the height of their power and prosperity, but were faced by the might of
the Ottoman Empire, against which they waged perpetual warfare. Bitter and
unceasing was the strife prosecuted by the Cross against the Crescent, and
by the Crescent against the Cross; and riding, like eagles on the storm
came the corsairs in their swift galleys ready to strike down the luckless
argosy of the merchantman wheresoever she was to be met. But this was not
all, as the shore as well as the sea yielded up to them its tribute in the
shape of slaves and booty, and Christian mothers trembling in the
insecurity of their homes would hush their wailing children with the terror
of the names of Barbarossa, of Dragut, or of Ali Basha.

Popes and emperors, kings and princes, found themselves compelled to form
leagues against these Sea-wolves who devoured the substance of their
subjects, and great expeditions were fitted out to fight with and destroy
the corsairs. Had Christendom been united no doubt the object would have
been attained; but, as will be seen at the end of this chapter, an
"Alliance of Christian Princes against the Turks"--which generic term
included the corsairs--was not always used in the manner best calculated to
injure those common enemies.

When in 1492 Granada was yielded up to "Los Reyes Catolicos," Ferdinand of
Aragon, and Isabella of Castile, by that luckless monarch known as Boabdil
el Chico (or "the little"), the last remnant of the power of the Moors in
Spain had gone never to return. On that small hill on the way to the coast
still known as "el ultimo suspiro del Moro" (the last sigh of the Moor),
Boabdil, as he looked for the last time on his lost capital of Granada, is
said to have burst into tears. His fierce mother Ayesha had, however, no
sympathy for her fallen son: "Thou doest well to weep like a woman for that
which thou daredst not defend as a man," was her biting--and totally
unjust--comment, and the cavalcade pursued its miserable journey to the