СНАР. II. mencement of the sixteenth century the illustrious Ximenes persuaded Ferdinand of Spain to attempt a crusade against Oran, and had the satisfaction of entering the Moslem city at the head of an expedition undertaken at his advice, furnished at his own cost, and guided by his counsels. Never had Christian prelate achieved so great a triumph as the infirm old Spanish cardinal. The consequences of the victory were splendid. Algiers and Tripoli surrendered to the arms of Spain, the opulent marts of the Barbary Coast were opened to the Spanish trader, and the Mediterranean was freed from the piratical marauders by whom it had been infested. Spain, however, did not long retain her superiority on the Northern Coast of Africa. Horuc the corsair, whose red beard gained for him the nickname of Barbarossa, undertook to expel the Spaniards from a fort which they had built in the neighbourhood of Algiers. Murdering the Moorish prince, who had invited his assistance, he usurped the kingdom which he had come to protect; and, rapidly extending his dominion, planted a monarchy, founded on piracy, on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. The arms of Spain eventually defeated and destroyed this troublesome marauder. But Horuc's brother, Hayradin, succeeding to his dominion and nickname of Barbarossa, extended his piratical enterprises with more than Horuc's success. Algiers, fortified at vast expense by the work, it was alleged, of 30,000 Christian slaves, afforded the corsair's fleets ample refuge from any troublesome enemy. A formidable expedition, which the Emperor Charles V. organised against the corsair, was terminated by a frightful disaster; and a state avowedly dependent on piracy, and employing its Christian captives as slaves, continued to menace the trade of the Mediterranean. During the two centuries and a half, which succeeded the expedition of Charles V., the piratical government of Algiers was frequently attacked by the Christian states of II. Europe. Algiers was, on one occasion, reduced to ashes CHAP. by the French, and its inhabitants were compelled to abstain from their piratical pursuits. But the gain was never more than temporary. The possession of Gibraltar and Minorca by the British, indeed, induced the Algerines to treat British shipping with a respect which they declined to pay to the vessels of other powers. But the corsairs of Barbary still scoured the Mediterranean; the captives, whom they had taken from Christian vessels, still languished in captivity in Algiers; and, to the disgrace of the civilised world, a piratical state was suffered to exist in its very centre.1 The outbreak of the Revolutionary war facilitated the ravages of the Barbary pirates. England was the only formidable naval power, and the defenceless vessels of other countries were exposed to the attacks of the corsairs. But the conclusion of the war made the continuance of these ravages utterly intolerable. In the interests of civilisation it was essential that piracy should be put down; Britain was mistress of the seas, and it therefore devolved upon her to do the work. But the task which it was necessary to accomplish was one which even taxed the resources of the British navy. The city of Algiers is built on the northern slope of a steep triangular hill facing the Mediterranean. In 1815 the summit of the hill, five hundred feet above the level of the ocean, was crowned by the Casbah, or ancient fortress of the seas. The town was surrounded with a stout wall, strongly fortified. The fortifications on the sea front were especially formidable and heavily armed. A long pier, three hundred feet in length, projected into the sea. From the end of the pier a semicircular mole, constructed on a ledge of rock, bent in a south-westerly direction towards Many people will recollect that Pringle, of Crichton, who killed Sir Walter Scott's great-grand-uncle in a duel, fled to Spain, and was long a captive and slave in Barbary.-See CHAP. II. the town. One hundred and twenty yards from the mole, and opposite to it, another small pier protected the entrance to the harbour. The piers, the mole, the rock on which the mole stood, the batteries above the harbour, were lined with cannon. Five hundred guns thus defended the sea front of the town, and the formidable navy of the Dey of Algiers was ready to support the land defences. Happily for this country the Mediterranean command was held by an officer whose bravery and skill were fully equal to the dangers before him. Lord Exmouth, the son of Samuel Pellew, the commander of a Dover packet, was born in 1757; he entered the navy in 1770; and for more than forty years he was actively engaged in his profession. He served with distinction in every part of the world. During the American war his gallant conduct on the great inland waters of the Western World gained him the commendations of his commanding officer and his promotion. He participated in General Burgoyne's inglorious campaign; and was reluctantly compelled to share in the capitulation of Saratoga. When the French Revolutionary war broke out he was appointed to the command of the Nymph'; and, after a desperate action, he captured the 'Cleopatra,' a French frigate. For this exploit he received the honour of knighthood and was promoted to the command of the 'Arethusa.' He subsequently served in the Indefatigable' and in the Tonnant,' and in each of these vessels increased the reputation which he had already acquired. His appointment to the command in the East Indies removed him from the theatre in which laurels were to be chiefly won; but, after the death of Collingwood in 1811, he received the command in the Mediterranean. The French, however, were too cautious to risk an engagement with the British admiral, and the British fleet rode in undisputed supremacy over the great 6 inland sea. Pellew, at the close of the war, received the barony of Exmouth, both in recognition of his own services and of those of the navy; and, when the ministry determined to punish the piratical states of Barbary, they naturally availed themselves of Lord Exmouth's services. Early in 1816 Exmouth was instructed to proceed to the several states of Barbary; to require them to recognise the cession of the Ionian Islands to Britain; to conclude peace with the kingdoms of Sardinia and Naples; and to abolish Christian slavery. The Dey of Algiers readily assented to the two first of these conditions; the Beys of Tripoli and Tunis followed the example of the Dey of Algiers; and in addition consented to refrain in future from treating prisoners of war as slaves. Exmouth thereupon returned to Algiers, and endeavoured to obtain. a similar concession from the Dey. The Dey pleaded that Algiers was subject to the Ottoman Porte, and that slavery could not be abolished without the concurrence of the Sultan. He consented, however, to send an ambassador to Constantinople, in a British frigate, for the purpose of obtaining the Sultan's consent to the arrangement. Exmouth accordingly agreed to a suspension of hostilities for three months, and returned to England to report the result of his negotiations. Exmouth had hardly set sail for England before an outrage was committed by the Algerines which entirely altered the complexion of affairs. Up to this time the Algerines had scrupulously respected the British flag. An establishment had been formed at Bona, on the coast of Algiers, for carrying on the coral fishery; and the operations, which were undertaken by Corsican, Italian, and Neapolitan boats, were conducted under the protection of the British flag. On May 23, the festival of the Ascension, while the crews were preparing to hear mass, a gun was suddenly fired from the castle, and 2,000 Algerine troops. CHAP. II. 11. CHAP. unexpectedly appeared and moved upon the fishermen. The whole of the unfortunate men were massacred; the British flag was torn to pieces and trampled under foot; the house of the British vice-consul was pillaged; and the vice-consul himself was detained in the town. It is uncertain whether this unprovoked attack on some defenceless fishermen was actively encouraged by the Dey's government. But the British Government rightly concluded that, whether it were actively encouraged by the Dey or no, it was necessary to regard it as a direct affront which it was indispensable to avenge. Lord Exmouth was desired to obtain from the Algerines effectual security for their future peaceful conduct; and he was invited to name the force with which he would be willing to undertake the reduction of Algiers. The experience, which the admiral had gained in his previous visit to the Dey, now stood him in good stead. He had noticed the comparatively narrow front which Algiers presented to the sea, and he concluded that a small force would operate in this narrow space as efficiently as a large one. With this information in his possession he demanded only five ships of the line, five frigates, and five bomb vessels. The ministry were alarmed at the moderation of the admiral. There was a tradition at the Admiralty that Nelson had himself affirmed the impossibility of attacking Algiers with less than twenty-five sail of the line; and the Ministry doubted the possibility of Exmouth effecting with a small force what Nelson had declined to undertake without a large one. There was this difference, however, between the opinions of Nelson and Exmouth : Exmouth had made himself personally acquainted with the strength of Algiers; Nelson had only derived his information on the subject from the reports of other persons. Exmouth, from his acquaintance with the locality, was enabled to convince the ministry of the sufficiency of his own estimate. The force which he required was rapidly got |