Barbary corsairs

“ 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 ”

“ Some of them volunteered—and to the outlaws of Europe the command of a Barbary galley was perhaps the only congenial resort;—but most of them were captives seized as children, and torn from their homes in some of the Corsairs’ annual raids upon Corsica and Sardinia and the Italian or Dalmatian coasts. Most of such prisoners were condemned to menial and other labour, unless ransomed; but the bolder and handsomer boys were often picked out by the penetrating eye of the reïs, and once chosen the young captive’s career was established. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The principal officers took each three shares, the gunners and helmsmen two, and the soldiers and swabbers one; the Christian slaves received from 1-1/2 to three shares apiece. A scrivener saw to the accuracy of the division. If the prize was a very large one, the captors usually towed it into Algiers at once, but small vessels were generally sent home under a lieutenant and a jury-crew of Moors.
There is no mistaking the aspect of a Corsair who has secured a prize: for he fires gun after gun as he draws near the port, utterly regardless of powder. ”

“ In an old work on naval architecture, published in 1629, it is stated in reference to the Turkish pirates of Barbary that "The Corsairs, indeed, are very wily in attack and defence, acquainted with many kinds of projectiles, even Submarine Torpedoes, which a diver will attach to an enemy's keel". ”

“ 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. Suleymān the Magnificent saw the necessity of combination; he knew that Kheyr-ed-dīn could teach the Stambol [Pg 75] navigators and ship-builders much that they ought to learn; his Grand Vezīr Ibrahīm strenuously urged a closer relation between the Turkish powers of the east and west ”

“ This flagship is a Christian vessel, so the rowers are either Turkish and Moorish captives, or Christian convicts. If it were a Corsair, the rowers would all be Christian prisoners. In earlier days the galleys were rowed by freemen, and so late as 1500 the Moors of Algiers pulled their own brigantines to the attack of Spanish villages, but their boats were light, and a single man could pull the oar. ”

“ At this time, two brothers, Horuc and Hayradin, the sons of a potter in the Island of Lesbos, had become famous as corsairs. In an age when the sword of the adventurer often carved a higher fortune than could be earned by lawful exertion, they were dreaded for their abilities, their hardihood, and their power. ”

“ Insomuch that before these Corsairs have been absent from their abodes much longer than perhaps twenty or thirty days, they return home rich, with their vessels crowded with captives, and ready to sink with [Pg 205] wealth ”

“ The die was cast, the erstwhile corsair, the son of the renegado of Mitylene and his Christian wife was henceforward the supreme head of the Ottoman fleet.
The following description of the famous corsair may be found interesting at this juncture.
Barbarossa was at this time seventy-seven years of age. Courageous and prudent, he was as far-seeing in war as he was subtle in peace. A tireless worker, he was, above all things, constant in reverse of fortune, for no difficulties dismayed him, no dangers had power to daunt his spirit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thousands of Christian slaves meant tens of thousand of Christian sympathisers, bereaved parents and sisters, sorrowing children and friends; and it is easy to imagine what efforts were made to procure the release of their unhappy relatives in captivity. At first it was extremely difficult to open negotiations with the Corsairs; but when nation after nation appointed consuls to watch over their interests at Algiers and Tunis, there was a recognized medium of negotiation of which the relations took advantage. ”

“ Barbarossa, Uruj, 7, 74, his birth, 43; character, 44; first attempt at piracy, 45; taken prisoner, 46; escapes, 47, 48; presented with a ship, 48; winters at Alexandria, 49; at the island of Jerba, 50; joined by his brother, 50; treaty with the Sultan of Tunis, 51; attackes The Galley of Naples, 51–54; wounded, 54; attacks on Bougie, 55, 58; loses an arm, 55; 391appeal from the Algerines, 66; treatment of Kara-Hassan, 66; besieges Navarre’s Tower, 67; slaughters the Berbers, 68–70; defeats Don Diego, 71; marches on Tlemcen, 72; blockaded, 73; killed, 73. Barbary, coast of, 236. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Uruj and Kheyr-ed-Din for their part, although they had captured Jigelli, were totally unable to hold it: the capture had indeed been principally due to the assistance which they had received from the Berber tribesmen, but these nomads had disappeared into the deserts from whence they came, once the looting of the town and fortress had been completed.
The corsair had to be armed at all points, in the moral as well as the material sense, as he was the enemy of all men, and all were vowed to his destruction. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There was no mention of Raschid, that Prince of the Hafsit dynasty, whom Kheyr-ed-Din had declared to the townspeople he had come to restore to the throne of his ancestors. Too late the town sprang to arms, under a chief named Abdahar, and in the first instance accomplished a considerable success. Barbarossa’s men were unprepared, and a number of them were slain. Driven into a bastion of the walls, a party of the corsairs were desperately defending themselves, when one Baetio, a Spanish renegado, discovered that a cannon behind them pointing seawards was loaded. ”

“ Once again had a Moslem corsair bid defiance to that ruler whom Sandoval and Marmol in their histories greet by the name of the “Modern Cæsar.” It was told to Charles that Susa, Sfax, and Monastir had fallen, that “Africa” was in the hands of the corsairs; “was he never to be free from these pestilent knaves,” he demanded of his trembling courtiers? Hot-foot came the couriers from Charles to Andrea Doria, with orders to take Dragut dead or alive, but alive for choice; and up and down the tideless sea in the summer of 1549 did the great Genoese seaman range in search of the bold corsair. ”

“ In the name of Allah the compassionate and his holy Prophet give me my eighty galleys and let me go.”
In Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa sound strategical instinct went hand in hand with the desperate184 valour of the corsair. To dally in the Golden Horn while so rich a prey was at sea to be picked up by his Christian foes was altogether opposed to his instincts: never to throw away a chance in the game of life had ever been his guiding principle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fact of the intolerable lot of the common man in these times helps us to understand one thing which otherwise would be an insoluble problem: which was, why did Christian soldiers so often become renegadoes and fight for the corsairs under the banner of those who were the fiercest and most irreconcilable foes of themselves and their kindred? The life of the common soldier or sailor did not offer many advantages; it was generally a short and anything but a merry one, and the thing by which it was most profoundly affected was capture by the corsairs. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Thus balked of his prey, Barbarossa swung his fleet round to the southward and westward and sailed for Sardinia, where, from the Straits of Bonifacio to Cape Spartivento, he left no house standing that would burn, or man alive who was not swept in as a captive. The descent of the corsairs in force, such as Kheyr-ed-Din now had at his disposal, was one of the most awful calamities for a country that it is possible to imagine. When 137Sardinia had ceased to yield up either booty or slaves the fleet sailed for Tunis, where it arrived before Bizerta on August 15th. ”

“ Once again Christendom was nerving itself for a supreme effort against the corsairs, and, during the time that Barbarossa was raiding and ravaging among the islands of the Archipelago, the Christian fleet was gradually assembling. At first it numbered191 some 150 galleys, 81 Venetian, 36 Pontifical, and 30 Spanish; Charles V. sent, at the last moment, 50 ships on which were embarked 10,000 troops. The force totalled altogether 59,000 to 60,000 men, 195 ships, and 2,594 cannons. ”

“ Three or four days after we had set sail, we were attacked by corsairs, who easily made themselves masters of our vessel, as we were not in a state for defence. Some persons in the ship attempted to make resistance, but it cost them their lives. I, and all those who had the prudence not to oppose the intention of the corsairs, were made slaves. After they had stripped us, and substituted bad clothes for our own, they bent their course towards a large island at a very great distance, where they sold us. ”

“ He could drive men, he could lead them, he could invariably persuade when all else failed him. In this we have had an instance when he was chased from Algiers by the combined efforts of Venalcadi and Hassan, whom he had flogged; for no sooner did he meet with other corsairs than he persuaded them to take up his quarrel—which, it must be understood, was none of theirs—and to replace him on that precarious throne from which he had been so rudely thrust. ”