Part 1 (1/2)
Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean.
by E. Hamilton Currey.
PREFACE
When the s.h.i.+p is ready for launching there comes a moment of tense excitement before the dogsh.o.r.es are knocked away and she slides down the ways. In the case of a s.h.i.+p this excitement is shared by many thousands, who have a.s.sembled to acclaim the birth of a perfected product of the industry of man; the emotion is shared by all those who are present. It is very different when a book has been completed. The launching has been arranged for and completed by expert hands; she like the s.h.i.+p gathers way and slides forth into an ocean: but, unlike the s.h.i.+p which is certain to float, the waters may close over and engulf her, or perchance she may be towed back to that haven of obscurity from which she emerged, to rust there in silence and neglect. There is excitement in the breast of one man alone--to wit, the author. If his book possesses one supreme qualification she will escape the fate mentioned, and this qualification is--interest. As the weeks lengthened into months, and these multiplied themselves to the tale of something like twenty-four, the conviction was strengthened that that which had so profoundly interested the writer, would not be altogether indifferent to others. For some inscrutable reason the deeds of sea-robbers have always possessed a fascination denied to those of their more numerous brethren of the land; and in the case of the Sea-wolves of the sixteenth century we are dealing with the very aristocrats of the profession.
Circ.u.mstances over which they had no control flung the Moslem population of Southern Spain on to the sh.o.r.es of Northern Africa: to revenge themselves upon the Christian foe by whom this expropriation had been accomplished was natural to a warrior race; and those who heretofore had been land-folk pure and simple took to piracy as a means of livelihood. It is of the deeds of these men that this book treats; of their marvellous triumphs, of their apparently hopeless defeats, of the manner in which they audaciously maintained themselves against the princ.i.p.alities and the powers of Christendom always hungering for their destruction.
The quality which Napoleon is said to have ascribed to the British Infantry, ”of never knowing when they were beaten,” seems to have also characterised the Sea-wolves; as witness the marvellous recuperation of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa when expelled from Tunis by Charles V.; and the escape of Dragut from the island of Jerba when apparently hopelessly trapped by the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria. All through their history the leaders of the Sea-wolves show the resourcefulness of the real seamen that they had become by force of circ.u.mstances, and it was they who in the age in which they dwelt showed what sea power really meant. Sailing through the Mediterranean on my way to Malta in the spring of this year, as the good s.h.i.+p fared onwards I pa.s.sed in succession all those lurking-places from which the Moslem Corsairs were wont to burst out upon their prey. Truly it seemed as if
”The spirits of their fathers might start from every wave,”
and in imagination one pictured the rush of the pirate galley, with its naked slaves straining at the oar of their taskmasters, its fierce, reckless, beturbaned crew cl.u.s.tered on the ”rambades” at the bow and stern.
It might be that they would capture some hapless ”round-s.h.i.+p,” a merchantman lumbering slowly along the coast; or again they might meet with a galley of the terrible Knights of St. John or of the ever-redoubtable Doria. In either case the Sea-wolves were equal to their fortune, to plunder or to fight in the name of Allah and his prophet.
That which differentiated the Sea-wolves from other pirates was the combination which they effected among themselves; the manner in which these lawless men could subordinate themselves to the will of one whom they recognised as a great leader. To obtain such recognition was no easy matter, and the manner in which this was done, by those who rose by sheer force of character to the summit of this remarkable hierarchy, has here been set forth.
E. HAMILTON CURREY.
INTRODUCTORY
In all the ages of which we have any record there have been men who gained a living by that practice of robbery on the high seas which we know by the name of Piracy. Perhaps the pirates best known to the English-speaking world are the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who flourished exceedingly in the seventeenth century, and of whom many chronicles exist: princ.i.p.ally owing to the labours of that John Esquemelin, a pirate of a literary turn of mind, who added the crime of authors.h.i.+p to the ill deeds of a sea-rover.
The Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean in the preceding century did not raise up a chronicler from among themselves: for not much tincture of learning seems to have distinguished these desperate fighters and accomplished seamen, descendants of those Spanish Moslems who had, during the Middle Ages, lived in a land in which learning and culture had been held in the highest estimation. Driven from their homes, their civilisation crushed, their religion banned in that portion of Southern Spain in which they had dwelt for over seven centuries, cast upon the sh.o.r.es of Northern Africa, these men took to the sea and became the scourge of the Mediterranean. That which they did, the deeds which they accomplished, the terror which they inspired, the ruin and havoc which they wrought, have been set forth in the pages of this book.
It was the age of the galley, the oar-propelled vessel which moved independently of the wind in the fine-weather months of the great inland sea. Therefore to the dwellers on the coast the Sea-wolves were a perpetual menace; as, when booty was un.o.btainable at sea, they raided the towns and villages of their Christian foes. During all the period here dealt with no man's life, no woman's honour, was safe from these pirates within the area of their nefarious activities. They held the Mediterranean in fee, they levied toll on all who came within reach of their galleys and their scimitars. Places unknown to the geography of the sixteenth century became notorious in their day, and Christian wives and mothers learned to tremble at the very names of Algiers and Tunis. From these places the rovers issued to capture, to destroy, and to enslave: in Oran and Tlemcen, in Tenes, Shersh.e.l.l, Bougie, Jigelli, Bizerta, Sfax, Susa, Monastir, Jerbah, and Tripoli they lurked ready for the raid and the foray. At one time all Northern Africa would thrill to the triumph of the Moslem arms, at another there would go up the wail of the utterly defeated; but in spite of alternations of fortune the Sea-wolves abode in the localities of their choice, and ended in establis.h.i.+ng those pirate States which troubled the peace of the Mediterranean practically until the introduction of steam.
The whole record of the sixteenth century is one of blood and fire, of torture and ma.s.sacre, of ”punic faith” and shameless treason; the deeds of the sea-rovers, appalling as they were, frequently found a counterpart in the battles, the sieges, and the sacking of towns which took place perpetually on the continent of Europe.
There was so much history made at this period, the stage of world politics was occupied by so many great, striking, and dazzling personalities, that the Sea-wolves and all they accomplished were to a great extent overshadowed by happenings which the chroniclers of the time considered to be of greater importance. In this no doubt they were right in the main; but, in spite of this opinion which they held, we find that time and again the main stream of events is ruffled by the prows of the pirate galleys.
Such men as the Barbarossas, as Dragut, and Ali Basha could only have been suppressed and exterminated had the whole might of Christendom been turned against them, for they held in their hands two weapons, the keenest and most powerful with which to attain the objects which they had in view.
The first and more powerful of these was the appeal in a rough and warlike age to the cupidity of mankind. ”Those who are content to follow us,” they said in effect, ”are certain to enrich themselves if they are men stout of heart and strong of hand. All around us lie rich and prosperous lands; we have but to organise ourselves, and to take anything that we wish for; we can, if we like, gather a rich harvest at comparatively small trouble.”
Such counsels as these did not fall on deaf ears. Driven from the land of plenty--from glorious Andalusia with its fruitful soil, its magnificent cities, its vines and olives, its fruit and grain, its n.o.ble rivers and wide-spreading _vegas_--the Spanish Moslem of the day of the Sea-wolves was an outcast and a beggar, ripe for adventure and burning for revenge on those by whom he had been expropriated.
Great historians like William Hickling Prescott tell us that, in the course of the seven centuries of the Moslem domination in Spain, the Moors had become soft and effeminate, that ”the canker of peace” had sapped, if it had not destroyed, the virile qualities of the race, that luxury and learning had dried up at their source those primitive virtues of courage and hardihood which had been the leading characteristics of those stark fighters who had borne the banner of the Prophet from Mecca even to Cadiz.
Tom by faction, by strife among themselves, they had succ.u.mbed to the arms of the Northern chivalry; by its warriors they had been driven out, never to return.
When this was accomplished, when the curtain fell on the final scene of the tragedy, and the Moors, after the fall of Granada, were driven across the sea into Africa, there came to pa.s.s a most remarkable change in those who had been expropriated. The learning, the culture, the civilisation, by which they had been so long distinguished, seemed to drop away from them, cast away like a worn-out garment for which men have no further use. In place of all these things there came a complete and desperate valour, a bitter and headstrong fanaticism.
It was one of the attributes of the Moslem civilisation in Spain, and one of the most enlightened thereof, that religious toleration flourished in its midst. Jew and Christian were allowed to wors.h.i.+p at the altars of their fathers, no man hindering or saying them nay; one rule, and one alone, had to be preserved: none must blaspheme against Mahomet, the Prophet of G.o.d, as he was considered to be by the Moslems. The penalty for infraction of this rule was death; otherwise, complete liberty of conscience was accorded.
We have spoken of the two weapons held by the leaders of the Sea-wolves.
The first, as we have, said, was cupidity; the second was fanaticism, the deadly religious hatred engendered, not only by the wholesale expropriation of the Moslem population, but also by the persecution to which the Moriscoes--as those Moslems were known who remained in Spain--were subjected by their Christian masters. It requires little imagination to see how these two weapons of avarice and intolerance could be made to serve the purpose of those dominant spirits who rose to the summit of the piratical hierarchy. Not only did they dazzle the imaginations of those who followed in their train by promises of wealth uncounted, but they added to this the specious argument that, in slaying and robbing the Christian wheresoever he was to be found, the faithful Moslem was performing the service of G.o.d and the act most grateful to his holy Prophet.
Could any rule of life be at the same time more simple and more attractive to the beggared Mohammedan cast on the sterile sh.o.r.es of Northern Africa to starve?