.

Continue reading The Story of the Barbary Corsairs free in the Wunder reader →