The Story of the Barbary Corsairs Part 2

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Morgan, _Hist. of Algiers_, 233. (1731.)

[9] Morgan, 257.

V.

KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA.

1518-1530.

Uruj Barbarossa, the gallant, impulsive, reckless, lovable soldier of fortune was dead, and it seemed as if all the power he had built up by his indomitable energy must inevitably vanish with its founder. The Marquis de Comares and the Spanish army held the fate of Algiers in their hands; one steady march, and surely the Corsairs must be swept out of Africa. But, with what would seem incredible folly, if it had not been often repeated, the troops were shipped back to Spain, the Marquis returned to his post at Oran, and the opportunity was lost for three hundred years. The Algerines drew breath again, and their leader began to prepare fresh schemes of conquest.

The mantle of Uruj had fallen upon worthy shoulders. The elder brother possessed, indeed, matchless qualities for deeds of derring-do; to lead a storming party, board a galleon,--cut and thrust and "have at you,"--he had no equal: but Kheyr-ed-din, with like courage and determination, was gifted with prudent and statesmanlike intelligence, which led him to greater enterprizes, though not to more daring exploits. He measured the risk by the end, and never exposed himself needlessly to the hazard of defeat; but when he saw his way clear, none struck harder or more effectual blows.[10]

His first proceeding was typical of his sagacious mind. He sent an amba.s.sador to Constantinople, to lay his homage at the feet of the Grand Signior, and to beg his Majesty's favour and protection for the new province of Algiers, which was now by his humble servant added to the Ottoman Empire. The reply was gracious. Selim had just conquered Egypt, and Algiers formed an important western extension of his African dominion. The sage Corsair was immediately appointed Beglerbeg, or Governor-General, of Algiers (1519), and invested with the insignia of office, the horse and scimitar and horsetail-banner.

Not only this, but the Sultan sent a guard of two thousand Janissaries to his viceroy's aid, and offered special inducements to such of his subjects as would pa.s.s westward to Algiers and help to strengthen the Corsair's authority.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OBSERVATION WITH THE CROSSBOW.

(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]

The Beglerbeg lost no time in repairing the damage of the Spaniards.

He reinforced his garrisons along the coast, at Meliana, Shershel, Tinnis, and Mustaghanim, and struck up alliances with the great Arab tribes of the interior. An armada of some fifty men-of-war and transports, including eight galleys-royal, under the command of Admiral Don Hugo de Moncada, in vain landed an army of veterans on the Algerine strand--they were driven back in confusion, and one of those storms, for which the coast bears so evil a name, finished the work of Turkish steel (1519). One after the other, the ports and strongholds of Middle Barbary fell into the Corsair's hands: Col, Bona, Constantine, owned the sway of Kheyr-ed-din Barbarossa, who was now free to resume his favourite occupation of scouring the seas in search of Christian quarry. Once or twice in every year he would lead out his own eighteen stout galleots, and call to his side other daring spirits whom the renown of his name had drawn from the Levant, each with his own swift cruiser manned by stout arms and the pick of Turkish desperadoes. There you might see him surrounded by captains who were soon to be famous wherever ships were to be seized or coasts harried;--by Dragut, Salih Res, Sinan the "Jew of Smyrna," who was suspected of black arts because he could take a declination with the crossbow, and that redoubtable rover Aydin Res, whom the Spaniards dubbed _Cachadiablo_, or "Drub-devil," though he had better been named Drub-Spaniard. The season for cruising began in May, and lasted till the autumn storms warned vessels to keep the harbours, or at least to attempt no distant expeditions. During the summer months the Algerine galleots infested every part of the Western Mediterranean, levied contributions of slaves and treasure upon the Balearic Isles and the coasts of Spain, and even pa.s.sed beyond the straits to waylay the argosies which were returning to Cadiz laden with the gold and jewels of the Indies. Nothing was safe from their attacks; not a vessel ran the gauntlet of the Barbary coast in her pa.s.sage from Spain to Italy without many a heart quaking within her.

The "Scourge of Christendom" had begun, which was to keep all the nations of Europe in perpetual alarm for three centuries. The Algerine Corsairs were masters of the sea, and they made their mastery felt by all who dared to cross their path; and not merchantmen only, but galleys-royal of his Catholic Majesty learnt to dread the creak of the Turkish rowlock.

One day in 1529 Kheyr-ed-din despatched his trusty lieutenant "Drub-Devil" with fourteen galleots to make a descent upon Majorca and the neighbouring islands. No job could be more suited to the Corsair's taste, and Salih Res, who was with him, fully shared his enjoyment of the task. The pair began in the usual way by taking several prizes on the high seas, dropping down upon the islands and the Spanish coasts, and carrying off abundance of Christians to serve at the oar, or to purchase their liberty with those pieces-of-eight which never came amiss to the rover's pockets. Tidings reaching them of a party of Moriscos who were eager to make their escape from their Spanish masters, and were ready to pay handsomely for a pa.s.sage to Barbary.

"Drub-Devil" and his comrades landed by night near Oliva, embarked two hundred families and much treasure, and lay-to under the island of Formentara. Unfortunately General Portundo, with eight Spanish galleys, was just then on his way back from Genoa, whither he had conveyed Charles V. to be crowned Emperor by the Pope at Bologna; and, being straightway informed of the piratical exploit which had taken place, bore away for the Balearic Isles in hot pursuit. "Drub-Devil"

hastily landed his Morisco friends, to be the better prepared to fight or run, for the sight of eight big galleys was more than he had bargained for; but to his surprise the enemy came on, well within gun-shot, without firing a single round. Portundo was anxious not to sink the Turks, for fear of drowning the fugitive Moriscos, whom he supposed to be on board, and for whose recapture he was to have ten thousand ducats; but the Corsairs imputed his conduct to cowardice, and, suddenly changing their part from attacked to attackers, they swooped like eagles upon the galleys, and after a brisk hand-to-hand combat, in which Portundo was slain, they carried seven of them by a.s.sault, and sent the other flying at topmost speed to Ivica. This bold stroke brought to Algiers, besides the Moriscos, who had watched the battle anxiously from the island, many valuable captives of rank, and released hundreds of Moslem galley-slaves from irons and the lash.[11] "Drub-Devil" had a splendid reception, we may be sure, when the people of Algiers saw seven royal galleys, including the _capitana_, or flagship, of Spain, moored in their roads; and it is no wonder that with such triumphs the new Barbary State flourished exceedingly.

Fortified by a series of unbroken successes, Kheyr-ed-din at last ventured to attack the Spanish garrison, which had all this time affronted him at the Penon de Alger. It was provoking to be obliged to beach his galleots a mile to the west, and to drag them painfully up the strand; and the merchantmen, moored east of the city, were exposed to the weather to such a degree as to imperil their commerce.

Kheyr-ed-din resolved to have a port of his own at Algiers, with no Spanish bridle to curb him. He summoned Don Martin de Vargas to surrender, and, on his refusal, bombarded the Penon day and night for fifteen days with heavy cannon, partly founded in Algiers, partly seized from a French galleon, till an a.s.sault was practicable, when the feeble remnant of the garrison was quickly overpowered and sent to the bagnios. The stones of the fortress were used to build the great mole which protects Algiers harbour on the west, and for two whole years the Christian slaves were laboriously employed upon the work.

To aggravate this disaster, a curious sight was seen a fortnight after the fall of the Penon. Nine transports, full of men and ammunition for the reinforcement of the garrison, hove in sight, and long they searched to and fro for the well-known fortress they had come to succour. And whilst they marvelled that they could not discover it, out dashed the Corsairs in their galleots and light shebeks, and seized the whole convoy, together with two thousand seven hundred captives and a fine store of arms and provisions.[12]

Everything that Kheyr-ed-din took in hand seemed to prosper. His fleet increased month by month, till he had thirty-six of his own galleots perpetually on the cruise in the summer season; his prizes were innumerable, and his forces were increased by the fighting men of the seventy thousand Moriscos whom he rescued, in a series of voyages, from servitude in Spain. The waste places of Africa were peopled with the industrious agriculturists and artisans whom the Spanish Government knew not how to employ. The foundries and dockyards of Algiers teemed with busy workmen. Seven thousand Christian slaves laboured at the defensive works and the harbour; and every attempt of the Emperor to rescue them and destroy the pirates was repelled with disastrous loss.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Kheyr-ed-din (p.r.o.nounced by the Turks _Hare-udeen_), as has been said, is the Barbarossa of modern writers, and it is probable that the name was given to him originally under some impression that it was of the nature of a family name. Haedo, Marmol, and Hajji Khalifa all give him this t.i.tle, though his beard was auburn, while Uruj was the true "Red-Beard." Neither of the brothers was ever called Barbarossa by Turks or Moors, and Hajji Khalifa records the t.i.tle merely as used by Europeans. The popular usage is here adopted.

[11] Morgan, 264-6.

[12] Jurien de la Graviere, _Doria et Barberousse_, Pt. I., ch. xxi.

VI.

THE OTTOMAN NAVY.

1470-1522.

No one appreciated better the triumphs of the Beglerbeg of Algiers than Sultan Suleyman. The Ottomans, as yet inexperienced in naval affairs, were eager to take lessons. The Turkish navy had been of slow growth, chiefly because in early days there were always people ready to act as sailors for pay. When Murad I. wished to cross from Asia to Europe to meet the invading army of Vladislaus and Hunyady, the Genoese skippers were happy to carry over his men for a ducat a head, just to spite their immemorial foes the Venetians, who were enlisted on the other side. It was not till the fall of Constantinople gave the Turks the command of the Bosphorus that Mohammed II. resolved to create for himself a naval power.

That fatal jealousy between the Christian States which so often aided the progress of the Turks helped them now. The great commercial republics, Genoa and Venice, had long been struggling for supremacy on the sea. Venice held many important posts among the islands of the Archipelago and on the Syrian coast, where the Crusaders had rewarded her naval a.s.sistance with the gift of the fortress of Acre. Genoa was stronger in the Black Sea and Marmora, where, until the coming of the Turks, her colony at Galata was little less than an Oriental Genoa.

The Genoese tower is still seen on the steep slope of Pera, and Genoese forts are common objects in the Bosphorus, and in the Crimea, where they dominate the little harbour of Balaklava. The Sea of Marmora was the scene of many a deadly contest between the rival fleets. In 1352, under the walls of Constantinople, the Genoese defeated the combined squadrons of the Venetians, the Catalonians, and the Greeks. But next year the Bride of the Sea humbled the pride of Genoa in a disastrous engagement off Alghero; and in 1380, when the Genoese had gained possession of Chioggia and all but occupied Venice itself, the citizens rose like one man to meet the desperate emergency, and not only repulsed, but surrounded the invaders, and forced them to capitulate. From this time Genoa declined in power, while Venice waxed stronger and more haughty. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, followed rapidly by the expulsion of the Genoese from Trebizond, Sinope, Kaffa, and Azov, was the end of the commercial prosperity of the Ligurian Republic in the East. The Black Sea and Marmora were now Turkish lakes. The Castles of the Dardanelles, mounted with heavy guns, protected any Ottoman fleet from pursuit; and though Giacomo Veniero defiantly carried his own ship under fire through the strait and back again with the loss of only eleven men, no one cared to follow his example.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ADMIRAL'S GALLEY

(_Furttenbach, Architectura Navalis, 1629._)]

When Mohammed II. issued forth with a fleet of one hundred galleys and two hundred transports, carrying seventy thousand troops, and ravished the Negropont away from Venice in 1470, he had only to repa.s.s the h.e.l.lespont to be absolutely safe. All that the Venetian admirals, the famous Loredani, could do was to retaliate upon such islands of the Archipelago as were under Turkish sway and ravage the coasts of Asia Minor. Superior as they were to the Turks in the building and management of galleys, they had not the military resources of their foe. Their troops were mercenaries, not to be compared with the Janissaries and Sipahis, though the hardy Stradiotes from Epirus, dressed like Turks, but without the turban, of whom Oth.e.l.lo is a familiar specimen, came near to rivalling them. On land, the Republic could not meet the troops of the Grand Signior, and after her very existence had been menaced by the near approach of a Turkish army on the banks of the Piave[13] (1477), Venice made peace, and even, it is said, incited the Turks to the capture of Otranto. The Ottoman galleys were now free of the Adriatic, and carried fire and sword along the Italian coast, insomuch that whenever the crescent was seen at a vessel's peak the terrified villagers fled inland, and left their homes at the mercy of the pirates. The period of the Turkish Corsairs had already begun.

There was another naval power to be reckoned with besides discredited Genoa and tributary Venice. The Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem, driven from Smyrna (in 1403) by Timur, had settled at Rhodes, which they hastened to render impregnable. Apparently they succeeded, for attack after attack from the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt failed to shake them from their stronghold, whence they commanded the line of commerce between Alexandria and Constantinople, and did a brisk trade in piracy upon pa.s.sing vessels. The Knights of Rhodes were the Christian Corsairs of the Levant; the forests of Caramania furnished them with ships, and the populations of Asia Minor supplied them with slaves. So long as they roved the seas the Sultan's galleys were ill at ease. Even Christian ships suffered from their high-handed proceedings, and Venice looked on with open satisfaction when, in 1480, Mohammed II. despatched one hundred and sixty ships and a large army to humble the pride of the Knights. The siege failed, however; D'Aubusson, the Grand Master, repulsed the general a.s.sault with furious heroism, and the Turks retired with heavy loss.[14]

Finding that the Ottomans were not quite invincible, Venice plucked up heart, and began to prepare for hostilities with her temporary ally.

The interval of friendliness had been turned to good account by the Turks. Yani, the Christian shipbuilder of the Sultan, had studied the improvements of the Venetians, and he now constructed two immense _kokas_, seventy cubits long and thirty in the beam, with masts of several trees spliced together, measuring four cubits round. Forty men in armour might stand in the maintop and fire down upon the enemy.

There were two decks, one like a galleon's deck, and the other like a galley, each with a big gun on either side. Four-and-twenty oars a side, on the upper deck, were propelled each by nine men. Boats hung from the stern; and the ship's complement consisted (so says Hajji Khalifa)[15] of two thousand soldiers and sailors. Kemal Res and Borak Res commanded these two prodigies, and the whole fleet, numbering some three hundred other vessels, was despatched to the Adriatic under the command of Daud Pasha. The object of attack was Lepanto.

Towards the end of July, 1499, they sighted the Venetian fleet, which was on the look-out for them, off Modon. They counted forty-four galleys, sixteen gallea.s.ses, and twenty-eight ordinary sail. Neither courted an action, which each knew to be fraught with momentous consequences. Grimani, the Venetian admiral, retired to Navarino; the Turks anch.o.r.ed off Sapienza. On August 12th Daud Pasha, who knew the Sultan was awaiting him with the land forces at Lepanto, resolved to push on at all costs. In those days Turkish navigators had little confidence in the open sea; they preferred to hug the sh.o.r.e, where they might run into a port in case of bad weather. Daud accordingly endeavoured to pa.s.s between the island of Prodano and the Morea, just north of Navarino. Perfectly aware of his course, the Venetians had drawn out their fleet at the upper end of the narrow pa.s.sage, where they had the best possible chance of catching the enemy in confused order. The Proveditore of Corfu, Andrea Loredano, had reinforced the Christian fleet that very day with ten ships; the position was well chosen; the wind was fair, and drove full down upon the Turks as they emerged from the strait. But the Venetian admiral placed his chief reliance in his gallea.s.ses, and as yet the art of manoeuvring sailing vessels in battle array was in its youth. Bad steering here, a wrong tack there, and then ship ran against ship, the great gallea.s.ses became entangled and helpless, carried by the wind into the midst of the enemy, or borne away where they were useless, and the Turkish galleys had it all their own way. Loredano's flagship burnt down to the water, and other vessels were destroyed by fire. Yani's big ships played an important part in the action. Two gallea.s.ses, each containing a thousand men, and two other vessels, surrounded Borak Res, but the smaller ships could not fire over the _koka's_ lofty sides, and were speedily sunk. Borak Res threw burning pitch into the gallea.s.ses, and burnt up crews and ships, till, his own vessel catching fire, he and other notable captains, after performing prodigies of valour, perished in the flames. Wherefore the island of Prodano is by the Turks called Borak Isle to this day.[16] To the Christians the action was known as "the deplorable battle of Zonchio,"

from the name of the old castle of Navarino, beneath which it was fought.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GALLEa.s.sE.

(_Furttenbach, Architectura Navalis, 1620._)]

In spite of his success at Zonchio, Daud Pasha had still to fight his way up to Lepanto. The Venetians had collected their scattered fleet, and had been reinforced by their allies of France and Rhodes; it was clear they were bent on revenge. The Turks hugged the land, dropped anchor at night, and kept a sharp look-out. It was a perpetual skirmish all the way. The Venetians tried to surprise the enemy at their moorings, but they were already at sea, and squally weather upset Grimani's strategy and he had the mortification of seeing his six fire-ships burning innocuously with never a Turk the worse. Again and again it seemed impossible that Daud could escape, but Grimani's Fabian policy delivered the enemy out of his hands, and when finally the Turkish fleet sailed triumphantly into the Gulf of Patras, where it was protected by the Sultan's artillery at Lepanto, the Grand Prior of Auvergne, who commanded the French squadron, sailed away in disgust at the pusillanimity of his colleague. Lepanto fell, August 28th; and Grimani was imprisoned, nominally for life, for his blundering: nevertheless, after twenty-one years he was made Doge.[17]

Venice never recovered from her defeat. The loss of Lepanto and the consequent closing of the gulfs of Patras and Corinth were followed by the capture of Modon, commanding the strait of Sapienza: the east coast of the Adriatic and Ionian seas was no longer open to Christian vessels. The Oriental trade of the republic was further seriously impaired by the Turkish conquest of Egypt (1517),[18] which deprived her of her most important mart; and the discovery of the New World brought Spanish traders into successful compet.i.tion with her own.

Venice indeed was practically an Oriental city; her skilled workmen learned their arts in Egypt and Mesopotamia; her bazaars were filled with the products of the East, with the dimity and other cloths and silks and brocades of Damietta, Alexandria, Tinnis, and Cairo, cotton from Ba'lbekk, silk from Baghdad, atlas satin from Ma'din in Armenia; and she introduced to Europe not only the products of the East, but their very names. Sarcenet is Saracen stuff; tabby is named after a street in Baghdad where watered silk was made; Baldacchini are simply "Baldac," _i.e._, Baghdad, canopies; samite is Shami, "Syrian," fabric; the very coat of the Egyptian, the _jubba_, is preserved in giuppa, jupe.[19] With the loss of her Oriental commerce, which the hostility of the Turks involved, Venice could no longer hold her own. She bowed to her fate and acknowledged the Turkish supremacy by sea as well as by land. She even paid the Sultan tribute for the island of Cyprus. When Suleyman the Magnificent succeeded Selim and took Belgrade (1521), Venice hastily increased her payment and did homage for Zante as well. So meek had now become the Bride of the Sea.

Turkey still suffered the annoyance of the Rhodian Corsairs, and till they were removed her naval supremacy was not complete. Genoa and Venice had been humbled: the turn of the Knights of St. John was come. Selim had left his son, the great Suleyman, the legacy of a splendid fleet, prepared for this very enterprize. One hundred and three swift galleys, thirty-five gallea.s.ses, besides smaller craft, and 107 transports, "naves, fustes, mahones, tafforees, galions, et esquira.s.ses,"[20] formed a n.o.ble navy, and Rhodes fell, after an heroic defence, at the close of 1522. For six months the Knights held out, against a fleet which had swollen to four hundred sail and an army of over a hundred thousand men commanded by the Sultan in person.

It was a crisis in the history of Europe: the outpost of Christendom was at bay. The Knights realized their duty n.o.bly, but they had the best engineers in the world against them, and all the resources of a now mighty empire, wielded by a master-mind. Suleyman surrounded the city with his works, and made regular approaches for his advancing batteries and mines; yet at the end of a month not a wall was down, and the eight bastions of the eight Tongues of the Order--the English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Provencal, and Auvergnat--were so far unmoved. Gabriel Martinego of Candia superintended the countermines with marked success.[21] At last the English bastion was blown up; the Turks swarmed to the breach, and were beaten back with a loss of two thousand men. A second a.s.sault failed, but on September 24th they succeeded in getting a foothold, and the destruction of the Spanish, Italian, and Provencal bastions by the Turkish mines and the consequent exposure of the exhausted garrison rendered the defence more and more perilous. The Ottoman army too was suffering severely, from disease, as well as from the deadly weapons of the Knights, and in the hope of sparing his men Suleyman offered the garrison life and liberty if they would surrender the city. At first they proudly rejected the offer, but within a fortnight, finding their ammunition exhausted and their numbers sadly thinned, on December 21st they begged the Sultan to repeat his conditions, and, with an honourable clemency, Suleyman let them all depart unmolested in his own ships to such ports in Europe as seemed best to them.[22]

The fall of Rhodes removed the last obstacle to the complete domination of the Ottoman fleet in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Henceforward no Christian ship was safe in those waters unless by the pleasure of the Sultan. The old maritime Republics were for the time reduced to impotence, and no power existed to challenge the Ottoman supremacy in the Aegean, Ionian, and Adriatic Seas.

Almost at the same time the brothers Barbarossa had effected a similar triumph in the west. The capture of Algiers and the firm establishment of various strong garrisons on the Barbary coast had given the Turkish Corsairs the command of the western basin of the Mediterranean.

Suleyman the Magnificent saw the necessity of combination; he knew that Kheyr-ed-din could teach the Stambol navigators and ship-builders much that they ought to learn; his Grand Vezir Ibrahim strenuously urged a closer relation between the Turkish powers of the east and west; and Kheyr-ed-din received the Imperial command to present himself at Constantinople.