We have said that the real interest in the lives of the corsairs arose from the fact that it was personal ascendancy, and that alone, which counted in the piratical hierarchy.  Against Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa plots arose again and again, only to be defeated by the address of the man against whom they were directed.

It was one of the cruellest of ages, and rough cruelty was the principal means adopted to ensure success; sheer terror was the weapon of the leader.  Thus when one Hassan, a subordinate of Kheyr-ed-Din, failed to take a Spanish ship because she made too stout a resistance, his chief caused him to be soundly flogged and then thrown into prison.  Such methods naturally raised up hosts of enemies in the wake of the piratical commanders, ready at any time to do them a mortal injury, and it is little short of miraculous that they should throughout a long period of years have been able not only to maintain, but to increase, their supremacy over the wild spirits of which their following was composed.  It was, however, the golden age of autocracy, when men surrendered their judgment to some great leader, content to follow where he led, to endorse his policy at the cost of their lives.

It is the autocrat who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme.  The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could begin to impose their will upon others.  It was then that their real trials began, as the undisciplined are ever prone to suspicion, much given to murmuring against a leader who is not perpetually successful.

As a rule, however, there were but few to criticise, as the office of critic was one fraught with far too much danger to be alluring.  In maintaining their authority the leaders stopped at nothing, and the heads of the recalcitrant were apt to part with amazing suddenness from their bodies if they repined overmuch.  The Moslem leader was, it is true, merely primus inter pares, and was distinguished by no outward symbol of the power which he possessed; but life and death lay in his hands, and life was cheap indeed.

We have spoken hitherto of the leaders, but what of the men of which their following was composed?  Rough, rude, and reckless, these latter lived but to fight and to plunder; to them any other life would have seemed impossible, and indeed this was practically the fact.  In the communities in which they lived the adult male had no other means of gaining a livelihood.  Since their expulsion from their ancient homes no ordered and peaceful method of existence had been possible for them.  In the surroundings in which their forefathers had lived the arts of peace had been carried on in a civilisation to which there had been none