His master, we are told,
advanced him to all the military offices of the State--it would be
interesting to know what these were in a purely piratical confederation
ruled by a pirate! In the end Dragut was appointed to be kayia, or
lieutenant, and given entire command of twelve galleys.
"From thenceforward this redoubtable corsair passed not one summer
without ravaging the coasts of Naples and Sicily; nor durst any
Christian vessel attempt to pass between Spain and Italy; for if they
offered it he infallibly snapped them up, and when he missed his prey at
sea, he made himself amends by making descents along the coasts
plundering villages and towns and dragging away multitudes of
inhabitants into captivity."
That "no vessel durst pass from Spain to Italy" is no doubt a picturesque
form of exaggeration on the part of the historian; at the same time, when
Dragut was at the height of his activities there is no doubt that any one
passing through those seas ran a great risk of capture; so much so in fact
that at this period, from 1538, the date of the battle of Prevesa, until
Lepanto in 1571, all maritime commerce in the Mediterranean was greatly
circumscribed. At the beginning of this epoch, which saw the rise of the
Moslem corsairs, these robbers perforce confined themselves more to the
North African coast than was the case later on. The pioneers of the
piratical movement, after the fatal date 1492, which saw the wholesale
expulsion of the Moors from Spain, were comparatively speaking inexpert
practitioners in the art and mystery of piracy; they had not the habit of
the sea, and in consequence confined their depredations to the
neighbourhood of their own selected ports in Africa, which dominated that
sea lane running east and west through the Mediterranean, which then, as
now, was one of the greatest highways of commerce of the world.
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