Most everybody has heard of the book Don Quixote—or, to give it its more complete title, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha—the famous novel written by Miguel de Cervantes in the early seventeenth century. The story line is well known: Alonso Quixano, an aging hidalgo (Spanish nobleman) who immersed himself so deeply in chivalric romances that his brain has becomes addled, decides he is a knight errant and so sets off on a series of delusional quests—including, among other things, jousting with windmills that he is convinced are giants.
What is less well known is that as a young man (well before he penned Don Quixote) Cervantes was captured by Barbary corsairs and spent five years (1575-1580) in Algiers. His experience as a captive there made its way into his writing—including Don Quixote. A section of that book, usually referred to as The Captive’s Tale, derives from his time in Algiers.
The next series of post in this blog will be devoted to presenting The Captives Tale, a section of Don Quixote which I reckon is less well known than it deserves to be. It’s an odd piece that presents a series of absurdly romanticized events. The background to those events, though, clearly comes from Cervantes’ own experience, and so it presents us with a pretty convincing portrait of what life in Algiers in the late sixteenth century might have been like for European captives.
The Captive’s Tale takes up three chapters in the first section of Don Quixote (Chapters 39-41). The contents of all three chapters will be presented here in this series of posts (they form a single coherent story), but in a slightly abridged version.
The set-up here is that Don Quixote is staying at an inn where he meets a man who had been a captive in North Africa. He and other guests ask the captive to tell his story. The captive obliges them.
So settle back, pour yourself a glass of wine (if you’re so inclined), and immerse yourself in The Captive’s Tale:
They finished their supper, the cloth was removed, and while the hostess was getting Don Quixote of La Mancha’s garret ready, Don Fernando and the other guests begged the captive to tell them the story of his life, for it could not fail to be strange and interesting, to judge by the hints he had let fall on his arrival. To this the captive replied that he would very willingly yield to his request, only he feared his tale would not give them as much pleasure as he wished. Nevertheless, not to be wanting in compliance, he would tell it. These words made the company settle themselves in their places and preserve a deep silence, and he, seeing them waiting on his words in mute expectation, began thus in a pleasant, quiet voice.
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My family had its origin in a village in the mountains of Leon. My father could have been a rich man there had he been as clever in preserving his property as he was in spending it. He had been a soldier in his youth, and the soldier’s life is a school in which the niggard becomes free-handed and the free-handed prodigal. My father went beyond liberality and bordered on prodigality, a disposition by no means advantageous to a married man who has children to succeed to his name and position.
My father had three children, all sons, and all of sufficient age to make choice of a profession. Finding, then, that he was unable to resist his propensity to waste his wealth, he resolved to divest himself of temptation. And so he called us all three aside one day into a room.
“My sons,” he said, “be assured that I love you. But I have no self-control as far as preservation of your patrimony is concerned. Therefore, that you may for the future feel sure that I love you like a father should, I propose to do the following. You are now of an age to choose your line of life or at least make choice of a calling that will bring you honor and profit when you are older. I have accordingly resolved to divide my property into four parts. Three I will give to you, to each his portion without making any difference, and the other I will retain, to live upon and support myself for whatever remainder of life Heaven may be pleased to grant me.
“I wish each of you to take possession of the share that falls to him to follow one of three paths. It is my will and pleasure that one of you should follow letters, another trade, and the third serve the king in the wars. Eight days hence, I will give you your full shares in money, without defrauding you of a farthing, as you will see in the end. Now tell me if you are willing to follow out my idea and advice as I have laid it before you.”
Having called upon me as the eldest to answer, I, after urging him not to strip himself of his property but to spend it all as he pleased, for we were young men able to gain our living, consented to comply with his wishes, and said that mine were to follow the profession of arms and thereby serve God and my king. My second brother, having made the same proposal, decided upon going to the Indies, embarking the portion that fell to him in trade. The youngest, and in my opinion the wisest, said he would rather follow the church, or go to complete his studies at Salamanca.
As soon as we had come to an understanding, and made choice of our professions, my father embraced us all, and in the short time he mentioned carried into effect all he had promised; and when he had given to each his share, which as well as I remember was three thousand ducats apiece in cash (for an uncle of ours bought the estate so as not to let it go out of the family), we all three on the same day took leave of our good father, and of our uncle, not without sorrow and tears on both sides, they charging us to let them know whenever an opportunity offered how we fared, whether well or ill.
We promised to do so, and when our father had embraced us and given us his blessing, one set out for Salamanca, the other for Seville, and I for Alicante, where I had heard there was a Genoese vessel taking in a cargo of wool for Genoa.
It is now some twenty-two years since I left my father’s house, and in all that time, though I have written several letters, I have had no news whatever of him or of my brothers. My own adventures during that period I will now relate.
I embarked at Alicante, reached Genoa after a prosperous voyage, and proceeded thence to Milan, where I provided myself with arms and a few soldier’s accoutrements. From there it was my intention to go and take service in Piedmont, but as I was already on the road to Alessandria della Paglia, I learned that the great Duke of Alva was on his way to Flanders. I changed my plans, joined him, served under him in the campaigns he made, was present at the deaths of the Counts Egmont and Horn, and was promoted to be ensign under a famous captain of Guadalajara, Diego de Urbina by name.
Some time after my arrival in Flanders, news came of the league that his Holiness Pope Pius V, of happy memory, had made with Venice and Spain against the common enemy, the Turk, who had just then with his fleet taken the famous island of Cyprus, which belonged to the Venetians, a loss deplorable and disastrous. It was known as a fact that the Most Serene Don Juan of Austria, natural brother of our good king Don Philip, was coming as commander-in-chief of the allied forces, and rumors were abroad of the vast warlike preparations which were being made, all which stirred my heart and filled me with a longing to take part in the campaign which was expected.
Though I had reason to believe, and almost certain promises, that on the first opportunity that presented itself I should be promoted to be captain, I preferred to leave all and betake myself, as I did, to Italy. It was my good fortune that Don Juan had just arrived at Genoa, and was going on to Naples to join the Venetian fleet, as he afterwards did at Messina.
I may say, in short, that I took part in that glorious expedition, promoted by this time to be a captain of infantry, to which honorable charge my good luck rather than my merits raised me.
However, on that day—so fortunate for Christendom, because then all the nations of the earth were disabused of the error of imagining the Turks to be invincible on the sea—on that day, I say, on which the Ottoman pride and arrogance were broken and all those who were there were made happy (for the Christians who died that day were happier than those who remained alive and victorious)… on that day, I alone was miserable. For, instead of some naval crown that I might have expected had it been in Roman times, on the night that followed that famous day, I found myself with fetters on my feet and manacles on my hands.
For a further installment of The Captive’s Tale, see the next post in this blog.
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The “glorious expedition,” the captive refers to was the Battle of Lepanto, a massive naval battle involving hundreds of oared galleys that was fought between the Holy League, a coalition of European forces, and the Ottoman navy in October, 1571. The Europeans won, which was why “all those [Europeans] who were there were made happy.” As a young man, Cervantes himself traveled to Italy, enrolled in Don Juan of Austria’s coalition forces, and took part in that battle. He was wounded (losing the use of his left arm as a result) but survived.
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