The battle did not last long. The pirates in the tavern chose to surrender. On the one hand, they couldn't break out; on the other, the fire was spreading too quickly. In a little while, even if they weren't burned to death, they would be suffocated by the smoke.
Besides, they had no idea how many people were outside—or even who they were.
The Austrian Navy Marine Corps hadn't expected the other side to surrender, but given the British sailors' notorious reputation, the Marines couldn't simply cease fire at once.
"Listen up! Strip naked, put your hands on your heads, and come out one at a time!"
Sailors from every country had a bad image in this era. After all, being a sailor was a job that traded lives for money, and heavy drinking, gambling, and brawling were the norm.
But British sailors had an especially vile reputation. Half of it was because they really did behave abominably.
The other half came from humanity's twisted nature: they took pride in their shame, often loudly boasting of their "glorious exploits" wherever they went. Some British writers were also fond of sucking up to them, and even developed an entire genre of pirate fiction.
In the famous works handed down to later generations, pirates were cruel, cunning, and heartless, yet also free, brave, and unafraid of authority.
They went about murdering, robbing, and trafficking in people, all the while claiming they were merely challenging society's injustices—that they simply had their own distinctive sense of justice and morality.
Some gentleman pirates even rose above their original low tastes, setting out in search of legendary treasures or seeking to establish a new order at sea.
Franz's assessment was that they weren't doing their proper jobs.
Whether the pirates in those classics were true to