he Moslem corsairs of the
Mediterranean, could be included in this category, and yet, as their story
is unfolded, we shall see how the Sea-wolves rose from the humblest
beginnings to trouble the peace of Europe, to found for themselves
dynasties which endured.

Uruj Barbarossa, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, Dragut Reis, and Occhiali, or All
Basha, were men who, in the sixteenth century, did much to change the
conditions of the times in which they lived: it was the time of the
Renaissance in Europe, a period of splendour in all the arts and sciences.
These men added nothing to the knowledge of the civilised world as it then
existed, save and except in one particular, which was, as Kheyr-ed-Din
explained to Soliman the Magnificent on a certain memorable occasion, that
he who rules on the sea will rule on the land also. In the present day,
when all the nations and languages sit at the feet of Captain (now
Rear-Admiral) Mahan, and acclaim his "Sea Power" series of books, it is
interesting to find that he was anticipated in the most practical fashion
possible by a corsair of the sixteenth century.

This period was one in which great men abounded. The Emperor Charles V.,
Francis I. of France, and Henry VIII. of England, were on the thrones of
their respective countries; in Hungary was John Hunyadi, at Constantinople
Soliman the Magnificent held rule, while in Rome the "fatal house of
Medici" were the successors of Saint Peter. War was a commonplace state of
the times, but until the Crescent began to sweep the seas it had its
manifestation in the perpetual quarrels of the nations of Christendom,
which represented, as a rule, the insatiable ambitions of its rulers. But
now new men forced themselves to the front, a new power arose which was
very imperfectly understood, and which practically held the sea at its
mercy. Gone were the halcyon days of peaceful trade which had been pursued
for generations by Venetian and Genoese, by Spaniard and Frenchman; gone
also, apparently never to return, was all sense of security for the
wretched dwellers on the littoral of the Mediterranean, who lived in daily,
and particularly in nightly, dread of the falcon swoop of the pirate
galleys.

It is amusing to read the old chroniclers, sticklers as they were for "the
dignity of history," continually having to turn aside from the main stream
of their narrative of emperors, popes, and kings to descend to the level of
the Sea-wolves, and to be constraine