The Algerian corsairs became famous for their ravages in the narrow seas, for their ships were models for speed and lightness, and their crews worked under the strictest discipline. Each vessel carried soldiers, cannon, and artillerymen. The merchant vessels they seized were brought back to Algiers, where the passengers, crews, and cargoes were sold at auction. These undertakings proved most profitable to the captains, “Reis,” who built themselves a quarter of the town, where they lived in houses resembling fortresses, since their captives were kept in these buildings (bagni) until they could be sold. So was formed a Barbary aristocracy, which ended by winning its independence from Turkish rule. Among the corsairs were many renegades, especially Italians. Algiers developed from a small town to a city of 100,000 souls. Many of the captives gave up Christianity and won their freedom. With such elements it is not surprising that the hold of the Turks on the inhabitants became weakened, until finally, not long after Greece won its freedom, Algiers was conquered by the French in the reign of Louis Philippe. After the death of Souliman the Ottoman Sultanate underwent an eclipse. The succession of strong rulers was broken, and the empire was largely under the direction of the women of the harem and slaves. Of the eight successors of Souliman, one only can be called a military leader; many were mere children when they were called to the throne. Even Murad IV (1623-40), the most active of all, took the title of Sultan when he was twelve years old, and his career ended when he was twenty-eight. But even under such unfavorable conditions the progress of Turkish conquests was not arrested. Of the western powers, the chief rival of the Ottoman Empire, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was Venice. At the cost of a yearly tribute of 236,000 ducats, she enjoyed great commercial privileges, was mistress of possessions in the Levant and on the Dalmatian coast, and blocked the way to complete Ottoman domination. Though Rhodes had been taken from the Knights, as we have seen, the large islands of Cyprus and Crete were still in the hands of the republic of the Adriatic, and her possessions in the Ægean Sea were a constant source of annoyance to the Turkish lords of the Morea. Piracy flourished in these ports, which became centers of retaliation for the excesses of the Barbary corsairs.