They revenged themselves by piratical attacks on the Spanish coast.
There had been Some irregular and piratical fighting at sea between English and Norman sailors, in which the latter had been worsted.
While the Malays were famous almost exclusively for their piratical expeditions they naturally bore an evil reputation among Europeans, but now that we have come into closer Ch aracter, contact with them,, and have learned to understand aca them better, the old opinions concerning them have been greatly modified.
The most statesmanlike of his foreign enterprises, the attempt to take the piratical city of Algiers ill 1775 (see BARBARY PIRATES), was made with insufficient forces, was iii executed, and ended in defeat.
But the piratical acts of these traders, in which the knights themselves sometimes joined, and the strategic position of the island between Constantinople and the Levant, necessitated its reduction by the Ottoman sultans.