Cornish Characters and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

"The Emperor's wrath is terrible, which the Christians have often felt. One day, passing by a high wall on which they were at work, and being affronted that they did not keep time in their strokes, he made the guards go up and throw them off the wall, breaking their legs and arms, and knocking them on the head. Another time he ordered them to bury a man alive, and beat him down along with the mortar in the wall.

"In the year 1721 the Emperor despatched El Arbi Shat, a man of one of the best families in Barbary, being descended from the Andalusian Moors, and deserved the esteem both of his own countrymen and of us. Part of the crime laid to his charge was for going out of the country without the Emperor's knowledge, and having been friendly himself with Christian women, and often been in liquor. He was also accused of being an unbeliever. Early one morning he was carried before the Emperor, who commanded him to be sawed in two; upon which he was tied between two boards and sawed in two, beginning at the head and going downwards, till the body fell asunder, and must have remained to have been eaten by dogs, if the Emperor had not pardoned him—an extravagant custom, to pardon a man after he is dead, but unless he does so, nobody dares bury the body."

Pellow describes the condition of the Christian slaves: "The severest labour and hardships inflicted on malefactors in Europe are levity compared with what many worthy persons undergo in this modern Egypt. At daybreak the guardians of the several dungeons, where the Christian slaves are shut up at night, rouse them with curses and blows to their work, which consists in providing materials for the Emperor's extravagant buildings, stamping earth mixed with lime and water, in a wooden box near three yards long and three feet deep, and of the extended breadth of the wall. Their instrument for this is a heavy wooden stamper. Others prepare and mix the earth, or dig in quarries for lime stones; others burn them. Some are employed to carry large baskets of earth; some drive wagons drawn by six bulls and two horses, and, after the toil of the day, these miserable carters watch their cattle in the field at night, and in all weathers, as their life must answer for any accident. The task of many is to saw, cut, cement and erect marble pillars, and of such as are found qualified, to make gunpowder and small arms; yet does not their skill procure them any better treatment than those who, having only the use of their limbs without any ingenuity, are set to the coarsest works, as tending horses, sweeping stables, carrying burdens, grinding with hand-mills. They have all their respective taskmasters, who punish the least stop or inadvertency, and often will not allow the poor creatures time to eat their bread. After such a wearisome day, it frequently happens they are hurried away to some filthy work in the night time. Their lodgings in the night are subterranean dungeons, round, and about five fathoms diameter and three deep, going down by a ladder of ropes, which is afterwards drawn up, and an iron grate fastened in the mouth; and here they lay upon mats. Neither has their fare anything more comfortable in it, consisting only of a small platter of black barley meal, with a pittance of oil per day. This scantiness has put several upon hazarding a leap from very high walls only to get a few wild onions that grow in the Moors' burying place."

Pellow developed considerable military ability and was employed in military operations against rebels; he was made a captain, and was present at several sieges, and witnessed the barbarity wherewith were treated the men of a captured town. On one occasion the troops were required to cut off the heads of all the male inhabitants and bring them to the Sultan; but as the number was so great and the stench threatened to breed a pestilence in the army, the general was compelled to slice off the ears and pickle them in barrels and convey these only to the Sultan at his capital, who graciously under the circumstances accepted the ears in lieu of the heads.

Pellow was several times wounded, and he made occasional abortive attempts to escape. When wounded, returning from one of his expeditions, he received news that his wife and daughter were dead, and he calmly observes: "I must own that it gave me very little uneasiness, as I thought them to be by far better off than they could have been in this troublesome world, especially this part of it; and I was really very glad that they were delivered out of it, and therefore it gave me very little uneasiness."

It is startling to think that in the reign of George I there should be such numbers of English as well as French, Spanish and Italian captives in Morocco and Algiers and Tunis, and that their redemption should have to be the work of private charity, and not be a determined undertaking of Government.

In 1791 England framed a treaty with Morocco giving our merchants freedom to sail the seas unmolested, and permitting renegades to return to their old faith and obtain their liberty on certain conditions. But captives continued to be taken by the corsairs as of old: "Shall a Moslem," asked one of the sultans, "be a slave to his word, like a dog of a Christian?" In 1800 Muley Suliman agreed with Spain for a reciprocal interchange of captives, and similar contracts were entered into with other powers. In 1817, acting under force majeure, Suliman was compelled to disarm his war vessels, and promise to put an end to this atrocious system, that had lasted too long. But although piracy was no longer officially recognized, it did not wholly cease. Whether the Sultan connived at the infraction of treaty, or whether the inhabitants of the Riff shore acted independently of him, merchant vessels continued to be boarded and taken and the crew enslaved.

In 1828 the English established a blockade of the Morocco coast in retaliation for the continuance of these outrages, and in 1829 the capture of an Austrian vessel by pirates led to the bombardment of the ports of Tetuan, Azila, Rabat, and Sallee. At length the insolence of the Moorish corsairs led to the Spanish war of 1859-60, which taught the Moors a salutary lesson.

In 1856 Sir John Drummond-Hay succeeded in recovering some captives, and in exacting an assurance that similar conduct should not recur. But although attacks by piratical ships on the high seas were brought to an end, wrecking was pursued with zest and impunity. Any vessel that was cast upon the coast was regarded as a legitimate prize, and its crew who came ashore were carried into the interior and enslaved. In this way Riley, Adams, and Puddock were able to write their experiences, on their escape from captivity.

Sir Arthur Brook in 1831 wrote that "the country Moors on all parts of the coast are constantly on the look out for Christians, and instantly make prisoners of all who have either landed accidentally or have been shipwrecked. Parties that are occasionally formed, as ours was, to visit Cape Spartel are even subject to this, and in one recent instance the lady of the English Vice-Consul, who had strolled to a short distance out of sight of the guard that attended her, was on the point of being made a prisoner by a body of natives who surrounded her and her party, thinking they were alone, until undeceived by the timely appearance of the escort."