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and of Philip II., but never executed till the period of the Duke of Lerma's ministry. There were fortyfour towers or forts placed at intervals along the whole coast of Andalusia, from Gibraltar to the border of the province of Granada, within such distances as to be able by signal-fires to communicate with each other.* The activity used to complete them appears to shew that the number of corsairs had increased after the expulsion of the Moriscoes. Davila describes a bold attempt made by the Turks or Berbers, with Moriscoes to guide them, in October 1620, on the town of Adra, on the coast of Granada. They came in seven galleys,

battered down the sea-gate

landed with artillery, and and part of the town-wall. The Spanish governor of the place was slain in a sally; the town was plundered; but the people took refuge in the castle, which they could not take.t

Gongora has a pleasing ballad, describing the escape of a Leonese gentleman with his two daughters, who found refuge in the duke's port of Denia, when in imminent danger of being taken by Morat. It is evidently founded on a real incident.

(42.) The true character of these long piratical wars cannot be estimated without some reference to the records of these worthy friars, who so long took a leading part in the merciful office of bringing the prisoners out of captivity. Bernardine de St. Antonio, a Portuguese Provincial of the Order, and a con* Davila, 210. + Id. 250.

temporary of Gongora's, has given us a summary account of the number of expeditions undertaken by the brotherhood up to the year 1625, and the aggregate of released captives, as far as they could be ascertained. The general redemptions, as he calls them, had been 1341; the number of persons accounted for, of different qualities, age, and sex, was near to 200,000. But of very many of these expeditions no particulars were preserved; and many ransoms were probably effected in other ways, and by more private treaties. Add to this the number of those who died unransomed, and those who were carried off, as Cervantes himself narrowly escaped being carried, to hopeless slavery at Constantinople, or other places in the Turkish dominions. And reckon also those whom we know to have been rescued in war; as Charles V. is said to have liberated 10,000 at the capture of Tunis, and John of Austria to have sent home 15,000 saved from the Turkish galleys at Lepanto; and those whom the knights of Rhodes and Malta from time to time restored to freedom. It is impossible to calculate the myriads of victims, during so long a period of years, in this barbarian warfare.

(43.) More than 420 years had now passed since Innocent III. had incorporated the Order of Trinitarian Friars for the Redemption of Captives. Two years later, in A. D. 1200, at the outset of the stormy reign of King John, two Englishmen, John Inglis a

*

Epitome Generalium Redemptionum, etc.; Lisbon, 1625, 4to.

Londoner, and William Scot an Oxford-man, undertook the first embassy to Morocco on this charitable errand. They were among the first disciples of John de Matha, the Founder of the Order; and bore a letter from the Pope to the Miramolin, whose name is familiar to the reader of the times of King John. Even then they found Christian slaves whom they brought off by hundreds.* The decline of the

Crusades gave an impulse to the activity of the Moslem cruisers in the thirteenth century; but the full bitterness of this desolating strife was reserved for the period subsequent to the fall of Constantinople. After Lepanto, indeed, the Turks and Moors could no longer dispute the command of the Mediterranean; and, at the period of which we are writing, the Duke of Ossuna in Sicily kept up an efficient fleet to repress any attempt from the Levant; but the swift-sailing galleys from Barbary came down like birds of prey upon any unfortunate trader which ventured to go to sea without an escort. When we call to mind these barbarous piracies, and the character of the people concerned in them, unless we suppose, against historical evidence, that the Moriscoes were altogether different from their African kinsmen, it ought to miti gate our opinion of the impolicy, as distinguished from the injustice of the mode of their expulsion.

(44.) The real impolicy or weakness of Spain was shewn in her not putting forth a stronger arm to rid * Altuna, 95. Stevens, Additions to Dugdale, ii. 259.

encouraged than assisted in putting down the pirates. and corsairs of the states of Barbary. Would it not have been more for the interests of humanity, and the blessings of commerce, if, instead of what was called "singeing the King of Spain's beard," sending expedi tions to gather plunder rather than to wage war, dispatching Drake and Raleigh to Panama and Orinoco, they had first agreed even with Spain to rid the European seas of these miscreants, whose spirit still survived, after our bombardment of Algiers, to animate the Riff Pirates in the middle of this nineteenth century Our traders to the Levant were often carried captive to the ports of Fez and Tunis even in the age of Monson and Blake; and our incomparable Barrow, in his passage from Leghorn to Constantinople in 1657, had a narrow escape from being made an Algerine rover's prize. But at this period it seems that buccaneers of all nations found harbour at Sallee or other Moorish ports, and sold their plunder to the Moorish Beys. Two bold fellows are specially mentioned by Cabrera; one familiarly called by the Spaniards Pie de Palo, or Timberlegs, an English cruiser, who, after the conclusion of King James's peace, kept up a little private war of his own, and did not surrender to the Count of Elda till he had killed thirty of his men, and wounded the Count himself;+

*

* Cabrera, 560.

+ Id. 280. Another English renegade and pirate, Ali George, occurs in 1617. Notes to Cabr. 597.

the other, Simon Dance, who seems to have been a Dutchman, and perhaps survived, after he had finished his bloody trade, to cultivate tulips, like an honest burgomaster at home-for his pursuers could not take him.

(40.) They were indeed not only Turks and Moors, but the lawless outcasts from all Christian lands, who addicted themselves to these unhallowed ventures. Uluch Ali, or Ochali, mentioned by Gongora in his Song of Lepanto, was a Calabrian who had turned Turk. His skilful seamanship saved him at Lepanto; but subsequently, in danger of falling into the hands of John of Austria, he took poison and destroyed himself.* Hassan Aga, Dey of Algiers at the time of the detention of Cervantes, was a Greek renegade.t Saber Pasha, another Dey near the same time, was a Hungarian. Morat, whom Gongora calls a Calabrian, is said by other authorities to have been an Albanian or Arnaut. He was a contemporary of Simon Dance; and, as Simon made a prize of the Dean of Jaen, whom he sold at Algiers,§ Morat made a bold effort to carry off the Bishop of Malaga from the trim gardens near the city, wherein he used to take his pleasure: but he missed his mark, the prelate having received timely warning.|| These freebooters probably knew that the wealth of the Church of Spain

* Pellicer, Notes to Don Quixote, iii. 91.
Altuna, Chron. of Redemptionists, 325.
|| Id. 153.

+ Id. vol. i. lxviii.

§ Cabrera, 360.

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