The Story of the Barbary Corsairs
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Title: The Story of the Barbary Corsairs
Author: Stanley Lane-Poole
J. D. Jerrold Kelley
Release date: July 28, 2007 [eBook #22169]
Language: English
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The Story of the Nations
THE STORY OF THE
BARBARY CORSAIRS
BY
STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF LORD STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE," "TURKEY,"
"THE MOORS IN SPAIN," ETC., ETC.
WITH THE COLLABORATION OF
LIEUT. J. D. JERROLD KELLEY, U.S. NAVY
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
1890
COPYRIGHT
BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1890
_Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_
BY T. FISHER UNWIN
Press of
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
New York
THE STORY OF THE NATIONS
12MO, ILLUSTRATED. PER VOL., $1.50
THE EARLIER VOLUMES ARE
THE STORY OF GREECE. By Prof. Jas. A. Harrison
THE STORY OF ROME. By Arthur Gilman
THE STORY OF THE JEWS. By Prof. Jas. K. Hosmer
THE STORY OF CHALDEA. By Z. A. Ragozin
THE STORY OF GERMANY. By S. Baring-Gould
THE STORY OF NORWAY. By Prof. H. H. Boyesen
THE STORY OF SPAIN. By E. E. and Susan Hale
THE STORY OF HUNGARY. By Prof. A. Vambery
THE STORY OF CARTHAGE. By Prof. Alfred J. Church
THE STORY OF THE SARACENS. By Arthur Gilman
THE STORY OF THE MOORS IN SPAIN. By Stanley Lane-Poole
THE STORY OF THE NORMANS. By Sarah O. Jewett
THE STORY OF PERSIA. By S. G. W. Benjamin
THE STORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT. By Geo. Rawlinson
THE STORY OF ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. By Prof. J. P. Mahaffy
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA. By Z. A. Ragozin
THE STORY OF IRELAND. By Hon. Emily Lawless
THE STORY OF THE GOTHS. By Henry Bradley
THE STORY OF TURKEY. By Stanley Lane-Poole
THE STORY OF MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. By Z. A. Ragozin
THE STORY OF MEDIAEVAL FRANCE. By Gustave Masson
THE STORY OF MEXICO. By Susan Hale
THE STORY OF HOLLAND. By James E. Thorold Rogers
THE STORY OF PH[OE]NICIA. By George Rawlinson
THE STORY OF THE HANSA TOWNS. By Helen Zimmern
For prospectus of the series see end of this volume.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
[Illustration: ALGIERS, 1700.
(_From a Map in the British Museum._)]
CONTENTS.
_INTRODUCTION._
I.
PAGES
THE REVENGE OF THE MOORS. 3-13
Centuries of piracy, 3--The Moslems take to the sea, 4--African
fleets, 7--Effects of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, 8--The
delights of piracy, 9--Retaliation of the Moors, 10--Don Pedro
Navarro, 12--The building of the Penon de Alger, 13.
II.
THE LAND OF THE CORSAIRS. 14-27
The Barbary Peninsula, 14--Command of the narrow seas, 15--Barbary
ports and havens, 16--Character of the country, 20--North-African
dynasties, 21--Relations between the rulers of Barbary and the
Christian States, 22--Piracy discountenanced, 24--Christian
Corsairs, 25--Growth of sea-roving, 26--The coming of the Turks, 27.
_PART I._
THE CORSAIR ADMIRALS.
III.
Ur[=u]j Barbarossa. 1504-1515 31-44
Lesbos, 31--Birth of Ur[=u]j and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa, 31--Arrival
of Ur[=u]j at Tunis, 32--Capture of Papal galleys, 35--The epithet
Barba-rossa, 36--Galley slaves, 39--Jerba, 40--Unsuccessful siege of
Buj[=e]ya, 40--Doria besieges the Goletta of Tunis, 43--Second attack
on Buj[=e]ya, 44--Ur[=u]j becomes king of J[=i]jil, 44.
IV.
THE TAKING OF ALGIERS. 1516-1518 45-52
Death of Ferdinand, 45--Algerines appeal to Ur[=u]j to deliver them
from the Spaniards, 46--His doings at Algiers, 49--Defeat of a Spanish
armada, 50--Victory over the prince of Tinnis, 50--Great authority of
Ur[=u]j, 51--Expedition of the Marquis de Comares, 51--Death of Ur[=u]j
Barbarossa, 52.
V.
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa. 1518-1530 53-60
Departure of the Spanish troops, 53--Character of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n,
53--Policy towards the Sultan, 54--Is made Beglerbeg of Algiers,
54--Disaster to Don Hugo de Moncada, 55--Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's cruises
and his captains, 56--"Drub-Devil" at Majorca, 57--Defeat of Portundo,
58--Storming of the Penon de Alger, 59--Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's fleet, 59.
VI.
THE OTTOMAN NAVY. 1470-1522 61-75
Rise of the Turkish navy, 61--Rivalry of Genoa and Venice, 62--The
fleet of Mohammed II., 65--The Knights Hospitallers, 66--Ship building
at Constantinople, 66--The Battle of Zonchio, 68--Fall of Lepanto,
71--Decline of Venice, 71--Siege of Rhodes, 73--Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n
summoned to the Porte, 75.
VII.
DORIA AND BARBAROSSA. 1533 76-83
Andrea Doria, 76--Change of sides, 77--The two rivals, 78--Doria's
conquest of Coron, 78--Relief of Coron, 81--Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n sails
to Constantinople, 82--Is made Admiral, 83--Building galleys, 83.
VIII.
TUNIS TAKEN AND LOST. 1534-1535 84-93
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n ravages the coasts of Italy, 84--Giulia Gonzaga, 84--The
Ben[=i] Hafs of Tunis, 85--Conquest of Tunis by Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n,
86--Charles V. goes to Tunis, 86--Defeat of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n,
89--Brutality of the Imperial troops, 90--Joy throughout Christendom,
91--Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's expedition to Minorca, 93.
IX.
THE SEA-FIGHT OFF PREVESA. 1537 94-104
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n and Venice, 94--Venetian provocations, 95--Doria off
Paxos, 95--Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n lays waste the Apulian coast, 96--Siege
of Corfu by the Turks, 96--Abandoned, 97--A raid among the isles of
Greece, 97--Rich prizes, 97--Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n sails to combat Doria,
98--Battle off Prevesa, 101--Doria's galleasses, 102--Hesitation of
the Christians, 103--Doria's seamanship and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's
audacity, 104.
X.
BARBAROSSA IN FRANCE. 1539-1546 105-111
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n retakes Castelnuovo, 105--Is invited by Francis I. to
come to Marseilles, 106--Attacks Nice, 109--Winters at Toulon,
109--Ransoms Dragut, 110--Returns to Constantinople, and dies, 111--His
tomb at Beshiktash, 111.
XI.
CHARLES AT ALGIERS. 1541 112-123
Barbarossa's successors at Algiers, 112--Charles V. resolves to
destroy piracy, 113--The expedition to Algiers, 113--Stormy voyage,
114--The Christian fleet, 114--Landing at Algiers, 117--Effects of the
rains, 118--Repulse of the besiegers, 118--Panic in the camp allayed
by the Emperor, 119--The Storm, 119--Charles orders a retreat, 120--The
remnant of the army sails away, 121--Another tempest, 122--Total
failure of the expedition, 123.
XII.
DRAGUT REIS. 1543-1560 124-140
Dragut or Torgh[=u]d the Rover, 124--His captivity, 127--His lair at
Jerba, 128--The city of "Africa," 128--Early siege of "Africa" by the
Duke of Bourbon, 131--Retreat, 133--"Africa" (Mahd[=i]ya) taken by
Dragut, 133--Retaken by Doria and Garcia de Toledo, 134--Dragut's
escape from Jerba, 135--He joins the Ottoman navy, 136--Attack on
Malta, 136--Siege and conquest of Tripoli, 137--Christian fleets
assemble for recapture of Tripoli, 138--Disaster at Jerba, 139-140.
XIII.
THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA. 1565 141-159
Activity of Maltese galleys, 141--Fortifications of Malta,
142--Description of Malta, in 1565, 143--The Turkish forces,
144--Jean de la Valette, 145--Arrival of Dragut, 146--Siege of
Fort St. Elmo, 147--Fall of St. Elmo, 149--Death of Dragut, 149--Siege
of Fort St. Michael, 150--Ten assaults, 155--A false alarm, 157--Last
assault, 158--Arrival of relieving army, 158--The survivors of the
siege, 159.
XIV.
LEPANTO. 1571 160-178
Results of the siege of Malta, 160--Ochiali, 161--The Turks lay siege
to Cyprus, 162--Jealousies among the Christian admirals, 163--Cyprus
occupied by the Turks, 164--Efforts of Pope Pius V., 164--Don John of
Austria, 167--Muster of the Christian fleets, 167--The Turkish armada,
173--Meeting of the hostile fleets, 173--Giovanni Doria's tactics,
175--Marshalling of the Turkish array, 175--Beginning of the battle,
176--The victory, 177--Cervantes, 177--Subsequent career and death of
Don John, 178.
_PART II._
THE PETTY PIRATES.
XV.
THE GENERAL OF THE GALLEYS. _16th-18th Centuries_ 181-199
The last of the great Corsairs, 181--Ochiali, 182--Pashas of Algiers,
185--Renegades succeeded by Turks, 185--Beys of Tunis, 186--Blackmail
levied on the Christian Powers, 186--Deys of Algiers, 187--Violent
deaths, 187--Morocco, 188--Sal[=e] rovers, 188--Delgarno,
188--Chevalier Acton, 191--Mur[=a]d Reis, 192--'Ali Pichinin,
194--Defeated by Venetians, 194--His slaves, 195--His theology, 199.
XVI.
GALLEYS AND GALLEY SLAVES. _16th Century_ 200-225
The Renegade Corsairs, 200--Their cruises, 201--Description of
different classes of galleys, 205--Furttenbach's account, 206--Rig
and armament, 213--Galley-oars, 214--Sufferings of the slaves, 215--The
boatswains, 216--Christian galleys, 217--Ship's company, 218--Barbary
galleot, 218--Building, 219--Strength of Algerine fleet, 219--Captains,
220--Launching a galley, 220--The rowers and owners, 221--Soldiers,
221--Food, 222--Auguration, 222--Time of cruising, speed, and
manoeuvre, 222-223--Ports of refuge, 223-4--Mode of attack,
224--Division of spoils, 224--Return to port with a prize, 225.
XVII.
THE TRIUMPH OF SAILS. _17th Century_ 226-234
European ship-builders in Barbary, 226--The galley superseded by the
galleon or ship, 229--Depredations of the Algerine sailing-ships,
229--Fighting a Turkish caramuzel, 231--Raids on Madeira, Denmark,
Iceland, and Ireland, 232--Losses of the French, 234.
XVIII.
THE REDEMPTION OF CAPTIVES. _17th and 18th Centuries_ 235-255
Slaves on shore, 235--Dan's account, 236--Cruelty the exception,
241--Government slaves, 242--Sale of captives, 243--Pitiful history
of four Knights of Malta, 244--Cervantes in captivity, 246--Attempts
to escape, 247--The Order of the Redemption, 251--Father Dan and the
mission of Sanson le Page, 252--Arrival of the new Pasha at Algiers,
253--The Bastion de France, 254--Father Comelin, 255.
XIX.
THE ABASEMENT OF EUROPE. _16th to 18th Centuries_ 256-273
Arrogance of the Barbary States, 256--Humiliations imposed upon foreign
envoys, 257--Extortion of blackmail from European Powers, 259--Treatment
of consuls, 260--Piracy on the high sea, 265--Mr. Spratt's captivity,
266--Ransoms by English government, 267--Adventures of captives,
267--Admiral Blake at Porto Farina, 269--False passes, 270--Failure
of all remonstrances, 271-3.
XX.
THE UNITED STATES AND TRIPOLI. 1803-5 274-291
Piracy on American ships, 274--Threats of the Pirates, 275--Squadrons
sent to refuse tribute, 276--Commodore Preble, 276--Tangiers brought
to reason, 277--The loss of the _Philadelphia_, 279--Decatur succeeds
in burning her, 287--Attack on Tripoli, 289--Treaty signed, 290.
XXI.
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. 1816 292-300
Proceedings of the Mediterranean fleet, 292--American treaty with
Algiers, 293--Lord Exmouth's expedition, 293--His success at Tunis,
294--Princess Caroline, 295--Bombardment of Algiers, 297--Treaty
ineffectual, 299.
XXII.
THE FRENCH IN AFRICA. 1830-1881 301-310
French quarrel with Algiers, 301--Duperre's expedition, 302--Surrender
of Algiers and departure of the last Dey, 302--Cruelties in French
occupation of Algiers, 303--'Abd-el-K[=a]dir leads the Arabs, 305--His
victories and reverses, 306--His submission and exile, 306--Subsequent
French policy in Algiers, 307--The invasion of Tunis, 307--Perfidy of
the French Government, 308--A reign of terror, 309.
INDEX. 311
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
ALGIERS, 1700 _Frontispiece_
GALLEON OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 5
CARAVEL OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 11
THE BARBARY PENINSULA 15
A MAP OF THE KINGDOMS OF BARBARY 17
TUNIS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 33
GALLEY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 37
J[=I]JIL, 1664 41
ALGIERS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 47
OBSERVATION WITH THE CROSSBOW 55
AN ADMIRAL'S GALLEY 63
GALLEASSE 69
ANDREA DORIA 79
TUNIS, 1566 87
COMPASS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 99
OBSERVATION WITH THE ASTROLABE 104
GALLEY AT ANCHOR 107
SIEGE OF ALGIERS, 1541 115
CASTLE OF JERBA 125
SIEGE OF "AFRICA," 1390 129
GREEK FIRE 131
MEDIEVAL FIREARMS 132
MEDIEVAL PROJECTILES 132
SKETCH OF THE PORT OF MALTA IN 1565 152, 153
ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN A SPANISH GALLEON AND A DUTCH SHIP 165
ARABIC ASTROLABE (TWO POSITIONS) 170, 171
TUNIS IN 1573 183
SAL[=E] IN 1637 189
FIGHT OF THE "MARY ROSE" WITH ALGERINE PIRATES, 1669 197
GALLEY RUNNING BEFORE THE WIND 203
STAGES IN BUILDING A GALLEY 207
PLAN AND SECTIONS OF A GALLEY 209
HOLD OF A GALLEY 211
GALLEASSE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 227
ANCHOR 232
TORMENTS OF THE SLAVES 237
TORMENTS OF THE SLAVES 239
FATHERS OF THE REDEMPTION 249
TRIPOLI 281
[*.*] These illustrations are chiefly reproduced from _La Sphere des
deux Mondes_, composee en Francois, par Darinel pasteur des Amadis,
Anvers, 1555; Furttenbach's _Architectura Navalis_, 1629; Dan's
_Histoire de Barbarie_, 1637; Ogilby's _Africa_, 1670; Adm. Jurien de
la Graviere's _Derniers Jours de la Marine a Rames_; and the maps
[63842. (3.)--S. 9. 9. (39).--S. 10. 2.--64162. (2.)--64043. (1.)] in
the British Museum.
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES CONSULTED.
Bat[=u]ta, Ibn-: _Voyages._ Ed. Defremery. 4 vols. Paris. 1874-9.
Braithwaite, J.: _History of the Revolutions in the Empire of Morocco
upon the death of the late Emperor Muley Ishmael._ 1729.
Brantome, P. de Bourdeille, Seign. De.: _Hommes illustres, [OE]uvres._
Vols. 1 and 2. Paris. 1822.
Broadley, A. M.: _Tunis, Past and Present._ 2 vols. 1882.
Celesia, E.: _Conspiracy of Fieschi._ E. T. 1866.
Cervantes: _Don Quixote._ Trans. H. E. Watts. 5 vols. 1888-9.
Chenier, L. S.: _Present State of the Empire of Morocco._ E. T. 1788.
_Cruelties of the Algerine Pirates._ 1816.
Dan, Pere F.: _Histoire de Barbarie et de ses Corsaires._ 2nd ed.
Paris. 1649.
Eur[=i]s[=i], El-: _Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne._ Ed.
Dozy and De Goeje. Leyden. 1866.
Froissart, J.: _Chronicles._ Trans. T. Johnes. 2 vols. 1844.
Furttenbach, J.: _Architectura Navalis: das ist, Von dem Schiff-Gebaw,
auf dem Meer und Seekusten zu Gebrauchen._ Ulm. 1629.
Graviere, Adm. Jurien de la: _Les Derniers Jours de la Marine a
Rames._ Paris. 1885.
" : _Doria et Barberousse._ 1886.
" : _Les Corsaires Barbaresques._ 1887.
" : _Les Chevaliers de Malte._ 2 vols. 1887.
" : _La Guerre de Chypre._ 2 vols. 1888.
Grammont, H.: _Histoire d'Alger._ 1887.
Haedo, Diego de: _Topographia e Historia General de Argel._
Valladolid. 1612.
H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa: _History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks._
Hammer, J. von.: _Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches._ 2nd ed. 4 vols.
Pesth. 1834-6.
_Journal Asiatique_: Ser. II., iv., xii.; III., xi., xii., xiii.; IV.,
iii., v., vii., x., xviii.; V., ii., v., vi., xii., xiii.; VI.,
xviii.; VII., vii.
Marmol, Luys del Caravajal: _Descripcion de Africa._ Granada. 1573.
Mas-Latrie, Comte de: _Relations et commerce de l'Afrique
Septentrionale (ou Magreb) avec les nations chretiennes au moyen
age._ Paris. 1886.
Morgan, J.: _A complete History of Algiers._ 1731.
Playfair, Sir R. L.: _The Scourge of Christendom._ 1884.
Reclus, Elisee: _Nouvelle Geographie Universelle._ XI. Paris.
_Registre des Prises._ Algiers. 1872.
Rousseau, Baron A.: _Annales Tunisiennes._ Algiers. 1864.
" : _History of the Conquest of Tunis by the
Ottomans._ 1883.
Shaw, T.: _Travels in Barbary and the Levant._ 3rd ed. Edinb. 1808.
Windus, J.: _Journey to Mequinez._ 1725.
INTRODUCTION.
THE BARBARY CORSAIRS.
I.
THE REVENGE OF THE MOORS.
For more than three centuries the trading nations of Europe were
suffered to pursue their commerce or forced to abandon their gains at
the bidding of pirates. From the days when Barbarossa defied the whole
strength of the Emperor Charles V., to the early part of the present
century, when prizes were taken by Algerine rovers under the guns, so
to say, of all the fleets of Europe, the Corsairs were masters of the
narrow seas, and dictated their own terms to all comers. Nothing but
the creation of the large standing navies of the present age crippled
them; nothing less than the conquest of their too convenient coasts
could have thoroughly suppressed them. During those three centuries
they levied blackmail upon all who had any trading interest in the
Mediterranean. The Venetians, Genoese, Pisans in older days; the
English, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and American Governments in
modern times, purchased security by the payment of a regular tribute,
or by the periodical presentation of costly gifts. The penalty of
resistance was too well known to need exemplification; thousands of
Christian slaves in the bagnios at Algiers bore witness to the
consequences of an independent policy. So long as the nations of
Europe continued to quarrel among themselves, instead of presenting a
united line of battle to the enemy, such humiliations had to be
endured; so long as a Corsair raid upon Spain suited the policy of
France; so long as the Dutch, in their jealousy of other states, could
declare that Algiers was necessary to them; there was no chance of the
plague subsiding; and it was not till the close of the great
Napoleonic wars that the Powers agreed, at the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, to act together, and do away with the scourge
of Christendom. And even then little was accomplished till France
combined territorial aggrandizement with the _role_ of a civilizing
influence.
[Illustration: GALLEON OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]
There had been pirates in the Mediterranean long before the Turks took
up the trade; indeed, ever since boats were built their capabilities
for plunder must have been realized. The filibustering expedition of
Jason and the loot of the Golden Fleece is an early instance, and the
Greeks at all times have distinguished themselves by acting up to
Jason's example by sea and land. The Moslems, however, were some time
in accustoming themselves to the perils of the deep. At first they
marvelled greatly at "those that go down to the sea in ships, and have
their business in great waters," but they did not hasten to follow
them. In the early days of the conquest of Egypt the Khalif 'Omar
wrote to his general and asked him what the sea was like, to which
'Amr made answer: "The Sea is a huge beast which silly folk ride like
worms on logs;" whereupon, much distressed, the prudent Khalif gave
orders that no Moslem should voyage on so unruly an element without
his leave. But it soon became clear that if the Moslems were to hold
their own with their neighbours (still more if they meant to hold
their neighbours' own) they must learn how to navigate; and
accordingly, in the first century of the Hijra, we find the Khalif
'Abd-el-Melik instructing his lieutenant in Africa to use Tunis as an
arsenal and dockyard, and there to collect a fleet. From that time
forward the Mohammedan rulers of the Barbary coast were never long
without ships of some sort. The Aghlab[=i] princes sailed forth from
Tunis, and took Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The F[=a]tim[=i]
Khalifs waged war with the navies of 'Abd-er-Rahm[=a]n, the Great
Khalif of Cordova, at a strength of two hundred vessels a side. The
Almohades possessed a large and capacious fleet, in which they
transported their armies to Spain, and their successors in North
Africa, though less powerful, were generally able to keep up a number
of vessels for offensive as well as commercial purposes.
During the later Middle Ages the relations between the rulers of the
Barbary coast--the kings of Tunis, Tilims[=a]n, Fez, &c.--and the
trading nations of Christendom were amicable and just. Treaties show
that both parties agreed in denouncing and (so far as they could)
suppressing piracy and encouraging mutual commerce. It was not till
the beginning of the sixteenth century that a change came over these
peaceful conditions, and the way it happened was this.
When the united wisdom of Ferdinand and Isabella resolved on the
expatriation of the Spanish Moors, they forgot the risk of an exile's
vengeance.[1] No sooner was Granada fallen than thousands of desperate
Moors left the land which for seven hundred years had been their home,
and, disdaining to live under a Spanish yoke, crossed the strait to
Africa, where they established themselves at various strong points,
such as Shersh[=e]l, Oran, and notably at Algiers, which till then had
hardly been heard of. No sooner were the banished Moors fairly settled
in their new seats than they did what anybody in their place would
have done: they carried the war into their oppressors' country. To
meet the Spaniards in the open field was impossible in their reduced
numbers, but at sea their fleetness and knowledge of the coasts gave
them the opportunity of reprisal for which they longed.
Science, tradition, and observation inform us that primitive man had
certain affinities to the beast of prey. By superior strength or
ingenuity he slew or snared the means of subsistence. Civilized man
leaves the coarsest forms of slaughter to a professional class, and,
if he kills at all, elevates his pastime to the rank of sport by the
refining element of skill and the excitement of uncertainty and
personal risk. But civilized man is still only too prone to prey upon
his fellows, though hardly in the brutal manner of his ancestors. He
preys upon inferior intelligence, upon weakness of character, upon the
greed and upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In the grandest scale
he is called a financier; in the meanest, a pickpocket. This predatory
spirit is at once so ancient and so general, that the reader, who is,
of course, wholly innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must
nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery
considered as a fine art. Some cynics there are who will tell us that
the only reason we are not all thieves is because we have not pluck
enough; and there must certainly be some fascination, apart from
natural depravity or original sin, to make a man prefer to run
countless risks in an unlawful pursuit sooner than do an honest day's
work. And in this sentence we have the answer: It is precisely the
risk, the uncertainty, the danger, the sense of superior skill and
ingenuity, that attract the adventurous spirit, the passion for sport,
which is implanted in the vast majority of mankind.
Our Moorish robbers had all this, and more, to attract them. Brave and
daring men they had shown themselves often before in their tussles
with the Spaniards, or in their wild sea courses and harryings of
Christian shores, in Sardinia, perhaps, or Provence; but now they
pursued a quest alluring beyond any that had gone before, a righteous
vengeance upon those who had banished them from house and home, and
cast them adrift to find what new anchorage they might in the world--a
Holy War against the slaughterers of their kith and kin, and the
blasphemers of their sacred Faith. What joy more fierce and jubilant
than to run the light brigantine down the beach of Algiers and man her
for a cruise in Spanish waters? The little ship will hold but ten oars
a side, each pulled by a man who knows how to fight as well as to
row--as indeed he must, for there is no room for mere landsmen on
board a _firkata_. But if there be a fair wind off the land, there
will be little rowing; the big lateen sail on her one mast will span
the narrow waters between the African coast and the Balearic Isles,
where a convenient look-out may be kept for Spanish galleons or
perhaps an Italian polacca. Drawing little water, a small squadron of
brigantines could be pushed up almost any creek, or lie hidden behind
a rock, till the enemy hove in sight. Then oars out, and a quick
stroke for a few minutes, and they are alongside their unsuspecting
prey, and pouring in their first volley. Then a scramble on board, a
hand-to-hand scuffle, a last desperate resistance on the poop, under
the captain's canopy, and the prize is taken, the prisoners ironed, a
jury crew sent on board, and all return in triumph to Algiers, where
they are received with acclamations.
Or it might be a descent on the shores of their own beloved Andalusia.
Then the little vessels are run into the crevices between the rocks,
or even buried in the sand, and the pirates steal inland to one of the
villages they know so well, and the loss of which they will never
cease to mourn. They have still friends a-many in Spain, who are
willing enough to help them against the oppressor and to hide them
when surprised. The sleeping Spaniards are roused and then grimly
silenced by the points of swords; their wives and daughters are borne
away on the shoulders of the invaders; everything valuable is cleared;
and the rovers are soon sailing merrily into the roads at Algiers,
laden with spoil and captives, and often with some of the persecuted
remnant of their race, who thankfully rejoin their kinsmen in the new
country. To wreak such vengeance on the Spaniard added a real zest to
life.
[Illustration: CARAVEL OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]
With all their skill and speed, their knowledge of the coasts, and the
help of their compatriots ashore, there was still the risk of capture.
Sometimes their brigantines "caught a Tartar" when they expected an
easy victim, and then the Moors found the tables turned, and had to
grace their captors' triumph, and for years, perhaps for ever, to sit
on the banks of a Venetian or Genoese galley, heavily chained, pulling
the infidel's oar even in the chase of the true believers, and gazing
to satiety upon the weals which the lash kept raw on the bare back of
the man in front. But the risk added a zest to the Corsair's life, and
the captive could often look forward to the hope of recapture, or
sometimes of ransom by his friends. The career of the pirate, with all
its chances, was a prosperous one. The adventurers grew rich, and
their strong places on the Barbary coast became populous and well
garrisoned; and, by the time the Spaniards began to awake to the
danger of letting such troublesome neighbours alone, the evil was past
a cure. For twenty years the exiled Moors had enjoyed immunity, while
the big Spanish galleys were obstinately held in port, contemptuous of
so small a foe. At last Don Pedro Navarro was despatched by Cardinal
Ximenes to bring the pirates to book. He had little difficulty in
taking possession of Oran and Buj[=e]ya; and Algiers was so
imperfectly fortified, that he imposed his own terms. He made the
Algerines vow to renounce piracy; and, to see that they kept their
word, he built and garrisoned a strong fort, the "Penon de Alger,"[2]
to stop their boats from sallying forth. But the Moors had still more
than one strong post on the rocky promontories of Barbary, and having
tasted the delights of chasing Spaniards, they were not likely to
reform, especially as the choice lay between piracy and starvation.
Dig they would not, and they preferred to beg by force, like the
"gentlemen of the road." So they bided their time, till Ferdinand the
Catholic passed away to his account, and then, in defiance of the
Penon, and reckless of all the pains and penalties of Spanish
retribution, they threw up their allegiance, and looked about for
allies.
Help was not far off, though in this case it meant mastery. The day of
the Moorish pirates was over; henceforth they might, and did,
triumphantly assault and batter Spanish and Venetian ships, but they
would do this under the captaincy of the allies they had called in,
under the leadership of the Turkish Corsairs. The Moors had shown the
way, and the Corsairs needed little bidding to follow it.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Story of the Moors in Spain_, 232-280.
[2] Algiers is in Arabic, Al-Gezair ("the Islands"), said to be so
called from that in its bay; or, more probably, Al-Gezair is a
grammarian's explanation of the name Tzeyr or Tzier, by which the
Algerians commonly called their city, and which is, I suspect, a
corruption of the Roman city _Caesarea_ (Augusta), which occupied
almost the same site. It should be remarked that the Algerians
pronounce the _g[=i]m_ hard: not Al-Jeza[=i]r. Europeans spelt the name
in all sorts of ways: Arger, Argel, Argeir, Algel, &c., down to the
French Alger and our Algiers.
II.
THE LAND OF THE CORSAIRS.
It is time to ask how it was that a spacious land seemed to lie vacant
for the Corsairs to occupy, and a land too that offered almost every
feature that a pirate could desire for the safe and successful
prosecution of his trade. Geographers tell us that in climate and
formation the island of Barbary, for such it is geologically, is
really part of Europe, towards which, in history, it has played so
unfriendly a part. Once the countries, which we now know as Tunis,
Algiers, and Morocco, stood up abruptly as an island, with a
comparatively small lake washing its northern shore, and a huge ocean
on the south (see the map). That ocean is now the _Sahra_ or Sahara,
which engineers dream of again flooding with salt water, and so
forming an inland African sea. The lake is now the Mediterranean, or
rather its western basin, for we know that the Barbary island was once
nearly a peninsula, joined at its two ends to Spain and Sicily, and
that its Atlas ranges formed the connection between the Sierra Nevada
and Mt. Aetna. By degrees the Isthmus between Cape Bona and Sicily
sank out of sight, and the ocean flowed between Spain and Africa,
while the great sea to the south dried up into the immense stony waste
which is known preeminently as _the_ Sahra, the Desert, "a tract of
land, bare as the back of a beast, without trees or mountains."
[Illustration: _After Bourguignat_ _Walker & Boutallsc._
THE BARBARY PENINSULA.
(_Elisee Reclus._)]
Through one or both of these narrow straits, Gibraltar and Malta, all
vessels from the outer ocean bound for the ports of France and Italy
and the Levant, were obliged to pass; and it must be remembered that
just about the time when the Corsairs made their appearance in
Barbary, the riches of the new-found Western world were beginning to
pour through the straits to meet those of the East, which were brought
to France and Spain, England and Holland, from Alexandria and Smyrna.
An immense proportion of the trade of Europe had to cross the western
basin of the Mediterranean, of which Barbary formed the southern
boundary. Any bold man who could hold Tunis at the eastern corner, or
Algiers in the middle, or Ceuta or Tangiers at the western point,
might reckon upon numerous opportunities of stopping argosies of
untold wealth as they passed by his lair. The situation seemed
purposely contrived for Corsairs.
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE KINGDOMS OF BARBARY.
(_Voyages to Barbary for the Redemption of Captives, 1736._)]
More than this, the coast was just what a pirate wants. The map shows
a series of natural harbours, often backed by lagunes which offer
every facility for the escape of the rover from his pursuers; and
while in the sixteenth century there were no deep ports for vessels of
heavy draught, there were endless creeks, shallow harbours, and
lagunes where the Corsairs' galleys (which never drew more than six
feet of water) could take refuge. Behind Jerba, the fabled island of
the Lotus-Eaters, was an immense inland sea, commanded in the Middle
Ages by castles, and affording a refuge for which the rovers had often
had cause to be grateful. Merchant vessels were shy of sailing in the
dangerous Gulf of the Greater Syrtes with its heavy tides and
spreading sandbanks, and even the war-galleys of Venice and Spain were
at a disadvantage when manoeuvring in its treacherous eddies against
the Corsair who knew every inch of the coast. Passing westward, a
famous medieval fortress, with the remains of a harbour, is seen at
Mahd[=i]ya, the "Africa" of the chroniclers. Next, Tunis presents the
finest harbour on all the Barbary coast; within its Goletta (or
"Throat") a vessel is safe from all the winds that blow, and if a
canal were cut to join it with the inland lake of Bizerta, a deep
harbour would be formed big enough to hold all the shipping of the
Mediterranean. The ancient ports of Carthage and Porto Farina offered
more protection in the Corsairs' time than now when the sand has
choked the coast; and in the autumn months a vessel needed all the
shelter she could get when the Cyprian wind was blowing off Cape Bona.
Close to the present Algerine frontier is Tabarka, which the Lomellini
family of Genoa found a thriving situation for their trading
establishments. Lacalle, once a famous nest of pirates, had then a
fine harbour, as the merchants of Marseilles discovered when they
superintended the coral fisheries from the neighbouring Bastion de
France. Bona, just beyond, has its roads, and formerly possessed a
deep harbour. J[=i]jil, an impregnable post, held successively by
Phoenicians, Normans, Romans, Pisans, and Genoese, till Barbarossa got
possession of it and made it a fortress of refuge for his Corsairs,
stands on a rocky peninsula joined by a sandy isthmus to the mainland,
with a port well sheltered by a natural breakwater. Further on were
Buj[=e]ya (Bougie), its harbour well protected from the worst winds;
Algiers, not then a port, but soon to become one; Shersh[=e]l, with a
harbour to be shunned in a heavy swell from the north, but otherwise a
valuable nook for sea rovers; Tinnis, not always accessible, but safe
when you were inside; and Oran, with the important harbour of Mars
El-Keb[=i]r the "Portus Divinus" of the Romans; while beyond, the
Jamia-el-Ghazaw[=a]t or Pirates' Mosque, shows where a favourite
creek offered an asylum between the Brothers Rocks for distressed
Corsairs. Passing Tangiers and Ceuta (Septa), and turning beyond the
Straits, various shelters are found, and amongst others the celebrated
ports of Sal[=e], which, in spite of its bar of sand, managed to send
out many mischievous craft to harass the argosies on their return from
the New World.
Not only were there ports in abundance for the shelter of galleys, but
the land behind was all that could be desired. River indeed there was
none capable of navigation, but the very shortness of the watershed
which precluded the possibility of great streams brought with it a
counterbalancing advantage; for the mountains rise so steep and high
near the coast that the Corsairs' look-out could sight the vessels to
be attacked a long way out to sea, and thus give notice of a prize or
warning of an enemy. Moreover the land produced all that was needed to
content the heart of man. Below the mountains where the Berbers dwelt
and the steppes where Arab shepherds roamed, fertile valleys spread to
the seashore. Jerba was a perfect garden of corn and fruit, vines,
olives, almonds, apricots, and figs; Tunis stood in the midst of green
fields, and deserved the title of "the White, the Odoriferous, the
Flowery Bride of the West,"--though, indeed, the second epithet,
according to its inhabitants, was derived from the odour of the lake
which received the drainage of the city, to which they ascribed its
peculiar salubrity.
What more could be required in a land which was, now to become a nest
of pirates? Yet, as though this were not sufficient, one more virtue
was added. The coast was visited by terrible gales, which, while
avoidable by those who had experience and knew where to run, were
fatal to the unwary, and foiled many an attack of the avenging enemy.
It remains to explain how it was that the Corsairs were able to
possess themselves of this convenient territory, which was neither
devoid of inhabitants nor without settled governments.
North Africa--the only Africa known to the ancients--had seen many
rulers come and go since the Arabs under Okba first overran its plains
and valleys. Dynasty had succeeded dynasty; the Arab governors under
the Khalifs of Damascus and Baghd[=a]d had made room for the Houses of
Idr[=i]s (A.D. 788) and Aghlab (800); these in turn had given way to
the F[=a]tim[=i] Khalifs (909); and when these schismatics removed
their seat of power from their newly founded capital of Mahd[=i]ya to
their final metropolis of Cairo (968), their western empire speedily
split up into the several princedoms of the Zeyr[=i]s of Tunis, the
Ben[=i] Hamm[=a]d of Tilims[=a]n, and other minor governments. At the
close of the eleventh century, the Mur[=a]bits or Almoravides, a
Berber dynasty, imposed their authority over the greater part of North
Africa and Spain, but gave place in the middle of the twelfth to the
Muwahhids or Almohades, whose rule extended from the Atlantic to
Tunis, and endured for over a hundred years. On the ruins of their
vast empire three separate and long-lived dynasties sprang up: the
Ben[=i] Hafs in Tunis (1228-1534), the Ben[=i] Ziy[=a]n in Central
Maghrib (1235-1400), and the Ben[=i] Merin in Morocco (1200-1550). To
complete the chronology it may be added that these were succeeded in
the sixteenth century by the Corsair Pashas (afterwards Deys) of
Algiers, the Turkish Pashas or Beys of Tunis, and the Sher[=i]fs or
Emperors of Morocco. The last still continue to reign; but the Deys of
Algiers have given place to the French, and the Bey of Tunis is under
French tutelage.
Except during the temporary excitement of a change of dynasty, the
rule of these African princes was generally mild and enlightened. They
came, for the most part, of the indigenous Berber population, and were
not naturally disposed to intolerance or unneighbourliness. The
Christians kept their churches, and were suffered to worship
unmolested. We read of a Bishop of Fez as late as the thirteenth
century, and the Kings of Morocco and Tunis were usually on friendly
terms with the Pope. Christians were largely enrolled in the African
armies, and were even appointed to civil employments. The relations of
the rulers of Barbary with the European States throughout the greater
part of this period--from the eleventh century, when the fighting
F[=a]tim[=i]s left Tunis and went eastward to Egypt, to the sixteenth,
when the fighting Turks came westward to molest the peace of the
Mediterranean--were eminently wise and statesmanlike. The Africans
wanted many of the industries of Europe; Europe required the skins and
raw products of Africa: and a series of treaties involving a principle
of reciprocity was the result. No doubt the naval inferiority of the
African States to the trading Republics of the Mediterranean was a
potent factor in bringing about this satisfactory arrangement; but it
is only right to admit the remarkable fairness, moderation, and
probity of the African princes in the settlement and maintenance of
these treaties. As a general rule, Sicily and the commercial Republics
were allied to the rulers of Tunis and Tilims[=a]n and Fez by bonds of
amity and mutual advantage. One after the other, Pisa, Genoa,
Provence, Aragon, and Venice, concluded commercial treaties with the
African sovereigns, and renewed them from time to time. Some of these
States had special quarters reserved for them at Tunis, Ceuta, and
other towns; and all had their consuls in the thirteenth century, who
were protected in a manner that the English agent at Algiers would
have envied seventy years ago. The African trade was especially
valuable to the Pisans and Genoese, and there was a regular African
company trading at the Ports of Tripoli, Tunis, Buj[=e]ya, Ceuta, and
Sal[=e]. Indeed, the Genoese went so far as to defend Ceuta against
Christian crusaders, so much did commerce avail against religion; and,
on the other hand, the Christian residents at Tunis, the western
metropolis of Islam, had their own place of worship, where they were
free to pray undisturbed, as late as 1530. This tolerance was largely
due to the mild and judicious government of the Ben[=i] Hafs, whose
three centuries' sway at Tunis was an unmixed benefit to their
subjects, and to all who had relations with them.
Not that the years passed by without war and retaliation, or that
treaties made piracy impossible. In the early and more pugnacious days
of the Saracen domination conflicts were frequent. The F[=a]tim[=i]
Khalifs conquered and held all the larger islands of the Western
Mediterranean, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles. In
1002 the Saracens pillaged Pisa, and the Pisans retaliated by burning
an African fleet. Three years later El-Muj[=a]hid ("Muget"), the lord
of Majorca, and conqueror of Sardinia, burnt part of Pisa; and another
incursion is recorded in 1011. From his stronghold at Luni in Etruria
this terrible scourge ravaged the country round, until the Pope drove
him out of Italy, and the Pisans and others turned him out of Sardinia
(1017). We read of African fleets cruising with hostile intent off the
Calabrian coast, and of the Pisans taking Bona, which was then a nest
of Corsairs (1034). Mahd[=i]ya was burnt in 1087, and Sicily conquered
by the Normans about the same time (1072). But these were in the early
days, and even then were the exceptions; in succeeding centuries,
under more settled governments, war became very rare, and mutual amity
was the prevailing policy.[3]
Piracy was always distinctly prohibited in the commercial treaties of
the African States; nevertheless piracy went on, and most
pertinaciously on the part of the Christians. The Greeks, Sardinians,
Maltese, and Genoese were by far the worse members of the fraternity
of rovers, as the treaties themselves prove: the increase of commerce
under the stimulus of the Crusades tempted the adventurous, and the
absence of any organized State navies gave them immunity; and there
was generally a war afoot between some nation or other, Christian or
Moslem, and piracy (in the then state of international law) at once
became legitimate privateering. Our buccaneers of the Spanish main had
the same apology to offer. But it is important to observe that all
this was private piracy: the African and the Italian governments
distinctly repudiated the practice, and bound themselves to execute
any Corsair of their own country whom they might arrest, and to
deliver all his goods over to the state which he had robbed.[4] These
early Corsairs were private freebooters, totally distinct from the
authorized pirates of later days. In 1200, in time of peace, two Pisan
vessels attacked three Mohammedan ships in Tunis roads, captured the
crews, outraged the women, and made off, vainly pursued by the
Tunisian fleet: but they received no countenance from Pisa, the
merchants of which might have suffered severely had the Tunisians
exacted reprisals. Sicily was full of Corsairs, and the King of Tunis
paid a sort of tribute to the Normans, partly to induce them to
restrain these excesses. Aragonese and Genoese preyed upon each other
and upon the Moslems; but their doings were entirely private and
unsupported by the state.
Up to the fourteenth century the Christians were the chief pirates of
the Mediterranean, and dealt largely in stolen goods and slaves. Then
the growth of large commercial fleets discouraged the profession, and
very soon we begin to hear much less of European brigandage, and much
more of Moorish Corsairs. The inhabitants of the coast about the Gulf
of Gabes had always shown a bent towards piracy, and the port of
Mahd[=i]ya, or "Africa," now became a regular resort of sea rovers.
El-Bekr[=i], in the twelfth century, had noticed the practice of
sending galleys on the cruise for prey (perhaps during war) from the
harbours of Bona; and Ibn-Khald[=u]n, in the fourteenth, describes an
organized company of pirates at Buj[=e]ya, who made a handsome profit
from goods and the ransom of captives. The evil grew with the increase
of the Turkish power in the Levant, and received a violent impetus
upon the fall of Constantinople; while on the west, the gradual
expulsion of the Moors from Spain which followed upon the Christian
advance filled Africa with disaffected, ruined, and vengeful Moriscos,
whose one dominant passion was to wipe out their old scores with the
Spaniards.
Against such influences the mild governors of North Africa were
powerless. They had so long enjoyed peace and friendship with the
Mediterranean States, that they were in no condition to enforce order
with the strong hand. Their armies and fleets were insignificant, and
their coasts were long to protect, and abounded with almost
impregnable strongholds which they could not afford to garrison.
Hence, when the Moors flocked over from Spain, the shores of Africa
offered them a sure and accessible refuge, and the hospitable
character of the Moslem's religion forbade all thought of repelling
the refugees. Still more, when the armed galleots of the Levant came
crowding to Barbary, fired with the hope of rich gain, the ports were
open, and the creeks afforded them shelter. A foothold once gained,
the rest was easy.
It was to this land, lying ready to his use, that Captain Ur[=u]j
Barbarossa came in the beginning of the sixteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Le Comte de Mas-Latrie, _Relations et commerce de l'Afrique
Septentrionale avec les nations chretiennes au moyen age_, 1886.
[4] Le Comte de Mas-Latrie, _Relations et commerce de l'Afrique
Septentrionale avec les nations chretiennes au moyen age_, pp. 175-9.
PART I.
_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.[5] Ur[=u]j, the
elder, soon became the reis, 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.
[Illustration: TUNIS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(_Sphere 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 Civita 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 Reis 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,[6] "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 Reis 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."[7]
[Illustration: GALLEY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]
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 Reis 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.
[Illustration: J[=I]JIL, 1664.
(_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.
He was too late, however. The Senate of Genoa was highly incensed at
the loss of the galleot, and Andrea Doria, soon to be known as the
greatest Christian admiral of his time, was despatched with twelve
galleys to exact reparation. He landed before the Goletta, and drove
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n before him into Tunis. The fortress was sacked, and
half Barbarossa's ships were brought in triumph to Genoa. Thus ended
the first meeting between Doria and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n: the next was less
happy for the noble Genoese.
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, well aware of his brother's fierce humour, did not
dare to face him after this humiliation, but left him to fume
impotently in his sickroom, while he stole away to Jerba, there to
work night and day at shipbuilding. Ur[=u]j joined him in the
following spring--the King of Tunis had probably had enough of
him--and they soon had the means of wiping out their disgrace. The
attempt was at first a failure; a second assault on the ominous forts
of Buj[=e]ya (1514) was on the point of success, when reinforcements
arrived from Spain. The Berber allies evinced more interest in getting
in their crops after the rain than in forcing the bastion; and
Barbarossa, compelled to raise the siege, in a frantic rage, tearing
his red beard like a madman, set fire to his ships that they might not
fall into the hands of the Spaniards.
He would not show himself now in Tunis or Jerba. Some new spot must
shelter him after this fresh reverse. On his way to and from Buj[=e]ya
he had noticed the very place for his purpose--a spot easy to defend,
perched on inaccessible rocks, yet furnished with a good harbour,
where the losses of recent years might be repaired. This was J[=i]jil,
some sixty miles to the east of Buj[=e]ya; whose sturdy inhabitants
owed allegiance to no Sultan, but were proud to welcome so renowned,
although now so unfortunate, a warrior as Barbarossa. So at J[=i]jil
Ur[=u]j dwelt, and cultivated the good-will of the people with spoils
of corn and goods from his cruisers, till those "indomitable African
mountaineers," who had never owned a superior, chose him by
acclamation their king.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The differences between the Turkish authority, H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa,
who wrote in the middle of the seventeenth century and used "Memoirs"
partly inspired by Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n himself, and the two Spanish
chroniclers, Haedo and Marmol, in their narratives of the early feats
and experiences of Barbarossa and his brothers, are irreconcilable in
details, though the general purport is similar. Von Hammer naturally
follows H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, and modern writers, like Adm. Jurien de la
Graviere, take the same course. For the period of his life when
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n was at Constantinople the Turkish writer may be
reasonably preferred; but on all matters concerning the Barbary coast
the Abbot Diego de Haedo, who lived many years in Algiers in the
sixteenth century, was personally acquainted with many of the servants
and followers of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n (who died in 1546), and published his
_Topographia e historia de Argel_ in 1612, is undoubtedly the best
informed and most trustworthy authority.
[6] Quoted by Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 225.
[7] It is possible that Barba-rossa is but a European corruption of
Baba Ur[=u]j, "Father Ur[=u]j," as his men called him. At all events
Ur[=u]j is the real Barbarossa, though modern writers generally give
the name to his younger brother Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, who was only called
Barbarossa on account of his kinship to the original.
IV.
THE TAKING OF ALGIERS.
1516-1518.
The new Sultan of J[=i]jil was now called to a much more serious
enterprize than heading his truculent highlanders against a
neighbouring tribe--though it must be admitted that he was always in
his element when fisticuffs were in request. An appeal had come from
Algiers. The Moors there had endured for seven years the embargo of
the Spaniards; they had seen their _fregatas_ rotting before their
eyes, and never dared to mend them; they had viewed many a rich prize
sail by, and never so much as ventured a mile out to sea to look her
over: for there were keen eyes and straight shots in the Penon which
commanded the bay, and King Ferdinand the Catholic held a firm hand
over the tribute which his banished subjects had to pay him for his
condescension in ruining them. Their occupation was gone; they had not
dragged a prize ashore for years; they must rebel or starve. At this
juncture Ferdinand opportunely died (1516), and the Algerine Moors
seized their chance. They stopped the tribute, and called in the aid
of Salim, the neighbouring Arab sheykh, whose clansmen would make the
city safe on the land side. "But what are they to do with the two
hundred petulant and vexatious Spaniards in the fort, who incessantly
pepper the town with their cannon, and make the houses too hot to hold
them; especially when they are hungry? Little would the gallant Arab
cavalry, with their fine Libyan mares and horses, rich coats-of-mail,
tough targets, well-tempered sabres, and long supple lances, avail
them against the Spanish volleys. And who so proper to redress this
grievance as the invincible Barbarossa, who was master of a naval
force, and wanted not artillery? Had he not been twice to reinstate
the unfortunate King of Buj[=e]ya, and lost a limb in his service?
"Without the least deliberation Prince Salim despatched a solemn
embassy to J[=i]jil, intreating Barbarossa, in whom he and his people
reposed their entire confidence, to hasten to their assistance. No
message whatever could have been more welcome to the ambitious
Barbarossa than one of this nature. His new-acquired realm brought him
in but a very scanty revenue; nor was he absolute.... He had been
wretchedly baffled at Buj[=e]ya, but hoped for better success at
Algiers, which, likewise, is a place of much greater consequence, and
much more convenient for his purpose, which, as has been said, was to
erect a great monarchy of his own in Barbary."[8]
[Illustration: ALGIERS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(_Sphere des deux Mondes, 1555._)]
With some six thousand men and sixteen galleots Ur[=u]j set forth by
sea and land to the rescue of Algiers. First he surprised Shersh[=e]l,
a strong position fifteen leagues to the west of Algiers, which had
been occupied by Moors from Granada, and was now commanded by a bold
Turkish Corsair, Kara Hasan, who, emulating his old comrade's success
with the people of J[=i]jil, had induced the Shersh[=e]l rovers to
accept him as their leader. Ur[=u]j had no liking for two Kings of
Brentford, and took off Black Hasan's head as a friendly precaution,
before exposing himself to the perils of another contest with the
Spaniards.
Soon he was at Algiers, hospitably lodged and entertained, he and all
his men, Turks and J[=i]jilis alike, by Sheykh Salim and the people of
the town. There, at the distance of a crossbow-shot, stood the
fortress he had come to reduce, and thither he sent a message offering
a safe conduct to the garrison if they would surrender. The Spanish
captain made reply that "neither threats nor proffered curtesies
availed aught with men of his kidney," and told him to remember
Buj[=e]ya. Upon which Ur[=u]j, more to please his unsuspicious hosts
than with much prospect of success, battered the Penon for twenty days
with his light field-pieces, without making any sensible breach in the
defences.
Meanwhile, the Arabs and Moors who had called him to their aid were
becoming aware of their mistake. Instead of getting rid of their old
enemy the Spaniard, they had imported a second, worse than the first,
and Ur[=u]j soon showed them who was to be master. He and his Turks
treated the ancient Moorish families, who had welcomed them within
their gates, with an insolence that was hard to be borne by
descendants of the Abencerrages and other noble houses of Granada.
Salim, the Arab Sheykh, was the first to feel the despot's power: he
was murdered in his bath--it was said by the Corsair himself. In their
alarm, the Algerines secretly made common cause with the soldiers of
the Penon, and a general rising was planned; but one day at Friday
prayers Barbarossa let the crowded congregation know that their
designs were not unsuspected. Shutting the gates, the Turks bound
their entertainers with the turbans off their heads, and the immediate
decapitation of the ringleaders at the mosque door quelled the spirit
of revolt. Nor was a great Armada, sent by Cardinal Ximenes, and
commanded by Don Diego de Vera, more successful than the Algerine
rebellion. Seven thousand Spaniards were utterly routed by the Turks
and Arabs; and to complete the discomfiture of the Christians a
violent tempest drove their ships ashore, insomuch that this mighty
expedition was all but annihilate.
An adventurer who, with a motley following of untrained bandits and
nomads, could overthrow a Spanish army was a phenomenon which the
Christian States now began to eye with considerable anxiety. From the
possessor of a strong place or two on the coast, he had become nothing
less than the Sultan of Middle Barbary (_Maghrib el-Awsat_). When the
Prince of Tinnis raised the whole country side against him, and a
mighty host was rolling down upon Algiers, Ur[=u]j marched out with
one thousand Turks and five hundred Moors, and never a cannon amongst
them, and smote the enemy hip and thigh, and pursued them into their
own city. The prince of Tinnis took to the mountains, and Ur[=u]j
Barbarossa reigned in his stead (1517). Then Tilims[=a]n fell into his
possession, and save that the Spaniards held Oran and two or three
fortresses, such as the Penon de Alger and Buj[=e]ya, his dominions
coincided with modern Algeria, and marched with the kingdoms of Tunis
and Fez. He was in a position to form alliances with Fez and Morocco.
His galleots were punctilious, moreover, in returning the call of Don
Diego de Vera, and many an expectant merchant in Genoa, or Naples, or
Venice, strained his eyes in vain for the argosy that, thanks to the
Corsair's vigilance, would never again sail proudly into the harbour.
When all this came to the ears of the new King of Spain, afterwards
the Emperor Charles V, he yielded to the prayer of the Marquis de
Comares, Governor of Oran, and despatched ten thousand veterans to
make an end of the Corsairs once and for ever. Ur[=u]j Barbarossa was
then stationed at Tilims[=a]n with only 1,500 men, and when the hosts
of the enemy drew near he made a bolt by night for Algiers, taking his
Turks and his treasure with him. The news soon reached the enemy's
scouts, and the Marquis gave hot pursuit. A river with steep banks lay
in the fugitives' path: could they pass it, they would have the
chances in their favour. Ur[=u]j scattered his jewels and gold behind
him, vainly hoping to delay the greedy Spaniards; but Comares trampled
over everything, and came up with the Turkish rear when but half their
force had crossed the river. Their leader was already safe on the
other side, but the cries of his rear-guard brought him back. The
Corsair was not the man to desert his followers, and without an
instant's hesitation he recrossed the fatal stream and threw himself
into the fray. Hardly a Turk or a Moor escaped from that bloody field.
Facing round, they fought till they dropped; and among them the
vigorous figure of Barbarossa was ever to be seen, laying about him
with his one arm like a lion to the last.
"Ur[=u]j Barbarossa, according to the testimony of those who remember
him, was, when he died, about forty-four years of age. He was not very
tall of stature, but extremely well set and robust. His hair and beard
perfectly red; his eyes quick, sparkling and lively; his nose aquiline
or Roman; and his complexion between brown and fair. He was a man
excessively bold, resolute, daring, magnanimous, enterprizing,
profusely liberal, and in nowise bloodthirsty, except in the heat of
battle, nor rigorously cruel but when disobeyed He was highly beloved,
feared, and respected, by his soldiers and domestics, and when dead
was by them all in general most bitterly regretted and lamented. He
left neither son nor daughter. He resided in Barbary fourteen years,
during which the harms he did to the Christians are inexpressible."[9]
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 233. (1731.)
[9] Morgan, 257.
V.
KHEYR-ED-D[=I]N BARBAROSSA.
1518-1530.
Ur[=u]j Barbarossa, the gallant, impulsive, reckless, lovable soldier
of fortune was dead, and it seemed as if all the power he had built up
by his indomitable energy must inevitably vanish with its founder. The
Marquis de Comares and the Spanish army held the fate of Algiers in
their hands; one steady march, and surely the Corsairs must be swept
out of Africa. But, with what would seem incredible folly, if it had
not been often repeated, the troops were shipped back to Spain, the
Marquis returned to his post at Oran, and the opportunity was lost for
three hundred years. The Algerines drew breath again, and their leader
began to prepare fresh schemes of conquest.
The mantle of Ur[=u]j had fallen upon worthy shoulders. The elder
brother possessed, indeed, matchless qualities for deeds of
derring-do; to lead a storming party, board a galleon,--cut and thrust
and "have at you,"--he had no equal: but Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, with like
courage and determination, was gifted with prudent and statesmanlike
intelligence, which led him to greater enterprizes, though not to
more daring exploits. He measured the risk by the end, and never
exposed himself needlessly to the hazard of defeat; but when he saw
his way clear, none struck harder or more effectual blows.[10]
His first proceeding was typical of his sagacious mind. He sent an
ambassador to Constantinople, to lay his homage at the feet of the
Grand Signior, and to beg his Majesty's favour and protection for the
new province of Algiers, which was now by his humble servant added to
the Ottoman Empire. The reply was gracious. Sel[=i]m had just
conquered Egypt, and Algiers formed an important western extension of
his African dominion. The sage Corsair was immediately appointed
Beglerbeg, or Governor-General, of Algiers (1519), and invested with
the insignia of office, the horse and scimitar and horsetail-banner.
Not only this, but the Sultan sent a guard of two thousand Janissaries
to his viceroy's aid, and offered special inducements to such of his
subjects as would pass westward to Algiers and help to strengthen the
Corsair's authority.
[Illustration: OBSERVATION WITH THE CROSSBOW.
(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]
The Beglerbeg lost no time in repairing the damage of the Spaniards.
He reinforced his garrisons along the coast, at Meliana, Shersh[=e]l,
Tinnis, and Mustagh[=a]nim, and struck up alliances with the great
Arab tribes of the interior. An armada of some fifty men-of-war and
transports, including eight galleys-royal, under the command of
Admiral Don Hugo de Moncada, in vain landed an army of veterans on the
Algerine strand--they were driven back in confusion, and one of those
storms, for which the coast bears so evil a name, finished the work of
Turkish steel (1519). One after the other, the ports and strongholds
of Middle Barbary fell into the Corsair's hands: Col, Bona,
Constantine, owned the sway of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa, who was now
free to resume his favourite occupation of scouring the seas in search
of Christian quarry. Once or twice in every year he would lead out
his own eighteen stout galleots, and call to his side other daring
spirits whom the renown of his name had drawn from the Levant, each
with his own swift cruiser manned by stout arms and the pick of
Turkish desperadoes. There you might see him surrounded by captains
who were soon to be famous wherever ships were to be seized or coasts
harried;--by Dragut, S[=a]lih Reis, Sin[=a]n the "Jew of Smyrna," who
was suspected of black arts because he could take a declination with
the crossbow, and that redoubtable rover Ayd[=i]n Reis, whom the
Spaniards dubbed _Cachadiablo_, or "Drub-devil," though he had better
been named Drub-Spaniard. The season for cruising began in May, and
lasted till the autumn storms warned vessels to keep the harbours, or
at least to attempt no distant expeditions. During the summer months
the Algerine galleots infested every part of the Western
Mediterranean, levied contributions of slaves and treasure upon the
Balearic Isles and the coasts of Spain, and even passed beyond the
straits to waylay the argosies which were returning to Cadiz laden
with the gold and jewels of the Indies. Nothing was safe from their
attacks; not a vessel ran the gauntlet of the Barbary coast in her
passage from Spain to Italy without many a heart quaking within her.
The "Scourge of Christendom" had begun, which was to keep all the
nations of Europe in perpetual alarm for three centuries. The Algerine
Corsairs were masters of the sea, and they made their mastery felt by
all who dared to cross their path; and not merchantmen only, but
galleys-royal of his Catholic Majesty learnt to dread the creak of the
Turkish rowlock.
One day in 1529 Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n despatched his trusty lieutenant
"Drub-Devil" with fourteen galleots to make a descent upon Majorca and
the neighbouring islands. No job could be more suited to the Corsair's
taste, and S[=a]lih Reis, who was with him, fully shared his enjoyment
of the task. The pair began in the usual way by taking several prizes
on the high seas, dropping down upon the islands and the Spanish
coasts, and carrying off abundance of Christians to serve at the oar,
or to purchase their liberty with those pieces-of-eight which never
came amiss to the rover's pockets. Tidings reaching them of a party of
Moriscos who were eager to make their escape from their Spanish
masters, and were ready to pay handsomely for a passage to Barbary.
"Drub-Devil" and his comrades landed by night near Oliva, embarked two
hundred families and much treasure, and lay-to under the island of
Formentara. Unfortunately General Portundo, with eight Spanish
galleys, was just then on his way back from Genoa, whither he had
conveyed Charles V. to be crowned Emperor by the Pope at Bologna; and,
being straightway informed of the piratical exploit which had taken
place, bore away for the Balearic Isles in hot pursuit. "Drub-Devil"
hastily landed his Morisco friends, to be the better prepared to fight
or run, for the sight of eight big galleys was more than he had
bargained for; but to his surprise the enemy came on, well within
gun-shot, without firing a single round. Portundo was anxious not to
sink the Turks, for fear of drowning the fugitive Moriscos, whom he
supposed to be on board, and for whose recapture he was to have ten
thousand ducats; but the Corsairs imputed his conduct to cowardice,
and, suddenly changing their part from attacked to attackers, they
swooped like eagles upon the galleys, and after a brisk hand-to-hand
combat, in which Portundo was slain, they carried seven of them by
assault, and sent the other flying at topmost speed to Ivica. This
bold stroke brought to Algiers, besides the Moriscos, who had watched
the battle anxiously from the island, many valuable captives of rank,
and released hundreds of Moslem galley-slaves from irons and the
lash.[11] "Drub-Devil" had a splendid reception, we may be sure, when
the people of Algiers saw seven royal galleys, including the
_capitana_, or flagship, of Spain, moored in their roads; and it is no
wonder that with such triumphs the new Barbary State flourished
exceedingly.
Fortified by a series of unbroken successes, Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n at last
ventured to attack the Spanish garrison, which had all this time
affronted him at the Penon de Alger. It was provoking to be obliged to
beach his galleots a mile to the west, and to drag them painfully up
the strand; and the merchantmen, moored east of the city, were exposed
to the weather to such a degree as to imperil their commerce.
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n resolved to have a port of his own at Algiers, with no
Spanish bridle to curb him. He summoned Don Martin de Vargas to
surrender, and, on his refusal, bombarded the Penon day and night for
fifteen days with heavy cannon, partly founded in Algiers, partly
seized from a French galleon, till an assault was practicable, when
the feeble remnant of the garrison was quickly overpowered and sent to
the bagnios. The stones of the fortress were used to build the great
mole which protects Algiers harbour on the west, and for two whole
years the Christian slaves were laboriously employed upon the work.
To aggravate this disaster, a curious sight was seen a fortnight after
the fall of the Penon. Nine transports, full of men and ammunition for
the reinforcement of the garrison, hove in sight, and long they
searched to and fro for the well-known fortress they had come to
succour. And whilst they marvelled that they could not discover it,
out dashed the Corsairs in their galleots and light sheb[=e]ks, and
seized the whole convoy, together with two thousand seven hundred
captives and a fine store of arms and provisions.[12]
Everything that Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n took in hand seemed to prosper. His
fleet increased month by month, till he had thirty-six of his own
galleots perpetually on the cruise in the summer season; his prizes
were innumerable, and his forces were increased by the fighting men of
the seventy thousand Moriscos whom he rescued, in a series of voyages,
from servitude in Spain. The waste places of Africa were peopled with
the industrious agriculturists and artisans whom the Spanish
Government knew not how to employ. The foundries and dockyards of
Algiers teemed with busy workmen. Seven thousand Christian slaves
laboured at the defensive works and the harbour; and every attempt of
the Emperor to rescue them and destroy the pirates was repelled with
disastrous loss.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n (pronounced by the Turks _Hare-udeen_), as has
been said, is the Barbarossa of modern writers, and it is probable that
the name was given to him originally under some impression that it was
of the nature of a family name. Haedo, Marmol, and H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa
all give him this title, though his beard was auburn, while Ur[=u]j was
the true "Red-Beard." Neither of the brothers was ever called
Barbarossa by Turks or Moors, and H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa records the title
merely as used by Europeans. The popular usage is here adopted.
[11] Morgan, 264-6.
[12] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. I., ch. xxi.
VI.
THE OTTOMAN NAVY.
1470-1522.
No one appreciated better the triumphs of the Beglerbeg of Algiers
than Sultan Suleym[=a]n. The Ottomans, as yet inexperienced in naval
affairs, were eager to take lessons. The Turkish navy had been of slow
growth, chiefly because in early days there were always people ready
to act as sailors for pay. When Mur[=a]d I. wished to cross from Asia
to Europe to meet the invading army of Vladislaus and Hunyady, the
Genoese skippers were happy to carry over his men for a ducat a head,
just to spite their immemorial foes the Venetians, who were enlisted
on the other side. It was not till the fall of Constantinople gave the
Turks the command of the Bosphorus that Mohammed II. resolved to
create for himself a naval power.
That fatal jealousy between the Christian States which so often aided
the progress of the Turks helped them now. The great commercial
republics, Genoa and Venice, had long been struggling for supremacy on
the sea. Venice held many important posts among the islands of the
Archipelago and on the Syrian coast, where the Crusaders had rewarded
her naval assistance with the gift of the fortress of Acre. Genoa was
stronger in the Black Sea and Marmora, where, until the coming of the
Turks, her colony at Galata was little less than an Oriental Genoa.
The Genoese tower is still seen on the steep slope of Pera, and
Genoese forts are common objects in the Bosphorus, and in the Crimea,
where they dominate the little harbour of Balaklava. The Sea of
Marmora was the scene of many a deadly contest between the rival
fleets. In 1352, under the walls of Constantinople, the Genoese
defeated the combined squadrons of the Venetians, the Catalonians, and
the Greeks. But next year the Bride of the Sea humbled the pride of
Genoa in a disastrous engagement off Alghero; and in 1380, when the
Genoese had gained possession of Chioggia and all but occupied Venice
itself, the citizens rose like one man to meet the desperate
emergency, and not only repulsed, but surrounded the invaders, and
forced them to capitulate. From this time Genoa declined in power,
while Venice waxed stronger and more haughty. The conquest of
Constantinople by the Turks, followed rapidly by the expulsion of the
Genoese from Trebizond, Sinope, Kaffa, and Azov, was the end of the
commercial prosperity of the Ligurian Republic in the East. The Black
Sea and Marmora were now Turkish lakes. The Castles of the
Dardanelles, mounted with heavy guns, protected any Ottoman fleet from
pursuit; and though Giacomo Veniero defiantly carried his own ship
under fire through the strait and back again with the loss of only
eleven men, no one cared to follow his example.
[Illustration: AN ADMIRAL'S GALLEY
(_Furttenbach, Architectura Navalis, 1629._)]
When Mohammed II. issued forth with a fleet of one hundred galleys and
two hundred transports, carrying seventy thousand troops, and ravished
the Negropont away from Venice in 1470, he had only to repass the
Hellespont to be absolutely safe. All that the Venetian admirals, the
famous Loredani, could do was to retaliate upon such islands of the
Archipelago as were under Turkish sway and ravage the coasts of Asia
Minor. Superior as they were to the Turks in the building and
management of galleys, they had not the military resources of their
foe. Their troops were mercenaries, not to be compared with the
Janissaries and Sip[=a]his, though the hardy Stradiotes from Epirus,
dressed like Turks, but without the turban, of whom Othello is a
familiar specimen, came near to rivalling them. On land, the Republic
could not meet the troops of the Grand Signior, and after her very
existence had been menaced by the near approach of a Turkish army on
the banks of the Piave[13] (1477), Venice made peace, and even, it is
said, incited the Turks to the capture of Otranto. The Ottoman galleys
were now free of the Adriatic, and carried fire and sword along the
Italian coast, insomuch that whenever the crescent was seen at a
vessel's peak the terrified villagers fled inland, and left their
homes at the mercy of the pirates. The period of the Turkish Corsairs
had already begun.
There was another naval power to be reckoned with besides discredited
Genoa and tributary Venice. The Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem,
driven from Smyrna (in 1403) by Timur, had settled at Rhodes, which
they hastened to render impregnable. Apparently they succeeded, for
attack after attack from the Maml[=u]k Sultans of Egypt failed to
shake them from their stronghold, whence they commanded the line of
commerce between Alexandria and Constantinople, and did a brisk trade
in piracy upon passing vessels. The Knights of Rhodes were the
Christian Corsairs of the Levant; the forests of Caramania furnished
them with ships, and the populations of Asia Minor supplied them with
slaves. So long as they roved the seas the Sultan's galleys were ill
at ease. Even Christian ships suffered from their high-handed
proceedings, and Venice looked on with open satisfaction when, in
1480, Mohammed II. despatched one hundred and sixty ships and a large
army to humble the pride of the Knights. The siege failed, however;
D'Aubusson, the Grand Master, repulsed the general assault with
furious heroism, and the Turks retired with heavy loss.[14]
Finding that the Ottomans were not quite invincible, Venice plucked up
heart, and began to prepare for hostilities with her temporary ally.
The interval of friendliness had been turned to good account by the
Turks. Y[=a]ni, the Christian shipbuilder of the Sultan, had studied
the improvements of the Venetians, and he now constructed two immense
_kokas_, seventy cubits long and thirty in the beam, with masts of
several trees spliced together, measuring four cubits round. Forty men
in armour might stand in the maintop and fire down upon the enemy.
There were two decks, one like a galleon's deck, and the other like a
galley, each with a big gun on either side. Four-and-twenty oars a
side, on the upper deck, were propelled each by nine men. Boats hung
from the stern; and the ship's complement consisted (so says H[=a]jji
Khal[=i]fa)[15] of two thousand soldiers and sailors. Kem[=a]l Reis
and Bor[=a]k Reis commanded these two prodigies, and the whole fleet,
numbering some three hundred other vessels, was despatched to the
Adriatic under the command of Da[=u]d Pasha. The object of attack was
Lepanto.
Towards the end of July, 1499, they sighted the Venetian fleet, which
was on the look-out for them, off Modon. They counted forty-four
galleys, sixteen galleasses, and twenty-eight ordinary sail. Neither
courted an action, which each knew to be fraught with momentous
consequences. Grimani, the Venetian admiral, retired to Navarino; the
Turks anchored off Sapienza. On August 12th Da[=u]d Pasha, who knew
the Sultan was awaiting him with the land forces at Lepanto, resolved
to push on at all costs. In those days Turkish navigators had little
confidence in the open sea; they preferred to hug the shore, where
they might run into a port in case of bad weather. Da[=u]d accordingly
endeavoured to pass between the island of Prodano and the Morea, just
north of Navarino. Perfectly aware of his course, the Venetians had
drawn out their fleet at the upper end of the narrow passage, where
they had the best possible chance of catching the enemy in confused
order. The Proveditore of Corfu, Andrea Loredano, had reinforced the
Christian fleet that very day with ten ships; the position was well
chosen; the wind was fair, and drove full down upon the Turks as they
emerged from the strait. But the Venetian admiral placed his chief
reliance in his galleasses, and as yet the art of manoeuvring sailing
vessels in battle array was in its youth. Bad steering here, a wrong
tack there, and then ship ran against ship, the great galleasses
became entangled and helpless, carried by the wind into the midst of
the enemy, or borne away where they were useless, and the Turkish
galleys had it all their own way. Loredano's flagship burnt down to
the water, and other vessels were destroyed by fire. Y[=a]ni's big
ships played an important part in the action. Two galleasses, each
containing a thousand men, and two other vessels, surrounded Bor[=a]k
Reis, but the smaller ships could not fire over the _koka's_ lofty
sides, and were speedily sunk. Bor[=a]k Reis threw burning pitch into
the galleasses, and burnt up crews and ships, till, his own vessel
catching fire, he and other notable captains, after performing
prodigies of valour, perished in the flames. Wherefore the island of
Prodano is by the Turks called Bor[=a]k Isle to this day.[16] To the
Christians the action was known as "the deplorable battle of Zonchio,"
from the name of the old castle of Navarino, beneath which it was
fought.
[Illustration: GALLEASSE.
(_Furttenbach, Architectura Navalis, 1620._)]
In spite of his success at Zonchio, Da[=u]d Pasha had still to fight
his way up to Lepanto. The Venetians had collected their scattered
fleet, and had been reinforced by their allies of France and Rhodes;
it was clear they were bent on revenge. The Turks hugged the land,
dropped anchor at night, and kept a sharp look-out. It was a perpetual
skirmish all the way. The Venetians tried to surprise the enemy at
their moorings, but they were already at sea, and squally weather
upset Grimani's strategy and he had the mortification of seeing his
six fire-ships burning innocuously with never a Turk the worse. Again
and again it seemed impossible that Da[=u]d could escape, but
Grimani's Fabian policy delivered the enemy out of his hands, and when
finally the Turkish fleet sailed triumphantly into the Gulf of Patras,
where it was protected by the Sultan's artillery at Lepanto, the Grand
Prior of Auvergne, who commanded the French squadron, sailed away in
disgust at the pusillanimity of his colleague. Lepanto fell, August
28th; and Grimani was imprisoned, nominally for life, for his
blundering: nevertheless, after twenty-one years he was made Doge.[17]
Venice never recovered from her defeat. The loss of Lepanto and the
consequent closing of the gulfs of Patras and Corinth were followed by
the capture of Modon, commanding the strait of Sapienza: the east
coast of the Adriatic and Ionian seas was no longer open to Christian
vessels. The Oriental trade of the republic was further seriously
impaired by the Turkish conquest of Egypt (1517),[18] which deprived
her of her most important mart; and the discovery of the New World
brought Spanish traders into successful competition with her own.
Venice indeed was practically an Oriental city; her skilled workmen
learned their arts in Egypt and Mesopotamia; her bazaars were filled
with the products of the East, with the dimity and other cloths and
silks and brocades of Damietta, Alexandria, Tinnis, and Cairo, cotton
from Ba'lbekk, silk from Baghd[=a]d, atlas satin from Ma'din in
Armenia; and she introduced to Europe not only the products of the
East, but their very names. Sarcenet is Saracen stuff; tabby is named
after a street in Baghd[=a]d where watered silk was made; Baldacchini
are simply "Baldac," _i.e._, Baghd[=a]d, canopies; samite is
Sh[=a]m[=i], "Syrian," fabric; the very coat of the Egyptian, the
_jubba_, is preserved in giuppa, jupe.[19] With the loss of her
Oriental commerce, which the hostility of the Turks involved, Venice
could no longer hold her own. She bowed to her fate and acknowledged
the Turkish supremacy by sea as well as by land. She even paid the
Sultan tribute for the island of Cyprus. When Suleym[=a]n the
Magnificent succeeded Sel[=i]m and took Belgrade (1521), Venice
hastily increased her payment and did homage for Zante as well. So
meek had now become the Bride of the Sea.
Turkey still suffered the annoyance of the Rhodian Corsairs, and till
they were removed her naval supremacy was not complete. Genoa and
Venice had been humbled: the turn of the Knights of St. John was
come. Sel[=i]m had left his son, the great Suleym[=a]n, the legacy of
a splendid fleet, prepared for this very enterprize. One hundred and
three swift galleys, thirty-five galleasses, besides smaller craft,
and 107 transports, "naves, fustes, mahones, tafforees, galions, et
esquirasses,"[20] formed a noble navy, and Rhodes fell, after an
heroic defence, at the close of 1522. For six months the Knights held
out, against a fleet which had swollen to four hundred sail and an
army of over a hundred thousand men commanded by the Sultan in person.
It was a crisis in the history of Europe: the outpost of Christendom
was at bay. The Knights realized their duty nobly, but they had the
best engineers in the world against them, and all the resources of a
now mighty empire, wielded by a master-mind. Suleym[=a]n surrounded
the city with his works, and made regular approaches for his advancing
batteries and mines; yet at the end of a month not a wall was down,
and the eight bastions of the eight Tongues of the Order--the English,
French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Provencal, and
Auvergnat--were so far unmoved. Gabriel Martinego of Candia
superintended the countermines with marked success.[21] At last the
English bastion was blown up; the Turks swarmed to the breach, and
were beaten back with a loss of two thousand men. A second assault
failed, but on September 24th they succeeded in getting a foothold,
and the destruction of the Spanish, Italian, and Provencal bastions by
the Turkish mines and the consequent exposure of the exhausted
garrison rendered the defence more and more perilous. The Ottoman army
too was suffering severely, from disease, as well as from the deadly
weapons of the Knights, and in the hope of sparing his men Suleym[=a]n
offered the garrison life and liberty if they would surrender the
city. At first they proudly rejected the offer, but within a
fortnight, finding their ammunition exhausted and their numbers sadly
thinned, on December 21st they begged the Sultan to repeat his
conditions, and, with an honourable clemency, Suleym[=a]n let them all
depart unmolested in his own ships to such ports in Europe as seemed
best to them.[22]
The fall of Rhodes removed the last obstacle to the complete
domination of the Ottoman fleet in the eastern basin of the
Mediterranean. Henceforward no Christian ship was safe in those waters
unless by the pleasure of the Sultan. The old maritime Republics were
for the time reduced to impotence, and no power existed to challenge
the Ottoman supremacy in the Aegean, Ionian, and Adriatic Seas.
Almost at the same time the brothers Barbarossa had effected a similar
triumph in the west. The capture of Algiers and the firm establishment
of various strong garrisons on the Barbary coast had given the Turkish
Corsairs the command of the western basin of the Mediterranean.
Suleym[=a]n the Magnificent saw the necessity of combination; he knew
that Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n could teach the Stambol navigators and
ship-builders much that they ought to learn; his Grand Vez[=i]r
Ibrah[=i]m strenuously urged a closer relation between the Turkish
powers of the east and west; and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n received the Imperial
command to present himself at Constantinople.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Story of Turkey_, 135.
[14] See _The Story of Turkey_, 136.
[15] _History of the Maritime Wars of the Turks_, 20.
[16] H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, 21.
[17] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. I., ch. xv.
[18] See the _Story of Turkey_, 158-163.
[19] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Art of the Saracens_, 239, &c.
[20] _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II., ch. vii.
[21] _Ibid._, Pt. II., ch. vii., p. 106 ff.
[22] See the _Story of Turkey_, 170; and the illustrations, pp. 137,
147, 171, 175, 177.
VII.
DORIA AND BARBAROSSA.
1533.
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n was in no hurry to visit the Sublime Porte. He had to
provide for the safety and government of Algiers during his absence,
when exposed to the dangers both of foreign attack and internal
intrigue. He had to reckon with the galleys of the Knights of St.
John, who, after wandering homeless for a longer time than was at all
creditable to that Christendom which they had so heroically defended
at Rhodes, had finally settled in no less convenient a spot than
Malta, whence they had every opportunity of harassing the operations
of the Corsairs (1530). Moreover Andrea Doria was cruising about, and
he was not the sort of opponent Barbarossa cared to meet by hazard.
The great Genoese admiral considered it a personal duel with
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n. Each held the supreme position on his own side of the
water. Both were old men and had grown old in arms. Born in 1468, of a
noble Genoese family, Doria was sixty-five years of age, of which
nearly fifty had been spent in warfare. He had been in the Pope's
guard, and had seen service under the Duke of Urbino and Alfonso of
Naples, and when he was over forty he had taken to the sea and found
himself suddenly High Admiral of Genoa (1513). His appointment to the
command of his country's galleys was due to his zealous services on
shore, and not to any special experience of naval affairs; indeed the
commander of the galleys was as much a military as a naval officer.
Doria, however, late as he adopted his profession, possessed undoubted
gifts as a seaman, and his leadership decided which of the rival
Christian Powers should rule the Mediterranean waves. He devoted his
sword to France in 1522, when a revolution overthrew his party in his
own republic; and so long as he was on the French side the command of
the sea, so far as it did not belong to the Barbary Corsairs, belonged
to France. When in 1528 he judged himself and his country ill-used by
Francis I., he carried over his own twelve galleys to the side of
Charles V.; and then the Imperial navies once more triumphed. Doria
was the arbiter of fortune between the contending states. Doria was
the liberator of Genoa, and, refusing to be her king, remained her
idol and her despot. No name struck such terror into the hearts of the
Turks; many a ship had fallen a prey to his devouring galleys, and
many a Moslem slave pulled at his oars or languished in Genoese
prisons. Officially an admiral, he was at the same time personally a
Corsair, and used his private galleys to increase his wealth.
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's fame among Christians and Turks alike was at least
as great and glorious as his rival's. He had driven the Spaniards out
of Algiers and had inflicted incalculable injuries upon the ships and
shores of the Empire. Though the two had roved the same sea for twenty
years, they had never met in naval combat: perhaps each had respected
the other too much to risk an encounter. Long ago, when
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n was unknown to fame, Doria had driven him from the
Goletta (1513); and in 1531 the Genoese admiral made a descent upon
Shersh[=e]l, which Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had been strengthening, to the
great detriment and anxiety of the opposite coast of Spain. The
Imperialists landed in force, surprised the fort, and liberated seven
hundred Christian slaves. Then, contrary to orders and heedless of the
signal gun which summoned them on board, the soldiery dispersed about
the town in search of pillage, and, being taken at a disadvantage by
the Turks and Moriscos of the place, were driven in confusion down to
the beach, only to perceive Doria's galleys rapidly pulling away. Nine
hundred were slaughtered on the seashore and six hundred made
prisoners. Some say that the admiral intended to punish his men for
their disobedience; others that he sighted Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's fleet
coming to the rescue. At all events he drew off, and the two great
rivals did not meet. The Genoese picked up some Barbary vessels on his
way home to console him for his failure.
[Illustration: ANDREA DORIA.]
In the following year he retrieved his fame by a brilliant expedition
to the coasts of Greece. With thirty-five sail and forty-eight galleys
he attacked Coron, by way of making a diversion while Sultan
Suleym[=a]n was invading Hungary,[23] and after a heavy bombardment
succeeded in landing his men on the curtain of the fort. The Turkish
garrison was spared and marched out, and Mendoza was left in command,
while Doria bore up to Patras and took it, occupied the castles which
guard the Gulf of Corinth, and returned in triumph to Genoa before the
Turkish fleet could come up with him. This was in September, 1532. In
the following spring a yet more daring feat was accomplished. Coron
was running short of supplies, and a Turkish fleet blockaded the port.
Nevertheless Cristofero Pallavicini carried his ship in, under cover
of the castle guns, and encouraged the garrison to hold out; and
Doria, following in splendid style, fought his way in, notwithstanding
that half his fleet, being sailing galleons, became becalmed in the
midst of the Turkish galleys, and had to be rescued in the teeth of
the enemy. Lutfi Pasha was outmanoeuvred and defeated. This
revictualling of Coron, says Admiral Jurien de la Graviere, was one of
the skilfullest naval operations of the sixteenth century.[24]
It was clear that, while Doria had effected almost nothing against the
Barbary Corsairs, he always mastered the Turks. The Sultan was eager
to discover Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's secret of success, and counted the days
till he should arrive in the Golden Horn. The Corsair, for his part,
had heard enough of Doria's recent exploits to use more than his
habitual caution, and he was not disposed to cheapen his value in the
Sultan's eyes by a too precipitate compliance with his Majesty's
command. At last, in August, 1533, having appointed Hasan Aga, a
Sardinian eunuch, in whom he greatly confided, to be viceroy during
his absence, Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n set sail from Algiers with a few galleys;
and after doing a little business on his own account--looting Elba and
picking up some Genoese corn-ships--pursued his way, passing Malta at
a respectful distance, and coasting the Morea, till he dropped anchor
in the Bay of Salonica.[25] By his route, which touched Santa Maura
and Navarino, he appears to have been looking for Doria, in spite of
the smallness of his own force (which had, however, been increased by
prizes); but, fortunately, perhaps, for the Corsair, the Genoese
admiral had returned to Sicily, and the two had missed each other on
the way.
Soon the eyes of the Sultan were rejoiced with the sight of a Barbary
fleet, gaily dressed with flags and pennons, rounding Seraglio Point,
and, in perfect order, entering the deep water of the Golden Horn; and
presently Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n and his eighteen captains were bowing before
the Grand Signior, and reaping the rewards due to their fame and
services. It was a strange sight that day at Eski Serai,[26] and the
divan was crowded. The tried generals and statesmen of the greatest of
Ottoman emperors assembled to gaze upon the rough sea-dogs whose
exploits were on the lips of all Europe; and most of all they
scrutinized the vigorous well-knit yet burly figure of the old man
with the bushy eyebrows and thick beard, once a bright auburn, but
now hoary with years and exposure to the freaks of fortune and rough
weather. In his full and searching eye, that could blaze with ready
and unappeasable fury, they traced the resolute mind which was to show
them the way to triumphs at sea, comparable even to those which their
victorious Sultan had won before strong walls and on the battle plain.
The Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m recognized in Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n the man he
needed, and the Algerine Corsair was preferred before all the admirals
of Turkey, and appointed to reconstruct the Ottoman navy. He spent the
winter in the dockyards, where his quick eye instantly detected the
faults of the builders. The Turks of Constantinople, he found, knew
neither how to build nor how to work their galleys.[27] Theirs were
not so swift as the Christians'; and instead of turning sailors
themselves, and navigating them properly, they used to kidnap
shepherds from Arcadia and Anatolia, who had never handled a sail or a
tiller in their lives, and entrust the navigation of their galleys to
these inexperienced hands.[28] Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n soon changed all this.
Fortunately there were workmen and timber in abundance, and, inspiring
his men with his own marvellous energy, he laid out sixty-one galleys
during the winter, and was able to take the sea with a fleet of
eighty-four vessels in the spring. The period of Turkish supremacy on
the sea dates from Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's winter in the dockyards.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] See the _Story of Turkey_, 191.
[24] _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II. ch. xxv.
[25] The Spanish historians are silent on the subject of this
expedition: or, rather, Haedo positively denies it, and says that
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n sent an embassy to the Sultan, but did not go in
person. H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, however, is clear and detailed in his
account of the visit.
[26] For an account of Stambol and the old Seraglio see the _Story of
Turkey_, 260 ff.
[27] See Chapter XVI., below.
[28] So says Jean Chesneau, French secretary at Constantinople in 1543.
See Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 13.
VIII.
TUNIS TAKEN AND LOST.
1534-1535.
The dwellers on the coasts of Italy soon discovered the new spirit in
the Turkish fleet; they had now to dread Corsairs on both hands, east
as well as west. In the summer of 1534 Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n led his new
fleet of eighty-four galleys forth from the Golden Horn, to flesh
their appetite on a grand quest of prey. Entering the Straits of
Messina, he surprised Reggio, and carried off ships and slaves;
stormed and burnt the castle of S. Lucida next day, and took eight
hundred prisoners; seized eighteen galleys at Cetraro; put Sperlonga
to the sword and brand, and loaded his ships with wives and maidens. A
stealthy inland march brought the Corsairs to Fondi, where lay Giulia
Gonzaga, the young and beautiful widow of Vespasio Colonna, Duchess of
Trajetto and Countess of Fondi. She was sister to the "heavenly Joanna
of Aragon," on whose loveliness two hundred and eighty Italian poets
and rimesters in vain exhausted the resources of several languages;--a
loveliness shared by the sister whose device was the "Flower of Love"
amaranth blazoned on her shield. This beauty Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n destined
for the Sultan's harem, and so secret were the Corsairs' movements
that he almost surprised the fair Giulia in her bed. She had barely
time to mount a horse in her shift and fly with a single
attendant,--whom she afterwards condemned to death, perhaps because
the beauty revealed that night had made him overbold.[29] Enraged at
her escape the pirates made short work of Fondi; the church was
wrecked, and the plundering went on for four terrible hours, never to
be forgotten by the inhabitants.
Refreshed and excited by their successful raid, the Turks needed
little encouragement to enter with heartiness upon the real object of
the expedition, which was nothing less than the annexation of the
kingdom of Tunis. Three centuries had passed since the Sultans of the
race of Hafs had established their authority on the old Carthaginian
site, upon the breaking up of the African empire of the Almohades.
Their rule had been mild and just; they had maintained on the whole
friendly relations with the European powers, and many treaties record
the fair terms upon which the merchants of Pisa, Venice, and Genoa
were admitted to the port of Tunis. Saint Louis had been so struck
with the piety and justice of the king that he had even come to
convert him, and had died in the attempt. Twenty-one rulers of their
line had succeeded one another, till the vigour of the Ben[=i] Hafs
was sapped, and fraternal jealousies added bloodshed to weakness.
Hasan, the twenty-second, stepped to the throne over the bodies of
forty-four slaughtered brothers, and when he had thus secured his
place he set a pattern of vicious feebleness for all sovereigns to
avoid. A rival claimant served as the Corsair's pretext for invasion,
and Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had hardly landed when this miserable wretch fled
the city, and though supported by some of the Arab tribes he could
make no head against the Turkish guns. Tunis, like Algiers, had been
added to the Ottoman Empire, against its will, and by the same
masterful hands. It may be doubted whether the Sultan's writ would
have run in either of his new provinces had their conqueror gainsaid
it.
[Illustration: TUNIS, 1566.
(_From a Map in the British Museum._)]
Tunis did not long remain in the possession of Barbarossa. The
banished king appealed to Charles V., and, whatever the emperor may
have thought of Hasan's wrongs, he plainly perceived that Barbarossa's
presence in Tunis harbour was a standing menace to his own kingdom of
Sicily. It was bad enough to see nests of pirates perched upon the
rocks of the Algerine coast; but Tunis was the key of the passage from
the west to the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and to leave it in
the Corsairs' hands was to the last degree hazardous. Accordingly he
espoused the cause of Hasan, and at the end of May, 1535, he set sail
from Barcelona with six hundred ships commanded by Doria (who had his
own grudge to settle), and carrying the flower of the Imperial troops,
Spaniards, Italians, and Germans. In June he laid siege to the
Goletta--or _halk-el-w[=e]d_, "throat of the torrent," as the Arabs
called it--those twin towers a mile asunder which guarded the channel
of Tunis. The great carack _St. Ann_, sent, with four galleys, by "the
Religion" (so the Knights of Malta styled their Order), was moored
close in, and her heavy cannon soon made a breach, through which the
Chevalier Cossier led the Knights of St. John, who always claimed the
post of danger, into the fortress, and planted the banner of "the
Religion" on the battlements[30] (14 July). Three desperate sallies
had the besieged made under the leadership of Sin[=a]n the Jew; three
Italian generals of rank had fallen in the melley; before they were
driven in confusion back upon the city of Tunis, leaving the Goletta
with all its stores of weapons and ammunition, and its forty guns,
some of them famous for their practice at the siege of Rhodes, and
more than a hundred vessels, in the hands of the enemy. Barbarossa
came out to meet the emperor at the head of nearly ten thousand
troops; but his Berbers refused to fight, the thousands of Christian
slaves in the Kasaba (or citadel), aided by treachery, broke their
chains and shut the gates behind him; and, after defending his rampart
as long as he could, the Corsair chief, with Sin[=a]n and Ayd[=i]n
"Drub-Devil," made his way to Bona, where he had fortunately left
fifteen of his ships. The lines of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's triple wall may
still be traced across the neck of land which separates the lake of
Tunis from the Mediterranean. Fifteen years ago this rampart was cut
through, when nearly two hundred skeletons, some Spanish money, cannon
balls, and broken weapons were found outside it.[31]
For three days Charles gave up the city of Tunis to the brutality of
his soldiers. They were days of horrible license and bloodshed. Men,
women, and children were massacred, and worse than massacred, in
thousands. The infuriated troops fought one with the other for the
possession of the spoil, and the luckless Christians of the Kasaba were
cut down by their deliverers in the struggle for Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's
treasures. The streets became shambles, the houses dens of murder and
shame: the very Catholic chroniclers admit the abominable outrages
committed by the licentious and furious soldiery of the great Emperor.
It is hard to remember that almost at the very time when German and
Spanish and Italian men-at-arms were outraging and slaughtering
helpless, innocent people in Tunis, who had taken little or no hand in
Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n's wars and had accepted his authority with reluctance,
the Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m was entering Baghd[=a]d and Tebr[=i]z as
a conqueror at the head of wild Asiatic troops, and not a house nor a
human being was molested. _Fas est et ab hoste doceri._
So far as Tunis was concerned the expedition of Charles V. was
fruitless. Before he sailed in August he made a treaty with Hasan,
which stipulated for tribute to Spain, the possession of the Goletta
by the crown of Castile, the freeing of Christian slaves, the
cessation of piracy, and the payment of homage by an annual tribute
of six Moorish barbs and twelve falcons; and he and the Moor duly
swore it on Cross and sword. But the treaty was so much parchment
wasted. No Moslem prince who had procured his restoration by such
means as Hasan had used, who had spilt Moslem blood with Christian
weapons and ruined Moslem homes by the sacrilegious atrocities of
"infidel" soldiers, and had bound himself the vassal of "idolatrous"
Spain, could hope to keep his throne long. He was an object of horror
and repulsion to the people upon whom he had brought this awful
calamity, and so fierce was their scorn of the traitor to Islam that
the story is told of a Moorish girl in the clutch of the soldiers,
who, when the restored King of Tunis sought to save her, spat in his
face; anything was better than the dishonour of his protection. Hasan
pretended to reign for five years, but the country was in arms, holy
Kayraw[=a]n would have nothing to say to a governor who owed his
throne to infidel ravishers; Imperial troops in vain sought to keep
him there; Doria himself succeeded only for a brief while in reducing
the coast towns to the wretched prince's authority; and in 1540 Hasan
was imprisoned and blinded by his son Ham[=i]d, and none can pity him.
The coast was in the possession of the Corsairs, and, as we shall see,
even the Spaniards were forced ere long to abandon the Goletta.
Nevertheless, the expedition to Tunis was a feat of which Europe was
proud. Charles V. seldom suffered from depreciation of his exploits,
and, as Morgan quaintly says, "I have never met with that Spaniard in
my whole life, who, I am persuaded, would not have bestowed on me at
least forty _Boto a Christo's_, had I pretended to assert Charles V.
not to have held this whole universal globe in a string for
four-and-twenty hours; and _then it broke_: though none had ever the
good nature or manners to inform or correct my ignorance in genuine
history, by letting me into the secret when that critical and slippery
period of time was."[32] Naturally admirers so thoroughgoing made the
most of the conquest of Tunis, the reduction of the formidable
Goletta, the release of thousands of Christian captives, and, above
all, the discomfiture of that scourge of Christendom, Barbarossa
himself. Poets sang of it, a painter-in-ordinary depicted the siege, a
potter at Urbino burnt the scene into his vase; all Europe was agog
with enthusiasm at the feat. Charles posed as a crusader and a
knight-errant, and commemorated his gallant deeds and those of his
gentlemen by creating a new order of chivalry, the Cross of Tunis,
with the motto "Barbaria," of which however we hear no more.
Altogether "it was a famous victory."
The joy of triumph was sadly marred by the doings of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n.
That incorrigible pirate, aware that no one would suspect that he
could be roving while Charles was besieging his new kingdom, took
occasion to slip over to Minorca with his twenty-seven remaining
galleots; and there, flying Spanish and other false colours, deceived
the islanders into the belief that his vessels were part of the
Armada; upon which he rowed boldly into Port Mahon, seized a rich
Portuguese galleon, sacked the town, and, laden with six thousand
captives and much booty and ammunition, led his prize back in triumph
to Algiers. In the meanwhile Doria was assiduously hunting for him
with thirty galleys, under the emperor's express orders to catch him
dead or alive. The great Genoese had to wait yet three years for his
long-sought duel.
Having accomplished its object, the Armada, as usual, broke up without
making a decisive end of the Corsairs. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, waiting at
Algiers in expectation of attack, heard the news gladly, and, when the
coast was clear, sailed back to Constantinople for reinforcements. He
never saw Algiers again.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Von Hammer, _Gesch. d. Osm. Reiches_, ii. 129.
[30] Broadley, _Tunis, Past and Present_, i. 42, quoting a narrative by
Boyssat, one of the Knights of Malta, written in 1612.
[31] On Charles's expedition to Tunis, consult Marmol, H[=a]jji
Khal[=i]fa, Robertson, Morgan, Von Hammer, and Broadley. In the last
will be found some interesting photographs of Jan Cornelis Vermeyen's
pictures, painted on the spot during the progress of the siege, by
command of the Emperor, and now preserved at Windsor. All the accounts
of the siege and capture show discrepancies which it seems hopeless to
reconcile.
[32] _Hist. of Algiers_, 286.
IX.
THE SEA-FIGHT OFF PREVESA.
1537.
When Barbarossa returned to Constantinople Tunis was forgotten and
Minorca alone called to mind: instead of the title of Beglerbeg of
Algiers, the Sultan saluted him as Capudan Pasha or High Admiral of
the Ottoman fleets. There was work to be done in the Adriatic, and
none was fitter to do it than the great Corsair. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had
acquired an added influence at Stambol since the execution of the
Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m,[33] and he used it in exactly the opposite
direction. Ibrah[=i]m, a Dalmatian by birth, had always striven to
maintain friendly relations with Venice, his native state, and for
more than thirty years there had been peace between the Republic and
the Porte. Barbarossa, on the contrary, longed to pit his galleys
against the most famous of the maritime nations of the Middle Ages,
and to make the Crescent as supreme in the waters of the Adriatic as
it was in the Aegean. Francis I. was careful to support this policy
out of his jealousy of the Empire. The Venetians, anxious to keep on
good terms with the Sultan, and to hold a neutral position between
Francis and Charles V., found themselves gradually committed to a war,
and by their own fault. Their commanders in the Adriatic and at Candia
were unable to resist the temptation of chasing Ottoman merchantmen.
Canale, the Proveditore of Candia, caught a noted Corsair, the "Young
Moor of Alexander," as his victims called him, sunk or captured his
galleys, killed his Janissaries, and severely wounded the young Moor
himself;--and all this in Turkish waters, on Turkish subjects, and in
time of peace. Of course when the too gallant Proveditore came to his
senses and perceived his folly, he patched the young Moor's wounds and
sent him tenderly back to Algiers: but the Sultan's ire was already
roused, and when Venetian galleys actually gave chase to a ship that
carried a Turkish ambassador, no apologies that the Signoria offered
could wipe out the affront. War was inevitable, and Venice hastily
made common cause with the Pope and the Emperor against the formidable
host which now advanced upon the Adriatic.
Before this, some stirring actions had been fought off the coasts of
Greece. Doria, sallying forth from Messina, had met the governor of
Gallipoli off Paxos, and had fought him before daybreak. Standing
erect on the poop, conspicuous in his cramoisy doublet, the tall
figure of the old admiral was seen for an hour and a half directing
the conflict, sword in hand, an easy mark for sharpshooters, as a
wound in the knee reminded him. After a severe struggle the twelve
galleys of the enemy were captured and carried in triumph to Messina.
Barbarossa was sorely wanted now, and in May, 1537, he sailed with one
hundred and thirty-five galleys to avenge the insult. For a whole
month he laid waste the Apulian coast like a pestilence, and carried
off ten thousand slaves, while Doria lay helpless with a far inferior
force in Messina roads. The Turks were boasting that they might soon
set up a Pope of their own, when the war with Venice broke out, and
they were called off from their devastation of Italy by the Sultan's
command to besiege Corfu. The Ionian islands were always a bone of
contention between the Turks and their neighbours, and a war with
Venice naturally began with an attack upon Corfu. The Senate had shut
its eyes as long as possible to the destination of the huge armaments
which had left Constantinople in the spring: Tunis, or perhaps Naples,
was said to be their object. But now they were undeceived, and on the
25th of August, Captain Pasha Barbarossa landed twenty-five thousand
men and thirty cannon under Lutfi Pasha, three miles from the castle
of Corfu. Four days later the Grand Vez[=i]r Ay[=a]s, with twenty-five
thousand more and a brilliant staff, joined the first-comers, and the
Akinji or light troops spread fire and sword around. A fifty-pounder
fired nineteen shots in three days, but only five struck the fortress:
the Turks fired too high, and many of their missiles fell harmlessly
into the sea beyond. In spite of storm and rain the Grand Vez[=i]r
would not desist from making the round of the trenches by night.
Suleym[=a]n offered liberal terms of capitulation, but the besieged
sent back his messenger with never an answer. Alexandro Tron worked
the big guns of the castle with terrible precision. Two galleys were
quickly sunk, four men were killed in the trenches by a single shot--a
new and alarming experience in those early days of gunnery--four times
the Fort of St. Angelo was attacked in vain; winter was approaching,
and the Sultan determined to raise the siege. In vain Barbarossa
remonstrated: "A thousand such castles were not worth the life of one
of his brave men," said the Sultan, and on the 17th of September the
troops began to re-embark.[34]
Then began a scene of devastation such as the isles of Greece have too
often witnessed,--not from Turks only, but from Genoese and Venetians,
who also came to the Archipelago for their oarsmen,--but never perhaps
on so vast a scale. Butrinto was burnt, Paxos conquered, and then
Barbarossa carried fire and sword throughout the Adriatic and the
Archipelago. With seventy galleys and thirty galleots, he raged among
the islands, most of which belonged to noble families of Venice--the
Venieri, Grispi, Pisani, Quirini. Syra, Skyros, Aegina, Paros, Naxos,
Tenos, and other Venetian possessions were overwhelmed, and thousands
of their people carried off to pull a Turkish oar. Naxos contributed
five thousand dollars as her first year's tribute; Aegina furnished
six thousand slaves. Many trophies did Barbarossa bring home to
Stambol, whose riches certainly did his own and the Sultan's, if not
"the general coffer, fill." Four hundred thousand pieces of gold, a
thousand girls, and fifteen hundred boys, were useful resources when
he returned to "rub his countenance against the royal stirrup."[35]
Two hundred boys in scarlet, bearing gold and silver bowls; thirty
more laden with purses; two hundred with rolls of fine cloth: such was
the present with which the High Admiral approached the Sultan's
presence.
Suleym[=a]n's genius was at that time bent upon three distinct
efforts: he was carrying on a campaign in Moldavia; his Suez fleet--a
novelty in Ottoman history--was invading the Indian Ocean, with no
very tangible result, it is true (unless a trophy of Indian ears and
noses may count), save the conquest of Aden on the return voyage, but
still a notable exploit, and disturbing to the Portuguese in Gujerat;
and his High Admiral was planning the destruction of the maritime
power of Venice.
In the summer of 1538, Barbarossa put off to sea, and soon had one
hundred and fifty sail under his command. He began by collecting
rowers and tribute from the islands, twenty-five of which had now been
transferred from the Venetian to the Turkish allegiance, and then laid
waste eighty villages in Candia. Here news was brought that the united
fleet of the Emperor, Venice, and the Pope was cruising in the
Adriatic, and the Captain Pasha hastened to meet it. The pick of the
Corsairs was with him. Round his flagship were ranged the galleys of
Dragut, Mur[=a]d Reis, Sin[=a]n, S[=a]lih Reis with twenty Egyptian
vessels, and others, to the number of one hundred and twenty-two
ships of war. The advance guard sighted part of the enemy off
Prevesa--a Turkish fortress opposite the promontory of Arta or Actium,
where Antony suffered his memorable defeat.
[Illustration: COMPASS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]
The Christian strength was really overwhelming. Eighty Venetian,
thirty-six Papal, and thirty Spanish galleys, together with fifty
sailing galleons, made up a formidable total of nearly two hundred
ships of war, and they carried scarcely less than sixty thousand men,
and two thousand five hundred guns. Doria was in chief command, and
Capello and Grimani led the Venetian and Roman contingents. Barbarossa
had fortunately received but an imperfect report of the enemy's
strength and so boldly pursued his northerly course up the Adriatic.
When he reached Prevesa, the combined fleets had gone on to Corfu, and
he was able to enter unopposed the spacious gulf of Arta, where all
the navies of the world might safely anchor and defy pursuit.
On September 25th, the allied fleets appeared off the entrance to the
gulf, and then for the first time Barbarossa realized his immense good
fortune in being the first in the bay. Outnumbered as he was, a fight
in the open sea might have ended in the total destruction of his navy;
but secure in an ample harbour, on a friendly coast, behind a bar
which the heavier vessels of the enemy could not cross, he could wait
his opportunity and take the foe at a disadvantage. The danger was
that Doria might disembark his guns and attack from the shores of the
gulf, and to meet this risk some of the Turkish captains insisted on
landing their men and trying to erect earthworks for their
protection; but the fire from the Christian ships soon stopped this
manoeuvre. Barbarossa had never expected Doria to hazard a landing,
and he was right. The old admiral of Charles V. was not likely to
expose his ships to the risk of a sally from the Turks just when he
had deprived them of the men and guns that could alone defend them.
The two fleets watched each other warily. Doria and Barbarossa had at
last come face to face for a great battle, but, strange as it may
seem, neither cared to begin: Barbarossa was conscious of serious
numerical inferiority; Doria was anxious for the safety of his fifty
big sailing vessels, on the heavy artillery of which he most relied,
but which a contrary wind might drive to destruction on the hostile
coast. As it was, his guideship on the extreme left had but a fathom
of water under her keel. Each felt keenly the weighty responsibility
of his position, and even the sense that now at last the decisive day
of their long rivalry had come could not stir them from their policy
of prudence. Moreover, it was no longer a question of the prowess of
hot-blooded youth: Doria and Barbarossa and Capello were all men of
nearly seventy years, and Doria was certainly not the man he once was;
politics had spoilt him.
So the two great admirals waited and eyed each other's strength. Will
Barbarossa come out? Or must Doria risk the passage of the bar and
force his way in to the encounter? Neither event happened: but on the
morning of the 27th the Corsairs rubbed their eyes to feel if they
were asleep, as they saw the whole magnificent navy of Christendom,
anchor a-peak, sailing slowly and majestically--_away!_ Were the
Christians afraid? Anyhow no one, not even Barbarossa, could hold the
Turks back now. Out they rushed in hot pursuit, not thinking or
caring--save their shrewd captain--whether this were not a feint of
Doria's to catch them in the open. "Get into line," said Barbarossa to
his captains, "and do as you see me do." Dragut took the right wing,
S[=a]lih Reis the left. Early on the 28th the Christian fleet was
discovered at anchor, in a foul wind, off Santa Maura, thirty miles to
the south. Doria was not at all prepared for such prompt pursuit, and
eyed with anxiety the long battle line of one hundred and forty
galleys, galleots, and brigantines, bearing down upon him before the
wind. His ships were scattered, for the sails could not keep up with
the oars, and Condulmiero's huge Venetian carack was becalmed off
Zuara, a long way behind, and others were in no better plight. Three
hours Doria hesitated, and then gave the order to sail north and meet
the enemy. Condulmiero was already fiercely engaged, and soon his
carack was a mere unrigged helmless waterlog, only saved from instant
destruction by her immense size and terrific guns, which, well aimed,
low on the water, to gain the _ricochet_, did fearful mischief among
the attacking galleys. Two galleons were burnt to the water's edge,
and their crews took to the boats; a third, Boccanegra's, lost her
mainmast, and staggered away crippled. What was Doria about? The wind
was now in his favour; the enemy was in front: but Doria continued to
tack and manoeuvre at a distance. What he aimed at is uncertain: his
colleagues Grimani and Capello went on board his flagship, and
vehemently remonstrated with him, and even implored him to depart and
let them fight the battle with their own ships, but in vain. He was
bent on tactics, when what was needed was pluck; and tactics lost the
day. The Corsairs took, it is true, only seven galleys and sailing
vessels, but they held the sea. Doria sailed away in the evening for
Corfu, and the whole allied fleet followed in a gale of wind.[36]
[Illustration: OBSERVATION WITH THE ASTROLABE.
(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]
So, after all, the great duel was never fairly fought between the
sea-rivals. Barbarossa was willing, but Doria held back: he preferred
to show his seamanship instead of his courage. The result was in
effect a victory, a signal victory, for the Turks. Two hundred
splendid vessels of three great Christian states had fled before an
inferior force of Ottomans; and it is no wonder that Sultan
Suleym[=a]n, when he learnt the news at Yamboli, illuminated the town,
and added one hundred thousand aspres a year to the revenues of the
conqueror. Barbarossa had once more proved to the world that the
Turkish fleet was invincible. The flag of Suleym[=a]n floated supreme
in all the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] See the _Story of Turkey_, 195.
[34] Von Hammer, _Gesch. d. Osm. Reiches_, ii. 142.
[35] H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, 58.
[36] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. II., ch.
xlii.-xlv.; H[=a]jji Khal[=i]fa, 62; Von Hammer, ii. 155; Morgan, 290.
X.
BARBAROSSA IN FRANCE.
1539-1546.
Barbarossa's life was drawing to a close, but in the eight years that
remained he enhanced his already unrivalled renown. His first exploit
after Prevesa was the recapture of Castelnuovo, which the allied
fleets had seized in October, as some compensation on land for their
humiliation at sea. The Turkish armies had failed to recover the
fortress in January, 1539; but in July Barbarossa went to the front as
usual, with a fleet of two hundred galleys, large and small, and all
his best captains; and, after some very pretty fighting in the Gulf of
Cattaro, landed eighty-four of his heaviest guns and bombarded
Castelnuovo, from three well-placed batteries. On August 7th, a
sanguinary assault secured the first line of the defences; three days
later the governor, Don Francisco Sarmiento, and his handful of
Spaniards, surrendered to a final assault, and were surprised to find
themselves chivalrously respected as honourable foes. Three thousand
Spaniards had fallen, and eight thousand Turks, in the course of the
siege.
One more campaign and Barbarossa's feats are over. Great events were
happening on the Algerine coasts, where we must return after too long
an absence in the Levant and Adriatic: but first the order of years
must be neglected that we may see the last of the most famous of all
the Corsairs. To make amends for the coldness of Henry VIII., Francis
I. was allied with the other great maritime power, Turkey, against the
Emperor, in 1543; and the old sea rover actually brought his fleet of
one hundred and fifty ships to Marseilles. The French captains saluted
the Corsair's _capitana_, and the banner of Our Lady was lowered to be
replaced by the Crescent. Well may a French admiral call this "the
impious alliance." On his way Barbarossa enjoyed a raid in quite his
old style; burnt Reggio and carried off the governor's daughter;
appeared off the Tiber, and terrified the people of Civita Vecchia;
and in July entered the Gulf of Lyons in triumph. Here he found the
young Duke of Enghien, Francois de Bourbon, commander of the French
galleys, who received him with all honour and ceremony.
[Illustration: GALLEY AT ANCHOR.
(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]
Barbarossa had hardly arrived when he discovered that his great
expedition was but a fool's errand. The King of France was afraid of
attempting a serious campaign against the Emperor, and he was already
ashamed of his alliance with the Musulmans: his own subjects--nay, all
Europe--were crying shame. Barbarossa grew crimson with fury, and tore
his white beard: he had not come with a vast fleet all the way from
Stambol to be made a laughing-stock. Something must evidentially be
done to satisfy his honour, and Francis I. unwillingly gave orders for
the bombardment of Nice. Accompanied by a feeble and ill-prepared
French contingent, which soon ran short of ammunition--"Fine
soldiers," cried the Corsair, "to fill their ships with wine casks,
and leave the powder barrels behind!"--Barbarossa descended upon the
Gate of Italy. The city soon surrendered, but the fort held out,
defended by one of those invincible foes of the Turk, a Knight of
Malta, Paolo Simeoni, who had himself experienced captivity at the
hands of Barbarossa; and as the French protested against sacking the
town after capitulation on terms, and as Charles's relieving army was
advancing, the camps were broken up in confusion, and the fleets
retired from Nice.
The people of Toulon beheld a strange spectacle that winter. The
beautiful harbour of Provence was allotted to the Turkish admiral for
his winter quarters. There, at anchor, lay the immense fleet of the
Grand Signior; and who knew how long it might dominate the fairest
province of France? There, turbaned Musulmans paced the decks and
bridge, below and beside which hundreds of Christian slaves sat
chained to the bench and victims to the lash of the boatswain.
Frenchmen were forced to look on, helplessly, while Frenchmen groaned
in the infidels' galleys, within the security of a French port. The
captives died by hundreds of fever during that winter, but no
Christian burial was allowed them--even the bells that summon the
pious to the Mass were silenced, for are they not "the devil's
musical instrument"?[37]--and the gaps in the benches were filled by
nightly raids among the neighbouring villages. It was ill sleeping
around Toulon when the Corsair press-gangs were abroad. And to feed
and pay these rapacious allies was a task that went near to ruining
the finances of France.
The French were not satisfied of the Corsair's fidelity, and it must
be added that the Emperor might have had some reason to doubt the
honesty of Doria. The two greatest admirals of the age were both in
the Western Mediterranean, but nothing could tempt them to come to
blows. The truth was that each had a great reputation to lose, and
each preferred to go to his grave with all his fame undimmed. Francis
I. had a suspicion that Barbarossa was meditating the surrender of
Toulon to the Emperor, and, improbable as it was, some colour was
given to the King's anxiety by the amicable relations which seemed to
subsist between the Genoese Corsair and his Barbary rival. Doria gave
up the captive Dragut to his old captain for a ransom of three
thousand gold crowns--a transaction on which he afterwards looked back
with unqualified regret. The situation was growing daily more
unpleasant for France. From his easy position in Toulon, Barbarossa
sent forth squadrons under S[=a]lih Reis and other commanders to lay
waste the coasts of Spain, while he remained "lazily engaged in
emptying the coffers of the French king."
At last they got rid of him. Francis was compelled to furnish the pay
and rations of the whole crews and troops of the Ottoman fleet up to
their re-entry into the Bosphorus; he had to free four hundred
Mohammedan galley slaves and deliver them to Barbarossa; he loaded him
with jewellery, silks, and other presents; the Corsair departed in a
Corsair's style, weighed down with spoil. His homeward voyage was one
long harrying of the Italian coasts; his galley sailed low with human
freight; and his arrival at Constantinople was the signal for the
filling of all the harems of the great pashas with beautiful captives.
Barbarossa, laden with such gifts, was sure of his welcome.
Two years later he died, in July, 1546, an old man of perhaps near
ninety, yet without surviving his great fame. "Valorous yet prudent,
furious in attack, foreseeing in preparation," he ranks as the first
sea captain of his time. "The chief of the sea is dead," expressed in
three Arabic words, gives the numerical value 953, the year of the
Hijra in which Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa died.
Long afterwards no Turkish fleet left the Golden Horn without her crew
repeating a prayer and firing a salute over the tomb at Beshiktash,
where lie the bones of the first great Turkish admiral.
FOOTNOTE:
[37] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Speeches and Tabletalk of the Prophet
Mohammad_, 168.
XI.
CHARLES AT ALGIERS.
1541.
When Barbarossa left Algiers for ever in 1535 to become the High
Admiral of the Ottoman Empire, the Corsairs lost indeed their chief;
but so many of his captains remained behind that the game of sea
roving went on as merrily as ever. Indeed so fierce and ruthless were
their depredations that the people of Italy and Spain and the islands
began to regret the attentions of so gentlemanly a robber as
Barbarossa. His successor or viceroy at Algiers was a Sardinian
renegade, Hasan the Eunuch; but the chief commanders at sea were
Dragut, S[=a]lih Reis, Sin[=a]n, and the rest, who, when not called to
join the Captain Pasha's fleet, pursued the art of piracy from the
Barbary coast. Dragut (properly Torgh[=u]d) worked measureless
mischief in the Archipelago and Adriatic, seized Venetian galleys and
laid waste the shores of Italy, till he was caught by Giannettino
Doria, nephew of the great admiral, while unsuspectingly engaged in
dividing his spoils on the Sardinian coast (1540). Incensed to find
his vast empire perpetually harassed by foes so lawless and in
numbers so puny, Charles the Emperor resolved to put down the
Corsairs' trade once and for ever. He had subdued Tunis in 1535, but
piracy still went on. Now he would grapple the head and front of the
offence, and conquer Algiers.
He had no fears of the result; the Corsair city would fall at the mere
sight of his immense flotilla; and in this vainglorious assurance he
set out in October, 1541. He even took Spanish ladies on board to view
his triumph. The season for a descent on the African coast was over,
and every one knew that the chance of effecting anything before the
winter storms should guard the coast from any floating enemy was more
than doubtful; but "the Spaniards commonly move with gravity"; and
besides, Charles had been delayed during a busy summer by his troubles
in Germany and Flanders, and could not get away before.
Now at last he was free; and, in spite of the earnest remonstrances of
Doria and the entreaties of the Pope, to Algiers he would go.
Everything had long been prepared--a month, he believed, at the
outside would finish the matter--in short, go he would. At Spezzia he
embarked on Doria's flagship; the Duke of Alva, of sanguinary memory,
commanded the troops, many of whom had been brought by the Emperor
himself from the German highlands. Ill-luck attended them from the
outset: a storm, no unusual phenomenon with November coming on, drove
the ships back into shelter at Corsica. At length the seas subsided,
and the fleet, picking up allies as it went along, cautiously hugged
the land as far as Minorca, where the mistral, the terror of seamen,
rushed down upon the huge armada--masts strained, yards cracked, sails
were torn to rags, and there was nothing for it but to row--row for
their lives and for Charles. They were but seven miles from Port
Mahon, yet it took half the night to win there--an endless night which
the panting crews never forgot.
In the bay of Palma, at Majorca, the fleet was assembled. There were
the Emperor's hundred sailing vessels carrying the German and Italian
troops, commanded by such historic names as Colonna and Spinosa; there
were Fernando Gonzago's Sicilian galleys, and a hundred and fifty
transports from Naples and Palermo; there were the fifty galleys of
Bernadino de Mendoza, conveying two hundred transports with the arms
and artillery, and carrying the corps of gentlemen adventurers,
mustered from the chivalry of Spain, and including one only who had
climbed up from the ranks--but that one was Cortes, the conqueror of
Mexico. Over five hundred sail, manned by twelve thousand men, and
carrying a land force of twenty-four thousand soldiers, entered the
roads of Algiers on October 19, 1541.
[Illustration: SIEGE OF ALGIERS, 1541.
(_From a map in the British Museum._)]
At last the great Emperor set eyes upon the metropolis of piracy. On
the rocky promontory which forms the western crest of the crescent
bay, high up the amphitheatre of hills, tier upon tier, in their
narrow overshadowed lanes, the houses of the Corsairs basked in the
autumn sun, crowned by the fortress which had known the imperious
rule of two Barbarossas. On the right was the mole which Spanish
slaves had built out of the ruins of the Spanish fort. Two gates
fronted the south and north, the Bab Az[=u]n and Bab-el-W[=e]d.
Avoiding the promontory of Cashina, the galleys, with furled sails,
drew up before the low strand, backed by stretches of luxuriant
verdure, south of the city, and out of range, at the spot which is
still called the "Jardin d'essai." A heavy swell prevented their
landing for three days, but on the 23rd, in beautiful weather, the
troops disembarked. The Berbers and Arabs, who had lined the shore and
defied the invaders, hastily retired before the guns of the galleys,
and the Spaniards landed unopposed. The next day they began the march
to the city some few miles off. The Spaniards formed the left wing on
the hill side; the Emperor and the Duke of Alva with the German troops
composed the centre; the Italians and one hundred and fifty knights of
Malta marched on the right by the seashore. Driving back the
straggling bands of mounted Arabs, who ambushed among the rocks and
ravines, and picked off many of the Christians, the invaders pushed
steadily on, till Algiers was invested on all sides save the north.
Its fate appeared sealed. A brief bombardment from Charles's heavy
cannon, and the Spaniards would rush the breach and storm the citadel.
Hasan Aga, within, with only eight hundred Turks, and perhaps five
thousand Arabs and Moors, must almost have regretted the proud reply
he had just made to the Emperor's summons to surrender.
Then, when the end seemed close at hand, the forces of Nature came to
the rescue. The stars in their courses fought for Algiers: the rains
descended and the winds blew and beat upon that army, till the
wretched soldiers, with neither tents nor cloaks, with barely
food--for the landing of the stores had hardly begun--standing all
night knee-deep in slush in that pinguid soil, soaked to the skin,
frozen by the driving rain and bitter wind, were ready to drop with
exhaustion and misery. When morning dawned they could scarcely bear up
against the blustering gale; their powder was wet; and a sudden sally
of the Turks spread a panic in the sodden ranks which needed all the
courage and coolness of the Knights of Malta to compose. At last the
enemy was driven out of the trenches and pursued, skirmishing all the
way, to the Bab Az[=u]n. It looked as though pursuers and pursued
would enter together; but the gate was instantly shut, and a daring
Knight of Malta had barely struck his dagger in the gate to defy the
garrison, when the Christians found themselves under so heavy a fire
from the battlements, that they were forced to beat a retreat: the
Knights of Malta, last of all, their scarlet doublets shining like a
fresh wound, and their faces to the foe, covered the retreat.
Hasan then led out his best horsemen from the gate, and driving their
heels into their horses' flanks, the cloud of Moslems poured down the
hill. The Knights of Malta bore the shock with their iron firmness,
though they lost heavily. The Italians ran for their lives. The
Germans whom Charles hurriedly despatched to the rescue came back at
the double without drawing a sword. The Emperor himself put on his
armour, spurred his charger into the midst of the fugitives, sword in
hand, and with vehement reproaches succeeded in shaming them into
fight. "Come, gentlemen," then said he to the nobles around,
"forwards!" And thus he led his dispirited troops once more to the
field; this time the panic alarm of the rank and file was controlled
and banished by the cool courage of the cavaliers, and the Turks were
driven back into the town. The skirmish had cost him three hundred men
and a dozen Knights of Malta. All that day the Emperor and his
officers, great signiors all, stood at arms in the pouring rain, with
the water oozing from their boots, vigilantly alert.
Had Charles now run his ships ashore at all hazard, and dragged up his
heavy siege train and stores and tents and ammunition, all might yet
have been won. But several precious days were wasted, and on the
morning of the 25th such a storm sprang up as mortal mariner rarely
encountered even off such a coast--a violent north-easterly
hurricane--still known in Algiers as "Charles's gale"--such as few
vessels cared to ride off a lee shore. The immense flotilla in the bay
was within an ace of total destruction. Anchors and cables were
powerless to hold the crowded, jostling ships. One after the other
they broke loose, and keeled over to the tempest till their decks were
drowned in the seas. Planks gaped; broadside to broadside the helpless
hulks crashed together. Many of the crews threw themselves madly on
shore. In six hours one hundred and fifty ships sank. The rowers of
the galleys, worn out with toiling at the oar, at last succumbed, and
fifteen of the vessels ran on shore, only to be received by the
Berbers of the hills, who ran their spears through the miserable
shipwrecked sailors as soon as they gained the land.
The worst day must come to an end: on the morrow the storm was over,
and Doria, who had succeeded in taking the greater part of the fleet
out to sea, came back to see what new folly was in hand. He was
indignant with the Emperor for having rejected his advice and so led
the fleet and army into such peril; he was disgusted with his
captains, who had completely lost their coolness in the hurricane, and
wanted to run their vessels ashore, with the certainty of wreck,
sooner than ride out the storm--and yet called themselves sailors!
He found Charles fully aware of the necessity for a temporary retreat,
till the army should be revictualled and reclothed. The camp was
struck: the Emperor himself watched the operation, standing at the
door of his tent in a long white cassock, murmuring quietly the
Christian's consolation: "Thy will be done"--_Fiat voluntas Tua!_
Baggage and ordnance were abandoned; the horses of the field artillery
were devoured by the hungry troops; and then the march began.
To retreat at all is humiliation, but to retreat as this luckless army
did was agony. Deep mud clogged their weary feet; when a halt was
called they could but rest on their halberts, to lie down was to be
suffocated in filth; mountain torrents swollen breast-high had to be
crossed, the wading men were washed away till they built a rude
bridge--O crowning humiliation!--out of the wreckage of their own
ships. Hasan and a multitude of Turks and Arabs hung forever on their
flanks. The dejected Italians, who had no stomach for this sort of
work, fell often into the hands of the pursuers; the Germans, who
could do nothing without their customary internal stuffing, were mere
_impedimenta_; and only the lean Spaniard covered the retreat with
something of his natural courage.
At last the dejected army reached the Bay of Temendefust (Matifoux),
where the remains of the fleet were lying at anchor. It was resolved,
in view of the approach of winter and the impossibility of sending
supplies to an army in stormy weather, to reembark. Cortes in vain
protested: the council of war agreed that it was too late in the year
to attempt retaliation. Then a new difficulty arose: how was room to
be found in a flotilla, which had lost nearly a third of its ships,
for an army which was but a couple of thousand less than when it
landed? Regretfully Charles gave orders for the horses to be cast into
the sea, and, despite their masters' entreaties, favourite chargers of
priceless value were slaughtered and thrown overboard. The famous
breed of Spanish horses was well-nigh ruined. It was but one tragedy
more. On the 2nd of November most of the troops were on board. Charles
resolved to be the last to leave the strand; but the wind was getting
up, the sea rising, and at last he gave the order to weigh anchor.
Often is the story told in Algiers how the great Emperor, who would
fain hold Europe in the palm of his hand, sadly took the crown from
off his head and casting it into the sea said, "Go, bauble: let some
more fortunate prince redeem and wear thee."
He did not sail a moment too soon. A new and terrific storm burst
forth. The ships were driven hither and thither. Where the tempest
drove them, there they helplessly wandered, and many men died from
famine and exposure. Some of the Spanish vessels were wrecked at
Algiers, and their crews and troops were sent to the bagnios. Charles
himself and Doria arrived safely at Buj[=e]ya--then a Spanish
outpost--with part of the flotilla. Here the unexpected visitors soon
caused a famine--and still the tempest raged. The half-starved rovers
in vain tried to make head against the waves, and carry the Emperor
back to Spain: eighty miles out they gave in, and the ships returned
disconsolately to the harbour. Twelve days and nights the storm
bellowed along the treacherous coast, and not till November 23rd could
the Imperial fleet set sail for the coast of Spain.
There was mourning in Castile that Yuletide. Besides eight thousand
rank and file, three hundred officers of birth had fallen victims to
the storm or the Moorish lance. Algiers teemed with Christian
captives, and it became a common saying that a Christian slave was
scarce a fair barter for an onion.
So ended this famous expedition. It was begun in glory, and ended in
shame. The whole of Christendom, one might say--for there were English
knights there, like Sir Thomas Challoner, as well as Germans,
Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians in the army--had gone forth to
destroy a nest of pirates, and behold, by the fury of the elements and
the foolishness of their own counsels, they were almost destroyed
themselves. They had left behind them ships and men and stores and
cannon: worse, they had left Algiers stronger and more defiant than
ever.
The Algerines, for their part, never forgot the valour of the Knights
of Malta, and the spot where they made their stand is still called
"The Grave of the Knights." High up on the hillside may be seen "the
Emperor's Castle," which marks the traditional place where Charles'
great pavilion was pitched on the morning of the fatal 23rd of
October.
"The climate of Africa"--it is the caustic comment of Admiral Jurien
de la Graviere--"was evidently unsuited to deeds of chivalry."
XII.
DRAGUT REIS.
1543-1560.
The name of Dragut has already occurred more than once in this
history: it was destined to become as notorious as Barbarossa's as the
century advanced. Dragut--or Torgh[=u]d--was born on the Caramanian
coast opposite the island of Rhodes. Unlike many of his colleagues he
seems to have been the son of Mohammedan parents, tillers of the
earth. Being adventurous by nature, he took service as a boy in the
Turkish fleet and became "a good pilot and a most excellent gunner."
At last he contrived to purchase and man a galleot, with which he
cruised the waters of the Levant, where his intimate acquaintance with
all the coasts and islands enabled him to seize and dispose of many
prizes. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa soon came to hear of his exploits,
and welcomed him heartily when he came to pay his respects at Algiers,
in so far that he gave him the conduct of various expeditions and
eventually appointed him his lieutenant with the command of twelve
galleys. "From thenceforward this redoubtable Corsair passed not one
summer without ravaging the coasts of Naples and Sicily: nor durst
any Christian vessels attempt to pass between Spain and Italy; for if
they offered it, he infallibly snapped them up: and when he missed any
of his prey at sea, he made himself amends by making descents along
the coasts, plundering villages and towns, and dragging away
multitudes of inhabitants into captivity."[38]
[Illustration: CASTLE OF JERBA.
(_Elisee Reclus._)]
In 1540, as we have seen, Dragut was caught by Giannettino Doria, who
made him a present to his great kinsman Andrea, on whose galleys he
was forced to toil in chains. La Valette, afterwards Grand Master of
Malta, who had once pulled the captive's oar on Barbarossa's ships and
knew Dragut well, one day saw the ex-Corsair straining on the galley
bank: "Senor Dragut," said he, "_usanza de guerra!_--'tis the custom
of war!" And the prisoner, remembering his visitor's former
apprenticeship, replied cheerfully, "_Y mudanza de fortuna_--a change
of luck!" He did not lose heart, and in 1543 Barbarossa ransomed him
for 3000 crowns,[39] and made him chief of the galleys of the western
Corsairs. Imprisonment had sharpened his appetite for Christians, and
he harried the Italian coasts with more than his ancient zeal.
Surrounded by bold spirits and commanding a fleet of his own, Dragut
had the Mediterranean in his grasp, and even ventured to seize the
most dreaded of all foes, a Maltese galley, wherein he found 70,000
ducats intended for the repair of the fortifications of Tripoli, which
then belonged to "the Religion." As the Turkish annalist says,
"Torgh[=u]d had become the drawn sword of Islam."
Dragut's lair was at the island of Jerba, which tradition links with
the lotus-eaters, perhaps because of the luxuriant fertility of the
soil. The people of Jerba, despite their simple agricultural pursuits,
were impatient of control, and, as often as not, were independent of
the neighbouring kingdom of Tunis or any other state. Here, with or
without their leave, Dragut took up his position, probably in the very
castle which Roger Doria, when lord of the island, began to build in
1289; and from out the wide lake at the back the Corsair's galleots
issued to ravage the lands which were under the protection of Roger
Doria's descendants. Not content with the rich spoils of Europe,
Dragut took the Spanish outposts in Africa, one by one--Susa, Sfax,
Monastir; and finally set forth to conquer "Africa."
[Illustration: SIEGE OF "AFRICA," 1390.
(_From a MS._)]
It is not uncommon in Arabic to call a country and its capital by the
same name. Thus Misr meant and still means both Egypt and Cairo;
El-Andalus, both Spain and Cordova. Similarly "Africa" meant to the
Arabs the province of Carthage or Tunis and its capital, which was not
at first Tunis but successively Kayraw[=a]n and Mahd[=i]ya. Throughout
the later middle ages the name "Africa" is applied by Christian
writers to the latter city. Here it was that in 1390 a "grand and
noble enterprize" came to an untimely end. "The Genoese," says
Froissart, "bore great enmity to this town; for its Corsairs
frequently watched them at sea, and when strongest fell on and
plundered their ships, carrying their spoils to this town of
Africa, which was and is now their place of deposit and may be called
their warren." It was "beyond measure strong, surrounded by high
walls, gates, and deep ditches." The chivalry of Christendom hearkened
to the prayer of the Genoese and the people of Majorca and Sardinia
and Ischia, and the many islands that groaned beneath the Corsairs'
devastations; the Duke of Bourbon took command of an expedition (at
the cost of the Genoese) which included names as famous as the Count
d'Auvergne, the Lord de Courcy, Sir John de Vienne, the Count of Eu,
and our own Henry of Beaufort; and on St. John Baptist's Day, with
much pomp, with flying banners and the blowing of trumpets, they
sailed on three hundred galleys for Barbary. Arrived before Africa,
not without the hindrance of a storm, they beheld the city in the form
of a bow, reaching out its arms to the sea; high were its ramparts;
and a colossal tower, armed with stone-projectiles, guarded the
harbour. Nevertheless the Knights landed in good heart, after a cup of
Grecian or Malmsey wine, on the Vigil of Magdalen Day (July 22nd),
unopposed, and each great lord set up his pennon before his tent over
against the fortress, with the Genoese crossbows on the right. Here
they remained nine weeks. The Saracens never offered battle, but
harassed the enemy with their skirmishers, who fired their arrows,
then dropped down behind their targets of Cappadocian leather to avoid
the enemy's return volley; then, rising again, cast their javelins
with deadly aim. What was to be done? The Duke of Bourbon spent his
time in sitting crosslegged before his tent; the nobles and knights
had plenty of excellent wine and food; but it was very hot and
uncomfortable--the assault had failed--many had died--the Genoese
wanted to get their galleys back safe in port before the autumn gales
came on; so they packed up their baggage, and re-embarked, blowing
their horns and beating their drums for very joy.[40]
[Illustration: GREEK FIRE.
(_From a MS._)]
[Illustration: MEDIEVAL FIREARMS.
(_From a MS._)]
[Illustration: MEDIEVAL PROJECTILES.
(_From a MS._)]
This was the city which Dragut took without a blow in the spring of
1550. Mahd[=i]ya was then in an anarchic state, ruled by a council of
chiefs, each ready to betray the other, and none owing the smallest
allegiance to any king, least of all the despised king of Tunis,
Ham[=i]d, who had deposed and blinded his father Hasan, Charles V.'s
_protege_. One of these chiefs let Dragut and his merry men into the
city by night, and the inhabitants woke up to find "Africa" in the
possession of the bold Corsair whose red and white ensign, displaying
a blue crescent, floated from the battlements.
So easy a triumph roused the emulation of Christendom. Where the Duke
of Bourbon had failed, Dragut had conspicuously succeeded. Don Garcia
de Toledo dreamed of outshining the Corsair's glory. His father, the
Viceroy of Naples, the Pope, and others, promised their aid, and old
Andrea Doria took the command. After much delay and consultation a
large body of troops was conveyed to Mahd[=i]ya, and disembarked on
June 28, 1550. Dragut, though aware of the project, was at sea,
devastating the Gulf of Genoa, and paying himself in advance for any
loss the Christians might inflict in Africa: his nephew, His[=a]r Reis
commanded in the city. When Dragut returned, the siege had gone on for
a month, without result; a tremendous assault had been repulsed with
heavy loss to the besiegers, who were growing disheartened. The
Corsair assembled a body of Moors and Turks and attempted to relieve
the fortress; but his ambuscade failed, His[=a]r's simultaneous sally
was driven back, and Dragut, seeing that he could do nothing, fled to
Jerba. His retreat gave fresh energy to the siege, and a change of
attack discovered the weak places of the defence. A vigorous assault
on the 8th of September carried the walls, a brisk street fight
ensued, and the strong city of "Africa" was in the hands of the
Christians.
The Sultan, Suleym[=a]n the Great, was little pleased to see a Moslem
fortress summarily stormed by the troops of his ally, the Emperor.
Charles replied that he had fought against pirates, not against the
Sultan's vassals; but Suleym[=a]n could not perceive the distinction,
and emphasized his disapproval by giving Dragut twenty galleys, which
soon found their way to Christian shores. The lamentations of his
victims roused Doria, who had the good fortune to surprise the Corsair
as he was greasing his keels in the strait behind Jerba. This strait
was virtually a _cul-de-sac_. Between the island and the great lake
that lay behind it, the sea had worn a narrow channel on the northern
side, through which light vessels could pass, with care; but to go out
of the lake by the southern side involved a voyage over what was
little better than a bog, and no one ever thought of the attempt.
Doria saw he had his enemy in a trap, and was in no hurry to venture
in among the shoals and narrows of the strait. He sent joyous messages
to Europe, announcing his triumph, and cautiously, as was his habit,
awaited events.
Dragut, for his part, dared not push out against a vastly superior
force; his only chance was a ruse. Accordingly, putting a bold face on
the matter, he manned a small earthwork with cannon, and played upon
the enemy, with little or no actual injury, beyond the all-important
effect of making Doria hesitate still more. Meanwhile, in the night,
while his little battery is perplexing the foe, all is prepared at the
southern extremity of the strait. Summoning a couple of thousand field
labourers, he sets them to work; here a small canal is dug--there
rollers come into play; and in a few hours his small fleet is safely
transported to the open water on the south side of the island. Calling
off his men from the illusive battery, the Corsair is off for the
Archipelago: by good luck he picks up a fine galley on the way, which
was conveying news of the reinforcements coming to Doria. The old
Genoese admiral never gets the message: he is rubbing his eyes in sore
amazement, wondering what had happened to the imprisoned fleet. Never
was admiral more cruelly cheated: never did Doria curse the nimble
Corsair with greater vehemence or better cause.
Next year, 1551, Dragut's place was with the Ottoman navy, then
commanded by Sin[=a]n Pasha. He had had enough of solitary roving,
and found it almost too exciting: he now preferred to hunt in couples.
With nearly a hundred and fifty galleys or galleots, ten thousand
soldiers, and numerous siege guns, Sin[=a]n and Dragut sailed out of
the Dardanelles--whither bound no Christian could tell. They ravaged,
as usual, the Straits of Messina, and then revealed the point of
attack by making direct for Malta. The Knights of St. John were a
perpetual thorn in the side of the Turks, and even more vexatious to
the Corsairs, whose vessels they, and they alone, dared to tackle
single-handed, and too often with success. Sultan and Corsair were
alike eager to dislodge the Knights from the rock which they had been
fortifying for twenty years, just as Suleym[=a]n had dislodged them
from Rhodes, which they had been fortifying for two hundred. In July
the Turkish fleet appeared before the Marsa, wholly unexpected by the
Knights. The Turks landed on the tongue of promontory which separates
the two great harbours, and where there was as yet no Fort St. Elmo to
molest them. Sin[=a]n was taken aback by the strong aspect of the
fortress of St. Angelo on the further side of the harbour, and almost
repented of his venture. To complete his dejection, he seems to have
courted failure. Instead of boldly throwing his whole force upon the
small garrison and overwhelming them by sheer weight, he tried a
reconnaissance, and fell into an ambuscade; upon which he
incontinently abandoned all thought of a siege, and contented himself
with laying waste the interior of Malta, and taking the adjacent
island of Goza.
The quantity of booty he would bring back to Constantinople might
perhaps avail, he thought, to keep his head on his shoulders, after so
conspicuous a failure; but Sin[=a]n preferred not to trust to the
chance. To wipe out his defeat, he sailed straight for Tripoli, some
sixty-four leagues away. Tripoli was the natural antidote to Malta:
for Tripoli, too, belonged to the Knights of St. John--much against
their will--inasmuch as the Emperor had made their defence of this
easternmost Barbary state a condition of their tenure of Malta. So far
they had been unable to put it into a proper state of defence, and
with crumbling battlements and a weak garrison, they had yearly
expected invasion. The hour had now come. Summoned to surrender, the
Commandant, Gaspard de Villiers, of the Auvergne Tongue, replied that
the city had been entrusted to his charge, and he would defend it to
the death. He had but four hundred men to hold the fort withal.
Six thousand Turks disembarked, forty cannons were landed, Sin[=a]n
himself directed every movement, and arranged his batteries and
earthworks. A heavy cannonade produced no effect on the walls, and the
Turkish admiral thought of the recent repulse at Malta, and of the
stern face of his master; and his head sat uneasily upon his neck. The
siege appeared to make no progress. Perhaps this venture, too, would
have failed, but for the treachery of a French renegade, who escaped
into the trenches and pointed out the weak places in the walls. His
counsel was taken; the walls fell down; the garrison, in weariness and
despair, had lain down to sleep off their troubles, and no reproaches
and blows could rouse them. On August 15th Gaspard de Villiers was
forced to surrender, on terms, as he believed, identical with those
which Suleym[=a]n granted to the Knights of Rhodes.[41] But Sin[=a]n
was no Suleym[=a]n; moreover, he was in a furious rage with the whole
Order. He put the garrison--all save a few--in chains, and carried
them off to grace his triumph at Stambol.
Thus did Tripoli fall once more into the hands of the Moslems,
forty-one years after its conquest by the Count Don Pedro Navarro.[42]
The misfortunes of the Christians did not end here. Year after year
the Ottoman fleet appeared in Italian waters, marshalled now by
Sin[=a]n, and when he died by Pi[=a]li Pasha the Croat, but always
with Dragut in the van; year by year the coasts of Apulia and Calabria
yielded up more and more of their treasure, their youth, and their
beauty, to the Moslem ravishers; yet worse was in store. Unable as
they felt themselves to cope with the Turks at sea, the Powers of
Southern Europe resolved to strike one more blow on land, and recover
Tripoli. A fleet of nearly a hundred galleys and ships, gathered from
Spain, Genoa, "the Religion," the Pope, from all quarters, with the
Duke de Medina-Celi at the head, assembled at Messina. Doria was too
old to command, but his kinsman, Giovanni Andrea, son of his loved and
lost Giannettino, led the Genoese galleys. The Fates seemed adverse
from the outset. Five times the expedition put to sea; five times was
it driven back by contrary winds.[43] At last, on February 10, 1560,
it was fairly away for the African coast. Here fresh troubles awaited
it. Long delays in crowded vessels had produced their disastrous
effects: fevers and scurvy and dysentery were working their terrible
ravages among the crews, and two thousand corpses were flung into the
sea. It was impossible to lay siege to Tripoli with a diseased army,
and when actually in sight of their object the admirals gave orders to
return to Jerba.
A sudden descent quickly gave them the command of the beautiful
island. The Arab sheykh whose people cultivated it was as ready to pay
tribute to the Spaniard as to the Corsair. Medina-Celi and his troops
accordingly set to work undisturbed at the erection of a fortress
strong enough to baffle the besieging genius even of the Turks. In two
months a strong castle was built, with all scientific earthworks, and
the admiral prepared to carry home such troops as were not needed for
its defence.
Unhappily for him, he had lingered too long. He had wished to see the
defences complete, and had trusted to the usual practice of the Turks,
not to put to sea before May was advanced. He was about to prepare for
departure when news came that the Turkish fleet had been seen at Goza.
Instantly all was panic. Valiant gentlemen forgot their valour, forgot
their coolness, forgot how strong a force by sea or land they
mustered: one thought alone was uppermost--the Turks were upon them!
Giovanni Doria hurried on board and embarked his Genoese; Medina-Celi
more methodically and with something like _sang froid_ personally
supervised the embarcation of his men; but before they could make out
of the strait, where Dragut had so narrowly escaped capture, the dread
Corsair himself, and Ochiali, and Pi[=a]li Pasha were upon them. Then
ensued a scene of confusion that baffles description. Despairing of
weathering the north side of Jerba the panic-stricken Christians ran
their ships ashore, and deserted them, never stopping even to set them
on fire. The deep-draught galleons stuck fast in the shallow water. On
rowed the Turks; galleys and galleons to the number of fifty-six fell
into their hands; eighteen thousand Christians bowed down before their
scimitars; the beach, on that memorable 11th of May, 1560, was a
confused medley of stranded ships, helpless prisoners, Turks busy in
looting men and galleys--and a hideous heap of mangled bodies. The
fleet and the army which had sailed from Messina but three months ago
in such gallant array were absolutely lost. It was a _dies nefas_ for
Christendom.
Medina-Celi and young Doria made good their escape by night. But when
the old Genoese admiral learnt the terrible news, the loss of the
fleet he loved, the defeat of the nephew he loved yet more, his dim
eyes were wet. "Take me to the church," he said; and he soon received
the last consolations of religion. Long as he had lived, and many as
had been the vicissitudes of his great career, he had willingly been
spared this last most miserable experience. On November 25, 1560, he
gave up the ghost: he was a great seaman, but still more a passionate
lover of his country;--despotic in his love, but not the less a noble
Genoese patriot.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 439.
[39] Brantome, _Hommes illustres etrangers_. [OE]uvres, i. 279.
[40] Froissart's _Chron._, transl. T. Johnes (1844) ii. 446, 465, ff.
[41] See the _Story of Turkey_, 170.
[42] See Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 193-215.
[43] _Les Corsaires Barbaresques_, 266.
XIII.
THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA.
1565.
When Sultan Suleym[=a]n reflected on the magnanimity which he had
displayed towards the Knights of Rhodes in allowing them to depart in
peace in 1522, his feelings must have resembled those of Doria when he
thought of that inconsiderate release of Dragut in 1543. Assuredly the
royal clemency had been ill-rewarded; the Knights had displayed a
singular form of gratitude to the sparer of their lives; they had
devoted themselves to him, indeed, but devoted themselves to his
destruction. The cavaliers whom Charles V. suffered to perch on the
glaring white rock of Malta, in 1530, proved in no long time to be a
pest as virulent and all-pervading as even Rhodes had harboured. Seven
galleys they owned, and never more, but the seven were royal vessels,
splendidly armed and equipped, and each a match for two or three
Turkish ships.[44] Every year they cruised from Sicily to the Levant,
and many a prize laden with precious store they carried off to Malta.
The commerce of Egypt and Syria was in danger of annihilation; the
Barbary Corsairs, even Dragut himself, shunned a meeting with the red
galleys of "the Religion," or their black _capitana_; and the Turkish
fleet, while holding undisputed sway over the Mediterranean, was not
nimble enough to surprise the Maltese squadron in its rapid and
incalculable expeditions. Jean de la Valette Parisot, General of the
Galleys and afterwards Grand Master, Francis of Lorraine, Grand Prior
of France, Romegas, prince of knights-errant, scoured the seas in
search of prey:--they were as true pirates as ever weathered the
"white squall." The Knights lived by plunder as much as any Corsair;
but they tempered their freebooting with chivalry and devotions; they
were the protectors of the helpless and afflicted, and they preyed
chiefly upon the enemies of the Faith.
Meanwhile they built and built; Fort St. Elmo rose on the central
promontory, Forts St. Michael and St. Angelo were strengthened;
bastions were skilfully planned, flanking angles devised, ravelins and
cavaliers erected, ditches deepened, parapets raised, embrasures
opened, and every device of sixteenth-century fortification as
practised by Master Evangelista, chief engineer of the Order, was
brought into use. For the Knights knew that Suleym[=a]n lived and was
mightier than ever. Their cruisers had wrought sad havoc among his
subjects, and the Sultan would not long suffer the hornets of Rhodes
to swarm at Malta. They lived in constant expectation of attack, and
they spent all their strength and all their money in preparing for
the day of the Sultan's revenge. At last the time came: Suleym[=a]n
swore in his wrath that the miscreants should no longer defy him; he
had suffered them to leave Rhodes as gentlemen of honour--he would
consume them in Malta as one burns a nest of wasps.
At the time of the siege of 1565 the city or fortress of Malta was
situated, not as Valetta now stands on the west, but on the east side
of the Marsa or great harbour. To understand even the briefest
narrative of one of the most heroic deeds of war that the world has
seen, the position of the forts must be understood. (See the Plan.) On
the northern coast of the rocky island a bold promontory or rugged
tongue of land, Mount Sceberras, separates two deep bights or inlets.
The eastern of these was called Marsa Muset, or "Middle Port," but was
unoccupied and without defences at the time of the siege, except that
the guns of St. Elmo, the fortress at the point of the Sceberras
promontory, commanded its mouth. The Marsa Kebir, or simply La Marsa,
the "Great Port," was the chief stronghold of the Knights. Here four
projecting spits of rock formed smaller harbours on the western side.
The outermost promontory, the Pointe des Fourches, separated the Port
de la Renelle or La Arenela, from the open sea; Cape Salvador divided
the Arenela from the English Harbour; the Burg, the main fortress and
capital of the place, with Fort St. Angelo at its point, shot out
between the English Harbour and the Harbour of the Galleys; and the
Isle of La Sangle, joined by a sandy isthmus to the mainland, and
crowned by Fort St. Michael, severed the Galley Harbour from that of
La Sangle. All round these inlets high hills dominated the ports.
Behind Fort St. Elmo, the Sceberras climbed steeply to a considerable
height. Behind the Arenela and English Harbour rose Mount Salvador,
Calcara, and further back the Heights of St. Catherine. The Burg and
Fort St. Michael were overtopped by the Heights of St. Margaret,
whilst the Conradin plateau looked down upon the head of the Marsa and
the Harbour of La Sangle. To modern artillery and engineering the
siege would have been easy, despite the rocky hardness of the ground,
since the Knights had not had time to construct those field-works upon
the surrounding heights which were essential to the safety of the
forts. Even to the skilled but undeveloped artillery of the Turks, the
destruction of Malta ought not to have been either a difficult or
lengthy operation, had they begun at the right place.
To those who were acquainted with the ground, who had heard of the
siege of Rhodes, and knew that the Turks were not less but more
formidable in 1565 than in 1522, the issue of the struggle must have
appeared inevitable, when the huge Ottoman fleet hove in view on the
18th of May, 1565. One hundred and eighty vessels, of which two-thirds
were galleys-royal, carried more than thirty thousand fighting
men--the pick of the Ottoman army, tried Janissaries and Sip[=a]his,
horsemen from Thrace, rough warriors from the mountains of Anatolia,
eager volunteers from all parts of the Sultan's dominions. Mustafa
Pasha who had grown old in the wars of his master, commanded on land,
and Pi[=a]li was admiral of the fleet. Dragut was to join them
immediately, and the Sultan's order was that nothing should be done
till he arrived.
The Knights had not remained ignorant of the preparations that were
making against them. They sent to all Europe for help, and the Pope
gave money, and Spain promises: the Viceroy of Sicily would send
Spanish reinforcements by the 15th of June. They worked unceasingly at
their defences and did all that men could do to meet the advancing
storm. All told, they mustered but seven hundred Knights, and between
eight and nine thousand mercenaries of various nations, but chiefly
Maltese, who could only be trusted behind walls.
The Order was fortunate in its Grand Master. Jean de la Valette, born
in 1494, a Knight of St. John before he was of age, and a defender of
Rhodes forty-three years ago, though now an old man retained to the
full the courage and generalship which had made his career as
commander of the galleys memorable in the annals of Mediterranean
wars. He had been a captive among the Turks, and knew their languages
and their modes of warfare; and his sufferings had increased his
hatred of the Infidel. A tall, handsome man, with an air of calm
resolution, he communicated his iron nerve to all his followers. Cold
and even cruel in his severity, he was yet devoutly religious, and
passionately devoted to his Order and his Faith. A true hero, but of
the reasoning, merciless, bigoted sort: not the generous, reckless
enthusiast who inspires by sympathy and glowing example.
When he knew that the day of trial was at hand, Jean de la Valette
assembled the Order together, and bade them first be reconciled with
God and one another, and then prepare to lay down their lives for the
Faith they had sworn to defend. Before the altar each Knight foreswore
all enmities, renounced all pleasures, buried all ambitions; and
joining together in the sacred fellowship of the Supper of the Lord,
once more dedicated their blood to the service of the Cross.
At the very outset a grave mischance befell the Turks; Dragut was a
fortnight late at the rendezvous. His voice would have enforced
Pi[=a]li's advice, to land the entire force and attack the Burg and
St. Michael from the heights behind. Mustafa, the Seraskier, was
determined to reduce the outlying Fort of St. Elmo on the promontory
of Sceberras before attacking the main position, and accordingly
landed his men at his convenience from the Marsa Muset, and laid out
his earthworks on the land side of St. Elmo. He had not long begun
when Ochiali arrived with six galleys from Alexandria, and on June 2nd
came Dragut himself with a score or more galleys of Tripoli and Bona.
Dragut saw at once the mistake that had been made, but saw also that
to abandon the siege of St. Elmo would too greatly elate the Knights:
the work must go on; and on it went with unexampled zeal.
The little fort could hold but a small garrison, but the force was a
_corps d'elite_: De Broglio of Piedmont commanded it with sixty
soldiers, and was supported by Juan de Guaras, bailiff of the
Negropont, a splendid old Knight, followed by sixty more of the
Order, and some Spaniards under Juan de la Cerda:--a few hundred of
men to meet thirty thousand Turks, but men of no common mettle. They
had not long to wait. The fire opened from twenty-one guns on the last
day of May and continued with little intermission till June 23rd. The
besiegers were confident of battering down the little fort in a week
at most, but they did not know their foes. As soon as one wall
crumbled before the cannonade, a new work appeared behind it. The
first assault lasted three hours, and the Turks gained possession of
the ravelin in front of the gate; so furious was the onset that the
defenders sent to the Grand Master to tell him the position was
untenable; they could not stand a second storming party. La Valette
replied that, if so, he would come and withstand it himself: St. Elmo
must be held to keep the Turks back till reinforcements arrived. So of
course they went on. Dragut brought up some of his largest yards and
laid them like a bridge across the fosse, and a tremendous struggle
raged for five terrible hours on Dragut's bridge. Again and again
Mustafa marshalled his Janissaries for the attack, and every time they
were hurled back with deadly slaughter. As many as four thousand Turks
fell in a single assault. St. Elmo was little more than a heap of
ruins, but the garrison still stood undaunted among the heaps of
stones, each man ready to sell his life dearly for the honour of Our
Lady and St. John.
The Turks at last remedied the mistake they had made at the beginning.
They had left the communication between St. Elmo and the harbour
unimpeded, and reinforcements had frequently been introduced into the
besieged fortress from the Burg. On June 17th the line of
circumvallation was pushed to the harbour's edge, and St. Elmo was
completely isolated. Yet this prudent precaution was more than
outweighed by the heavy loss that accompanied its execution: for
Dragut was struck down while directing the engineers, and the surgeons
pronounced the wound mortal. With the cool courage of his nation,
Mustafa cast a cloak over the prostrate form, and stood in Dragut's
place.
Five days later came the final assault. On the eve of June 23rd, after
the cannonade had raged all the forenoon, and a hand-to-hand fight had
lasted till the evening, when two thousand of the enemy and five
hundred of the scanty garrison had fallen, the Knights and their
soldiers prepared for the end. They knew the Grand Master could not
save them, that nothing could avert the inevitable dawn. They took the
Sacrament from each other's hands, and "committing their souls to God
made ready to devote their bodies in the cause of His Blessed Son." It
was a forlorn and sickly remnant of the proudest chivalry the world
has ever known, that met the conquering Turks that June morning: worn
and haggard faces, pale with long vigils and open wounds; tottering
frames that scarce could stand; some even for very weakness seated in
chairs, with drawn swords, within the breach. But weary and sick,
upright or seated, all bore themselves with unflinching courage; in
every set face was read the resolve to die hard.
The ghastly struggle was soon over: the weight of the Turkish column
bore down everything in its furious rush. Knights and soldiers alike
rolled upon the ground, every inch of which they had disputed to the
last drop of their blood. Not a man escaped.
Dragut heard of the fall of St. Elmo as he lay in his tent dying, and
said his Moslem _Nunc Dimittis_ with a thankful heart. He had been
struck at the soldier's post of duty; he died with the shout of
victory ringing in his ears, as every general would wish to die. His
figure stands apart from all the men of his age:--an admiral, the
equal of Barbarossa, the superior of Doria; a general fit to marshal
troops against any of the great leaders of the armies of Charles V.;
he was content with the eager rush of his life, and asked not for
sovereignty or honours. Humane to his prisoners, a gay comrade, an
inspiriting commander, a seaman every inch, Dragut is the most vivid
and original personage among the Corsairs.
St. Elmo had fallen: but St. Angelo and St. Michael stood untouched.
Three hundred Knights of St. John and thirteen hundred soldiers had
indeed fallen in the first, but its capture had closed the lives of
eight thousand Turks. "If the child has cost us so dear," said
Mustafa, "what will the parent cost?" The Turkish general sent a flag
of truce to La Valette, to propose terms of capitulation, but in vain.
Mutual animosity had been worked to a height of indignant passion by a
barbarous massacre of prisoners on both sides, each in view of the
other. The Grand Master's first impulse was to hang the messenger of
such foes: he thought better of it, and showed him the depth of the
ditch that encircled the twin forts: "Let your Janissaries come and
take that," he said, and contemptuously dismissed him.
A new siege now began. The forts on the east of La Marsa had been
sorely drained to fill up the gaps in the garrison at St. Elmo, and it
was fortunate that Don Juan de Cardona had been able to send a
reinforcement, though only of six hundred men, under Melchior de
Robles, to the Old Town, whence they contrived to reach Fort St.
Michael in safety.[45] Even six hundred men added materially to the
difficulties of the siege: for, be it remembered, six hundred men
behind skilfully constructed fortifications may be worth six thousand
in the open. It was very hard for the besiegers to find cover. The
ground was hard rock, and cutting trenches was extremely arduous work,
and the noise of the picks directed the fire of the forts by night
upon the sappers. Nevertheless by July 5th four batteries were playing
upon St. Michael from the heights of St. Margaret and Conradin, while
the guns of Fort St. Elmo opened from the other side; and soon a line
of cannon on Mount Salvador dominated the English Port. An attempt to
bring a flotilla of gun-boats into the Harbour of the Galleys failed,
after a vigorous conflict between a party of Turkish swimmers, who
strove with axes to cut the chain that barred the port, and some
Maltese who swam to oppose them, sword in teeth. The battle in the
water ended in the flight of the Turks.
[Illustration: SKETCH OF THE PORT OF MALTA IN 1565.]
Ten distinct general assaults were delivered with all the fury of
Janissaries against the stronghold. First, a grand assault by sea was
ordered on July 15th. Three columns simultaneously advanced by night
on Fort St. Michael: one landed in the Arenela and marched to attack
the eastern suburb La Bormula; the second came down from the heights
of St. Margaret and made straight for the bastion defended by De
Robles; the third advanced from Conradin on the south-west, and
assaulted the salient angle at the extreme point of the spit of land
on which the fort was built. In vain the Turks swarmed up the
scaling-ladders; company after company was hurled down, a huddled mass
of mangled flesh, and the ladders were cast off. Again the escalade
began:--the Knights rolled huge blocks of masonry on the crowded
throng below; when they got within arms' reach the scimitar was no
match for the long two-handed swords of the Christians. At all three
points after a splendid attack, which called forth all the finest
qualities of the magnificent soldiery of Suleym[=a]n the Great, the
Turks were repulsed with terrible loss. The Knights lost some of their
bravest swords, and each one of them fought like a lion: but their
dead were few compared with the unfortunate troops of Barbary, who had
cut off their retreat by dismissing their ships, and were slaughtered
or drowned in the harbour by hundreds. The water was red with their
blood, and mottled with standards and drums and floating robes. Of
prisoners, the Christians spared but two, and these they delivered
over to the mob to be torn in pieces.
After the assault by water came the attack by mines; but the result
was no better, for the Knights were no novices in the art of
countermining, and the attempt to push on after the explosion ended in
rushing into a trap. Mustafa, however, continued to work underground
and ply his heavy artillery, with hardly a pause, upon the two
extremities of the line of landward defences--the Bastion of De
Robles, and the Bastion of Castile: both were in ruins by the 27th of
July, as S[=a]lih Reis, son of Barbarossa's old comrade, satisfied
himself by a reconnaissance pushed into the very breach. An assault
was ordered for midday of August 2nd, when the Christians were resting
after the toils of the sultry morning. Six thousand Turks advanced in
absolute silence to Melchior de Robles' bastion; they had almost
reached their goal when the shout of the sentry brought that gallant
Knight, readily awakened, to the breach, followed by Munatones and
three Spanish arquebusiers. These five warriors held twenty-six
Janissaries and Sip[=a]his in check till reinforcements came; and they
killed fifteen of them. Their valour saved the fort. Four hours longer
the struggle lasted, till neither party could deal another blow in the
raging August sun; and the Turks at last retired with a loss of six
hundred dead.
Nothing daunted, the 7th of August saw them once more scaling the
walls and rushing the breaches of the two bastions, this time with
nearly twenty thousand men. They poured over the ravelin, swarmed up
the breach, and were on the point of carrying the fort. All was nearly
lost, and at that supreme moment even the aged Grand Master, whose
place was to direct, not to imperil his life, came down to the front
of battle, and used his sword and pike like a common soldier. Eight
long hours they fought, six times came fresh reserves to the support
of the Turks; the Christians were exhausted, and had no reserves. One
rush more and the place would be carried.
Just then a body of cavalry was seen riding down from the direction of
the Old Town. The Turks took them to be the long-expected
reinforcements from Sicily. They are seen to fall upon stray parties
of Turks; they must be the advance guard of Philip's army. Pi[=a]li in
alarm runs to his galleys; the Turks who had all but carried the
long-contested bastion pause in affright lest they be taken in rear.
In vain Mustafa, in vain the King of Algiers shows them that the
horsemen are but two hundred of the Old Town garrison, with no army at
all behind them. Panic, unreasoning and fatal as ever, seizes upon the
troops: the foothold won after eight hours of furious fighting is
surrendered to a scare; not a Turk stays to finish the victory. The
lives of their two thousand dead need not have been sacrificed.
Still Mustafa did not despair. He knew that the main defences of the
bastions had been destroyed--a few days more, a heavy cannonade, the
explosion of a series of mines which thousands of his sappers were
preparing would, he was certain, ensure the success of a final
assault. The day came, August 20th, and Mustafa himself, in his coat
of inlaid mail and robe of cramoisy, led his army forward; but a
well-directed fire drove him into a trench, whence he emerged not
till night covered his path. When at last he got back, he found his
army in camp; another assault had been repulsed. The next day they
went up again to the fatal embrasures, and this time the failure was
even more signal; repeated repulses were telling on the spirits of the
men, and the veteran Janissaries went to their work with unaccustomed
reluctance. Nevertheless, the trenches, cut in the hard rock,
continued to advance slowly, and the cavalier behind the ravelin was
taken after a severe struggle:--just taken, when La Valette's mines
blew the victorious assailants into the air. On the 30th another
well-planned assault was repelled. One more effort--a last and
desperate attempt--was to be made on the 7th of September; but on the
5th the news arrived that the Spanish army of relief had at length,
after inconceivable delays and hesitations, actually landed on the
island. The worn-out Turks did not wait to reconnoitre, they had borne
enough: a retreat was ordered, the siege was abandoned, the works that
had cost so much labour and blood were deserted, and there was a
general stampede to the galleys. It is true they landed again when
they learnt that the relieving army numbered but six thousand men; but
their strength was departed from them. They tried to fight the
relieving army, and then again they ran for the ships. The Spaniards
cut them down like sheep, and of all that gallant armament scarce five
thousand lived to tell the tale of those terrible three months in
Malta.
No more moving sight can be imagined than the meeting of the new-come
Brethren of the Order and their comrades of St. Michael's Fort. The
worn remnant of the garrison, all told, was scarcely six hundred
strong, and hardly a man was without a wound. The Grand Master and his
few surviving Knights looked like phantoms from another world, so pale
and grisly were they, faint from their wounds, their hair and beard
unkempt, their armour stained, and neglected, as men must look who had
hardly slept without their weapons for more than three memorable
months. As they saw these gaunt heroes the rescuers burst into tears;
strangers clasped hands and wept together with the same overpowering
emotion that mastered relievers and relieved when Havelock and Colin
Campbell led the Highlanders into Lucknow. Never surely had men
deserved more nobly the homage of mankind. In all history there is no
record of such a siege, of such a disproportion in the forces, of such
a glorious outcome. The Knights of Malta live for ever among the
heroes of all time.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] See an excellent account of the galleys and discipline of the
Knights of St. John in Jurien de la Graviere, _les Derniers Jours de la
Marine a Rames_, ch. ix.; and _Les Chevaliers de Malte_, tome i.
[45] Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Chevaliers de Malte et la Marine de
Philippe II._, ii. 71.
XIV.
LEPANTO.
1571.
The failure of the siege of Malta was a sensible rebuff, yet it cannot
be said that it seriously injured the renown of the Turks in the
Mediterranean. They had been resisted on land; they had not yet been
beaten at sea. Nor could they look back on the terrible months of the
siege without some compensating feeling of consolation. They had taken
St. Elmo, and its fall had aroused general jubilation in every Moslem
breast; the Moors of Granada went near to rising against the Spaniards
on the mere report of this triumph of the Turkish arms. Though they
had failed to reduce St. Michael, the cause was to be found, at least
in part, in a false alarm and an unreasoning panic. To be defeated by
such warriors as the Knights of St. John was not a disgrace; like the
Highlanders in the Crimean War, these men were not so much soldiers,
in their opponents' eyes, as veritable devils; and who shall contend
against the legions of the Jinn? Moreover, forced as they were to
abandon the siege, had they not left the island a desert, its people
reduced by half, its fortifications heaps of rubbish, its brave
defenders a handful of invalids?
So reasoned the Turks, and prepared for another campaign. They had
lost many men, but more were ready to take their place; their immense
fleet was uninjured; and though Dragut was no more, Ochiali--as the
Christians called 'Ali _El-Ul[=u]ji_ "the Renegade"--the Turks dubbed
him _Fart[=a]s_, "Scurvied," from his complaint--was following
successfully in his old master's steps. Born at Castelli (Licastoli)
in Calabria about 1508,[46] Ochiali was to have been a priest, but his
capture by the Turks turned him to the more exciting career of a
Corsair. Soon after the siege of Malta he succeeded Barbarossa's son
Hasan as pasha or Beglerbeg of Algiers (1568), and one of his first
acts was to retake Tunis (all but the Goletta) in the name of Sultan
Sel[=i]m II., who, to the unspeakable loss of the Mohammedan world,
had in 1566 succeeded his great father Suleym[=a]n. In July, 1570, off
Alicata, on the southern coast of Sicily, Ochiali surrounded four
galleys of "the Religion"--they then possessed but five--and took
three of them, including the flagship, which Saint-Clement, the
general of the galleys, abandoned in order to throw himself and his
treasure on shore at Montichiaro. One galley alone, the _St. Ann_,
made a desperate resistance; the others surrendered. Sixty Knights or
Serving Brothers of the Order were killed or made prisoners on this
disastrous day, and so intense was the indignation in Malta, that the
Grand Master had much ado to save Saint-Clement from being lynched by
the mob, and was obliged to deliver him up to the secular court, which
at once condemned him to death. He was strangled in his cell, and his
body thrown in a sack into the sea. Such a success went far to atone
for Mustafa Pasha's unfortunate siege.
A far more important triumph awaited the Turks in 1570-1:--a siege,
and a conquest. The new Sultan, like his father, saw in the island of
Cyprus a standing affront to his authority in the Levant. Then, as
now, Cyprus was a vital centre in all maritime wars in the Eastern
Mediterranean; a convenient depot for troops and stores; a watch-tower
whence the movements of the Turkish fleet could be observed; a refuge
for the numberless Christian Corsairs that infested the coast of
Syria. Cyprus belonged to Venice, and on the score of her protection
of piracy the Sultan found no difficulty in picking a quarrel with the
Senate. War was declared, and Pi[=a]li Pasha transported a large army
under Lala Mustafa (not the Seraskier who commanded at Malta) to lay
siege to Nicosia, the capital of the island. After forty-eight days,
the city fell, September 9th, and became a shambles. The catastrophe
might have been averted, had the Christian fleet owned a single
competent chief; but unhappily the relief of Cyprus was entrusted to
the least trustworthy of all instruments--a coalition.
Pope Pius V., a man of austere piety, full of the zeal of his high
office, and in energy and intellect a born leader, spared no effort to
support the Venetians as soon as war became inevitable. Few of the
states of Europe found it convenient to respond to his appeal, but
Philip of Spain sent a numerous fleet under Giovanni Andrea Doria, and
the Pope himself, aided in some degree by the Italian princes, added
an important contingent, which he confided to the care of the Grand
Constable of Naples, Mark Antony Colonna. Giovanni Zanne commanded the
Venetian fleet. The whole force, when united, amounted to no less than
two hundred and six vessels, of which eleven were galleasses, and
nearly all the rest galleys; while the soldiers and crews numbered
forty-eight thousand men. So dire was the dread then inspired by the
Turks that this vast armament dared not move till it was known that
Ochiali had left the neighbourhood of Italy, and even then the
rivalries of the different admirals tended rather to war between the
contingents than an attack upon the enemy's fleet. While the
Christians were wrangling, and Doria was displaying the same Fabian
caution that had led his grand-uncle to lose the battle of Prevesa,
Pi[=a]li Pasha, wholly regardless of danger, had bared his galleys
almost entirely of soldiers, in order to aid Lala Mustafa in the final
assault on Nicosia. Had the allied fleets attacked him on the 8th or
9th of September it is doubtful whether a single Turkish galley could
have shown fight. But Colonna and Doria wasted their time in wrangling
and discussing, while the foe lay powerless at their feet. Finally
they sailed back to Sicily, for fear of bad weather. Such were the
admirals who furnished the gibes of Ochiali and his brother Corsairs.
Famagusta surrendered August 4, 1571, and despite the promise of life
and liberty, the garrison was ma
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