THE PROBLEM WITH RANSOMS: THE TANGLED WEB OF POLITICS AND INFLUENCE

Ransoming captives from North Africa wasn’t a simple process. The logistics could be fiendishly complicated and difficult, and, as we saw in last week’s post in this blog, the process could be derailed by corruption. This week, we’ll look at how international politics could complicate the ransoming process.

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In the spring of 1609, three Spanish Trinitarian friars sailed to Algiers on a ransom expedition. Their names were Bernardo de Monroy, Juan de Aguila, and Juan de Palacios. The ship carrying them left Spain in March and arrived at Algiers on the first of April.

The Trinitarian religious order was dedicated to ransoming captives from North Africa. They had been organizing ransom expedition for a very long time and knew what they were doing. They carried a Safe Pass, officially issued to them by the Pasha of Algiers to protect them from being assaulted by corsairs on their journey: any corsairs who boarded them would respect this pass and leave them alone.

Once in Algiers, the Trinitarian friars followed the standard protocol for ransom expeditions like theirs: they reported to the Pasha (the Ottoman Governor of the city), registered the amount of ransom funds they had brought with them, paid the requisite tax on those funds, arranged for an interpreter, and then took up residence and began the arduous task of negotiating ransoms.

They were there for a month and a half. During that time, they paid out enough money to free a total of 136 captives. They also celebrated mass regularly in the chapel in what was known as the Grand Bagnio—the prison building that housed captives and slaves in Algiers, a building large enough to hold well over 1,000 inmates—and also gave religious comfort to the sick and the dying in the infirmary there.

In short, it was an entirely successful expedition. As Father Bernardo de Monroy put it in a report he sent back to his superiors: “We exhorted the poor Christian slaves we had freed to drop their chains to the ground. They flexed their knees, which had been bent for so long under the torment of their iron fetters, tears in their eyes, sobbing.” With their 136 freed slaves, the three Trinitarian friars boarded their ship and began preparations for departure.

And then the trouble began.

A noisy mob appeared on the docks. A squad of janissaries emerged from the agitated crowd, boarded the ship, placed the three friars and their freed captives under arrest, and marched them back into town. The friars had no idea why any of this was happening and vigorously protested such ill treatment all the way. It did no good.

The friars and their freed captives—who must have been sick with dismay at this sudden bitter reversal of their fortunes—were thrown into prison.

This unexpected setback had nothing to do with the actions of the members of the expedition.

It had to do with a complicated international situation.

Several months earlier, an Algiers merchant ship had been captured by the Genoese. As bad luck would have it for the Algerines, a number of children from important families in Algiers were aboard that ship, including the son of the Pasha himself. The children were taken to Livorno, and negotiations were begun to ransom them. Since their parents were influential and wealthy people, the negations went fairly smoothly, and the children were freed.

They were put aboard a ship and sailed for Algiers. On the way, however, they stopped at a small port on northwest corner of Corsica called Calvi. Among the Algerine children was the nine-year-old daughter of Mehmet Axá, a janissary officer and commander of the town of Annaba, located in the Algerian coast about 400 miles (640 kilometers) east of the city of Algiers. The girl’s name was Fatima.

How exactly it happened isn’t clear, but somehow Fatima converted to Christianity and left the ship. So when the excited crowd of relived parents and family met the ship when it arrived at the Algiers docks, Mehmet Axá was severely disappointed. In fact, it seems he was furious at what he heard about his daughter from the ship’s Captain. He stormed off to see the Pasha and demand that his daughter be returned to him.

The Pasha’s response was to hold the three Trinitarian friars and their newly freed captives as hostages to use to negotiate Fatima’s release.

Word got around town that Christians had kidnapped Mehmet Axá’s daughter and forced her to convert against her will—she was, after all, only nine years old—and a crowd of angry Algerines converged on the docks, shouting and shaking their fists at the Catholic friars. It was then that, under the Pasha’s orders, the janissaries arrested the Trinitarians and their freed captives and placed them in prison.

Much to Mehmet Axá’s satisfaction no doubt.

At this point, a complicated series of international negotiations began.

The authorities in Corsica claimed that Fatima’s conversion was entirely voluntary. This meant that she could not under any circumstances be sent to Algiers.

Her father, of course, didn’t believe any of this and demanded her immediate release. The Corsican authorities, under the auspices of the Duke of Tuscany, the ruler of Livorno, offered a Safe Pass to Mehmet Axá and whoever he might wish to bring with him so that he could travel to Corsica, talk with his daughter, and see for himself that her conversion was indeed voluntary.

Mehmet Axá didn’t trust the Corsicans and refused the offer. He proposed instead that they meet at a location closer to Algiers.

The Corsican authorities didn’t trust Mehmet Axá and refused his offer.

All this took time—several years in fact. The seventeenth century was a much slower age than ours when it came to communication.

Meanwhile the Trinitarian friars and their almost-freed captives were kept as hostages in prison in Algiers.

Negotiations continued, and more parties became involved.

In 1612, no lesser a dignitary than the Ottoman Sultan himself issued an official order for the release of the Trinitarians. Algiers was nominally a regency of the Ottoman Empire, so the order should have been obeyed. Algiers’ fealty, however, was more theoretical than actual. The Algerine authorities refused to budge. They were determined that they would release the Trinitarians only after Fatima was freed. They defied the Sultan’s order.

In 1613, the Governor of Oran, which was then a Spanish outpost, devised a scheme to smuggle Father de Monroy out of prison. The attempt failed.

In 1614 the situation was complicated by a new development.

The Bey (the Governor) of Alexandria, a man named Muhammad, was captured by a European ship. A deal was put together to swap him for the Trinitarians. The Ottoman Sultan favored this arrangement and gave it his full support.

But…

Back in 1609, a young man named Diego de Pacheco, the son of the Marquis of Villena, a Spanish nobleman of very high rank, was captured by corsairs from Algiers and sold into slavery in that city. The Marquis saw a chance to free his son and intervened in the deal to swap the Dey of Alexandria for the Trinitarians. He was such an important and influential figure that he succeeded in scuppering the deal—but not in freeing his son.

In 1617, the new Pashsa of Algiers—the Algiers Pashas served three-year terms—brought with him a second order from the Ottoman Sultan to release the Trinitarians. The Algerine authorities ignored this order as they had the first.

Negotiations dragged on with no noticeable success.

Then, in 1618, an event occurred that further complicated matters: Fatima, who was now known as Madalena, had turned eighteen and married a Christian man on Corsica.

In 1621, in a final desperate attempt, the Governor of Oran offered a massive ransom for Father de Monroy. The Algerine authorities refused the offer.

In the end, nothing was ever resolved.

Diego de Pacheco, the son of the Marquis of Villena, ended up in Istanbul, where he converted to Islam. He died there in 1619.

Juan de Aguila died in prison in Algiers in 1613

Muhammad, the Bey of Alexandria, died in prison in Sicily in 1616.

Juan de Palacios died in prison in Algiers in 1616.

Bernardo de Monroy died in prison in Algiers in 1622.

And that was the end of it.

There is no record of what happened to Fatima/Madalena.

Not all ransoms were this mercilessly complicated, of course, but the story of Fatima serves as an example of just how complex the ransom process could be, for it included not just the immediate people involved—the captives and those endeavoring to free them—but also the tangled web of international politics and influence.

Not so very different in some ways from our own times, really.

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For those who may be interested…

My initial interest in this ransom story came from a report presented in 1613 by a Trinitarian friar named François du Carroy to Fraçois Petit, the Grand Ministre of the Trinitarians, titled Histoire véritable de ce qui s’est passé en Turquie , pour la délivrance et rédemption des Chrétiens captifs depuis l’année 1609 . Et des sècheresses extraordinaires advenus en Alger l’an passé, pendant lesquelles arriva une pluie miraculeuse par l’intercession de trois Religieux de Ordre de la Sainte Trinité de la rédemption des Captifs (The true story of what happened in Turkey concerning the deliverance and redemption of captive Christians in the year 1609. And the extraordinary droughts that occurred in Algiers last year, during which a miraculous rain arrived through the intercession of three members of the  Religious Order of the Holy Trinity of the Redemption of the Captives), which can be found in Volume 2 of Archives des voyages ou collection d’aciennes relations inedites ou très-rares de lettres, memoires, itinéraires et autres documents relatif a la géographie et aux voyages (Travel archives, or a collection of ancient unpublished or very rare records of letters, memoirs, itineraries and other documents relating to geography and travel), published in 1840 and edited by H. Ternaux-Compans.