E. Hamilton Currey

“ All through the northern coasts of Africa the name of Barbarossa was a synonym of terror; the sad fate of Selim Eutemi, of Kara-Hassan, of the twenty-two conspirators of the mosque, had been noised abroad, and the superstitious tribesmen firmly believed that these red-bearded corsairs were the accomplices of Shaitan, even if they did not represent him themselves in their own persons. Who were these men, they asked one another tremblingly, who feared neither God nor devil, and who caused even the redoubtable Spaniards to fly before them like the leaves in front of an autumn gale? ”

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

“ In the stormy times in which his lot was cast he never faltered in his onward way, never repined, never looked back, sustained as he was by a consciousness of his own capability to rule the wild spirits by whom he lived surrounded. So it is that, whatever other opinion we may hold of Dragut, we cannot deny that in this captain of the Sea-wolves were blended rare qualities, which caused him to shine as a capable administrator, a fine seaman, but above all as a supreme leader of men. Dragut died with arms in his hands fighting those whom he considered to be his bitterest enemies. ”

“ Again he had to hearten them for possible encounters with Spaniards, with the terrible Doria, or worst of all with the dreaded Knights of St. John themselves; to point out that to die in conflict with the infidel was a sure passport to heaven and its houris, and to invoke great names, such as that of Barbarossa to show to what dizzy heights the fighting Moslem could climb. In such an age and among such men as these it was no mean feat to become a leader by whom men swore and to whom they yielded a ready obedience. ”

“ Uruj Barbarossa, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, Dragut Reis, and Occhiali, or All Basha, were men who, in the sixteenth century, did much to change the conditions of the times in which they lived: it was the time of the Renaissance in Europe, a period of splendour in all the arts and sciences. These men added nothing to the knowledge of the civilised world as it then existed, save and except in one particular, which was, as Kheyr-ed-Din explained to Soliman the Magnificent on a certain memorable occasion, that he who rules on the sea will rule on the land also. ”

“ East and west flew the galleys of Kheyr-ed-Din, scudding before the wind if that were favourable, or churning the surface of the sea with straining, strenuous oars should the wind be foul or a calm prevail.
It was an appeal for aid to the Moslem corsairs from Algiers, from Tlemcen, from Oran, from Los Gelues (or Jerbah) , and from all the countless islands of the Archipelago, where they lurked to seize their prey—Tunis, which flew the Crescent flag of the Prophet, was in danger—let them rally against the grandson of the man who expelled the Moors from Spain. ”

“ Barbarossa had in his train sixty Spanish soldiers captured by him from the force of Don Hugo de Moncada. Well did the corsair know their value: there were no finer fighting men in all the Christian armies. Hastily summoning them, he promised them their freedom if they would now throw in their lot with him and assist in the downfall of Venalcadi.
The offer was no sooner made than accepted, and the Spanish veterans, fresh and unwearied, threw themselves into the heart of the fray. Shoulder to shoulder and blade to blade in their disciplined valour, they broke through all opposition ”

“ He sent at once to his master, Soliman the Magnificent, at Constantinople, to impart to him the direful intelligence; then the bagnios were thrown open, and, under pitiless lash and scourge, the Christian captives toiled from dawn till dark to repair the fortifications of Tunis. Silent and unapproachable, conferring with none, the grim old Sea-wolf sat in his palace overlooking the bay and considered the question of whether he should give battle by land or sea when the time came. ”

“ The Viziers trembled, as men did when Barbarossa stormed and turned upon them those terrible eyes which knew neither fear nor pity. “We be but men,” they answered, “and our lord the Sultan has so ordained it.”
“I have forty galleys,” replied the corsair; “you have forty more. With these I will take the sea; but, mark you,” he continued, softening somewhat, “you do right to fear the displeasure of the Sultan, and I also have no wish to encounter it; but vessels raised and equipped in a hurry will be of small use to me. ”

“ It is amusing to read the old chroniclers, sticklers as they were for “the dignity of history,” continually having to turn aside from the main stream of their narrative of emperors, popes, and kings to descend to the level of the Sea-wolves, and to be constrained to set down the nefarious doings of these rovers of the sea. Bell, book, and candle were invoked against them in vain, and mighty monarchs had to meet them in the stricken field not merely once or twice—to their utter undoing and discomfiture—but many times, while victory inclined first to one side and then to the other. ”

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

“ Far otherwise was it with the Sea-wolves, who were a law to themselves and to themselves alone. Should they care “to place it on the hazard of a die to win or lose it all,” there was none to say them nay, there was no punishment save that of defeat. This it was that so often conduced to their success. Despots as were such men as Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa and Dragut, they were none the less dependent on the goodwill of their followers. If, therefore, they decided on a desperate enterprise, they appealed to the fighting instincts, the cupidity, and the fanaticism of these men. ”

“ Grim and sinister, the corsairs came flocking to the standard of Barbarossa. Well they knew that, should he fall, it was but a matter of time for them all to be chased from off the face of the waters. Of cohesion there was but little among them, and, in spite of the bond of a common religion and a common hatred of the Christian, they were swayed far more by a lust for plunder than by such considerations as these. In times of imminent danger, however, men naturally crave for a leader, and in piratical circles all was now subordinated to the instinct of self-preservation. ”

“ Barbarossa himself was an old man, so old that it seems nothing short of a miracle that he should have survived the hardships of this awful march. Not only did he do this, but apparently arrived at Bona in condition to continue his journey by sea at once, had he cared to do so. He had lost his newly acquired kingdom, he had lost nearly his entire fleet, his arsenal and stores were in the hands of his enemies; if ever a man was completely crushed it was he on this memorable occasion. ”

“ For long years now the fortress of Tripoli had been in the hands of the renowned Dragut, who was the scourge and the terror of the Christians. The corsair dwelt in his stronghold in insolent defiance of the Knights, whose property it once had been. Years before he had wrested it from them by the strong hand: what, then, more necessary in the eyes of such an one as La Valette than to expel this audacious pirate? The Grand Master invited the co-operation of Juan la Cerda (a Spanish Grandee, Duke of Medina-Celi, and Viceroy of Sicily for the King of Spain) in this enterprise. ”

“ Dragut was in a trap, and he was quite aware of the fact; by way of the Bocca de Cantara escape was impossible, and neither a tame surrender nor complete annihilation was by any means to the taste of the pirate leader. Had Doria gone in and attacked at once, the fate of the corsair had been sealed; the policy of delay adopted by the Christian admiral was his salvation.
A man less able, less determined, than Dragut, might well have despaired; but he brought to bear on the problem with which he was confronted all the subtlety of his nature, all the resourcefulness of the born seaman that he was. ”

“ On May 16th, 1530, the corsairs once again advanced to the assault. By this time the walls had been battered until a practicable breach had been formed, and over this swarmed thirteen hundred of the starkest fighters of the Mediterranean, In the breach, bareheaded, his armour hacked and dinted, stood the undaunted chieftain of the Spaniards: over his head floated that proud banner which had never cast its shadow on a worthier knight of Spain. ”

“ A ravelin in advance of the fortress on the land side was scourged without ceasing by the arquebus fire of the Janissaries. One evening, as the return fire had slackened and all seemed quiet within this work, some Turkish engineers stole forth from the trenches to reconnoitre. Approaching the cavalier, all was still as death; the bold sappers pushed on as far as the ditch by which the work was surrounded, creeping on hands and knees. They let themselves down noiselessly into the ditch, and then, one standing on the shoulders of another, peeped in upon their Christian foes. ”

“ Thus at Lepanto, the Christian slaves, seeing the right wing of the Turkish fleet thrown into disorder by the galleys of the Allies, broke out into furious mutiny, succeeded in shattering their fetters and chains, attacked their masters the Turks in the rear with incredible energy with any weapons upon which they could lay their hands, and thus contributed in no small measure to the ultimate triumph of the Christian arms. ”

“ THE BATTLE OF PREVESA How Alessandro Condalmiero fought the Galleon of Venice—
“The King of the Sea is dead.”
There is something almost pathetic in the spectacle of a really great leader badgered and importuned by lesser men to adopt a course which he, with a superior insight, knows to be unsound. In the matter of the landing Barbarossa had demonstrated that it was he whose knowledge of war was superior to those who were so ready to thrust upon him their opinions; this, however, did not content them, and they now desired to close with the foe waiting for them outside. ”

“ By this time the fame of the Barbarossas had gone abroad from Valencia to Constantinople, from Rome to the foot—hills of the Atlas Mountains, and, to circumvent the Genoese garrison of Jigelli, Kheyr-ed-Din called to his aid the savage Berber tribes of the hinterland of this part of Northern Africa.
Turbulent, rash, unstable as water, were these primitive dwellers of the desert; but they were fighters and raiders to a man, and ready for any desperate encounter if only it held out the promise of loot: they were as veritably the pirates of the land as were the Barbarossas pirates of the sea. ”

“ At this juncture Barbarossa hesitated; had he not done so, and had he followed Grimani to Corfu, he might have destroyed both him and Vincenzo Capello in detail before the arrival of Doria. The Prevesa campaign is a curious study of hesitation on both sides, and the idea naturally occurs were not the corsair and the Christian commanders-in-chief too old for the work on which they were engaged? Men of over seventy are not impetuous, but grave and deliberate as a rule; but there is no rule without its exceptions, and Doria and Barbarossa were not as other leaders. ”

“ He reminded the Padishah that, in the dungeons of the Knights, true believers were languishing; that on the rowers’ benches of the galleys of “the Religion” Moslems were being flogged like dogs. In a furious peroration he concluded: “It is only thy invincible sword which can shatter the chains of these unfortunates, whose cries are rising to heaven and afflicting the ears of the Prophet of God: the son is demanding his father, the wife her husband and her children. All, therefore, wait upon thee, upon thy justice, and thy power, for vengeance upon their cruel and implacable enemies.” ”

“ His old and experienced antagonist was well aware that the winds and the waves might save him the trouble of destroying the fleet of the enemy; an equinoctial gale would do that far more effectually than could he. If Doria had an uneasy consciousness that he might at any time see the shore littered with oarless galleys and dismasted nefs, while the sea was filled with drowning men, the same vision had been vouchsafed to his imperturbable adversary. Had it been left to the entire initiative of Barbarossa, his Fabian tactics would assuredly have prevailed in the end ”

“ Absolute supremacy was his in the life which he lived, but none knew better than he upon what an unstable basis his power rested. He now called himself the King of Algiers, but still that lean, sun-dried garrison held with desperate tenacity to the tower of the redoubtable Navarro, and any moment a fresh Spanish relieving force might be upon him and chase him forth even as Uruj had been chased from Tlemcen. ”