. Such was the peril of the sea
that ships used to carry two sets of sails, one white for use by day, the
other black, in order to conceal their movements in the darkness. Thousands
of Christian slaves were always wearing out their miserable lives in the
galleys and prisons of the Mohammedan ports. Isolated expeditions were
sometimes made by this or that Christian power for their deliverance. Two
religious orders were founded to collect alms for their ransom, to minister
to them in their captivity, and to negotiate for their deliverance. But all
this was only a mitigation of the evil, and year after year there went on
the enslavement of Europeans, men for the galleys, women for the harems.

One would have thought that all Europe would have banded itself together to
drive back the Turk from the Danube and sweep the corsairs from the
Mediterranean. To their honour be it said that successive Popes endeavoured
to arouse the old crusading spirit, and band civilized and Christian Europe
together for an enterprise that was to the advantage of all, and the
neglect of which was a lasting disgrace. But their efforts were long
defeated by the mutual quarrels and jealousies and the selfish policy of
the European powers. Venice and Genoa long preferred to maintain peace with
the Sultans, in order to have the undisturbed monopoly of the Eastern
trade. France was too often the ally of the Turk, thanks to her traditional
rivalry with the House of Austria, the rulers of the German Empire. The
pressure of Turkish armies on the Eastern frontiers of the Empire made it
impossible for the Emperors to use their full strength on the Rhine or in
North Italy.

Again and again Rome uttered the cry of alarm, and the warning passed
unheeded. But at last it was listened to, when a new outburst of aggressive
activity on the part of the Turks for a while roused the maritime nations
of the Mediterranean from their lethargy, and then a glorious page was
added to the story of naval warfare.

In the year 1566 Suleiman the Magnificent died. He had conquered at Mohacs
and besieged Vienna, enlarged the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire on land,
and made its fleets the terror of the Mediterranean; but the year before he
died his pashas had failed disastrously in their attempt on Malta, and his
successor, Selim II (whom Ottoman historians surname "the Drunkard"), was
reported to be a half-imbecile wretch, devoid of either intelligence or
enterprise. So Europe