Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean | Page 8

with the Sea-wolves of the Mediterranean, Primarily sea-robbers
they were of course, but as time and opportunity developed their
characters they rose to meet occasion, to take fortune at the flood, in a
manner that, had they been pursuing any other career, would most
certainly have caused them to rise to eminence. Into the fierce and
blood-stained turmoil of their lives there entered something unknown
to any other pirates: this was religious fanaticism--a fanaticism so
engrained in character, a belief held to with such passionate tenacity,
that men stained with every conceivable crime held that their passage to
Paradise was absolutely secure because of the faith which they
professed. Tradition, sentiment, discipline, were summed up in one trite
formula; but though we, at this distance of time, may hold it somewhat
in derision, it was a vital force in the days of Soliman the Magnificent;
and there was an added zest to robbery and murder in the fact that the
pirates, as good Mohammedans, were obeying the behests of the
Prophet every time that they cut a Christian throat, plundered a
Christian argosy, or carried off shrieking women into a captivity far
worse than death.
That a pirate should be a warrior goes without saying, that a pirate
should be a statesman is a thing almost incredible; but those who will
read the story of the life of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa will be forced to
admit that here, at least, was a pirate who achieved the apparently
impossible. Admiral Jurien de la Gravière has remarked that the
Moslem corsairs of the sixteenth century were great men, even when
measured by the standard of Henry VIII., of Charles V., of Soliman the
Magnificent, of Ibrahim, his Grand Vizier, or of Andrea Doria, greatest
among contemporary Christian mariners. To the seaman, of course,
there is much that is fascinating in the deeds of his forerunners, and the
ships of the corsairs had in them something distinctive in that they were
propelled by oars, and were in consequence, to a certain extent,
independent of the weather. Like the sailors of all ages, to the
Sea-wolves gales and storms of all sorts and descriptions were

abhorrent; and in consequence they had a well-marked piracy season,
which, as we shall see, covered the spring and summer, while they
carefully avoided the inclement months of autumn and winter.
In a later chapter an attempt has been made to place before the reader
pictures of the galley, the galeasse, and the nef, which were the names
attached to the ships then in use; the name brigantine, far from having
the significance attached to it by the sailor of the present day, seems to
have been a generic term to denote any craft not included in the names
already given.
Although the sixteenth century had outgrown the principle of the
general massacre of the enemy by the victors, still chivalry to the fallen
foe was far to seek, as all persons captured at sea were, no matter what
their rank and status, immediately stripped and chained to the rowers'
bench, where they remained until ransom, good fortune, or a kindly
death, for which these unfortunates were wont to pray, should come to
their release. To a large extent this savagery may be traced to the
religious rancour which animated the combatants on both sides, as the
fanaticism of the Moslem, of which we have already spoken, was fully
matched on the side of the Christians by the bigotry of the Knights of
Saint John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Knights of Malta, who
were vowed to the extermination of what they, on their side, called "the
infidel." It was an age of iron, when men neither gave nor expected
grace for the misfortunes which might befall them in the warrior life
which they led. It was distinguished by many gallant feats of arms on
both sides, but pity formed no part of the equipment of the fighting man
bent on the death or capture of his enemy. Honestly and sincerely each
side believed that they were doing the service of the Almighty in
destroying the other party root and branch. The amount of human
misery and suffering caused by the rise and progress of the Moslem
corsairs was absolutely incalculable; the slavery of the rower in the
galley in the time of which we speak was an agony so dreadful that in
these days it is a thing which seems altogether incredible, a nightmare
of horror almost impossible even to imagine.
The life of the "gallerian" was so hard that his sufferings in many cases

were mercifully ended in death in a very short time, as none save those
of iron constitution could stand the strain imposed by the desperate toil
and wretched food. Yet there are cases on record