With the remainder of the siege, which was yet to last till September 18th, we have no concern in this book. It is only necessary to say that the men of Il Borgo were worthy to stand in the same category with the defenders of St. Elmo, which is equivalent to stating that in them also was discovered the last limit of heroism. The Grand Master survived the siege, his monument is the noble city of “Valetta” built on Mount Sceberras. The Turks abandoned the siege and returned to Constantinople on the arrival of some insignificant reinforcements from Sicily. So terrible had been the resistance of the Knights that no heart was left in their armada. Of Dragut there remains but little to be said: he was perhaps the best educated of the corsairs and less cruel than was usually their habit. Although not so renowned as his more celebrated master, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, this is, perhaps, because his career was cut short at the siege of Malta at a comparatively early age. Although he never attained the rank of Admiralissimo to the Grand Turk, that potentate, as we have seen, placed in him the greatest confidence, and relied largely on his judgment, especially when sea-affairs were in question. Like the Barbarossas before him, he rose from nothing to the height to which he eventually attained by sheer force of intellect and character. In the stormy times in which his lot was cast he never faltered in his onward way, never repined, never looked back, sustained as he was by a consciousness of his own capability to rule the wild spirits by whom he lived surrounded. So it is that, whatever other opinion we may hold of Dragut, we cannot deny that in this captain of the Sea-wolves were blended rare qualities, which caused him to shine as a capable administrator, a fine seaman, but above all as a supreme leader of men. Dragut died with arms in his hands fighting those whom he considered to be his bitterest enemies. He did not live to see the repulse of Piali and Mustapha, and it is to be presumed that he died assured in his own mind that victory would rest with the Moslem host. For such a man as this no death could have been more welcome.
CHAPTER XXI
ALI BASHA
Ali, the Basha of Algiers, succeeds to Dragut—He conquers the Kingdom of Tunis, captures four galleys from the Knights of Malta, joins Piali Basha in his raidings preliminary to the battle of Lepanto—The gathering of the Christian hosts and the arrival of Don John of Austria in the Mediterranean to take command.
“Now I have heard several mariners and captains of the sea, nay, even Knights of Malta, debate among themselves this question, as to which was the greater and better seaman, Dragut or Occhiali? And some held for one and some for the other; those who held for Occhiali declaring that he had held greater and more honourable charges than Dragut, because he commanded as General and Admiral for the Grand Turk and that il fit belle action at the battle of Lepanto.” Pierre de Bourdeille, the Seigneur de Brantôme, from whom we make the above quotation, was himself present at the siege of Malta and, besides this, as is well known, gossiped in his own inimitable way concerning men and women of his time, from corsairs to courtesans. When such contemporary authorities as those mentioned could not agree it is quite certain that we of the twentieth century cannot decide on the rival claims to distinction between the Bashaw of Tripoli and his follower Occhiali,[345] as he was known to the Christians, or Ali Basha, as he was called by the Turks. Ali Basha has a title to fame in the fact that he is mentioned by Cervantes in his Don Quijote de la Mancha under the name of “Uchali” in chapter xxxix., “Donde el cautivo cuenta su vida y sucesos.” The captive is supposed to have been no less a person than the famous Cervantes himself, and he briefly describes how Uchali became “Rey de Argel,” or King of Algiers.
Ali was a Christian, having been born at a miserable little village in Calabria called Licastelli. Nothing whatever is known of his birth and parentage, and he does not appear even to have possessed a Christian name, although born in a Christian land. He followed from his earliest youth the calling of a mariner; “he was from infancy inured to salt water,” says Joseph Morgan, in his Compleat History of Algiers, and he was, as a mere boy, captured by Ali Ahamed, Admiral of Algiers, and was chained to the starboard-bow oar in the galley of that officer. He was thus very early in life “inured” to suffering, and must have possessed a constitution of iron to withstand thus, in boyhood, the hardships of the life of a galley-slave, which as a rule broke down the endurance of strong men in a very few years. Morgan presents us with a description of him at this period which in these more squeamish days can certainly not be set down in its entirety: suffice it to say that he suffered all his days from what is known as “scald-head,” and that personal filthiness was one of his principal characteristics.
For some years Ali remained at the heart-breaking toil of the rower’s bench: cut off from home, which to him meant nothing, devoid of kinsfolk, alone—miserably alone in a world which, so far, had given him naught but the chain and the whip—it is not a matter for surprise that he became a Mussulman, thus freeing himself from slavery. From the time that he took this step his fortunes mended rapidly in that strange medley of savagery and bloodshed in which his lot was cast.
Alert, strong, capable, and vigorous, he became in early manhood chief boatswain in the galley in which his apprenticeship had been passed—a position which enabled him to accumulate a small store of ducats, with which he bought a share in a brigantine. Here he soon acquired sufficient wealth to become captain and owner of a galley, in which he soon gained the reputation of being one of the boldest corsairs on the Barbary coast. Having in some sort made a name for himself, his next step was to seek for a patron who could make use of his valour, address, and capability for command. His choice was soon made, as who in all the Mediterranean, in his early days, held such a name as Dragut? He accordingly entered the service of the Basha of Tripoli, and, under his command, became well known to the officers of the Grand Turk, particularly to the Admiral, Piali Basha, to whom he was able to render some important services.
There is no object to be gained in lingering over the earlier years of this notable corsair, as we should thus only be repeating what has been said about Dragut, whose lieutenant and trusted follower he became. He accompanied his master to the siege of Malta, and when Dragut was slain the Capitan-Basha, Piali, named him as successor to his chief as Viceroy of Tripoli. Ali sailed from Malta to Tripoli, taking with him the remains of Dragut, to be buried as that chieftain had directed. When he arrived on the Barbary coast he made himself master of the slaves and treasure which had been left behind by Dragut; shortly after this he was confirmed in his Vice-royalty of Tripoli by the Grand Turk; thenceforward increasing, both his wealth and the terror in which his name was held, by continual raids upon the Christians, more particularly on the coasts of Sicily, Calabria, and Naples. It is curious to observe the sort of spite which all the renegadoes seem to have harboured against the countries in which they were born.