United States or Cameroon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Curtogali ended his days as the Governor of Rhodes, from which the Knights of Saint John were finally expelled by Soliman the Magnificent on December 22nd, 1522. This was the greatest blow which the fraternity ever received.
Great were the depredations of Curtogali, and even Pope Leo X. trembled on his throne, while Genoa, Venice, and Sicily seethed with impotent fury. In the meanwhile who so happy as Abu-Abd-Allah-Mahomed? We cannot do better than to take the description of his position from the pages of the good Padre Alberto Guglielmotti.
Here he was waited for by the corsair Curtogali, who, with fifteen ships off the coast and an ambush on shore, was ready to carry him off. Curtogali is supposed to have derived his information as to the movements of the Pope from some traitor about the Papal Court who desired the downfall of "the fatal House of Medici."
Curtogali, a corsair who had collected a great following, was now a power with which to reckon, and high in the favour of the Grand Turk at Constantinople. This robber presented himself at Bizerta one of the ports of Abd-Allah-Mahomed with a squadron of thirty ships, and demanded hospitality.
He promised them succour and support on the same terms which Curtogali had obtained, namely, one-fifth of all the spoil landed in his dominions.
In consequence they sent an army against Curtogali, and on August 4th, 1516, they captured Bizerta, set free a number of Christian captives, and plundered the town. But they did not capture Curtogali, who, only five weeks after, made a daring attempt to carry off the Pope in person from the sea-shore in the neighbourhood of Rome.
As Curtogali disposed of thirty ships and some six thousand fighting men it would probably have been impossible for Abd-Allah to have refused his request in any case; but he was far from wishing to do so, as, by a convenient interpretation of the Koran, the pirate had to deliver up one-fifth part of all the booty which he reft from the Christians to the ruler of the country in whose harbours he sheltered.
This, however, did not present an insuperable difficulty, as we have already seen in the case of Curtogali, and a similar arrangement was carried out by Uruj Barbarossa and his brother. Uruj now established himself at the island of Jerba, on the east coast of Tunis, which formed an admirable base from which to "work" the Mediterranean from the piratical point of view.
Word Of The Day