tantinople and the transfer of the Turkish
seat of government to that city, a corps of infantry was organized
that became the terror of the Christian world--the Janissaries. By
a grim irony of the Sultan, who created this body of troops, these
men were exclusively of Christian parentage, taken as children either
in the form of a human tribute levied on the Christian population
of Constantinople, or as captives in the various expeditions in
Christian territory. The Janissaries were brought up wholly to a
military life, they were not permitted to marry, and their lives
were devoted to fighting for the Crescent. For a long time they
were invincible in the open field.

The first half of the 16th century saw the Turks in Persia, in the
east, and at the gates of Vienna in the west. For a time they got
a foothold in Italy by seizing Otranto. They had conquered Egypt
and Syria, penetrated Persia, and in Arabia gained the support of
the Arabs for the Turkish sultan as the successor to the Caliphs.
Constantinople, therefore, became not only the political capital
for the Turkish empire but the religious center of the whole Moslem
world. Moreover, the Arab states on the southern borders of the
Mediterranean acknowledged the suzerainty of the Turkish ruler.

This fact was of great importance, for it enabled the Turks to become
masters of the inland sea. In 1492 the greater part of the Moors--the
descendants of the Arab conquerors of Spain--were expelled from the
Peninsula by the conquest of Granada. This event was hailed with
joy throughout Christendom, but it had an unexpected and terrible
consequence. Flung back into northern Africa, and filled with hatred
because of the persecution they had endured, these Moors embarked
on a career of piracy directed against Christians. In making common
cause with the Turks they supplied the fleets that the Turkish
power needed to carry out its schemes of conquest. Apparently the
Turks had never taken to salt water as the Arabs had done, but in
these Moorish pirates they found fighters on the sea well worthy
to stand comparison with their peerless fighters on land, the
Janissaries. Between 1492 and 1580, the date of Ali's death, there
was a period in which the Moorish corsairs were supreme. It produced
three great leaders, each of whom in turn became the terror of the
sea: Kheyr ed Din, known as Barbarossa, Dragut, and Ali. It is a
curious fact that the first and third were of Christian parenta