And the nations far away
Are watching with eager eyes;
They talk together and say,
"To-morrow, perhaps to-day,
Enceladus will arise!"
And the old gods, the austere
Oppressors in their strength,
Stand aghast and white with fear,
At the ominous sounds they hear,
And tremble, and mutter, "At length!"
Ah, me! for the land that is sown
With the harvest of despair!
Where the burning cinders, blown
From the lips of the overthrown
Enceladus, fill the air!
Where ashes are heaped in drifts
Over vineyard and field and town,
Whenever he starts and lifts
His head through the blackened rifts
Of the crags that keep him down!
See, see! the red light shines!
'Tis the glare of his awful eyes!
And the storm-wind shouts through the pines
Of Alps and of Apennines,
"Enceladus, arise!"
THE ZOUAVES.
The decree of October 1, 1830, approved by a royal ordinance, March 21, 1831, created two battalions of Zouaves. To perceive the necessity for this body of troops, to understand the nature of the service required of them, and to obtain a just notion of their important position in African affairs, it will be necessary to glance, for a moment, at the previous history of Algeria under the Deys, and especially at the history of that Turkish militia which they were to replace,—a body of irresponsible tyrants, which, since 1516, had exercised the greatest power in Africa, and had rendered their name hated and feared by the most distant tribes.
Algeria was settled in 1492, by Moors driven from Spain. They recognized a kind of allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey, which was, however, only nominal; he appointed their Emirs, but further than this there was no restraint on their actions. Hard pressed by the Spaniards in 1509, the Emirs sent in haste to Turkey for aid; and Barbarossa, a noted pirate, sailed to their help, drove out the Christians, but fixed upon the Moors the yoke of Turkish sovereignty. In 1516, he declared himself Sultan, or Dey, of Algiers; and his brother succeeding him, the Ottoman power was firmly established in the Northwest of Africa. Hated by the people of this great territory, both Moors and Arabs, menaced not only by their dissensions, but frequently attacked by the Christians from the North, there was but one method by which the Dey could maintain his power. He formed a large body of mercenary soldiers, drawn entirely from Turkey, united with himself and each other by a feeling of mutual dependence and common danger, and bound by no feeling of interest or affection to the inhabitants of the soil. Brave they were, as they proved in 1541, against Charles the Fifth, whose forces they defeated and nearly destroyed at Haratsch,—in 1565, at the siege of Malta,—in 1572, in the seafight of Lepanto,—in many smaller combats at different times, defending their land triumphantly in 1775 against the Spaniards under O'Reilly and Castejon. Hardy and ready they were, from the very necessity of the case; for they were hated and dreaded beyond measure by the Arabs, and theirs was a life of constant exertion. Other than united they could not be; for they were in continual warfare of offence or of defence; they suppressed rebellion and anarchy,—for without a leader and union they had been cut off by the restless foe, whose piercing eyes watched, and whose daggers waited only for the time. In constant danger, they could not sink into that sloth that eats out the heart of Eastern and Southern nations; for it was only in unrest that safety lay;—he who slumbered on those burning plains, no less than the sleeper on Siberian ice, was lost utterly and without remedy.
This body of troops, called the Odjack, elected or deposed Deys at pleasure; the Dey, nominally their ruler, was in reality their tool. In one period of twenty years there were six Deys, of whom four were decapitated, one abdicated through fear, and one died peacefully in the exercise of his governing functions. [Footnote: Voyage pour la Rédemption des Captifs aux Royaumes d'Alger et de Tunis, fait en 1720. Paris, 1721.] In 1629, they declared the kingdom free from the domination of Turkey; soon after, they expelled the Koulouglis, or half-breed Turks, and enslaved the Moors. Admitting some of the latter to service in the militia, they never allowed them to hope for advancement in the State, or, what was the same thing, the army. Only Turks, or in some instances renegade Christians, could lead the soldiers, whom thus no feeling of local patriotism mollified in their course of savage cruelty, grinding the face of the poor natives till spirit and hope were lost and resistance ceased to be a settled idea in their minds.
Now when the French navy came up to the port of Algiers, June 12, 1830, the unity between the soldiers and their master, Hussein Pacha, was tottering on the verge of dissolution; a plot against his life had just been discovered, he had punished the ringleaders with death, and many who had been concerned in the conspiracy felt that there was no safety for them with him. Beaten constantly in every skirmish or battle, they conceived a high respect for the military genius of the invaders, and, ere the close of the summer campaign, offered their services in a body to General Clausel; this offer he promptly declined, and they thereupon withdrew, carrying their swords to the aid of other powers less scrupulous.