That which they did has been set down here; the
record, however, is not complete, as many of their acts of cruelty, lust,
and oppression are not fitted for publication in the present day. It has
been said, with truth, that no man is much better or much worse than in the
age in which he lives; and to hold the scales evenly--if one were tempted
to shock contemporary opinion by too literal a transcript of all that was
done by the corsairs--it would also be necessary to cite the reprisals of
their Christian antagonists. It has seemed better to leave such things
unchronicled: to present, with as much fidelity as possible, the public
lives and acts of these troublers of the peace of the sixteenth century.
Looking back, as we do, over three hundred and fifty years, and judging as
fairly as is possible, it would seem that there is little which can be said
in their favour.
But we may at least concede that, no matter how infamous were the
Barbarossas, Dragut, and Ali, they proved that in them dwelt one rare and
supreme quality, which, in all the ages, has covered a multitude of sins.
At a time when every one was a warrior and the whole world was an armed
camp, men sought great captains in whose following to serve. Among the
Moslems of Northern Africa, in ordered succession, there rose to the
surface "veritable men of the sea," in the wake of whose galleys ravened
the Sea-wolves. When we consider how undisciplined and how stupidly violent
these pirates were by nature, and how they were welded into a homogeneous
whole by those of whom we speak, we are forced to the conclusion that
seldom, in all the ages, have abler captains arisen to take fortune at the
flood, to dominate the minds and the bodies of a vast host, to prove that
they were, in deed and in truth, supreme as leaders of men.
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