CHAPTER I.
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.
Condition of Turkey.—African Corsairs.—Expedition against Tripoli.—War on the Barbary Coast.
1559-1563.
There are two methods of writing history;—one by following down the stream of time, and exhibiting events in their chronological order; the other by disposing of these events according to their subjects. The former is the most obvious; and where the action is simple and continuous, as in biography, for the most part, or in the narrative of some grand historical event, which concentrates the interest, it is probably the best. But when the story is more complicated, covering a wide field, and embracing great variety of incident, the chronological system, however easy for the writer, becomes tedious and unprofitable to the reader. He is hurried along from one scene to another without fully apprehending any; and as the thread of the narrative is perpetually broken by sudden transition, he carries off only such scraps in his memory as it is hardly possible to weave into a connected and consistent whole. Yet this method, as the most simple and natural, is one most affected by the early writers,—by the old Castilian chroniclers more particularly, who form the principal authorities in the present work. Their wearisome pages, mindful of no order but that of time, are spread over as miscellaneous a range of incidents, and having as little relation to one another, as the columns of a newspaper.
To avoid this inconvenience, historians of a later period have preferred to conduct their story on more philosophical principles, having regard rather to the nature of the events described, than to the precise time of their occurrence. And thus the reader, possessed of one action, its causes and its consequences, before passing on to another, is enabled to treasure up in his memory distinct impressions of the whole.
In conformity to this plan, I have detained the reader in the Netherlands until he had seen the close of Margaret's administration, and the policy which marked the commencement of her successor's. During this period, Spain was at peace with her European neighbors, most of whom were too much occupied with their domestic dissensions to have leisure for foreign war. France, in particular, was convulsed by religious feuds, in which Philip, as the champion of the Faith, took not only the deepest interest, but an active part. To this I shall return hereafter.
But while at peace with her Christian brethren, Spain was engaged in perpetual hostilities with the Moslems, both of Africa and Asia. The relations of Europe with the East were altogether different in the sixteenth century from what they are in our day. The Turkish power lay like a dark cloud on the Eastern horizon, to which every eye was turned with apprehension; and the same people for whose protection European nations are now willing to[{394}] make common cause, were viewed by them, in the sixteenth century, in the light of a common enemy.
It was fortunate for Islamism that, as the standard of the Prophet was falling from the feeble grasp of the Arabs, it was caught up by a nation like the Turks, whose fiery zeal urged them to bear it still onward in the march of victory. The Turks were to the Arabs what the Romans were to the Greeks. Bold, warlike, and ambitious, they had little of that love of art which had been the dominant passion of their predecessors, and still less of that refinement which, with the Arabs, had degenerated into effeminacy and sloth. Their form of government was admirably suited to their character. It was an unmixed despotism. The sovereign, if not precisely invested with the theocratic character of the caliphs, was hedged round with so much sanctity, that resistance to his authority was an offence against religion as well as law. He was placed at an immeasurable distance above his subjects. No hereditary aristocracy was allowed to soften the descent, and interpose a protecting barrier for the people. All power was derived from the sovereign, and, on the death of its proprietor, returned to him. In the eye of the sultan, his vassals were all equal, and all equally his slaves.