Once the “Grand Period” was passed, that period in which such men as the Barbarossas, Dragut, and Ali flourished, the chronicle of the Moslem States founded by them sinks to the degraded level of sheer robbery and murder; of a history of a tyranny established within one hundred miles of the shores of Europe, and of great kings and princes bargaining with piratical ruffians who held in thrall thousands upon thousands of their subjects. How it came about that the Christian States tolerated such an abuse is one of those mysteries which can never be explained; and if subsequent centuries displayed a greater refinement of manners, a more apt appreciation of all that is softer and kindlier in the human relationships of nation towards nation and of people towards people, they have not perhaps so much to plume themselves upon as had their rude forefathers of the sixteenth century, who, seeing the evil and feeling the effects thereof, did their best to extirpate those by whom this evil was caused.
The question may be asked, how can it be that the lives and actions of such men as these are worth chronicling? It is because, not only that they modified profoundly the course of history in the age in which they lived, but also because that, hidden deep down, somewhere, in these men stained by a thousand crimes, ruthless, lustful, bloodthirsty, cruel as the grave, was the germ of true greatness, some dim spark of the divine fire of genius. Contending against principalities and powers, they held their own; in the welter of anarchy in which they lived they proved that there existed no finer fighting men, which alone give them some claim to consideration; but that which is most interesting to watch is the absolute domination obtained by the leaders over their followers. There is no other record of pirates who commanded on so large a scale; there is none which shows men such as these bargaining on equal terms with the great ones of the earth.
CHAPTER I
THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS
There is, in the deeds of men of action, an interest which is never aroused by those persons of brains and capacity by whom the world is really ruled. The statesman in his cabinet is the god within the machine; it is he who directs the acts of nations, it is he who moves the fleets and armies as if they were pieces on the chess-board; to him, as a rule, is the man of action subordinate, obeying his behests. Rule and governance are his, power both in the abstract and the concrete. Seldom in the history of the world do we come across the men who are at one and the same time statesmen and soldiers, who, taking their destiny in their own hands, work it out to the appointed end thereof. But, as we stray in the by-paths of history, we meet with some who, in their day, have influenced not only the age in which they lived themselves, but also the destinies of generations yet unborn. It would seem incredible that mere pirates, such as the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean, could be included in this category, and yet, as their story is unfolded, we shall see how the Sea-wolves rose from the humblest beginnings to trouble the peace of Europe, to found 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.