Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean | Page 5

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 Còrdoba, At the last moment of their wonderful
defence they were relieved by a fleet sent by the King of Spain, and