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 tolerated such an abuse is one of
those mysteries which can never be explained; and if subsequent centuries
displayed a greater refinement of manners, a more apt appreciation of all
that is softer and kindlier in the human relationships of nation towards
nation and of people towards people, they have not perhaps so much to plume
themselves upon as had their rude forefathers of the sixteenth century,
who, seeing the evil and feeling the effects thereof, did their best to
extirpate those by whom this evil was caused.

The question may be asked, how can it be that the lives and actions of such