272 THE MEDITEKRANEAN, PHYSICAL AND HISTORICAL. 



of the Corsairs of Aueoiia, and there is uo other name but piracy for 

 such acts of the Genoese as the unprovoked pillage of Tripoli by Andrea 

 Doria in 1535. To form a just idea of the Corsairs of the past, it is 

 well to remember that commerce and piracy were often synonymous 

 terms, even among the English, up to the reign of Elizabeth. Listen 

 to the description given by the pious Cavendish of his commercial cir- 

 cumnavigation of the globe : " It has pleased Almighty God to suffer 

 me to circumpass the whole globe of the world. - - - I navigated 

 along the coast of Chile, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great 

 spoils. All the villages and towns that ever I landed at, I burned and 

 spoiled, and had I not been discovered upon the coast, I had taken a 

 great quantity of treasure," and so he concludes, " The Lord be praised 

 for all his mercies ! " 



Sir William Monson, when called upon by James I to propose a 

 scheme for an attack on Algiers, recommended that all the maritime 

 powers of Europe should contribute towards the expense and partici- 

 pate in the gains by the sale of Moors and Turks as slaves. 



After the discovery of America and the expulsion of the Moors from 

 Spain, piracy developed to an extraordinary extent. The audacity of 

 the Barbary Corsairs seems incredible at the present day; they landed 

 on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, and even extended 

 their ravages to Great Britain, carrying off all the inhabitants whom 

 they could seize into the most wretched slavery. The most formidable 

 of these piratical states was Algiers, a military oligarchy, consisting 

 of a body of janissaries, recruited by adventurers from the Leveut, the 

 outcasts of the Mohammedan world, criminals and renegades from 

 every nation in Europe. They elected their own ruler or Dey, who 

 exercised despotic sway, tempered by frequent assassination; they 

 oppressed without mercy the natives of the country, accumulated vast 

 riches, had immense numbers of Christian slaves, and kept all Europe 

 in a state bordering on subjection by the terror which they inspired. 

 Nothing is sadder or more inexplicable than the shameful manner in 

 which this state of things was accepted by civilized nations. Many 

 futile attempts were made during successive centuries to humble their 

 arrogance, but it only increased by every manifestation of the power- 

 lessness of Europe to restrain it. It was reserved for our own country- 

 man, Lord Exmouth, by his brilliant victory in 1816, forever to put an 

 end to pira(;y and Christian slavery in the Mediterranean. His work, 

 however, was left incomplete, for though he destroyed the navy of the 

 Algerines and so rendered them powerless for evil on the seas, they 

 were far from being huuibled; they continued to slight their treaties 

 and to subject even the agents of powerful nations to contumely and 

 injustice. The French took the only means possible to destroy this 

 nest of ruffians by the almost unresisted occupation of Algiers and 

 the deportation of its Turkish aristocracy. 



They found the whole country in the possession of a hostile people. 



