ful; that, as in the case of the attack
by Hassem, the ruler of Algiers in 1563, on Oran and Marzaquivir (a small
port in the immediate vicinity of Oran), in the end the Moslems were badly
beaten. This undoubtedly was the case, and there is no desire to magnify
the deeds of the Sea-wolves or to minimise the heroic defence of
Marzaquivir by the Count of Alcaudete, or that of Oran by his brother, Don
Martin de Cordoba, At the last moment of their wonderful defence they were
relieved by a fleet sent by the King of Spain, and Hassem had to abandon
his artillery, ammunition, and stores and beat a hasty retreat to the place
from whence he had come.

There was nothing remarkable in the fact that the corsairs were frequently
defeated; what is really strange is that they should have achieved so great
a success--success vouched for by the concrete instance that they
established those sinister dynasties on the coast of Northern Africa which
were the outcome of their piratical activities.

In speaking of them, historians of later date than that at which they
flourished are apt to hold them somewhat cheaply, to dismiss them as mere
barbarians of no particular importance in the scheme of mundane affairs; as
men who caused a certain amount of trouble to civilisation by their inroads
and their plunderings. That which is certain is that they were for
centuries a standing shame and disgrace to the whole of Christendom.

To those who may perhaps be called the pioneers--that is to say, the men
treated of in this book--a certain amount of sympathy and understanding may
be conceded; for they had been driven from the land which had been theirs,
it was their countrymen and their co-religionists who were being ground to
powder beneath the fanatical cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition. That which
they did was doubtless abominable, but it cannot be contended that they had
not received the strongest provocation both from the material and the
religious points of view.

Once the "Grand Period" was passed, that period in which such men as the
Barbarossas, Dragut, and Ali flourished, the chronicle of the Moslem States
founded by them sinks to the degraded level of sheer robbery and murder; of
a history of a tyranny established within one hundred miles of the shores
of Europe, and of great kings and princes bargaining with piratical
ruffians who held in thrall thousands upon thousands of their subjects. How
it came about that the Christian States tole