Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/50

 corsair was at his best as a sea-rover and a powerful racial force. And if he was still a pest to shipping after that date, yet his activities were more of a desultory nature. Along the Barbarian coast at different dates he made himself strong, though of these strongholds Algiers remained for the longest time the most notorious.

In considering these Moslem corsairs one must think of men who were as brutal as they were clever, who became the greatest galley-tacticians which the world has ever seen. Their greed and lust for power and property were commensurate with their ability to obtain these. Let it not be supposed for one moment that during the grand period these Moorish pirate leaders were a mere ignorant and uncultured number of men. On the contrary, they possessed all the instincts of a clever diplomatist, united to the ability of a great admiral and an autocratic monarch. Dominating their very existence was their bitter hatred of Christians either individually or as nations. And though a careful distinction must be made between these Barbarian corsairs and the Turks, who were often confused in the sixteenth-century accounts of these rovers, yet from a very early stage the Moorish pirates and the Turks assisted each other. You have only to remember that they were both Moslems; to remind yourself that the downfall of Constantinople in 1453 gave an even keener incentive to harass Christians; and to recollect that though the Turks were great fighters by land yet they were not seamen. They had an almost illimitable quantity of men to draw upon, and for this as well as other reasons it was to the Moors' interests that there should be a close association with them.

During the fifteenth and especially the sixteenth centuries there was in general European use a particular word which instantly suggested a certain character that