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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 to2 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.