Part 10 (2/2)
(_Dan, Hist. de Barbarie, 1637._)]
Slavery in private houses, shops, and farms, was tolerable or intolerable according to the character and disposition of the master and of the slaves. Some were treated as members of the family, save in their liberty, as is the natural inclination of Moslems towards the slaves of their own religion; others were cursed and beaten, justly or unjustly, and lived a dog's life. Those who were supposed to be able to pay a good ransom were for a time especially ill-treated, in the hope of compelling them to send for their money. Escape was rare: the risk was too great, and the chances too small.
Thousands of Christian slaves meant tens of thousand of Christian sympathisers, bereaved parents and sisters, sorrowing children and friends; and it is easy to imagine what efforts were made to procure the release of their unhappy relatives in captivity. At first it was extremely difficult to open negotiations with the Corsairs; but when nation after nation appointed consuls to watch over their interests at Algiers and Tunis, there was a recognized medium of negotiation of which the relations took advantage. As will presently be seen, the office of consul in those days carried with it little of the power or dignity that becomes it now, and the efforts of the consul were often abortive.
There were others than consuls, however, to help in the good work. The freeing of captives is a Christian duty, and at the close of the twelfth century Jean de Matha, impressed with the unhappy fate of the many Christians who languished in the lands of the infidels, founded the ”Order of the Holy Trinity and Redemption of Captives.” The convent of S. Mathurin at Paris was immediately bestowed upon the Order, another was built at Rome on the Coelian Hill, another called Cerfroy near Meaux, and others in many countries, even as far as the Indies. Pope Innocent the Third warmly supported the pious design, and wrote a Latin letter recommending the Redemptionists to the protection of the Emperor of Morocco: it was addressed, _Ill.u.s.tri Miramomolin, Regi Marochetanorum_. Matha's first voyage (1199) brought back one hundred and eighty-six captives, and in succeeding generations some twenty thousand slaves were rescued by the good fathers, who, clad in their white robes, with the blue and red cross on the breast--three colours symbolical of the Three Persons--fearlessly confronted the Corsairs and bartered for the captives' ransom.
Father Pierre Dan and his colleagues of the Order of the Redemption set out from Ma.r.s.eilles, in 1634, in the suite of Sanson le Page, premier herald of France, and conversant in the Turkish tongue, to arrange for the exchange of captives.[76] Some Turks confined in the galleys at Ma.r.s.eilles were to be released in return for the freeing of the three hundred and forty-two Frenchmen who were in captivity in Algiers. The good father's views upon the origin of the Corsairs were very p.r.o.nounced. He held that they were descended from Ham, the traitor, and were inheritors of the curse of the patriarch Noah; further, that they were the cruellest of all the unnatural monsters that Africa has bred, the most barbarous of mankind, pests of the human race, tyrants over the general liberty, and the wholesale murderers of innocent blood. He did not stop to examine into the condition of the galley-slaves in the ports of his own France, or to inquire whether the word Corsair applied to Moslems alone.
On July 15, 1634, Sanson and the priests arrived at Algiers. A full divan was being held, and the Pasha received them courteously, despite their obstinate refusal to dip the French flag to his crescent. They were forced, in deference to the universal custom at Algiers, to surrender their rudder and oars, not so much to prevent their own unauthorized departure, as to remove the temptation of Christian captives making their escape in the vessel. Orders were given that every respect was to be paid to the envoy's party on pain of decapitation. Rooms were prepared for them in the house of the agent who represented the coral fisheries of the neighbouring Bastion de France; and here Father Dan made an altar, celebrated Ma.s.s, and heard confession of the captives. Two days after their arrival, a new Pasha appeared from Constantinople: he was met by two state-galleys, and saluted by the fifteen hundred guns in the forts and the forty galleys in the harbour. The Aga of the Janissaries, and the Secretary of State, with a large suite of officers, drummers, and fifes, received him on his landing with a deafening noise. The new Pasha, who was robed in white, then mounted a splendid barb, richly caparisoned with precious stones and silk embroidery, and rode to the palace, whence he sent the French envoy a present of an ox, six sheep, twenty-four fowls, forty-eight hot loaves, and six dozen wax candles; to which the Sieur le Page responded with gold and silver watches, scarlet cloth, and rich brocades.
Despite these civilities, the negotiations languished; and finally, after three months of fruitless endeavours, the Mission left ”this accursed town” in such haste that they never even looked to see if the wind would serve them, and consequently soon found themselves driven by a Greek Levant, or east wind, to Majorca; then across to Bujeya, which was no longer a place of importance or of piracy, since the Algerines had concentrated all their galleys at their chief port; and then sighted Bona, which showed traces of the invasion of 1607, when six Florentine galleys, commanded by French gentlemen, had seized the fort, made mincemeat of the unfortunate garrison, and carried off eighteen hundred men, women, and children to Leghorn. At last, with much toil, they reached La Calle, the port of the Bastion de France, a fine castle built by the merchants of Ma.r.s.eilles in 1561 for the protection of the valuable coral fisheries, and containing two handsome courts of solid masonry, and a population of four hundred French people. Sanson Napolon had been governor here, but he was killed in an expedition to Tabarka; Le Page accordingly appointed a lieutenant, and then the Mission returned to Ma.r.s.eilles, without results. The fathers, however, soon afterwards sailed for Tunis, whence they brought back forty-two French captives, with whom they made a solemn procession, escorted by all the clergy of Ma.r.s.eilles, and sang a triumphant _Te Deum_, the captives marching joyfully beside them, each with an ill.u.s.trative chain over his shoulder.
This is but one example of a long course of determined efforts of the Redemptionists (to say nothing of Franciscans and Dominicans) to rescue their unhappy countrymen. In 1719 Father Comelin and others brought away ninety-eight Frenchmen,[77] and similar expeditions were constantly being made. The zeal of the Order was perhaps narrow: we read that when they offered to pay 3,000 pieces for three French captives, and the Dey voluntarily threw in a fourth without increasing the price, they refused the addition because he was a Lutheran.
Nevertheless, they worked much good among the Catholic prisoners, established hospitals and chapels in various parts of the Barbary coast, and many a time suffered the penalty of their courage at the hands of a merciless Dey, who would sometimes put them to a cruel death in order to satisfy his vengeance for some reverse sustained by his troops or s.h.i.+ps from the forces of France. Catholic, and especially French, captives at least had cause to be grateful to the Fathers of the Redemption. Those of the Northern nations fared worse: they had no powerful, widespread Church organization to help them, their rulers took little thought of their misery, and their tears and pet.i.tions went unregarded for many a long year.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] If one may draw an a.n.a.logy from Morocco, the Christian slaves there appear to have been well treated in 1728, certainly better than the renegades. They had a Christian Alcaid, were allowed to keep taverns, and were lodged in a tolerable inn, where the Moslems were not allowed to come near them; they were nursed when sick by Spanish friars (who paid the Emperor of Morocco for the privilege of curing his slaves); and many of them ama.s.sed fortunes, and kept servants and mules. At least so says Braithwaite, _Hist. of the Rev. in Morocco_, 343 ff.
[71] This is the standard account of Christian slavery under the Corsairs. It is contained in the anonymous work ent.i.tled _Several Voyages to Barbary_, &c., [translated and annotated by J. Morgan,]
second ed., London, Oliver Payne, &c., 1736. It is singular that although Sir R. Lambert Playfair's account of the slaves in his _Scourge of Christendom_ (1884) p. 9 ff. is practically taken verbatim from this work, there is not a word to show his indebtedness. The name of Joseph Morgan is never mentioned in the _Scourge of Christendom_, though the author was clearly indebted to him for various incidents, and among others for a faultily copied letter (p. 35) from the well-known amba.s.sador Sir Francis Cottington (whom Sir R. L. Playfair calls Cotting_ham_). A good many errors in the _Scourge of Christendom_ are due to careless copying of unacknowledged writers: such as calling Joshua Bushett of the Admiralty, ”Mr. Secretary Bush.e.l.l,” or Sir John Stuart, ”Stewart,” or eight bells ”eight boats,” or Sir Peter Denis, ”Sir Denis,” or misreckoning the s.h.i.+ps of Sir R. Mansell's expedition, or turning San Lucar into ”St. Lucas.”
[72] _Several Voyages_, 58-65.
[73] This brief account of Cervantes' captivity is abridged from my friend Mr. H. E. Watts's admirable Life, prefixed to his translation of _Don Quixote_. The main original authority on the matter is Haedo, who writes on the evidence of witnesses who knew Cervantes in Algiers, and who one and all spoke with enthusiasm and love of his courage and patience, his good humour and unselfish devotion (Watts, i. 76, 96).
[74] _Don Quixote_, I., chap. xl. (Watts): ”Every day he hanged a slave; impaled one; cut off the ears of another; and this upon so little animus, or so entirely without cause, that the Turks would own he did it merely for the sake of doing it, and because it was his nature.”
[75] H. E. Watts, _Life of Cervantes_, prefixed to his translation of _Don Quixote_, i. 96.
[76] _Histoire de Barbarie et de ses Corsaires_, par le R. P. Fr.
Pierre Dan, Ministre et Superieur du Convent de la Sainte Trinite et Redemption des Captifs, fonde au Chasteau de Fontaine-bleau, et Bachelier en Theologie, de la Faculte de Paris.
A Paris, chez Pierre Rocolet, Libraire et Imprimeur ord^{re} du Roy, au Palais, aux Armes du Roy et de la Ville. Avec Privilege de sa Majeste.
1637.
[77] _Several Voyages to Barbary_, second ed., Lond., 1736.
XIX.
THE ABAs.e.m.e.nT OF EUROPE.
16th to 18th Centuries.
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