White Gold

by Giles Milton

  He arrived in Meknes in February and was immediately invited to a personal audience with Moulay Ismail. The sultan was the personification of charm at this first meeting. Kirke was “received by the king in his garden, being accompanied with four of his chiefest councillors and kaids, his bashaws and general officers.” Overawed by the formality of the occasion, he nervously handed Sir James Leslie’s letters of apology to Moulay Ismail. The sultan smiled graciously “[and] returned more favourable answers than could be expected from a prince so haughty.”

  He was extremely hospitable toward Kirke, offering him a tour of his lion den and laying on a dramatic display of Moroccan horsemanship. “We owe him great acknowledgements for his kind usage of us,” wrote one of the Englishmen in Kirke’s little entourage, “not only supplying us plentifully with necessaries, but in as much fashionable ceremony as could come from any well bred man.”

  Moulay Ismail proved adept at flattering his English guests and took particular care to woo and manipulate Colonel Kirke. He invited him to tea in his exquisite pleasure gardens and gave him a tour of the sweet-scented orange groves, glittering pavilions and pools of cool water. The two men “discoursed very morally of trust and honour,” and when Kirke lamely raised the vexed question of the peace treaty, Moulay Ismail smiled capriciously and proposed a four-year truce. He swore to Kirke that “thare never should be bullet shot against Tangier so long as I was in it.”

  Kirke was delighted with the success of his meeting and congratulated himself on his skills as a diplomat. He was convinced that the sultan was not only a man to be trusted but was keen to forge a closer relationship. When Moulay Ismail asked his new friend whether he could supply the Moroccan army with ten big guns, Kirke was only too happy to oblige, promising to “help him with everything he lacked.”

  The colonel was breathtakingly naïve in his negotiations with the sultan and completely overstepped his duties. He had been dispatched to Meknes as a mere emissary, yet he had assumed the role of an ambassador. Leslie might have forgiven him this transgression, were it not for the fact that Kirke displayed a total lack of regard for the English slaves being held in Morocco. These numbered at least 300, perhaps many more, and were being kept in pitiful conditions. Kirke almost certainly saw them at work, for Moulay Ismail relished the opportunity to display his slaves to visiting emissaries. Yet Kirke made virtually no mention of them in his dispatches. Instead, he penned a letter to London—where news of the slaves was anxiously awaited—extolling the sultan’s virtues. “I must tell the holle world,” he wrote, “I have met with a kinde prince and a just generall.”

  Sir James Leslie remained in Tangier for two months, awaiting the vessel carrying the sultan’s presents. It was not until March that it finally arrived, and he was able to set off for Meknes. Leslie proved a rather better judge of character than Kirke and quickly realized that while the sultan was all too quick to make promises, he was rather less eager to follow them through. Leslie tried his best to negotiate a release of the slaves, but Moulay Ismail washed his hands of the whole affair and asked Kaid Omar—the very man who had been defeated by the English—to draft a truce.

  When the ambassador returned to the issue of redeeming the English slaves, Moulay Ismail was even less willing to negotiate. Leslie’s first hurdle was to ascertain exactly how many slaves were in the sultan’s possession. Moulay Ismail admitted to having just 130 Englishmen, of whom 70 were former members of the Tangier garrison. A further 60 belonged to members of his entourage, bringing the alleged total to 190. Yet the actual number of slaves was a great deal higher, as Leslie well knew. Scores of English ships had been seized in the preceding years, and their crews had disappeared without trace.

  With sinking spirits, Leslie tried to buy back the seventy slaves captured from Tangier. But Moulay Ismail laughed in scorn at the sum he was offered and demanded 200 pieces of eight per slave. He added that the sixty slaves owned by his courtiers would be even more expensive. The total sum was far more than Leslie had available and, after months of fruitless negotiations, he was obliged to leave the court empty-handed. When the money was eventually raised and sent to the sultan, Moulay Ismail said that he had meant 200 ducats—an even greater sum—not pieces of eight.

  Leslie’s sojourn at the court of Meknes left him exhausted. He felt that the Moroccan sultan had consistently got the upper hand and bemoaned the fact that he had failed to free a single slave. “I have beene a very unfortunate man in this businesse,” he wrote, “ … [and] all I desire is that I may not be blamed before I am heard.”

  Moulay Ismail, too, was most unsatisfied by the outcome. He had anticipated an array of presents from the English ambassador and was disgusted to discover that many of them were of inferior quality. The costly cloths and silks had been spoiled by the rain, and the English muskets exploded on being fired. When the sultan came to view the “six Gallway naggs”—specially selected for their “long tailes”—he found them fit for nothing but the knackers’ yard.

  Sir James Leslie continued to object to Moulay Ismail’s obfuscation throughout 1681 and repeatedly demanded the return of the English slaves. Although the sultan refused to accede to their release, he did agree to dispatch an ambassador to London. This ambassador was given plenipotentiary powers, enabling him to negotiate the terms by which all the English captives would be freed.

  The man chosen to represent Moulay Ismail was Kaid Muhammad ben Haddu Ottur, a Moroccan nobleman whose mother was rumored to be an English slave. Colonel Kirke had met the kaid on several occasions and believed him to be “a person of a good temper and understanding.” He was alone in holding such a view. The French emissary Pidou de St. Olon warned the English to treat the kaid with extreme caution. “His ways and discourse dis–cover a great deal of cunning,” he wrote. “He is deceitful and wicked to the highest degree.” The ambassador’s retinue was held to be even less trustworthy. One of his advisers, Hamet Lucas, was a renegade Englishman who had deserted from Tangier’s garrison some years earlier. Even Kirke called him “a subtile and impudent vilain” and stressed the importance of secrecy whenever Lucas was within earshot. “Our affairs in England … ought as carefully to be concealed from these people as they endeavour to keep us ignorant in theirs.”

  The embassy sailed from Tangier in December 1681 and arrived in London after a three-week voyage. There was great excitement in England about the arrival of the ambassador and his retinue, particularly among the West Country communities who had lost so many of their menfolk to the Salé corsairs. The king and his ministers also looked forward to face-to-face talks with their Moroccan counterparts, hoping to secure a deal that would lead not only to the slaves being freed, but would also end years of enmity between the two nations.

  On 11 January 1682, the ambassador and his entourage had their first audience with King Charles II, a splendid affair that was held in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace. As the ambassador entered the hall, the assembled courtiers were enchanted by his exotic demeanor. Only one shrewd observer—the diarist John Evelyn—expressed any disquiet at the manner of his entrance, noting that the kaid was haughty in his bearing and approached the throne “without making any sort of reverence, not bowing his head or body.”

  King Charles himself did not care one jot. The Merry Monarch was so excited by the occasion that he flung off his hat in an exuberant display of joy and welcome, a gesture that would later have important ramifications for the ambassador. Evelyn described Kaid Haddu Ottur and his men as “all clad in the Moorish habite, cassocks of coloured cloth or silk, with buttons and loops.” To keep out the winter chill, they also wore a “white woollen mantle, so large as to wrap both head and body.” On their heads were small turbans, while their arms and legs were bare, except for their thick leather socks. The ambassador was the most resplendent, wearing a delicate string of pearls “oddly woven in his turban.” Evelyn found him “an handsome person, well featur’d, of a wise looke, subtill, and extreamly civil.” He brought
two lions as a gift for the king, as well as a number of ostriches, whose humorous facial expressions caused the assembled courtiers to chuckle.

  London society extended every possible courtesy to the Moroccan entourage, hoping that their hospitality would help win the release of the slaves. King Charles II’s French mistress, Louise de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, prepared a “great banquet of sweetemeates and musiq” in their honor and invited all of Lon–don’s leading courtiers to welcome them to the capital. The English guests dressed in the most outlandish costumes and looked “as splendid as jewells and excesse of bravery could make them.”

  The Moroccan ambassador and his retinue looked on in bemused disbelief as the revelry rapidly degenerated into bacchanalia and saucy frolicking. Declining to join the fun, they “behav’d themselves with extraordinary moderation and modesty,” wrote Evelyn, “ … neither admiring nor seeming to regard any thing.” They turned down the opportunity to engage in raucous dancing and turned up their noses at the offer of wine.

  “They dranke a little milk and water,” wrote Evelyn, “but not a drop of wine; they also dranke of a sorbet and jacolatt [chocolate].” Evelyn was surprised that they retained their sobriety for the entire evening “[and] did not looke about, or stare on ye ladies, or expresse the least surprise.”

  In the days that followed the banquet, the ambassador and his men spent much of their time in Hyde Park, “where he and his retinue shew’d their extraordinary activity in horsemanship, and flinging and catching their launces at full speede.” The kaid was taken to the theatre on several occasions, where, “upon any fool–ish or fantastical action, he could not forbear laughing, but he endeavour’d to hide it with extraordinary modesty and gravity.”

  The Moors thoroughly enjoyed themselves in London, becoming a regular fixture on the social circuit. They showed no inclination to discuss the English slaves in Morocco, and the king’s ministers decided not to press the issue until they could be sure of meeting with success. Instead, they took the Moroccans on sightseeing expeditions, making short excursions to Windsor, Newmarket, Oxford and Cambridge. Everywhere they went, huge crowds gathered to greet them. It was as if the whole of England wanted to glimpse a representative of the nation that had for so long been attacking their shipping and enslaving their mariners.

  In Cambridge, the ambassador was invited to a banquet presided over by the vice-chancellor and heads of colleges. Here, for the first time since arriving in England, he allowed himself to join in the merriment. He munched his way through so many “soused eeles, sturgeon and samson” that he felt “a little indisposed” and had to lie down in the provost’s lodgings at King’s College.

  In February, the ambassador was back in London, visiting West–minster Abbey, where the young Henry Purcell had just been appointed organist. In April, he was the guest of the Royal Society, whose president was Sir Christopher Wren. He was elected honorary fellow and took great delight in inscribing his name in the charter book “in fair character in Arabic.” The following month, the ambassador was off again, this time to Oxford. He was given lodgings at the Angel, where he was visited by the vice-chancellor and various doctors, some of whom spoke Arabic. Dr. Edward Pocock made a speech in Arabic, “which made him laugh”—probably because of the numerous mistakes.

  The ambassador beguiled all whom he met and proved no less skillful when—after enjoying almost six months of lavish hospitality—he sat down to discuss the slaves being held in Morocco. King Charles II had done all he could to welcome the ambassador with “more than ordinary form,” hoping that it would result in a lasting and advantageous peace. The negotiations he conducted with the ambassador were held behind closed doors, and details of the diplomatic wrangling were never set down on paper. But the resultant treaty—signed in March 1682—was proof enough that the king had been worsted. The key concern had been the release of the English slaves in Morocco. Although the kaid agreed to sell back these captives at a cost of 200 Spanish dollars each, he said that this would need ratification by the sultan in person. Another priority had been to bring to a halt the depredations of the Salé corsairs, who continued to ransack the West Country and seize fisherfolk. Yet the treaty signed by King Charles had “nothing in it of the sea, the ambassador professing utter ignorance of sea af–fairs.” It also permitted the Moroccans to continue to buy weaponry from the English—a clause that raised many an eyebrow in London—and sanctioned the release of seventy-nine Moroccan prisoners of war being held in Tangier. This was done in the belief that Moulay Ismail would display a similar magnanimity toward his English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish slaves.

  The Moroccan ambassador returned home in September 1682 and immediately headed to Moulay Ismail’s court to report on his triumph. Shortly before arriving in Meknes, he and his retinue were greeted by ten of the sultan’s black guard. Far from congratulating the men on their success, they “apprehended the embassador and his camerades [comrades], putting them immediately into irons.” They were then marched to the sultan, who expressed great anger at their conduct. According to Hamet Lucas, Moulay Ismail shouted at them, called them dogs and reproached them for being overly friendly to their Christian hosts. He then ordered the ambassador to be “dragged by mules for the space of twelve leagues through a country of stones and bryers.”

  The reason for the sultan’s fury soon became apparent. In the hope of advancement, one of the ambassador’s retinue had told Moulay Ismail that Muhammad ben Haddu Ottur had spent his time in England drinking and consorting with bad women. The ambassador retorted that he had been the very model of probity, but added that the others had indulged in “whoring, and mixing pagan rumps with Christian giblets.” In the end, it was one man’s word against another. The sultan was inclined to believe his ambassador and released him from his irons, confessing later that he had spared him only when he learned that King Charles II had saluted him by taking off his hat. The rest of the retinue were condemned for consorting with prostitutes and were ordered to strip naked. “Their principle evidence was cut off,” reads one English account of the incident, “which it is thought will spoil their whoring for the future.”

  The ambassador never repaid the kindness he had been shown in England and certainly made no effort to persuade Moulay Ismail to release the English slaves. Thomas Phelps, one of the English captives in Meknes, wrote that “the dog has returned to his vomit … and now improves his knowledge of English affairs to the detriment and ruin of all the king’s subjects.” He added that whenever Muhammad ben Haddu Ottur passed the slaves as they worked, he would “salute them with a devillish curse, which to the best of my remembrance, was expressed thus: Alli hazlebuck, i.e. God, roast your father.”

  Moulay Ismail, too, was as vehemently anti-English as ever. He disowned all of the ambassador’s work in England, including the treaty, and declined to inscribe his signature alongside that of King Charles II. He also refused to release his English slaves, even though the Tangier garrison had freed all of their Moroccan captives. When the English protested, Moulay Ismail demanded that another ambassador be sent to Morocco to renegotiate the treaty.

  King Charles II himself dispatched a letter in Arabic to Moulay Ismail, but the sultan was indignant that “its tone was not more flattering and servile.” He replied with a stinging rebuke, informing the king that he would not rest “till I have sat down before Tangier and filled it with Moors, and reduced it to my possession by the favour of God.” On the unresolved issue of peace at sea, he could scarcely have been less willing to compromise. “We have no need of it,” he wrote in his letter, adding that Moroccan corsairs would continue to harass English shipping.

  The sultan soon fulfilled his promise to fill Tangier with Moors, although not through military victory. With the peace treaty in shreds, King Charles II lost interest in his Moroccan outpost. Instead of pouring yet more money into the costly Tangier experiment—which had singularly failed to stop the depredations of the Salé corsairs—he ordered the evacua
tion and destruction of the town. During the winter of 1683, Tangier’s harbor and fortifications—built at such a huge cost—were systematically demolished. The following February, the last English troops were pulled out.

  The abandonment of Tangier did not change Moulay Ismail’s attitude toward the English, nor did it encourage him to release any of his slaves. King Charles II died in 1685. During the short reign of King James II, many hundreds of English captives languished in their underground cells, alongside thousands of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Italians. No attempt was made to win their freedom and the first news of them for many a year was received in 1689, when a Dutchman, Jan Smit Heppendorp, managed to visit a cell containing 400 English and North American captives. He wrote to William of Orange, England’s Dutch-born monarch, informing him they were “in great misery and servitude, such as there is no resemblance of in any other part of the world.”

  King William III’s conscience was pricked by this news and he began a series of discussions about their liberation. For five long years he attempted to haggle and negotiate, but the sultan kept demanding an increasingly large ransom. King William was so anxious to free the slaves that he eventually agreed to the extortionate sum of £15,000 and 1,200 barrels of gunpowder, sending Captain George Delaval to Morocco with both. “The ship was so full of pouder,” wrote Delaval, “that we were in continuall fear of her blowing up.”

  Moulay Ismail began disputing the terms of the agreement within hours of the English captain landing in Tetouan. Delaval was exasperated but displayed commendable spirit in refusing to hand over the money until he had tangible evidence that the slaves were going to be released. His persistence—and presents—eventually bore fruit. In December 1701 the sultan agreed to free 194 of his English slaves, leaving just 30 in Meknes.