Last week’s post here in this blog continued the origin story of Histoire de Babarie, the book written by Father Pierre Dan, the Trinitarian friar. That post ended with the expedition’s complete failure in Algiers. We pick up the story this week from there.
Father Dan’s description of the expedition’s return to Marseilles does not focus on the seriousness of their failure in Algiers, but, reading between the lines, one can catch a clear glimpse of just how desperate the Trinitarians must have been for some sort of success:
On the ninth of that month [October]… a little before noon, we dropped anchor in the port of Marseille. The Sieur La Page left a few days later, in order to go to the Court to report there to the King concerning the events of his trip, and to accept new orders from his Majesty to return to Barbary.
However, the other fathers and I, who were all dedicated to redeeming captives, considered that it would be a long time before the Sieur La Page could mount any new expedition to Algiers, and we were of the opinion that we must do something to ensure that it was not said that our journey to Barbary had been fruitless.
We therefore resolved not to wait for him. Instead, with the consent of our most Reverend Father General, we decided to use part of the ransom money for the deliverance of some Frenchmen whom we knew to be captive in Tunis, and to reserve the remainder of the Algiers ransom funds for when his Majesty should give the order to return there. [1]
This was a breathtakingly dangerous gamble. Father Dan and his colleagues were setting out on a ransom expedition with no royal sanction, using funds they had been directed to employ only in Algiers.
The bland sentiment that “we were of the opinion that we must do something to ensure that it was not said that our journey to Barbary had been fruitless” surely masks what must have been a violently heated and desperate debate at the Trinitarian monastery in Marseilles—the participants goaded on by the specter of Mercedarian friars chortling in glee at their abject failure in Algiers. It is easy to imagine how intense the discussion must have been, for they were risking royal displeasure, and if they failed again, the very survival of the order might be at stake.
They managed to resolve whatever internal disputes they might have had, though, and committed themselves to the journey to Tunis, wagering everything on this one desperate move.
Fortunately for them, the expedition was a success. Here is Father Dan’s description:
Indeed, the fathers whom I have mentioned above, together with Father Charles of Arras and I, worked so well on this business, and so successfully, that it pleased God to grant us our desire. For three months later, He vouchsafed us so much grace that from the city of Tunis we bought back forty-two Frenchmen who had been enslaved there. [2]
Father Dan provided a detailed, “blow by blow” account of events in Algiers. With the Tunis expedition, however, he mentions a couple of the individual captives who were ransomed—a man of seventy-two who had spent thirty-one years “soaked in misery” as a slave, and a seventeen-your-old blind boy who miraculously recovered his sight upon arriving in Marseilles—but he offers no details at all about the expedition itself beyond the simple “three months later…” phrase quoted above.
It is tempting to think that there might have been a number of irregularities about this voyage to Tunis that were best glossed over. Whatever might have happened along the way, though, Father Dan obviously managed to steer the expedition to a successful conclusion. The Mercedarians at this time were typically ransoming 100-200 captives per expedition, so the forty-two Frenchmen liberated from Tunis did not represent anything like a spectacular feat.
It is important to note here, however, that it had been a couple of generations since the French Trinitarians had launched a successful ransom expedition to North Africa, and neither Father Dan nor any of the other Trinitarian friars with him had prior personal experience with conducting such affairs. They had to work things out as they went along. Perhaps Father Dan learned crucial lessons in Algiers, or perhaps he was just so determined that he simply refused to accept failure a second time.
Whatever the case may have been, the fact of his success was a genuine triumph—and the salvation of his Order.
The Trinitarians were, so to speak, back in the game.
When the expedition returned to Marseilles in early April, 1635, a public spectacle was organized to celebrate the Trinitarians’ success. A procession of local monks, solemnly singing the Te Deum, greeted the returning friars and the liberated captives as they disembarked from their ship. From there, they all formed a grand procession and paraded through the streets of Marseilles to the Trinitarian monastery in the city.
Here is Father Dan’s description (he did not gloss over the details of this part):
Two hundred confreres and penitents of the trinity walked first. After these went all the clergy, followed by our forty-two liberated slaves, walking two by two, each carrying his chains across his shoulders and wearing the scapular [a religious garment put on like a poncho, but composed of two rectangles of material that hung down over the wearer’s chest and back] of our order. I and the other Fathers who had bought them out of their captivity walked after, and, after us, came the Gentlemen Consuls. [3]
This was the sort of dramatic pageant that the Mercedarians had organized upon their return from Salé in 1630. Such spectacles were a common practice with a long pedigree. The chains the liberated captives displayed were the very chains they had been forced to wear as slaves (or at least they were presented as such). Often, the captives were forbidden to shave and were dressed in rags to emphasize the destitute state from which they had been saved. It was not untypical for them to be accompanied by children costumed as angels who led them along at the ends of satin ribbons or slim golden chains. The illustration at the top of this post depicts one such pageant.
Such exhibitions of dramatic pathos provided the redemptive orders (Mercedarians and Trinitarians alike) with an opportunity to publicly display their successes and to inspire in their audience feelings of pity and righteous outrage—all of which helped encourage people to donate to the Order’s worthy cause and allow more expeditions of liberation to be mounted.
At this point, the Trinitarians were desperately in need of exactly this sort of positive publicity. So after spending the night in Marseilles, Father Dan, his Trinitarian brothers, and the freed captives started out on a grand public procession across France to Paris.
For the next installment of the origin story of Histoire de Barbarie, see Father Pierre Dan: The Origin Story of Histoire De Barbarie – Part 5 here in this blog.
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[1] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 1649, p. 58.
[2] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 1649, p. 58.
[3] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 1649, p. 60.
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