Corsair, a pirate or sea-robber, and specially any of those rovers who in former times cruised from the Barbary ports, as Algiers, Tunis, or Tripoli, and became the terror of merchantmen in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, ravaging the coasts and seizing shipping, as far north as Cornwall, Baltimore in Cork, and even Iceland. Though piracy on a small scale had long prevailed, the immediate cause of the sudden development of corsair states and fleets at the beginning of the 16th century was the persecution of the Moors in Spain: the exiles looked for vengeance, and their necessities compelled thieving; and when they were joined by adventurers from the Levant and not a few Christian renegades, who were attracted by the spoils of the Indies, then coming to Spain, they soon became a formidable power, and founded citadels and states (see ALGIERS, TUNIS, TRIPOLI, SALLEE). Their greatest leaders were the brothers Urûj and Kheyr-ed-dîn Barbarossa, the first pashas of Algiers. Kheyr-ed-dîn rose from a mere captain of a galley to be high admiral of Sultan Suleyman (Soliman the Magnificent), and defeated the combined imperial, papal, and Venetian fleets under Doria off Prevesa in 1538. Other famous corsairs were Dragut (Torghud), a Sardinian who died at the siege of Malta; Ocliali (Ulûj 'Ali), who fought in the battle of Lepanto, 1571; Aidin Rcis, or 'Drub-devil'; Sinan of Smyrna; Salih Reis; Ramadan; Ali Pichinin, &c. Many attempts were made to put down the corsairs, from Sir Robert Mansel's expedition in 1621 to the very important expedition against Algiers by the United States under Decatur (q.v.) in 1815—the first serious attempt to put an end to the long established evil—followed by Lord Exmouth's victory in 1816; but the jealousies of the European powers conspired to assure the pirates' immunity, and the Deys of Algiers levied blackmail upon Christian governments who wished to protect their trade. Nothing less than the French conquest could have suppressed so long-seated a disorder, which had infected the Mediterranean for more than three centuries, and even carried off captives from Ireland. See BARBAROSSA, GALLEYS, PIRACY, SLAVERY; and Corsairs of the Mediterranean, by Stanley Lane-Poole (1889).
Corsets. See TIGHT-LACING.