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

by E. Hamilton Currey

So it was that, all preparations being completed, he stood along the coast anchoring out of sight of his objective, but close enough to reach it by midnight after darkness had fallen. He had every confidence in himself, an absolute trust in the hardbitten fighters whom he was about to lead; success or failure now rested in the hands of traitors within the city.

“Faith unfaithful kept them falsely true,” for when Dragut and his followers arrived at a certain rendezvous outside the walls which had been agreed upon previously, there they found Ibrahim Amburac and his men ready to assist them in scaling this obstacle. It will be remembered that Ibrahim Amburac was personally in charge of one of the towers with which the walls were guarded, and thus his task of aiding those who came from without was a singularly easy one. But even at midnight the passage of five hundred men could not remain long undiscovered as they clambered in over the walls. Soon an alarm was raised and the “Africans” rushed to arms and hurried to the quarter from which danger threatened. The townsmen were well armed and brave, also they were numerous; but it was the old story of the break-up of undisciplined valour by highly organised attack.

In the choking heat of the African night townsmen and corsairs wrestled in deadly conflict hand to hand and foot to foot; but these untrained landsmen stood but a poor chance against the picked fighting men of the Moslem galleys who had been inured to bloodshed from their earliest youth and trained by such a master in the art of war as Dragut. That warrior, his great curved scimitar red to the hilt, the blood dripping from a gash in his cheek, his clothing torn and in disarray, followed by a gigantic negro bearing a flaming torch, was ever in the thickest of the fray. Behind him his lieutenants Othman and Selim strove to emulate his prowess, while all around surged his devoted band of fanatics.

“Allah! Allah!” and “Dragut! Dragut!” pealed the war-cry of the corsairs; foot by foot and yard by yard that spearhead of dauntless dare-devils pressed onwards into the packed masses of the “Africans,” who, fighting stubbornly, nevertheless were borne back by the fury of the terrible onslaught.

Torch-bearers among the pirates leaped into houses and set them ablaze, the flames volleyed and crackled, the dense smoke rolled upwards to the stainless sky, the night was a hell of blood and fire.

There was a sharp order repeated and passed on, the corsairs drew back, and the “Africans” shouted that the triumph was theirs; but they little knew Dragut, the sea-hawk who poised to strike anew. A blazing beam dropped across the street, the townsfolk shouted in insult and derision; but the joy which they had experienced at seeing their adversaries recoil was but a short and fleeting emotion. Giving himself and those who had hitherto been engaged time to breathe and recover themselves, Dragut waited while the noise of the strife died down, and nought was heard but the roar of the flames and the crash of the burning buildings.

The leader turned to his followers, among whom dwelt an ominous silence. “Dost remember Prevesa,” he cried, “when Andrea Doria and the best of the Christian warriors fled before you like sheep before a dog: are these miserable townsmen to stay your onward march?”

There remained for an appreciable period after he had spoken a tense silence; the red light from the burning houses shone on the lean faces alight with the fierce fire of fanaticism, with an inextinguishable lust of slaughter. There came an answering frenetic roar, “Lead! Lead! Dragut! Dragut! Dragut!” It was enough: the corsair had tried the temper of the steel, he had now but to use the edge. There was an ordered movement on the part of the pirates: a fresh hundred men, who had hitherto taken no part in the combat, now pressed to the front and formed the advance, those who had been before engaged now forming the supports; that which had been the shaft of the spear now forming its head. With Dragut leading, these fresh unwounded men swept forward over the burning beam; irresistible as some mighty river in spate, these disciplined ruffians, headed by this master spirit, burst through the ill-organised resistance opposed to them, and slew and slew and slew.

Behind them, alert and wary, came the supports, asking no quarter and giving none, cutting up the wounded, trampling under foot friend and foe alike who fell in the weltering shambles which marked the onward path of their leader and the advanced party. Very soon the broken hosts of the “Africans” cried piteously for mercy; the fight was over, and Dragut-Reis, wounded, breathless, but victorious, stood master of the strongest place of arms in all the continent of Africa. It is true that treachery had given him his opportunity, but once that was obtained the rest he had done for himself: the stealthy advance by sea, the midnight march to the exact spot on the walls where he was awaited by Ibrahim Amburac, the marshalling of his five hundred for the conflict, and the actual conduct of the fight itself, were all to the credit of this apt pupil of the great Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, As warriors his followers were worthy of their leader: defeated the corsairs frequently were, but, in the combats in which they engaged, they were frequently, as we have seen in the course of this story, largely dependent upon auxiliaries in whom no trust could be placed; and at Prevesa, at the siege of Malta, and later on at the battle of Lepanto, the spot on which they fought, were it on the land or on the sea, was ever the one which formed the nucleus of resistance. It was not only that fighting was their particular trade; that, of course, might be said also of any man who trailed a pike or carried an arquebus and marched in the ranks of Spain, France, Genoa, or Venice. In the case of the sea-wolves it was the perpetual practice in the art of war, as it was then understood, that caused them to be the men that they were. Much of their fighting could hardly be dignified by such a name, as in their everlasting raids on villages and undefended places they seldom lost many of their number: when, however, it came to the real thing, as it did on the occasion we have just recounted, the long years of training told, and opposition had to be strong indeed if it were not to be beaten down by such a leader as Dragut, by such men as his picked five hundred.