The beginning of the century had seen the growth of the Corsairs'
strength to a most alarming extent. While all the European Powers were
fighting among themselves, these Barbary Corsairs (as they were later
called) had become the terror of the Western Mediterranean. Spain, by
its unrelenting persecution of the Moriscoes, following on centuries
of bitter conflict between Christian and Mussulman, had earned the
undying hatred of the dwellers on the North African coast, many of
whom were the children of the expelled Moors. These Moors had wasted
their energy in desultory warfare up to the beginning of the sixteenth
century, when the genius of the two brothers, Uruj and Khair-ed-Din
Barbarossa, had organised them into the pirate State of Algiers, which
was to be a thorn in the side of Christendom for over three centuries.
The Corsairs were not content with merely attacking ships at sea: they
made raids on the Spanish, Italian, and Sicilian sea-boards, burning
and looting for many miles inland. The inhabitants of these parts were
driven off as captives to fill the bagnios of Algiers, Tunis, Bizerta,
and other North African towns. These prisoners were used as galley
slaves, and the life of a galley slave was generally so short that
there was no difficulty of disposing of all the captives that could
be seized. Cupidity, allied with fanaticism, gave this state of war a
cruelty beyond conception: both sides displayed such undaunted courage
and such fierce personal hatred as to make men wonder, even in
that hard and bitter century. Those low-lying galleys, which were
independent of the wind, were ideal pirates' craft in the gentle
Mediterranean summer, and many a slumbering Spanish or Italian village
would be startled into terror by their sudden approach. The audacity
of their methods is illustrated by the raid on Fundi in 1534,
when Barbarossa swooped down on that town simply to seize Giulia
Gonzaga--reputed the loveliest woman in Italy--for the Sultan's harem: