href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@45473@[email protected]#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[32] A stanch body of infantry from Germany, veterans of Spain and Italy, the flower of the Spanish nobility, knights of Malta, with a fleet of near five hundred vessels, contributed by Italy, Portugal, and even distant Holland, commanded by Andrew Doria, the great sea-officer of the age,—the whole under the immediate eye of the Emperor himself, with the countenance and benediction of the Pope, and composing one of the most complete armaments which the world had hitherto seen,—were directed upon Tunis. Barbarossa opposed them bravely, but with unequal forces. While slowly yielding to attack from without, his defeat was hastened by unexpected uprising within. Confined in the citadel were many Christian slaves, who, asserting the rights of freedom, obtained a bloody emancipation, and turned its artillery against their former masters. The place yielded to the Emperor, whose soldiers soon surrendered to the inhuman excesses of war. The blood of thirty thousand innocent inhabitants reddened his victory. Amidst these scenes of horror there was but one spectacle that afforded any satisfaction to the imperial conqueror. It was that of ten thousand Christian slaves rejoicing in emancipation, who met him as he entered the town, and, falling on their knees, thanked him as their deliverer.[33]

In the treaty of peace which ensued, it was expressly stipulated on the part of Tunis, that all Christian slaves, of whatever nation, should be set at liberty without ransom, and that no subject of the Emperor should for the future be detained in slavery.[34]

The apparent generosity of this undertaking, the magnificence with which it was conducted, and the success with which it was crowned drew to the Emperor the homage of his age beyond any other event of his reign. Twenty thousand slaves freed by treaty or by arms diffused through Europe the praise of his name. It is probable that in this expedition the Emperor was governed by motives little higher than vulgar ambition and fame; but the results by which it was emblazoned, in the emancipation of so many fellow-Christians from cruel chains, place him, with Cardinal Ximenes, among the earliest Abolitionists of modern times.

This was in 1535. Only a few short years before, in 1517, he conceded to a Flemish courtier the exclusive privilege of importing into the West Indies four thousand blacks from Africa. It is said that Charles lived long enough to repent what he had thus inconsiderately done.[35] Certain it is, no single concession of king or emperor recorded in history has produced such disastrous far-reaching consequences. The Fleming sold his monopoly to a company of Genoese merchants, who organized a systematic traffic in slaves between Africa and America. Thus, while levying a mighty force to check the piracies of Barbarossa, and to procure the abolition of Christian slavery in Tunis, the Emperor, with criminal inconsistency, laid the corner-stone of a new slavery, in comparison with which the enormity he warred against was trivial and fugitive.

Elated by the conquest of Tunis, filled also with the ambition of subduing all the Barbary States, and of extirpating Christian slavery, the Emperor in 1541 directed an expedition of singular grandeur against Algiers. The Pope tardily joined his influence to the martial array. But Nature proved stronger than Pope and Emperor. Within sight of Algiers a sudden storm shattered his proud fleet, and he was driven back to Spain, discomfited, with none of those trophies of emancipation with which his former expedition was crowned.[36]

The power of the Barbary States was now at its height. Their corsairs became the scourge of Christendom, while their much dreaded system of slavery assumed a front of new terror. Their ravages were not confined to the Mediterranean. They entered the ocean, and penetrated even to the Straits of Dover and St. George's Channel. From the chalky cliffs of England, and from the remote western coasts of Ireland, unsuspecting inhabitants were swept into cruel captivity.[37] The English government was aroused against these atrocities. In 1620, a fleet of eighteen ships, under the command of Sir Robert Mansel, Vice-Admiral, was despatched to punish Algiers. It returned without being able, in the language of the times, to "destroy those hellish pirates," though it obtained the liberation of "some forty poore captives, which they pretended was all they had in the towne." Purchas records, that the English fleet was indebted for information to "a Christian captive, which did swimme from the towne to the ships."[38] Not in this respect only does this expedition recall that of Charles the Fifth, which received important assistance from rebel slaves; we observe also a similar inconsistency in the government which directed it. It was in the year 1620,—dear to all the descendants of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock as an epoch of freedom,—while an English fleet was seeking the emancipation of Englishmen held in bondage by Algiers, that African slaves were first introduced into the English colonies of North America,[39] thus beginning that dreadful system whose long catalogue of humiliation and woes is not yet complete.

The expedition against Algiers was followed, in 1637, by another against Sallee, in Morocco. Terrified by its approach, the Moors desperately transferred a thousand captives, British subjects, to Tunis and Algiers. "Some Christians that were slaves ashore, who stole away out of the town and came swimming aboard," together with intestine feud, aided the fleet, and the cause of emancipation speedily triumphed.[40] Two hundred and ninety Britons were released, and a promise was extorted from the enemy to redeem the wretched captives sold away to Tunis and Algiers. Shortly afterwards an ambassador from the King of Morocco visited England, and on his way through the streets of London to his audience at court was attended by "four Barbary horses led along in rich caparisons, and richer saddles, with bridles set with stones; also some hawks; many of the captives whom he brought over going along afoot clad in white."