The conquest of Apulia, won bit by bit in many years of what we can only call freebooting, was not a national Norman enterprise like the conquest of England, and the settlement to which it led could not be a national Norman settlement in the same sense.
The whole tract, excepting south-eastern Arabia, is nominally subject to Turkey, but the people are to no small extent practically independent, living a nomadic, pastoral and freebooting life under petty chiefs, in the more arid districts, but settled in towns in the more fertile tracts, where agriculture becomes more profitable and external commerce is established.
With the exception of the peshwas, its chiefs were little more than freebooting warriors, for the most part rude, violent and' unlettered.
They invaded the West Indies, seized one island after another, and formed the freebooting communities known as the Brethren of the Coast and the Buccaneers.
The Transvaal War of that date offered opportunities to the freebooting Boers of the west which were not to be lost.
