NICOLAUS THE UNLUCKY

In the early 1600s, a young French sailor named Nicolaus, from Havre de Grace (modern-day Le Havre, located on the northern coast of France, where the River Sein empties into the English Channel) went to sea to seek his fortune. Instead of finding riches, however, he encountered disaster. His ship was attacked by corsairs from Algiers, and he, along with everybody else aboard, was captured.

Nicolaus was taken to Algiers and sold there in the Badestan—the market where slavesd were sold (see the illustration above for a depiction of the Badestan). For years, he endured the misery of his enslavement, forced to do hard labor, with no hope of liberation. Eventually, out of desperation, he ‘turned Turk’ (as the expression was then) and converted to Islam. Such converts were known in Europe as renegades.

When a male Christian slave converted, he was circumcised, given a new Muslim name, and paraded through the streets of Algiers triumphantly. He also acquired a new status.

In marked contrast to the firmly stratified European societies of the time, Algiers was in some ways a meritocratic culture. Neither race nor ethnic background nor class origins mattered that much—as long as you were a Muslim. When Nicolaus converted, he became a member of a privileged group, a group in which he was treated as an equal (or at least a potential equal). A new future opened up for him. Conversion didn’t automatically mean that Nicolaus became a free man—things weren’t that simple—but it opened up opportunities for him that otherwise would have been impossible.

For some European Christians, conversion to Islam was a genuine matter of adopting a new faith. For others, it was merely a way of formally aligning themselves with the ruling group in order to further their careers (this was the tactic of a number of European pirates who chose to operate out of ports along the North African coast). Such converts embarked on new lives to which they willingly committed themselves.

Slaves, however, mostly converted as a way to liberate themselves from the atrocious conditions of their captivity—as Nicolaus did—clinging secretly to their own religion all the while and telling themselves that their conversion was just for show.

In Nicolaus’ case, the ruse worked. As a renegade, he was now eligible to serve aboard corsair ships. He did so, and during one of the cruises he took part in, he managed to desert from his ship and escape.

So Nicolaus returned to Havre de Grace, where he was no doubt greeted with joy by friends and family, and took up his former life again. Or tried to, anyway.

Nicolaus had two problems.

First, he would have had to hide or explain his conversion to Islam. Such conversion—such apostasy—was a very big deal at the time. Spanish ex-slaves returning home had to face the ungentle questioning of the Inquisition. The French had no real equivalent to the Spanish Inquisition, but Nicolaus would nonetheless have had to face a lot of hard questions. Even Inquisitors could sometimes recognize that ex-slaves might still be true Christian at heart despite their apostasy, but turning Turk always counted against you.

The second problem Nicolaus faced was more practical in nature: he was a sailor. He tried staying ashore for the better part of two years, but, for whatever reasons, he was unable to make it work.

So in order to earn a living, and perhaps to escape from people who knew too much about his past, he signed on as crew aboard a merchant ship and took to the sea once again—after having, no doubt, implored the Blessed Virgin herself to keep him safe.

But Nicolaus was unlucky.

Somewhere off the Atlantic coast of Europe, his ship was surprised by a small fleet of corsairs out of Salé, on the western shore of Morocco. The ship attempted to flee, but the Salé corsairs, whose vessels were notoriously fast, caught up with them easily. After a brief and hopeless struggle, the European ship was overwhelmed.

The first thing corsairs did when they captured a ship was to take inventory—of both cargo and crew. The crew and passengers (if there were any) were immediately stripped of anything valuable they might be wearing, sometimes including their clothing. Then they were examined to see what quality of people they were and so determine what sort of ransom prospects might be expected from each.

Again, Nicolaus was unlucky—very unlucky.

One of the Salé corsairs recognized him as a renegade from Algiers.

During the early 1600s, there was a fair amount of traffic between Algiers and Salé, so it was not unusual for corsairs aboard a Salé ship to have been in Algiers. It was just unfortunate that this one corsair had happened to be in Algiers when Nicolaus was there.

Nicolaus tried to deny everything, to claim that this was a case of mistaken identity. But there was a simple test to see who was telling the truth: they yanked Nicolaus’ trousers down and, sure enough, he was circumcised. In those days, there as only one reason why a European Christian man would be circumcised—if he had converted.

Nicolaus was chained up and thrust down into the ship’s hold, along with the rest of the captives, and taken to Salé.

Apostasy was, if anything, a bigger issue for Muslims than for Christians. European Christians were willing, in at least some cases, to acknowledge the terrible stress that slaves were under, to recognize that such converts might still be true Christians at heart, and to offer forgiveness. Muslims were not so lenient.

When they arrived at Salé, Nicolaus’ captors took him straightway to the home of a local magistrate, so that he could be officially judged for his apostasy. On the way there, however, they paraded him through the streets in chains, loudly proclaiming that, having converting to Islam, he had then reneged and become a Christian again. By the time they reached the magistrate’s house, they were surrounded by an angry, shrieking mob.

The magistrate attempted to calm everybody down… but failed.

The mob was too worked up. Some of them started punching Nicolaus and kicking him. Tearing him from the hold of the corsairs, they began beating him with sticks. Knives came out. People started throwing stones. The violence grew so hysterical that not only did they kill poor Nicolaus, they built a pyre over his dead body right there on the spot and burned him to ashes.

And so ended the life of Nicolaus the unlucky.

In order to survive times like these, you had to be smart, strong, and adaptable—and lucky.

Nicolaus clearly had all the former traits. But that was not enough to save him when, against all reasonable odds, he ended up in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.

When it comes to captives from this period, it is mostly the lucky ones we know about, the ones who escaped and lived to tell their stories. There must have been many Nicolauses, however—on both sides of the Mediterranean. For Europeans enslaved their Muslim captives with just as much vigorous cruelty as Muslims enslaved Christians.

The story of Nicolaus is a reminder of the waste of lives—Christian and Muslin alike—that resulted from the centuries of conflict between Europe and the Maghreb.

 

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(The outlines of Nicolaus’ story can be found in Pierre Dan’s Histoire de Barbarie et de ses corsaires, des royaumes, et des villes d’Alger, de Tunis, de Salé et de Tripoly, Second Edition, 1649, Book 4, Chapter 5.)