He drove out Barbarossa, a penniless, discredited fugitive; and his soldiers slaughtered thirty thousand citizens of Tunis to console them for the pirate’s late atrocities.
Poor old Barbarossa, past seventy years of age, had lost a horde of fifty thousand men, his kingdom of Tunis, fleet and arsenal; but he still had fifteen galleys left at Bona, his kingdom of Algiers to fall back upon, and his Moorish seamen, who had no trade to win them honest bread except as pirates. “Cheer up,” said he, to these broken starving men, and after a little holiday they sacked the Balearic Isles taking five thousand, seven hundred slaves, and any amount of shipping. Then came the building of a Turkish fleet; and with one hundred twenty sail, Barbarossa went to his last culminating triumph, the defeat of Andrea Doria, who had at Prevesa one hundred ninety-five ships, sixty thousand men, and two thousand, five hundred ninety-four guns. With that victory he retired, and after eight years of peace, he died in his bed, full of years and honors. For centuries to come all Turkish ships saluted with their guns, and dipped their colors whenever they passed the grave of the King of the Sea.
Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean, Commander E. Hamilton Currey, R.N. John Murray.
IX
A. D. 1542 PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES
It was Italian trade that bought and paid for the designs of Raphael, the temples of Michelangelo, the sculptures of Cellini, the inventions of Da Vinci, for all the wonders, the glories, the splendors of inspired Italy. And it was not good for the Italian trade that Barbarossa, and the corsairs of three centuries in his wake, beggared the merchants and enslaved their seamen. But Italian commerce had its source in the Indian Seas, and the ruin of Italy began when the sea adventures of Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope to rob, to trade, to govern and convert at the old centers of Arabian business.
Poverty is the mother of labor, labor the parent of wealth and genius. It is the poverty of Attica, and the Roman swamps, of sterile Scotland, boggy Ireland, swampy Holland, stony New England, which drove them to high endeavor and great reward. Portugal, too, had that advantage of being small and poor, without resources, or any motive to keep the folk at home. So the fishermen took to trading and exploration led by Cao who found the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama who smelt out the way to India, Almeida who gained command of the Indian Seas, Cabral who discovered Brazil, Albuquerque who, seizing Goa and Malacca, established a Christian empire in the Indies, and Magellan, who showed Spain the way to the Pacific.
Of these the typical man was Da Gama, a noble with the motives of a crusader and the habits of a pirate, who once set fire to a shipload of Arab pilgrims, and watched unmoved while the women on her blazing deck held out little babies in the vain hope of mercy. On his first voyage he came to Calicut, a center of Hindu civilization, a seat of Arab commerce, and to the rajah sent a present of washing basins, casks of oil, a few strings of coral, fit illustration of the poverty of his brave country, accepted as a joke in polished, wealthy, weary India. The king gave him leave to trade, but seized the poor trade goods until the Portuguese ships had been ransacked for two hundred twenty-three pounds in gold to pay the customs duties. The point of the joke was only realized when on his second voyage Da Gama came with a fleet, bombarded Calicut, and loaded his ships with spices, leaving a trail of blood and ashes along the Indian coast. Twenty years later he came a third time, but now as viceroy to the Portuguese Indies. Portugal was no longer poor, but the richest state in Europe, bleeding herself to death to find the men for her ventures.
Now these arrogant and ferocious officials, military robbers, fishermen turned corsairs, and ravenous traders taught the whole East to hate and fear the Christ. And then came a tiny little monk no more than five feet high, a white-haired, blue-eyed mendicant, who begged the rice he lived on. Yet so sweet was his temper, so magical the charm, so supernatural the valor of this barefoot monk that the children worshiped him, the lepers came to him to be healed, and the pirates were proud to have him as their guest. He was a gentleman, a Spanish Basque, by name Francis de Xavier, and in the University of Paris had been a fellow student with the reformer Calvin, then a friend and follower of Ignatius de Loyola, helping him to found the Society of Jesus. Xavier came to the Indies in 1542 as a Jesuit priest.
Once on a sea voyage Xavier stood for some time watching a soldier at cards, who gambled away all his money and then a large sum which had been entrusted to his care. When the soldier was in tears and threatening suicide, Xavier borrowed for him the sum of one shilling twopence, shuffled and dealt for him, and watched him win back all that he had lost. At that point Saint Francis set to work to save the soldier’s soul, but this disreputable story is not shown in the official record of his miracles.
From his own letters one sees how the heathen puzzled this little saint, “‘Was God black or white?’ For as there is so great variety of color among man, and the Indians are themselves black, they esteem their own color most highly, and hold that their gods are also black.”