Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean | Page 5

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 Còrdoba, 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