The little fort could hold but a small garrison, but the force was a corps d'elite: De Broglio of Piedmont commanded it with sixty soldiers, and was supported by Juan de Guaras, bailiff of the Negropont, a splendid old Knight, followed by sixty more of the Order, and some Spaniards under Juan de la Cerda:—a few hundred of men to meet thirty thousand Turks, but men of no common mettle. They had not long to wait. The fire opened from twenty-one guns on the last day of May and continued with little intermission till June 23rd. The besiegers were confident of battering down the little fort in a week at most, but they did not know their foes. As soon as one wall crumbled before the cannonade, a new work appeared behind it. The first assault lasted three hours, and the Turks gained possession of the ravelin in front of the gate; so furious was the onset that the defenders sent to the Grand Master to tell him the position was untenable; they could not stand a second storming party. La Valette replied that, if so, he would come and withstand it himself: St. Elmo must be held to keep the Turks back till reinforcements arrived. So of course they went on. Dragut brought up some of his largest yards and laid them like a bridge across the fosse, and a tremendous struggle raged for five terrible hours on Dragut's bridge. Again and again Mustafa marshalled his Janissaries for the attack, and every time they were hurled back with deadly slaughter. As many as four thousand Turks fell in a single assault. St. Elmo was little more than a heap of ruins, but the garrison still stood undaunted among the heaps of stones, each man ready to sell his life dearly for the honour of Our Lady and St. John.

The Turks at last remedied the mistake they had made at the beginning. They had left the communication between St. Elmo and the harbour unimpeded, and reinforcements had frequently been introduced into the besieged fortress from the Burg. On June 17th the line of circumvallation was pushed to the harbour's edge, and St. Elmo was completely isolated. Yet this prudent precaution was more than outweighed by the heavy loss that accompanied its execution: for Dragut was struck down while directing the engineers, and the surgeons pronounced the wound mortal. With the cool courage of his nation, Mustafa cast a cloak over the prostrate form, and stood in Dragut's place.

Five days later came the final assault. On the eve of June 23rd, after the cannonade had raged all the forenoon, and a hand-to-hand fight had lasted till the evening, when two thousand of the enemy and five hundred of the scanty garrison had fallen, the Knights and their soldiers prepared for the end. They knew the Grand Master could not save them, that nothing could avert the inevitable dawn. They took the Sacrament from each other's hands, and "committing their souls to God made ready to devote their bodies in the cause of His Blessed Son." It was a forlorn and sickly remnant of the proudest chivalry the world has ever known, that met the conquering Turks that June morning: worn and haggard faces, pale with long vigils and open wounds; tottering frames that scarce could stand; some even for very weakness seated in chairs, with drawn swords, within the breach. But weary and sick, upright or seated, all bore themselves with unflinching courage; in every set face was read the resolve to die hard.

The ghastly struggle was soon over: the weight of the Turkish column bore down everything in its furious rush. Knights and soldiers alike rolled upon the ground, every inch of which they had disputed to the last drop of their blood. Not a man escaped.

Dragut heard of the fall of St. Elmo as he lay in his tent dying, and said his Moslem Nunc Dimittis with a thankful heart. He had been struck at the soldier's post of duty; he died with the shout of victory ringing in his ears, as every general would wish to die. His figure stands apart from all the men of his age:—an admiral, the equal of Barbarossa, the superior of Doria; a general fit to marshal troops against any of the great leaders of the armies of Charles V.; he was content with the eager rush of his life, and asked not for sovereignty or honours. Humane to his prisoners, a gay comrade, an inspiriting commander, a seaman every inch, Dragut is the most vivid and original personage among the Corsairs.

St. Elmo had fallen: but St. Angelo and St. Michael stood untouched. Three hundred Knights of St. John and thirteen hundred soldiers had indeed fallen in the first, but its capture had closed the lives of eight thousand Turks. "If the child has cost us so dear," said Mustafa, "what will the parent cost?" The Turkish general sent a flag of truce to La Valette, to propose terms of capitulation, but in vain. Mutual animosity had been worked to a height of indignant passion by a barbarous massacre of prisoners on both sides, each in view of the other. The Grand Master's first impulse was to hang the messenger of such foes: he thought better of it, and showed him the depth of the ditch that encircled the twin forts: "Let your Janissaries come and take that," he said, and contemptuously dismissed him.

A new siege now began. The forts on the east of La Marsa had been sorely drained to fill up the gaps in the garrison at St. Elmo, and it was fortunate that Don Juan de Cardona had been able to send a reinforcement, though only of six hundred men, under Melchior de Robles, to the Old Town, whence they contrived to reach Fort St. Michael in safety.[45] Even six hundred men added materially to the difficulties of the siege: for, be it remembered, six hundred men behind skilfully constructed fortifications may be worth six thousand in the open. It was very hard for the besiegers to find cover. The ground was hard rock, and cutting trenches was extremely arduous work, and the noise of the picks directed the fire of the forts by night upon the sappers. Nevertheless by July 5th four batteries were playing upon St. Michael from the heights of St. Margaret and Conradin, while the guns of Fort St. Elmo opened from the other side; and soon a line of cannon on Mount Salvador dominated the English Port. An attempt to bring a flotilla of gun-boats into the Harbour of the Galleys failed, after a vigorous conflict between a party of Turkish swimmers, who strove with axes to cut the chain that barred the port, and some Maltese who swam to oppose them, sword in teeth. The battle in the water ended in the flight of the Turks.



Ten distinct general assaults were delivered with all the fury of Janissaries against the stronghold. First, a grand assault by sea was ordered on July 15th. Three columns simultaneously advanced by night on Fort St. Michael: one landed in the Arenela and marched to attack the eastern suburb La Bormula; the second came down from the heights of St. Margaret and made straight for the bastion defended by De Robles; the third advanced from Conradin on the south-west, and assaulted the salient angle at the extreme point of the spit of land on which the fort was built. In vain the Turks swarmed up the scaling-ladders; company after company was hurled down, a huddled mass of mangled flesh, and the ladders were cast off. Again the escalade began:—the Knights rolled huge blocks of masonry on the crowded throng below; when they got within arms' reach the scimitar was no match for the long two-handed swords of the Christians. At all three points after a splendid attack, which called forth all the finest qualities of the magnificent soldiery of Suleymān the Great, the Turks were repulsed with terrible loss. The Knights lost some of their bravest swords, and each one of them fought like a lion: but their dead were few compared with the unfortunate troops of Barbary, who had cut off their retreat by dismissing their ships, and were slaughtered or drowned in the harbour by hundreds. The water was red with their blood, and mottled with standards and drums and floating robes. Of prisoners, the Christians spared but two, and these they delivered over to the mob to be torn in pieces.

After the assault by water came the attack by mines; but the result was no better, for the Knights were no novices in the art of countermining, and the attempt to push on after the explosion ended in rushing into a trap. Mustafa, however, continued to work underground and ply his heavy artillery, with hardly a pause, upon the two extremities of the line of landward defences—the Bastion of De Robles, and the Bastion of Castile: both were in ruins by the 27th of July, as Sālih Reis, son of Barbarossa's old comrade, satisfied himself by a reconnaissance pushed into the very breach. An assault was ordered for midday of August 2nd, when the Christians were resting after the toils of the sultry morning. Six thousand Turks advanced in absolute silence to Melchior de Robles' bastion; they had almost reached their goal when the shout of the sentry brought that gallant Knight, readily awakened, to the breach, followed by Munatones and three Spanish arquebusiers. These five warriors held twenty-six Janissaries and Sipāhis in check till reinforcements came; and they killed fifteen of them. Their valour saved the fort. Four hours longer the struggle lasted, till neither party could deal another blow in the raging August sun; and the Turks at last retired with a loss of six hundred dead.

Nothing daunted, the 7th of August saw them once more scaling the walls and rushing the breaches of the two bastions, this time with nearly twenty thousand men. They poured over the ravelin, swarmed up the breach, and were on the point of carrying the fort. All was nearly lost, and at that supreme moment even the aged Grand Master, whose place was to direct, not to imperil his life, came down to the front of battle, and used his sword and pike like a common soldier. Eight long hours they fought, six times came fresh reserves to the support of the Turks; the Christians were exhausted, and had no reserves. One rush more and the place would be carried.

Just then a body of cavalry was seen riding down from the direction of the Old Town. The Turks took them to be the long-expected reinforcements from Sicily. They are seen to fall upon stray parties of Turks; they must be the advance guard of Philip's army. Piāli in alarm runs to his galleys; the Turks who had all but carried the long-contested bastion pause in affright lest they be taken in rear. In vain Mustafa, in vain the King of Algiers shows them that the horsemen are but two hundred of the Old Town garrison, with no army at all behind them. Panic, unreasoning and fatal as ever, seizes upon the troops: the foothold won after eight hours of furious fighting is surrendered to a scare; not a Turk stays to finish the victory. The lives of their two thousand dead need not have been sacrificed.

Still Mustafa did not despair. He knew that the main defences of the bastions had been destroyed—a few days more, a heavy cannonade, the explosion of a series of mines which thousands of his sappers were preparing would, he was certain, ensure the success of a final assault. The day came, August 20th, and Mustafa himself, in his coat of inlaid mail and robe of cramoisy, led his army forward; but a well-directed fire drove him into a trench, whence he emerged not till night covered his path. When at last he got back, he found his army in camp; another assault had been repulsed. The next day they went up again to the fatal embrasures, and this time the failure was even more signal; repeated repulses were telling on the spirits of the men, and the veteran Janissaries went to their work with unaccustomed reluctance. Nevertheless, the trenches, cut in the hard rock, continued to advance slowly, and the cavalier behind the ravelin was taken after a severe struggle:—just taken, when La Valette's mines blew the victorious assailants into the air. On the 30th another well-planned assault was repelled. One more effort—a last and desperate attempt—was to be made on the 7th of September; but on the 5th the news arrived that the Spanish army of relief had at length, after inconceivable delays and hesitations, actually landed on the island. The worn-out Turks did not wait to reconnoitre, they had borne enough: a retreat was ordered, the siege was abandoned, the works that had cost so much labour and blood were deserted, and there was a general stampede to the galleys. It is true they landed again when they learnt that the relieving army numbered but six thousand men; but their strength was departed from them. They tried to fight the relieving army, and then again they ran for the ships. The Spaniards cut them down like sheep, and of all that gallant armament scarce five thousand lived to tell the tale of those terrible three months in Malta.

No more moving sight can be imagined than the meeting of the new-come Brethren of the Order and their comrades of St. Michael's Fort. The worn remnant of the garrison, all told, was scarcely six hundred strong, and hardly a man was without a wound. The Grand Master and his few surviving Knights looked like phantoms from another world, so pale and grisly were they, faint from their wounds, their hair and beard unkempt, their armour stained, and neglected, as men must look who had hardly slept without their weapons for more than three memorable months. As they saw these gaunt heroes the rescuers burst into tears; strangers clasped hands and wept together with the same overpowering emotion that mastered relievers and relieved when Havelock and Colin Campbell led the Highlanders into Lucknow. Never surely had men deserved more nobly the homage of mankind. In all history there is no record of such a siege, of such a disproportion in the forces, of such a glorious outcome. The Knights of Malta live for ever among the heroes of all time.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] See an excellent account of the galleys and discipline of the Knights of St. John in Jurien de la Graviere, les Derniers Jours de la Marine a Rames, ch. ix.; and Les Chevaliers de Malte, tome i.

[45] Jurien de la Graviere, Les Chevaliers de Malte et la Marine de Philippe II., ii. 71.



XIV.

LEPANTO.

1571.

The failure of the siege of Malta was a sensible rebuff, yet it cannot be said that it seriously injured the renown of the Turks in the Mediterranean. They had been resisted on land; they had not yet been beaten at sea. Nor could they look back on the terrible months of the siege without some compensating feeling of consolation. They had taken St. Elmo, and its fall had aroused general jubilation in every Moslem breast; the Moors of Granada went near to rising against the Spaniards on the mere report of this triumph of the Turkish arms. Though they had failed to reduce St. Michael, the cause was to be found, at least in part, in a false alarm and an unreasoning panic. To be defeated by such warriors as the Knights of St. John was not a disgrace; like the Highlanders in the Crimean War, these men were not so much soldiers, in their opponents' eyes, as veritable devils; and who shall contend against the legions of the Jinn? Moreover, forced as they were to abandon the siege, had they not left the island a desert, its people reduced by half, its fortifications heaps of rubbish, its brave defenders a handful of invalids?

So reasoned the Turks, and prepared for another campaign. They had lost many men, but more were ready to take their place; their immense fleet was uninjured; and though Dragut was no more, Ochiali—as the Christians called 'Ali El-Ulūji "the Renegade"—the Turks dubbed him Fartās, "Scurvied," from his complaint—was following successfully in his old master's steps. Born at Castelli (Licastoli) in Calabria about 1508,[46] Ochiali was to have been a priest, but his capture by the Turks turned him to the more exciting career of a Corsair. Soon after the siege of Malta he succeeded Barbarossa's son Hasan as pasha or Beglerbeg of Algiers (1568), and one of his first acts was to retake Tunis (all but the Goletta) in the name of Sultan Selīm II., who, to the unspeakable loss of the Mohammedan world, had in 1566 succeeded his great father Suleymān. In July, 1570, off Alicata, on the southern coast of Sicily, Ochiali surrounded four galleys of "the Religion"—they then possessed but five—and took three of them, including the flagship, which Saint-Clement, the general of the galleys, abandoned in order to throw himself and his treasure on shore at Montichiaro. One galley alone, the St. Ann, made a desperate resistance; the others surrendered. Sixty Knights or Serving Brothers of the Order were killed or made prisoners on this disastrous day, and so intense was the indignation in Malta, that the Grand Master had much ado to save Saint-Clement from being lynched by the mob, and was obliged to deliver him up to the secular court, which at once condemned him to death. He was strangled in his cell, and his body thrown in a sack into the sea. Such a success went far to atone for Mustafa Pasha's unfortunate siege.

A far more important triumph awaited the Turks in 1570-1:—a siege, and a conquest. The new Sultan, like his father, saw in the island of Cyprus a standing affront to his authority in the Levant. Then, as now, Cyprus was a vital centre in all maritime wars in the Eastern Mediterranean; a convenient depot for troops and stores; a watch-tower whence the movements of the Turkish fleet could be observed; a refuge for the numberless Christian Corsairs that infested the coast of Syria. Cyprus belonged to Venice, and on the score of her protection of piracy the Sultan found no difficulty in picking a quarrel with the Senate. War was declared, and Piāli Pasha transported a large army under Lala Mustafa (not the Seraskier who commanded at Malta) to lay siege to Nicosia, the capital of the island. After forty-eight days, the city fell, September 9th, and became a shambles. The catastrophe might have been averted, had the Christian fleet owned a single competent chief; but unhappily the relief of Cyprus was entrusted to the least trustworthy of all instruments—a coalition.

Pope Pius V., a man of austere piety, full of the zeal of his high office, and in energy and intellect a born leader, spared no effort to support the Venetians as soon as war became inevitable. Few of the states of Europe found it convenient to respond to his appeal, but Philip of Spain sent a numerous fleet under Giovanni Andrea Doria, and the Pope himself, aided in some degree by the Italian princes, added an important contingent, which he confided to the care of the Grand Constable of Naples, Mark Antony Colonna. Giovanni Zanne commanded the Venetian fleet. The whole force, when united, amounted to no less than two hundred and six vessels, of which eleven were galleasses, and nearly all the rest galleys; while the soldiers and crews numbered forty-eight thousand men. So dire was the dread then inspired by the Turks that this vast armament dared not move till it was known that Ochiali had left the neighbourhood of Italy, and even then the rivalries of the different admirals tended rather to war between the contingents than an attack upon the enemy's fleet. While the Christians were wrangling, and Doria was displaying the same Fabian caution that had led his grand-uncle to lose the battle of Prevesa, Piāli Pasha, wholly regardless of danger, had bared his galleys almost entirely of soldiers, in order to aid Lala Mustafa in the final assault on Nicosia. Had the allied fleets attacked him on the 8th or 9th of September it is doubtful whether a single Turkish galley could have shown fight. But Colonna and Doria wasted their time in wrangling and discussing, while the foe lay powerless at their feet. Finally they sailed back to Sicily, for fear of bad weather. Such were the admirals who furnished the gibes of Ochiali and his brother Corsairs. Famagusta surrendered August 4, 1571, and despite the promise of life and liberty, the garrison was massacred and the Venetian commander, Bragadino, cruelly burnt to death. Cyprus became a Turkish possession thenceforward to this day.

Meanwhile, the Turkish and Barbary fleets, commanded by 'Ali Pasha, the successor of Piāli, and Ochiali, ravaged Crete and other islands, and coasting up the Adriatic, worked their will upon every town or village it suited their pleasure to attack. Thousands of prisoners, and stores and booty of every description rewarded their industry. At length, in September, they anchored in the Gulf of Lepanto. They had heard that the united Christian fleets were on the move, and nothing would suit the victors of Cyprus better than a round encounter with the enemy. Flushed with success, they had no fear for the issue.

Many a Christian fleet had gathered its members together before then in the waters of the Adriatic. The great battle off Prevesa was in the memory of many an old sailor as the galleys came to the rendezvous in the autumn of 1571. But there was an essential difference between then and now. Prevesa was lost by divided counsels; at Lepanto there was but one commander-in-chief. Pope Pius V. had laboured unceasingly at the task of uniting the Allies and smoothing away jealousies, and he had succeeded in drawing the navies of Southern Europe on to another year's campaign; then, warned by what he had learned of the wranglings off Cyprus, he exerted his prerogative as Vicar of God, and named as the sole commander-in-chief of the whole fleet, Don John of Austria.



Son of the most illustrious monarch of the age, Don John was born to greatness. His mother was the beautiful singer, Barba Blomberg; his father was Charles V. The one gave him grace and beauty; the other, the genius of command. He was but twenty-two when his half-brother, Philip, confided to him the difficult task of suppressing the rebellion of the Moors in the Alpuxarras.[47] Where the experienced veterans of Spain had failed, the beardless general of twenty-two succeeded to admiration. And now, two years later, he was called to the command of the whole navy of Southern Europe. He accepted the post with joy. He had all the hopeful confidence of youth, and he longed to fight one of the world's great battles. His enthusiasm glowed in his face: one sees it in his portraits and on the medals struck to commemorate his victory. "Beau comme un Apollon, il avait tout le prestige d'un archange envoye par le Seigneur pour exterminer les ennemis de la Foi."

Squadron after squadron begins to crowd the Straits of Messina. Veniero, the Venetian admiral, is already there with forty-eight galleys, and sixty more expected, when Colonna enters, in July, with eighteen vessels and moors alongside. Don John has not yet arrived. He has had much ado to get his squadron ready, for no nation understands better than the Spanish the virtue of the adage festina lente. At last he puts off from Barcelona, and laboriously crosses the Gulf of Lyons. One may smile now at the transit, but in those days, what with the mistral and the risk of Corsairs, to cross the Gulf of Lyons was a thing to be thought about. At Genoa Don John is entertained by G. Andrea Doria, and attends a fancy ball in a gay humour that becomes his youth and buoyancy with all his perils still ahead. As he proceeds, he hears how the Turks are laying waste Dalmatia, and how the Allies are quarrelling at Messina, but he hastens not: he knows that a galley on a long voyage has as much a fixed pace as a horse, and that flogging is of no use except for a short course. At Naples he reverently receives the standard blessed by his Holiness himself, and on August 23rd he joins the fleet at Messina. Time is still needed for the other ships to come up, and for the commander-in-chief to mature his plans; before they start, each captain of a galley will have a separate written order, showing him his place during the voyage and his post in any engagement, whereby the risk of confusion and hasty marshalling is almost done away. On the 16th of September the signal is given to weigh anchor. Don John is off first, in his Reale, a splendid capitana galley of sixty oars, with a poop carved with allegorical designs by Vasquez of Seville. After him come two hundred and eighty-five vessels, comprising six galleasses and two hundred and nine galleys, carrying twenty-nine thousand men, and commanded by the most famous names of the great families of Spain, Genoa, Venice, Naples, Rome, Vicenza, Padua, Savoy, and Sicily.[48] Don Juan de Cardona leads the van with seven galleys; Don John himself, between Marcantonio Colonna and Veniero, commands the centre of sixty-two large galleys; G. A. Doria has fifty in the right wing; Barbarigo of Venice fifty-three in the left; Don Alvaro de Bazan commands the reserve of thirty galleys: the galleasses are ranged before the lines, each with five hundred arquebusiers on board. After ten days rowing and sailing they reach Corfu, and the castle greets them with thunders of joy-guns, for the fear of the Turk is removed.



'Ali Pasha, hard by in the Gulf of Lepanto, sent out scouts to ascertain the enemy's strength. A bold Barbary Corsair pushed his bark unseen by night among the Christian galleys, but his report was imperfect, and till the day of conflict neither side knew the exact strength of his opponent. The Turkish fleet numbered about two hundred and eight galleys and sixty-six galleots, and carried twenty-five thousand men. Constantinople furnished ninety-five galleys; twenty-one came from Alexandria, twenty-five from Anatolia, ten from Rhodes, ten from Mitylene, nine from Syria, twelve from Napoli di Romania, thirteen from the Negropont, and eleven from Algiers and Tripoli. The galleots were chiefly Barbary vessels, more useful for piracy than a set battle.

The two fleets unexpectedly came in sight of each other at seven o'clock on the morning of October 7th, at a point just south of the Echinades, and between Ithaca and the Gulf of Patras or Lepanto. A white sail or two on the horizon was descried by Don John's look-out on the maintop; then sail after sail rose above the sea-line, and the enemy came into full view. Don John quickly ran up a white flag, the signal of battle, and immediately the whole fleet was busily engaged in clewing up the sails to the yards, and making all snug for the conflict. The central banks were removed to make room for the soldiers, and the slaves were served with meat and wine. Old seamen, who had met the Turks again and again from their youth up, prepared grimly for revenge; sanguine boys, who held arms in set fight for the first time that day, looked forward eagerly to the moment of action. Even to the last the incurable vacillation of the allied admirals was felt: they suggested a council of war. Don John's reply was worthy of him: "The time for councils is past," he said; "do not trouble yourselves about aught but fighting." Then he entered his gig, and went from galley to galley, passing under each stern, crucifix in hand, encouraging the men. His calm and confident mien, and the charm of his address, excited universal enthusiasm, and he was met on all hands with the response: "Ready, Sir; and the sooner the better!" Then Don John unfurled the Blessed Standard with the figure of the Saviour, and falling on his knees commended his cause to God.

About eleven o'clock a dead calm set in. The Turks shortened sail and took to their oars: in perfect order and with matchless speed and precision they formed in line of battle, while drums and fifes announced their high spirits. The Christian fleet was slower in falling into line; some of the galleys and most of the galleasses were behindhand. Don John let drop some pious oaths, and sent swift vessels to hurry them up. At last they began to get into order. Barbarigo, the "left guide," hugged the coast with the left wing; Don John with the centre corps de bataille kept touch with him; but where was the "right guide"? Giovanni Doria, infected with the tactical vanity of his family, resolved to show these landsmen how a sailor can manoeuvre. Conceiving that Ochiali, on the Ottoman left, was trying to outflank the Christian fleet, he bore out to sea in order to turn him. In vain Don John sent to recall him; he had gone out of reach, and the battle had to be fought without the right wing. Doria's precious manoeuvring went near to losing the day.

The Ottoman fleet was marshalled in the same order as the Christian, except that there were no galleasses. The line of battle, nearly a mile long, was divided into centre, and right and left wing, and behind the centre was the reserve. Mohammed Shaluk (called by Europeans Scirocco) commanded the right wing, opposed to Barbarigo's left; 'Ali Pasha opposed Don John in the centre; Ochiali was over against the post where Doria should have been. Between the two lines stood forth the heavy galleasses, like great breakwaters, turning aside and dividing the flowing rush of the Ottoman galleys. The fire of these huge floating castles nearly caused a panic among the Turks, but they soon pulled past them, and a general melley ensued. In the Christian left, after a deadly struggle, in which both Barbarigo and Scirocco lost their lives, the Turks were repulsed, and, deprived of their chief, took to the shore, but not before the Christians had lost many galleys and a host of brave men. Soon after the left had been engaged, the centre came into action. 'Ali Pasha made straight for Don John's Reale, and his beak rammed it as far in as the fourth bank of oars. Close by were Pertev Pasha and the capitanas of Colonna and Veniero. The ships became entangled, and formed one large platform of war. Twice the Spaniards of the Reale boarded the Fanal of 'Ali Pasha as far as the mainmast, and twice they were driven back with terrible loss. 'Ali himself was preparing to leap upon Don John's galley when Colonna rammed him on the poop, penetrating as far as the third oar, and delivered a withering fire from his arquebuses. The Christians had all the advantage of armour and firearms, and fired behind bulwarks; the Turks were unprotected by cuirass or helmet or bulwark, and most of them had bows instead of guns. Colonna's volleys decided the fate of the Fanal, and 'Ali Pasha departed this life. An hour and a half had sufficed to disperse the Ottoman right and to overpower the flagship in chief. When the fleet saw the Christian ensign at the peak of the Turkish capitana they redoubled their efforts: Veniero, severely wounded, still fought with the Seraskier Pertev Pasha; the Turks fled, and Pertev took to the land. In half an hour more Don John's centre was completely victorious. Then a new danger arose: Ochiali, seeing that Doria was well away to sea, sharply doubled back with all the right wing, and bore down upon the exhausted centre. He rushed upon the capitana of Malta, and massacred every soul on board. Dragut is avenged! Juan de Cardona hastened to the rescue, and of his five hundred soldiers but fifty escaped; on the Fiorenza seventeen men alone remained alive; and other terrible losses were incurred in the furious encounter. Upon this the ingenious Doria perceived that he had outwitted only his own cause, and at last turned back. The Marquis de Santa Cruz was already upon the enemy; Don John was after him with twenty galleys; Ochiali was outnumbered, and after a brilliant effort, made off in all haste for Santa Maura, bearing with him the Standard of "the Religion" to be hung up in St. Sophia. The battle of Lepanto is fought and won: the Turks have been utterly vanquished.[49] Well might the good Pope cry, as the preacher cried in St. Stephen's a century later when Sobieski saved Vienna,[50] "There was a man sent from GOD, whose name was JOHN."

The Turkish fleet was almost annihilate: one hundred and ninety galleys were captured, besides galleots, and fifteen more burnt or sunk; probably twenty thousand men had perished, including an appalling list of high dignitaries from all parts of the empire. The Christians lost seven thousand five hundred men, including many of the most illustrious houses of Italy and Spain. Cervantes, who commanded a company of soldiers on board the Marquesa, fortunately escaped with a wound in his left arm; and to many the Battle of Lepanto is familiar only from the magical pages of Don Quixote. Seventeen Venetian commanders were dead, and among them Vicenzo Quirini and the valiant, chivalrous, and venerable Proveditore Barbarigo. Sixty Knights of the diminished Order of St. John had given up the ghost. Twelve thousand Christian slaves were freed from the Ottoman galleys.

The brilliant young conqueror did not wear his well-earned laurels long. His statue was erected at Messina; his victory was the subject of Tintoret and Titian; he was received with ovations wherever he went. Two years later he recaptured Tunis. Then he was employed in the melancholy task of carrying on Alva's detestable work in Flanders. He inflicted a sanguinary defeat upon the Dutch at Gembloux, and then, struck down by fever, the young hero died on October 1, 1578, in his thirty-first year, the last of the great figures of medieval chivalry—a knight worthy to have been commemorated in the Charlemagne gestes and to have sat at Arthur's Round Table with Sir Galahad himself.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] H. de Grammont, La course, l'esclavage, et la redemption; Un pacha d'Alger; Hist. d'Algerie.

[47] See The Story of the Moors in Spain, p. 278.

[48] See the complete list in Girolamo Catena, Vita del gloriosissimo Papa Pio Quinto, 1587.

[49] Read the admirable and graphic description of the battle in Jurien de la Graviere, La Guerre de Chypre et la Bataille de Lepante, ii., 149-205.

[50] See the Story of Turkey, 237.



PART II.

THE PETTY PIRATES.



XV.

THE GENERAL OF THE GALLEYS.

16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries.

The age of the great Corsairs may be said to have ended with the battle of Lepanto, which sounded the knell of the naval supremacy of the Ottomans. It is true that they seemed to have lost little by Don John's famous victory; their beard was shorn, they admitted, but it soon grew again:—their fleet was speedily repaired, and the Venetians sued for peace. But they had lost something more precious to them than ships or men: their prestige was gone. The powers of Christendom no longer dreaded to meet the invincible Turk, for they had beaten him once, and would beat him again. Rarely after this did an Ottoman fleet sail proudly to work its devastating way along the coasts of Italy. Small raids there might be, but seldom a great adventure such as Barbarossa or Sinān led. Crete might be besieged for years; but the Venetians, pressed by land, nevertheless shattered the Turkish ships off the coast. Damad 'Ali might recover the Morea, and victoriously surround the shores of Greece with his hundred sail; but he would not venture to threaten Venice, to lay siege to Nice, to harry Naples, or attack Malta. The Turks had enough to do to hold their own in the Black Sea against the encroaching forces of Russia.

Deprived of the protection which the prestige of the Turks had afforded, the Barbary Corsairs degenerated into petty pirates. They continued to waylay Christian cargoes, to ravish Christian villages, and carry off multitudes of captives; but their depredations were not on the same grand scale, they robbed by stealth, and never invited a contest with ships of war. If caught, they would fight; but their aim was plunder, and they had no fancy for broken bones gained out of mere ambition of conquest.

Ochiali was the last of the great Corsairs. He it was who, on his return to Constantinople after the fatal October 7, 1571, cheered the Sultan with the promise of revenge, was made Captain-Pasha, and sailed from the Bosphorus the following year with a fleet of two hundred and thirty vessels, just as though Lepanto had never been fought and lost. He sought for the Christian fleets, but could not induce them to offer battle. His operations in 1574 were limited to the recapture of Tunis, which Don John had restored to Spain in 1573. With two hundred and fifty galleys, ten mahons or galleasses, and thirty caramuzels, and supported by the Algerine squadron under Ahmed Pasha, Ochiali laid siege to the Goletta, which had owned a Spanish garrison ever since the conquest by Charles V. in 1535. Cervellon defended the fort till he had but a handful of men, and finally surrendered at discretion. Then Ochiali disappeared from the western seas; he fought for his master in the Euxine during the Persian War, and died in 1580, aged seventy-two, with the reputation of the most powerful admiral that had ever held sway in the Golden Horn.



We have not closely followed the succession of the Pashas or Beglerbegs of Algiers, because more important affairs absorbed the whole energies of the Turkish galleys, and the rulers on land had little of consequence to do. Ochiali was the seventeenth pasha of Algiers, but of his predecessors, after the deaths of Urūj and Kheyr-ed-dīn Barbarossa, few attained special eminence. Hasan the son of Barbarossa took part in the siege of Malta, Sālih Reis conquered Fez and Bujēya; but the rest were chiefly occupied with repressing internal dissensions, fighting with their neighbours, and organizing small piratical expeditions. After Ochiali had been called to Stambol as Captain-Pasha, in 1572, when he had been Pasha of Algiers for four years, nine governors succeeded one another in twenty-four years. At first they were generally renegades: Ramadān the Sardinian (1574-7), Hasan the Venetian (1577-80 and 1582-3), Ja'far the Hungarian (1580-2), and Memi the Albanian (1583-6), followed one another, and (with the exception of the Venetian) proved to be wise, just, and clement rulers. Then the too usual practice was adopted of allotting the province to the highest bidder, and rich but incompetent or rascally Turks bought the reversion of the Pashalik. The reign of the renegades was over; the Turks kept the government in their own hands, and the role of the ex-Christian adventurers was confined to the minor but more enterprising duties of a Corsair reis or the "general of the galleys." The Pashas, and afterwards the Deys, with occasional exceptions, gave up commanding piratical expeditions, and the interest of the history now turns upon the captains of galleys.

Piracy without and bloodshed and anarchy within form the staple of the records. Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers showed very similar symptoms. Tripoli was the least powerful, and therefore the least injurious; Algiers dominated the Western Mediterranean and to a considerable extent the Atlantic; Tunis, less venturesome, but still formidable, infested the Eastern Mediterranean, and made the passage of Malta and the Adriatic its special hunting grounds. At Tunis thirty Deys, appointed by the Sublime Porte, succeeded one another from 1590 to 1705—giving each an average reign of less than four years. Most of them were deposed, many murdered, and one is related on credible authority to have been torn to pieces and devoured by the enraged populace. In 1705 the soldiery, following the example of Algiers, elected their own governor, and called him Bey; and the Porte was obliged to acquiesce. Eleven Beys followed one another, up to the French "protectorate." The external history of these three centuries is made up of lawless piracy and the levying of blackmail from most of the trading powers of Europe, accompanied by acts of insufferable insolence towards the foreign representatives; all of which was accepted submissively by kings and governments, insomuch that William III. treated a flagrant Corsair, 'Ali Reis, who had become Dey, with the courtesy due to a monarch, and signed himself his "loving friend." The earliest English treaty with Tunis was dated 1662; many more followed, and all were about equally inefficacious. Civil anarchy, quarrels with France, and wars with Algiers, generally stopped "by order" of the helpless Porte, fill up the details of this uninteresting canvas.

Precisely the same picture is afforded by the modern annals of Algiers. Take the Deys at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Hasan Chāwush was deposed in 1700, and succeeded by the Aga of the Sipāhis, Mustafa, nicknamed Bogotillos or "Whiskerandos," who, though something of a coward, engaged in two successful campaigns against Tunis and one with Morocco, until he had the misfortune to find the bow-string round his throat in 1706. Uzeyn Khōja followed, and Oran fell during his one year's reign, after which he was banished to the mountains, and died. Bektāsh Khōja, the next Dey, was murdered on his judgment-seat in the third year of his reign. A fifth Dey, Ibrahīm Deli, or "the Fool," made himself so hated by his unconscionable licentiousness that he was assassinated, and his mutilated body exposed in the street, within a few months, and 'Ali, who succeeded in 1710, by murdering some three thousand Turks, contrived to reign eight years, and by some mistake died in his bed.

The kingdom of Morocco is not strictly a Barbary state, and its history does not belong to this volume Nevertheless, the operations of the Morocco pirates outside the Straits of Gibraltar so closely resemble those of the Algerine Corsairs within, that a few words about them will not be out of place. At one time Tetwān, within the Straits, in spite of its exposed haven, was a famous place for rovers, but its prosperity was destroyed by Philip II. in 1564. Ceuta was always semi-European, half Genoese, then Portuguese (1415), and finally Spanish (1570 to this day). Tangiers, as the dowry of Charles II.'s Queen, Catherine of Portugal, was for some time English territory. Spanish forts at Penon de Velez de la Gomera and Alhucemas, and Portuguese garrisons, repressed piracy in their vicinity; and in later times Salē was perhaps the only port in Morocco that sent forth buccaneers. Reefs of rocks and drifts of sand render the west coast unsuitable for anchorage, and the roads are unsafe when the wind is in the south-west. Consequently the piracy of Salē, though notorious and dreaded by merchantmen, was on a small scale; large vessels could not enter the harbour, and two-hundred-ton ships had to be lightened before they could pass the bar. The cruisers of Salē were therefore built very light and small, with which they did not dare to attack considerable and well-armed ships. Indeed, Capt. Delgarno and his twenty-gun frigate so terrified the Salē rovers, that they never ventured forth while he was about, and mothers used to quiet naughty children by saying that Delgarno was coming for them, just as Napoleon and "Malbrouk" were used as bugbears in England and France. There was not a single full-sized galley at Salē in 1634, and accounts a hundred years later agree that the Salē rovers had but insignificant vessels, and very few of them, while their docks were practically disused, in spite of abundance of timber. In the latter part of the eighteenth century there seems to have been an increase in the depredations of the Salē pirates, which probably earned them their exaggerated reputation. At that time they had vessels of thirty and thirty-six guns, but unwieldy and badly built, with which they captured Provencal ships and did considerable mischief, till the Chevalier Acton in 1773, with a single Tuscan frigate, destroyed three out of their five ships. About 1788 the whole Morocco navy consisted of six or eight frigates of two hundred tons, armed with fourteen to eighteen six-pounders, and some galleys. The rovers of Salē formed at one time a sort of republic of pirates, paying the emperor a tithe of prize-money and slaves, in return for non-interference; but gradually the Government absorbed most of the profits, and the trade declined, till the emperors, in return for rich presents, concluded treaties with the chief maritime Powers, and to a large extent suppressed piracy.[51]

IN 1637.

(From a Map in the British Museum.)]

Turning from the monotonous records of internal barbarism, the more adventurous side of Algerine history claims a brief notice. Among the captains who continued to make the name of Corsair terrible to Christian ears, Murād Reis holds the foremost place; indeed, he belongs to the order of great Corsairs. There were several of the name, and this Murād was distinguished as the Great Murād. He was an Arnaut or Albanian, who was captured by an Algerine pirate at the age of twelve, and early showed a turn for adventure. When his patron was engaged at the siege of Malta in 1565, young Murād gave him the slip, and went on a private cruise of his own, in which he contrived to split his galleot upon a rock. Undeterred by this misadventure, as soon as he got back to Algiers he set out in a brigantine of fifteen banks, and speedily brought back three Spanish prizes and one hundred and forty Christians. He was with Ochiali when that eminent rover seized Saint-Clement's galleys, and was with difficulty restrained from anticipating his admiral in boarding the St. Ann. He soon gained the reputation of a Corsair of the first water, and "a person, who, for our sins, did more harm to the Christians than any other." In 1578, while cruising about the Calabrian coast with eight galleots in search of prey, he sighted the Capitana of Sicily and a consort, with the Duke of Tierra Nuova and his retinue on board. After a hot pursuit the consort was caught at sea; the flagship ran on shore; the Duke and all the ship's company deserted her; and the beautiful vessel was safely brought into Algiers harbour. In 1585 Murād ventured out into the Atlantic out of sight of land, which no Algerine had ever dared to do before, and picking up a reinforcement of small brigantines at Salē, descended at daybreak upon Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, sacked the town without opposition, and carried off the governor's family and three hundred captives. This done, he unblushingly ran up a flag of truce, and permitted the Count and the chief families to come on board and buy back their relations. In 1589, after picking up a stray trader or two, he fell in with La Serena, a galley of Malta, which had a Turkish prize in tow. Far from shirking a conflict with so formidable an antagonist, Murād gave hot pursuit with his single galleot, and coming up with the Serena, boarded and mastered her in half an hour. Then, after stopping to arrest the misdoings of a Majorcan pirate, who was poaching on his own private manor, the Corsair carried his prizes into Algiers, where he was honourably mounted on the Pasha's own horse and escorted in triumph to the Palace by a guard of Janissaries. In 1594, when he had attained the dignity of "General of the Algerine Galleys," Murād, with four galleots, encountered two Tuscan galleys off Tripoli; lowering the masts of two of his galleots, so that they should escape observation, he towed them behind the other two, and when the Tuscans had drawn near in full expectation of a couple of prizes, he loosed the vessels astern, and with all four bore down upon the enemy; both galleys were taken, and the Florentine knights and soldiers were chained to the oars in place of the Turks who had lately sat there.[52]

No more typical example of the later sort of pirate can be cited than 'Ali Pichinin, General of the Galleys and galleons of Algiers in the middle of the seventeenth century. This notable slaver, without Barbarossa's ambition or nobility, possessed much of his daring and seamanship. In 1638, emboldened by the successes of the Sultan Murād IV. against the Persians, 'Ali put to sea, and, picking up some Tunisian galleys at Bizerta, set sail with a squadron of sixteen for the east coast of Italy. He sacked the district of Nicotra in Apulia, carrying off great spoils and many captives, not sparing even nuns; and then scoured the Adriatic, took a ship in sight of Cattaro, and picked up every stray vessel that could be found.

Upon this a strong Venetian squadron, under Marino Capello, sallied forth, and compelled the Corsairs to seek shelter under the guns of the Turkish fortress of Valona in Albania. In spite of the peace then subsisting between Venice and the Porte, Capello attacked, and the fortress naturally defended, the refugees. The Corsairs were obliged to land, and then Capello, carried away by his zeal, and in contravention of his orders, sent in his galleots and, after a sharp struggle, towed away the whole Barbary squadron, leaving 'Ali and his unlucky followers amazed upon the beach. For this bold stroke Capello was severely reprimanded by the Senate, and the Porte was consoled for the breach of treaty by a douceur of five hundred thousand ducats: but meanwhile the better part of the Algerine galley-fleet had ceased to exist, and owners and captains were bankrupt. It was small consolation that in the same summer an expedition to the north, piloted by a renegade from Iceland, brought back eight hundred of his unfortunate countrymen to exchange the cold of their native land for the bagnios of Algiers.

In 1641, however, the Corsairs had recovered from their losses, and 'Ali Pichinin could boast a fleet of at least sixty-five vessels, as we have it on the authority of Emanuel d'Aranda, who was his slave at the time. The wealth and power of the General of the Galleys were then at their zenith. Six hundred slaves were nightly locked up in his prison, which afterwards was known as the Khan of 'Ali Pichinin, and in Morgan's time was noted for its grape vines, which covered the walls and fringed the windows with the luscious fruit up to the top storey. The son of a renegade himself, he liked not that his followers should turn Turk upon his hands; which "was but picking his pocket of so much money to give a disciple to Mohammed, for whom he was remarked to have no extraordinary veneration. He had actually cudgelled a Frenchmen out of the name of Mustafa (which he had assumed with a Turkish dress) into that of John, which he would fain have renounced. His farms and garden-houses were also under the directions of his own Christians. I have heard much discourse of an entertainment he once made, at his garden, for all the chief Armadores and Corsairs, at which the Pasha was also a guest, but found his own victuals, as fearing some foul play; nothing of which is ill taken among the Turks. All was dressed at town in the general's own kitchen, and passed along from hand to hand by his slaves up to the garden-house, above two miles' distant, where as much of the victuals as got safe thither arrived smoking hot, as they tell the story."[53] A good part, however, disappeared on the road, since, in Corsair's phrase, "the Christian slaves wore hooks on their fingers," and the guests went nigh to be starved. 'Ali's plan for feeding his slaves was characteristic. He gave them no loaves as others did, but told them they were indeed a sorry set of scoundrels, unworthy of the name of slaves, if, during the two or three hours of liberty they enjoyed before sunset, they could not find enough to keep them for a day. His bagnios used to be regular auction-rooms for stolen goods, and were besieged by indignant victims, who were reproached for their carelessness, and made to re-purchase their own valuables: in fine, 'Ali Pichinin "has the honour of having trained up the cleanest set of thieves that were anywhere to be met with." Once a slave found a costly ring of the general's, and restored to him without price: for which "unseasonable piece of honesty" 'Ali gave him half a ducat, and called him a fool for his pains; the ring was worth his ransom. Another time, a slave bargained to sell to an ironmaster the general's anchor from out of his own galley: when discovered, he was commended for his enterprising spirit, and told he was fit to be a slave, since he knew how to gain his living. This slave-dealer had a genius for wheedling the truth out of captives; he was so civil and sympathizing when a new prize was caught, so ready with his "Count" and "my lord" to plain gentlemen, and his "your Eminence" to simple clergymen, that they soon confided in him, revealed their rank, and had their ransom fixed: but, to do him justice, he kept his word, and once promised the release was certain: "My word is my word," he would say.



He was a man of very free views in religion. Once he asked a Genoese priest to tell him candidly what would become of him; "frankly," said Father Angelo, "I am persuaded that the devil will have you;" and the response was cheerfully accepted. Another time it was a devout Moslem sheykh who begged 'Ali to give him a Christian slave to kill, as he did not feel that he had offered any sufficiently pleasing sacrifice to the prophet Mohammed. 'Ali unchained the stroke-oar of his galley, a muscular Spaniard, and armed him at all points, and sent him to be killed by the holy man. "This Christian," shrieked the good sheykh, running as hard as he could, "looks as if he rather wanted to kill me than to be killed himself." "So is it," said 'Ali, "that you are to merit the prophet's favour. Thus it is that Christians are to be sacrificed. Mohammed was a brave, generous man, and never thought it any service done him to slaughter those who were not able to defend themselves. Go; get yourself better instructed in the meaning of the Koran." He was a thorough Corsair, with the rough code of honour, as well as the unprincipled rascality of the sea-rover.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] See John Windus, Journey to Mequinez (Lond., 1735), describing the embassy of Commodore Stewart to Morocco, in 1721, when two hundred and ninety-six English slaves were freed, and a treaty repudiating piracy and the right of search was concluded. Capt. John Braithwaite's History of the Revolutions in Morocco (1729) includes a journal of events and observations made during Mr. Russell's mission in 1728. Salē is described at pp. 343 ff. See also Chenier, Present State of the Empire of Morocco (Eng. transl., 1788). Chenier was French Consul from 1767: the original work is entitled Recherches historiques sur les Maures.

[52] Morgan, 557-9, 588, 597, 607.

[53] Morgan, 674.



XVI.

GALLEYS AND GALLEY SLAVES.

16th Century.

"The Corsairs," says Haedo, "are those who support themselves by continual sea-robberies; and, admitting that among their numbers some of them are natural Turks, Moors, &c., yet the main body of them are renegadoes from every part of Christendom; all who are extremely well acquainted with the Christian coasts." It is a singular fact that the majority of these plunderers of Christians were themselves born in the Faith. In the long list of Algerine viceroys, we meet with many a European. Barbarossa himself was born in Lesbos, probably of a Greek mother. His successor was a Sardinian; soon afterwards a Corsican became pasha of Algiers, then another Sardinian; Ochiali was a Calabrian; Ramadān came from Sardinia, and was succeeded by a Venetian, who in turn gave place to a Hungarian, who made room for an Albanian. In 1588 the thirty-five galleys or galleots of Algiers were commanded by eleven Turks and twenty-four renegades, including nations of France, Venice, Genoa, Sicily, Naples, Spain, Greece, Calabria, Corsica, Albania, and Hungary, and a Jew. In short, up to nearly the close of the sixteenth century (but much more rarely afterwards) the chiefs of the Corsairs and the governors were commonly drawn from Christian lands. Some of them volunteered—and to the outlaws of Europe the command of a Barbary galley was perhaps the only congenial resort;—but most of them were captives seized as children, and torn from their homes in some of the Corsairs' annual raids upon Corsica and Sardinia and the Italian or Dalmatian coasts. Most of such prisoners were condemned to menial and other labour, unless ransomed; but the bolder and handsomer boys were often picked out by the penetrating eye of the reis, and once chosen the young captive's career was established.

"While the Christians with their galleys are at repose, sounding their trumpets in the harbours, and very much at their ease regaling themselves, passing the day and night in banqueting, cards, and dice, the Corsairs at pleasure are traversing the east and west seas, without the least fear or apprehension, as free and absolute sovereigns thereof. Nay, they roam them up and down no otherwise than do such as go in chase of hares for their diversion. They here snap up a ship laden with gold and silver from India, and there another richly fraught from Flanders; now they make prize of a vessel from England, then of another from Portugal. Here they board and lead away one from Venice, then one from Sicily, and a little further on they swoop down upon others from Naples, Livorno, or Genoa, all of them abundantly crammed with great and wonderful riches. And at other times carrying with them as guides renegadoes (of which there are in Algiers vast numbers of all Christian nations, nay, the generality of the Corsairs are no other than renegadoes, and all of them exceedingly well acquainted with the coasts of Christendom, and even within the land), they very deliberately, even at noon-day, or indeed just when they please, leap ashore, and walk on without the least dread, and advance into the country, ten, twelve, or fifteen leagues or more; and the poor Christians, thinking themselves secure, are surprised unawares; many towns, villages, and farms sacked; and infinite numbers of souls, men, women, children, and infants at the breast, dragged away into a wretched captivity. With these miserable ruined people, loaded with their own valuable substance, they retreat leisurely, with eyes full of laughter and content, to their vessels. In this manner, as is too well known, they have utterly ruined and destroyed Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Calabria, the neighbourhoods of Naples, Rome, and Genoa, all the Balearic islands, and the whole coast of Spain: in which last more particularly they feast it as they think fit, on account of the Moriscos who inhabit there; who being all more zealous Mohammedans than are the very Moors born in Barbary, they receive and caress the Corsairs, and give them notice of whatever they desire to be informed of. Insomuch that before these Corsairs have been absent from their abodes much longer than perhaps twenty or thirty days, they return home rich, with their vessels crowded with captives, and ready to sink with wealth; in one instant, and with scarce any trouble, reaping the fruits of all that the avaricious Mexican and greedy Peruvian have been digging from the bowels of the earth with such toil and sweat, and the thirsty merchant with such manifest perils has for so long been scraping together, and has been so many thousand leagues to fetch away, either from the east or west, with inexpressible danger and fatigue. Thus they have crammed most of the houses, the magazines, and all the shops of this Den of Thieves with gold, silver, pearls, amber, spices, drugs, silks, cloths, velvets, &c., whereby they have rendered this city the most opulent in the world: insomuch that the Turks call it, not without reason, their India, their Mexico, their Peru."[54]



One has some trouble in realizing the sort of navigation employed by Corsairs. We must disabuse our minds of all ideas of tall masts straining under a weight of canvas, sail above sail. The Corsairs' vessels were long narrow row-boats, carrying indeed a sail or two, but depending for safety and movement mainly upon the oars. The boats were called galleys, galleots, brigantines ("galeotas ligeras o vergatines," or frigatas), &c., according to their size: a galleot is a small galley, while a brigantine may be called a quarter galley. The number of men to each oar varies, too, according to the vessel's size: a galley may have as many as four to six men working side by side to each oar, a galleot but two or three, and a brigantine one; but in so small a craft as the last each man must be a fighter as well as an oarsmen, whereas the larger vessels of the Corsairs were rowed entirely by Christian slaves.



The galley is the type of all these vessels, and those who are curious about the minutest details of building and equipping galleys need only consult Master Joseph Furttenbach's Architectura Navalis: Das ist, Von dem Schiff-Gebaw, auf dem Meer und Seekusten zu gebrauchen, printed in the town of Ulm, in the Holy Roman Empire, by Jonam Saurn, in 1629. Any one could construct a galley from the numerous plans and elevations and sections and finished views (some of which are here reproduced) in this interesting and precise work.[55] Furttenbach is an enthusiastic admirer of a ship's beauties, and he had seen all varieties; for his trade took him to Venice, where he had a galleasse,[56] and he had doubtless viewed many a Corsair fleet, since he could remember the battle of Lepanto and the death of Ochiali. His zeal runs clean away with him when he describes a stolo, or great flagship (capitanea galea) of Malta in her pomp and dignity and lordliness, as she rides the seas to the rhythmical beat of her many oars, or "easies" with every blade suspended motionless above the waves like the wings of a poised falcon. A galley such as this is "a princely, nay, a royal and imperial vassello di remo," and much the most suitable, he adds, for the uses of peace and of war in the Mediterranean Sea. A galley may be 180 or 190 spans long—Furttenbach measures a ship by palmi, which varied from nine to ten inches in different places in Italy,—say 150 feet, the length of an old seventy-four frigate, but with hardly a fifth of its cubit contents—and its greatest beam is 25 spans broad. The one engraved on p. 37 is evidently an admiral's galley of the Knights of Malta. She carries two masts—the albero maestro or mainmast, and the trinchetto, or foremast, each with a great lateen sail. The Genoese and Venetians set the models of these vessels, and the Italian terms were generally used in all European navigation till the northern nations took the lead in sailing ships. These sails are often clewed up, however, for the mariner of the sixteenth century was ill-practised in the art of tacking, and very fearful of losing sight of land for long, so that unless he had a wind fair astern he preferred to trust to his oars. A short deck at the prow and poop serve, the one to carry the fighting-men and trumpeters and yardsmen, and to provide cover for the four guns, the other to accommodate the knights and gentlemen, and especially the admiral or captain, who sits at the stern under a red damask canopy embroidered with gold, surveying the crew, surrounded by the chivalry of "the Religion," whose white cross waves on the taffety standard over their head, and shines upon various pennants and burgees aloft. Behind, overlooking the roof of the poop, stands the pilot who steers the ship by the tiller in his hand.

Between the two decks, in the ship's waist, is the propelling power: fifty-four benches or banks, twenty-seven a side, support each four or five slaves, whose whole business in life is to tug at the fifty-four oars. This flagship is a Christian vessel, so the rowers are either Turkish and Moorish captives, or Christian convicts. If it were a Corsair, the rowers would all be Christian prisoners. In earlier days the galleys were rowed by freemen, and so late as 1500 the Moors of Algiers pulled their own brigantines to the attack of Spanish villages, but their boats were light, and a single man could pull the oar. Two or three were needed for a galleot, and as many sometimes as six for each oar of a large galley. It was impossible to induce freemen to toil at the oar, sweating close together, for hour after hour—not sitting, but leaping on the bench, in order to throw their whole weight on the oar. "Think of six men chained to a bench, naked as when they were born, one foot on the stretcher, the other on the bench in front, holding an immensely heavy oar [fifteen feet long], bending forwards to the stern with arms at full reach to clear the backs of the rowers in front, who bend likewise; and then having got forward, shoving up the oar's end to let the blade catch the water, then throwing their bodies back on to the groaning bench. A galley oar sometimes pulls thus for ten, twelve, or even twenty hours without a moment's rest. The boatswain, or other sailor, in such a stress, puts a piece of bread steeped in wine in the wretched rower's mouth to stop fainting, and then the captain shouts the order to redouble the lash. If a slave falls exhausted upon his oar (which often chances) he is flogged till he is taken for dead, and then pitched unceremoniously into the sea."[57]

"Those who have not seen a galley at sea, especially in chasing or being chased, cannot well conceive the shock such a spectacle must give to a heart capable of the least tincture of commiseration. To behold ranks and files of half-naked, half-starved, half-tanned meagre wretches, chained to a plank, from whence they remove not for months together (commonly half a year), urged on, even beyond human strength, with cruel and repeated blows on their bare flesh, to an incessant continuation of the most violent of all exercises; and this for whole days and nights successively, which often happens in a furious chase, when one party, like vultures, is hurried on almost as eagerly after their prey, as is the weaker party hurried away in hopes of preserving life and liberty."[58]

Sometimes a galley-slave worked as long as twenty years, sometimes for all his miserable life, at this fearful calling. The poor creatures were chained so close together in their narrow bench—a sharp cut was the characteristic of the galley—that they could not sleep at full length. Sometimes seven men (on French galleys, too, in the last century), had to live and sleep in a space ten feet by four. The whole ship was a sea of hopeless faces. And between the two lines of rowers ran the bridge, and on it stood two boatswains (comiti) armed with long whips, which they laid on to the bare backs of the rowers with merciless severity. Furttenbach gives a picture of the two boatswains in grimly humorous verse: how they stand,

Beclad, belaced, betrimmed, with many knots bespick; Embroidered, padded, tied; all feathers and all flap; Curly and queued, equipped, curious of hood and cap:

and how they "ever stolidly smite" the crew with the bastinado,

Or give them a backward prod in the naked flesh as they ply, With the point that pricks like a goad, when "powder and shot" is the cry;

in order to send the Turks to Davy's wet locker:—

As John of Austria nipped them and riddled them with ball, As soon as his eyes fell on them, and ducked or slaughtered them all;

and how the boatswain's dreaded whistle shrieked through the ship:—

For they hearken to such a blast through all the swish and sweat, Through rattle and rumpus and raps, and the kicks and cuffs that they get, Through the chatter and tread, and the rudder's wash, and the dismal clank Of the shameful chain which forever binds the slave to the bank.

To this may be added Captain Pantero Pantera's description of the boatswain's demeanour: "He should appear kindly towards the crew: assist it, pet it, but without undue familiarity; be, in short, its guardian and in some sort its father, remembering that, when all's said, 'tis human flesh, and human flesh in direst misery."

This terrible living grave of a galley, let us remember, is depicted from Christian models. A hundred and fifty years ago such scenes might be witnessed on many a European vessel. The Corsairs of Algiers only served their enemies as they served them: their galley slaves were no worse treated, to say the least, than were Doria's or the King of France's own. Rank and delicate nurture were respected on neither side: a gallant Corsair like Dragut had to drag his chain and pull his insatiable oar like any convict at the treadmill, and a future grand master of Malta might chance to take his seat on the rowing bench beside commonest scoundrel of Naples. No one seemed to observe the horrible brutality of the service, where each man, let him be never so refined, was compelled to endure the filth and vermin of his neighbour who might be half a savage and was bound to become wholly one; and when Madame de Grignan wrote an account of a visit to a galley, her friend Madame de Sevigne replied that she would "much like to see this sort of Hell," and the men "groaning day and night under the weight of their chains." Autres temps, autres moeurs!

Furttenbach tells us much more about the galley; and how it was rigged out with brilliant cloths on the bulwarks on fete-days; how the biscuit was made to last six or eight months, each slave getting twenty-eight ounces thrice a week, and a spoonful of some mess of rice or bones or green stuff; of the trouble of keeping the water-cans under the benches full and fairly fresh. The full complement of a large galley included, he says, besides about 270 rowers, and the captain, chaplain, doctor, scrivener, boatswains, and master, or pilot, ten or fifteen gentleman adventurers, friends of the captain, sharing his mess, and berthed in the poop; twelve helmsmen (timonieri), six foretop A.B's., ten warders for the captives, twelve ordinary seamen, four gunners, a carpenter, smith, cooper, and a couple of cooks, together with fifty or sixty soldiers; so that the whole equipage of a fighting-galley must have reached a total of about four hundred men.[59]

What is true of a European galley is also generally applicable to a Barbary galleot, except that the latter was generally smaller and lighter, and had commonly but one mast, and no castle on the prow.[60] The Algerines preferred fighting on galleots of eighteen to twenty-four banks of oars, as more manageable than larger ships. The crew of about two hundred men was very densely packed, and about one hundred soldiers armed with muskets, bows, and scimitars occupied the poop. Haedo has described the general system of the Corsairs as he knew it at the close of the sixteenth century, and his account, here summarized, holds good for earlier and somewhat later periods:—

These vessels are perpetually building or repairing at Algiers; the builders are all Christians, who have a monthly pay from the Treasury of six, eight, or ten quarter-dollars, with a daily allowance of three loaves of the same bread with the Turkish soldiery, who have four. Some of the upper rank of these masters have six and even eight of these loaves; nor has any of their workmen, as carpenters, caulkers, coopers, oar-makers, smiths, &c., fewer than three. The Beylik, or common magazine, never wants slaves of all useful callings, "nor is it probable that they should ever have a scarcity of such while they are continually bringing in incredible numbers of Christians of all nations." The captains, too, have their private artificer slaves, whom they buy for high prices and take with them on the cruise, and hire them out to help the Beylik workmen when ashore.

The number of vessels possessed at any one time by the Algerines appears to have never been large. Barbarossa and Dragut were content with small squadrons. Ochiali had but fifteen Algerine galleys at Lepanto. Haedo says that at the close of the sixteenth century (1581) the Algerines possessed 36 galleots or galleys, made up of 3 of 24 banks, 1 of 23, 11 of 22, 8 of 20, 1 of 19, 10 of 18, and 2 of 15, and these were, all but 14, commanded by renegades. They had besides a certain number of brigantines of 14 banks, chiefly belonging to Moors at Shershēl. This agrees substantially with Father Dan's account (1634), who says that there were in 1588 thirty-five galleys or brigantines (he means galleots) of which all but eleven were commanded by renegades. Haedo gives the list[61] of the 35 captains, from which the following names are selected: Ja'far the Pasha (Hungarian), Memi (Albanian), Murād (French), Deli Memi (Greek), Murād Reis (Albanian), Feru Reis (Genoese), Murād Maltrapillo and Yūsuf (Spaniards), Memi Reis and Memi Gancho (Venetians), Murād the Less (Greek), Memi the Corsican, Memi the Calabrian, Montez the Sicilian, and so forth, most of whom commanded galleys of 22 to 24 banks.[62]

It was a pretty sight to see the launching of a galley. After the long months of labour, after felling the oak and pine in the forests of Shershēl, and carrying the fashioned planks on camels, mules, or their own shoulders, some thirty miles to the seashore; or perhaps breaking up some unwieldy prize vessel taken from the Spaniards or Venetians; after all the sawing and fitting and caulking and painting; then at last comes the day of rejoicing for the Christian slaves who alone have done the work: for no Mussulman would offer to put a finger to the building of a vessel, saving a few Morisco oar-makers and caulkers. Then the armadores, or owners of the new galleot, as soon as it is finished, come down with presents of money and clothes, and hang them upon the mast and rigging, to the value of two hundred or three hundred ducats, to be divided among their slaves, whose only pay till that day has been the daily loaves. Then again on the day of launching, after the vessel has been keeled over, and the bottom carefully greased from stem to stern, more presents from owners and captains to the workmen, to say nothing of a hearty dinner; and a great straining and shoving of brawny arms and bare backs, a shout of Allahu Akbar, "God is Most Great," as the sheep is slaughtered over the vessel's prow—a symbol, they said, of the Christian blood to be shed—and the galleot glides into the water prepared for her career of devastation: built by Christians and manned by Christians, commanded probably by a quondam Christian, she sallies forth to prey upon Christendom.

The rowers, if possible, were all Christian slaves, belonging to the owners, but when these were not numerous enough, other slaves, or Arabs and Moors, were hired at ten ducats the trip, prize or no prize. If he was able, the captain (Reis) would build and furnish out his own vessel, entirely at his own cost, in hope of greater profit; but often he had not the means, and then he would call in the aid of one or more armadores. These were often speculative shopkeepers, who invested in a part share of a galleot on the chance of a prize, and who often discovered that ruin lay in so hazardous a lottery. The complement of soldiers, whether volunteers (levents), consisting of Turks, renegades, or Kuroghler (Kuloghler)—i.e., creoles, natives, Turks born on the soil—or if these cannot be had, ordinary Moors, or Ottoman janissaries, varied with the vessel's size, but generally was calculated at two to each oar, because there was just room for two men to sit beside each bank of rowers: they were not paid unless they took a prize, nor were they supplied with anything more than biscuit, vinegar, and oil—everything else, even their blankets, they found themselves. The soldiers were under the command of their own Aga, who was entirely independent of the Reis and formed an efficient check upon that officer's conduct. Vinegar and water, with a few drops of oil on the surface, formed the chief drink of the galley slaves, and their food was moistened biscuit or rusk, and an occasional mess of gruel (burgol): nor was this given out when hard rowing was needed, for oars move slackly on a full stomach.

It was usual to consult an auguration book and a marabut, or saint, before deciding on a fortunate day for putting to sea, and these saints expected a share of the prize money. Fridays and Sundays were the favourite days for sailing; a gun is fired in honour of their tutelary patron; "God speed us!" shout the crew; "God send you a prize!" reply the crowd on the shore, and the galleot swiftly glides away on its destructive path. "The Algerines," says Haedo, "generally speaking, are out upon the cruise winter and summer, the whole year round; and so devoid of dread they roam these eastern and western seas, laughing all the while at the Christian galleys (which lie trumpetting, gaming, and banqueting in the ports of Christendom), neither more nor less than if they went a hunting hares and rabbits, killing here one and there another. Nay, far from being under apprehension, they are certain of their game; since their galleots are so extremely light and nimble, and in such excellent order, as they always are[63]; whereas, on the contrary, the Christian galleys are so heavy, so embarrassed, and in such bad order and confusion, that it is utterly in vain to think of giving them chase, or of preventing them from going and coming, and doing just as they their selves please. This is the occasion that, when at any time the Christian galleys chase them, their custom is, by way of game and sneer, to point to their fresh-tallowed poops, as they glide along like fishes before them, all one as if they showed them their backs to salute: and as in the cruising art, by continual practise, they are so very expert, and withal (for our sins) so daring, presumptuous, and fortunate, in a few days from their leaving Algiers they return laden with infinite wealth and captives; and are able to make three or four voyages in a year, and even more if they are inclined to exert themselves. Those who have been cruising westward, when they have taken a prize, conduct it to sell at Tetwān, El-Araish, &c., in the kingdom of Fez; as do those who have been eastward, in the states of Tunis and Tripoli: where, refurnishing themselves with provisions, &c., they instantly set out again, and again return with cargoes of Christians and their effects. If it sometimes happens more particularly in winter, that they have roamed about for any considerable time without lighting on any booty, they retire to some one of these seven places, viz:—If they had been in the west their retreats were Tetwān, Al-Araish, or Yusale; those who came from the Spanish coasts went to the island Formentara; and such as had been eastward retired to the island S. Pedro, near Sardinia, the mouths of Bonifacio in Corsica, or the islands Lipari and Strombolo, near Sicily and Calabria; and there, what with the conveniency of those commodious ports and harbours, and the fine springs and fountains of water, with the plenty of wood for fuel they meet with, added to the careless negligence of the Christian galleys, who scarce think it their business to seek for them—they there, very much at their ease, regale themselves, with stretched-out legs, waiting to intercept the paces of Christian ships, which come there and deliver themselves into their clutches."[64]

Father Dan describes their mode of attack as perfectly ferocious. Flying a foreign flag, they lure the unsuspecting victim within striking distance, and then the gunners (generally renegades) ply the shot with unabated rapidity, while the sailors and boatswains chain the slaves that they may not take part in the struggle. The fighting men stand ready, their arms bared, muskets primed, and scimitars flashing, waiting for the order to board. Their war-cry was appalling; and the fury of the onslaught was such as to strike panic into the stoutest heart.

When a prize was taken the booty was divided with scrupulous honesty between the owners and the captors, with a certain proportion (varying from a fifth to an eighth) reserved for the Beylik, or government, who also claimed the hulks. Of the remainder, half went to the owners and reis, the other half to the crew and soldiers. The principal officers took each three shares, the gunners and helmsmen two, and the soldiers and swabbers one; the Christian slaves received from 11/2 to three shares apiece. A scrivener saw to the accuracy of the division. If the prize was a very large one, the captors usually towed it into Algiers at once, but small vessels were generally sent home under a lieutenant and a jury-crew of Moors.

There is no mistaking the aspect of a Corsair who has secured a prize: for he fires gun after gun as he draws near the port, utterly regardless of powder. The moment he is in the roads, the Liman Reis, or Port Admiral, goes on board, and takes his report to the Pasha; then the galleot enters the port, and all the oars are dropped into the water and towed ashore, so that no Christian captives may make off with the ship in the absence of the captain and troops. Ashore all is bustle and delighted confusion; the dulness of trade, which is the normal condition of Algiers between the arrivals of prizes, is forgotten in the joy of renewed wealth; the erstwhile shabby now go strutting about, pranked out in gay raiment, the commerce of the bar-rooms is brisk, and every one thinks only of enjoying himself. Algiers is en fete.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] Haedo, quoted by Morgan, 593-4.

[55] Hardly less valuable is Adm. Jurien de la Graviere's Les Derniers Jours de la Marine a Rames (Paris, 1885). It contains an admirable account of the French galley system, the mode of recruiting, discipline, and general management; a description of the different classes of vessels, and their manner of navigation; while a learned Appendix of over one hundred pages describes the details of galley-building, finishing, fitting, and rigging, and everything that the student need wish to learn. The chapters (ix. and x.) on Navigation a la rame and Navigation a la voile, are particularly worth reading by those who would understand sixteenth and seventeenth century seamanship.

[56] A galleasse was originally a large heavy galley, three-masted, and fitted with a rudder, since its bulk compelled it to trust to sails as well as oars. It was a sort of transition-ship, between the galley and the galleon, and as time went on it became more and more of a sailing ship. It had high bulwarks, with loopholes for muskets, and there was at least a partial cover for the crew. The Portuguese galleys in the Spanish Armada mounted each 110 soldiers and 222 galley-slaves; but the Neapolitan galleasses carried 700 men, of whom 130 were sailors, 270 soldiers, and 300 slaves of the oar. Jurien de la Graviere, Les Derniers Jours de la Marine a Rames, 65-7.

[57] So says Jean Marteille de Bergerac, a galley-slave about 1701, quoted by Adm. Jurien de la Graviere, Derniers Jours de la Marine a Rames, 13.

[58] Morgan, 517.

[59] In 1630 a French galley's company consisted of 250 forcats and 116 officers, soldiers, and sailors.

[60] Dan, Hist. de Barbarie, 268-71. See the cut of Tunisian galleots on p. 183.

[61] Topographia, 18.

[62] Dan, 270-1.

[63] The Corsairs prided themselves on the ship-shape appearance of their vessels. Everything was stowed away with marvellous neatness and economy of space and speed; even the anchor was lowered into the hold lest it should interfere with the "dressing" of the oars. The weapons were never hung, but securely lashed, and when chasing an enemy, no movement of any kind was permitted to the crew and soldiers, save when necessary to the progress and defence of the ship. These Corsairs, in fact, understood the conditions of a rowing-race to perfection.

[64] Haedo, 17.



XVII.

THE TRIUMPH OF SAILS.

17th Century.



At the beginning of the seventeenth century a notable change came over the tactics of the Corsairs: they built fewer galleys, and began to construct square-sailed ships. In Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli the dockyards teemed with workmen busily engaged in learning the new build; and the honour, if such it be, of having taught them rests apparently between England and Flanders. Simon Danser, the Flemish rover, taught the Algerines the fashion of "round ships," in 1606, and an Englishman seems to have rendered the same kind office to the people of Tunis, aided by a Greek renegade, Memi Reis; where, moreover, another English pirate, "Captain Wer," was found in congenial company at the Goletta by Monsieur de Breves, the French ambassador.[65] The causes of the change were twofold: first, Christian slaves were not always to be caught, and to hire rowers for the galleys was a ruinous expense; and secondly, the special service for which the smaller galleots and brigantines were particularly destined, the descents upon the Spanish coasts was to some degree obstructed by the final expulsion of the last of the Moors from Andalusia in 1610.[66] That stroke deprived the Corsairs of the ready guides and sympathisers who had so often helped them to successful raids, and larger vessels and more fighting men were needed if such descents were to be continued. Moreover, the Barbary rovers were ambitious to contend with their old enemies for golden treasure on the Spanish main itself; the science of navigation was fast developing; and they felt themselves as equal to venturing upon long cruises as any European nation. Now a long cruise is impossible in a galley, where you have some hundreds of rowers to feed, and where each pound of biscuit adds to the labour of motion; but sails have no mouths, and can carry along a great weight of provisions without getting tired, like human arms. So sails triumphed over oars. The day of the galley was practically over, and the epoch of the ship had dawned. As early as 1616 Sir Francis Cottington reported to the Duke of Buckingham that the sailing force of Algiers was exciting general alarm in Spain: "The strength and boldness of the Barbary pirates is now grown to that height, both in the ocean and the Mediterranean seas, as I have never known anything to have wrought a greater sadness and distraction in this Court than the daily advice thereof. Their whole fleet consists of forty sail of tall ships, of between two and four hundred tons a piece; their admiral [flagship] of five hundred. They are divided into two squadrons; the one of eighteen sail remaining before Malaga, in sight of the city; the other about the Cape of S. Maria, which is between Lisbon and Seville. That squadron within the straits entered the road of Mostil, a town by Malaga, where with their ordnance they beat down part of the castle, and had doubtless taken the town, but that from Granada there came soldiers to succour it; yet they took there divers ships, and among them three or four from the west part of England. Two big English ships they drove ashore, not past four leagues from Malaga; and after they got on shore also, and burnt them, and to this day they remain before Malaga, intercepting all ships that pass that way, and absolutely prohibiting all trade into those parts of Spain." The other squadron was doing the same thing outside the straits, and the Spanish fleet was both too small in number and too cumbrous in build to attack them successfully. Yet "if this year they safely return to Algiers, especially if they should take any of the fleet, it is much to be feared that the King of Spain's forces by sea will not be sufficient to restrain them hereafter, so much sweetness they find by making prize of all Christians whatsoever."

This dispatch shows that the Corsairs had speedily mastered the new manner of navigation, as might have been expected of a nation of sailors. They had long been acquainted with the great galleasse of Spain and Venice, a sort of compromise between the rowed galley and the sailing galleon; for it was too heavy to depend wholly on its oars (which by way of distinction were rowed under cover), and its great lateen sails were generally its motive power. The galleys themselves, moreover, had sails, though not square sails; and the seaman who can sail a ship on lateen sails soon learns the management of the square rig. The engravings on pp. 5, 11, 165, 197, and 227 sufficiently show the type of vessel that now again came into vogue, and which was known as a galleon, nave, polacca, tartana, barcone, caravel, caramuzel, &c., according to its size and country. The Turkish caramuzel or tartan, says Furttenbach, stands high out of the water, is strong and swift, and mounts eighteen or twenty guns and as many as sixty well-armed pirates. It is a dangerous vessel to attack. From its commanding height its guns can pour down so furious a fire upon a Christian craft that the only alternative to surrender is positive extirpation. If the enemy tries to sneak out of range below the level of fire, the Turks drop grenades from the upper decks and set the ship on fire, and even if the Christians succeeded in boarding, they find themselves in a trap: for though the ship's waist is indeed cleared of the enemy, the hurricane decks at poop and prow command the boarding party, and through loopholes in the bulwarks—as good a cover as a trench—a hail of grape pours from the guns, and seizing their opportunity the Turks rush furiously through the doors and take their opponents simultaneously in face and rear; and then comes a busy time for scimitar and pike. Or, when you are alongside, if you see the caramuzel's mainsail being furled, and something moving in the iron cage on the gabia or maintop, know that a petard will soon be dropped in your midst from the main peak, and probably a heavy stone or bomb from the opposite end of the long lateen yard, where it serves the double purpose of missile and counterpoise. Now is the time to keep your distance, unless you would have a hole in your ship's bottom. The Corsairs, indeed, are very wily in attack and defence, acquainted with many sorts of projectiles,—even submarine torpedoes, which a diver will attach to the enemy's keel,—and they know how to serve their stern chasers with amazing accuracy and rapidity.[67]