THE ODYSSEY OF RENÉ DU CHASTELET DES BOYS – PART 8

This week, we return to The Odyssey of René du Chastelet des Boys—though this installment is posted a couple of days late (sorry).

(This post is a continuation of The Odyssey of René du Chastelet des Boys – Parts 1 through 7. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read those posts before continuing on here.)

 

René du Chastelet des Boys, remember, had been bought by a new owner and ended up serving a widow named Fatima, with whom he was, perhaps, about to become too familiar.

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I remained in the house of Fatima, my patroness, for another four to five days. Then, upon the advice of her brother, who counseled her to sell me, for he considered me to be a useless slave (and far too familiar with her), I was led to the slave market for the third time. And so I ended up in the hands of my third owner, an Ouda Bachi—a company commander in the janissaries. I passed out of service of the house of Fatima for sixty pieces of eight. She received the money from my auction through the hands of her brother. I took my leave of her with some regret.

The Ouda Bachi who purchased me was called Beiram (family names being unknown among the Turks). He had a nickname: Topeclaure, meaning “big leg.” I thus became known as the slave of the Ouda Bachi Topeclaure.

The price for which I was sold was quite low. I had made the walk through the slave market several times already, remember, and the Jews and other kinds of experts found my body weak, and found me stronger in the teeth than anywhere else. One said he had seen me with Oge Alli’s negresses at the macerie outside the city. Another had seen me attempting to sell water with little success. A third remembered that Oge Alli had sold me in the Badestan [the slave market] at a loss, that a renegade woman had bought me, and that it was now she who was selling me.

Despite my poor reputation, my new owner bought me and brought me to the janissary barracks in which he lived. There, he put me in charge of the cooking, which was done in the evening in common among the soldiers. The janissaries were divided up into brigades and housed close to each other in dormitories, like the cells of our religious houses. In the middle of the building in which they lived was a large courtyard, resembling the cloister of an abbey.

I was soon able to set myself up successfully as a cook in the Beiram brigade, having learned in a few days how to season white cabbage with chili and orange, how to prepare rice and couscous with chicken, and how to lay out honey and oil with hot bread. Cooking fish was just as easy, for frying and poaching were the only methods employed—the Turks being neither so greedy for, nor so fond of food as we are in Europe.

Beiram was satisfied enough with my service that soon he commanded me to organize supplies needed for him to join a corsair expedition aboard one of the more important corsair vessels, named The Small Moor. Onto this vessel I carried, in a single case, his basic necessities, which included a bunch of onions, a stick of tobacco, and a small barrel of brandy. As well as these, I brought along the staples that all Turkish soldiers going to sea carry with them: oil, olives, vinegar, and hardtack biscuits—since onboard provisions do not consist of very much and are distributed among them only twice a day.

There were fifteen other slaves on board this corsair ship, mostly Flemish and English, with me being the lone Frenchman. There were also fifty Turks on board, plus ten or twelve Kouloughlis, who were the sons of those among the Turkish janissaries who had married local women. Kouloughlis were not included among the ranks of Algiers’ state militia [the janissaries]. The garrison payroll is intended solely for the Turks whom the Pashas bring in from the Levant, or for the renegades among their ranks. Any children got with native women are usually excluded.

A dozen years ago, these Kouloughlis—the term means “mixed-race” in their language—launched a rebellion and, in an attempt to take control of the city and the state, captured the Alcassave [the fortress at the top of the city of Algiers]. They were besieged by both Turks and renegades, many of them fathers of the rebels. The Kouloughlis’ resistance was so stubborn that they blew up the Alcassave. Those who survived lost their heads. In my own time, some of these severed heads still decorated the walls around the Bab al-Oued gate—a pitiful relic of paternal revenge, for most of the besieged and the besiegers were fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, or at least first cousins.

Since that time, the Kouloughlis have had no voice in the government of Algiers, do not receive any public pay, and are permitted to join corsair expeditions only on the condition that they receive no wages or salaries but just a simple share in the common profits.

Notwithstanding all this, the captain of The Small Moor was, in fact, a Kouloughli, a man named Joseph Raïs, who was the son of a young janissary from the Levant who had married a Morisco woman. Although my master, the Ouda Bachi, did not consider Joseph Raïs to be a man of any importance ashore, he nevertheless yielded to his authority aboard ship because the ship owner so wished. This man, who had armed and equipped the ship himself, had given command of it to Joseph Raïs because of his leadership skills, loyalty, and experience.

The day of our departure dawned, and a brisk wind from the land moved us quickly away from the port. The coast of Barbary dwindled behind us. Algiers diminished visibly… and finally disappeared.

And so we began our expedition, on a sea that seemed like a giant, unpolished emerald, still turmoiled by a recent storm.

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For the next installment of René du Chastelet des Boys’ adventures, see The Odyssey of René du Chastelet des Boys – Part 9.

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For those who may be interested…

The above excerpt (which, as usual, has been somewhat abridged) comes from des Boys’ L’Odyssée ou diversité d’aventures, rencontres et voyages en Europe, Asie et Affrique, pp. 61 – 64.

Also for those who may be interested… the story of the Kouloughli rebellion will be the subject of a future blog post.