This week, we continue the series of excerpts of an English translation of Relation de la captivité du Sr. Moüette dans les royaumes de Fez et de Maroc, où il a demeuré pendant onze ans (The Story of the Captivity of Sieur Moüette in the Kingdoms of Fez and Marocco, Where He lived for Eleven Years), the book published in 1683 that relates the experiences of Germain Moüette, who at the age of nineteen had the misfortune to be captured by corsairs from Salé.
Last week, remember, Moüette related how he was sold into slavery and described meeting his new owners/masters. We pick up the story from there.
The next morning I was delivered to Mahomet Liebus, who took me to his home, where I found his mother-in-law and his wife, both Andalusians [i.e., expulsados from Spain], who began to sympathize with my misfortune.
They gave me a good breakfast, and after it set me to work grinding at a hand-mill. This is the most usual labor of the slaves in the sea-port towns, there being no other mills. It is a toilsome exercise requiring much strength, and having never been used to such work, I began to mislike it at once. I ended up making such course flour that they could not use it.
This persuaded my mistress to give me a young child she had, to carry about the town. I made so much of him that he would not go to anybody else, nor lie from me. My mistress, who was young and who spoke excellent Spanish, perceiving how fond her son was of me, got me liberty to walk about with him wherever I pleased. She treated me with white bread, butter mixed with honey, and such fruit as was in season. She also caused a chain weighing of twenty-five pounds, which her husband had put on me, to be taken off.
She recommended that I be patient in my captivity, saved me from her husband’s beatings and often pressed me to turn renegade [i.e., convert to Islam] so that she might have it in her power to show me greater tokens of her affection by marrying me to a very beautiful and rich niece she had, whose father, Abdul Caderamer, had been for fifteen years enslaved aboard the ship of the Captain of the galleys of Malta.
The better to please my mistress, I responded that were she to be my reward, I could willingly incline to it [to converting], but I would never do it for anybody else. Then I added the tenderest and most moving expressions I could think of, which had the effect of her excusing me from going to lie in the dungeon among the other slaves.
Madam de Montagne, in fifteen days, arranged for her own and her son, the Knight of Malta’s ransom for three thousand crowns. Half of this sum was paid by the Sieur de l’Aubia, a merchant from Bayonne. She boarded a Dutch Ship that was ready to sail, which took her to the coast of England. From there, she went over to France to raise the necessary money for the freeing of her son and servants, who were left behind.
However, Muley Archy, who then reigned at Fez, being informed that the said young Knight of Malta was captive at Salé, caused him to be removed to Fez, for Muley Archy was resolved never to restore him to his liberty, no more than he did any of those who fell into his hands. He also took from the young man’s master the fifteen hundred crowns he had received and gave him two hundred bastinados [whipped the soles of his feet] for having released his mother.
Thus that noble young gentleman of Malta was, during the reign of the said barbarian monarch, put to all the hardships the meanest of captives must suffer. But after Muley Archy’s death, Muley Semein el Heusenin, his successor, sold him to certain Jews of Fez for two thousand crowns, who, in order to force him to pay three thousand crowns for his ransom, employed him for a full eighteen months on the vilest tasks in their quarter, putting him to carry out the dirt of their houses and clean their privies, adding all the while a thousand reproaches, which he bore with wonderful patience.
At length, because of his many sufferings and the chains he was forced to wear, he fell into a dangerous sickness, which brought him to the brink of the grave, and obliged those villains, when he was eventually recovered, to let him go for 2,500 crowns in the year 1674.
For my part, I lived comfortably enough with my master Liebus. For a year I was in his house, and he never pressed me for money, for the renegado I mentioned earlier had convinced him I had none.
The year being expired, Hamet Ben Yeucourt, Governour of the Salé castle, who was my fourth master, and who owned a half share in me, asked the other three whether they had treated with me regarding my ransom. They answered that they had not and added that they were convinced they had been deceived when they bought me.
“Will you take your money,” said he, “and resign me your share? I will find a way to make him speak.” They readily consented and sent me to castle, where I was put to work in the stable. I soon found what a difference there was between the Governor and Liebus, for with the latter I used to eat as he did, and with the other had nothing but brown bread and water and was forced to lie in a Mattamore, that is, a dungeon, so filthy, stinking, and full of crawling vermin, that it obliged me to get fresh straw every night because about thirty Arabs were kept imprisoned in that place, upon whose ordure I was forced to lie at night with the other slaves, as long as we continued there.
While I was at Salé, a Dutch ship arrived from Amsterdam bringing the Jews of Salé certain predictions sent them from Holland. The substance of them, among other things, was that the Messiah they had expected for many ages would be born in Holland at the beginning of the following year, which was 1672. Upon receiving this good news, the Jews made a second feast of the Tabernacle and kept up a general rejoicing for eight days together.
The most important among them being met one day at the house of Jacob Bueno de Mesquita, who was the richest of those who dressed in the Christian fashion, having made his escape out of Spain from the Inquisition. The Sieur de l’Aubia, the merchant from Bayonne, went there to congratulate them. He proposed a toast to their health and to the safe arrival of their Messiah.
De Mesquita, who suspected that the Sieur de l’Aubia was taunting them, said to him in Spanish, “Well Monsieur de l’Aubia, will you wager 400 pieces of eight with me that the King, our Messiah, whom we expect, will not be born in Holland within a year?”
De l’ Aubia gave to de Mesquita his hand in the presence of all the other Jews, who took hold of it to make good the wager, declaring he would be obliged to pay the 400 pieces of eight if the Messiah was not born in Holland within the time he proposed. De Mesquita swore before all the company that he would stand by his word and then invited de l’Aubia to partake in their mirth.
The year expired in July, at which time de l’Aubia went to de Mesquita’s house to ask whether the Messiah had been born, and, in case he was, to offer him the 400 pieces of eight he had won. The Jew, who thought the wager had been a mere jest, was surprised at this visit and began to recant.
De l’Aubia, without losing any time, went straight to the castle and gave the Governor a full account of what had passed between him and de Mesquita the year before, naming all the other Jews who had been present. The Governor summoned them all. Being informed by them how the matter stood, he ordered de Mesquita to immediately pay the money he had lost. Against this judgement, no entreaties were of any use.
The Governor and de l’Aubia divided the 400 pieces of eight between them.
For the next installments of Germain Moüette’s Relation, see the next post here in this blog.
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
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