Last week’s post here in this blog continued the series of segments recounting the origin story of Histoire de Babarie, the book written by Father Pierre Dan, the Trinitarian friar. That post ended with the expedition doing quite well. We pick up the story this week from there.
When Yusuf Pasha finally found time to meet with Sanson le Page and Father Dan, le Page demanded that the Pasha free all the French slaves and return all the merchandise and the ships that had been taken by Algiers 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 Pasha insisted that this approach would be impractical, since returning all those slaves, all the merchandise, and all the ships that had been taken would financially ruin those who had bought and sold them over the years “in good faith.” Le Page then asked that at least the French slaves be released and that the Algiers corsairs undertake not to attack French ships in future. Yusuf Pasha proposed a counter offer: that the French slaves in the city be put up for ransom and that Father Dan purchase them individually from their owners.
Being the Pasha of Algiers was potentially highly remunerative. Like other Algiers Pashas, however, Yusuf Pasha no doubt had to invest a large sum of money in emoluments, bribes, and enticements in order to secure his three-year tenure.[1] As a result, his priority in the negotiations was to bring in as much revenue for himself as possible.
Le Page and Father Dan recognized that the Pasha’s suggestion that slaves be ransomed individually was entirely self-serving, since he was personally entitled to a tax collected on each slave ransomed. Moreover, the basic operating principle of the Trinitarians (and the Mercedarians) was to apply an “economy of scale” approach and to ransom slaves en masse, and so pay less per individual slaves. Accordingly, whenever possible, they resisted pressure to negotiate ransoms individually.
So le Page changed tactics and attempted to bypass the Pasha by appealing directly to the Divan (the governing council of Algiers).
As he launched into his pitch on the floor of the chamber where the Divan met, however, several women burst in clutching letters in their hands, shouting “Charala! Charala!”—“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 Hospitaller on Malta. The women demanded that before any French slaves were released in Algiers, their husbands should first be returned from Malta.
Father Dan was convinced that the women were lying, and that this was all a scheme devised by Yusuf Pasha. It did not matter. The members of the Divan were outraged, the French were made to appear duplicitous, and negotiations broke down.
Le Page threatened to return immediately to France. In response to this, Yusuf Pasha 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 Pasha 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 Pasha, could arrange matters so that the French slaves could be freed. Le Page stormed off 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.”[2] His embittered characterization of all this was that dealing with the Algerians was like dealing with “vultures and insatiable tigers that live off their prey, seizing it everywhere, and who never return anything.”[3]
To their horror, the French slaves in Algiers were sent back to their backbreaking work on the Mole, their dream of liberation shattered.
While negotiations had been ongoing, Father Dan managed to privately ransom a few French slaves. These were now prohibited from leaving Algiers until the husbands of the angry wives had been returned from Malta. If Father Dan tried to ransom any more, they too would be consigned to that same limbo—technically freed but unable to leave Algiers.
Sanson le Page had had no more success with the treaty negotiations than with the ransoms, and the expedition abandoned its mission. Having failed in every way, they had no option but to ask politely for their rudder and canvas back, hoist sails, and return to Marseilles.
This was an unmitigated disaster for the French Trinitarians.
For the next installment of the origin story of Histoire de Barbarie, see Father Pierre Dan: The Origin Story of Histoire De Barbarie – Part 4 here in this blog.
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[1] Cornelis Pijnacker, a Dutch envoy who was in Algiers in the 1620s to renegotiate a treaty between the Republic of the Netherlands and Algiers and who penned a record of his experiences, included the following description that clearly illustrates the motivation for the Algiers Pashas’ predatory approach to finance: “The Pasha demanded 1,000 pieces of eight from me for negotiating the treaty. When I rejected that and argued that that I had had to pay a huge sum to come here and that I had already given him valuable presents, he responded by saying that he needed money to pay the wages of a great number of soldiers, that the emolument he had paid to the Great Sultan in Istanbul had amounted to 40,000 sultanini [Turkish ducats], and, moreover, that he had spent 20,000 doublas [an Algiers coin] to attain his position, and that when he returned to Istanbul he would have to pay the same sum of 20,000 doublas to his allies at court” (Cornelis, Pijnacker, Historysch verhael van den steden Thunes, Alger ende andere steden en Barbarien gelegen (An Historicical account of the cities of Tunis, Algiers, and other cities in Barbary) Gérard van Krieken, éd., ‘s-Gravenhage: Marinus Nihoff, 1975, p 85).
[2] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 1649, p. 48.
[3] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 1649, p. 45.
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