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
To this very place came, 1569 years later, the Christian and the
Moslem, the Crescent and the Cross, each under its most renowned
leader, each side burning with an inextinguishable hate. It was one of
the peculiarities of this warfare that into it entered so much actual
personal feeling, each side hating the other for the love of God in
the most poisonous fashion. Save and except the battle of Lepanto in
1571 (with which we shall deal later in the story of Ali Basha, or
Occhiali as he was called by his Christian opponents) the contest
at Prevesa was far the most important ever fought by those strange
oar-propelled vessels known as galleys. It was memorable in many ways,
but particularly so for the ages of the men in chief command. Andrea
Doria was at this time seventy years of age; in fact, Guglielmotti
gives the date of his birth as 1466, thus making him two years older.
That amazing veteran Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, who died in his bed at
Constantinople on July 4th, 1546, at the age of ninety, must have been
eighty-two. Vicenzo Capello was sixty-eight, as the epitaph on his
tomb at Venice in the church of Santa Maria Formosa says that he was
seventy-two in the year of his death, 1542.
Once again Christendom was nerving itself for a supreme effort against
the corsairs, and, during the time that Barbarossa was raiding and
ravaging among the islands of the Archipelago, the Christian fleet
was gradually assembling. At first it numbered some 150 galleys,
81 Venetian, 36 Pontifical, and 30 Spanish; Charles V. sent, at the
last moment, 50 ships on which were embarked 10,000 troops. The force
totalled altogether 59,000 to 60,000 men, 195 ships, and 2,594 cannons.
This was no doubt a most formidable armada, but the policy of those
by whom it was composed was not all directed to the same end. While
Charles desired, above all things, to exterminate the corsairs for
good and all, which was, in the circumstances, the only sound view
of the matter, the Venetians were for fighting defensive actions to
maintain their supremacy in the Ionian Islands, and were disposed to
let the future take care of itself. There was not, in consequence, that
absolute unanimity among the various commanders of the expedition as
was necessary for its complete success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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