[Footnote 51: _Siècle de Louis XIV._ chap. 14.]
An incident is mentioned by the historian, which unhappily shows how little the French at that time, even while engaged in securing the emancipation of their own countrymen, had at heart the cause of general freedom. As an officer of the triumphant fleet received the Christian slaves who were brought to him and liberated, he observed among them many English, who, in the empty pride of nationality, maintained that they were set at liberty out of regard to the King of England. The Frenchman at once summoned the Algerines, and, returning the foolish captives into their hands, said, "These people pretend that they have been delivered in the name of their monarch; mine does not offer them his protection. I return them to you. It is for you to show what you owe to the King of England." The Englishmen were again hurried to prolonged slavery. The power of Charles the Second was impotent in their behalf--as was the sense of justice and humanity in the French officer or in the Algerine government.
Time would fail, even if materials were at hand, to develop the course of other efforts by France against the Barbary States. Nor can I dwell upon the determined conduct of Holland, one of whose greatest naval commanders, Admiral de Ruyter, in 1661, enforced at Algiers the emancipation of several hundred Christian slaves.[52] The inconsistency, which we have so often remarked, occurs also in the conduct of France and Holland. Both these countries, while using their best endeavors for the freedom of their white people, were cruelly engaged in selling blacks into distant American slavery; as if every word of reprobation, which they fastened upon the piratical, slaveholding Algerines, did not return in eternal judgment against themselves.
[Footnote 52: Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xviii. p. 441.]
Thus far I have chiefly followed the history of military expeditions. War has been our melancholy burden. But peaceful measures were also employed to procure the _redemption_ of slaves; and money sometimes accomplished what was vainly attempted by the sword. In furtherance of this object, missions were often sent by the European governments. These sometimes had a formal diplomatic organization; sometimes they consisted of fathers of the church, who held it a sacred office, to which they were especially called, to open the prison doors, and let the captives go free.[53] It was through the intervention of the superiors of the Order of the Holy Trinity, who were despatched to Algiers by Philip the Second of Spain, that Cervantes obtained his freedom by ransom, in 1579.[54] Expeditions of commerce often served to promote similar designs of charity; and the English government, forgetting or distrusting all their sleeping thunder, sometimes condescended to barter articles of merchandise for the liberty of their subjects.[55]