Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/570

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, 1542.

cruisers as well as their peaceable traders. But her corsairs, once so renowned, must not be confounded with her pirates. The former resembled in many respects the privateers of our own time; while their pirates were chiefly under the control of men who had been banished from the republic either for some delinquency against the laws or for political offences. A number of these political exiles, belonging to what was known as the "Guelph faction," having been banished from the republic in 1323, fitted out ten