The French have been forced sometimes to make use of violent means, when they cannot get the princes to discharge these forced loans, by pillaging some village, and making slaves of the inhabitants; after which they have balanced accounts with his majesty, and paid for as many as they had taken above their due. But these measures, says the author, don’t always succeed; and even though one was sure of getting paid this way, yet that it would be better not to make a practice of it, for fear of drawing the resentment of the country upon a man, which, sooner or later he would feel to his cost—(p. 258.)
Le Maire’s Travels, about 1690.—Astley’s Voyages, vol. ii.
Sometimes the king of Senegal makes incursions on the weakest of his neighbours, driving off their cattle, or making slaves of them, which he sells for brandy. When his stock of this grows low, he locks it up in a small chest, giving the key to one of his favorites, whom he dispatches, perhaps thirty leagues off, and thus saves his liquor by putting it out of his power to get at it. If he has no opportunity of exercising his tyranny on his neighbours, he makes no scruple of living on his own subjects, staying with his court, which consists of two hundred of those who have learnt all the worst qualities of the whites, till he has eat up the inhabitants; and, if they presume to complain, selling them for slaves.—(p. 260.)
As long as the brandy bottle lasts the prince is drunk: no answer is to be expected till all the liquor is out. When he grows sober, he gives his audience of congée, presenting the factor with two or three slaves, which he sends to have taken up in the nearest villages. Unhappy are they who at that time fall into the hands of his guards, for they stay to make no choice.—(p. 260, 261.)
Travels (about 1730), of Francis Moore, Factor several years to the Royal African Company of England.
The king of Barsalle, so soon as he has wasted what he has gotten, either by taking an enemy’s town, or one of his own, he must look out for some new prize to give it to his men.—Astley, ii. 261.
Rohone, where the king of Barsali commonly resides, stands near the sea, about one hundred miles from Joar, which lies in the same kingdom. When he wants goods or brandy, he sends a messenger to the governor of James Fort, to desire he would send up a sloop with a cargo, which the governor never fails to do. Against the time the vessel is arrived, the king plunders some of his enemy’s towns, selling the people for such goods as he wants, which commonly is brandy or rum, gunpowder, ball, fire-arms, pistols, and cutlasses for his soldiers, and coral and silver for his wives and mistresses. If he is at war with no neighbouring king, he falls upon one of his own towns, and makes bold to sell his own miserable subjects.
His usual way of living is, to sleep all day till sun-set, at which time he gets up to drink, and goes to sleep again till midnight, when he rises and eats; and if he has any strong liquors, will sit and drink till day-light, and then eat and go to sleep again, When he is well stocked with liquor, he will sit and drink for five or six days together, and not eat one morsel of any thing in all that time. It is to this insatiable thirst after brandy, that his subjects freedoms and families are in so precarious a situation[[58]]; for he often goes with some of his troops, by a town in the daytime, and returns in the night, and sets fire to three parts of it, placing guards at the fourth, to seize the people as they run out from the fire: he ties their arms behind them, and marches them either to Joar or Rohone, where he sells them.—(p. 261, 262.). The king furnishes the Europeans with slaves very easily: he sends a troop of guards to some village, which they surround; then seizing as many as they have orders for, they bind them up and send them away to the ships, where, the ship mark being put upon them, they are heard of no more.
They usually carry the infants in sacks, and gag the men and women, for fear they should alarm the villages through which they are carried; for these actions are never committed in the villages near the factories, which it is the king’s interest not to ruin, but in those up the country. It often happens, that some escape, and alarm the country, which, taking arms, join the persons injured, and pursue the robbers. If they catch them, they carry them before the king, who then denies his commission, and sells them on the spot for slaves. What is further remarkable, if any of the injured people appear as evidence still in bonds before the king, they are also adjudged to be slaves, and sold as such.[[59]]—(p. 268.).