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
Dragut, like all the sea-wolves, was fond of money, fonder still of
what money could buy; he now hankered after revenge as the sweetest
morsel that his hoarded ducats could procure for him. That the Sultan
was well disposed to him he had every reason to think; none the less
did he spend royally among the venal favourites of the Court in order
that nothing might be left undone to inflame the ardour of Soliman
against those whom he considered to be his hereditary foes.
With such skill and address did the corsair manage his suit that he
prevailed upon the Sultan to address a letter to Charles demanding the
immediate return of the towns of Susa, Sfax, Monastir, and “Africa.”
This, of course, meant war; as Charles immediately replied that these
places were dependencies of the King of Tunis, and that that ruler was
under his special protection; further that they were his by right of
conquest; finally that the matter was no concern whatever of the Sultan
of Constantinople. The stern and imperious Christian Emperor was in no
mood to brook interference, the more so that he discerned plainly that
though the demand was that of Soliman, the mover in the affair was none
other than Dragut. He therefore by way of a rider to his answer to the
Sultan informed that monarch that these places which he had taken on
the coast of Africa had been reft by him “from one Dragut, a corsair
odious to both God and man”; that without in any way departing from
the treaty which he had made with Soliman “he intended to pursue this
pirate whithersoever he might go.”
Whether or no this denunciation of Dragut had any influence on the
Sultan it is impossible to say; he was in the habit of employing
the corsairs, and apparently cared nothing about their piratical
reputation, so long as their depredations were confined to Christian
vessels. Shortly after the receipt of the answer of Charles, however,
the Sultan conferred upon Dragut the title of Sandjak or governor of
the island of Santa Maura, thus constituting him a Turkish official.
Once again was Andrea Doria ordered to put to sea to fight against
neither small nor great save Dragut alone; he was to take him dead or
alive, but alive for choice, in order that he might be made to answer
at the bar of Christian justice for all the atrocities committed by
him both by land and sea. The corsair had returned in the meanwhile
to Jerbah, an island on the east coast of Tunis much affected by the
sea-wolves, and which in contemporary histories is known as Jerbah, as
Los Gelues (by the Spanish writers), as Gelves, and various other names
which greatly confuse its identity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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