White Gold

by Giles Milton

  John Harrison returned to England with the released slaves in the summer of 1627. The stories of their experiences in Morocco are no longer extant, and it would fall to a new generation of English captives to chart the full horror of life as a Christian slave. But Harrison’s own writings offer a glimpse of the daily torments to which they were subjected. In his book, The Tragicall Life and Death of Muley Abdala Melek, he said that violent beatings were commonplace and revealed that many of the slaves had been acquired by the sultan. These were treated with even greater brutality than those held in Salé. “He would cause men to be drubbed, or beaten almost to death in his presence,” wrote Harrison, “[and] would cause some to be beaten on the soles of their feet, and after make them run up and downe among the stones and thornes.” Some of the sultan’s slaves had been dragged behind horses until they were torn to shreds. A few had even been dismembered while still alive, “their fingers and toes cut off by everie joint; armes and legs and so head and all.”

  When the sultan was in a black humor, he took great delight in torturing his Christian slaves. “He did cause some English boyes perforce to turne Moores,” recalled Harrison, “cutting them and making them capadoes or eunachs.” Others were beaten and mocked. When one English slave complained that he had nothing to eat except barley, the sultan ordered that his horse’s food bag be “hanged about the Englishman’s necke, full of barlie … and so made him eate the barlie like a horse.”

  The sultan’s slaves, whom Harrison had not managed to free in his several missions to Salé, eventually managed to dispatch a petition to King Charles I, asking him to “think … upon the distressed estate of us, Your Majesty’s poor subjects, slaves under the king of Morocus.” They reminded him that they had been in captivity for so long that they had almost forgotten their homeland: “some twenty years, some sixteen, some twelve, and he that hath been least, seven years in most miserable bondage.” The king read their petition, but declined to act. The truce with Sidi Mohammed was being more or less observed and the attacks on England’s coastlines had been temporarily halted. Preoccupied with troubles elsewhere, he abandoned the sultan’s English slaves to their fate.

  The uneasy peace was not to last long. The Salé corsairs, who depended upon slave trading for their livelihood, pleaded with Sidi Mohammed to abandon the truce. They argued that King Charles I had not respected his side of the agreement, having sent just four cannon, and reminded the marabout that the English king had displayed a singular lack of interest in attacking the Spanish. When it dawned on Sidi Mohammed that no military assistance was to be forthcoming, he ordered a series of spectacular new raids on England’s southern coast. Within a few months, Salé’s dungeons were once again filled with English captives. In one month alone—May 1635—more than 150 Englishmen were seized “and eight of them in Morocco circumcised perforce, and tortured to turne Moores.”

  The king’s patience finally snapped. When he learned that there were almost 1,200 captives in Salé, “amonge which there is 27 woemen,” he vowed to crush the slave traders once and for all. Diplomacy had failed. Now, the only answer was war.

  IN THE SHARP winter of 1637, a bullish sea captain named William Rainsborough was ordered to prepare a fleet of six warships and lead them toward the corsair stronghold of Salé. The town was to be bombarded until it was reduced to rubble. Captain Rainsborough was sanctioned to use whatever force he thought necessary, so long as it was “for the advantage of His Majestye’s honour and service, the preservacion of his territories, and the good of his subjectes.” He was also to keep a lookout for any corsairing vessels at sea. “If you shall meet with any pyrattes or sea-rovers,” said the king, “yow are to doe your best to apprehend or sincke them.”

  Rainsborough’s bellicose temperament was perfectly suited to such a mission and he relished the opportunity to destroy the corsairs. He assembled his fleet at Tilbury, in the Thames Estuary, and set sail in February 1637. He arrived in Salé within a month, having failed to capture any corsairs en route. This disappointment was more than compensated for by the providential timing of his arrival. Salé’s slave-trading corsairs “had made ready all their ships to go for the coast of England,” and their huge fleet lay at anchor in the harbour.

  Rainsborough was shocked at the number of vessels under their command. More than fifty had been made ready for action and their captains were preparing to launch attacks on both England and Newfoundland. One of Rainsborough’s lieutenants, John Dunton, learned that the corsairs were expecting to seize more captives than ever before. “The governor of New Salé [has] commanded all the captains … that they should go for the coast of England,” he was told, “ … and fetch the men, women and children out of their beds.” Rainsborough was in no doubt that they were in deadly earnest. “The last yeare, by this time, they had brought in 500 of his Majestie’s subjects,” he wrote, “and I veryly beleve, had wee not come, they would have taken many more this yeare.

  Most of the previous year’s captives were no longer being held in Salé. When Rainsborough made discreet inquiries ashore, he was told that they had been auctioned in the slave market. “All that I could heare,” he wrote, “is that many English have been transported to Algiers and Tunis.” These unfortunate individuals had been “sould for slaves, and there doth not remaine here [in Salé] above 250.” Although this news dismayed Rainsborough, he was pleased to learn that the town’s corsairs had split into two rival factions. One group was led by Sidi Mohammed, who was attempting to consolidate his grip over the republic of Salé. The other was led by a rebel named Abdallah ben All el-Kasri. He was “an obstinate fellow,” according to Rainsborough, “[and] puffed up with his luck in theeving.” He had seized the ancient kasbah, where he was holding 328 Englishmen and 11 women “in great misery.”

  Rainsborough decided to exploit the divisions in the town. Concerned that a general assault on Salé might unite the rival factions, he proceeded to make overtures to Sidi Mohammed and suggested a joint attack on the kasbah with the aim of expelling the rebel corsairs. This would restore the prestige of Sidi Mohammed—who, Rainsborough believed, could be contained—and would also enable him to free the English slaves held by el-Kasri. Rainsborough noted the advantages of the scheme in his journal: “a meanes that wee shall recover His Majestie’s subjects,” he wrote, “and keepinge this towne from ever haveinge any more men of warre.” It would not just benefit the English, but be “a happie turne for all Christendome.”

  Sidi Mohammed agreed to Rainsborough’s plan and released seventeen of his personal slaves as a sign of goodwill. Rainsborough, meanwhile, prepared to open hostilities, priming his heavy weaponry and training it on the clifftop kasbah. The ensuing bombardment caused total carnage. “We shot at the castle,” wrote John Dunton, “and into it, and over it, and through it, and into the town, and through the town, and over it, and amongst the Moors, and killed a great many of them.”

  As the dust settled, Rainsborough landed a troop of men and ordered them to dig a system of trenches. This allowed him to bring his heavy cannon ashore and fire on the ships that belonged to the rebel forces. “Our men did sink many of their ships,” wrote Dunton, “and shot through many of their houses, and killed a great many men.” If the English reports of the battle are correct, the rebels were taken aback by the accuracy of the attacking guns. “We did so torment them by sinking and burning their ships,” wrote Rainsborough, “that they were stark mad and at their wits’ end.” The English commander was thoroughly enjoying himself. He reveled in the bloodshed, and when two Salé caravels opened fire on his fleet, he showed them no mercy. “[We] set upon them … and did heave fire pots [primitive explosives] unto her, and did burne three men of them to death, and did kill fifteen men of them outright.”

  While Rainsborough sank ships in the harbor, Sidi Mohammed attacked the kasbah from the land. “He hath beleagred it with 20 thousand men, horse and foote,” wrote Rainsborough, “and burnt all theire corne.” It proved harder than expected t
o capture the castle, but after three weeks of intense bombardment the rebellious Hornacheros were a spent force. Weary of fighting and almost starved of provisions, they had no option but to capitulate.

  Their first act was to release the English slaves. John Dunton compiled a list of these men and women, recording their names and the places from which they were seized. His information reveals that the Salé raids had affected every corner of the kingdom. Although the majority had been taken from the West Country—thirty-seven from Plymouth alone—there were captives from as far afield as London, Hull, Jersey and Cardiff.

  By mid-August, William Rainsborough felt that he had achieved all he could. The rebel Hornacheros had been crushed, and their vessels were totally destroyed. Sidi Mohammed’s prestige had been greatly enhanced, while Rainsborough was convinced that the marabout could be restrained from attacking English villages and shipping with the occasional gift of weaponry and gunpowder. After receiving solemn assurances from Sidi Mohammed, Rainsborough set sail for England in the autumn of 1637, with 230 of the surviving slaves on board.

  He was given a warm reception when he arrived back home. There was a widespread feeling that the Salé menace had at long last been neutralized, and that the West Country was once again safe. There was additional cause for joy when King Charles I signed a treaty with the Moroccan sultan. The fourth clause of the treaty stated that “the King of Morocco shall prohibit and re-strayne all his subjects from takeinge, buyinge or receaveinge anie of the subjects of the said King of Great Brittainie to be used as slaves or bondmen in anie kind.”

  No one in England paused to consider that their concern for the white slaves was not matched by a similar compassion for the black slaves being brutally shipped out of Guinea, on Africa’s western coastline. Although England was not yet the principal slave nation in Europe—that dubious honor went to Portugal—an increasing number of blacks were being dispatched to her fledgling colonies in the Caribbean and North America. The suffering endured by these captives during the middle passage—the Atlantic crossing—was truly appalling. They were packed into unsanitary vessels and often forced to lie in a space smaller than a coffin. There was neither sanitation nor fresh food, and dysentery and fevers were rife. Sailors said that a slave ship could be smelled from more than a mile away at sea.

  Reports of this trade, which would eventually lead to the capture and sale of some 15 million Africans, troubled few consciences in England. It was seen as altogether different from the capture and sale of men and women from their own country. Indeed, most viewed the enslavement of black Africans as a legitimate and highly profitable branch of England’s growing international trade. More than a century would pass before people first began to draw parallels between the two slave trades and question whether or not the trade in black slaves could be morally justified.

  King Charles I’s attitude was no different from that of his subjects. Unmoved by the plight of Africa’s black slaves, he nevertheless abhorred the trade in white slaves and greeted William Rainsborough’s return with great joy. But the king soon discovered that the truce he had signed with the Moroccan sultan was to last just a few months. When he failed to stop English merchants from trading with Moroccan rebels, the sultan tore up the peace treaty. The Sallee Rovers, too, found reasons to recommence their attacks on English shipping. By 1643, so many new slaves had been captured that Parliament was forced to order churches to collect money in order to buy the slaves back from their captors. “It is therefore thought fit, and so ordained by the Lords and Commons in Parliament, that collections be made in the several churches within the City of London and Westminster, and the borough of Southwark.”

  Redeeming slaves was a costly business, for markets extended all along the coast of North Africa. By the 1640s, at least 3,000 Englishmen and women had been taken to Barbary, where they were languishing “in miserable captivity, undergoing divers and most insufferable labour, such as rowing in galleys, drawing carts, grinding in mills, with divers such unchristianlike works, most lamentable to express.”

  The crisis was at its most acute in the Moroccan port of Salé, and in the Turkish regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. These three maritime cities were nominally under the control of the Ottoman sultan, but real power was more often wielded by local admirals and slave-trading sea captains, who sold their European captives to merchants and dealers from right across the Islamic world. White slaves, who continually changed hands, were soon to be found not only in the great cities of Alexandria, Cairo and Istanbul, but also in dozens of smaller towns and ports. Some had even been enslaved in the remote Arabian peninsula. In one infamous incident that had occurred in 1610, Sir Henry Middleton and his crew had the misfortune to be seized in Aden and taken in chains to the inland city of Sana’a. It had required concerted military action to finally win their release.

  In 1646, a merchant named Edmund Cason was sent by Parliament to Algiers to buy back as many English slaves as possible. An initial search located some 750, while many more were said to “be turned Turkes through beatings and hard usage.” Cason bargained long and hard, but was obliged to pay an average price of £38 per slave. Female captives proved a great deal more expensive to redeem. He paid £800 for Sarah Ripley of London, and £1,100 for Alice Hayes of Edinburgh, while Mary Bruster of Youghal cost a staggering £1,392—more than thirty-six times the average. These were huge sums of money; the average annual income of a London shopkeeper was just £10, while even wealthy merchants were lucky to make more than £40 in a year. The cost of ransoming each female slave was more than most Londoners would earn in a lifetime. It helps to explain why the Barbary corsairs were more interested in ships’ crews than in their cargoes.

  Cason’s funds were soon exhausted, and he returned to England with just 244 freed captives. Those left behind in Algiers feared they had been abandoned to their fate and sent anguished letters to their loved ones. “Ah! Father, brother, friends, and acquaintance,” wrote Thomas Sweet, “use some speedy means for our redemption.” He begged that “our sighs will come to your ears and move pity and compassion,” and he ended his letter with a plea: “Deny us not your prayers, if you can do nothing else.”

  The Barbary corsairs had by now extended their attacks across the whole of Europe, targeting ships from as far afield as Norway and Newfoundland. The Portuguese and French suffered numerous hit-and-run raids on their shores and their shipping. The Italian city-states, too, were repeatedly attacked, with the coasts of Calabria, Naples and Tuscany enduring particularly aggressive strikes. Russians and Greeks were also enslaved, along with noblemen and merchants from various parts of the Holy Roman Empire. The islands of Majorca, Minorca, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica yielded particularly rich harvests for the slave dealers, while the citizens of Gibraltar were singled out so often that they wrote a desperate petition to the king of Spain, in which they bemoaned the fact that they never felt safe, “neither at night, nor during the day, neither in bed, nor at mealtimes, neither in the fields, nor in our homes.”

  Spain itself suffered the most devastating raids of all, and entire villages on the Atlantic coast were sold into slavery. The situation was even more critical on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. When the town of Calpe was attacked in 1637, the corsairs made off with no fewer than 315 women and children. Life in Spanish coastal villages soon became so dangerous that new taxes had to be levied on fish, meat, cattle and silk in order to pay for constructing sea defenses. But these proved of little use. By 1667, one of the Basque provinces had lost so many seamen to the corsairs that it could no longer meet its quota for the royal levy of mariners.

  The Barbary corsairs were indiscriminate when it came to choosing their victims, seizing even merchants and mariners from the colonies of North America. In 1645, a fourteen–gun ship from Massachusetts was the first colonial American vessel to be attacked by an Islamic pirate vessel. The crew managed to fight off this assault, but many of their seafaring comrades were not so fortunate. By the 1660s, a ste
ady trickle of Americans found themselves captured and enslaved in North Africa. The corsairs scored their greatest coup when they captured Seth Southwell, King Charles II’s newly appointed governor of Carolina. It was fortuitous for the king that one of his admirals had recently detained two influential Islamic corsairs, who were released in exchange for Southwell.

  The Sallee Rovers continued to plunder English shipping, in spite of the treaties they had signed. By the second half of the seventeenth century, the West Country fishermen were at their wits’ end. Virtually every coastal port had been touched in some way by the white slave trade, and there seemed no hope of ending the crisis.

  In 1672, there was—at long last—a glimmer of good news. The ruling sultan was dead and Morocco looked certain to plunge into civil war. It was hoped that in the ensuing chaos, the nations of Christian Europe could finally put an end to the trade in white slaves.

  2

  SULTAN OF SLAVES

  THE MESSENGER GALLOPED through the night, crossing rock-strewn wasteland and parched riverbeds. Dressed in a billowing djellaba and protected from the chill by a thick veil, he urged his dromedary onward with a stout stick, beating the beast to ride faster and faster. Shortly before dawn on 14 April 1672, he at last glimpsed his goal. In the far distance, lit by a thin shard of moon, were the gates and minarets of Fez.

  The messenger rode deep into the souk, pausing only when he came to the iron–studded doors of the viceroy’s residence, a secretive palace whose inner courtyards were fringed with orange trees. After explaining his mission to the sleepy gatekeeper, the messenger was whisked inside and ushered into the presence of the city’s acting viceroy, Moulay Ismail.