Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean | Page 3

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,