Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean written by E. Hamilton Currey
E >>
E. Hamilton Currey >> Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
[Illustration: KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA--CORSAIR, ADMIRAL, AND KING.]
SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
THE GRAND PERIOD OF THE MOSLEM CORSAIRS
BY COMMANDER E. HAMILTON CURREY, R.N.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
"Ships be but boards, sailors but men:
There be land rats and water rats, land thieves and water thieves,
I mean pirates."
_Merchant of Venice_.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W
1910
TO THAT GRACIOUS LADY TO WHOSE COUNSEL AND ENCOURAGEMENT I OWE SO MUCH MORE
THAN ANY ONE--SAVE I--CAN IMAGINE...
TO MY WIFE
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
PREFACE
When the ship is ready for launching there comes a moment of tense
excitement before the dogshores are knocked away and she slides down the
ways. In the case of a ship this excitement is shared by many thousands,
who have assembled 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 ship gathers way
and slides forth into an ocean: but, unlike the ship 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.
Circumstances over which they had no control flung the Moslem population of
Southern Spain on to the shores 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 principalities 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 circumstances, 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
ship fared onwards I passed 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 clustered on the "rambades" at the bow and stern.
It might be that they would capture some hapless "round-ship," 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.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAPTER I
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 13
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE CORSAIRS 28
CHAPTER III
URUJ BARBAROSSA 43
CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH OF URUJ BARBAROSSA 59
CHAPTER V
KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA 75
CHAPTER VI
THE TAKING OF THE PENON D'ALGER; ANDREA DORIA 91
CHAPTER VII
THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE CORSAIR KING 107
CHAPTER VIII
THE RAID ON THE COAST OF ITALY; JULIA GONZAGA 123
CHAPTER IX
BARCELONA, MAY 1535; THE GATHERING OF THE
CHRISTIAN HOSTS 139
CHAPTER X
THE FALL OF TUNIS AND THE FLIGHT OF BARBAROSSA 155
CHAPTER XI
ROXALANA AND THE MURDER OF IBRAHIM 172
CHAPTER XII
THE PREVESA CAMPAIGN; THE GATHERING OF THE
FLEETS 189
CHAPTER XIII
THE BATTLE OF PREVESA 205
CHAPTER XIV
THE NAVY OF OARS. THE GALLEY, THE GALEASSE,
AND THE NEF 221
CHAPTER XV
DRAGUT-REIS 238
CHAPTER XVI
DRAGUT-REIS 254
CHAPTER XVII
DRAGUT-REIS 269
CHAPTER XVIII
THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN 286
CHAPTER XIX
DRAGUT-REIS 306
CHAPTER XX
THE SIEGE OF MALTA 324
CHAPTER XXI
ALI BASHA 344
CHAPTER XXII
LEPANTO 362
AUTHORITIES CONSULTED 383
LIST OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN,
SULTANS OF TURKEY, POPES OF ROME, AND GRAND
MASTERS OF MALTA FROM 1492 TO 1580 385
DISTANCES IN SEA MILES ON THE COAST OF NORTHERN
AFRICA 387
INDEX 389
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I wish to record my cordial recognition of the kindness shown to me at
Malta by Mr. Salvino Sant Manduca. The picture of the carrack opposite to
page 300 was a gift from him. The galley of the Knights of Malta is a
reproduction of a picture hanging in his house. I should also like to thank
him for the time and trouble which he took on my behalf during my stay at
Malta, and the keen interest he displayed in my subject.
R. HAMILTON CURREY.
KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA--CORSAIR, ADMIRAL, AND KING _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
URUJ AND KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA 44
ANDREA DORIA, PRINCE OF ONEOLIA, ADMIRAL TO CHARLES V. 92
SOLIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT 110
THE EMPEROR CHARLES V 150
MULEY HASSAN KING OF TUNIS 162
GALEASSE UNDER SAIL 194
GALLEY UNDER OARS 222
BRIGANTINE CHASING FELUCCA 236
GOZON DE DIEU-DONNE SLAYING THE GREAT SERPENT OF RHODES 294
CARRACK IN WHICH THE KNIGHTS ARRIVED AT MALTA, 1530 300
JEAN PARISOT DE LA VALETTE, GRAND MASTER OF THE KNIGHTS
OF MALTA, AT THE SIEGE OF THAT ISLAND BY THE TURKS
IN 1565 324
DEATH OF DRAGUT AT THE SIEGE OF MALTA 340
A GALLEY OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA 354
DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA 362
SEBASTIAN VENIERO 364
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: principally
owing to the labours of that John Esquemelin, a pirate of a literary turn
of mind, who added the crime of authorship to the ill deeds of a sea-rover.
The Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean in the preceding century did not raise
up a chronicler from among themselves: for not much tincture of learning
seems to have distinguished these desperate fighters and accomplished
seamen, descendants of those Spanish Moslems who had, during the Middle
Ages, lived in a land in which learning and culture had been held in the
highest estimation. Driven from their homes, their civilisation crushed,
their religion banned in that portion of Southern Spain in which they had
dwelt for over seven centuries, cast upon the shores of Northern Africa,
these men took 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 unobtainable at sea, they raided the towns and
villages of their Christian foes. During all the period here dealt with no
man's life, no woman's honour, was safe from these pirates within the area
of their nefarious activities. They held the Mediterranean in fee, they
levied toll on all who came within reach of their galleys and their
scimitars. Places unknown to the geography of the sixteenth century became
notorious in their day, and Christian wives and mothers learned to tremble
at the very names of Algiers and Tunis. From these places the rovers issued
to capture, to destroy, and to enslave: in Oran and Tlemcen, in Tenes,
Shershell, Bougie, Jigelli, Bizerta, Sfax, Susa, Monastir, Jerbah, and
Tripoli they lurked ready for the raid and the foray. At one time all
Northern Africa would thrill to the triumph of the Moslem arms, at another
there would go up the wail of the utterly defeated; but in spite of
alternations of fortune the Sea-wolves abode in the localities of their
choice, and ended in establishing those pirate States which troubled the
peace of the Mediterranean practically until the introduction of steam.
The whole record of the sixteenth century is one of blood and fire, of
torture and massacre, of "punic faith" and shameless treason; the deeds of
the sea-rovers, appalling as they were, frequently found a counterpart in
the battles, the sieges, and the sacking of towns which took place
perpetually on the continent of Europe.
There was so much history made at this period, the stage of world politics
was occupied by so many great, striking, and dazzling personalities, that
the Sea-wolves and all they accomplished were to a great extent
overshadowed by happenings which the chroniclers of the time considered to
be of greater importance. In this no doubt they were right in the main;
but, in spite of this opinion which they held, we find that time and again
the main stream of events is ruffled by the prows of the pirate galleys.
Such men as the Barbarossas, as Dragut, and Ali Basha could only have been
suppressed and exterminated had the whole might of Christendom been turned
against them, for they held in their hands two weapons, the keenest and
most powerful with which to attain the objects which they had in view.
The first and more powerful of these was the appeal in a rough and warlike
age to the cupidity of mankind. "Those who are content to follow us," they
said in effect, "are certain to enrich themselves if they are men stout of
heart and strong of hand. All around us lie rich and prosperous lands; we
have but to organise ourselves, and to take anything that we wish for; we
can, if we like, gather a rich harvest at comparatively small trouble."
Such counsels as these did not fall on deaf ears. Driven from the land of
plenty--from glorious Andalusia with its fruitful soil, its magnificent
cities, its vines and olives, its fruit and grain, its noble rivers and
wide-spreading _vegas_--the Spanish Moslem of the day of the Sea-wolves was
an outcast and a beggar, ripe for adventure and burning for revenge on
those by whom he had been expropriated.
Great historians like William Hickling Prescott tell us that, in the course
of the seven centuries of the Moslem domination in Spain, the Moors had
become soft and effeminate, that "the canker of peace" had sapped, if it
had not destroyed, the virile qualities of the race, that luxury and
learning had dried up at their source those primitive virtues of courage
and hardihood which had been the leading characteristics of those stark
fighters who had borne the banner of the Prophet from Mecca even to Cadiz.
Tom by faction, by strife among themselves, they had succumbed to the arms
of the Northern chivalry; by its warriors they had been driven out, never
to return.
When this was accomplished, when the curtain fell on the final scene of the
tragedy, and the Moors, after the fall of Granada, were driven across the
sea into Africa, there came to pass a most remarkable change in those who
had been expropriated. The learning, the culture, the civilisation, by
which they had been so long distinguished, seemed to drop away from them,
cast away like a worn-out garment for which men have no further use. In
place of all these things there came a complete and desperate valour, a
bitter and headstrong fanaticism.
It was one of the attributes of the Moslem civilisation in Spain, and one
of the most enlightened thereof, that religious toleration flourished in
its midst. Jew and Christian were allowed to worship at the altars of their
fathers, no man hindering or saying them nay; one rule, and one alone, had
to be preserved: none must blaspheme against Mahomet, the Prophet of God,
as he was considered to be by the Moslems. The penalty for infraction of
this rule was death; otherwise, complete liberty of conscience was
accorded.
We have spoken of the two weapons held by the leaders of the Sea-wolves.
The first, as we have, said, was cupidity; the second was fanaticism, the
deadly religious hatred engendered, not only by the wholesale expropriation
of the Moslem population, but also by the persecution to which the
Moriscoes--as those Moslems were known who remained in Spain--were
subjected by their Christian masters. It requires little imagination to see
how these two weapons of avarice and intolerance could be made to serve the
purpose of those dominant spirits who rose to the summit of the piratical
hierarchy. Not only did they dazzle the imaginations of those who followed
in their train by promises of wealth uncounted, but they added to this the
specious argument that, in slaying and robbing the Christian wheresoever he
was to be found, the faithful Moslem was performing the service of God and
the act most grateful to his holy Prophet.
Could any rule of life be at the same time more simple and more attractive
to the beggared Mohammedan cast on the sterile shores of Northern Africa to
starve?
With the main stream of history, to which we have before referred, we have
no concern in this book. He who would embark thereon must sail a powerful
vessel which must carry many guns. Also for the conduct of this vessel many
qualities are necessary: a commanding intellect, acute perceptions,
indefatigable industry, complete leisure, are among those things necessary
to the pilot. These must be supplemented by a genius for research, a
knowledge of ancient and modern languages, and an unerring faculty for
separating the few precious grains of wheat from those mountains of chaff
which he will have to sift with the utmost care. There are, however,
subsidiary rivulets which feed the onward flow of events, and of such is
the story of the Sea-wolves of the Mediterranean. On these the adventurous
mariner can sail his little cockboat, discreetly retiring before he becomes
involved and engulfed in the main stream. That he cannot altogether avoid
it is shown by the fact that the men who are here chronicled took part in
events of first-class importance in the age in which they lived.
Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa fought the battle of Prevesa against his lifelong
antagonist, Andrea Doria. Dragut was killed at the siege of Malta, at the
moment almost of the fall of the castle of St. Elmo; had he lived it is
more than probable that Jean Parisot de la Valette and his heroic garrison
would have been defeated instead of being victorious. Ali Basha was the one
Moslem commander who increased his reputation at the battle of Lepanto,
because, as was usual in all maritime conflicts of the time, the corsairs,
who had the habit of the sea, were more than a match for soldiers embarked
to fight on an unfamiliar element.
We shall speak, later on, of the autocratic rule of these leaders who
possessed so absolute a domination over the men by whom they were followed.
The fact of this absolute supremacy on the part of the chiefs is very
curious, as theoretically in the confederacy of the Sea-wolves all were
equal; we are, in fact, confronted with pure democracy, where every man was
at liberty to do what seemed best in his own eyes. He was a free agent,
none coercing him or desiring him to place himself under discipline or
command. This, be it observed, was the theory. As a matter of fact the
corsairs, who were extraordinarily successful in their abominable trade,
abode beneath an iron and rigid discipline. This was enforced by the lash,
as we shall see later on when it is related how Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa
flogged one Hassan, a captain who, he considered, had failed in his duty:
or by the actual penalty of death, which Uruj Barbarossa inflicted on one
who had dared to act independently of his authority.
The theory of equality obtained among the Mediterranean pirates; but the
Barbarossas, Dragut, and Ali believed that, in practice, the less
interference there was with their designs by those, whom Cardinal Granvelle
denominated in a letter to Philip II. as "that mischievous animal the
people," the better it would be for all concerned. The conception held of
rights and duties of "the mischievous animal" by these militant persons
was, that it should behave as did those others recorded of the Roman
centurion in Holy Writ: if it did not, and difficulties arose, the leaders
were not troubled with an undue tenderness either towards the individual or
the theory. Of this we shall see examples as we go on.
This period has been called "The Grand Period of the Moslem Corsairs"
because it was in something less than a century, from the year of the
expulsion of the Moors from Granada in 1492 to the death of Ali Basha in
1580, that the Sea-wolves were at the height of their power, that the
piratical States of the Mediterranean were in the making. That subsequently
they gave great cause of trouble to Christendom is written in characters of
blood and fire throughout the history of the succeeding centuries; but the
real interest in the careers of these men resides in the fact that they
established, by their extraordinary aptitude for sea-adventure, the
permanent place which was held by their descendants. Time and again in the
sixteenth century the effort was made to destroy them root and branch: they
were defeated, driven out of their strongholds on shore, crushed apparently
for ever. But nothing short of actual extermination could have been
successful in this; as, no matter how severe had been the set-back, there
was always left a nucleus of the pirates which in a short time grew again
into a formidable force. The Ottoman Turk, magnificent fighter as he was on
land, seemed to lose his great qualities when the venue was changed from
the land to the sea. The Janissaries, that picked corps trained as few
soldiers were trained even in that age of iron, who never recoiled before
the foe but who fought only to conquer or die, seem to have failed when
embarked for sea-service. That which the hard teaching of experience alone
could show--that the man who fights best upon the sea is he who has the
habit of the sea--was at this time not generally recognised, and this it
was that rendered the corsairs so supreme on the element which they had
made their own. Some among the great ones of the earth there were who
appreciated this fact, who, like that great statesman Ibrahim, Grand Vizier
to Soliman the Magnificent, recognised what it was to lay their hands upon
"a veritable man of the sea"; but the rule was to embark men from the shore
and to entrust to them the duty of fighting naval actions.
When "the Grand Period" came to an end, as it did about the date already
indicated, the corsairs had become a permanent institution; they remained
established at Algiers, Tunis, and other ports on the littoral of Northern
Africa as a recognised evil. Pirates they remained to the end of the
chapter, the scourge of the tideless sea; but no longer did they array
themselves in line of battle against the mightiest potentates of the earth
allied for their complete destruction. It was the men of the sea who set up
this empire; it was they who defied Charles V., a whole succession of
Popes, Andrea Doria and his descendants, the might of Spain, Venice, Genoa,
Catalonia, and France. It was they who taught the so-called civilised world
of the age in which they lived that sea-power can only be met and checked
by those who dispose of navies manned by seamen; that against it the master
of the mightiest legions of the land is powerless.
This contention is by no means invalidated by the fact that frequently the
corsairs were defeated by land forces embarked on board ship. Thus when
Dragut was defending Tripoli against an expedition sent against him in 1559
by the combined forces of Spain, Tuscany, Rome, Naples, Sicily, and Genoa,
of one hundred sail which embarked fourteen thousand troops, he was
relieved by Piali, the Admiral of Soliman the Magnificent, who came to his
assistance with eighty-six galleys, each of which had on board one hundred
Janissaries, and who gained so striking a victory over the Christians that
the Turkish Admiral returned to Constantinople with no less than four
thousand prisoners. But in this case, as in so many others, the actual
hostilities took place on shore, where the troops had the opportunity of
displaying their sterling qualities.
There is very little doubt that critics will point out that the corsairs
were by no means universally successful; that, as in the case of the attack
by Hassem, the ruler of Algiers in 1563, on Oran and Marzaquivir (a small
port in the immediate vicinity of Oran), in the end the Moslems were badly
beaten. This undoubtedly was the case, and there is no desire to magnify
the deeds of the Sea-wolves or to minimise the heroic defence of
Marzaquivir by the Count of Alcaudete, or that of Oran by his brother, Don
Martin de Cordoba, At the last moment of their wonderful defence they were
relieved by a fleet sent by the King of Spain, and Hassem had to abandon
his artillery, ammunition, and stores and beat a hasty retreat to the place
from whence he had come.
There was nothing remarkable in the fact that the corsairs were frequently
defeated; what is really strange is that they should have achieved so great
a success--success vouched for by the concrete instance that they
established those sinister dynasties on the coast of Northern Africa which
were the outcome of their piratical activities.
In speaking of them, historians of later date than that at which they
flourished are apt to hold them somewhat cheaply, to dismiss them as mere
barbarians of no particular importance in the scheme of mundane affairs; as
men who caused a certain amount of trouble to civilisation by their inroads
and their plunderings. That which is certain is that they were for
centuries a standing shame and disgrace to the whole of Christendom.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25