Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.
It is difficult for us nowadays to realize the terror of the Turks that possessed Europe in the sixteenth century; mothers quieted their children by the dreadful name, and escaped sailors recounted indescribable horrors in every little seaport from Albania to Scotland. Many thousands of Christian slaves laboured at the oars of the war-galleys, not, as is generally thought, as hostages that these galleys might not be sunk. They were the private property of the captains, who treated their own property better than they treated the property of the Grand Turk. Thus, it was not the worst fate for a Christian galley-slave to serve in the galley of his owner. He would not be exposed to reckless sinking at any rate; if the galley sank, it would be because the owner could not help it. Nor would he be likely to be impaled upon a red-hot poker or thrown upon butchers’ hooks, as might happen to the slave of the Sultan. So it would seem that some unnecessary pity has been spilt upon the slaves of the galleys. Their lot might have been worse, to put things in their most favourable light.
King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck,
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
(“But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line!”)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,