[49] Read the admirable and graphic description of the battle in Jurien
de la Graviere, _La Guerre de Chypre et la Bataille de Lepante_, ii.,
149-205.

[50] See the _Story of Turkey_, 237.

PART II.

_THE PETTY PIRATES._

XV.

THE GENERAL OF THE GALLEYS.

16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries.

The age of the great Corsairs may be said to have ended with the
battle of Lepanto, which sounded the knell of the naval supremacy of
the Ottomans. It is true that they seemed to have lost little by Don
John's famous victory; their beard was shorn, they admitted, but it
soon grew again:--their fleet was speedily repaired, and the Venetians
sued for peace. But they had lost something more precious to them than
ships or men: their prestige was gone. The powers of Christendom no
longer dreaded to meet the invincible Turk, for they had beaten him
once, and would beat him again. Rarely after this did an Ottoman fleet
sail proudly to work its devastating way along the coasts of Italy.
Small raids there might be, but seldom a great adventure such as
Barbarossa or Sin[=a]n led. Crete might be besieged for years; but the
Venetians, pressed by land, nevertheless shattered the Turkish ships
off the coast. Damad 'Ali might recover the Morea, and victoriously
surround the shores of Greece with his hundred sail; but he would not
venture to threaten Venice, to lay siege to Nice, to harry Naples, or
attack Malta. The Turks had enough to do to hold their own in the
Black Sea against the encroaching forces of Russia.

Deprived of the protection which the prestige of the Turks had
afforded, the Barbary Corsairs degenerated into petty pirates. They
continued to waylay Christian cargoes, to ravish Christian villages,
and carry off multitudes of captives; but their depredations were not
on the same grand scale, they robbed by stealth, and never invited a
contest with ships of war. If caught, they would fight; but their aim
was plunder, and they had no fancy for broken bones gained out of mere
ambition of conquest.

Ochiali was the last of the great Corsairs. He it was who, on his
return to Constantinople after the fatal October 7, 1571, cheered the
Sultan with the promise of revenge, was made Captain-Pasha, and sailed
from the Bosphorus the following year with a fleet of two hundred and
thirty vessels, just as though Lepanto had never been fought and lost.
He sought for the Christian fleets, but could not induce them to offer
ba