“From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli...” are the beginning lines from the United States Marine Corps Hymn, and the “Tripoli” that's mentioned is the largest city in today's Libya. The hymn was written sometime after 1867, and these lines commemorate two of the Marine Corps' most famous battles “the halls of Montezuma referring to the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, and “the shores of Tripoli” refers to the battles the Marine Corps, along with the US Navy, fought with the infamous “Barbary Pirates” who terrorized the coast of North Africa, the Mediterranean Sea and indeed, a large part of Europe for at three centuries.