The corsair had to be armed at all points, in the moral as well as the
material sense, as he was the enemy of all men, and all were vowed to his
destruction. Every cruise which he took raised up against him fresh hatred
and a more bitter animus, and we must remember that it was not only men
individually, but Principalities and Powers that were arrayed in line of
battle for his destruction. At the present juncture Spain was specially
hostile, for not only had her possession of Bougie been twice attacked by
the Sea-wolves, but a valuable convoy had been captured. An expedition, in
consequence, was sent by the Spaniards against the Barbarossas, but this
effort did not result in much damage being done to the offenders. The
Spaniards destroyed four piratical vessels which had been abandoned by
their crews at Bizerta, and pushed a strong reconnaissance into the Bay of
Tunis itself. Here shots were exchanged between the Spanish fleet and the
forts--under which Kheyr-ed-Din had drawn up his ships--and the Spaniards
then abandoned the enterprise and returned from whence they had come.
In the year 1510 the Spaniard, Count Pedro Navarre, had seized upon
Algiers, which town was at this time one of the principal refuges of the
Moorish fugitives, who had been driven from Granada, from Cordoba, and from
Southern Spain generally by Ferdinand and Isabella eighteen years
previously. To say that the condition of these people was desperate is to
speak but the bare truth, for what could exceed the misery of the situation
in which they were left after the successful incursion of their Christian
foes? What we are apt to lose sight of in the light of present-day
circumstances is the fact that these Spanish Moors were a most highly
civilised people, far more so indeed than their Christian contemporaries;
that they had been driven with fire and sword from the land in which they
and their forefathers had dwelt for over seven centuries, and that they now
had been cast out literally to starve on the inhospitable shores of
Northern Africa.
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