Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean | Page 6

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.
To those who may perhaps be called the pioneers--that is to say, the
men treated of in this book--a certain amount of sympathy and
understanding may be conceded; for they had been driven from the land
which had been theirs, it was their countrymen and their co-religionists
who were being ground to powder beneath the fanatical cruelty of the
Spanish Inquisition. That which they did was doubtless abominable,
but it cannot be contended that they had not received the strongest
provocation both from the material and the religious points of view.
Once the "Grand Period" was passed, that period in which such men as
the Barbarossas, Dragut, and Ali flourished, the chronicle of the
Moslem States founded by them sinks to the degraded level of sheer
robbery and murder; of a history of a tyranny established within one
hundred miles of the shores of Europe, and of great kings and princes
bargaining with piratical ruffians who held in thrall thousands upon
thousands of their subjects. How it came about that the Christian States
tolerated such an abuse is one of those mysteries which can never be
explained; and if subsequent centuries displayed a greater refinement of
manners, a more apt appreciation of all that is softer and kindlier in the

human relationships of nation towards nation and of people towards
people, they have not perhaps so much to plume themselves upon as
had their rude forefathers of the sixteenth century, who, seeing the evil
and feeling the effects thereof, did their best to extirpate those by whom
this evil was caused.
The question may be asked, how can it be that the lives and actions of
such men as these are worth chronicling? It is because, not only that
they modified profoundly the course of history in the age in which they
lived, but also because that, hidden deep down, somewhere, in these
men stained by a thousand crimes, ruthless, lustful, bloodthirsty, cruel
as the grave, was the germ of true greatness, some dim spark of the
divine fire of genius. Contending against principalities and powers,
they held their own; in the welter of anarchy in which they lived they
proved that there existed no finer fighting men, which alone give them
some claim to consideration; but that which is most interesting to watch
is the absolute domination obtained by the leaders over their followers.
There is no other record of pirates who commanded on so large a scale;
there is none which shows men such as these bargaining on equal terms
with the great ones of the earth.

CHAPTER I
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS
There is, in the deeds of men of action, an interest which is never
aroused by those persons of brains and capacity by whom the world is
really ruled. The statesman in his cabinet is the god within the machine;
it is he who directs the acts of nations, it is he who moves the fleets and
armies as if they were pieces on the chess-board; to him, as a rule, is
the man of action subordinate, obeying his behests. Rule and
governance are his, power both in the abstract and the concrete. Seldom
in the history of the world do we come across the men who are at one
and the same time statesmen and soldiers, who, taking their destiny in
their own hands, work it out to the appointed end thereof. But, as we
stray in the by-paths of history, we meet with some who, in their day,
have influenced not only the age in which they lived themselves, but
also the destinies of generations yet unborn. It would seem incredible

that mere pirates, such as the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean,
could be included in this category, and yet, as their story is unfolded,
we shall see how the Sea-wolves rose from the humblest beginnings to
trouble the peace of Europe, to found