Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: The grand period of the Moslem corsairs

by E. Hamilton Currey

The events recorded in the last chapter bring us down to the end of the year 1515, and while every endeavour has been made to present affairs in chronological sequence, it must be remembered that the dates of piratical expeditions are often impossible to obtain: the wrath of the chroniclers at the nefarious deeds of the corsairs greatly exceeding their desire for a meticulous accuracy in the matter of the exact time of their occurrence. Uruj, as has been seen, had by his headstrong folly once again placed his brother and himself in a decidedly awkward situation. By the losses which he had incurred in his second ill-advised attempt on Bougie he had so weakened the piratical confederation that the countenance of some potentate had again become necessary for their continued existence, and the Sultan of Tunis had now repudiated all connection with these ingrates.

But, if craft and subtlety were not to be found in Uruj there was one who never failed to exhibit these qualities when they became necessary, and Kheyr-ed-Din once more came to the front. The Russian peasantry have a saying that “God is high and the Czar is far away.” In the sixteenth century the Grand Turk was in every sense “far away” from the struggling corsairs on the littoral of Northern Africa, and was a sovereign of such great and mysterious might that any man with a less fine instinct into the psychology of the times in which he lived than Kheyr-ed-Din would have hesitated long and anxiously before addressing him directly; would probably in the end not have done so at all. But desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and the politic corsair well knew that even the moral support of such an one as the Sultan of Constantinople was worth more than even material aid from a Sultan of Tunis.

Consequently, greatly daring, he sent an embassy to the Sublime Porte with one of his most trusted captains at its head to lay the homage of the corsairs at the feet of Selim I. Very naturally these ambassadors did not go empty-handed, but took with them rich presents and numerous slaves. Selim was much pleased at the attention, coming as it did from such a distance—we have to remember that the coast of North Africa was an immense journey from Constantinople in those days—and the insight of Kheyr-ed-Din was triumphantly vindicated. Not only did the Sultan send a gracious reply in return, but—what was far more to the purpose—he sent a reinforcement of fourteen vessels to the corsairs bidding them to go on and prosper in their efforts to spread the true faith among the Christian heretics.

There is nothing more curious in the history of the corsairs than the perpetual ups and downs of their lives. Thus in the present instance the ill-advised attack of Uruj on Bougie had reduced them to terrible straits; immediately afterwards the action of the Grand Turk once more set them upon their feet and enabled them to pursue an unchecked career of devastation. Aided by the reinforcements sent by Selim, their depredations assumed ever larger proportions, and, had they continued to receive this assistance, the course of history itself might have been changed. Ground to powder beneath the iron heel of their ruthless conquerors, the Moriscoes of Southern Spain were ever waiting the chance to rise and shake off the yoke by which they were so sore oppressed; from far and near reports were coming to hand of the continued successes of the corsairs, and all Andalusia seethed with passionate hope that the day of deliverance was at hand.

But, alas for the vanity of human wishes! in the opening months of the year 1516 Selim recalled his ships and the chance was gone, never again to arise.

It may have been that “the sorrowful sighing of the captives” never reached the ears of the successor of Othman in his palace on the shores of the Golden Horn; in any case, the Sultan was preparing for the conquest of Egypt, and in consequence recalled the ships which he had lent to assist the corsairs. The Moriscoes were thus left without hope, but so far as the corsairs were concerned they were enabled to strike another bargain with the Sultan of Tunis. This monarch had now got over his fit of the sulks, and discovered that customs dues from the peaceful trading mariners, although desirable enough, were not by any means so lucrative a form of revenue as was the one-fifth share of the booty of the pirates. Uruj and Kheyr-ed-Din for their part, although they had captured Jigelli, were totally unable to hold it: the capture had indeed been principally due to the assistance which they had received from the Berber tribesmen, but these nomads had disappeared into the deserts from whence they came, once the looting of the town and fortress had been completed.

The corsair had to be armed at all points, in the moral as well as the material sense, as he was the enemy of all men, and all were vowed to his destruction. Every cruise which he took raised up against him fresh hatred and a more bitter animus, and we must remember that it was not only men individually, but Principalities and Powers that were arrayed in line of battle for his destruction. At the present juncture Spain was specially hostile, for not only had her possession of Bougie been twice attacked by the Sea-wolves, but a valuable convoy had been captured. An expedition, in consequence, was sent by the Spaniards against the Barbarossas, but this effort did not result in much damage being done to the offenders. The Spaniards destroyed four piratical vessels which had been abandoned by their crews at Bizerta, and pushed a strong reconnaissance into the Bay of Tunis itself. Here shots were exchanged between the Spanish fleet and the forts—under which Kheyr-ed-Din had drawn up his ships—and the Spaniards then abandoned the enterprise and returned from whence they had come.

In the year 1510 the Spaniard, Count Pedro Navarre, had seized upon Algiers, which town was at this time one of the principal refuges of the Moorish fugitives, who had been driven from Granada, from Còrdoba, and from Southern Spain generally by Ferdinand and Isabella eighteen years previously. To say that the condition of these people was desperate is to speak but the bare truth, for what could exceed the misery of the situation in which they were left after the successful incursion of their Christian foes? What we are apt to lose sight of in the light of present-day circumstances is the fact that these Spanish Moors were a most highly civilised people, far more so indeed than their Christian contemporaries; that they had been driven with fire and sword from the land in which they and their forefathers had dwelt for over seven centuries, and that they now had been cast out literally to starve on the inhospitable shores of Northern Africa. So it came about that the common people exchanged the life of the peaceful and prosperous artisan or husbandman for that of the hand-to-mouth pirate, and the case of knight and noble among them was no better—perhaps rather worse—than the meanest among those who had been expropriated.

Those who know the region in which these unhappy folk lived are aware of the material monuments which still exist and testify to the glorious past; and, seeing what they have seen, it is no great stretch of the imagination to picture to themselves the comfort, the elegance, and the luxury with which the inhabitants of Granada and Còrdoba lived surrounded. Over there, away across some few leagues of shining blue water, were the ruined homes of which many of the banished people still possessed the keys, awaiting the day when Allah and the Prophet should vouchsafe to them that return which they so naturally and ardently desired. To this day the key of the great Mosque at Cordoba is preserved at Rabat as a sacred relic of former dignity and power—a symbol to the Moslem of his perpetual banishment. If Cordoba with its mosque—still one of the wonders of the world, with its eleven hundred marble columns—were the principal shrine and holy of holies to these people, there were in addition hundreds of other temples of their faith now for ever desecrated in their eyes by the misfortune which had placed them in Christian hands. In Andalusia were the dishonoured graves of their kinsfolk, and, last and worst of all, in this land still dwelt thousands upon thousands of their co-religionists held in a degrading bondage by their implacable enemies.

The capture of Algiers by Count Pedro Navarro was a crowning misfortune for the exiles, and when this commander seized upon the place he extracted from the inhabitants an oath of fidelity to the Spanish crown; he further erected a strong tower to overawe the town, and to keep its turbulent inhabitants in order. But such an oath as this, extracted at the point of the sword, was writ in water; it meant, of course, the suppression of piracy, and it also meant the starvation of most of those persons who dwelt in the vicinity. How the Moslem population existed for the six years after the incursion of Navarro is a mystery; but they probably moved their galleys, of which they possessed some twenty, further along the coast out of the range of the guns from Navarro’s Tower, and secure from the observation of those who held it for the Spanish king.