FATHER PIERRE DAN AND THE 1634 RANSOMING EXPEDITION TO ALGIERS – PART 1

Europeans captives enslaved in Algiers dreamed of one thing above all others: being ransomed.

If you were a citizen of a northern protestant country—England, Holland, the German States, Denmark, Iceland, etc.—you had two options for ransom: private collections raised by individuals, or royal funds from the king’s (or the government’s) treasury. If you were a citizen of a catholic country, however, you had a third option: the redemptive friars.

There were two famous Catholic religious orders founded specifically for the ransoming of captives held in North Africa: The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives, known as the Mercedarians, and The Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives, known as the Trinitarians. These orders raised large sums of money, both from private and royal donors, and then organized ransoming expeditions to various cities on the Barbary Coast and bought the freedom of anywhere from a few dozen to several hundred enslaved Catholics at a time.

These ransoming expeditions were delicate affairs requiring equal amounts of diplomatic tact, hard bargaining, judicious bribery, nerve, and luck. Some expeditions were unqualified successes. For instance, in 1660, 366 Spanish captives were freed during a single expedition to Algiers. Some ransoming expeditions had less success, though.

One such less-than-successful expedition took place in the summer of 1634.

It was a French endeavor, involving both political and humanitarian aims.

The French and the Algerians had entered into a treaty in 1628 that had guaranteed the inviolability of ships and merchandise on both sides. It hadn’t worked out that way, though. Despite the solemn commitments the treaty contained, both the French and the Algerians had continued to prey on each other’s ships, amidst bitter accusations and recriminations—and the virtual collapse of the treaty.

The (in)famous Cardinal Richelieu was the French King Louis XIII’s chief minister at the time, and he wanted to stem the hemorrhaging of ships and sailors resulting from the continued depredations of the Algerian corsairs. He sent Sanson Le Page, First Herald of the Armies of France, to Algiers to negotiate a new treaty. Richelieu also wanted to redeem the hundreds of French slaves in Algiers. For this aspect of the mission, he appointed Father Pierre Dan, a Trinitarian friar.

There is no record of how Le Page might have felt about this mission.

We do, however, know what Father Dan’s reaction was, for he wrote about his experience: “The merit of this endeavor and obedience and charity made me very happy to undertake this journey… Some other of my colleagues were assigned to accompany me, and we were all very glad that we might have such an opportunity to fulfill the goal of our profession, which requires us to expose our lives to all kinds of dangers in order to liberate the poor captives that the infidels have kept in irons in the bondage of their unbearable tyranny.”

The mission’s objectives were—in principle at least—quite simple: renegotiate the treaty between France, and Algiers, ransom the French slaves in Algiers, and return to France triumphant. To help with the second objective, Richelieu had authorized the liberation of the Muslim slaves rowing on French galleys (France, like everybody else on the Mediterranean littoral at this time, had a fleet of oared galleys powered by slaves chained to the rowing benches): these Muslim galley slaves could be swapped for French slaves in Algiers.

The ransoming expedition left Marseilles on Wednesday, July 12, 1634. They made the voyage to Algiers in four days—very good time indeed for those days—and arrived on Saturday, July 15. As was the case with all European ships in Algiers, they had to surrender their rudder and sails—this was a proviso put in place to prevent European ships from sneaking slaves aboard and sailing away with them during the night.

Saturday was the day when the Divan—the governing council of Algiers—regularly gathered. So Le Page and Father Dan and the rest were able to meet directly with the Algerian authorities the very day they landed, an auspicious beginning that everybody noted.

There was a problem, though. Algiers was, at least nominally, an Ottoman Regency. That is, it was a province of the sprawling Ottoman Empire, the capital of which was Constantinople. Algiers was ruled jointly by the Divan, which was made up predominantly of Janissary officers (janissaries were the Ottoman troops stationed in Algiers) and the Basha, who was the official Ottoman Governor of the city. Bashas took control of Algiers for several years and then were cycled out and replaced by new ones.

As (bad) luck would have it, when Le Page and Father Dan and their expedition arrived, the old Basha had just left, and the new Basha had not yet showed up from Constantinople.

So they had to wait.

The new Basha, Yusuf the Second, arrived some time later to a grand and dramatic welcome. No fewer than fifteen hundred cannon were fired off to salute him, and a huge parade, including marching bands, poured through the streets. (Father Dan was unimpressed by the music: “It made such a strange noise that, if it can be called harmony, I must confess it was more capable of producing fright than of giving pleasure.”)

The new Basha greeted the French ransomers shortly after his arrival. They presented him with a series of lavish gifts (as was expected), but he told them he would be far too busy getting adjusted to his new position to have time for them for several weeks.

So they waited some more.

Things look positive enough at this point, though. The Basha and the Divan had issued a joint decree that all Algerian residents were to avoid harming the French in any way—“ on pain of “having no more head.” This, father Dan wrote, was “the standard phrase they use when they want to threaten people into submission.”

There was also another decree: the French slaves employed in the hard labor of hauling replacement stones out to the Mole (the rock causeway that formed the breakwater that sheltered the Algiers harbor and that required constant upkeep) were relieved of that onerous work, “to the great relief of all those poor captives,” as Father Dan put it. “In the height of incomparable joy, they thanked God for this favor, and prayed for his very Christian Majesty, King Louis XIII, in recognition of the care he had taken to deliver them from this misery, and for the hope that, by the same favor, they would soon be delivered from the shackles and cruel servitude to which they had been miserably reduced by the tyranny of these barbarians.”

Unfortunately, this was the high point of the expedition. From here, things began to deteriorate.

See the Part 2 in this Father Pierre Dan and the 1634 Ransoming Expedition to Algiers series for the details of what happened.