Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean | Page 7

for themselves dynasties which
endured.
Uruj Barbarossa, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, Dragut Reis, and Occhiali,
or All Basha, were men who, in the sixteenth century, did much to
change the conditions of the times in which they lived: it was the time
of the Renaissance in Europe, a period of splendour in all the arts and
sciences. These men added nothing to the knowledge of the civilised
world as it then existed, save and except in one particular, which was,
as Kheyr-ed-Din explained to Soliman the Magnificent on a certain
memorable occasion, that he who rules on the sea will rule on the land
also. In the present day, when all the nations and languages sit at the
feet of Captain (now Rear-Admiral) Mahan, and acclaim his "Sea
Power" series of books, it is interesting to find that he was anticipated
in the most practical fashion possible by a corsair of the sixteenth
century.
This period was one in which great men abounded. The Emperor
Charles V., Francis I. of France, and Henry VIII. of England, were on
the thrones of their respective countries; in Hungary was John Hunyadi,
at Constantinople Soliman the Magnificent held rule, while in Rome
the "fatal house of Medici" were the successors of Saint Peter. War was
a commonplace state of the times, but until the Crescent began to
sweep the seas it had its manifestation in the perpetual quarrels of the
nations of Christendom, which represented, as a rule, the insatiable
ambitions of its rulers. But now new men forced themselves to the front,
a new power arose which was very imperfectly understood, and which
practically held the sea at its mercy. Gone were the halcyon days of
peaceful trade which had been pursued for generations by Venetian and
Genoese, by Spaniard and Frenchman; gone also, apparently never to
return, was all sense of security for the wretched dwellers on the littoral
of the Mediterranean, who lived in daily, and particularly in nightly,
dread of the falcon swoop of the pirate galleys.

It is amusing to read the old chroniclers, sticklers as they were for "the
dignity of history," continually having to turn aside from the main
stream of their narrative of emperors, popes, and kings to descend to
the level of the Sea-wolves, and to be constrained to set down the
nefarious doings of these rovers of the sea. Bell, book, and candle were
invoked against them in vain, and mighty monarchs had to meet them
in the stricken field not merely once or twice--to their utter undoing and
discomfiture--but many times, while victory inclined first to one side
and then to the other.
The Osmanli had ever been warriors since the times of the Prophet, of
Abu-Bekr, of Othman, and of Ali; but so far their warlike achievements
had been always on land, their only sea experience being confined to
the crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar, when in the eighth century,
under Tarik, they had swarmed into Andalusia, conquered Roderick the
Goth, and set up that Moslem domination in Southern Spain which
lasted until 1492, just before the events set forth in this book took place.
Piracy in all ages is a thing in which a curious shuddering interest has
been taken, and the deeds of the outlaws of the sea have never lacked
chroniclers. There is for this a reason apart from the record of robbery
and murder, which is the commonplace of piratical deeds: it resides in
the perennial interest which men take in individual achievement, in the
spectacle of absolute and complete domination by one man over the
lives and the fortunes of others. This intense form of individualism is
nowhere so well exhibited as in the story of piratical enterprise, where a
band of men, outside of the law and divorced from all human kind by
the atrocity of their deeds, has had to be welded into one homogeneous
mass for the purpose of preying upon the world at large. Therefore he
who would hold rule among such outlaws must himself be a man of no
common description, for in him must be that quality which calls for
instantaneous obedience among those with whom he is associated;
behind him is no constituted authority, discipline is personal, enforced
by the leader, and by him alone. Beneath him are men of the rudest and
roughest description, slaves to their lusts and their passions, prone to
mutiny, suspicious, and--worst of all--stupid.
It is with these constituent elements that the piratical leader had to deal,

trusting to the strength of his own arm, the subtlety of his own
unassisted brain. Some among these leaders have risen to eminence in
their evil lives, most of them have been the captains of single ships
preying on commerce in an indiscriminate manner; but this was not the
case