by Giles Milton
Pellow was appalled, for he knew that this would spell his immediate doom. He asked Johnston if he was speaking in earnest, and the renegade replied with some relish that he was. When Pellow heard this, he was unable to control his temper. “[I] could no longer forbear him,” he wrote, “but directly drew my sword and gave him a very deep wound across his face.” It was unfortunate that he had not killed Johnston, “for after my giving him this shrewd cut … he went directly to the governor.” Determined to have his revenge, Johnston proceeded to reveal every detail of the escape plot.
Salé’s governor was stunned that these runaway slaves should attempt to escape from under his very nose and ordered Pellow to be brought to him directly. “Looking at me very fiercely,” wrote Pellow, “and turning up the white of his eyes sullenly, [he] told me that he never thought me to be so much a villain.” Declaring that Johnston deserved nothing but praise for informing on his erstwhile comrades, the governor informed Pellow that unless he could justify his actions—which he thought most unlikely—he would “be punished in a way deserving of so notorious a crime.”
Pellow had given some thought as to how best to defend himself. He told the governor that Johnston was lying and said that he could prove it—but would only do so in the presence of Johnston himself. The governor, who relished the spectacle of two Englishmen arguing for their lives, ordered the renegade to be brought forth instantly.
Johnston spoke first, repeating the details of Pellow’s intended escape. But when it was Pellow’s turn to speak, he sang a very different tune. He said it was Johnston who had initiated the idea of escape and that he had, “of a long time back, continually teazed me to join with him.” Pellow added fuel to the fire by telling the governor that Johnston had been so persistent in his desire to escape that his only option had been to gash him with his sword. “[For] his so wicked importunities,” he said, “I gave him the cut.”
The governor listened with incredulity to Pellow’s story, but his disbelief was tempered by Pellow’s insistence that he had a witness who could confirm everything. The governor promptly summoned William Hussey, whom he proceeded to cross-examine.
Hussey immediately realized that his life—and Pellow’s—were at stake. He proved a sterling alibi, informing the governor that if Pellow had not slashed Johnston, then “he had fully designed to have given it himself.” When asked to explain further, Hussey delivered the coup de grace. He said that “for a long time back, I have not been at quiet on [account of] Johnston’s frequent importuning me to join with him in escape.” He added that Johnston had repeatedly asserted that Pellow was also intending to escape—something he had found hard to believe. “This, sir, I must confess very much surprised me,” he said, “I having always found Pellow very easy under his present condition.”
The governor, having listened to Hussey’s story with rapt attention, thought long and hard before he spoke. At length, he turned toward Johnston with beetled brow and told him “that he could not imagine how he could invent such a damnable lie,” adding that if Hussey had not given evidence in Pellow’s defense, “[he] must in all likelihood have taken away the life of an innocent person.” He then ordered Johnston to be clapped in irons, and informed Pellow and Hussey that they were free to go.
The two men could scarcely believe that their hastily concocted tale had succeeded in convincing the governor of their innocence. Pellow, in particular, had once again proved himself to be a survivor—one whose quick wits and bold tongue had saved him from serious punishment. He remained furious with Johnston for having wrecked the very real chance he had of escaping from Morocco. Yet he felt guilty about the punishments that Johnston was certain to receive and begged the governor to pardon him. He also presented him with forty ducats, “which I had been a long time before scraping together,” and said that he hoped this would lead to Johnston’s speedy release.
William Johnston’s betrayal had a profound effect on Pellow. It served to remind him of the extraordinary dangers of trying to escape from Morocco and brought home the fact that he had twice gambled with his own life. He vowed to be more cautious in the future, and it was to be some years before he gathered the courage to make one final, and desperate, bid for freedom.
11
BLOOD RIVALS
TWO YEARS HAD passed since Commodore Stewart’s successful mission to Meknes, yet there was no sign that the sultan intended to release his other European slaves. The great palace works continued apace, and thousands of captives still toiled on the rambling walls and ramparts. The size of the slave population ebbed and flowed during this time. New ships were constantly being brought into Salé, along with their captive crews, keeping Moulay Ismail supplied with fresh slaves. But a large number of men being held in Meknes had chosen to apostatize, turning their backs on their erstwhile comrades. The slaves they left behind in the slave pens could only hope and pray that their own governments would send an emissary to negotiate with the sultan.
In 1723, it seemed to some of those slaves that their prayers were about to be answered. On a sparkling October morning in that year, a group of French padres could be seen splashing through the surf in Tetouan bay. Father Jean de la Faye and his brotherhood had landed in Morocco with costly presents and money in the hope of emulating the extraordinary success of Commodore Stewart. Full of optimism and in high spirits, they were buoyed by the belief that they would manage to buy back all of their countrymen in captivity.
The French had led a number of missions to Meknes in the early years of Moulay Ismail’s reign, and on each occasion they had managed to free several hundred of their enslaved compatriots. But the sultan had grown increasingly prickly in recent years, and the padres had therefore channeled all their finances into freeing the slaves of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, where they stood a greater chance of success. Now, with news of the British triumph in everyone’s minds, Father Jean and his comrades felt it was time to reopen negotiations with Moulay Ismail.
Their arrival in Tetouan was not greeted with quite the same enthusiasm as had been accorded to Commodore Stewart. Basha Hamet, the local governor, insisted on examining Father Jean’s presents, then brusquely informed him that the crates of Chinese faience and gilded cloths were unsuitable. He was offended by the padre’s manner and showed his displeasure by locking up several of his French slaves in the local prison. When Father Jean went to visit these men, he was horrified. “The dampness, stench and amount of vermin in this prison would be capable of killing them in a very short time,” he wrote.
The padres decided to press on toward Meknes, even though they were short of food and supplies. “Since our departure from Tetouan,” wrote Father Jean, “we have not found a single drop of good water.” Although he and his men filled their casks from rivers and streams, “the water stank, was murky, and full of worms and insects on account of there being no current.”
Most visiting dignitaries were accorded a modicum of respect when they arrived in the imperial capital. But Father de la Faye and his men were poorly treated from the outset and lodged in accommodations that were scarcely better than that in which the slaves were held. “We only saw daylight through an opening which was in the ceiling of the reception room,” wrote Father Jean. He was unable to fathom the reason for the sultan’s disregard. It may have been provoked by regret at having released his British captives, but may have been just another instance of the sultan’s quixotic nature.
After a few nights in Meknes, the padres were surprised to hear a knock at the door of their lodging. They were greeted by a handful of French captives who had bribed their guard into allowing them out of the slave pen. “As soon as we set eyes on their miserable state,” wrote Father Jean, “compassion changed our joy into pain.” He wept freely at the pitiful condition of the captives and wanted to spend the evening praying with them. But the men had to return to their quarters without delay, for they were fearful of being discovered. “After a little speech to strengthen them, and encourage them to perse
vere, they left.” Later that night, Father Jean dispatched a small purse of coins to the slaves, in order that they might bribe their guards to provide them with additional rations.
Several days passed before Father Jean and his men were granted permission to visit the French captives in the slave pens. They were appalled by the conditions and fought back tears as they listened to harrowing stories told by the slaves. The men complained that the hard labor was truly punishing: “work which continues from dawn to dusk without stopping, through rain and the heat of the sun, without any respite.” Father Jean also learned that nationality made no difference to the way in which the slaves were treated. He spoke with Dutch, Portuguese, Genoese and Spanish slaves, and all told a similar story. He was also told that female captives were treated with even greater cruelty. One woman who had refused to convert to Islam had been tortured so badly that she had died of her injuries. “The blacks burnt her breasts with candles; and with the utmost cruelty they had thrown melted lead in those areas of her body which, out of decency, cannot be named.”
After several days of waiting at court, Father Jean received word that the sultan was prepared to grant him an audience. This was the first piece of good news since his arrival in Morocco, and he made haste to prepare his presents: two huge looking glasses, a damascened hunting rifle, gold brocade and three trunks of faience. He then headed to the imperial palace where Moulay Ismail was waiting in anticipation of his gifts.
The sultan’s great age—he was seventy-six—was at last beginning to show. His frame was withered, his head shook continually and his darting black eyes—which were always small—had sunk deep into his head. They accentuated his extraordinarily fleshy lips, “on which he rests his tongue when he’s not speaking, which means that he dribbles continuously.” Yet he still cut an imposing figure, surrounded by dozens of fawning attendants. “We noticed that when the sultan wanted to spit,” wrote Father Jean, “his favourite Moors approached to receive his spit in a tissue. One received it in his hands, and rubbed it in his face as if it was a precious ointment.”
The padres were quick to notice that Moulay Ismail was wearing yellow, his killing color, “which denoted that he was going to order some executions.” They did not have to wait long to witness the bloodshed. Four criminals were ushered into the courtyard and the sultan ordered them to have their throats slit. When they begged for mercy, he temporarily commuted their death sentences to sound beatings. They were given 300 blows of a cudgel and tossed three times. They were then trussed up and executed.
The padres, horrified by the spectacle, felt sick and faint. Their fragile condition was made worse by Moulay Ismail’s insistence that they stand in the midday sun, which Father Jean found “très piquant.” But he did not dare to complain and eventually succeeded in starting negotiations to release the slaves.
Father Jean was shocked to discover that there were only 130 French captives in the slave pen—a fraction of the number he had expected to find. Death and disease had claimed a large number, while many more had chosen apostasy as a means of release. The surviving few had been held in captivity for many years. Germain Cavelier, aged sixty-one, had spent four decades in slavery. Nicolas Fiolet had been a slave for thirty-eight years. Most of the others had spent at least two-thirds of their lives in the slave pens, but had never given up hope that one day they would be rescued.
Father Jean soon grasped that Moulay Ismail had little intention of releasing them for the money he had at his disposal, demanding instead a staggering 300 piastres for each captive and refusing to accept the costly presents as part of the payment. As the padres haggled over the price, they became increasingly frustrated with the recalcitrant old ruler. With mounting anger, they informed him that their only desire was “a reasonable treaty, in the hope of retrieving, with our funds, a part of our slaves, if we couldn’t have them all.”
But time was fast running out. Many of the men were at death’s door, and the padres watched, helpless, as one of the captives, Bertrand Massion, collapsed from injuries he had received at the hands of the slave-drivers. “He had suffered several times the martyrdom of being hit with a rope and stick,” wrote Father Jean. “We saw his body full of a thousand weals which he had received.” He had also been slashed with a knife and “endured the torment of an iron clamp around his head.” Massion was never to taste the freedom for which he had yearned so long. He died in the slave pen’s little infirmary, after enduring more than thirty-five years as a captive.
Father Jean spent several more weeks in negotiation with Moulay Ismail, but he now realized that all his efforts were in vain. The sultan agreed to release fifteen of the oldest slaves in return for the presents, but was adamant in refusing to free the rest. With great reluctance and a heavy heart, Father Jean admitted defeat. On 11 November came the most difficult moment of all. “We went to the canot [slave pen] to bid farewell to the slaves that remained in captivity,” he wrote. “We exhorted them to stay steadfast in their faith, and encouraged them with the hope that other fathers would come back in more favourable times.”
Father Jean viewed his mission as a failure and blamed himself for the lack of success. Although he managed to persuade Moulay Ismail to part with two more slaves, bringing the total to seventeen, it was not an achievement of which he was proud. “Seventeen slaves did not satisfy our desire to release the irons from a greater number,” he wrote. The padres decided to press on to Algiers, where they felt more confident of success. But they met with unusual stubbornness from the ruling dey and managed to release just forty-seven slaves. It was a most disappointing result, yet Father Jean nevertheless decided to stage a noisy procession of the freed slaves when they arrived back in France. It was not quite the triumph that had greeted Commodore Stewart’s return to London, but the sight of these disheveled individuals was enough to move many to tears as they were paraded through the villages of northern France.
The erratic behavior of Sultan Moulay Ismail dissuaded any Spanish padres from sending an embassy to Morocco, recognizing that as they stood so little chance of buying back any captive Spaniards, the men would have to be abandoned to their fate. The redemptionist fathers decided instead to sail to Tunis and Algiers, where the slave population still numbered around 25,000. In three missions between 1722 and 1725, Father Garcia Navarra managed to release 1,078 slaves, although he was infuriated by the dey’s insistence that he buy both Catholics and Protestants. When the Spanish padre curtly remarked that the latter were heretics and therefore undesirable, the dey exploded with rage. “What I want, the Lord God wants,” he fumed, “and the king of Spain had better want it too.”
ONE OF COMMODORE Stewart’s last actions before leaving Morocco had been to persuade Consul Hatfeild to remain at his post. Hatfeild was extremely reluctant, but fell victim to the commodore’s considerable charm. For four more years he battled against destitution, but by the summer of 1726 he was in despair. His coffers were once again empty and no one in London seemed to care. When the Salé corsairs towed in yet more British vessels and marched their captives in triumph toward Meknes, Hatfeild decided to quit. He could no longer face the indignity of diplomatic impotence.
His replacement was John Russell, who arrived in Morocco in the spring of 1727, intending to head directly to the court of Moulay Ismail. His meeting with the sultan, however, was destined never to happen. At the end of March, dark rumors began to circulate through the court—rumors that were soon confirmed as true.
Moulay Ismail had fallen sick several months earlier, and his closest courtiers quickly realized that he would not recover. He demanded that his physicians work harder to find a cure and grew increasingly frustrated when their elixirs and potions failed to restore him. “His distemper towards his latter end became so nauseous that no-one could bear the room where he lay, notwithstanding all the art of perfumes.” So wrote John Braithwaite, who accompanied Consul Russell on his mission to Morocco. Moulay Ismail remained as virile as ever, despite his bodily dec
ay, and summoned his wives and concubines to his bedside in order to relieve his suffering. “For his recovery,” wrote the Frenchman Adrian de Manault, “he demanded such disgusting acts that decency won’t allow us to relate them.”
His end, when it came, was quite sudden. His ancient frame was already racked with disease when he contracted a “mortification in the lower part of his belly.” This prevented him from moving, and the chief eunuch perceived that the end was imminent. On 22 March, “at the hour the muezzin calls the faithful to midday prayer,” the great Moulay Ismail finally expired. He was eighty years of age and had ruled Morocco for a remarkable fifty-five years.
None of the sultan’s courtiers recorded his final mutterings, and it is impossible to know if he went to his death with a clear conscience. In the course of his reign, he had overseen the deaths of thousands of men and women, a number of whom had been butchered by his own hand. He had ordered countless courtiers to be dragged behind mules until they were dead and had slain dozens of his imperial guard. Several of his sons had been put to death, and he had maimed and mutilated many of his wives. At least two of his subjects had been sawn in two, and numerous kaids and officers had lost eyes and limbs. But Moulay Ismail had reserved his greatest contempt for his slaves, who had been butchered and tortured, mutilated and broken.
The survivors would doubtless have rejoiced at the news of the sultan’s death, but it would be two months before word spread from the inner recesses of the palace. According to Thomas Pellow, who was at Kasbah Temsna at the time, the secrecy was “for certain reasons of state.” John Braithwaite’s account of the sultan’s death provides much greater detail. He claimed that Moulay Ismail himself had demanded the deception in order to stop the orgy of pillage and violence that traditionally followed the death of a sultan. Imperial palaces were often looted and sacked, and rival usurpers raised armies to fight for the succession.
