II. The Barbary States, after the decline of the Arabian power, were enveloped in darkness, rendered more palpable by the increasing light among the Christian nations. As we behold them in the fifteenth century, in the twilight of European civilization, they appear to be little more than scattered bands of robbers and pirates,--"the land rats and water rats" of Shylock,--leading the lives of Ishmaelites. Algiers is described by an early writer as "a den of sturdy thieves, formed into a body, by which, after a tumultuary sort, they govern;"[22] and by still another writer, contemporary with the monstrosity which he exposes, as "the theatre of all cruelty and sanctuarie of iniquitie, holding captive, in miserable servitude, one hundred and twenty thousand Christians, almost all subjects of the King of Spaine."[23] Their habit of enslaving prisoners, taken in war and in piratical depredations, at last aroused against these states the sacred animosities of Christendom. Ferdinand the Catholic, after the conquest of Granada, and while the boundless discoveries of Columbus, giving to Castile and Aragon a new world, still occupied his mind, found time to direct an expedition into Africa, under the military command of that great ecclesiastic, Cardinal Ximenes. It is recorded that this valiant soldier of the church, on effecting the conquest of Oran, in 1509, had the inexpressible satisfaction of liberating upwards of three hundred Christian slaves.[24] [Footnote 22: Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. p. 522--_A Discourse concerning Tangiers._] [Footnote 23: Purchas's Pilgrims, vol. ii. p. 1565.] [Footnote 24: Prescott's History of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. iii. p. 308; Purchas's Pilgrims, vol. ii. p. 813.] [Illustration] The progress of the Spanish arms induced the government of Algiers to invoke assistance from abroad. At this time, two brothers, Horuc and Hayradin, the sons of a potter in the Island of Lesbos, had become famous as corsairs. In an age when the sword of the adventurer often carved a higher fortune than could be earned by lawful exertion, they were dreaded for their abilities, their hardihood, and their power. To them Algiers turned for aid. The corsairs left the sea to sway the land; or rather, with amphibious robbery, they took possession of Algiers and Tunis, while they continued to prey upon the sea. The name of Barbarossa, by which they are known to Christians, is terrible in modern history.[25] [Footnote 25: Robertson's Charles the Fifth, book v.; Haedo, _Historia de Argel, Epitome de los Reyes, de Argel_.]