• In ancient times the peoples living in the Mediterranean region often applied slaves for propulsing  ships in naval wars.
  • In the Middle Ages, the recruitment of rowers was formed from captured soldiers and deserters, and galley slavery was also established as penalty item.
  • The period of religious wars from the 16th to 18th centuries coincided with the westward expansion of the Ottoman Empire (15th-17th centuries), so often European rowing captives can be found in the battles of Christian and Muslim forces on both sides. The largest naval battle of this kind was the Battle of Lepanto (1571).
  • From this time, we posses several data prouving that masses had been sent to galleys for religious reasons.

1539 – The Swiss Hutter’s followers were imprisoned in the Czech-Moravian land by Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria. The entire community adhering to Anabaptist views first suffered imprisonment in a fortress and then these 95 men had been sent to  galley  by emperor. The persecuted people known to us under the name of „habánok” were settled in Sárospatak by Prince  I Rákóczi György adhering to the reformed church, and we owe the green ceramic stoves of the castle to them. In the 1670s, the Jesuits expelled them from the town or recatholized them.

1670–81 – The exposure of Wesselényi uprising was followed by a wide-ranging reckoning. The decade-long crisis that aimed to undermine the Protestant intellectuals is referred to as the decade of mourning (persecutio decennalis) in the domestic Protestant church historical literature.

1674–76 – Members of the Zrínyi, Frangepán and Nádasdy Aristocratic families were upper leaders of the medieval Hungarian state: their anti-Habsburg conspiracy resulted in the loss of life and property as a consequence of high treason. Following their public execution, their castles and fortresses were confiscated for the state, and in the Kingdom of Hungary the medieval legal system was temporarily abolished, and temporary institutions took over their roles. Subsequently, during county investigations and witness interrogations that took place over the years, the Protestant intellectuals were targeted as the social layer that constituted the intellectual background of the uprising of nobility. The proceedings, which had bloated to nationwide measure were finally summarized, and the defendants were summoned to the trials together. First, in the spring of 1673, approximately 700 preachers  and teachers of German, Slavic and Hungarian ethnic background, mostly of the Lutheran denomination from Upper Hungary (in Hungarian term: Felvidék) were summoned before the trial residing in Bratislava; then in the spring of 1674, approximately 300 more intellectuals from the entire territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, mostly of protestant religion, were brought under investigation. In the Bratislava trial of 1674, about 70 Reformed and Lutheran preachers and teachers were sentenced to death and imprisoned, and then about 40 people were sold as galley slaves for the naval battles in southern Italy of Spanish Empire. Finally, thanks to the intervention of the Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, the way to freedom was opened from the galleys on 11th February 1676, and from the prisons on May 2 in the same year. Historian László Benczédi’s research in Vienna has proven that this had been a show trial elaborated by local Jesuit scientists and priests, as part of the Košice plan. The evidence for this fact was clarified by János Heltai’s book history research: 3 of the 4 main texts are forgeries: these were documents marked with pseudonyms and with a pseudo-site of printing, and even containing fictitious and falsified pieces of evidence, what is more the accused persons had not been even allowed to get an insight into these documents.

1685 – Expulsion of the Huguenots (French protestants) from the Kingdom of France. It remained a living practice to sell the resisters for serving on galleys and transport them to Canada.

1692 – Several hundred prisoners were still provided to the Turkish galleys, including a Hungarian priest captured in Transylvania: his further fate is unknown. What is certain is that the so-called slave-liberating monastic orders (Trinitarians, Mercedarians) developed their activity in this region as well, and they tried to ransom the Christian prisoners. In return for the ransom, Cardinal Lipót Kollonich sent 4 Turkish prisoners: the celebration of the ransomed people took place in Vienna.

1805 – Schopenhaeur witnessed the enslavement of those condemned to the galleys in the port of Toulon in southern France, and affected by this lifelong experience, he began to write his central philosophical work titled The World as Will and Representation.

1835 – Alexandre Dumas the Elder meets a galley slave (Gabriel Lambert) also in Toulon, and writes this story in his novel The Imposter.