the Moslem, of which we have already spoken, was fully matched on the side of the Christians by the bigotry of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, otherwise known as the Knights of Malta, who were vowed to the extermination of what they, on their side, called “the infidel.”  It was an age of iron, when men neither gave nor expected grace for the misfortunes which might befall them in the warrior life which they led.  It was distinguished by many gallant feats of arms on both sides, but pity formed no part of the equipment of the fighting man bent on the death or capture of his enemy.  Honestly and sincerely each side believed that they were doing the service of the Almighty in destroying the other party root and branch.  The amount of human misery and suffering caused by the rise and progress of the Moslem corsairs was absolutely incalculable; the slavery of the rower in the galley in the time of which we speak was an agony so dreadful that in these days it is a thing which seems altogether incredible, a nightmare of horror almost impossible even to imagine.

The life of the “gallerian” was so hard that his sufferings in many cases were mercifully ended in death in a very short time, as none save those of iron constitution could stand the strain imposed by the desperate toil and wretched food.  Yet there are cases on record of men who had worked at the oar for actual decades, so unconquerable in their strength that even such a life as this had not the power to break them down.

To the peaceful mariner who wished merely to trade, to the individual whose business called him overseas, this epoch must have been one of terror unspeakable.  The ordinary perils of the deep were quite enough to keep timid folk at home in those days of clumsy, ill-found sailing ships, which could by no means work to windward, and did not sail remarkably well even with the most favouring breezes; when to this we add that every ship which started on a voyage in the Mediterranean had before her the chance of being captured by the corsairs, it was no wonder that he whose business led him oversea should make his last will and testament and bid a fond farewell to all his relatives.

There is a record in the Memoires of the Rev. Frere Pierre d’An, Bachelier en Theologie de la Faculte de Paris, etc., who wrote in a most heartfelt manner concerning the danger of the sea and the perils to be expected from the Barbary corsairs.  He says, date 1637: 

“An ancient writer, considering how little assurance can ordinarily be placed in the sea, and how hazardous it is to expose oneself and one’s goods to its mercy, has remarked, with much reason, that it is infinitely preferable to be poor on shore than to be rich at sea.  In which saying he mocks indeed at those ambitious, avaricious, and mercenary men who, in order to gain false glory and the things of this world, expose themselves rashly to the manifest perils which are most of the time the inevitable lot of the seaman.