Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: The grand period of the Moslem corsairsCurrey, E. Hamilton (Edward Hamilton)
History
Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: The grand period of the Moslem corsairs
Currey, E. Hamilton (Edward Hamilton)
Africa, North -- History; Pirates
On August 17th Charles re-embarked his army and evacuated the country,
leaving, however, one thousand Spanish veterans, under the command of
Bernard de Mendoza, in charge of the Goletta, as a permanent memorial
of the expedition, and as a guarantee that the wretched Muley Hassan
should fully comply with the treaty obligations which had been
imposed upon him. It is true that Barbarossa had not been captured,
but his city had been taken, his fleet had been destroyed, and he
himself was now a fugitive, unable any further to trouble the peace
of Christendom or the dignity of the Emperor by whom he had been so
soundly chastised. In consequence the Cæsar departed well pleased with
himself and with those who had been acting under his orders, to whom he
distributed orders and titles, as a memento of the occasion upon which
they had finally broken up the power of those by whom his peace had so
long been troubled.
One of the difficulties in dealing with the career of Kheyr-ed-Din
Barbarossa is that, in times when he was unsuccessful, or when, as on
the present occasion, he had received a severe setback, it is next
to impossible to find out what he was doing or where exactly he was
preparing for his next coup. In this case, in particular, the old-time
historians were thanking God that the Emperor had rid the world of a
particularly pestilent knave, and ceased to trouble themselves much
about him until he forced himself once more upon their notice. Had
Charles at this time recognised the greatness of the man whom he had
just so signally defeated he might have changed the course of history.
Had he, instead of sailing back to Europe, content with that which
he had accomplished in Tunis, pushed his attack home on Algiers, he
might have made himself master of the whole of Northern Africa, as,
in the disorganised state in which the corsairs now found themselves,
they could certainly have offered no effective resistance. But to
the Emperor these rovers of the sea presented themselves merely in
the light of robbers. Robbers, it is true, on a somewhat large scale,
but still not persons of sufficient importance to detain him from the
infinitely more pressing affairs which awaited him on the opposite
shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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