FRANCIS BROOKS – BARBARIAN CRUELTY – PART 2

Francis Brooks had the misfortune to be taken captive and enslaved in Morocco the 1680s. Being a slave anywhere in North Africa in the seventeenth (or any other) century was a bad experience. Being a slave in Morocco in the last couple of decades of the seventeenth century was about as bad as it could get.

There was a new dynasty in power in Morocco at the time—the Alaouite dynasty (the same dynasty that rules Morocco today). In 1672, the second Alaouite Sultan, Moulay Ismail Ben Sharif, came to power. Moulay Ismail had enormous ambitions, and he proved enormously effective at achieving those ambitions. He was also one of history’s most brutal tyrants.

This sounds like a trite cliché, but in Moulay Ismail’s case, there simply seems no other way to put it.

One of his grand ambitions was to build a palace in Meknes (located about 30 miles/50 kilometers southwest of Fez, in northern Morocco) that would dwarf Versailles (he had heard all about Versailles). He set about doing this by purchasing thousands of slaves and putting them to work constructing his dream palace—a shining city on a hill, so to speak.

It was a personal dream, and he regularly rode through the sprawling construction site personally overseeing things and—by all accounts—terrorizing everybody in sight.

Here is Francis Brooks on Moulay Ismail Ben Sharif, whom he simply calls the Emperor:

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The poor Christian captives that are taken by any of those hellish pirates belonging to the Emperor of Morocco are brought up to Meknes, where they are kept at hard work from daylight in the morning till night carrying earth on their heads in great baskets, driven to and fro by those barbarous Negroes, the Emperor’s Guards, by the his order. When the slaves are driven by the Negroes at night to their lodging, which is on the cold ground, in a vault or hollow place in the earth, laid over with great Beams, and iron bars over them, they are herded in there like sheep, and out again in the morning.

The slaves’ food is bread made of old rotten barley, and their drink only water—when they can get it. Many times after they have been hurried to their work in the morning, not knowing whether they shall be able to bear their afflictions till night, and have survived and been driven back to their lodging, expecting rest, the tyrant sends some of his Negroes to hurry them out again to work, either to haul down walls, brace the gates, or the like, keeping them working both night and day many times without either bread or water—which is all their sustenance. When they have done all that, the Negroes dare not to drive them home again before the Emperor gives the order, lest they be killed for so doing. When they finally receive his order, they drive the slaves home and lock them up again until daylight in the morning.

 

One day, coming to inspect matters (as he used constantly to do), although it was raining very hard, as the Emperor was going into one of the buildings, he saw the Master Workman and his assistants hoisting up a piece of timber. The pope that held it broke, and the timber fell, forcing the Emperor to suddenly retreat. He then sent for the Master Workman in a great passion, threatening him for taking no better care. The Master Workman returned he was as careful as he could be, saying it was a mischance he could not prevent. Nevertheless, the Emperor took a gun from out of the hands of one of his Guards and shot the Master Workman to death.

He then went among the Christians, raving and tearing as if he would have killed them all, setting his Negroes and Guard to beat both the Moors and the Christians that were at work, which they did with such violence that many of them had their heads and arms miserably broken, making his building more like a slaughterhouse than a place of work. At the same time, he ran two of his Moors through with his Lance. He made no more out of killing a man at his pleasure than out of killing a dog.

Every one of his black Guard has a gun, and the Emperor has three or four lances which he carries with him, and several guns always ready charged, to kill with at his pleasure either the Christians or his own natives. When he falls out with his Guard, he strips them and takes their clothes from them, puts them in irons, and sets them to work.

He seldom returns home after his going out in a morning without killing one or other before he returns, by running them through with his lance, shooting them, or dragging them across the ground tied to a mule’s tail, both men and women, seldom repenting for what he has done. The Emperor believes

that if he kills any one, he merits Heaven by so doing, but if any person should kill him, that person cannot avoid going to Hell. He has short sticks carried around for him daily, so that he can beat the poor slaves at his pleasure, which is hourly, to vex and punish them, delighting in nothing more.

In this Captivity I have been, with the rest of my poor countrymen, for the space of ten years. But now, through the mercies of God, I am come to see my native country again, and I cannot but sympathize with they who still suffer miserably under that cruel Tyrant, the Emperor of Morocco. I beseech Almighty God that no more of my countrymen may ever come to suffer under that hard taskmaster.

There are at present three hundred and forty Englishmen, subjects of our Gracious King, in this sore captivity.

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For those who may be interested…

The above extract is excerpted from pages 20 through 62 of Francis Brooks’ Barbarian Cruelty: Being a True History of the Distressed Condition of the Christian Captives under the Tyranny of Mully Ishmael Emperor of Morocco, and King of Fez and Macqueness in Barbary, originally printed for I. Salusbury at the Rising-Sun in Cornhil, and H. Newman at the King’s Arms in the Poultry, in London, England, in 1693.