FATHER PIERRE DAN ON THE DIFFICULTIES OF ESCAPE – PART 1

For those Europeans unfortunate enough to be captured by Barbary corsairs and taken to North Africa to be auctioned off into slavery in a crowded, raucous market (see the image above for a somewhat sentimentalized version of such a market) and forced to endure the hardships and drudgery of servitude, one thought must have been uppermost in their minds: escape.

Escape wasn’t easy, though. The economies of North African cities were dependent on slavery as a largescale institution: if the slaves had suddenly disappeared, economic collapse would have followed. So to protect their economic viability, North African corsair states implemented a variety of procedures especially designed to prevent slaves from escaping.

This didn’t stop people from trying, though.

Father Pierre Dan, the French Trinitarian friar whose Histoire de Barbarie formed the basis of the series of blog posts that precede this one, had the opportunity, in his position as Minister Superior of the Trinitarian Order, to talk to a number of people who had successfully managed to escape from slavery. He devoted part of Histoire de Barbarie, to the various problems and difficulties that slaves faced if they wanted to escape and gain their freedom.

So here is Father Dan on the topic of escape.

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The only means of escape are either by land or by sea, and the poor slaves can only by a great miracle overcome one or the other.

If they are in Algiers, there is no Christian city nearer than Oran. To reach there, they must cross several frightful deserts, where there are neither inns nor other places of retreat, and which are inhabited only by lions and tigers. Also, in the countryside there are always Arabs who are a constant threat to these poor fugitives. These Arabs will not fail to seize any fugitives they come across and either put them to death immediately or bring them back to Algiers, where they are usually burned at the stake at once. As for Tunis, ingenious as the captives there may be, they cannot devise any method to save themselves that involves traveling overland, for all the countryside there is filled with Turks & Barbarians.

The only option left, therefore, is to try to flee by sea. But this too is rendered nearly impossible because before any ship is permitted to leave port, it is searched very carefully to make sure there are no renegades or slaves hidden away on board. As for the renegades who have ships of their own, it is also difficult for them to escape. The reason is that, especially for those going on a corsair expedition, they are not masters of their own ships. They might easily take their ship to the land of the Christians, where they would be well received, but, on corsair vessels, there are always some officers of the Divan, such as a Boluk-bashi, who command the soldiers as chiefs, or Agas. It is they who make all important decisions if difficulties arise, without consulting the Rais, the captains, of these same vessels. And so the fugitives cannot choose which ports to sail to or to dock at. Besides, the other Turks who are onboard with them also have the means of opposing their designs.

Their best chance is to go to the Levant, if it is possible, and there throw themselves into the ships of Christians who come there to trade, in Alexandria, in Aleppo, in Smyrna, in Scioute, and in the other locations in the Levant.

However, all the Christian ships are obliged to remain there for three days, to give the Turks the opportunity to visit them to see if there are any slaves or renegades hidden aboard. This procedure is similarly observed in all the corsair cities, such as Algiers, Tunis, Salé, and Tripoli, from which no vessel can depart until it has first been visited by an officer of the Divan and by the guard of the port, to see that no slaves or renegades are hiding aboard.

Those who escape usually manage it when a corsairs ship, needing to replenish its supply of water or wood, puts in to a desert island near the coast of Spain, such as Levisse or Fromentiere, where there are thickets of woods and rock formations providing caves in which they can hide. They land with the shore party sent to haul water and cut wood and then flee, taking with them a supply of ship’s biscuit, which they may have saved up. Since they are not far from the coast of Spain, when they feel sure that the corsairs are no longer looking for them, they build a fire on the beach as a signal, and the local fishermen come to take them out of there. They get some recompense for the discomfort and danger they must endure, for they typically bring away with them all the money they have.

There are others who risk their lives in small boats. Some devise things so well that they escape. Many of them drown, however, because their vessels are too small, the sea too big, and the storms too violent. If, by misfortune, they are surprised in their escape and captured, they are then burned alive at the stake, or put to death after having endured the most cruel tortures that these barbarians can imagine.

I will now present here some newly arrived stories, which are, to tell the truth, tragic and lamentable, leaving aside the old ones, whose number is so great, that one could make a whole volume of them.

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For the stories that Father Dan relates about escaping slaves, see the next part in this series of posts, Father Pierre Dan on the Difficulties of Escape – Part 2.

For those who may be interested…

The details about the difficulties of escape come from Book 4, Chapter 4 of Father Pierre Dan’s Histoire de Barbarie. Like the other extracts from Father Dan’s work that have appeared in this blog, I translated (and slightly abridged) the above directly from the seventeenth century French text.