Covering nearly one thousand
years, the Middle Ages
encompasses the fall of
the Roman Empire in the fifth century to the Renaissance
of the sixteenth. The most famous pirates during this time
period might be the Vikings, and
since they’ve been covered in separate articles, this
article looks at the High Middle Ages from the eleventh
century onward.
Upheaval
was the byword of medieval times and the idea of nation
did not yet exist as we understand it. It was still
evolving. Power fluctuated from one group to another, but
throughout this time period, piracy remained a problem
throughout the world.
In the absence of professional navies, and
with small royal fleets made up of ships which could
still be challenged by well-armed private vessels,
maritime power was essentially fragmented. In addition
it was marked by an inescapable intermingling of
public and private interests.
(Appleby, 13)
Nor was there any concerted effort to
stamp out piracy, although attempts were made with mixed
results. A monarch might extend a letter of reprisal to a
merchant whose ships had been attacked by pirates of
another country, but that country’s monarch could and did
do the same. Power, influence, economics, and politics
combined to thwart bringing pirates to justice. Merchants,
seamen, and landowners supported pirates on land, while
rulers and warlords maintained private warships that
sometimes carried out piratical deeds.
. . . the growth of maritime depredation was
assisted by conflicting and ambiguous attitudes, which
continued to undermine attempts to deal with the
problem of piracy well into the seventeenth century. .
. . During the 1420s and 1430s, for example, Henry VI
effectively sold off his navy at a time when the
author of the Libel of
English Policy was urging the King to
secure lordship over the sea. (Appleby, 22)
Not until 1228 did England try and
execute a pirate, William de Briggeho, for the first time.
While the names of most medieval pirates
aren’t familiar to people, one particular rogue appears in
most historical accounts of piracy – Eustace
the
Monk, also known as The Black Monk. His origins and
early life are unknown, but he may have been a younger son
of a noble of Boulogne. He apparently took holy orders
with the Benedictines, but he might also have been
involved in sorcery. After quarreling with the Count of
Boulogne, whom Eustace worked for as an administrator, he
fled to Jersey,
one of the Channel Islands, where he soon fell in with
pirates around 1203. Before long, he became their leader,
and together they attacked English and French merchant
ships. Two years later King
John of England enlisted Eustace the Monk’s help in
raiding French ships and towns from Calais to Brest. In
1212 the pirates decided to also attack the English. King
John then invaded the Channel Islands, and Eustace fled to
France where he became a mercenary for King
Philip II. In retaliation for the attack on Jersey,
Eustace and his followers attacked Folkestone, England.
At some point, Eustace decided there was
more profit in providing protection than plundering, so he
set up a protection racket. If merchants paid his fee, he
safeguarded their ships. If they refused, he attacked
them. When civil war broke out in England in 1215, he
supported the rebels, supplying these noblemen with arms
and supplies. King John died in October of the following
year and his son, Henry
III, assumed the throne. Eustace’s continued support
of the rebels, as well as his interactions with Prince
Louis of France, eventually led Henry to gather a large
fleet of ships to put an end to Eustace’s piracy. In 1217,
while the pirate ships were anchored off Sandwich Island,
this fleet surprised Eustace and his men. English archers
fired bolts from their crossbows, then as the pirate ships
came alongside for boarding, the seamen flung quicklime
into the pirates’ faces, blinding them. Eustace
the
Monk was dragged before the English admiral, Hugh de
Burgh, who offered the pirate one simple choice – where
his execution would take place, the center of the ship or
off to one side. Matthew
Paris, a historian and Benedictine monk who
chronicled these events, never explained which choice
Eustace the Monk made. He merely noted the pirate, whom he
described as viro flagitiosis-simo (a
real pain), was beheaded.
During the 13th century, maritime
associations emerged to supervise trade and suppress
piracy on the Baltic and North Seas. The first of these
appeared in Germany when the cities of Lübeck and Hamburg
banded together as the Hanse, or Hanseatic
League. By 1300, other port cities had joined until
the Hanse was akin to an independent
state. Its ships often sailed in convoys, and beginning in
1477, large vessels were required to carry twenty armed
men to defend against pirates.
There was an upsurge in piracy during
the Hundred
Years’
War (circa 1337 to 1453). The dukes of Mecklenburg
hired German seamen, who became known as Victual Brothers
(Vitalienbrüder) because they supplied
food to Stockholm while the Danes besieged it. In reality,
though, they were sevore (sea robbers),
and since they received no wages, they survived by
plundering ships of the Hanse. Once they
boarded a vessel, they slew anyone who had dared to resist
them. The rest they put in barrels, nailed shut the lids,
and stowed them in the hold until they could be ransomed.
But the Vitalienbrüder weren’t always
successful:
. . . in this year [1391] . . . a number of
these Vitalienbrüder attacked a ship from Stralsund and attempted
to take it by force, even though they heard and saw
that its crew were not Danes but Germans. But the men
on the Stralsund ship defended themselves and overcame
the Vitalienbrüder and captured more
than a hundred . . . . They took barrels . . . struck the bottoms out of
them, and made a hole in the top large enough to hold
a man by the neck. Then they stuffed the Vitalienbrüder into the barrels, one after the other, so
that their heads stuck out of the top. Then they
nailed the bottoms shut again. They stacked up the
barrels as one is accustomed to do, but with the men
in them, and brought them to Stralsund. The Vitalienbrüder remained in the barrels until they were
taken in carts where they were to be beheaded. The
Stralsunders had learnt this method of dealing with
prisoners from the Vitalienbrüder
themselves, who had mistreated and martyred many a
poor Dane in just the same way. (Meier, 147)
After the Vitalienbrüder
attacked Bergen, Norway in 1393, the Hanseatic League, the
Teutonic
Knights, Queen Margaret I of Denmark, and
Mecklenburg signed a treaty that ordered the Vitalienbrüder
to depart the Baltic Sea. Gotland wasn’t covered by the
treaty, so many of them went there. Now they attacked any
and all merchant ships. Finally, Konrad von Jungingen,
Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, gathered an invasion
force of eighty-four ships, 4,000 soldiers, and 400 horses
and attacked Gotland. Most of the pirates were
slaughtered.
Those who escaped found no
markets at which to sell their booty and few ports
welcomed them. So the Vitalienbrüder
sailed to the North Sea,
where Friesian chieftains opened their ports and markets
to them. One incident recounted that the Vitalienbrüder
“. . . took a ship in Norway laden with beer from Wismar,
whose master was one Egghert Schoeff of Danzig. In this
ship…they captured 14 or 15 ships laden with all manner of
goods . . . . At the same
time they also captured a ship which came from England . .
. . In this vessel the merchants of our [Hanseatic] lost
large quantities of gold and of cloth, and the pirates
took these merchants with them to Friesland . . . . And
after they had taken all the ships they wanted, they then
sold back to . . . Egghert Schoeff his ship for a sum of
money . . . .” (Meier, 153-4)
The
survivors of the Gotland raid adopted a new moniker, the Likedeelers, which meant they shared their
spoils equally. Their base of operations was Helgoland,
an island in the North Sea about forty-five miles from the
German coast. Protected by tall sandstone cliffs, this
haven was easy to defend against attack and lay near the
shipping lanes that linked Hamburg, Denmark, and ports on
the Baltic Sea. Their most notorious leader was Klaus
Störtebeker, whose surname meant he could drain a
mug in a single gulp. As was the case with Eustace the
Monk, Störtebeker’s origins are fuzzy. He may have been
born in Wismar around 1360, and his real name may have
been Nikolaus Storzenbecher. According to legend, he
sailed aboard the Seetiger (Sea Tiger),
which may have been a cog. Three of his captains were
Gödeke Michels, Hennig Wichmann, and Magister Wigbold
(Magister being an academic title of the period).
The Likedeeler became
so proficient in their attacks on merchant ships that the
economy of Hamburg began to collapse because trade nearly
halted. The Hanse finally took action and
sent a fleet of ships, under the command of Simon of
Utrecht, to destroy them. The running battle, which lasted
three days, eventually led to the capture of the Seetiger. One German legend says a
fisherman of Helgoland, whom the pirates forced to work
for them, sabotaged the vessel’s rudder to permit the
seizure. Another tale told of the discovery of gold bars
found within the mainmast, enough to not only pay for the
fleet of ships and men that captured Störtebeker, but also
to compensate all the merchants who had lost ships at the
hands of the Likedeeler and to pay for
the gold crown atop the spire of a seamen’s church in
Hamburg.
Seventy-two pirates were taken,
including Störtebeker, and ferried to trial in Hamburg.
Even though Störtebeker allegedly offered Hanse
officials a bribe (a gold chain whose length encompassed
the city), he and his cohorts were condemned to death. As
he stood beside the executioner, Störtebeker supposedly
struck a deal with the man. After his
head was severed, Störtebeker’s corpse would walk
past his men and however many it passed before collapsing
would receive pardons. Legend says he passed eleven
shipmates before the executioner tripped the body, but no
one escaped. The severed heads were stuck on poles and
displayed along the banks of the river. Gödeke
Michels and another eighty pirates met similar fates
the following year.
Although the Hanse was
the most successful of the merchant trading groups, it was
not the only one. The League
of the Cinque Ports comprised the English cities of
Hastings, Dover, New Romney, Hythe, Sandwich, Rye,
Winchelsea, and nine others in the fourteenth century.
Like its counterpart, the league’s mission was to protect
local shipping from pirates while encouraging trade, but
its members tended toward piracy, attacking any and all
ships that refused to pay protection money.
The English Channel, the North Sea, and
the Baltic Sea were not the only waters where pirates
hunted during the Middle Ages. They also plagued the
Mediterranean, Aegean, and Adriatic Seas. Byzantium
employed pirates and their captains to further its reach.
In the 1260s, the emperor primarily used the sea rogues
for his navy.
Outright illegal piracy on the one hand and
legitimized corsair activity under the licence of
political authorities . . . on
the other, were endemic throughout the Mediterranean
from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. No region or
time period was free from them, and there was no
maritime city, state, or people whose seamen did not
participate in them.
(Travers, 37)
One of the earliest pirates who engraved
his name on the historical record was Margaritone
of
Brindisi, an Italian knight known as “The New
Neptune.” He allied himself with Sicily’s Norman rulers
and eventually became that island’s Grand Admiral. In 1185
he proclaimed himself Count of Cephalonia and Zante and
used the island for a privateering base. While
participating in the defense of Naples in 1194, he was
captured by troops of the Holy Roman Emperor and spent the
remainder of his days in a German prison.
Giovanni de lo Cabo was a Genoese pirate
who captured Rhodes in 1278. The island soon attracted
other pirates and slavers and thrived as a haven until
1306 when the Knights Hospitaller seized Rhodes. Another
pirate base, located in the Aegean, was known as the
“Rock” and was located on the southeast corner of the
Peloponnese Peninsula. The lofty fortress was impregnable.
Upheaval in the fifteenth century led to
increased piracy back in European waters. One attack,
involving the second son of King
Robert
III of Scotland, had a profound effect on Scottish
politics. After the murder of his heir, Robert sent his
second son, twelve-year-old James, to France
for safekeeping. Pirates from Great Yarmouth captured The MaryenKnyght and sold James to King
Henry IV of England,
who imprisoned the lad in the Tower of London. News of
his son’s capture devastated Robert. He refused to eat and
died within a fortnight at Rothesay Castle on the
Isle of Bute. While Robert’s brother, the Duke of Albany,
became Regent, Henry made certain James received a good
education. The lad became a scholar and musician. He
remained a prisoner for eighteen years until twenty-one
hostages stood as security for payment of a £40,000 ransom
payable in six yearly installments. The following year,
1424, he was crowned James
I, King of Scots at Scone.
Fifty years later, the 320-ton Mary London set sail from Ross, Ireland
with four hundred twenty pilgrims bound for Santiago,
Spain. They landed safely, celebrated the jubilee of Saint
James, then headed home. Nicholas Devereuz and about eight
hundred men, aboard three Waterford ships, attacked the Mary London. “The owner of the vessel was
robbed of 140 marks and allegedly imprisoned for three
years.” (Appleby, 25)
Nor did the situation improve in the
following century. Although Henry VIII of England made
vast improvements in the royal navy, his foreign
aggression against France renewed that old rivalry, which
led to increased pirate attacks. But the world of piracy
was about to change and expand. In 1523 French privateer
captain Jean Fleury (also known as Florin) encountered
three Spanish galleons. Since his country was at war with
Spain, he attacked. One vessel eluded him, but subdued the
other two. When his men checked belowdecks, they found 680
pounds of pearls, 500 pounds of gold dust, 150,000 ducats
of gold, five cases of silver ingots, feathered cloaks,
chests of jewels and gold masks, and exotic birds and
animals. While rumors abounded in Europe of Spain's riches
from the New World, this haul was the first proof that the
tales were true. The news brought out many pirates hungry
for easy wealth who expanded their haunts to include the
Caribbean and South Seas. Fleury, however, didn't survive
long. The Spanish captured him in 1527 and made him dance
the hempen jig (hanged him) as a pirate.
For more information on
medieval piracy, I recommend the following
resources:
Appleby,
John C. Under the Bloody Flag: Pirates of
the Tudor Age. The History Press, 2009.
Dalton, Paul, and John C. Appleby. Outlaws
in Medieval and Early Modern England: Crime,
Government and Society, c. 1066 – c. 1600.
Ashgate, 2009.
Ditchburn, David. “Bremen Piracy and Scottish
Periphery: The North Sea World in the 1440s” in Ships, Guns and Bibles in the North Sea and
the Baltic States,
c. 1350- c. 1700 edited by A. I. Macinnes, Thomas
Riis, and Frederick Pedersen. Tuckwell Press, 2000.
Ford, C. J. “Piracy or Policy: The Crisis in the
Channel, 1400-1403,” Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society 29: (1979), 63-78.
Haywood, John. Dark Age Naval
Power: A Reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon
Activity. Routledge, 1991.
Kongstam, Angus. Piracy the
Complete History. Osprey, 2008.
Konstam, Angus. Pirates: Predators
of the Seas. Skyhorse Publishing, 2007.
Konstam, Angus. The World Atlas of
Pirates. Lyons Press, 2010.
Meier, Dirk. Seafarers, Merchants
and Pirates in the Middle Ages translated by Angus
McGeoch. Boydell Press, 2006.
Schulze, Andreas. “Pirates of the North Sea,” No Quarter Given IX: 4 (July 2002), 4-5.
Ships and Warfare edited by
Susan Rose. Ashgate, 2008.
Travers, Tim. Pirates a History.
The History Press, 2009.
Vallar, Cindy. "í
víking: Norse who went plundering," Pirates and Privateers
(July-August 2003).
Vallar, Cindy. "Alfhild:
Princess and Viking," Pirates and Privateers (November
2007).
Ward, Robin. The World of the
Medieval Shipmaster: Law, Business and the Sea, c.
1350-1450. Boydell Press, 2009.
Wylie,
James Hamilton. History of
England under Henry the Fourth. AMS
Press, 1969.
Pirates
and Privateers