FATHER PIERRE DAN AND THE 1634 RANSOMING EXPEDITION TO ALGIERS – PART 2

(This post is a continuation of Father Pierre Dan and the 1634 Ransoming Expedition to Algiers – Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read that post before continuing on here.)

When Yusuf Basha finally found time to see Sanson Le Page and Father Dan, Le Page demanded that the Basha free all the French slaves and return all the merchandise and the ships that had been taken by Algerian corsairs since 1628, the year the treaty between France and Algiers had been signed. In return, Le Page offered to turn over sixty-eight Muslim galley slaves kept in Marseilles.

The Basha said this would be very difficult, since returning all the French slaves, merchandise, and ships that had been taken would financially ruin those who had bought and sold them “in good faith” over the years. Le Page then asked that at least the French slaves be released and that the Algerians undertake not to attack French ships in future. Yusuf Basha proposed a counter offer: that the French slaves be put up for ransom and that Father Dan buy them individually from their owners.

Le Page and Father Dan were beginning to grasp the workings of the Algerian system by now, though, and they realized that the Basha’s offer was entirely self-serving, since he personally was entitle to a tax collected on each slave ransomed.

Le Page then changed tactics and attempted to bypass the Basha by appealing directly to the Divan.

As Le Page launched into his pitch on the floor of the chamber where the Divan met, however, several women burst in. According to Father Dan, they were clutching letters in their hands and shouting, “‘Charala! Charala!’ that is to say, God’s justice.” The women claimed their husbands had been galley slaves at Marseilles, and that the letters they held proved the French had sold their husbands as slaves to the Knights Hospitaler on Malta. The women demanded that before any French slaves were released, their husbands should first be returned from Malta.

Father Dan was convinced that the women were lying, and that this was all a scam devised by Yusuf Basha. It didn’t matter. The members of the Divan were outraged. The French were made to appear duplicitous, and negotiations broke down.

Le Page threaten to return immediately to France.

In response to this, Yusuf Basha offered to swap French slaves in Algiers for Muslim galley slaves in Marseilles at a rate of one for one.

Le Page stood firm and insisted that he must have all the French slaves in Algiers freed.

At this point, the Basha came up with a new approach to handling negotiations: if Le Page were to give him a gift of a large amount of gold, he, the Basha, could arrange matters so that the French slaves could be freed.

Sanson Le Page stomped out of that meeting in fury and began preparation for returning to France. The negotiations were over.

“After having spent the months of July, August, and September,” Father Dan wrote, “during the very hottest part of summer, and having suffered an infinity of struggle and labor, we were obliged to leave.” His embittered characterization of all this was that dealing with Algerians was like dealing with “vultures and insatiable tigers who live on their prey, attacking everywhere, and never return anything.”

To their horror, the French slaves in Algiers were returned to their backbreaking work on the Mole, their dream of liberation shattered. While negotiations had been ongoing, Father Dan had managed to privately ransom some French slaves. These were now prohibited from leaving Algiers until the husbands of the angry wives had been returned from Malta. If Father Dan had tried privately to ransom any more, they too would have been consigned to that same limbo—freed men but unable to leave Algiers.

At this point, the Le Page expedition left Algiers and set sail for Marseilles, having failed in every way.

Father Dan was unhappy about being back in France empty handed, though. He writes that, “The other Fathers and I were of the opinion that we should work for our part to ensure that it could not be said that we had gone there uselessly.” The Trinitarians still had most of the funds they had brought with them from Marseilles, and they desperately wanted to pull off a collective ransom of some sort. That was, after all, what the Trinitarian order did. Algiers being clearly closed to him now, Father Dan looked around for some other venue… and settled on Tunis.

So he arranged an expedition to Tunis. There,  after three months of haggling, the Trinitarians ransomed forty-two French slaves.  Not what you might call an unmitigated success, but far better than nothing at all.

And when Father Dan and his Trinitarian brothers landed at the docks in the Marseilles harbor in early April of 1635 with their forty-two freed captives in tow, they were greeted with cheers.

 

After his return to France, Father Dan wrote down his experiences. Perhaps he started out just intending to create a sort of travel diary. Perhaps not. In any case, he ended up producing one of the major European works—some would say the major work—of the seventeenth century on the Barbary corsairs:

Histoire de Barbarie et de ses corsaires des royaumes, & des villes d’Alger, de Tunis, de Salé, & de Tripoli, divisée en six livres où il est traité de leur gouvernement, de leurs moeurs, de leurs cruautés, de leurs brigandages, de leurs sortilèges, & de plusieurs autres particularités remarquables, ensemble des grandes misères & des cruels tourments qu’endurent les Chrétiens captifs parmi les infidèles

(History of the Barbarie Coast and its Corsairs and Kingdoms, and of the cities of Algiers, Tunis, Sale, and Tripoli, Divided into Six Books where is treated their government, their customs, their cruelties, their robberies, their sorceries, and several other remarkable peculiarities, along with all the great miseries and cruel torments endured by captive Christians among the infidels)

The first edition of History of Barbarie was published in 1637. It was an impressive 514 pages long—not counting the Table de Matieres (Table of Contents) at the back. It’s an encyclopedia work that generations of readers have consulted. Unfortunately, it has not yet been translated into English.  For those who have the patience to read the seventeenth century French, though, it’s fascinating.