O that the rushing flames thy billows green May redden, when, far flashing o'er the wave, The wise Cardona wrought, that none might know His muffled oars should pass: the winds that blow The skill of man hath fail'd: but Heav'n shall throw On that fell hold and sink of pirates dire." (45.) It must, however, be confessed, that at this period other Christian states displayed little more vigour or alacrity in dealing with these depredators. An English squadron under Sir Robert Mansel, in 1620, made an ineffectual effort to burn the Algerine fleet in their harbour: his failure only served to embolden them the more. In 1627 they made a foray as far north as Iceland, and brought home Christian slaves from the Vestmann Islands. In 1636, while we were disputing about ship-money, they plundered the coast near Plymouth; though this insolence was a little checked in the following year by Captain Rainsborough's success against the rovers of Sallee. The French and Dutch, and the Venetians, occasionally captured and destroyed their vessels, but with no decisive result; till, in 1683, the gallant old Huguenot Abraham Du Quesne, with the navy of France, which he commanded as Vice-Admiral, took and burnt the town, levelled the fortifications, and sank or blew up every vessel in their port. The last act of resistance on the part of these blood-stained miscreants was to massacre all the French on whom they could lay their hands, and to shoot off the head of the French consul in a mortar against the bombarding fleet. (46.) Strange that even after this the European powers should again have adopted their former weak and compromising policy, making treaties with the piratical states, which such allies never meant to keep, and feeding their cupidity by paying ransom for those whom they ought to have rescued by force of arms. In 1684, by an act of very bad faith to the Portuguese, Charles II. abandoned Tangier. In the following century Spain was left to struggle disastrously and alone. In 1708, profiting by her weakness from the War of the Succession, the Moors gained possession of Oran. It was gallantly recovered in 1732 by the Count of Montemar; but relinquished after a ruinous earthquake in 1790, and the Spanish garrison withdrawn to Mazarquivir. The efforts made by Charles III. were vigorous; but they failed miserably under the blunders of O'Reilly and other incompetent commanders. At length, in 1816, the arms of Great Britain and Holland under the command of Lord Exmouth inflicted on the Algerines their long-merited chastisement, and put an end to this lasting reproach of Christianity and civilization. Whatever may now be the future of Algiers under French protection, we may rejoice that at least the pining misery of the captives in that guilty land will be known no more. (47.) In Gongora's time the misery was nearly at its height. Every year the honest Friars of the Redemption went forth from the Peninsula with the alms of Christian benefactors, or sums entrusted to them by the relatives of the victims, and bought off hundreds of helpless people, women and children.* After the fatal expedition of King Sebastian, Philip II. made use of these friars to redeem the remnant of Portuguese troops left prisoners in Morocco, 2000 in number, and supplied them liberally with funds.t But the very readiness of the faithful to give their money was an encouragement to the Moors to prosecute their trade; and they would sometimes lie in wait to intercept the transports of the newly ransomed, and make them prisoners a second time before they could reach their native shore-a sufficiently humiliating state of things to be endured by a country which had extended her sway to both Indies. The good friars sustained all kinds of hardships and privations in these errands of mercy. Sometimes, if their money failed, they would remain themselves in captivity, that they might send home those whom they came to ransom. Often were they ill-treated by the Moorish judges, pelted with mud and stones by the Moorish rabble; and some of them died under lawless violence, or the rigours of imprisonment. In parti * Altuna, 328-9, 340. + Id. 218, 286. cular, Friar Juan Gil, whose name must be dear to all lovers of literature as the deliverer of Cervantes, endured such trials as shewed him to be no common example of Christian heroism. It is no reflection on the memory of these good friars, that they did not effectually excite the rulers of Christian lands to a different course of action, any more than it is on our own clergy to have raised funds and preached sermons for a society for the redemption of captives, even to the reign of George the Second.* But it is as little to the credit of the governing powers in Great Britain, as to those of Spain, that they left these water-thieves to themselves so long, till their trade died out rather by the operation of kind Nature, which has choked the piratical ports of Morocco with sand-bars, than by the resolute exertion of Christian arms. (48.) If, however, other countries must share the blame of this unworthy tolerance of robbers on the seas, Spain alone is answerable for the lawlessness of her own people at home. The Catalans were almost a province of brigands. The Roque Guinart of Cervantes was a well-known living character of the time of Philip III.+ There were different gangs, who went in bands of fifty or a hundred men each, and no * "Expended for Redemption of Captives, £400,"-Durham Chapter Accounts, 1663. Surtees Society, xxxvii. 260. If like sums were paid by other cathedrals at this period, it must have been as good as Peter-Pence to the Infidels. + Don Quixote, part ii. c. 60. travelling was safe.* If they were sometimes taken, and hung on the trees in clusters, as Cervantes describes, the process was more summary than efficacious. In the year 1616, Davila says, they had increased to the number of 6000, acted as if they had been lords of the soil, coined money, and occupied towns, as if they had been the king's militia, when the Viceroy, the Duke of Albuquerque at length captured their strongholds, and suppressed them by military executions.t And in Spain has been lamentably slow in adopting any efficient or salutary system for the repression of such outlaws. We may find the sensible Feyjoo, in the middle of the eighteenth century, offering advice to his government, to do what was done by us as long ago as the reign of the Tudors, to make it the duty of the local magistrates to suffer no one to live at large in town or country, who could give no satisfactory account of the means by which he lived. another place, having to advise how a Spanish nobleman might decline an unreasonable challenge to a duel, without being branded as a coward: "Let him offer his services," he says, "to the magistrates. In Spain, hitherto, there has been no lack of robbers; and it does not seem likely that there will be in the time to come. Let him go out in pursuit of them in any district which is infested with them: he will incur * Cabrera, 501. Villanueva, Viage Literario, xviii. 66. + Davila, 193. |