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'Algérie_. [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 Gravière, _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.