BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXLII.     APRIL, 1844.
    VOL. LV.

THE PIRATES OF SEGNA.

A TALE OF VENICE AND THE ADRIATIC. IN TWO PARTS.

PART II.

CHAPTER I.—THE BATTLE OF THE BRIDGE.

The time occupied by the events detailed in the three
preceding chapters, had been passed by Antonio in a state of
self-exile from his master’s studio. Conscious of having
disobeyed the earnest injunctions of Contarini, the weakness of
his character withheld him alike from confessing his fault, and
from encountering the penetrating gaze of the old painter.
Neglecting thus his usual occupation, he passed his days in his
gondola, wandering about the canals in the hope of again
meeting with the mysterious being who had made such an
impression on his excitable fancy. Hitherto all his researches
had been fruitless; but although day after day passed without
his finding the smallest trace of her he sought, his repeated
disappointments seemed only to increase the obstinacy with
which he continued the search.

The incognita not only engrossed all his waking thoughts,
but she still haunted him in his dreams. Scarcely a night
passed that her wrinkled countenance did not hover round his
pillow, now partially shrouded by the ample veil, then again
fully exposed and apparently exulting in its unearthly
ugliness; or else peering at him from behind the drapery that
covered the walls of his apartment. In vain did he attempt to
address the vision, or to follow it as it gradually receded and
finally melted away into distance.

It was from a dream of this description that he was one
morning awakened by his faithful gondolier Jacopo. The sun was
shining brightly through his chamber windows, and he heard an
unusual degree of noise and bustle upon the canal without.

“Up, Signor mio!” cried the gondolier joyously, and with a
mixture of respect and affectionate familiarity in his tone and
manner. “Up, Signor Antonio! You were not wont to oversleep
yourself on the day of the Bridge Fight. All Venice is
hastening thither. Quick, quick! or we shall never be able to
make our way through the press of gondolas.”

The words of the gondolier reminded Antonio that this was
the day appointed for the celebration of a festival, which for
weeks past had been looked forward to with the greatest
impatience and interest, by Venetians of all ranks, ages, and
sexes; a festival which he himself was in the habit of
regularly attending, though on this occasion his preoccupied
thoughts and feelings had made him utterly unconscious that it
was so near at hand.

Although the ancient and bitter hatred of the Guelphs and
Ghibellines had died away, and the factions which divided
northern Italy had sunk into insignificance, nearly a century
before this period, the memory of their feuds was still kept up
by their great grandchildren, and Venice was still severed
[pg 402] into two parties or
communities, separated from each other by the grand canal.
Those who dwelt on the western or land side of this boundary
were styled the Nicolotti, after the parish of San Nicolo;
while those on the eastern or sea side took the appellation
of Castellani, from the district of Castello. Not only the
inhabitants of the city itself, but those of the suburbs and
neighbouring country, were included in these two
denominations; the people from Mestre and the continent
ranging themselves under the banners of the Nicolotti, while
those from the islands were strenuous Castellani.

The frequent and sanguinary conflicts of the Guelphs and
Ghibellines were now replaced and commemorated by a popular
festival, occurring sometimes once, sometimes oftener in the
year; usually in the autumn or spring. “In order that,” says an
old chronicler of the time, “the heat being less great at those
seasons, the blood of the combatants should not become too
heated and the fight too dangerous.” “Also on cloudy days,”
says the same authority, “that the spectators might not be
molested by the sun; and on Sundays or Saints’ days, that the
people thereby might not be hindered from their occupations.”
On these occasions one of the numerous bridges was selected as
the scene of the mock combat that constituted the chief
amusement of the day. The quays afforded good standing-room to
the spectators; and here, under the inspection of ædiles
appointed by the people, the two parties met, and disputed for
supremacy in a battle, in which, however, no more dangerous
weapons than fists were allowed to be brought into play.

It was not the populace alone that divided itself into these
two factions. Accordingly as the palaces of the nobles stood on
the one or the other side of the canal, were their owners
Castellani or Nicolotti, although their partizanship existed
but in jest, and only showed itself in the form of
encouragement to their respective parties; whereas with the
lower orders the strife, begun in good-humour, not unfrequently
turned to bitter earnest, and had dangerous and even fatal
results. In the wish, however, to keep up a warlike spirit in
the people, and perhaps still more with a view to make them
forget, in a temporary and boundless license, the strict
subjection in which they were habitually held, the senate was
induced to permit the continuance of a diversion, which from
the local arrangements of Venice, the narrowness of the streets
and bridges, and the depth of the larger canals, was
unavoidably dangerous, and almost invariably attended with loss
of life.

Hastily dressing himself, Antonio hurried into his gondola
in order to proceed to the bridge of San Barnaba, opposite to
the church of the same name and to the Foscarini palace, that
being the spot appointed for the combat. The canal of the
Giudecca was one black mass of gondolas, which rendered even a
casual glimpse of the water scarcely obtainable; and it was
amidst the cries of the gondoliers and the noise of boats
knocking against each other, that the young painter passed the
Dogana and reached the grand canal. There the crowd became so
dense, that Jacopo, seeing the impossibility of passing, turned
aside in time, and making a circuit, entered the Rio de San
Trovaso, whence, through innumerable narrow canals, he
succeeded in reaching the scene of the approaching
conflict.

The combatants were attending mass, and had not yet made
their appearance. Wonderfully great, however, was the concourse
of spectators already assembled. Since sunrise they had been
thronging thither from all sides, eager to secure places which
might afford them a good view of the fight. Every roof, gable,
and chimney had its occupants; not a projection however small,
not a wall however lofty and perilous, but was covered with
people, for the most part provided with baskets of provisions,
and evidently determined to sit or stand out the whole of the
spectacle. In the anxiety to obtain good places, the most
extraordinary risks were run, and feats of activity displayed.
Here might be seen individuals clambering up perpendicular
buildings, by the aid of ledges and projections which appeared
far too narrow to afford either grasp or foot-hold; further on,
some herculean gondolier or peasant served as base to a sort of
human column, composed of five or six men, who, scrambling over
each other’s [pg 403] shoulders, attained in this
manner some seemingly inaccessible position. The seafaring
habits of the Venetian populace, who were accustomed from
boyhood to climb the masts and rigging of vessels, now stood
them in good stead; and notwithstanding all the noise,
confusion, and apparent peril, it was very rarely that an
accident occurred.

Under the red awnings covering the balconies and flat roofs
of the palaces, were seated groups of ladies, whose rich
dresses, glittering with the costliest jewels and embroideries,
appeared the more magnificent from being contrasted with the
black attire of the grave patricians who accompanied them. But
perhaps the most striking feature of this striking scene was to
be found in the custom of masking, then almost universal in
Venice, and the origin of which may be traced in great part to
dread of the Inquisition, and of its prying enquiries into the
actions and affairs of individuals. Amidst the sea of faces
that thronged roofs, windows, balconies, streets, and quays,
the minority only were uncovered, and the immense collection of
masks, of every form and colour, had something in it peculiarly
fantastic and unnatural, conveying an impression that the
wearers mimicked human nature rather than belonged to it.

Venice, whose trade and mercantile importance were at this
period greatly on the decline, saw nevertheless, on occasions
like the present, strangers from the most opposite nations of
Europe, and even Asia, mingling peaceably on her canals. Here
were Turks in their bright red caftans and turbans; there
Armenians in long black robes; and Jews, whose habitually
greedy and crafty countenances had for the nonce assumed an
expression of eager curiosity and expectation. The mercantile
spirit of the Venetians prevented them from extending to
individuals the quarrels of states; and although the republic
was then at war with Spain, more than one superb hidalgo might
be seen, wrapped in his national gravity as in a mantle, and
affecting a total disregard of the blunt or hostile
observations made within his hearing by sailors of the Venetian
navy, or by individuals smarting under the loss of ships and
cargoes captured by Spanish galleys.

Scattered here and there amongst the crowd, Antonio’s
searching eye soon remarked a number of men, to whom,
accustomed as he was to analyse the heterogeneous composition
of a Venetian mob, he was yet at a loss to assign any distinct
class or country. Their sunburnt and strongly marked features
were partially hidden by the folds of ample cloaks, in which
they kept themselves closely muffled; and it appeared to
Antonio, that in their selection of places they were more
anxious to escape observation than to obtain a good view of the
approaching fight. In the dark patches of shadow thrown by the
overhanging balconies, in the recesses of deep and gloomy
portals, or peering out from the entrance of some narrow and
tortuous alley, these men were grouped, silent, scowling, and
alone, and apparently known to none of the surrounding crowd.
But suspicious as were the appearance and deportment of the
persons in question, Antonio’s thoughts were too much engrossed
by another and far more interesting subject, to accord them
much attention. He nourished the hope of discovering amongst
the multitude assembled around him, the mysterious being who
had taken so strong a hold on his imagination. Vainly, however,
did he scan every balcony and window and strain his eyes to
distinguish the faces of the more distant of the assembled
dames. More than once the flutter of a white robe, or a
momentarily fancied resemblance of figure, made his heart beat
high with expectation, until a second glance destroyed his
hopes; and the turning of a head or drawing aside of a veil
disclosed the blooming features of some youthful beauty, to
which, in his then state of mind, the wrinkled and unearthly
visage of the incognita would have been infinitely
preferable.

While the young painter was thus fluctuating between hope
and disappointment, several lads with naked arms, or but
slightly encumbered with clothing, were giving the spectators a
foretaste of the approaching conflict; and, encouraged by the
applause which was liberally vouchsafed them, making violent
efforts to drive one another off the bridge. At times the
[pg 404] spirit of partizanship
would induce some of the bystanders to come to the aid of
those who seemed likely to be defeated—an interference
that was repressed by the ædiles stationed at either
end of the bridge, who did their utmost to enforce the laws
of this popular tournament. Notwithstanding their efforts,
however, the mostra or duello between two persons, by
which the combat should begin, was often converted into the
frotta or mêlée, in which all pressed
forward without order. The first advantage was held to
be—for one of the combatants to draw blood, if it were
only a single drop, from the nose or mouth of his opponent.
Loud applause rewarded the skill and vigour of him who
succeeded in throwing his adversary into the canal; but the
clamour became deafening when a champion was found who
maintained his station in the centre of the bridge, without
any of the opposite party venturing to attack him. This feat
won the highest honour that could be obtained; and he who
achieved it retired from his post amid the waving of scarfs
and handkerchiefs, and the enthusiastic cheers of the
gratified spectators.

At length the bell of the Campanile announced that mass was
over, and presently, out of two opposite streets that had been
purposely kept clear, the combatants emerged, pressing forward
in eager haste towards the bridge; their arms naked to the
shoulders, their breasts protected by leathern doublets, and
their heads by closely fitting caps—their dress
altogether as light as possible, and well adapted to the
struggle in which they were about to engage. The loud hum of
the multitude was hushed on their appearance, and the deepest
silence reigned while the ædiles marshaled them to their
respective places, on which they planted themselves in
threatening attitudes, their broad and muscular chests
expanded, their fists clenched, their feet seeming to grasp the
ground on which they stood.

A loud flourish of trumpets gave the signal of the onset,
and with inconceivable impetuosity the two parties threw
themselves on each other. In spite, however, of the fury and
violence of the shock, neither side yielded an inch of ground.
The bridge was completely filled with men from end to end, and
from side to side; there was no parapet or barrier of any kind
to prevent the combatants from pushing one another into the
canal; yet so equally balanced was the strength of the two
parties, that after nearly half an hour’s struggle very few men
had been thrown from the bridge, and not the smallest advantage
had been obtained either by Castellani or Nicolotti. Those in
the rear, who had as yet done nothing but push the others
forward, now came to the front, and the combat was renewed with
fresh vigour, but for a long time without any result. Again and
again were the combatants changed; but it was past noon before
Antonio, whose thoughts had been gradually diverted from the
incognita by the struggle that was going on, perceived symptoms
of weariness amongst those indefatigable athletes. Here and
there a knee was seen to bend, or a muscular form to sink,
under some well-directed blow, or before a sudden rush of the
opposite party. First one, then another of the combatants was
hurled from the bridge into the canal, an immersion that,
dripping with perspiration as they were, not unfrequently
caused death or severe illness. Nevertheless the fury of the
fight seemed rather to increase than diminish. So long as only
a man here and there fell into the water, they were dragged out
by their friends; and the spectators even seemed to feel pity
and sympathy for the unfortunates, as they saw them carried
along, some covered with blood, others paralysed by the sudden
cold, with faces pale as death and limbs stiff and rigid. But
as the fury and violence of the combatants augmented, the
bystanders forgot every other feeling in the excitement of the
fight, about the result of which they seemed as anxious as
those who were actively engaged in it. Even women might be seen
encouraging those who were driven back, and urging them once
more to the charge; applauding and cheering them on when they
advanced, and assailing those who hung back with vehement
reproaches. The uproar and shouting, shrieks and yells,
exceeded any thing that could be imagined. The partizans had
got completely mixed together; and, instead of the struggle
[pg 405] being confined to the
foremost ranks of the contending parties, the whole bridge
was now one coil of raging combatants. Men fell into the
canal by scores, but no one thought of rendering them any
assistance. Their places were immediately filled up, and the
fight lost none of its fury from their absence.

Evening was now approaching, and the combat was more violent
than it had yet been, or than it had for years been known to
be, when Antonio saw the cloaked and mysterious individuals who
had already attracted his attention, emerge from their
lurking-places, and disappear in different directions.
Presently he thought he observed some of them on the bridge
mingling with the combatants, whose blind rage prevented them
from noticing the intrusion. Wherever they passed, there did
the fight augment in obstinacy and fury. Suddenly there was a
violent rush upon the bridge, a frightful outcry, and a clash
of steel. At the same moment the blades of several swords and
daggers were seen crossed and glittering upon the bridge,
without its being possible for any one to divine whence the
weapons came. The spectators, seized with a panic fear, fled in
every direction, and sprang in crowds from the quays to seek
shelter under the awnings of the gondolas covering the canal.
In vain did the gondoliers resist the intrusion of the
fugitives: all considerations of rank and property were lost
sight of in the terror of the moment, and some of the boats
sank under the weight of the multitudes that poured into them.
In their haste to get away, the gondolas impeded each other,
and became wedged together in the canal; and amidst the screams
of the ladies and angry exclamations of the men, the gondoliers
laid down their oars and began to dispute the precedence with
blows. Meanwhile the people on the roofs of the houses,
believing themselves in safety, espoused different sides, and
threw stones and bricks at each other, and at those standing
below. In an incredibly short time houses were entirely
unroofed, and a perfect storm of tiles rained upon the quays
and streets. Those who had first fled, when they attained what
appeared a safe distance, halted to look on, and thus prevented
others from getting away. Antonio was amongst the number whose
escape was thus impeded. His gondolier lay at the bottom of the
boat, stunned by a blow from a stone; he himself was bruised
and wounded by the missiles that fell in all directions.

The tumult was at its height when suddenly a sound was heard
that had a truly magical effect upon the rioters, for such they
might now be termed. The alarm-bell of St Mark’s rang out its
awful peal. In an instant the yells of defiance were hushed;
the arm that was already drawn back to deal a blow fell
harmless by its owner’s side, the storm of missiles ceased, the
contending factions parted, and left the combat undecided. The
habit of obedience and the intimation of some danger to the
city, stilled in an instant the rage of party feeling, and
combatants and spectators alike hurried away in the direction
of St Mark’s place, the usual point of rendezvous on such
occasions.

Jacopo had now recovered his senses, and Antonio’s gondola
was one of the first which reached the square in front of the
cathedral. Thence the young painter at once discovered the
cause of the alarm. Smoke and flame were issuing from some
buildings on the opposite island of San Giorgio Maggiore, where
the greater part of the merchants’ warehouses were situated.
Thither the crowd of gondolas now steered, and Antonio found
himself carried along with the stream. But although the fire
was already beginning to subside before the prompt measures
taken to subdue it, the alarm-bell kept clanging on; and
Antonio soon perceived that there must be some other point of
danger to which it was intended to turn the attention of the
people. Gazing about for some indication of its source, he saw
several gondolas hurrying towards the grand canal, on which
most of the palaces of the nobles were situated, and he ordered
Jacopo to steer in the same direction.

On reaching the palazzo of the Malipieri family, a strange
scene presented itself to him. The open space between the side
of the palace and the adjacent church of San Samuele, was
crowded with men engaged in a furious and sanguinary conflict.
At one of the windows of the palace, a
[pg 406] tall man in a flowing white
robe, with a naked sabre in one hand and a musquetoon in the
other, which, from the smoke still issuing from its muzzle,
had apparently just been discharged, stood defending himself
desperately against a band of fierce and bearded ruffians,
who swarmed up a rope ladder fixed below the window. The
person making so gallant a defence was the Senator
Malipiero; the assailants were Uzcoques from the fortress of
Segna.

The arrival of the Proveditore Marcello at Gradiska, and his
subsequent recognition of his jewels at the ball, having
destroyed Strasolda’s hopes of obtaining her father’s
liberation through the intervention of the archducal
counsellors, the high-spirited maiden resolved to execute a
plan she had herself devised, and which, although in the
highest degree rash and hazardous, might still succeed if
favoured by circumstances and conducted with skill and
decision. This was to seize upon the person of a Venetian of
note, in order to exchange him for the Uzcoques then
languishing in the dungeons of the republic.

The Venetians were not yet aware that the much-dreaded
woivode Dansowich was among their prisoners. The time chosen by
the Uzcoques for their expeditions and surprises was usually
the night; and this, added to the custom of mask-wearing, was
the cause that the features of Dansowich were unknown to his
captors. Nevertheless the striking countenance and lofty
bearing of the chieftain, and of one or two of those who were
taken prisoners with him, raised suspicions that they were
persons of mark—suspicions which were not dissipated by
their reiterated denial of being any thing more than common
Uzcoques. It was this doubt which saved their lives; for their
captors, instead of hanging them at once at the yard-arm of the
galleys, which was the usual manner of disposing of Segnarese
prisoners, took them to Venice, and placed them at the disposal
of the senate. All subsequent threats and promises proved
ineffectual to extort from the pirates an acknowledgment of
superior rank; and the Venetian authorities would perhaps have
ended in believing the account they gave of themselves, had not
the urgent applications made by the Austrian Envoy and the
Capitano of Fiume, for the release of the Uzcoques, given their
suspicions new strength. The object of the Venetians was, if
they could ascertain that there was a chief among the
prisoners, to obtain from him, by torture or otherwise,
confessions which might enable them to prove to the Archduke
the encouragement afforded by his counsellors to the piracies
of the Segnarese. They accordingly delayed, by every possible
pretext, giving an answer to the archducal ambassador, doing
their utmost meanwhile to find out the real quality of the
prisoners. This, Strasolda was most anxious that they should
not discover; and her anxiety was scarcely less to prevent the
captivity of their leader from becoming known among the pirates
themselves. His daughter’s entreaties, and his own better
nature, had frequently caused Dansowich to check his followers
in the atrocities they were too apt to commit. In consequence
of this interference, Strasolda suspected her father to be more
feared than liked by Jurissa Caiduch and some others of the
inferior woivodes or officers; and she apprehended that, if she
confided her plan to them, they would be more likely to thwart
than to aid her in it. The crews of the two boats which had
been engaged in the skirmish with the Venetian galleys when
Dansowich was captured, and the men composing the garrison of
the castle on the evening of that fatal occurrence, were
therefore all whose assistance she could reckon upon. Some of
those were her relatives, and the others tried and trusty
adherents. They alone knew of their leader’s captivity, his
absence having been accounted for to the mass of Uzcoques
dwelling in the town of Segna, by a pretended journey to
Gradiska; and being too few in number to attack a Venetian
galley, the sole plan that seemed to offer a chance of success
to this handful of faithful followers, was the hazardous one
devised by Strasolda. Of this, they did not hesitate to attempt
the execution.

With the utmost cunning and audacity did the Uzcoques enter
Venice on the day appointed for the Battle of the Bridge,
singly, and by twos and threes, variously disguised, and
mingled with the country people and inhabitants
[pg 407] of the islands who were
hastening to the festival. Watching their opportunity when
the fight was at the fiercest, one party mixed with the
combatants, exciting and urging them on, and doing all in
their power to increase the confusion; others set fire to
the warehouses on the island of San Giorgio, in order to
draw the public attention in that direction; while the third
and most numerous division, favoured by the deepening
twilight and the deserted state of that part of the city,
succeeded in fixing a rope ladder to the window of the
Malipieri palace, the chief of which noble house was, as
they had previously ascertained, lying sick in bed in a
side-chamber, attended only by a few domestics.

But there were two things which Strasolda and the Uzcoques
had forgotten to include in their calculations. These were,
first, the slavish obedience of the Venetian populace to the
call of their superiors—an obedience to which they were
accustomed to sacrifice every feeling and passion; secondly,
the Argus eyes and omnipresent vigilance of the Secret
Tribunal. Scarcely was the ladder applied, when the first gush
of flame from the warehouses brought a deafening peal from the
alarm-bell; and at the same moment, the masked and armed
familiars of the Venetian police, rising as it seemed out of
the very earth, surrounded the ladder, and a fierce conflict
began. Even the watchfulness and precautions of the
Inquisition, however, were to a certain extent overmatched by
Uzcoque cunning and foresight. Had it not been necessary to
ring the alarm bell on account of the fire, the police, who
were far the most numerous, and who each moment received an
accession to their numbers, could scarcely have failed to
capture some of their opponents, and thus have ascertained to a
certainty what the promoters and the object of this audacious
attempt really were. But before they could accomplish this, the
small piazza where the conflict was going on was thronged with
the populace, half intoxicated with the excitement of the
scarcely less serious fight they had been witnessing and
sharing in. In the crush and confusion that ensued, familiars
and Uzcoques were separated; and the latter, mingling with the
crowd, and no longer distinguishable from the cloaked and
masked figures that surrounded them, easily succeeded in
effecting their escape.

When Antonio, who was pushed hither and thither by the mob,
was able to extricate himself sufficiently to get another view
of the window, the invalid nobleman, delivered from his
assailants, had retired into his apartment, while the ladder,
now deserted by the Uzcoques, had been cut and thrown down.
Desirous of escaping from this scene of confusion, the young
painter was making his way towards the quay, close to which his
gondola was waiting, when his heart suddenly leaped within him
at the sight of a muffled figure that passed near him, and in
which he thought he recognized the mysterious old woman who had
of late occupied so much of his thoughts. She was followed by a
number of the rabble, who pressed upon her with oaths and
curses, asserting that she was one of the party which had
attacked the palace of the Malipieri.

“I saw her holding the ladder,” exclaimed one fellow.

“Nay, she was climbing up it herself,” cried a second.

“Strike the foul witch dead!” shouted a score of voices.

The old woman’s life was in the greatest peril, when a
strange and unaccountable, but at the same time irresistible
impulse, moved Antonio to go to her rescue. He was forcing his
way through the crowd with this intention, when the object of
the popular fury turned her head towards him. Her veil was for
a moment partially drawn aside, affording a glimpse of her
features in profile; and Antonio, still the slave of his
diseased imagination, fancied that her yellow shriveled
features had been metamorphosed into a countenance of regular
beauty; such a countenance, in short, as befitted the graceful
and symmetrical form to which it belonged. Confused and
bewildered, the naturally weak and undecided youth stood
deliberating and uncertain whether he should attempt the
rescue, which would have been by no means difficult to
accomplish by the display of a little boldness and promptitude.
Whilst he was thus hesitating, there suddenly broke
[pg 408] through the crowd a young
man, attired like himself in a black dress, and holding a
naked rapier in his hand. The new comer had probably lost
his mask in the tumult and confusion, for his features were
uncovered, and Antonio saw, to his inexpressible
consternation and astonishment, that they were the exact
counterpart of his own. Before he could recover from this
new shock, the stranger, by the aid of his fierce and
determined demeanour, and the rapid play of his weapon, had
made his way to the mysterious old woman, whose back was
turned towards him, and seizing her round the waist he again
forced a passage through the throng to the nearest gondola,
which happened to be that of the young painter. The crowd
pressed after him, and Antonio was hurried along with it to
the edge of the quay. But at the very moment that, to avoid
being pushed into the water by the throng, he sprang into
one end of his gondola, he saw the stranger, who had just
entered it at the other, gaze with a look of disgust and
dismay on the features of her he had rescued, and then with
a cry of horror, leap into another boat, which immediately
rowed rapidly away. At the same instant Jacopo, by a strong
sweep of the oar, spun the gondola round, and shot into a
narrow canal which soon led them out of sight and sound of
the scene of confusion they had just left.

These various events had succeeded each other so rapidly,
that Antonio could hardly credit his senses when he found
himself in this strange manner the deliverer of the mysterious
being who now sat under the awning of his gondola, her
frightful countenance, unveiled in the struggle and no longer
seen through the beautifying prism of the young artist’s
imagination, again displaying the yellow and wrinkled skin, and
the deep-set glittering eyes, which now seemed fixed upon him
with an expression of love and gratitude that froze his blood.
With a shuddering sensation he retreated to the stern of the
boat, where Jacopo stood pale and trembling, crossing himself
without a moment’s intermission.

“Are you mad, Signore,” whispered the gondolier, “to risk
your life in behalf of such a frightful witch? Never did I see
you so ready with your rapier, flashing it in people’s eyes as
though it had been one of your painting brushes.”

“By Heaven, Jacopo,” answered Antonio, “that was not
I”—

“The saints protect us!” interrupted the gondolier. “You are
assuredly bewitched, or have lost your senses, Signore. To
think of your thus denying your own noble daring! Do, for the
blessed virgin’s sake, let us jump out upon the next
landing-place, and leave the gondola to the sorceress who has
bewitched you. Holy mother! she is coming this way!”

A prey to the strangest and most contradictory emotions,
Antonio hastily advanced to meet the mysterious being, whom he
could not help regarding with superstitious awe, though he at
the same time felt himself drawn towards her by a fascination,
against which he found it was in vain to contend. The features
of the unknown were again shrouded carefully in her veil, but
her black and brilliant eyes glittered through it like nebulous
stars.

“To the house of the Capitano of Fiume,” whispered she to
Antonio, and then retreated, as if anxious to avoid further
conversation, into the interior of the gondola.

In the district of Castello, through which Antonio and his
strange companion were now passing, the canals and quays were
deserted, and not a sound was heard except the distant hum of
the multitude assembled in the quarter of St Mark’s. Without
exciting suspicion or attracting observation, they reached the
Rialto and the grand canal, and the gondola stopped at a
landing-place opposite the church of San Moyses.

As the young painter assisted his mysterious charge out of
the boat, a gentle pressure from the warm soft hand which for a
moment rested upon his, quickened every pulse in his frame; and
long after the enigmatical being had disappeared behind the
angle of a palace, he stood gazing, like one entranced, at the
spot where he had last seen her imposing and graceful figure.
The approach of Jacopo, still crossing himself, and calling
upon all the saints for protection against the snares of the
evil one, [pg 409] roused the perplexed youth
from his reverie; and, stepping into the gondola, he was
soon gliding rapidly over the canals in the direction of his
father’s palace.

CHAPTER II.

THE PICTURE.

The gondola of the young painter, gliding rapidly and
silently over the still waters of the canals, was passing a
turn leading to the Giudecca, when it suddenly occurred to
Antonio that he would seek his old master, and, after
confessing his disobedience, relate to him the events of the
day, and make him the confidant of his troubles and
perplexities. A word to Jacopo changed the direction of the
gondola, and they entered the grand canal, on which Contarini’s
dwelling was situated.

The brief twilight of Italy had passed, and it was now
completely night, dark and starless, which made more startling
the sudden appearance of several blazing torches, borne by
masked and hooded figures attired in black, who struck loud and
repeated blows on the gates of the Palazzo Contarini.

“Antonio Marcello! We seek Antonio Marcello!” exclaimed a
deep and hollow voice.

It would be necessary to be a Venetian, and to have lived in
those days, fully to comprehend the feeling of horror which
caused Antonio’s blood to run cold, and the sweat to stand in
beads upon his forehead, when he heard his name uttered by the
familiars of the state Inquisition. Frightful dungeons, masked
judges, halls hung with black, the block and the gleaming axe,
the rack and its blood-stained attendants, the whole grim
paraphernalia of the Secret Tribunal, passed like the scenes of
a phantasmagoria before the mental vision of the young painter.
He at once conjectured the cause for which they were seeking
him. He had doubtless been taken for the youth who, by his
energy and promptitude, had rescued the mysterious old woman
from the mob, and who bore so striking and unaccountable
resemblance to himself; and it must be on suspicion of his
being connected with the attack on the Malipieri palace, that
the ministers of justice were hunting him out. Nor did he see
how he should he able to convince his judges of his innocence.
The tale he had to tell, although the truth, was still too
marvellous and improbable to obtain credence, and would be more
likely to draw upon him severe punishment, or perhaps the
torture, with the view of inducing him to confess its
falsehood. Bewildered by his terror, Antonio sat trembling, and
utterly incapable of deciding as to the course he should adopt,
when the trusty gondolier again came to his rescue.

“Cospetto! Signor!” he exclaimed, “have you lost your
senses, that you run thus into the very jaws of those devil’s
messengers? To one like myself flight would certainly avail
little; but, with a Proveditore for your father, you may
arrange matters if you only take time before you become their
prisoner. Quick, then, to the palazzo! Don’t you see old
Contarini’s head stuck out of his window? He is telling them
you are not there. They have doubtless been to your father’s
palace, and will not be likely to return thither at
present.”

While the faithful fellow’s tongue was thus wagging, his
arms were not idle. Intimately acquainted, as became his
calling, with the numerous windings and intricacies of the
Venetian canals, he threaded them with unhesitating confidence;
and, favoured by the darkness of the night, succeeded in
getting Antonio unobserved through a back entrance of his
father’s palace.

The first impulse of the terrified youth on finding himself
thus in at least temporary security, was to destroy the picture
of the mysterious old woman, which, if found by the agents of
the Inquisition, might bear false but fatal witness against
him. With pallid cheek, and still trembling with alarm, he was
hurrying to his chamber to execute his intention, when he
encountered his father, who advanced to meet him, and, grasping
[pg 410] his arm, fixed upon him for
some moments his stern and searching gaze.

“The picture, father!” exclaimed the terror-stricken
Antonio. “For the love of Heaven, stay me not! Let me destroy
that fatal picture!”

Regardless of his son’s agitation and terror, the
Proveditore half led, half forced him to a seat in a part of
the room, when the red blaze from the larch logs that were
crackling on the hearth, lit up the young man’s features.

“What means this, Antonio?” he said; “what has befallen
during my absence at Gradiska? The familiars of the Inquisition
have been seeking you here—you, the last person whose
name I should expect to hear in such mouths. Alarm me it did
not; for well I know that you are too scant of energy and
settled purpose to be mixed up in conspiracies against the
state.”

Antonio was still too much preoccupied by his terror to
understand, or at any rate to heed, the severity of his
father’s remark. Collecting his scattered thoughts, he
proceeded to narrate all that had occurred to him, not only on
that day, but since his first meeting with the incognita near
the church of San Moyses, on the very same spot whither he had
conveyed her in his gondola but a short hour ago.

“Let me destroy the painting, father!” he concluded; “it may
be found, and used as testimony against me.”

The Proveditore had listened with a smile, that was at once
contemptuous and sorrowful, to his son’s narrative, and to the
confession of his weakness and disobedience to the injunctions
of his aged teacher. When he had finished speaking, there was a
minute’s silence, broken at last by the elder Marcello.

“I have long been convinced,” he said, “that Contarini would
never succeed in making of you a painter fit to rank with those
old and illustrious masters of whom Venice is so justly proud.
But I had not thought so poorly of you, Antonio, as to believe
that you would want courage to defend an object, for the
attainment of which you scrupled not to disobey your venerable
instructor. What the kind entreaties and remonstrances of
Contarini could not induce you to abandon, you are ready to
annihilate on the very first symptom of danger. Oh, Venice!”
exclaimed the Proveditore, his fine countenance assuming an
expression of extreme bitterness, as he gazed mournfully at the
portraits of his ancestors, including more than one Doge, which
were suspended round the walls of the apartment—”Venice!
thou art indeed degenerate, when peril so remote can blanch the
cheek of thy patrician youth.”

He strode twice up and down the hall, then returning to his
son, bade him fetch the picture which he was so desirous of
destroying. Antonio, downcast and abashed by these reproaches,
which, however, were insufficient to awaken nobler aspirations
in his weak and irresolute nature, hurried to his chamber, and
presently returned with a roll of canvass in his hand, which he
unfolded and spread before the Proveditore—then, dreading
to encounter his father’s ridicule, he shrunk back out of the
firelight. But the effect produced upon Marcello by the
portrait of the old woman, was very different from that
anticipated by his son. Scarcely had he cast his eyes upon the
unearthly visage, when he started back with an exclamation of
horror and astonishment.

“By all the saints, Antonio,” cried he in an altered voice,
“that is a fearful portrait! Alas, poor wretch! thou art long
since in thy grave,” continued he, addressing the picture, and
with looks and tones strangely at variance with his usually
stern and imperturbable deportment. “The worms have preyed on
thee, and thou art as dust and ashes. Why, then, dost thou rise
from the dead to fright me with that ghastly visage?”

“Is the face known to you, father?” the astonished Antonio
ventured to exclaim.

“Known to me! Ay, too well! That wrinkled skin, that
unearthly complexion, those deep-set eyes glowing like burning
coals. Just so did she glare upon me as she swung from the
tree, the blood driven into her features by the agonizing
pressure of the halter. ‘Tis the very look that has haunted me
for years, and caused me many bitter moments of remorse;
though, God knows, the deed was lawful and justifiable, done in
the execution [pg 411] of my duty to the republic.
And yet she lives,” he continued musingly. “How could she
have been saved? True, she had not been hanging long when we
left the place. Some of her people, doubtless, were
concealed hard by, and cut her down ere life had entirely
fled. But, ha! ’tis a clue this to the perpetrators of
to-day’s outrage, for she was with them. Uzcoques, then they
must have been! Said you not, Antonio, that she came from
the house of the Capitano when first you saw her, and that
to-day you left her there?”

“At her own special desire, father,” replied Antonio.

“Then is the chain of evidence almost complete,” continued
the Proveditore. “It must have been herself. And now—this
attack on the Malipieri palace. What was its object? A
hostage?—Ay, I see it all, and our prisoner is none other
than Dansowich himself. But we must have proof of that from his
own confession; and this portrait may help to extort it.”

Whilst uttering these broken sentences, which were totally
incomprehensible to the bewildered Antonio, the Proveditore had
donned his mantle, and placed his plumed cap upon his head.

“No, Antonio,” said he, “we will not destroy this picture,
hideous though it be. It may prove the means of rendering
weighty service to the republic.”

And with these words, inexplicable to his son, the
Proveditore left the apartment; and, taking with him the
mysterious portrait, hastened to the prison were the Uzcoque
leader was immured.

The pirate chief was a man of large and athletic frame, of
strong feelings, and great intellectual capabilities. His brow
was large, open, and commanding; his countenance, bronzed with
long exposure to the elements, and scarred with wounds, was
repulsive, but by no means ignoble; his hair and beard had long
been silvered over by time and calamity; but his vast bodily
strength was unimpaired, and when roused into furious
resentment, his manly chest emitted a volume of sound that awed
every listener. Upon a larger stage, and under circumstances
more favourable to the fair development of his natural powers
and dispositions, the pirate Dansowich would have become one of
the most distinguished and admirable men of his time. Placed by
the accident of birth upon the frontiers of Christian Europe,
and cherishing from early youth a belief that the highest
interests of the human race were involved in the struggle
between the Crescent and the Cross, he had embraced the
glorious cause with that enthusiastic and fiery zeal which
raises men into heroes and martyrs. Too soon, however, were
these lofty aspirations checked and blighted by the
anti-Christian policy of trading Venice, the bad faith of
Austria towards the Uzcoque race, and the extortions of her
counsellors. Cursing in the bitterness of his heart, not only
Turks, Austrians, and Venetians, but all mankind, he no longer
opposed the piratical tendencies of his neglected people, and
eventually headed many of their marauding expeditions.

It was nearly midnight when Dansowich was awakened from a
deep but troubled slumber by a grating noise at the door of his
dungeon. Anxiety of mind, and still more, the effect of
confinement in an impure and stifling atmosphere, upon one
accustomed to the breezes of the Adriatic and the free air of
the mountains, had impaired his health, and his sleep was
broken by harassing and painful dreams. In that from which he
now awoke, with the sweat of anguish on his brow, he had
fancied himself before the tribunal of the Inquisition. The
rack was shown to him, and they bade him choose between
confession and torture. He then thought he heard his name
repeated several times in tones deep and sepulchral. Starting
up in alarm, he saw the door of his prison open, and give
admittance to a man muffled in a black cloak, who walked up to
the foot of his bed of damp straw, and threw the rays of a dark
lantern full into his dazzled eyes.

The traces of recent and strong emotion, visible at that
moment on the pirate’s countenance, did not escape the
Proveditore, who attributed them, and rightly, to an artifice
he had practised. Previously to entering
[pg 412] the dungeon, he had caused
the name of Nicolo Dansowich to be repeated several times in
a deep hollow voice. Aware of the superstitious credulity of
the Uzcoques, the wily Venetian had devised this stratagem
as one likely to produce a startling effect upon the
prisoner, and to forward the end he proposed to obtain by
his visit. He now seated himself upon a wooden bench, the
only piece of furniture in the dungeon, and addressed the
captive in a mild and conciliating tone.

“You should keep better watch over your dreams,” said he,
“if you wish our tribunals to remain in ignorance of your
secrets.”

“My dreams!” repeated the Uzcoque, somewhat startled by the
ominous coincidence between Marcello’s words and the visions
that had broken his slumber.

“Ay, friend, your dreams! The jailers are watchful, and
little passes in these prisons without coming to their
knowledge. More than once have they heard you revealing in your
sleep that which, during your waking hours, you so strenuously
deny.—’Enough! Enough!’ you cried. ‘I will confess all. I
am Nicolo Dansowich.'”

While Marcello was speaking, the old Uzcoque had had time to
collect his thoughts, and call to mind the numerous snares and
devices by which the Venetian tribunals obtained confessions
from their prisoners. With an intuitive keenness of perception,
he in a moment saw through the Proveditore’s stratagem, and
resolved to defeat it. A contemptuous smile played over his
features, and, shaking his head incredulously, he answered the
Venetian—

“The watchful jailers you speak of have doubtless been
cheering their vigils with the wine flask,” said he. “Their
draughts must have been deep, to make them hear that which was
never spoken.”

“Subterfuge will avail you nothing,” replied Marcello. “Your
sleeping confessions, although you may now wish to retract
them, are yet sufficient grounds for the tribunal to go upon,
and the most excruciating tortures will be used, if needful, to
procure their waking confirmation. Reflect, Dansowich,”
continued the Proveditore in a persuasive and gentle tone, “on
the position in which you now find yourself. Your life is
forfeited; and, if you persist in your denials, you will never
leave this dungeon but for the rack or scaffold. On the other
hand, the senate respects you as a brave and honourable,
although misguided man, and would gladly see you turn from the
error of your ways. Now is the time to ensure yourself a
tranquil and respected old age. Hearken to the proposals I am
empowered to make you. The Signoria offers you life, freedom,
and a captainship in the island of Candia, on the sole
condition, on your part, of disclosing the intrigues and
perfidy of the council at Gradiska, and furnishing us, as you
are assuredly able to do, with documents by which we may prove
to the Archduke the treachery of his ministers. Again, I
say—Reflect! or rather hesitate not, but decide at once
between a prosperous and honourable life, and a death of
degradation and anguish.”

Neither the threats nor the temptations held out by the
Proveditore seemed to have the smallest effect upon the
Uzcoque.

“You are mistaken,” replied he calmly. “I am not Dansowich,
nor have I any knowledge of the intrigues at Gradiska. I could
not therefore, if I wished it, buy my life by the treachery
demanded of me; and if the woivodes of Segna think as I do,
they will let themselves be hewn in pieces before they do the
bidding of your senators, or concede aught to the wishes of
false and crafty Venice.”

“You are a brave man, Dansowich!” resumed the Proveditore,
who saw the necessity of changing his tactics. “You care little
for the dangers and sufferings of this world. But
yet—pause and reflect. Your hair is silvered by time, and
even should you escape your present peril, you will still, ere
many years are past, have to render an account to a higher
tribunal than ours. By an upright course you might atone for
the crimes of your youth and manhood, and become the chosen
instrument of Heaven to deliver your fellow-Christians from a
cruel scourge and sore infliction.”

“And who has brought the scourge upon you?” demanded the old
man in [pg 413] a raised voice, measuring
the Proveditore with a stern and contemptuous look. “Is it
our fault that, whilst we were striving to keep the Turk
from the door of Christendom, you sought every means of
thwarting our efforts by forming treaties with the infidel?
You do well to remind me that my head is grey. I was still a
youth when the name of Uzcoque was a title of honour as it
is now a term of reproach—when my people were looked
upon as heroes, by whose valour the Cross was exalted, and
the Crescent bowed down to the dust. Those were the days
when, on the ruins of Spalatro, we swore to live like
eagles, amidst barren cliffs and naked rocks, the better to
harass the heathen—the days when the power of the
Moslem quailed and fled before us. And had not your sordid
Venetian traders stepped in, courting the infidel for love
of gain, the Cross would still be worshipped on all the
shores of the Adriatic, and the Uzcoques would still combat
for honour and victory instead of revenge and plunder. But
your hand has ever been against us. Your long galleys were
ever ready to sink our barks or blockade our coast; and the
fate of robbers and murderers awaited our people if they had
the mishap to fall into your hands. You reduced us at last
to despair. Each valiant deed performed against the Turk was
recompensed by you with new persecutions, till at last you
converted into deadly enemies those who would willingly have
been your friends and fast allies. Thank yourselves, then,
for the foe you have raised up. Your own cowardice and greed
have engendered the hydra which now preys upon your heart’s
blood.”

The Proveditore remarked with satisfaction, not unmingled
with surprise, that the old pirate, who had hitherto replied to
all interrogatories with a degree of cold reserve and cunning
which had baffled his examiners, was becoming visibly excited,
and losing his power of self-control. This was favourable to
the meditated stratagem of the Venetian, who now, in pursuance
of the scheme he had combined, gave the conversation another
direction.

“I an willing to acknowledge,” said he, “that the republic
has at times dealt somewhat hardly with your people. But which
is in fact the worst foe, he who openly attacks you, or he who
makes you his tool to sow discord amongst Christians, and to
excite the Turks against Venice, while under pretence of
protection he squeezes from you the booty obtained at the price
of your blood?”

“And who does that?” demanded the Uzcoque.

“Who! Need you ask the question? What do you give for the
shelter you receive from Austria? At what price do you inhabit
the town and castle of Segna?”

“At none that I am aware of,” replied Dansowich fiercely.
“We dwell there, in virtue of our compact with the Emperor, as
soldiers of the Archduke, bound to defend the post confided to
us against the aggressions of the infidel. As soldiers we have
our pay, as mariners we have our lawful booty.”

“Pay and booty!” repeated the Proveditore scornfully.
“Whence comes, then, your manifest misery and poverty? Whence
comes it that you turn robbers, if in the pay of Austria? No,
Dansowich, you will not deceive us by such flimsy pretexts!
Your gains, lawful and unlawful, are wrested from you by the
archducal counsellors, in whose hands you are mere puppets.
‘Twas they who prompted you to tell the Turks that you were in
league with Venice; that the republic encouraged your misdeeds,
and shared the profits of your aggressions on the subjects of
the Porte. They it was who caused the documents to be prepared,
with forged seals and signatures of the illustrious Signoria,
which were to serve as proofs of your lying assertions. Deny
this, if you can.”

The beard and mustache of the old Uzcoque appeared to curl
and bristle with fury at the insulting imputations of the
Proveditore. For a moment he seemed about to fly at his
interlocutor; his fingers clutched and tore the straw upon
which he was sitting; and his fetters clanked as his whole
frame shook with rage. After a brief pause, and by a strong
effort, [pg 414] he restrained himself, and
replied calmly to the taunting accusation of the
Venetian.

“Why go so far,” said he, “to seek for motives that may be
found nearer home? You seem to have forgotten how many times
the Archduke has compelled us to make restitution of booty
wrested from Venetian subjects. You forget, too, that it was in
consequence of your complaints he sent to the cruel Rabbata to
control us—Rabbata whom we slew in our wrath, for we are
freemen and brook no tyranny. If we are poor individually, it
is because we yield up our booty into the hands of our
woivodes, to be used for the common good of seven hundred
families. No, Signor! if the republic has to complain of us,
let her remember the provocations received at her hands, the
persecutions which converted a band of heroes into a pirate
horde, and which changed our holy zeal against the enemies of
the Cross into remorseless hatred of all mankind. As to the
forged seals and signatures you talk of, and the deceptions
practised on the Turks, if such there were, they were the
self-willed act of our woivodes, and in no way instigated by
Austria.”

“Thou liest, Dansowich!” said the Proveditore sternly. “Did
you not proclaim and swear in the public market-place of the
Austrian town of Segna, that you were the friends and allies of
Venice? This you would never have dared to do, but with the
approval and connivance of the archducal government.”

The eyes of the pirate sparkled with a strange and
significant gleam as the Proveditore recalled the circumstance
to his recollection.

“Know ye not,” said he with a grim smile, “whom ye have to
thank for that good office? ‘Twas Dansowich himself, who
thereby but half fulfilled his vow of vengeance against the
republic. And when did it occur?” he continued with rising
fury. “Was it not shortly after the day in which that heartless
villain, the Proveditore Marcello, captured the woivode’s wife,
and hung her, unoffending and defenceless, unshriven and
unabsolved, upon a tree on the Dalmatian shore?”

The Uzcoque paused, overcome by the bitter memories he was
calling up, and by the fury and hatred they revived in his
breast. His eyes were bloodshot, and the foam stood upon his
lips as he concluded. The Proveditore smiled. The favourable
moment he had been waiting had arrived, the moment when he
doubted not that Dansowich would betray himself. Taking
Antonio’s drawing from under his cloak, he suddenly unrolled
and held it before the Uzcoque, in such a manner that the light
of the lantern fell full upon the ghastly countenance of the
old woman.

“Behold!” said he. “Does that resemble her you speak
of?”

The object of the Proveditore was gained, but he had not
well calculated all the consequences of his stratagem.

“Fiend of hell!” shouted Dansowich in a voice of thunder,
while a sudden light seemed to burst upon him. “‘Tis thou who
are her murderer!” And bounding forward with a violence that at
once freed him from his fetters, which fell clattering on the
dungeon floor, he clutched the senator by the throat, and
hurled him to the ground before the astonished Venetian had
time to make the slightest resistance.

“Art thou still in being?” he muttered, while his teeth
gnashed and ground together. “I thought thee long since dead.
But, no! ’twas written thou shouldst die by my hand. Be it done
to thee as thou didst to the wife of my bosom,” continued he,
while kneeling on the breast of the Proveditore, and
compressing his throat in an iron gripe that threatened to
prove as efficacious and nearly as speedy in its operation as
the bow-string of the Turk. In vain did Marcello struggle
violently to free himself from the crushing pressure of the
pirate’s fingers. Although a very powerful man, and in the full
vigour of his strength, the disadvantage at which he had been
taken prevented his being a match for the old Uzcoque, whose
sinews were braced by a long life of hardship. Fortunately,
however, for the Venetian, the furious shout of Dansowich had
been overheard [pg 415] by the guards and jailers,
who now rushed into the dungeon, and rescued the half
strangled Proveditore from the grasp of his fierce
antagonist.

“Do him no hurt!” exclaimed Marcello, so soon as he was able
to speak, seeing that the guards were disposed to handle the
Uzcoque somewhat roughly; “the secret I have won is well worth
the risk. The prisoner is Dansowich, woivode of Segna.”

The fetters which the pirate had snapped with such facility,
were, upon examination, found to be filed more than half
through. The instrument by which this had been effected was
sought for and discovered, and the prisoner, having been doubly
manacled, was again left to the solitude of his cell. After
directing all imaginable vigilance to be used for the safe
custody of so important a captive, the Proveditore re-entered
his gondola and was conveyed back to his palace.

CHAPTER III.

THE PIRATES.

The desperate attempt on the life of the Proveditore, and
the evidence given by him as to the identity of the prisoner,
had the result that may be supposed, and the old Uzcoque was
put to the torture. But the ingenuity of Venetian tormentors
was vainly exhausted upon him; the most unheard of sufferings
failed to extort a syllable of confession from his lips. At
last, despairing of obtaining the desired information by these
means, the senate commissioned Marcello, as one well acquainted
with the localities, to make a descent on the Dalmatian coast,
and profiting by the consternation of the Uzcoqes at the loss
of their leader, to endeavour to surprise a small fort situated
at some distance from Segna, and which was the abode of
Dansowich. In the absence of the old pirate it would probably
be carelessly guarded and easily surprised; and it was hoped
that documents would be found there, proving that which the
Venetians were so anxious to establish. Another object of the
expedition was to capture, if possible, the mysterious female
who had been lately seen more than once in Venice, and who had
taken so prominent a part in the attack on the palace of the
Malipieri.

Accompanied by his son, whom for various reasons he had
resolved to take with him, Marcello went on board an armed
galley, and with a favouring breeze steered for the Dalmatian
coast. He had little doubt of accomplishing the object of his
expedition with ease and safety; for a Venetian Fleet was
already blockading the channel of Segna, and the archducal city
of Fiume, where several of the Uzcoque barks were undergoing
repairs. The blockade had been instituted in consequence of the
outrageous piracies committed by the Uzcoques during the Easter
festival, and was a measure frequently adopted by the republic;
which, although carefully avoiding a war, neglected no other
means of enforcing their applications to the court at Gradiska
for an energetic interference in the proceedings of the
pirates. The inconvenience and interruption to the trade of
Fiume occasioned by these blockades, usually induced the
archducal government to institute a pretended investigation
into the conduct of the Uzcoques, or at least to promise the
Venetians some reparation—a mockery of satisfaction with
which the latter, in their then state of decline and weakness,
were fain to content themselves. Reckoning upon the terror
inspired by the presence of the squadron now employed in the
blockade, as well as upon its support, should he require it,
the Proveditore made sure of success. He was doomed, however,
to be cruelly disappointed in his sanguine anticipations.

When the attempt to get possession of the person of a
Venetian nobleman had failed, Strasolda found it impossible to
keep her father’s captivity any longer a secret, and was
compelled to appeal to the whole of the Uzcoques to assist her
in his deliverance. Information of the woivode’s recognition,
[pg 416] and of the tortures he had
suffered, soon reached the ears of the pirates, who were not
slow to perceive that the safety, and even the existence of
their tribe, were now at stake. Although well acquainted
with the inflexible character of Dansowich, they trembled
lest the agonies he was made to suffer should force from him
a confession, which would enable the Venetians to convince
the archduke of the criminal collusion between his
counsellors and the Uzcoques. This would be the signal for
the withdrawal of the archducal protection from the pirates,
who then, exposed to the vengeance of all whom they had
plundered, must inevitably succumb in the unequal conflict
that would ensue.

The imminence of the peril inspired the Uzcoques with
unwonted courage and energy. Jurissa Caiduch himself,
forgetting any cause of dislike he might have to Dansowich,
joined heart and hand in the plans formed by the pirates for
the deliverance of their leader. Every man in Segna, whether
young or old, all who could wield a cimeter or clutch a knife,
hastily armed themselves, and crowded into the fleet of long
light skiffs in which they were wont to make their predatory
excursions. Then breaking furiously through the line of
Venetian ships, stationed between Veglia and the mainland, and
which were totally unprepared for this sudden and daring
manœuvre, they disappeared amidst the shoals and in the
small creeks and inlets of the Dalmatian islands belonging to
the republic, where the ponderous Venetian galleys would vainly
attempt to follow them. Their object was the same which they
had already attempted to carry out in Venice on the day of the
Bridge Fight; namely, to seize upon some Venetian magistrate or
person of importance whom they might exchange for Dansowich.
Under the guidance of Jurissa Caiduch they waylaid and boarded
every vessel that passed up or down the Adriatic, especially
those coming from the Ionian islands, in hope of meeting with a
Venetian of rank. Nor did they pursue their researches upon the
water alone. Not a night passed that one or other of the
islands was not lighted up by the blaze of villages, hamlets,
and villas. In the absence of Dansowich, there was no restraint
upon their fury; and urged on by the bloodthirsty Jurissa, the
cruelties they committed were unprecedented even in their
sanguinary annals. Nor were they without hope that the
barbarities they were perpetrating might induce the Venetians
to restore their leader to liberty, in order that he might, as
was well known to be his wont, check the excesses of his
followers.

The outbreak of the pirates had been so sudden and
unexpected, that the Proveditore, who sailed from Venice on the
same day on which it occurred, had received no intelligence of
it, and, unconscious of his peril, steered straight for the
islands. One circumstance alone appeared strange to him, which
was, that during the last part of his voyage he did not meet a
single vessel, although the quarter of the Adriatic through
which he was passing was usually crowded with shipping. But he
was far from attributing this extraordinary change to its real
cause.

It was afternoon when Marcello’s galley cane in sight of the
white cliffs of Cherso, and shortly afterwards entered the
channel, running between that island and Veglia. The masses of
dark clouds in the western horizon were becoming momentarily
more threatening, and various signs of an approaching storm
made the captain of the galley especially anxious to get,
before nightfall, into the nearest harbour, which was that of
Pesca, at the southern extremity of the island of Veglia. All
sail was made upon the galley, and they were running rapidly
down the channel, when a red light suddenly flashed over the
waves in the quarter of the horizon they were approaching, and
was reflected back upon the sky, now darkened with clouds and
by the approach of night. Attracted by this unusual appearance,
Antonio hurried to the high quarterdeck of the galley; and
scarcely had he ascended it, when the fiery glow fell in a
flood of rosy light upon the distant chalk cliffs. Entranced by
the picturesque beauty of the scene, the young painter forgot
to enquire the cause of this singular illumination,
[pg 417] when suddenly his attention
was caught by a shout from the man at the helm.

“By Heavens, ’tis a fire!” ejaculated the sailor, who had
been watching the unusual appearance. “All Pesca must be in
flames.”

He had scarcely uttered the words when the galley rounded a
projecting point of land, and the correctness of the seaman’s
conjecture was apparent. A thick cloud of smoke hung like a
pall over the unfortunate town of Pesca. Tongues of flame
darted upwards from the dense black vapour, lighting up sea and
land to an immense distance.

Scarcely had Antonio’s startled glance been able to take in
this imposing spectacle, when the storm, which had long been
impending, burst forth with tremendous violence; the wind
howled furiously amongst the rigging, and the galley was tossed
like a nutshell from crest to crest of the foaming waves; each
moment bringing it into more dangerous proximity to the rocky
shoals of that iron-bound shore. The light from the burning
town showed the Venetians all the dangers of their situation;
and their peril was the more imminent because the signal
usually made for boats to tow large vessels through the rocks
and breakers, was at such a moment not likely to be observed or
attended to by the people of Pesca. Nevertheless the signal was
hoisted; but instead of bringing the assistance so much needed
by the Venetians, it drew upon them an enemy far more
formidable than the elements with which they were already
contending. Boats were soon seen approaching the galley; but as
they drew near it was evident they were not manned by the
peaceful fishermen, who usually came out to render assistance
to vessels. They were crowded with wild, fierce-looking
figures, who, on arriving within a short distance of the ship,
set up a savage yell of defiance, and sent a deadly volley of
musket-balls amongst the astounded Venetians. Before the latter
had recovered from their astonishment, the light skiffs of the
Uzcoques were within a few yards of the galley. Another fatally
effective volley of musketry; and then, throwing down their
fire-arms, the pirates grasped their sabres and made violent
efforts to board. But each time that they succeeded in closing,
the plunging of the ponderous galley into the trough of the
sea, or the rising of some huge wave, severed them from their
prey, and prevented them from setting foot on the decks of the
Venetian vessel. This delay was made the most of by the
officers of the latter, in making arrangements for defence. The
Proveditore himself, a man of tried and chivalrous courage, and
great experience both in land and sea warfare, lent his
personal aid to the preparations, and in a few pithy and
emphatic words strove to encourage the crew to a gallant
resistance. But the soldiers and mariners who manned the galley
had already sustained a heavy loss by the fire of the Uzcoques,
and were moreover alarmed by their near approach to that
perilous shore, as well as disheartened by the prospect of a
contest with greatly superior numbers. Although some few took
to their arms and occupied the posts assigned them by their
officers, the majority seemed more disposed to tell beads and
mutter prayers, than to display the energy and decision which
alone could rescue them from the double peril by which they
were menaced. The pirates, meanwhile, were constantly foiled in
their attempts to board by the fury of the elements, till at
last, becoming maddened by repeated disappointments, they threw
off their upper garments, and fixing their long knives firmly
between their teeth, dashed in crowds into the water. Familiar
with that element from childhood, they skimmed over its surface
with the lightness and rapidity of sea-mews, and swarmed up the
sides of the galley. A vigorous defence might yet have saved
the vessel; but the heroic days of Venice were long
past—the race of men who had so long maintained the
supremacy of the republic in all the Italian seas, was now
extinct. After a feeble and irresolute resistance, the
Venetians threw down their arms and begged for quarter; while
the Proveditore, disgusted at the cowardice of his countrymen,
indignantly broke his sword, and retreating to the quarterdeck,
[pg 418] there seated himself beside
his son, and calmly awaited his fate.

Foremost among the assailants was Jurissa Caiduch, who
sprang upon the deck of the galley, foaming with rage, and
slaughtering all he met on his passage. The blazing town
lighted up the scene, and showed him and his followers where to
strike. In vain did the unfortunate crew implore quarter. None
was given, and the decks of the ship soon streamed with blood,
while each moment the cries of the victims became fewer and
fainter.

Totally forgetting in his blind fury the object of the
expedition, Jurissa stayed not his hand in quest of hostages,
but rushed with uplifted knife on Marcello and his son. The
latter shrieked for mercy; while the Proveditore, unmoved by
the imminence of the peril, preserved his dignity of mien, and
fixed his deep stern gaze upon the pirate. Jurissa paused for
an instant, staggered by the look, and awed by the commanding
aspect, of the Venetian. Soon, however, as though indignant at
his own momentary hesitation, he rushed forward with a furious
shout and uplifted blade. The knife was descending, the next
instant it would have entered the heart of Marcello; when an
Uzcoque, recognizing by the light of the conflagration the
patrician garb of the Proveditore, uttered a cry of surprise,
and seized the arm of his bloodthirsty leader.

“Caiduch!” exclaimed the pirate, “would you again blast our
purpose? This man is a Venetian noble. His life may buy that of
Dansowich.”

“It is the Proveditore Marcello!” cried Antonio, eager to
profit by the momentary respite.

The words of the young painter passed from mouth to mouth,
and in a few seconds the whole of the Uzcoques were acquainted
with the important capture that had been made. For a moment
astonishment kept them tongue-tied, and then a wild shout of
exultation conveyed to their companions on shore the
intelligence of some joyful event.

Ropes were now thrown out to the pirate skiffs, the galley
was safely towed into the harbour, and the Proveditore, his
son, and the few Venetian sailors who had escaped the general
slaughter, were conducted to the burning town, amidst the jeers
and ill-treatment of their captors. Exposed to great danger
from the falling roofs and timbers of the blazing houses, they
were led through the streets of Pesca, and on their way had
ample opportunity of witnessing the incredible cruelties
exercised by the pirates upon the inhabitants of that ill-fated
town. What made these cruelties appear still more horrible, was
the part taken in them by the Uzcoque women, who, as was the
case at that period with most of the Sclavonian races, were all
trained to the use of arms,¹ and
who on this occasion swelled the ranks of the freebooters.
Their ferocity exceeded, if possible, that of the men.
Neither age, sex, nor station afforded any protection
against these furies, who perpetrated barbarities the
details of which would exceed belief.

The violence of the flames rendering it impossible to remain
in the town, the Uzcoques betook themselves to the castle of a
nobleman, situated on a rising ground a short distance from
Pesca. On first landing, the pirates had broken into this
castle and made it their headquarters. After pillaging every
thing of value, they had gratified their savage love of
destruction by breaking and destroying what they could not well
carry away. In the court-yard were collected piles of
furniture, pictures of price, and fragments of rich tapestry,
rent by those ruthless spoilers from the walls of the
apartments. With this costly fuel had the Uzcoques lit fires,
at which quarters of oxen and whole sheep were now
roasting.

A shout of triumph burst forth when the news of the
Proveditore’s capture was announced to the pirates
[pg 419] who had remained at the
castle, and they crowded round the unfortunate prisoners,
overwhelming them with threats and curses. Something like
silence being at length obtained, Jurissa commanded instant
preparations to be made for the banquet appointed to
celebrate the success of their expedition. Tables were
arranged in a spacious hall of the castle, and upon them
soon smoked the huge joints of meat that had been roasting
at the fires, placed on the bare boards without dish or
plate. Casks of wine that had been rescued from the flames
of the town, or extracted from the castle cellars, were
broached, or the heads knocked in, and the contents poured
into jugs and flagons of every shape and size. Although the
light of the conflagration, glaring red through the tall
Gothic windows, lit up the hall and rendered any further
illumination unnecessary, a number of torches had been fixed
round the apartment, the resinous smoke of which floated in
clouds over the heads of the revelers. Seating themselves
upon benches, chairs, and empty casks, the Uzcoques
commenced a ravenous attack upon the coarse but abundant
viands set before them.

The scene was a strange one. The brutal demeanour of the
men, their bearded and savage aspect; the disheveled
bloodstained women, mingling their shrill voices with the
hoarse tones of their male companions; the disordered but often
picturesque garb and various weapons of the pirates; the whole
seen by the light of the burning houses—more resembled an
orgie of demons than an assemblage of human beings; and even
the cool and resolute Proveditore felt himself shudder and turn
pale as he contemplated this carnival of horrors, celebrated by
wretches on whose hands the blood of their fellow-men was as
yet hardly dry. Antonio sat supporting himself against the
table, seeming scarcely conscious of what passed around him.
Both father and son had been compelled to take their places at
the board, amidst the jeers and insults of the Uzcoques.

The revel was at its height, when Jurissa suddenly started
from his seat, and struck the table violently with his
drinking-cup.

“Hold, Uzcoques!” he exclaimed; “we have forgotten the
crowning ornament of our banquet.”

He whispered something to an Uzcoque seated beside him, who
left the room. While the pirates were still asking one another
the meaning of Jurissa’s words, the man returned, bearing
before him a trencher covered with a cloth, which he placed at
the upper end of the table.

“Behold the last and best dish we can offer to our noble
guests!” said Jurissa; “’twill suit, I doubt not, their dainty
palates.” And, tearing off the cloth, he exposed to view the
grizzly and distorted features of a human head.

The shout of savage exultation that burst from the pirates
at this ghastly spectacle, drowned the groan of rage and grief
uttered by the Proveditore, as he recognised in the pale and
rigid countenance the well-known features of his friend
Christophoro Veniero. That unfortunate nobleman, on his return
from a voyage to the Levant, had fallen into the hands of
Jurissa, who, before he was aware of the rank of his prisoner,
had barbarously slain him. This had occurred not many hours
before the capture of Marcello; and it was to the murder of
Veniero that the Uzcoque made allusion, when he seized
Jurissa’s arm at the moment he was about to stab the
Proveditore.

One of the pirates, a man of gigantic stature and hideous
aspect, now rose from his seat, staggering with drunkenness,
and forcing open the jaws of the dead, placed a piece of meat
between the teeth. The wildest laughter and applause greeted
this frightful pantomime, which made the blood of the
Proveditore run cold.

“Infernal and bloody villains!” shouted he, unable to
restrain his indignation, and starting to his feet as he spoke.
There was a momentary pause, during which the pirates gazed at
the noble Venetian, seemingly struck dumb with surprise at his
temerity. Then, however, a dozen sinewy arms were extended to
seize him, and a dozen daggers menaced his life. Dignified and
immovable, the high-souled senator offered no resistance, but
inwardly ejaculating a [pg 420] short prayer, awaited the
death-stroke. It came not, however. Although some of the
Uzcoques, in their fury and intoxication, would have
immolated their valuable hostage, others, who had drunk less
deeply, protested against the madness of such an act, and
rushed forward to protect him. Their interference was
resented, and a violent quarrel ensued. Knives were drawn,
benches overturned, chairs broken up and converted into
weapons; on all sides bare steel was flashing, deep oaths
resounding, and missiles of various kinds flying across the
tables. It would be impossible to say how long this scene of
drunken violence would have lasted, or how long the
Proveditore and his son would have remained unscathed amidst
the storm, had not the advent of a fresh actor upon the
scene stilled the tumult in a manner so sudden as to appear
almost miraculous.

The new comer was no other than the ghastly old woman who
has been seen to play such an important part in this history,
and who now entered the banqueting hall with hasty step and
impatient gesture.

“Uzcoques!” she exclaimed in a shrill, clear, and emphatic
voice, that rose above the clamour of the brawl; “Uzcoques!
what means this savage uproar? Are you not yet sated with
rapine and slaughter, that you thus fall upon and tear each
other? Are ye men, or wolves and tigers? Is this the way to
obtain your leader’s deliverance; and will the news of this
day’s havoc, think you, better the position of Dansowich?”

The pirates hung their heads in silent confusion at this
reproof. None dared to reply; Jurissa alone grumbled something
inaudible.

“Follow me!” continued the singular woman whose words had so
extraordinary an effect on this brutal band. “Follow, every
man! and stop as far as may be, the ruin you have begun.”

Obedient to her voice the Uzcoques left the hall, some of
them sullenly and slowly enough, but none venturing to dispute
the injunction laid upon them. The old woman waited till the
scene of tumult and revel was abandoned by all but Marcello and
his son, and then hurrying after the pirates, led the way to
the burning town. In a few minutes the two Venetians beheld,
from the castle windows, the dark forms of the freebooters
moving about in the firelight, as they busied themselves to
extinguish the conflagration. Here and there the white robe of
the mysterious old woman was discernible as she flitted from
one group to another, directing their efforts, and urging them
to greater exertions.

“Strange!” said the Proveditore musingly, “that so hideous
and repulsive an old creature should exercise such commanding
influence over these bandits.”

He looked round to his son as he spoke; but Antonio, worn
out by the fatigues and agitation of the day, had stretched
himself upon a bench and was already in a deep sleep. The
Proveditore gazed at him for a brief space, with an expression
of mingled pity, regret, and paternal affection upon his
countenance.

“As weak of body as infirm of purpose,” he murmured. “Alas!
that a name derived from old Roman ancestors should be borne by
one so little qualified to do it honour! Had it pleased Heaven
to preserve to me the child stolen in his infancy by the
Moslem, how different would have been my position! That
masculine and noble boy, so full of life and promise, would
have proved a prop to my old age, and an ornament to his
country. But now, alas!”—

He continued for a while to indulge in vain regrets that the
course of events had not been otherwise; then turning to the
window, he watched the efforts made by the pirates to
extinguish the flames, until a dense cloud of smoke that
overhung the town was the only sign remaining of the
conflagration.

For some time the Proveditore paced up and down the hall in
anxious thought upon his critical position, and the strange
circumstances that had led to it. In vain did he endeavour to
reconcile, with what now seemed more than ever inexplicable,
the vindictive rage of Dansowich in the dungeon, and the
evidence before him that the pirate’s wife was still in
existence. It was a riddle which he was unable to solve; and at
last, despairing of [pg 421] success, he abandoned the
attempt, and sought in slumber a temporary oblivion of the
perils that surrounded him.

CHAPTER IV.

THE RECOGNITION.

Upon a divan in the splendid armoury of the pacha’s palace
at Bosnia-Serai, the young Turk Ibrahim was seated in deep
thought, the day after his return home. On the walls around him
were displayed weapons and military accoutrements of every
kind. Damascus sabres richly inlaid, and many with jeweled
hilts, embroidered banners, golden stirrups, casques of
embossed silver, burnished armour and coats-of-mail, were
arranged in picturesque and fanciful devices. As the young
Moslem gazed around him, and beheld these trophies of victories
won by Turkish viziers and pachas in their wars against Austria
and Venice, his martial and fearless spirit rose high, and he
reproached himself with weakness and pusillanimity for having
abandoned the pursuit of her he loved. Bitterly did he now
regret his precipitation in leaving Venice the morning after
the Battle of the Bridge, and while under the influence of the
shock he had received, in beholding the hideous features of an
old woman where he had expected to find the blooming
countenance of Strasolda. His love for the Uzcoque maiden, as
he had seen her when his captive, and again in the cavern on
the coast by Segna, returned in full force. He was already
planning a journey to Venice, when he was interrupted in his
meditations by the noise of a horse’s hoofs dashing full speed
into the court of the palace. In another minute an attendant
summoned him to the presence of the pacha, and there he heard
the news just received, of the wild outbreak of the Uzcoques.
The Martellossi and other troops were ordered to proceed
immediately to the frontier, in order to protect Turkish
Dalmatia from the pirates; and Ibrahim, at his urgent request,
was appointed to a command in the expedition.

With joyful alacrity did the young Turk arm and hurry to
horse; and then, putting himself at the head of a troop of
light cavalry, sped onwards in the direction of the country
where he hoped to gain tidings of Strasolda. Having received
strict orders to content himself with protecting the Turkish
frontier, and above all not to infringe on Archducal territory,
Ibrahim, on arriving at the boundary of the pachalic, left his
troop in charge of the second in command, and with a handful of
men entered Venetian Dalmatia, with the intention of obtaining
information concerning the Uzcoques, and more especially
concerning her he loved. He was assisted in his enquiries by
the good understanding existing between Venice and the Porte;
and he soon learned that, after the burning of Pesca, the
pirates had suddenly ceased their excesses and returned to
Segna, taking the Proveditore with them. They had not gone,
however, either to the castle or the town; but fearful lest the
Archduke should interfere, and make them give up their
illustrious prisoners, had betaken themselves to the mountains,
in the numerous caverns and lurking-places of which they were
able to conceal their captives. From every mouth did the eager
enquirer hear praises of the female who accompanied the
Uzcoques. None spoke of her but in terms of love and gratitude.
As regarded her appearance accounts were at variance, some
representing her as young and beautiful, while others
compassionated her frightful ugliness; and, more than ever
perplexed by this conflicting testimony, Ibrahim pursued his
march and his enquiries, still hoping by perseverance to arrive
at a solution of the enigma.

While the young Turk was thus employed, the Proveditore and
his son were conveyed by their captors from one place of
security to another, passing one night in the depths of some
[pg 422] ravine, the next amongst
the crags and clefts of the mountains, but always moving
about in the daytime, and never sleeping twice in the same
place. Since the evening of the revel at Pesca they had not
again beheld the mysterious old woman, although they had
more than once heard her clear and silvery voice near the
place allotted to them for confinement and repose. In
certain attentions and comforts, intended as alleviations of
their unpleasant position, female care and thought were also
visible; but all their efforts were vain to obtain a sight
of the friendly being who thus hovered around them.

It was on a beautiful evening some fourteen days after their
capture, that the Proveditore and his son lay upon the bank of
the only river that waters the rocky vicinity of Segna, wearied
by a long and rapid march. There was an unusual degree of
bustle observable amongst the Uzcoques, and numerous messengers
had been passing to and from the castle of Segna, which was at
no great distance from the spot where they had now halted. From
the various indications of some extraordinary occurrence, the
two Venetians began to hope that the crisis of their fate was
approaching, and that they should at last know in what manner
their captors meant to dispose of them. Nor were they wrong in
their expectations. Suddenly the mysterious old woman stood
before them, her partially veiled features bearing their wonted
hideous aspect, and her eyes, usually so brilliant, dimmed with
tears.

“You are free,” said she in an agitated voice to the
Proveditore and his son. “Our people will escort you to Fiume
in all safety, and there you will find galleys of the republic
to convey you back to Venice.”

At the sight of the old woman’s unearthly countenance,
Antonio covered his face with his hands; the Proveditore rose
from the ground deeply moved.

“Singular being!” he exclaimed, “by this mildness and mercy
you punish me more effectually than by the bloodiest revenge
you could have taken for my cruel treatment of you.”

“You owe me no thanks,” was the reply; “thank rather the
holy Virgin, who sent the youth beside you to be your guardian
angel, and who delivered you into the hands of the Uzcoques at
a time when they had need of a hostage. Surely it was by the
special intervention of Heaven that the murderer of the wife
was sent to serve as ransom for the captive husband. But the
atonement has come too late, the noble Dansowich was basely
ensnared into an act of violence, and his life paid the forfeit
of his wrath—he died upon the rack. And now the wily
counsellors at Gradiska compel us to release you.”

She paused, interrupted by a flood of tears. After a short
silence, broken only by her sobs, she became more composed, and
the Proveditore again addressed her.

“But what,” said he, “could have driven Dansowich to an act
of violence, which he must have known would entail a severe
punishment? Surely his wife’s safety and the lapse of years
might have enabled him to forgive, if not to forget, the
unsuccessful attempt upon her life.”

“His wife’s safety!” exclaimed the old woman. “Have the
trials and fatigues of the last few days turned your brain?
Alas! too surely was the rope fixed round her neck; and had you
not carried off her remains how could you have possessed her
portrait, and by the devilish stratagem of showing it to the
bereaved husband, have driven him to the act which cost him his
life?”

“Gracious Heaven! what hideous jest is this?” exclaimed
Marcello. “Do I not see you living and standing before me; and
think you I could ever forget your features, or the look you
gave me when hanging from the tree? You were cut down and saved
after our departure; and but a few weeks have elapsed since my
son painted your likeness, after conveying you across the canal
in his gondola.”

The old woman stood for a few moments as though petrified by
what she had just heard. At last she passed her hand slowly
across her face, as if to convince herself of her identity.

“And she you murdered resembled me?” she exclaimed in
a trembling voice. “It was of me that the portrait was
taken, and by him!” she continued, pointing to Antonio
with [pg 423] a gesture of horror and
contempt. “My picture was it, that was held before
Dansowich, and by you, the murderer of his wife? Holy
Virgin!” she exclaimed, as the truth seemed to flash upon
her, “how has my faith in thee misled me! I beheld in this
youth one sent by Heaven to aid me; but now I see that he
was prompted by the powers of darkness to steal my portrait,
and thus become the instrument of destruction to the best
and noblest of our race.”

“Forgive and spare us!” exclaimed Antonio,
conscience-stricken as he remembered the admonitions of
Contarini. “‘Tis true, I was the instrument, but most
unwittingly. How could I know so sad an end would follow?”

“‘Tis not my wont to seek revenge,” replied the old woman;
“nor do I forget that you saved my life from the fury of the
Venetians.”

Antonio essayed to speak, but had not courage to correct the
error into which she had been led by his strong resemblance to
the gallant stranger.

“But,” she continued, “’tis time you should have full proof
that the features you painted were not those of the wife of
Dansowich.”

With these words she threw back her veil, unfastened some
small hooks concealed in her abundant tresses, and took off a
mask of thin and untanned lambskin, wrinkled and stained with
yellow and purple streaks by exposure to sun and storm. This
mask, closely fitted to features regular and prominent, and
strongly resembling those of her unfortunate mother, whose
large, dark, and very brilliant eyes she had also inherited,
will explain the misconception of the Proveditore as well as
that of Dansowich, who had never seen his daughter in a
disguise worn only at Venice or other places of peril, and
while away from her father and his protection.

While the beautiful but still tearful Uzcoque maid stood
thus revealed before the astonished senator, and his enraptured
and speechless son, the approaching footfall of a horse at full
speed was heard, and in an instant there darted round the angle
of a cliff the martial figure of a Turk, mounted upon a large
and powerful steed, of that noble race bred in the deserts
eastward of the Caspian. The tall and graceful person of the
stranger was attired in a close riding-dress of scarlet cloth,
from the open breast of which gleamed a light coat-of-mail. A
twisted turban bound with chains of glittering steel defended
and adorned his head. A crooked cimeter suspended from his belt
was his only weapon. His countenance bore a striking
resemblance to that of Antonio, and had the same sweet and
graceful expression about the mouth and chin; but the more
ample and commanding forehead, the well opened flashing eyes,
the more prominent and masculine nose, the clear, rich, olive
complexion and soldierly bearing, proclaimed him to be of a
widely different and higher nature. Riding close up to the side
of Strasolda, he reined in his steed with a force and
suddenness that threw him on his haunches; but speedily
recovering his balance, the noble animal stood pawing the earth
and lashing his sides with his long tail, like some untamed and
kingly creature of the desert; his veins starting out in sharp
relief, his broad chest and beautiful limbs spotted with foam,
and his long mane, that would have swept the ground, streaming
like a banner in the sea-breeze.

For a moment the startled Strasolda gazed alternately, and
in wild and mute amazement, at Antonio and the stranger; but
all doubt and hesitation were dispersed in an instant by the
well-remembered and impassioned tones, the martial bearing and
Moslem garb of Ibrahim, whose captive she had been before she
saw him in the cavern.

Leaping from his saddle and circling her slender waist with
his arm, he addressed her in those accents of truth and passion
which go at once to the heart—

“Heroic daughter of Dansowich! thou art the bright star of
my destiny, the light of my soul! Thou must be mine! Come,
then, to my heart and home! Gladden with thy love the life of
Ibrahim, and he will give thee truth unfailing and love without
end.”

Strasolda did not long hesitate. Already prepossessed in
favour of the young and noble-minded Moslem; her
[pg 424] allegiance to the Christian
powers and faith weakened by the treachery of Austria; her
people degraded into robbers; a soldier’s daughter, and
keenly alive to the splendours of martial gallantry and
glory; an orphan, too, and desolate—can it be wondered
at if she surrendered, at once and for ever, to this
generous and impassioned lover all the sympathies of her
affectionate nature? She spoke not; but, as she leaned
half-fainting on his arm, her eloquent looks said that which
made Ibrahim’s pulses thrill with grateful rapture. Pressing
her fondly to his bosom, he placed her on the back of his
faithful steed, and vaulted into the saddle. Snorting as the
vapour flew from his red nostrils, and neighing with mad
delight, the impatient animal threw out his iron hoofs into
the air, flew round the angle of the cliff, and joined
erelong a dozen mounted spearmen. Then, bending their
headlong course towards the far east, in a few seconds all
had disappeared.

During this scene, which passed almost with the speed of
thought, the Proveditore, who was seated on a ledge of the
cliff, had gazed anxiously and wildly at the youthful stranger.
He knew him in an instant, and would have singled him out
amidst thousands; but was so overwhelmed by a rushing tide of
strong and heartrending emotions, that he could neither rise
nor speak, and remained, long after the Turk had disappeared,
with out-stretched arms and straining eye-balls.

“Gracious Heaven!” exclaimed the bewildered Antonio, half
suspecting the truth, “who was that daring youth?”

After a pause, and in tones broken and inarticulate, his
father answered—”Thy twin brother, Antonio! When a child
he was stolen from me by some Turks in Candia; and those who
stole have given him their own daring and heroic nature, for
they are great and rising, while Venice and her sons are
falling and degenerate. Oh Ercole! my dear and long-lost
son—seen but a moment and then lost for ever!” ejaculated
the bereaved father, as, refusing all comfort, he folded his
cloak over his face and wept bitterly.

NOTE.—Shortly after these events, Venice, urged at
last beyond all endurance, took up arms against Austria on
account of the protection afforded by the latter power to the
Uzcoques. The pirate vessels were burned, Segna besieged and
taken, the Uzcoques slain or dispersed. The quarrel between
Austria and the republic was put an end to by the mediation of
Spain shortly before the breaking out of the Thirty Years’
War.

“Ces misérables,” says a distinguished French writer,
speaking of the Uzcoques, “fûrent bien plus criminels par
la faute des puissances, que par l’instinct de leur propre
nature. Les Vénétiens les aigrirent;
l’église Romaine préféra de les
persécuter au devoir de les éclaircir; la maison
d’Autriche en fit les instruments de sa politique, et quand le
philosophe examine leur histoire il ne voit pas que les
Uscoques soient les seuls criminels.”

Footnote 1:
(return)

The reader of German literature will call to mind the
anecdote, in Jean Paul’s Levana, of a Moldavian
woman who in one day slew seven men with her own hand, and
the same evening was delivered of a child.

THE SLAVE-TRADE.¹

The extraordinary change which took place in the public mind
in the beginning of the century on the subject of the
slave-trade, unquestionably justified the determination of
Government to abolish a traffic contradictory to every
principle of Christianity. It had taken twenty years to obtain
this victory of justice. But we must exonerate the mind of
England from the charge of abetting this guilty traffic in
human misery. The nation had been almost wholly ignorant of its
nature. Of course, that Africans were shipped for the West
Indies was known; that, as slaves, they were liable to the
severities of labour, or the temper of masters, was also known;
but in a country like England, where every man is occupied with
the concerns of public or private life, and where the struggle
for competence, if not for existence, is often of the most
trying order, great evils may occur in the distant dependencies
of the crown without receiving general notice from the nation.
It seems to have been one of the singular results of the war
with America, that the calamities of the slave-trade should
have been originally brought to the knowledge of the people.
The loss of our colonies on the mainland, naturally directed
public attention to the increased importance of the West Indian
colonies. A large proportion of our supplies for the war had
been drawn from those islands; they had become the station of
powerful fleets during the latter portion of the war; large
garrisons were placed in them; the intercourse became enlarged
from a merely commercial connexion with our ports, to a
governmental connection with the empire; and the whole
machinery of the West Indian social system was brought before
the eye of England.

The result was the exposure of the cruelties which slavery
entails, and the growing resolution to clear the country of the
stigma, and the benevolent desire to relieve a race of beings,
who, however differing in colour and clime from ourselves, were
sons of the same common blood, and objects of the same Divine
mercy. The exertions of Wilberforce, and the intelligent and
benevolent men whom he associated with himself in this great
cause, were at last successful; and he gained for the British
the noblest triumph ever gained for a nation over its own
habits, its selfishness, its pride, and its popular
opinion.

But the manner in which this great redemption of national
character was effected, did less honour to the wisdom of the
cabinet than to the benevolence of the people. Fox, probably
sincere, but certainly headlong, rushed into emancipation as he
had rushed into every measure that bore the name of popularity.
Impatient of the delay which might take the honour of this
crowning act out of the hands of his party—and
unquestionably, in any shape, it was an honour to any
party—he hurried it forward without securing the concert,
or compelling the acquiescence, of any one of the European
kingdoms engaged in the slave-trade. It is true that England
was then at war with them all; but there was thus only the
stronger opportunity of pronouncing the national resolve, never
to tolerate the commerce in slaves, and never to receive any
country into our protection by which that most infamous of all
trades was tolerated. The opportunity was amply given for
establishing the principle, in the necessity which every
kingdom in succession felt for the aid of England, and the
abolition ought to have been the first article of the treaty.
But the occasion was thrown away.

The parliamentary regulations, which had largely provided
for the comfort of the slaves on the passage from Africa, and
their protection in the British colonies, could not be extended
to the new and tremendous traffic which was engaged in by all
the commercial states of Europe and
[pg 426] the West. The closing of
the British mart of slavery flooded the African shore with
desperate dealers in the flesh and blood of man; whose only
object was profit, and who regarded the miseries of the
African only as they affected his sale. The ships which, by
the British regulations, had been suffered to carry only a
number limited to their accommodation, were now crowded with
wretches, stowed in spaces that scarcely allowed them to
breathe. The cheapness of the living cargo, produced by the
withdrawal of the British from the slave coast, excited the
activity, almost the fury, of the trade; and probably
100,000 miserable beings were thus annually dragged from
their own country, to undergo the labour of brutes, and die
the death of brutes in the Western World.

Another source of evil was added to the original crime. The
colonial possessions of Spain had been broken up into
republics, and those were all slave-dealers. The great colony
of Portugal, Brazil, had rushed into this frightful commerce
with the feverish avidity of avarice set free from all its old
restrictions. North America, coquetting with philanthropy, and
nominally abjuring the principle of slavery, suffered herself
to undergo the corruption of the practice for the temptation of
the lucre, and the Atlantic was covered with slave-ships.

But rash, ill considered, and unfortunate as was the
precipitate measure of Fox, we shall never but rejoice at the
abolition of the slave-trade by our country. If England had
stood alone for ever in that abolition, it would be a national
glory. To have cast that commerce from her at all apparent
loss, was the noblest of national gains; and it may be only
when higher knowledge shall be given to man, of the causes
which have protected the empire through the struggles of war
and the trials of peace, that we may know the full virtue of
that most national and magnanimous achievement of charity to
man.

It is only in the spirit of this principle that the
legislature has followed up those early exertions, by the
purchase of the final freedom of the slave, by the astonishing
donative of twenty millions sterling, the largest sum ever
given for the purposes of humanity. It is only in the same
spirit that our cabinet continues to press upon the commercial
states the right of search, a right which we solicit on the
simple ground of humanity; and which, though it cannot be our
duty to enforce at the hazard of hostility, must never be
abandoned where we can succeed by the representations of
reason, justice, and religion.

The curious and succinct narrative to which we now advert,
gives the experience of a short voyage on board of one of those
slave ships. And the miseries witnessed by its writer, whose
detail seems as accurate as it is simple, more than justify the
zeal of our foreign secretary in labouring to effect the total
extinction of this death-dealing trade.

H.M.S. the Cleopatra, of twenty-six guns, commanded by
Captain Wyvill, arriving at Rio Janeiro in September 1842, the
reverend writer took the opportunity of being transferred from
the Malabar, as chaplain. In the beginning of September the
Cleopatra left the Mauritius, to proceed to the Mozambique
Channel, off Madagascar, her appointed station, to watch the
slave-traders. After various cruises along the coast, and as
far as Algoa Bay, they at last captured a slaver.

April 12.—At daybreak the look-out at the
topmast-head perceived a vessel on the lee quarter, at such a
distance as to be scarcely visible; but her locality being
pronounced “very suspicious,” the order was given to bear up
for her. The breeze falling, the boats were ordered out, and in
a few minutes the barge and the first gig were pulling away in
the direction of the stranger. So variable, however, is the
weather at this season, that before the boats had rowed a mile
from the ship, a thick haze surrounded the ship, and the chase
was lost sight of. The rain fell in torrents, and the ship was
going seven knots through the water. On the clearing up of the
fog, the chase was again visible. The sun broke forth, and the
rakish-looking brigantine appeared to have carried on all sail
during the squall. They could see, under her sails, the low
black hull pitching up and down; and, approaching within range,
one of the forecastle guns was cleared away for a bow-chaser.
The [pg 427] British ensign had been for
some time flying at the peak. It was at length answered by
the green and yellow Brazilian flag. At length, after a
variety of dexterous manœuvres to escape, and from
fifteen to twenty shots fired after her, she shortened sail
and lay to. Dark naked forms passing across the deck,
removed any remaining doubt as to her character, and showed
that she had her slave cargo on board. An officer was sent
to take possession, and the British ensign displaced the
Brazilian. The scene on board was a sufficiently strange
one; the deck was crowded with negroes to the number of 450,
in almost riotous confusion, having risen but a little while
before against the crew. The meagre, famished-looking
throng, having broken through all control, had seized every
thing for which they had a fancy in the vessel; some with
handfuls of the powdered roots of the cassava, others with
large pieces of pork and beef, having broken open the casks,
and others with fowls, which they had torn from the coops.
Many were busily dipping rags, fastened with bits of string,
into the water-casks to act as sponges, and had got at the
contents of a cask of Brazilian rum, which they greatly
enjoyed. However, they exhibited the wildest joy, mingled
with the clank of the iron, as they were knocking off their
fetters on every side. From the moment the first ball had
been fired, they had been actively employed in thus freeing
themselves. The crew found but thirty thus shackled in
pairs, but many more pairs of shackles were found below.
There could not be a moment’s doubt as to the light in which
they viewed their captors, now become their liberators. They
rushed towards them in crowds, and rubbed their feet and
hands caressingly, even rolling themselves on the deck
before them; and, when they saw the crew of the vessel
rather unceremoniously sent over the side into the boat
which was to take them prisoners to the frigate, they set up
a long universal shout of triumph and delight. The actual
number of the negroes now on board, amounted to 447. Of
those 180 were men, few, however, exceeding twenty years of
age; 45 women; 213 boys. The name of the prize was the
Progresso, last from Brazil, and bound to Rio Janeiro. The
crew were seventeen; three Spaniards, and the rest
Brazilians. The vessel was of about 140 tons; the length of
the slave-deck, 37 feet; its mean breadth, 21½ feet;
its height, 3½ feet—a horrible space to contain
between four and five hundred human beings. How they could
even breathe is scarcely conceivable. The captain and one of
the crew were said to have been drowned in the surf at the
embarkation of the negroes. Two Spaniards, and a Portuguese
cook, were sent back into the prize.

As the writer understood Spanish, and as some one was
wanting to interpret between the English crew and those
managers of the negroes, he proposed to go on board with them
to their place of destination, the Cape of Good Hope. The
English crew were a lieutenant, three petty officers, and nine
seamen. It had been the captain’s first intention to take a
hundred of the negroes on board the frigate, which would
probably have prevented the fearful calamities that followed;
but an unfortunate impression prevailed, that some of them were
infected with the small-pox. In the same evening the Progresso
set sail. For the first few hours all went on well—the
breeze was light, the weather warm, and the negroes were
sleeping on the deck; their slender supple limbs entwined in a
surprisingly small compass, resembling in the moonlight
confused piles of arms and legs, rather than distinct human
forms. But about an hour after midnight, the sky began to
gather clouds, a haze overspread the horizon to windward, and a
squall approached. The hands, having to shorten sail, suddenly
found the negroes in the way, and the order was given to send
them all below.

There seems to have been some dreadful mismanagement to
cause the horrid scene that followed. Why all the
negroes should have been driven down together; or why, when the
vessel was put to rights, they should not have been allowed to
return to the deck; or why, when driven down, the hatches
should have been forced upon them—are matters which we
cannot comprehend; but nothing could be more unfortunate than
the consequence of those rash measures. We
[pg 428] state the event in the
words of the narrative:—

“The night being intensely hot and close, 400 wretched
beings crammed into a hold twelve yards in length, seven in
breadth, and only three and a half feet in height, speedily
began to make an effort to re-issue to the open air; being
thrust back, and striving the more to get out, the after
hatch was forced down upon them. Over the other
hatchway, in the fore part of the vessel, a wooden grating
was fastened. A scene of agony followed those most
unfortunate measures, unequaled by any thing that we have
heard of since the Black Hole of Calcutta. To this sole
inlet for the air, the suffocating heat of the hold,
and perhaps panic from the strangeness of their situation,
made them press. They crowded to the grating, and, clinging
to it for air, completely barred its entrance. They strove
to force their way through apertures in length fourteen
inches, and barely six inches in breadth, and in some
instances succeeded. The cries, the heat, I may say without
exaggeration, ‘the smoke of their torment,’ which ascended,
can be compared to nothing earthly. One of the Spaniards
gave warning that the consequence would be many
deaths—manana habra muchos muertos.”

If this statement with its consequences be true, we cannot
conceive how the conduct of those persons by whom it was
brought about can be passed over without enquiry. There seems
to have been nothing in the shape of necessity for its
palliation. There was no storm, the vessel was in no danger of
foundering unless the hatches were fastened down. That the
negroes might have lumbered the deck for the first few minutes
of preparing to meet the squall is probable; but why, when they
were palpably suffocating, they should still have been kept
down, is one of the most unaccountable circumstances we ever
remember. We must hope that while we are nationally incurring
an enormous expenditure to extinguish this most guilty and
detestable traffic, such scenes will be guarded against for
ever, by the strictest orders to the captors of the
slave-traders. It would have been infinitely better for the
wretched cargo if they had been carried to their original
destination, and sent to toil in the fields of Brazil.

The Spaniard’s prediction was true. Next morning no less
than fifty-four crushed and mangled corpses were lifted up from
the slave deck, and thrown overboard. We shall avoid disgusting
our readers with mentioning the state in which their struggles
had left those trampled and strangled beings. On the survivors
being released from their torrid dungeon, they drank their
allowance of water, somewhat more than half a pint to each,
with inconceivable eagerness. A heavy shower having freshened
the air, in the evening most of the negroes went below of their
own accord, the hatchways having been left open to allow them
air. But a short time, however, had elapsed, when they began
tumultuously to reascend; and some of the persons on deck,
fearful of their crowding it too much, repelled them, and they
were trampled back, screaming and writhing in a confused mass.
The hatch was about to be forced down upon them; and had not
the lieutenant in charge left positive orders to the contrary,
the catastrophe of last night would have been re-enacted. On
explaining to the Spaniard that it was desired he should
dispose those who came on deck in proper places, he set himself
to the task with great alacrity; and he showed with much
satisfaction how soon and how quietly they might be arranged
out of the way of the ropes, covered with long rugs provided
for the purpose. “To-morrow,” said he, “there will be no
deaths, except perhaps among some of those who are sick
already.” On the next day there was but one dead, but three
were reported dying from the sufferings of the first night.
They now saw the Cleopatra once more, and the alarm of
small-pox having been found groundless, the captain took on
board fifty of the boys.

To our surprise, the provisions on board the slaver were
ample for the negroes, consisting of Monte Video dried beef,
small beans, rice, and cassava flour. The cabin stores were
profuse; lockers filled with ale and porter, barrels of wine,
liqueurs of various sorts, cases of English pickles, raisins,
&c. &c.; and its list of medicines amounted to almost
the whole [pg 429] Materia Medica. On
questioning the Spaniards as to the probability of
extinguishing the slave-trade, their reply was, that though
in the creeks of Brazil it might be difficult, yet it had
grown a desperate adventure. Four vessels had been already
taken on the east coast of Africa this year; but the venture
is so lucrative, that the profits of a fifth which escaped,
would probably more than compensate the loss of the
four.

On the east coast negroes are paid for in money or coarse
cottons, at the rate of eighteen dollars for men, and twelve
for boys. At Rio Janeiro their value may be estimated at
£52 for men, £41, 10s. for women, and £31 for
boys. Thus, on a cargo of 500, at the mean price the profit
will exceed £19,000—

While these enormous profits continue, it must be a matter
of extreme difficulty to suppress the trade, especially while
the principals, captains, and crews, have perfect impunity. At
present, all that they suffer is the loss of their cargo. But
if enactments were made, by which heavy fines and imprisonment
were to be inflicted on the merchants to whom the expedition
could be traced, and corporal punishment and transportation for
life for the crews, and for the captains service as common
sailors on board our frigates, we should soon find the ardour
for the traffic diminished.

The voyage was slow from the frequent calms. By the 20th of
April they had advanced only to the tropic, 350 miles. From day
to day the sick among the negroes were dropping off. A large
shark followed the ship, which they conceived might have gorged
some of the corpses. He was caught, but the stomach was empty.
When brought on the deck, he exhibited the usual and remarkable
tenacity of life. Though his tail was chopped, and even his
entrails taken out, in neither of which operations it exhibited
any sign of sensation, yet no sooner was a bucket of salt water
poured on it to wash the deck, than it began to flounder about
and bite on all sides.

Symptoms of fever now began to appear on board, and the
Portuguese cook died.

April 29.—A storm, the lightning intolerably
vivid, flash succeeding flash with scarcely a sensible
intermission; blue, red, and of a still more dazzling white,
which made the eye shrink, lighting up every object on deck as
clearly as at mid-day. All the winds of heaven seemed let
loose, as it blew alternately from every point of the compass.
The screams of distress from the sick and weak in the hold,
were heard through the roar of the tempest. From the rolling
and creaking, one might fancy every thing going asunder. The
woman’s shed on deck had been washed down, and the planks which
formed its roof falling in a heap, a woman was found dead under
the ruin.

May 1.—In this hemisphere, marking the approach
of the cold weather, the naked negroes began to shiver, and
their teeth to chatter.

May 3.—Another storm, with severe cold. Seven
negroes were found dead this morning. The wretched beings had
begun now to steal water and brandy from the hold. “None can
tell,” says the writer, “save he who has tried, the pangs of
thirst which may excite them in that heated hold, many of them
fevered by mortal disease. Their daily allowance of water is
about a half pint in the morning, and the same quantity in the
evening.” This passage now became all storms. A heavy squall
came on May 8, which continued next day a strong gale.
The first object which met the eye in the morning, was three
negroes dead on the deck.

May 11.—Another storm, heavier than any of the
preceding ones. Towards evening the report of the helmsman was
the gratifying one, that the heart of the gale was broke; yet a
yellow haze overspread the setting sun, and it continued to
blow as wildly as ever. Squalls rapidly succeeding each other
mingled sea and air in one sheet of spray, blinding the eyes of
the helmsman; waves towering high above us, tossing up the foam
from their crests towards the sky, threatened to engulf the
vessel at every moment. When the squalls,
[pg 430] breaking heavily on the
vessel, caused her to heel over, and the negroes to tumble
one against each other in the hold, the shrieks of the
sufferers through the darkness of the night, rising above
the noise of the winds and waves, seemed of all horrors in
this unhappy vessel the saddest. Dysentery now attacked the
crew, and the boatswain’s mate died. We pass over the
melancholy details of this miserable voyage, in which
disgusts and distresses of every kind seemed to threaten all
on board with death, every day bringing its mortality. At
last on Sunday, May 28th, the welcome sight of Cape Agulhas
cheered them at the distance of ten miles. The weather was
now fine, but the mortality continued, the fatal cases
averaging four a-day. On the 1st of June eight were found
dead in the morning; and, when the morning mist had cleared
away, they found themselves within three miles of Simon’s
Bay. As soon as the Progresso anchored, the superintendent
of the naval hospital came on board, and the writer
descended with him for the last time to the slave hold.
Accustomed as he had been to scenes of suffering, he was
unable to endure a sight, surpassing all he could have
conceived, he said, of human misery, and made a hasty
retreat. The numbers who had died within the fifty days were
163. Even this was not all; for, on returning to the vessel
next day, six corpses were added to the eight of the
preceding day, and the fourteen were piled on deck for
interment on the shore. A hundred of the healthiest negroes
were landed at the pier to proceed in waggons to Cape Town;
but though rescued from a state of extreme misery, the
change seemed to excite anxiety and apprehension. Each of
the men had received on landing a new warm jacket and
trousers, and the women had each a new white blanket in
addition to an under dress, and they were placed snugly in
waggons; yet their countenances resembled those of condemned
victims. Of the whole of the original cargo, not far short
of one half had died. To what causes this horrible mortality
must be imputed, it is not our purpose to decide; but that
it did not arise from the original tendency of the negroes
to sickness seems evident—the fact being, that of the
fifty who were taken on board the frigate, but one had died
at sea and one on shore. Within a few days the liberated
negroes had acquired a more cheerful look, their first
conception having been that they were to be devoured by the
people of the country, and they were reluctant to eat,
fearing that it was intended to fatten them for the purpose.
However, the negroes in the colonies soon freed them from
this apprehension.

We shall be rejoiced if the publicity given to this little
but intelligent pamphlet by our means, may assist in drawing
the attention of the influential classes to the subject. We
fully believe that, if we were to look for the deepest misery
that was ever inflicted in this world, and the greatest mass of
it, we should find it in the slave-trade. It is the misery, not
as in civilized life, of scattered individuals, but of
multitudes, and a misery comprehending every other; sudden
separation from every tie of the human heart, parent, child,
spouse, and country; the misery of bodily affliction, disease,
famine, storms, shipwreck, and ultimately slavery, with all its
wretchedness of toil and tyranny for life. We certainly do not
think it our duty to go to war for the object of teaching
humanity to other nations. We must not attempt to heal the
calamity of the African by the greatest of all calamities and
crimes—an unnecessary war. But England has only to
persevere sincerely and steadily, however calmly, and she will,
by the blessing of that supreme Disposer of the ways of men,
who desires the happiness of all his creatures, succeed in the
extinction of a traffic which has brought a curse, and brings
it at this hour, and will bring it deeper still, upon every
nation which insults the laws of humanity and the dictates of
religion, by dealing in the flesh and blood of man.

Footnote 1:
(return)

Fifty Days on board a Slave vessel, in 1843. By the Rev.
PASCOE GRENFELL HILL, Chaplain of H.M.S. Cleopatra.

MOSLEM HISTORIES OF SPAIN.¹

THE ARABS OF CORDOVA.

The Arab domination in Spain is the grand romance of
European history. The splendid but mysterious fabric of Asiatic
power and science is seen for age after age, like the fairy
castle of St John, exalted far above the rugged plain of Frank
semi-barbarism—till the spell is at last broken by the
iron prowess of Christian chivalry; and the glittering edifice
vanishes from the land as though it had never been, leaving,
like the fabled structure of the poet, only a wreath of laurel
to bind the brows of the victor. Yet though replete with
gorgeous materials both for history and fiction, and stored not
only with the recondite lore of Asia and Egypt, but with the
borrowed treasures of ancient Greece, (long known to
Christendom only by versions through an Arabic medium,) the
language and literature of this marvellous people, and even
their history, except so far as it related to their
never-ceasing warfare with their Christian foes, remained, up
to the middle of the last century, a sealed book to their
Spanish successors. Coming into possession, like the Israelites
of old, “of a land for which they did not labour, of cities
which they built not, of vineyards and olive-yards which they
planted not,” the Spaniards not merely contemned, but
persecuted with the fiercest bigotry, all that was left in the
peninsula of the genius and learning of their predecessors.
Eighty thousand volumes were publicly burned in one fatal
auto-da-fé at Granada by order of Cardinal
Ximenes, in whom the literature of his own language yet found a
munificent patron; and so meritorious, did the deed appear in
the eyes of his contemporaries, that the number has been
magnified to an incredible amount by his biographers, in their
zeal for the renown of their hero! So complete was the
destruction or deportation² of
the seventy public libraries, which, a century and a half
before the subjugation of the Moors, were open in different
cities of Spain, that the valuable collection now in the
Escurial owes its origin to the accidental capture, early in
the seventeenth century, of three ships laden with books
belonging to Muley Zidan, emperor of Morocco—and even
of this casual prize so little was the value appreciated,
that it was not till more than a hundred years later, and
after three-fourths of the books had been consumed by fire
in 1671, that the learned and diligent Casiri was
commissioned to make a catalogue of the remainder. The
result was the well-known Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana
Escurialensis, which appeared in 1760-70; and which, in
the words of the present learned translator, “though hasty
and superficial, and containing frequent unaccountable
blunders, must, with all its imperfections, ever be valuable
as affording palpable proof of the literary cultivation of
the Spanish Arabs, and as containing the first glimpses of
historical truth.” Up to
[pg 432] this time the only
authority on Spanish history purporting to be drawn from
Mohammedan sources, was the work of a Morisco named Miguel
de Luna, written by command of the Inquisition; which was
first printed at Granada in 1592, and has passed through
many editions. Its value may be estimated from its placing
the Mohammedan conquest of Spain in the time of Yakub
Al-mansor, the actual date of whose reign was from A.D. 1184
to 1199; insomuch that Señor de Gayangos suggests, as
a possible explanation of its glaring inaccuracies, that it
was the writer’s intention to hoax his employers. Casiri
had, however, opened the door for further researches; and he
was followed in the same path by Don Faustino de Borbon,
whose works, valuable rather from the erudition which they
display than from their judgment or critical acumen, have
now become extremely scarce—and next by Don Antonio
José Condé, one of the most zealous and
laborious, if not the most accurate, of Spanish
orientalists. His “History of the Domination of the Arabs
and Moors in Spain,” has been generally regarded as of high
authority, and is in truth the first work on the subject
drawn wholly from Arab sources; but it receives summary
condemnation from Señor de Gayangos, for “the uncouth
arrangement of the materials, the entire want of critical or
explanatory notes, the unaccountable neglect to cite
authorities, the numerous repetitions, blunders, and
contradictions.” These charges are certainly not without
foundation; but they are in some measure accounted for by
the trouble and penury in which the author’s last years were
spent, and the unfinished state in which the work was left
at his death in 1820.

An authentic and comprehensive view of the Arab period, as
described by their own writers, was therefore still a
desideratum in European literature, which the publication
before us may be considered as the first step towards
supplying. The work of Al-Makkari, which has been taken as a
text-book, is not so much an original history as a collection
of extracts, sometimes abridged, and sometimes transcribed in
full, from more ancient historians; and frequently giving two
or three versions of the same event from different
authorities—so that, though it can claim but little merit
as a composition, it is of extreme value as a repository of
fragments of authors in many cases now lost; and further, as
the only “uninterrupted narrative of the conquests, wars, and
settlements of the Spanish Moslems, from their first invasion
of the Peninsula to their final expulsion.” In the arrangement
of his materials, the translator has departed considerably, and
with advantage, from the original; giving the historical books
in the form of a continuous narrative, and omitting several
sections relating to matters of little interest—while the
deficiencies and omissions of the author are supplied by an
appendix, containing, in addition to a valuable body of
original notes, copious extracts from numerous unpublished
Arabic MSS. relating to Spain, which afford ample proof of the
extent and diligence of his researches among the Oriental
treasures of Paris and London. To those in the Escurial,
however, he was denied access during his labours—an
almost incredible measure of illiberality, which, if he be
correct in ascribing it to his known intention of publishing in
England, “ill suits a country” (as he justly remarks in the
preface) “which has lately seen its archives and monastic
libraries reduced to cinders, and scattered or sold in foreign
markets, without the least struggle to rescue or secure
them.”

Ahmed Al-Makkari, the author or compiler of the present
work, derived his surname from a village near Telemsan called
Makkarah, where his family had been established since the
conquest of Africa by the Arabs. He was born at Telemsan some
time in the latter half of the sixteenth century, and educated
by his uncle, who held the office of Mufti in that city; but
having quitted his native country in 1618 on a pilgrimage to
Mekka, he married and settled in Cairo. During a visit to
Damascus in 1628, he was received with high distinction by
Ahmed Ibn Shahin Effendi, the director of the college of Jakmak
in that city, and a distinguished patron of literature; at
whose suggestion (he tells us) he undertook this work.
[pg 433] His original purpose had
been only to write the life of Abu Abdullah Lisanuddin, a
celebrated historian and minister in Granada, better known
to Oriental scholars as Ibnu’l-Khattib; but having completed
this, the thought struck him of adding, as a second part, an
historical account of the Moslems of Spain. He had formerly
written an extensive and elaborate work on this subject,
composed (to use his own words) “in such an elevated and
pleasing style, that had it been publicly delivered by the
common crier, it would have made even the stones
deaf:—but, alas! the whole of this we had left in
Maghreb (Morocco) with the rest of our library…. However,
we have done our best to make the present work as useful and
complete as possible.” It was probably the last literary
undertaking of his life; since he was on the point of
quitting Cairo to fix his residence in Damascus, when he
died of a fever in the second Jomada of A.H. 1041, (Jan.
1632,) leaving a high reputation as a traditionist and
doctor of the Moslem law.

The introductory chapter gives a sketch of the various
nations which inhabited Andalus or Spain before the Arab
conquest, prefaced by extracts from numerous writers eulogistic
of a country “whose excellences” (as Al-Makkari himself
declares) “are such and so many that they cannot easily be
contained in a book … so that one of their wise men, who knew
that the country had been called the bird’s tail, owing to the
supposed resemblance of the earth to a bird with extended
wings, remarked that that bird was the peacock, the principal
beauty of which was in the tail.” These panegyrics are not in
all cases exactly consistent; for while the famous geographer,
Obeydullah Al-Bekri, “compares his native country to Syria for
purity of air and water, to China for mines and precious
stones, &c. &c., and to Al-Ahwaz (a district in Persia)
for the magnitude of its snakes“—the Sheikh Ahmed
Al-Razi (better known as the historian Razis) praises its
comparative freedom from wild beasts and reptiles. The name
Andalus is derived by some authors from a great grandson
of Noah so named, who settled there soon after the deluge; but
Al-Makkari rather inclines, with Ibn Khaldun and other writers,
to deduce it from the Andalosh, (Vandals,) “a tribe of
barbarians,” who appear to be considered as the earliest
inhabitants; but who, having incurred the divine wrath by their
wickedness and idolatry, were all cut off by a terrible
drought, which left the land for a hundred years an uninhabited
desert. A colony then arrived from Africa, under a chief named
Batrikus, eleven generations of whose descendants reigned for
one hundred and fifty-seven years; after which they were all
annihilated by the “barbarians of Rome, who invaded and
conquered the country; and it was after their king Ishban, son
of Titus, that Andalus was called Ishbaniah,” (Hispania.) As
Ishban is just after said to have “plundered and demolished
Ilia, which is the same as Al-Kods the illustrious,”
(Jerusalem,) it is obvious that the name must be a corruption
of Vespasian, who is thus made the son instead of the father of
Titus. We are told that authors differ whether it was on this
occasion, or at the former capture of Jerusalem by
Bokht-Nasser, (Nebuchadnezzar,) at which a king of Spain named
Berian was also present, that the table constructed by the
genii for Solomon, and which Tarik afterwards found at Toledo,
was transported to Spain—and Al-Makkari professes
himself, as well he may, unable to reconcile the different
accounts. Fifty-five kings descended from Ishban, whose race
was dispossessed (“about the time of the Messiah, on whom be
peace!”) by a people called Bishtilikat, (Visigoths?) under a
king called Talubush, (Ataulphus?) whom Al-Makkari holds to
have been the same people as the “barbarians of Rome,” though
“there are not wanting authors who make the Goths and the
Bishtilikat only one nation.” After holding possession during
the reigns of twenty-seven monarchs, they were in turn subdued
by the Goths, whose royal residence was “Toleyalah, (Toledo,)
though Isbiliah (Seville) continued to be the abode of the
sciences.” The Gothic kings are said to have been
thirty-six;—but the only one particularized by name is
“Khoshandinus, [pg 434] (Constantine,) who not only
embraced Christianity himself, but called on his subjects to
do the same, and is held by the Christians as the greatest
king they ever had…. Several kings of his posterity
reigned after him, till Andalus was finally subdued by the
Arabs, by whose means God was pleased to make manifest the
superiority of Islam over every other religion.”

With the Arab, conquest the authentic history commences; and
the accounts given from the Moslem writers of this memorable
event, which first gave the followers of the Prophet a footing
in Europe, differ in no material point from the eloquent
narrative of Gibbon. Al-Makkari, however, does not fail to
inform us, that predictions had been rife from long past ages,
which foretold the invasion and conquest of the country by a
fierce people from Africa; and potent were the spells and
talismans constructed to ward off the danger, “by the
Greek kings who reigned in old times.” Several of these
are described with due solemnity; and among them we find the
tale of the visit paid by Roderic³ to
the magic tower at Toledo, which has been rendered familiar
by the pages of Scott and Southey. We shall not here
recapitulate the well-known incidents of the wrongs and
revenge of Count Yllan, or Julian, the first landing of
Tarif at Tarifa, the second expedition sent by Musa under
Tarik Ibn Zeyad, and the death or disappearance of the
Gothic king on the fatal day of Guadalete.⁴ So
complete was the discomfiture of the Christians, that the
kingdom fell, without a second blow, before the victors of a
single field; and was overrun with such rapidity, that from
the inability of the conquerors to garrison the cities which
surrendered, they were entrusted for the time to the guard
of the Jews!—a singular circumstance, which, when
coupled with the statement that many of the Berbers (of whom
the invading army was almost wholly composed) were recent
converts from Judaism,⁵
would apparently imply that the conquest was facilitated by
a previous correspondence. The subjugation of the country
was completed by the arrival of Musa himself, who reduced
Seville and the other towns which still held out, and is
even said to have crossed the Pyrenees and sacked
Narbonne;⁶ but
this is not mentioned by any Christian writer, and is
referred by the translator to his invasion of Catalonia,
which the Arabs considered as part of “the land of the
Franks.” After the first fury of conquest had subsided, the
Christians who remained in their homes were permitted to
live unmolested, on payment of the capitation-tax; but
peculiar privileges were accorded to the Jews, and the hold
of the Moslems on the country was strengthened by the vast
influx of settlers, not only from Africa, but from Syria and
Arabia, who were attracted by the reports of the riches and
fertility of the new province. Nearly all the tribes of
Arabia are enumerated by Al-Makkari as represented in Spain;
and the feuds of the two great divisions, the
Beni-Modhar⁷ or
race of Adnan, and the Beni-Kahttan or Arabs of Yemen, gave
rise to most of the civil wars which subsequently desolated
Andalus.

The spoil of the vanquished kingdom was immense—the
accumulation of long years of luxury and freedom from foreign
invasion in a country which, both from the fertility of the
soil and the abundance of the precious metals, was then
probably the richest in Europe. Whatever degree of credit we
may attach to the famous table of Solomon, “said by some to be
of pure gold, and by others green emerald,” and the gems and
ornaments of which are described with full Oriental luxuriance,
every account referring to the booty acquired in the principal
cities, gives ample evidence of the riches and splendour of the
Visigoths. “The plunder found at Toledo⁸ was
beyond calculation. It was common for the lowest men in the
army to find magnificent gold chains, and long strings of
pearls and rubies. Among other precious objects were found
170 diadems of the purest red gold, set with every sort of
precious stone; several measures full of emeralds, rubies,
and other gems; and an immense number of gold and silver
vases. Such was the eagerness for plunder, and the ignorance
of some, especially the Berbers, that when two or more of
this nation fell upon an article which they could not
conveniently divide, they would cut it in pieces, whatever
the material might be, and share it among them.” Some of the
victorious army seized some ships in the eastern ports, and
set sail for their homes with their plunder; but they were
speedily overtaken by a tremendous storm, and all perished
in the waves—a manifest token, we are given to
understand, of the Divine vengeance for the abandonment of
the holy warfare under the banners of Islam.

Musa was on his march into Galicia to crush the last embers
of national resistance, when his progress was checked by a
peremptory summons from the Khalif, to answer at Damascus the
charges forwarded against him by Tarik, whom he had unjustly
disgraced and punished. Being convicted of falsehood, on the
production by Tarik of the missing foot of the table of
Solomon, the merit of finding which had been claimed by Musa,
he was tortured and deprived of his riches; and the head of his
gallant son Abdulaziz, whom he had left in command in Spain,
was shown to him in public by the Khalif Soliman, the successor
of Walid, with the cruel demand if he knew whose it was. “I
do,” was the father’s reply: “it is the head of one who fasted
and prayed; may the curse of Allah fall on it if he who slew
him is a better man than he!” But though Musa was thus arrested
in the last stage of his conquering career, so complete was the
prostration of the Christians, that the viceroys who succeeded
Abdulaziz, overlooking or disregarding this yet unsubdued
corner of Spain, at once poured their forces across the
Pyrenees, seeking new fields of conquest and glory in the
countries of the Franks. But the antagonists whom they here
encountered, unlike the luxurious Goths of Spain, still
preserved the barbarian valour which they had brought from
their German forests. And As-Samh, (the Zama of the Christian
writers,) the first Saracen general who obtained a footing in
France, “fell a martyr to the faith,” with nearly his whole
army, in a battle with Eudo, Duke of Aquitaine, before
Toulouse, May 10, A.D. 721. But the fiery zeal of the Moslems
was only stimulated by this reverse. In the course of the ten
following years, their dominion was established as far as the
Rhone and Garonne; till, in 732, the torrent of invasion,
headed by the Wali Abdurrahman, burst into the heart of
the country; and the battle, decisive of the destinies of
France, and perhaps of Europe, was fought between Tours and
Poitiers, in October of that year, (Ramadhan, A.H. 114.) Few
details are given by the Arab writers of the seven days’
conflict, in which the ranks of the Moslems were shattered by
the iron arm of Charles Martel;
[pg 436] “and the army of
Abdurrahman was cut to pieces at a spot called
Balatt-ush-Shohadá, (the Pavement of the
Martyrs,) he himself being in the number of the slain.” Some
confusion here appears, as the same epithet had been applied
to the former battle near Toulouse; but this “disastrous
day” of Tours virtually extinguished the schemes of Arab
conquest in France, though it was not till many years later
that they were completely dislodged from Narbonne, and their
other acquisitions between the Garrone and the Pyrenees.

Meanwhile the Christian remnant, left unmolested in the
Asturian and Galician mountains, gradually recovered courage:
and in 717-18, “a despicable barbarian,” (as he is termed by
Ibn Hayyan, a writer often cited by Al-Makkari,) “named Belay,
(Pelayo or Pelagius,) rose in Galicia; and from that moment the
Christians began to resist the Moslems, and to defend their
wives and daughters; for till then they had not shown the least
inclination to do so.” “Would to God,” piously subjoins
Al-Makkari, “that the Moslems had then extinguished at once the
sparkles of a fire destined to consume their whole dominion in
those parts! But they said—’What are thirty barbarians,
perched on a rock? they must inevitably die!'” The spark, which
contained the germ of the future independence of Spain, was
thus suffered to remain and spread, while the swords of the
Moslems were occupied in France; and its growth was further
favoured by the anarchy and civil dissensions which broke out
among the conquerors. While the leaders of the different Arab
factions contested, sword in hand, the viceroyalty of Spain,
the Berbers (whose conversion to Islam was apparently yet but
imperfect) rose in furious revolt both in Spain and Africa, and
were only overpowered by a fresh army sent by the Khalif Hisham
from Syria. But the arrival of these reinforcements added new
fuel to the old feuds of the Beni-Modhar, and the Yemenis or
Beni-Kahttan; and a desperate civil war raged till 746, when
the Khalif’s lieutenant, the Emir Abu’l-Khattar, who supported
the Yemenis, was killed in a pitched battle fought near
Cordova. The leader of the victorious tribe, Yusuf
Al-Fehri,⁹ now
assumed supreme power, which he exercised nearly ten years
as an independent ruler, without reference to the court of
Damascus. The state of affairs in the East, indeed, left
little leisure to the Umeyyan khalifs to attend to the
regulation of a remote province. Their throne was already
tottering before the arms and intrigues of the Abbasides,
whose black banners, under the guidance of the formidable
Abu-Moslem, were even now bearing down from Khorassan upon
Syria. The unpopular cause of the Beni-Umeyyah, who were
detested for the murder of the grandsons of the Prophet
under the second of their line, was lost in a single battle;
and the death of Merwan, the last khalif of the race, was
followed by the unsparing proscription of the whole family.
“Every where they were seized and put to death without
mercy; and few escaped the search made by the emissaries of
As-Seffah, (the bloodshedder, the surname of the
first Abbaside khalif,) in every province of the
empire.”

Among the few survivors of the general doom, was a youth
named Abdurrahman Ibn Muawiyah, a grandson of the Khalif
Hisham. In his infancy his granduncle Moslemah, the leader of
the first Saracen host sent against Constantinople, had
indicated him, from certain marks, as the destined restorer of
the fallen fortunes of his race; and he was preserved, by a
timely warning from a client of his house, from the fatal
banquet, in which ninety of the Beni-Umeyyah were treacherously
massacred. Yet so hot was the pursuit, that his younger brother
was taken and slain before his eyes, while swimming the
Euphrates with him in their flight. But Abdurrahman, after
numberless perils and adventures, at
[pg 437] length reached Africa,
which was ruled by the wali or viceroy Abdurrahman
Ibn Habib, the father of Yusuf Al-Fehri, who had been a
personal retainer of his family. But he soon found that he
had erred in trusting to the faith of Ibn Habib; and, after
narrowly escaping the search made for him by the emissaries
of the governor, lay concealed for several years, a fugitive
and outlaw, among the tribes of Northern Africa. In this
extremity, he at length cast his eyes on Spain, where the
Abbasides had never been recognized, and where his own
clansmen of the Koreysh, with their maulis, (freedmen
or clients,) were numerous and powerful. The overtures of
the royal adventurer were eagerly listened to by the
Yemenis, who burned to revenge their late defeat on the
Beni-Modhar; and Abdurrahman, landing at Al-muñecar
in the autumn of 755, found himself instantly at the head of
700 horse, and was speedily joined by the chieftain of the
Yemenis, who admitted him into Seville. During the march the
want of a banner was remarked, “and a long spear was
produced, on the point of which a turban was to be placed;
but as it would have been necessary to incline the head of
the spear, which was supposed to be of extremely bad omen,
it was held erect between two olive trees, and a man,
ascending one of them, was enabled to fasten the turban to
the spear without lowering it…. With this same banner did
Abdurrahman, and his son Hisham, vanquish their enemies
whenever they met them; and in such veneration was it held,
that whenever the turban by long use decayed, it was not
removed, but a new one placed over it. In this manner it was
preserved till the days of Abdurrahman II.; some say till
the days of his son Mohammed, when the turban on the spear
being decayed, the vizirs of that monarch, seeing nothing
under it but a few rags twisted round the spear, gave orders
for their removal, and the whole was thrown away…. ‘From
that time,’ remarks the judicious historian Ibn Hayyan, ‘the
empire of the Beni-Umeyyah began visibly to decline.'”

Under the auspices of this novel oriflamme the
Umeyyan prince and his followers advanced upon Cordova, whither
Yusuf Al-Fehri, who had been engaged in suppressing an
insurrection in the Thagher, (Aragon,) had hastened to
oppose them at the head of the Beni-Modhar. Exchanging for a
mule the fiery courser which the jealous whispers of his
adherents had remarked as designed to secure his escape in case
of defeat, Abdurrahman led his troops to the attack; and his
victory established on the throne of Spain a new dynasty of the
Beni-Umeyyah, “who thus regained in the west the supremacy
which they had lost in the east.” Those of the fallen family
who had escaped the general massacre, flocked to the court of
their fortunate kinsman, “to all of whom he gave pensions,
commands, and governments, by which means his empire was
strengthened;”—and the robes and turbans of the monarch
and the princes were always white, the colour assumed by the
house of Umeyyah, in opposition to the black livery of their
rivals. Though Abdurrahman never assumed the title of commander
of the faithful, he suppressed the khotbah or public
prayers in the name of the Abbasides; and when Al-Ala, the
wali of Africa, invaded Spain in order to re-establish
the supremacy of the eastern khalif, the head of his
unsuccessful general, thrown before the tent of Al-mansor at
Mekka, conveyed to him the first tidings of the destruction of
the armament by the “hawk of the Koreysh,” as he was wont to
term Abdurrahman. In the elation of triumph from this success,
he is even said to have contemplated marching through Africa to
attack Al-mansor in the east; but this design was frustrated by
the continual rebellions of the Arab tribes, whom all his
address and prudence was unable to keep in order; and “while
the Moslems were revolting against their sovereign, the
Christians of Galicia gathered strength, took possession of the
towns and fortresses on the frontier, and expelled their
inhabitants.” We find him at length obliged, in order to
maintain his authority, to have recourse to the system, which
in the next century became universal in the
[pg 438] east, of entrusting the
defence of his throne and person, not to the native levies
of his kingdom, but to a standing army of purchased slaves
or Mamlukes. “He began to cease all communication
with the chiefs of the Arabian tribes, whom he found
animated with a strong hatred against him, and to surround
himself with slaves and people entirely devoted to him; for
which end he engaged followers and took clients from every
province of his empire, and sent over to Africa to enlist
Berbers. ‘Thus,’ says Ibn Hayyan, ‘Abdurrahman collected an
army of slaves and Berbers, amounting to upwards of 40,000
men, by means of whom he always remained victorious, in
every contest with the Arabian tribes of Andalus.'”

The sciences and fine arts, which had been almost banished
from Spain since the conquest, returned in the train of the new
dynasty; and literature was encouraged by the example of
Abdurrahman, who was himself a poet of no mean merit. His
affectionate remembrance of his Syrian home, led him to
introduce into his new kingdom the flowers and fruits of the
east;—and the palm-tree, which was the parent of all
those of its kind in Spain, and to which he addressed the
well-known lines, lamenting their common fate as exiles from
their fatherland, was planted by himself in the gardens of the
Rissáfah, a country palace built on the model of one
near Damascus, in which the first years of his life had been
spent. In architectural magnificence he rivaled or surpassed
the former princes of his race, the monuments of whose grandeur
still exist in the mosque of the Beni-Umeyyah at Damascus, and
other edifices adorning the cities of Syria. The palaces and
aqueducts which he constructed in Cordova, testified his zeal
for the splendour, as well as his care for the salubrity, of
his capital;—and after expending the sum of 80,000 golden
dinars (the produce of the royal fifth of all spoil
taken in war) in the erection of the stately mosque which bears
his name, he bequeathed the completion of the structure, at his
death, A.D. 788, to his younger son Hisham, whom he nominated
as his successor, to the exclusion of the elder brother
Soliman. Al-Makkari devotes an entire chapter to the wonders of
this celebrated temple, which was finished A.D. 794, nine years
after its commencement, and received additions from almost
every successive sovereign of the house of Umeyyah. In its
present state, as the cathedral of Cordova, it still covers
more ground than any church in Christendom; but the inner roof,
with its elaborate carving, the mihrab, or shrine, of
minute inlaid work of ivory, gems, and precious woods, and
containing a copy of the Koran which had belonged to the Khalif
Othman—the embossed plates of gold and silver which
encrusted the doors, and the apples of the same metals which
surmounted the dome—have long since disappeared; and the
thousand (or, as some say, thirteen hundred) columns of
polished marble which it once boasted, have been grievously
reduced in number, to make room for the shrines and chapels of
Christian saints. The unequal length and proportions of those
which remain, their irregular grouping, and the want of height
in the roof which they support, indicate a far lower grade of
architectural taste than that which we find in the aerial
palaces of Granada; but all the Arabic writers who have
described it, concur in considering it one of the wonders of
the world; and it ranked, in the estimation of the Spanish
Moslems, as inferior in point of sanctity to none but the
Kaaba, and the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem.

The mood of the Beni-Umeyyah, who appear in their eastern
reign only as gloomy and execrated tyrants, had been chastened
by their misfortunes; and the virtues of Abdurrahman
Ad-dakhel (the enterer or conqueror, as he is
generally termed by historians) were emulated by his
descendants. As an illustration of the character of his son
Hisham, it is related by Al-Makkari, that on hearing that the
people of Cordova said, that his only motive in restoring the
great bridge over the Guadalquivir was to pass over it himself
when he went out hunting, he bound himself by a solemn vow
never to cross it again as long as he lived; but the reign of
this beneficent prince lasted only eight years. His
[pg 439] immediate successors,
Al-hakem I., and Abdurrahman II., were almost constantly
engaged in warfare, either against their own rebellious
relatives and revolted subjects,¹⁰
or against the Christians of Galicia, who, by the middle of
the ninth century, had advanced their frontier to the Douro
and repeatedly repulsed the armies sent against them from
Cordova; but we find no mention in the writers cited by
Al-Makkari, either of the annual tribute of a hundred
virgins, popularly said to have been exacted by the Moslems,
or of the great victory in 846, by which King Ramiro
redeemed his country from this degrading badge of
vassalage.¹¹
So widely extended was the martial renown of the Umeyyan
sovereigns, that in 839 a suppliant embassy was received by
Abdurrahman II. from the Greek Emperor Tufilus,
(Theophilus,) then hard pressed by the arms of the Abbaside
khalif Al-mutassem, to solicit his aid against their common
enemy; and, though Abdurrahman declined to embark in this
distant and hazardous enterprise, a friendly intercourse
long continued to be kept up between the courts of Cordova
and Constantinople. The military establishment was fully
organized, and placed on a formidable footing. Besides the
troops quartered in the provinces and receiving regular pay,
the haras or royal guard of Mamlukes, whose commander
was one of the principal officers of the court, was
augmented to 5000 horse and 1000 foot, all Christians or
foreigners by birth, who occupied barracks close to the
royal palace, and constantly mounted guard at the gates. The
coast was also defended by a powerful fleet of armed
vessels, of which each of the seaports fitted out its
proportion, against the hostile attacks of the Abbaside
lieutenauts of Africa, and the predatory descents of the
Majus¹²
or Northmen; who, after laying waste with fire and sword the
French and English coasts, had extended their ravages into
the southern seas even to the Straits of Gibraltar. Lisbon
and Seville were sacked by them in 844; and their piratical
fleets continued for many years to carry pillage and
bloodshed along the shores of the Peninsula.

The simplicity which the first Abdurrahman had uniformly
preserved in his dress and habits of life, was soon exchanged
by his successors for royal magnificence, rivaling that of the
Abbaside court at Bagdad. It was Abdurrahman II. who, in a love
quarrel with a beautiful inmate of his harem, caused the door
of her chamber to be blocked up with bags of silver coin, to be
removed on her relenting—”and she threw herself on her
knees and kissed his feet; but,” naïvely adds the Arab
historian, “the money she kept, and no portion of it ever
returned to the treasury.” The same prince testified his esteem
for the fine arts, by riding forth in state from his capital,
to welcome the arrival of Zaryab, a far-famed musician, whom
the jealousy of a rival had driven from Bagdad, and who founded
in Spain a famous school of music; and in his convivial habits,
and the freedom which he allowed to the companions of his
festive hours, his character accords with that assigned in the
Thousand and One Nights, though not in the page of
history, to Haroon-Al-Rasheed. He died in 852, leaving the
crown to his son Mohammed, whose reign, as well as those of his
two sons Almundhir and Abdullah, who filled the throne in
succession, is but briefly noticed by Al-Makkari, though
Señor de Gayangos has supplied some valuable additional
matter in his notes. The never-ceasing contest
[pg 440] with the Christians was
waged year by year; and the Princes of Oviedo, though often
defeated in the plain and driven back into their mountains,
when the forces of Andalus were gathered against them; yet
surely, though slowly, gained ground against the provincial
walis or viceroys. At the death of “Ordhun Ibn
Adefunsh,” (Ordoño I.) in 866, their territory
extended from the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay to
Salamanca; and the Moslem power was diverted by the rising
strength of Navarre, where the Basques had shaken off the
divided allegiance paid alternately to the court of Cordova
and the Carlovingian rulers of France, and conferred on
Garcia-Ramirez, in 857, an independent regal title. But
these distant hostilities, as yet, little affected the
tranquillity of the seat of government, which was more
nearly interested in the frequent revolts of the provinces
under its rule,¹³
and particularly by the rebellion of the Muwallads,
(or descendants of Christian converts to Islam;) which,
though the information extant respecting it is somewhat
scanty, would appear to have been little less than a
struggle between the two races for the dominion of Spain.
One of the Muwallad chiefs, named Omar Ibn
Hafssun,¹⁴
maintained for years a sort of semi-independence in the
Alpuxarras. Al-mundhir fell in a skirmish against him in
888, only two years after his accession; and the
insurrection, after continuing through the whole reign of
Abdullah, was only finally suppressed under Abdurrahman
III.

The system of government under these princes, appears to
have remained in nearly the same form as it had been fixed by
Abdurrahman I. The monarch nominated, during his lifetime, one
of his sons as his successor; and the wali-al-ahd, or
crown-prince, thus selected, received the oaths of allegiance
of the dignitaries of the state, and was admitted to a share in
the administration—a wise regulation, which prevented the
recurrence of the civil wars arising from the ambition of
princes of the blood, which had distracted the reigns of
Al-hakem I. and Abdurrahman II. The council of the sovereign
was composed of the vizirs or ministers of the different
departments, the katibs or secretaries, and the chiefs
of the law; the walis of the six great provinces into
which Abdurrahman I. divided his empire,¹⁵
as well as the municipal chiefs of the principal cities were
also summoned on emergencies:—while the prime
minister, or highest officer of the state, in whom, as in
the Turkish Vizir-Azem,¹⁶
the supreme direction of both civil and military affairs was
vested, was designated the Hajib or chamberlain. Of
the four orthodox¹⁷
sects of the Soonis, the one which predominated in Spain, as
it does to the present day in Barbary and Africa, was that
of Malik Ibn Ans, whose doctrines were introduced in the
reign of Al-hakem I., by doctors who had received
instruction from the lips of the Imam Malik himself at
Mekka; and was formally established by that prince
throughout his dominions. The judicial offices were filled,
as in other Moslem countries, by Kadis, whose decisions were
regulated by the precepts of the Koran: but we find no
mention (even before the assumption of the titles of Imam
and Khalif by Abdurrahman III.) of any supreme
ecclesiastical chief like the Sheikh-al-Islam or Mufti of
the Ottomans;—though there were chief justices
analogous to the Turkish Kadileskers, who bore the title of
Kadi-‘l-jamah.

The royal revenue was derived from a variety of sources. The
principal were, a land-tax amounting to one-tenth of the
produce of the soil and the mines, the capitation-tax paid by
the Jews and Christians, and the fifth of the spoil taken from
the enemy—an enormously productive item in a time of
constant warfare—besides a duty of two and a half per
cent on all exports and imports. These were the legitimate dues
of the crown, sanctioned by the Koran; but the splendid court
maintained by the later sovereigns of Cordova, their lavish
expenditure in building, and their large military and naval
establishments, often compelled them to have recourse to
irregular methods of raising money, by forced loans and by
duties laid on different articles of food, in direct violation
of the Moslem law. The amount raised by all these means varied
greatly at different periods. Under Abdurrahman II., the whole
direct revenue is said not to have exceeded 1,000,000 of gold
dinārs:—but the royal fifths, and other
extraordinary sources of income, appear not to have been
included in this estimate:—and a century later, under the
third and greatest prince of that name, we are told, on the
authority of the biographer Ibn Khallekan, that “the revenues
of Andalus amounted to 5,480,000 gold dinārs,
collected from taxes,” (it is elsewhere said from the
land-tax:) besides 765,000 derived from
markets—exclusive also of the royal fifth of the spoil,
and the capitation-tax levied on Christians and Jews living in
the Moslem dominions, the amount of which is said to have
equaled all the rest. An annual sum of equal amount, reckoning
the dinār at ten shillings, had never in the
history of the world been raised in a territory of the same
extent, and probably equaled the united incomes of all the
Christian princes in Europe—if we except the revenue of
the Greek Emperor, it certainly far exceeded them. “Of this
vast income,” Ibn Khallekan continues, “one-third was
appropriated to the payment of the army, another third was
deposited in the royal coffers to cover the expenses of the
household, and the remainder was spent yearly in the
construction of Az-zahra and such other buildings as were
erected under his reign.” This tripartite allotment of the
revenue is alluded to under several reigns: the expenses of
administration and the salaries of the civil functionaries were
included under the second head; and the third portion was, in
ordinary case, reserved “to repel invasions and meet
emergencies.”

The prince under whom the vast revenue thus stated is said
to have been collected, ascended the throne on the death of his
grandfather Abdullah, in the 300th year of the Hejra, and the
912th of the Christian era:—and his reign, of more than
fifty lunar years, saw the power and splendour of the Umeyyan
dynasty attain its zenith. For some years after his accession,
he headed his armies in person against the Christians and the
partizans of Ibn Hafssun, who still continued in arms: but the
severe defeat which he received in 939 at Simaneas, near
Zamora, (called by Moslem writers the battle of Al-handik,)
from Ramiro II. of Leon, disgusted him with active warfare; and
he deputed the command of his armies to his generals and the
princes of the blood, who, in annual campaigns, so effectually
kept the Christians within their limits, that little
territorial acquisition was made by them during his reign;
while the voluntary adhesion of the Berber tribes, after the
overthrow of the Edrisite dynasty in 941 by the arms of the
Fatimite khalifs, gave him almost unresisted possession of
great part of Fez and Morocco. The defeat of Al-handik, and the
treason and execution in 950, of his elder son Abdullah, (whom
disappointment at being postponed to his younger brother in the
succession, had led to [pg 442] conspire against his
father’s life,) were almost the only clouds which dimmed the
continual sunshine of his prosperity—and his grandeur
was enhanced in the eyes of his subjects, by the assumption
of the highest prerogatives of Islam. Hitherto the princes
of his line had contented themselves with the style of
Amirs of the Moslems, and Beni-Kholaifah or
“sons of the Khalifs;” but in 929, “seeing the state of
weakness and degradation to which the khalifate of the
Beni-Abbas at Bagdad had been reduced,” he no longer
hesitated to adopt the titles of Imam and Khalif, with the
appellation of An-nasir Ledinillah, (defender of the
religion of God,) under which he is generally mentioned by
historians.

The writers from whom Al-Makkari has drawn his materials,
exhaust their powers of language in panegyrics on the unrivaled
magnificence of the court of Abdurrahman; which was thronged
both by men of letters whom the distracted state of the East
had driven thither for refuge, and by ambassadors, not only
from the princes of Islam, but from “Hoto the king of the
Alaman,” (Otho the Great of Germany,) the king of France, and
numerous other Christian potentates. The reception of these
missions was usually signalized by a gorgeous display of the
pomp of the court—and the ceremonial on the arrival in
949 of the envoys of Constantine VII. of Constantinople, is
described at length from Ibn Hayyan. “The vaulted hall in his
palace of Az-zahra, which he had fixed upon as the place where
he would receive their credentials, was beautifully decorated,
and a throne glittering with gold and sparkling with gems
raised in the midst. To the right of the throne stood five of
the khalif’s sons, to the left three others, one being absent
from illness. Next to them were the vizirs, each at his post on
the right or left of the throne. Then came the hajibs or
chamberlains, the sons of the vizirs, the freed slaves of the
khalif, and the wakils or officers of his household. The court
of the palace had been strewn with the richest carpets; and
silken awnings of the most gorgeous description had every where
been thrown over the doors and arches. Presently the
ambassadors entered the hall, and were struck with awe at the
magnificence displayed, and the power of the Sultan before whom
they stood. They advanced a few steps, and presented the letter
of their master, Constantine son of Leo, Lord of Constantinah
the Great, (Constantinople.) It was written on sky-blue paper,
and the characters were of gold. Within the letter was an
enclosure, the ground of which was also sky-blue like the
first, but the characters were of silver: it was likewise
written in Greek, and contained a list of the presents which
the Lord of Constantinah sent to the Khalif. On the letter was
a seal of gold of the weight of four mithkals, on one side of
which was a likeness of the Messiah, and on the other those of
the King Constantine and his son. The letter was enclosed in a
bag of silver cloth, over which was a case of gold, with a
portrait of King Constantine admirably executed on stained
glass. All this was enclosed in a case covered with cloth of
silk and gold tissue. On the first line of the Inwan or
introduction was written, ‘Constantine and Romanin, (Romanus,)
believers in the Messiah, kings of the Greeks;’ and in the
next, ‘To the great and exalted in dignity and power, as he
most deserves, the noble in descent, Abdurrahman the khalif,
who rules over the Arabs of Andalus: may God preserve his
life!'” The conclusion of this splendid ceremony was, however,
less imposing than the commencement; for a learned
Faquih, who had been appointed to harangue the envoys in
a set speech, was so overawed by the grandeur around him, that
“his tongue clove to his mouth, he could not aticulate a single
word, and fell senseless to the ground” Nor did his successor,
“who was reputed to be a prince in rhetoric, and an ocean of
language,” fare much better; for though he began fluently, “all
of a sudden he stopped for want of a word which did not occur
to him, and thus put an end to his peroration.” In this awkward
dilemma, the reputation of the Andalusian rhetoricians was
saved by Mundhir Ibn Said, who not only poured forth a torrent
of impromptu eloquence, but delivered a long ex-tempore
[pg 443] poem, “which to this day
stands unequalled; and Abdurrahman was so pleased, that he
appointed him preacher and Imam to the great mosque; and
some time after, the office of Kadi-‘l-jamah, or supreme
judge, being vacant, he named him to that high post, and
made him besides reader of the Khoran to the mosque of
Az-zahra.”

The palace of Az-zahra, where the eyes of the Greeks were
dazzled by this costly pageant, is one of the familiar names of
the romance of Spanish history:—it is known to all the
world how Abdurrahman, to gratify the capricious fancy of a
beautiful and beloved mistress, expended millions, and tasked
the labour of thousands, in erecting on the plain beyond
Cordova a fairy palace and city which might bear her name and
be her own. And like a fairy fabric did Az-zahra vanish; for so
utterly was it destroyed, during the wars and civil tumults
attending the fall of the race which raised it, that at the
present day not a stone can be found, not a vestige even of the
foundations traced, to show where it once stood; and all that
we know of this “wondrous freak of magnificence” is drawn from
the glowing accounts of contemporary writers, who saw it during
the brief period of its glory. It is principally from Ibn
Hayyan that Al-Makkari has copied the details of this
marvellous structure, with its “15,000 doors, counting each
flap or fold as one,” all covered either with plates of iron,
or sheets of polished brass; and its 4000 columns, great and
small, 140 of which were presented by the Emperor of
Constantinople, and 1013, mostly of green and rose-coloured
marble, were brought from various parts of Africa. Among the
principal ornaments were two fountains brought from
Constantinople, “the larger of gilt bronze, beautifully carved
with basso-relieve representing human figures,”—the
smaller surrounded by twelve figures, made of red gold in the
arsenal of Cordova: they were all ornamented with jewels, and
the water poured out of their mouths. The famous fountain of
quicksilver, which could be set in motion at pleasure, was
placed in the Kasr-al-Kholaifa, or hall of the khalifs,
“the roof and walls of which were of gold, and solid but
transparent blocks of marble of various colours: on each side
were eight doors fixed on arches of ivory and ebony, ornamented
with gold and precious stones, and resting on pillars of
variegated marble and transparent crystal:—and in the
centre was fixed the unique pearl presented to An-nassir by the
Greek Emperor.” The mosque and baths attached to the palace
were on a corresponding scale of magnificence: and the number
of inmates, male and female, is said to have been not less than
20,000. The expenses of the establishment must have consumed
the revenues of a kingdom, if we are to believe the statement,
that 12,000 loaves of bread were daily allowed to feed the fish
in the ponds! “But all this and more is recorded by orators and
poets who have exhausted the mines of eloquence in the
description,”—says Al-Makkari, who, after enlarging upon
“the running streams, the luxuriant gardens, the stately
buildings for the accommodation of the guards and high
functionaries—the throngs of soldiers, pages, eunuchs,
and slaves, attired in robes of silk and brocade, moving to and
fro through its broad streets—and the crowds of judges,
katibs, theologians, and poets, walking with becoming gravity
through the spacious halls and ample courts of the
palace,”—concludes with a burst of pious enthusiasm.
“Praise be to God who allowed those contemptible creatures
(mankind) to build such palaces, and to inhabit them as a
recompense in this world, that the faithful might be stimulated
to the path of virtue, by reflecting that the pleasures enjoyed
by their owners were still very far from giving even a remote
idea of those reserved for the true believers in paradise!”

“Abdurrahman,” as Al-Makkari sums up his character, “has
been described as the mildest and most enlightened of
sovereigns. His meekness, generosity, and love of justice,
became proverbial: none of his ancestors surpased him in
courage, zeal for religion, and other virtues which constitute
an able and beloved monarch. He was fond of science, and the
patron of the learned, with whom he
[pg 444] loved to converse…. We
should never finish, were we to transcribe the innumerable
anecdotes respecting him which are scattered like loose
pearls over the writings of the Andalusian poets and
historians,”—but as the “pearls” selected possess but
little novelty in the illustration of the kingly virtues
which they commemorate, we prefer to quote once more the
oft-repeated legacy to posterity, in which this “Soliman of
the West,” as he was called by his contemporaries, confessed
that, like his eastern prototype, he had found all his
grandeur “but vanity and vexation of spirit.”—”After
his death a paper was found in his on handwriting, in which
were noted those days he had spent in happiness and without
any cause of sorrow, and they were found to amount to
fourteen. O, man of understanding! consider and observe the
small portion of happiness the world affords, even in the
most enviable position! The khalif An-nasir, whose
prosperity in mundane affairs became proverbial, had only
fourteen days of undisturbed enjoyment during a reign of
fifty years, seven months, and three days. Praise be given
to him, the Lord of eternal glory and everlasting empire!
There is no God but he!”

In the fulness of years and glory, Abdurrahman died of a
paralytic stroke at Az-zahra, on the second or third of
Ramadhan, A.H. 350, (Oct. 961,) and was succeeded, according to
his previous nomination, by his son Al-hakem II., who assumed
on this occasion the title of Al-mustanser-billah, (one who
implores God’s assistance.) This prince has been characterized,
by one of the ablest of recent historians,¹⁸
as “one of those rare beings, who have employed the awful
engine of despotism in promoting the happiness and
intelligence of his species;” and who rivaled, “in his
elegant tastes, appetite for knowledge, and munificent
patronage, the best of the Medici:”—nor is this high
praise undeserved. Though he more than once headed his
armies in person, with success, against the Christians and
Northmen, and maintained on public occasions the state and
magnificence which had been introduced by his father, the
toils of war and the pomp of royalty were alike alien to his
inclinations, which had been directed from his earliest
years to pursuits of literature and science. The library
which he amassed is said by some writers to have amounted to
the almost incredible number of 400,000 volumes: and such
was his ardour in the collection of books, that even in
Persia and other remote regions, the munificence which he
exercised through agents employed for the purpose, secured
him copies of forthcoming works even before their appearance
in their own country. “He made Andalus a great market for
the literary productions of every clime … so that rich men
in Cordova, however illiterate they might be, rewarded
writers and poets with the greatest munificence, and spared
neither trouble nor expense in forming libraries.” Nor were
these treasures of literature idly accumulated, at least by
Al-hakem himself; for so vast and various was his reading,
that there was scarcely one of his books (as we are assured
by the historian Ibn’ul-Abbar) which was not enriched with
remarks and annotations from his pen. “In the knowledge
especially of history, biography, and genealogy, he was
surpassed by no living author of his days: and he wrote a
voluminous history of Andalus, in which was displayed such
sound criticism, that whatever he related, as borrowed from
more ancient sources, might be implicitly relied upon.”

The reign of Al-hakem was the Augustan age of Andalusian
literature; and besides the numerous learned men whom the fame
of his father’s and his own liberality, with the security of
their rule, had attracted to Spain from other regions of Islam,
we find in the pages of Al-Makkari an extensive list of native
authors, principally in the departments of poetry, history, and
philology, who are said to be “a few only of the most eminent
who flourished during this reign”—but none of their
names, however noted in their own day, are known in
[pg 445] modern Europe. Nor was the
gentler sex, as is usually the case in the lands of Islam,
excluded from the general taste for letters; and one of our
author’s chapters is almost entirely filled with a catalogue
of the poetesses who adorned Andalus at this and other
periods of its history. One of these, Mariam or Mary, the
daughter of Abu-Yakub Al-ansari, who rose into celebrity in
the latter years of Al-hakem, appears to have been one of
the earliest bas-bleus on record. Independent of her
poetical talents, she gave lectures at her residence at
Seville “in rhetoric and literature; which, united to her
piety, virtue, and amiable disposition, gained her the
affection of her sex, and procured her many pupils: she
lived to old age, and died after the 400th year of the
Hejra,” (A.D. 1010.) The favourite study of the Moslems, the
divinity and law of the Koran, was cultivated with especial
zeal under a monarch who was himself a rigid observer of its
ordinances; and various anecdotes are related by Al-Makkari
of the extraordinary deference paid by Al-hakem to the
eminent theologians who frequented his court. The Khalif
himself “attended public worship every Friday, and
distributed alms to the poor; he laid out large sums in the
construction of mosques, hospitals, and colleges for
youth;¹⁹
and being himself very strict in the observance of his
religious duties, he enforced the precepts of the
Sunnah (tradition) throughout his dominions.” With
this view, severe edicts were directed against the use of
wine, which had become prevalent among the Andalusian
Moslems; and Al-hakem was with difficulty restrained, by
representations of the ruin which would be thus brought on
the cultivators, from ordering the destruction of all the
vines in his dominions. But the reign of this excellent and
enlightened prince lasted only fifteen years; and at his
death, (Sept. 976,) which was caused by the same malady that
had proved fatal to his father, the glory of the house of
Umeyyah expired.

The evils of a minority had never yet been experienced in
the succession of the Umeyyan princes, all of whom had ascended
the throne at a mature age, and with some experience of
administration from their previous recognition as heir. But
Hisham II., (surnamed Al-muyyed-billah, the assisted by God,)
the only son of Al-hakem, was but nine years old at the time of
his father’s decease; and for some time the government was
directed in his name by the Hajib, Jafar Al-Mushafi; but the
influence of the queen-mother erelong succeeded in displacing
this faithful minister, in favour of Mohammed Ibn Abu Amir, who
then held the post of sahib-ush-shortah, or captain of
the guard. This remarkable personage (better known in history
by his surname of Al-mansur) was the son of a religious
devotee, and his condition in early life was so humble, that he
supported himself as a public letter-writer in the streets of
Cordova; but an accident having introduced him into the palace,
he so skilfully wound his way among the intigues of the court,
as to attain the highest place next the throne. But even this
dignity was far from satisfying his ambition. Under various
pretexts he destroyed or drove into exile, within a few years,
all the princes of the blood, and others whose influence or
station might have endangered the success of his projects, and
concentrated in his own hands all the powers of the state;
while the khalif, secluded from public view within his palace,
was as completely a puppet in the hands of his all-powerful
minister, as the khalifs of Bagdad at the same period in those
of the Emirs-al-Omrah. Secure of the support of the
soldiery, whose affections he had gained by his liberality,
Al-mansur so little affected to disguise his assumption of
supremacy, that he ordered his own name to be struck on the
coin, and repeated in the public prayers, along with that of
Hisham, thus arrogating to himself a share in the two most
inalienable prerogatives of sovereignty.
[pg 446] His robes were made of a
peculiar fashion and stuff appropriated to royalty; he
received embassies seated on the throne, and declared peace
and war in his own name. To such utter helplessness was the
khalif reduced,²⁰
that he was unable even to oppose the removal of the royal
treasure fiom Cordova to a fortified palace which Al-mansur
had built for his residence, not far from Az-zahra, and had
named, as if in mockery, Az-zahirah;—and the Hajib was
at one time obliged to quiet the murmurs of the populace,
who doubted whether their sovereign was still in existence,
by leading him in procession through the streets of the
capital; “and the eyes of the people feasted on what had
been so long concealed from them.”

But this daring usurpation was in part redeemed by qualities
in the usurper worthy of a king. Though the bigotry of Al-masur
led him to order the destruction of those volumes in the
library of Al-hakem which treated of philosophy and the
abstruse sciences, on the ground that such studies tended to
irreligion, he was yet liberal to the learned men who visited
his court at Az-zahirah, where he resided in royal splendour
during the intervals of his campaigns; and he endeared hinself
to the people, by his generosity, his rigid justice, and the
strict control which he enforced over his subordinate officers.
But it was on his fervent zeal for the cause of Islam, and his
martial exploits against the Christians, (whence his surname of
Al-mansur, or the Victorious, was derived,) that
his fame and popularity chiefly rested. The martial spirit of
the Spanish Moslems appears, from various anecdotes related by
Al-Makkari, to have suffered great deterioration from the
progress of luxury and decay of discipline; but the armies led
by Al-mansur were mainly recruited from the fiery tribes of
Barbary, and strengthened by numerous Christian slaves or
Mamlukes, trained to serve their captors in arms against their
own countrymen. With forces thus constituted, did Al-mansur, in
whom once more shone forth the spirit of the Arab conquerors of
past times, invade the Christian territories in each spring and
autumn for twenty-six successive years, carrying the Moslem
arms in triumph even to the shores of the “Green Sea,”
(Atlantic Ocean,) and into regions which Tarik and Musa had
never reached. Astorga and Leon, in spite of the efforts of
Bermudo II. to save his capital, were taken and razed to the
ground in 983. Barcelona only escaped the same fate in the
following year by submission and tribute; but the crowning
glory of Al-mansur’s achievements in the al-jahid or
holy war, was the capture, in 997, Santiago, the shrine and
sepulchre of the patron saint of Spain. “No Moslem general had
ever penetrated as far as that city, which is in an
inaccessible position in the most remote part of Galicia, and
is a sanctuary regarded by the Christians with veneration equal
to that which the Moslems entertain for the Kaaba,”—but
Al-mansur, supplied with provisions from a fleet which
accompanied his march along the coast of Portugal, forced his
way through the Galician defiles, and occupied the holy city
without opposition—all the inhabitants having fled,
according to Ibn Hayyan, with the exception of an old monk who
tended the tomb. The city and cathedral were leveled with the
ground; the shrine alone was left untouched in the midst of the
ruins, from the belief of the Moslems that St James was the
brother of the Messiah—and the church-bells were conveyed
on the shoulders of the captives to Cordova, where they were
suspended as lamps in the great mosque, to commemorate the
triumph of Islam in the principal seat of Christian worship and
pilgrimage.

Such was the depression produced among the Christians by
these repeated disasters, that, if we may believe Al-Makkari,
“one of Al-mansur’s soldiers having left his banner fixed in
the earth on a mountain before a Christian town, the garrison
[pg 447] dared not come out for
several days after the retreat of the Moslem army, not
knowing what troops might be behind it.” The pressing sense
of common danger, at length extinguished (“for the first
time perhaps,” as Conde remarks) the feuds of the Christian
princes; and in the spring of 1002 the united forces of the
Count of Castile, Sancho the Great of Navarre, and the King
of Leon, confronted the Moslem host at
Kalat-an-nosor,²¹
(the Castle of the Eagles,) on the frontiers of Old Castile.
The mighty conflict which ensued is very briefly dismissed
by Al-Makkari—”Al-mansur attacked and defeated them
with great loss”—but a far different account is given
by the Christian chroniclers, who represent the Moslems as
only saved from a total overthrow by the approach of night.
It seems, in truth, to have been nearly a drawn battle, with
immense carnage on both sides; but the advantage was
decidedly with the Christians, who retained possession of
the field; while Al-mansur, weakened by the loss of great
numbers of his best men and officers, abandoned his camp,
and retreated the next day across the Douro. In all his
fifty-two campaigns he is said never before to have been
defeated; and the chagrin occasioned by this severe reverse,
joined to a malady under which he was previously suffering,
ended his life shortly after²²
at Medinah-Selim, (Medinaceli.) He was buried by his sons in
the same place; the dust which had adhered to his garments
in his campaigns against the Christians, and which had been
carefully preserved for the purpose, being placed in the
tomb with the corpse—a practice not unusual at the
funeral of a celebrated warrior. “This enlightened and
never-vanquished Hajib”—says Al-Makkali, with whom
Al-mansur is a favourite hero—”used continually to ask
God to permit him to die in his service and in war against
the infidels, and thus his desire was granted;… and after
his death, the Mohammedan empire in Andalus began to show
visible signs of decay.”

Al-mansur had a worthy successor in his son Abdul-malek, who
at once received the appointment of Hajib from the passive
Khalif:—but on his death in 1008, the post was assumed by
his brother Abdurrahman, popularly known as Shanjul, a Berber
word signifying madman—a surname which he had
earned by his habits of low vice and intemperance. Scarcely had
he entered upon office, when, not contented with exercising
sovereign authority, like his father and brother, under an
appearance of delegation from the Khalif, he persuaded or
compelled the feeble Hisham, who had no male issue, to appoint
him Wali-al-ahd, or heir-presumptive—the deed of
nomination is given at length by Al-Makkari, and is a curious
specimen of a state-paper. But this transfer was viewed with
deep indignation by the people of Cordova, who were warmly
attached to the line of their ancient princes; and their
discontent being fomented by the members of the Umeyyan family,
they rose in furious revolt during the absence of the Hajib on
the Galician frontiers, deposed Hisham, and raised to the
throne Mohammed-Al-muhdi, a great-grandson of Abdurrahman III.
Abdurrahman, returning in haste to quell the insurrection,
found himself deserted by his army, and was put to death with
most of his family and principal adherents; and the power of
the Amirites vanished in a day like the remembrance of dream.
But the sceptre which had thus been struck from their grasp,
found no other hand strong enough to seize it; and from the
first deposition of Hisham II. in 1009, to the final
dissolution of the monarchy on the abdication of Hisham III. in
1031, the whole of Moslem Spain presented a frightful scene of
[pg 448] anarchy and civil war.
Besides the imbecile Hisham, who was at least once released
and restored to the throne, and was personated by more than
one pretender, the royal title was assumed, within twenty
years by not fewer than six princes of the house of Umeyyah,
and by three of a rival race—a branch of the Edrisites
called Beni-Hammud, who endeavoured in the general confusion
to assert their claims as descendants of the Khalif Ali. The
aid of the Christians was called in by more than one
faction; and Cordova was stormed and sacked after a long
siege in 1013, by the African troops who followed the
standard of Soliman Ab-muhdi, one of the Umeyyan
competitors. The palaces of Az-zahra and Az-zahirah were
utterly destroyed; the remains of Hakem’s library, with the
treasures amassed by former sovereigns, were either
plundered or dispersed; nor did the ancient capital of
Audalus, no more the seat of the Khalifate, ever recover its
former grandeur. The provincial walis, many of whom
owed their appointments to the Hajibs of the house of Amir,
and were disaffected to the Beni-Umeyyah, every where threw
off their allegiance and assumed independence, till only the
districts in its immediate vicinity remained attached to
Cordova, which was still considered the seat of the
Mohammedan empire. The last Umeyyan prince who ruled there
was a grandson of the great Abdurrahman, named Hisham
Al-Mutadd; whom the inhabitants, after expelling the troops
of the Beni-Hammud in 1027, invited to ascend the throne of
his ancestors. “He was a mild and enlightened prince and
possessed many brilliant qualities; but notwithstanding
this, the volatile and degenerate citizens of Cordova grew
discontented with him, and he was deposed by the army in
422, (A.D. 1031.) He left the capital and retired to Lerida,
where he died in 428, (A.D. 1036.) He was the last member of
that illustrious dynasty which had ruled over Andalus and a
great portion of Africa for two hundred and eighty-four
years, counting from the accession of Abdurrahman I.,
surnamed Ab-dakhel, in 138, (A.D. 756.) There is no God but
God! He is the Almighty!”

The fall of the Umeyyan khalifate closes the first of the
two brilliant periods which illustrate the Arab history of
Spain. The uninterrupted hereditary succession for ten
generations, and the long average duration of the reign of each
monarch, from the arrival in Spain of Abdurrahman I. in 756, to
the death or disappearance of Hisham II. in 1009, are without a
parallel it any other Moslem dynasty, with the single exception
of the Ottoman line; and though, on pursuing the comparison,
the Umeyyan princes cannot vie with the last-named race in
extent of conquest and splendour of martial achievement, they
far surpass not only the Ottomans, but almost every sovereign
family in the annals of Islam, in the cultivation of kingly
virtues and arts of peace, and the refinement and love of
literature, which they introduced and fostered in their
dominions. During the greater part of their rule, the court of
Cordova was the most polished and enlightened in Europe removed
equally from the martial rudeness of those of the Frank
monarchs, and the punctilious attention to forms and jealous
etiquette, within which the Grcek emperors studiously
intrenched themselves. The useful arts, and in particular the
science of agriculture, necessary for the support of a dense
population, were cultivated to an extent of which no other
country afforded an example; and the commerce which filled the
ports of Spain, from all parts of Europe and the East, was the
natural result of the industry of her people. In how great a
degree the personal character of the Umeyyan sovereigns
contributed to this state of political and social prosperity,
is best proved by the rapid disruption and fall of the
monarchy, when it passed into the feeble hands of Hisham II.,
and by the history of the two following centuries of anarchy,
civil war, and foreign domination. But the sun of Andalusian
glory, which had attained its meridian splendour under the
Khalifs of Cordova, once more emerged before the close of its
course from the clouds and darkness which surrounded
it;—and its setting rays shone, with concentrated lustre,
over the kingdom of GRANADA.

Footnote 1:
(return)

The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain. By
AHMED IBN MOHAMMED AL-MAKKARI of Telemsan. Translated and
illustrated with Critical Notes by Pascual de Gayangos,
late Professor of Arabic in the Athenæum of
Madrid.—Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund. 2
vols. 4to. 1840-43.

Footnote 2:
(return)

The Almoravide and Almohade princes, who ruled both in
Spain and Africa, often inserted a clause in their treaties
with the Christians for the restoration of the libraries
captured in the towns taken from the Moslems; and Ibn
Khaldun mentions, that Yakob Al-mansor destined a college
at Fez for the reception of the books thus recovered.

Footnote 3:
(return)

He is called by the Arabic writers Ludherik—a name
afterwards applied as a general designation to the kings of
Castile.

Footnote 4:
(return)

The translator adduces strong grounds for believing that
the battle was fought, not as usually held, in the plain of
Xeres, on the south bank of the Guadalete, but “nearer the
sea-shore, and not far from the town of
Medina-Sidonia.”

Footnote 5:
(return)

This is not mentioned by the authors from whom
Al-Makkari has drawn his materials, but is stated by
Professor de Gayangos on the authority of Ibn Khaldun.

Footnote 6:
(return)

A story is here told of Musa’s reaching some colossal
ruins, and a monument inscribed with Arabic characters
pointing out that place as the term of his
conquests—a legend which perhaps gave the hint for
one of the tales in the Thousand and One Nights, in which
he is sent on an expedition to the city of Brass on the
shores of the Western Ocean.—See Lane’s translation,
chap. 21.

Footnote 7:
(return)

Condé, and the writers who have followed him,
constantly speak of the Beni-Modhar as Egyptian—an
error owing to the neglect or omission of the point which
in Arabic orthography distinguishes Modhar from
Missr, (Egypt.)

Footnote 8:
(return)

Burkhardt (Travels in Arabia, i. 303) says, that all the
golden ornaments which the Khalif Walid gave to the mosque
at Mekka, “were sent from Toledo in Spain, and carried upon
mules through Africa and Arabia.”

Footnote 9:
(return)

The tribe of Fehr hold a conspicuous place in the
Spanish annals, and one of them was the leader of the last
attempt to shake off the yoke of Castile, after the capture
of Granada.

Footnote 10:
(return)

It was by a body of exiles under Abu Hafss Omar, the
Apochapsus of the Greeks, (incorrectly called Abu
Caab by Gibbon,) driven from Cordova after one of
these insurrections, that Crete was conquered in 823.

Footnote 11:
(return)

In this battle, according to the veracious Spanish
chroniclers, Santiago first appeared on his white horse in
the mêlée, fighting for the
Christians.—See the “Maiden Tribute,” in Lockhart’s
Spanish Ballads.

Footnote 12:
(return)

Majus—Magians or fire worshippers, is the
term invariably applied to these fierce Pagans by the
Arabic historians, apparently by a negative induction from
their being neither Moslems, Jews, nor Christians.

Footnote 13:
(return)

No fewer than twenty-seven insurgent leaders, in the
reign of Abdullah alone, are enumerated in the translator’s
notes from Ibn Hayyan.

Footnote 14:
(return)

The epithet of kelb, “dog,” frequently applied to
this leader, has led Condé into the strange error of
creating for him a son, whom he calls Kalib Ibun
Hafssun. The term Muwallad is said to be the origin
of mulatto.

Footnote 15:
(return)

We do not find this division mentioned by the authors
cited by Al-Makkari; but it is stated by Condé, and
appears to have prevailed as long as the kingdom retained
its unity. The six provincial capitals were Saragossa,
Toledo, Merida, Valencia, Murcia, and Granada. Shortly
before the arrival of Abdurrahman, Yusuf Al-Fehri had
organized five great governments, one of which
comprised Narbonne and the Trans-Pyrenean conquests.

Footnote 16:
(return)

Under the Arab dynasties of the east, the vizir
was exclusively an officer of the pen: and Makrizi
expressly mentions that Bedr-al-Jemali, who became vizir to
the Fatimite khalif Al-Mostanssor in 1074, was the first in
whom the sword and the pen were united.

Footnote 17:
(return)

See Sale’s Koran. Preliminary Discourse. Sect. 8.

Footnote 18:
(return)

Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, i. 351.

Footnote 19:
(return)

Eighty free schools are said by other authorities to
have existed or been founded during this reign in Cordova;
the number of dwelling-houses in which at the same time,
great and small, is stated at 200,000.

Footnote 20:
(return)

Some historians even speak of this period as the
“dynasty of the Amirites,” from Al-mansur’s father, Abn
Amir.

Footnote 21:
(return)

The precise locality of this famous battle is not very
clearly ascertained; but Condé places it betveen
Soria and Medinaceli.

Footnote 22:
(return)

The battle is placed by the Christian writers in 998;
but the death of Al-mansur, which both Christians and
Moslems agree in stating to have taken place within a very
short time, is said by the latter to have been A.M. 392,
A.D. 1002.

TWO NIGHTS IN SOUTHERN MEXICO.

A FRAGMENT FROM THE JOURNAL OF AN AMERICAN TRAVELLER.

“A capital place this for our bivouac!” cried I, swinging
myself off my mule, and stretching my arms and legs, which were
stiffened by a long ride.

It was a fairish place, to all appearances—a
snug ravine, well shaded by mahogany-trees, the ground covered
with the luxuriant vegetation of that tropical region, a little
stream bubbling and leaping and dashing down one of the high
rocks that flanked the hollow, and rippling away through the
tall fern towards the rear of the spot where we had halted, at
the distance of a hundred yards from which the ground was low
and shelving.

“A capital place this for our bivouac!”

My companion nodded. As to our lazy Mexican arrieros
and servants, they said nothing, but began making arrangements
for passing the night. Curse the fellows! If they had seen us
preparing to lie down in a swamp, cheek by jowl with an
alligator, I believe they would not have offered a word of
remonstrance. Those Mexican half-breeds, half Indian half
Spaniard, with sometimes a dash of the Negro, are themselves so
little pervious to the dangers and evils of their soil and
climate, that they never seem to remember that Yankee flesh and
blood may be rather more susceptible; that
niguas¹ and
musquittoes, and vomito prieto, as they call their
infernal fever, are no trifles to encounter; without
mentioning the snakes, and scorpions, and alligators, and
other creatures of the kind, which infest their strange,
wild, unnatural, and yet beautiful country.

I had come to Mexico in company with Jonathan Rowley, a
youth of Virginian raising, six and twenty years of age, six
feet two in his stockings, with the limbs of a Hercules and
shoulders like the side of a house. It was towards the close of
1824; and the recent emancipation of Mexico from the Spanish
yoke, and its self-formation into a republic, had given it a
new and strong interest to us Americans. We had been told much,
too, of the beauty of the country—but in this we were at
first rather disappointed; and we reached the capital without
having seen any thing, except some parts of the province of
Vera Cruz, that could justify the extravagant encomiums we had
heard bestowed in the States upon the splendid scenery of
Mexico. We had not, however, to go far southward from the chief
city, before the character of the country altered, and became
such as to satisfy our most sanguine expectations. Forests of
palms, of oranges, citrons, and bananas, filled the valleys:
the marshes and low grounds were crowded with mahogany-trees,
and with immense fern plants, in height equal to trees. All
nature was on a gigantic scale—the mountains of an
enormous height, the face of the country seamed and split by
barrancas or ravines, hundreds, ay, thousands of feet
deep, and filled with the most abundant and varied vegetation.
The sky, too, was of the deep glowing blue of the tropics, the
sort of blue which seems varnished or clouded with gold. But
this ardent climate and teeming soil are not without their
disadvantages. Vermin and reptiles of all kinds, and the deadly
fever of these latitudes, render the low lands uninhabitable
for eight months out of the twelve. At the same time there are
large districts which are comparatively free
[pg 450] from these
plagues—perfect gardens of Eden, of such extreme
beauty that the mere act of living and breathing amongst
their enchanting scenes, becomes a positive and real
enjoyment. The heart seems to leap with delight, and the
soul to be elevated, by the contemplation of those regions
of fairy-like magnificence.

The most celebrated among these favoured provinces is the
valley of Oaxaca, in which two mountainous districts, the
Mistecca and Tzapoteca, bear off the palm of beauty. It was
through this immense valley, nearly three hundred leagues in
length, and surrounded by the highest mountains in Mexico, that
we were now journeying. The kind attention of our
chargé-d’affaires at the Mexican capital, had procured
us every possible facility in travelling through a country, of
which the soil was at that time rarely trodden by any but
native feet. We had numerous letters to the alcaldes and
authorities of the towns and villages which are sparingly
sprinkled over the southern provinces of Mexico; we were to
have escorts when necessary; every assistance, protection, and
facility, were to be afforded us. But as neither the
authorities nor his excellency, Uncle Sam’s envoy, could make
inns and houses where none existed, it followed that we were
often obliged to sleep à la belle étoile,
with the sky for a covering. And a right splendid roof it was
to our bedchamber, that tropical sky, with its constellations,
all new to us northerns, and every star magnified by the effect
of the atmosphere to an incredible size. Mars and Saturn, Venus
and Jupiter, had all disappeared; the great and little Bear
were still to be seen; in the far distance the ship Argo and
the glowing Centaur; and, beautiful above all, the glorious
sign of Christianity the colossal Southern Cross, in all its
brightness and sublimity, glittering in silvery magnificence
out of its setting of dark blue crystal.

We were travelling with a state and a degree of luxury that
would have excited the contempt of our backwoodsmen; but in a
strange country we thought it best to do as the natives did;
and accordingly, instead of mounting our horses and setting
forth alone, with our rifles slung over our shoulders, and a
few handfuls of parched corn and dried flesh in our hunting
pouches, we journeyed Mexican fashion, with a whole string of
mules, a topith or guide, a couple of arrieros or
muleteers, a cook, and one or two other attendants. While the
latter were slinging our hammocks to the lowermost branches of
a tree—for in that part of Mexico it is not very safe to
sleep upon the ground, on account of the snakes and
vermin—our cocinero lit a fire against the rock,
and in a very few minutes an iguana which we had shot that day
was spitted and roasting before it. It looked strange to see
this hideous creature, in shape between a lizard and a dragon,
twisting and turning in the light of the fire; and its
disgusting appearance might have taken away some people’s
appetites; but we knew by experience that there is no better
eating than a roasted iguana. We made a hearty meal off this
one, concluding it with a pull at the rum flask, and then
clambered into our hammocks; the Mexicans stretched themselves
on the ground with their heads upon the saddles of the mules,
and both masters and men were soon asleep.

It was somewhere about midnight when I was awakened by an
indescribable sensation of oppression from the surrounding
atmosphere. The air seemed to be no longer air, but some
poisonous exhalation that had suddenly arisen and enveloped us.
From the rear of the ravine in which we lay, billows of dark
mephitic mist were rolling forward, surrounding us with their
baleful influence. It was the vomito prieto, the fever
itself, embodied in the shape of a fog. At the same moment, and
while I was gasping for breath, a sort of cloud seemed to
settle upon me, and a thousand stings, like redhot needles,
were run into my hands, face, neck—into every part of my
limbs and body that was not triply guarded by clothing. I
instinctively stretched forth my hands and closed them,
clutching by the action hundreds of enormous musquittoes, whose
droning, singing noise how almost deafened me. The air was
literally filled by a dense swarm of these insects; and the
agony caused [pg 451] by their repeated and
venomous stings was indescribable. It was a perfect plague
of Egypt.

Rowley, whose hammock was slung some ten yards from mine,
soon gave tongue: I heard him kicking and plunging, spluttering
and swearing, with a vigour and energy that would have been
ludicrous under any other circumstances; but matters were just
then too serious for a laugh. With the torture, for such it
was, of the musquitto bites, and the effect of the insidious
and poisonous vapours that were each moment thickening around
me, I was already in a high state of fever, alternately glowing
with heat and shivering with cold, my tongue parched, my
eyelids throbbing, my brain seemingly on fire.

There was a heavy thump upon the ground. It was Rowley
jumping out of his hammock. “Damnation” roared he, “Where are
we? On the earth, or under the earth?—We must be—we
are—in their Mexican purgatory. We are, or there’s no
snakes in Virginny. Hallo, arrieros! Pablo! Matteo!”

At that moment a scream—but a scream of such terror
and anguish as I never heard before or since—a scream as
of women in their hour of agony and extreme peril, sounded
within a few paces of us. I sprang out of my hammock; and as I
did so, two white and graceful female figures darted or rather
flew by me, shrieking—and oh! in what heart-rending
tones—for “Socorro! Socorro! Por Dios! Help!
Help!” Close upon the heels of the fugitives, bounding and
leaping along with enormous strides and springs, came three or
four dark objects which resembled nothing earthly. The human
form they certainly possessed; but so hideous and horrible, so
unnatural and spectre-like was their aspect, that their sudden
encounter in that gloomy ravine, and in the almost darkness
that surrounded us, might well have shaken the strongest
nerves. We stood for a second, Rowley and myself, paralysed
with astonishment at these strange appearances; but another
piercing scream restored to us our presence of mind. One of the
women had either tripped or fallen from fatigue, and she lay a
white heap, upon the ground. The drapery of the other was in
the clutch of one of the spectres, or devils, or whatever they
were, when Rowley, with a cry of horror, rushed forward and
struck a furious blow at the monster with his machetto.
At the same time, and almost without knowing how, I found
myself engaged with another of the creatures. But the contest
was no equal one. In vain did we stab and strike with our
machettos; our antagonists were covered and defended with a
hard bristly hide, which our knives, although keen and pointed,
had great difficulty in penetrating; and on the other hand we
found ourselves clutched in long sinewy arms, terminating in
hands and fingers, of which the nails were as sharp and strong
as an eagle’s talons. I felt these horrible claws strike into
my shoulders as the creature seized me, and, drawing me towards
him, pressed me as in the hug of a bear; while his hideous half
man half brute visage was grinning and snarling at me, and his
long keen white teeth were snapping and gnashing within six
inches of my face.

“God of heaven! This is horrible! Rowley! Help me!”

But Rowley, in spite of his gigantic strength, was powerless
as an infant in the grasp of these terrible opponents. He was
within a few paces of me, struggling with two of them, and
making superhuman efforts to regain possession of his knife,
which had dropped or been wrenched from his hand. And all this
time, where were our arrieros? Were they attacked likewise? Why
didn’t they come and help us? All this time!—pshaw! it
was no time: it all passed in the space of a few seconds, in
the circumference of a few yards, and in the feeble glimmering
light of the stars, and of the smouldering embers of our fire,
which was at some distance from us.

“Ha! That has told!” A stab, dealt with all the energy of
despair, had entered my antagonist’s side. But I was like to
pay dearly for it. Uttering a deafening yell of pain and fury,
the monster clasped me closer to his foul and loathsome body;
his sharp claws, dug deeper into my back, seemed to tear up my
flesh: the agony was [pg 452] insupportable—my eyes
began to swim, and my senses to leave me. Just
then—Crack! crack! Two—four—a dozen musket
and pistol shots, followed by such a chorus of yellings and
howlings and unearthly laughter! The creature that held me
seemed startled—relaxed his grasp slightly. At that
moment a dark arm was passed before my face, there was a
blinding flash, a yell, and I fell to the ground released
from the clutch of my opponent. I remember nothing more.
Overcome by pain, fatigue, terror, and the noxious vapors of
that vile ravine, my senses abandoned me, and I swooned
away.

When consciousness returned, I found myself lying upon some
blankets, under a sort of arbour of foliage and flowers. It was
broad day; the sun shone brightly, the blossoms smelled sweet,
the gay-plumaged hummingbirds were darting and shooting about
in the sunbeams like so many animated fragments of a prism. A
Mexican Indian, standing beside my couch, and whose face was
unknown to me, held out a cocoa-nutshell containing some
liquid, which I eagerly seized, and drank off the contents. The
draught (it was a mixture of citron juice and water) revived me
greatly; and raising myself on my elbow, although with much
pain and difficulty, I looked around, and beheld a scene of
bustle and life which to me was quite unintelligible. Upon the
shelving hillside on which I was lying, a sort of encampment
was established. A number of mules and horses were wandering
about at liberty, or fastened to trees and bushes, and eating
the forage that had been collected and laid before them. Some
were provided with handsome and commodious saddles, while
others had pack-saddles, intended apparently for the conveyance
of numerous sacks, cases, and wallets, that were scattered
about on the ground. Several muskets and rifles were leaning
here and there against the trees; and a dozen or fifteen men
were occupied in various ways—some filling up saddle-bags
or fastening luggage on the mules, others lying on the ground
smoking, one party surrounding a fire at which cooking was
going on. At a short distance from my bed was another similarly
composed couch, occupied by a man muffled up in blankets, and
having his back turned towards me, so that I was unable to
obtain a view of his features.

“What is all this? Where am I? Where is Rowley—our
guide—where are they all?”

“Non entiendo,” answered my brown-visaged Ganymede,
shaking his head, and with a good-humoured smile.

“Adonde estamos?“

“In el valle de Chihuatan, in el gran valle de Oaxaca y
Guatimala; diez leguas de Tarifa. In the valley of
Chihuatan; ten leagues from Tarifa.”

The figure lying on the bed near me now made a movement, and
turned round. What could it be? Its face was like a lump of raw
flesh streaked and stained with blood. No features were
distinguishable.

“Who are you? What are you?” cried I.

“Rowley,” it answered: “Rowley I was, at least, if those
devils haven’t changed me.”

“Then changed you they have,” cried I, with a wild laugh.
“Good God! have they scalped him alive, or what? That is not
Rowley.”

The Mexican, who had gone to give some drink to the creature
claiming to be Rowley, now opened a valise that lay on the
ground a short distance off, and took out a small
looking-glass, which he brought and held before my face. It was
then only that I began to call to mind all that had occurred,
and understood how it was that the mask of human flesh lying
near me might indeed be Rowley. He was, if any thing, less
altered than myself. My eyes were almost closed; my lips, nose,
and whole face swollen to an immense size, and perfectly
unrecognisable. I involuntarily recoiled in dismay and disgust
at my own appearance. The horrible night passed in the ravine,
the foul and suffocating vapours, the furious attack of the
musquittoes—the bites of which, and the consequent fever
and inflammation, had thus disfigured us—all recurred to
our memory. But the women, the fight with the
monsters—beasts—Indians—whatever they were,
that was still incomprehensible. It was no dream: my back and
shoulders were still smarting from the wounds that had been
inflicted on them by the
[pg 453] claws of those creatures,
and I now felt that various parts of my limbs and body were
swathed in wet bandages. I was mustering my Spanish to ask
the Mexican who still stood by me for an explanation of all
this, when I suddenly became aware of a great bustle in the
encampment, and saw every body crowding to meet a number of
persons who just then emerged from the high fern, and
amongst whom I recognized our arrieros and servants. The
new-comers were grouped around something which they seemed
to be dragging along the ground; several women—for the
most part young and graceful creatures, their slender supple
forms muffled in the flowing picturesque reboxos and
frazadas—preceded the party, looking back
occasionally with an expression of mingled horror and
triumph; all with rosaries in their hands, the beads of
which ran rapidly through their fingers, while they
occasionally kissed the cross, or made the sign on their
breasts or in the air.

“Un Zambo muerto! Un Zambo Muerto!” shouted they as
they drew near.

“Han matado un Zambo! They have killed a Zambo!”
repeated my attendant in a tone of exultation.

The party came close up to where Rowley and I were lying;
the women stood aside, jumping and laughing, and crossing
themselves, and crying out “Un Zambo! Un Zambo Muerto!”
the group opened, and we saw, lying dead upon the ground, one
of our horrible antagonists of the preceding night.

“Good God, what is that?” cried Rowley and I, with one
breath. “Un demonio! a devil!”

“Perdonen vos, Senores—Un Zambo mono—muy
terribles los Zambos. Terrible monkeys these Zambos.”

“Monkeys!” cried I.

“Monkeys!” repeated poor Rowley, raising himself up into a
sitting posture by the help of his hands.
“Monkeys—apes—by Jove! We’ve been fighting with
monkeys, and it’s they who have mauled us in this way. Well,
Jonathan Rowley, think of your coming from old Virginny to
Mexico to be whipped by a monkey. It’s gone goose with
your character. You can never show your face in the
States again. Whipped by an ape!—an ape, with a tail and
a hairy—O Lord! Whipped by a monkey!”

And the ludicrousness of the notion overcoming his
mortification, and the pain of his wounds and bites, he sank
back upon the bed of blankets and banana leaves, laughing as
well as his swollen face and sausage-looking lips would allow
him.

It was as much as I could do to persuade myself, that the
carcass lying before me had never been inhabited by a human
soul. It was humiliating to behold the close affinity between
this huge ape and our own species. Had it not been for the
tail, I could have fancied I saw the dead body of some prairie
hunter dressed in skins. It was exactly like a powerful,
well-grown man; and even the expression of the face had more of
bad human passions than of animal instinct. The feet and thighs
were those of a muscular man: the legs rather too curved and
calfless, though I have seen Negroes who had scarcely better
ones; the tendons of the hands stood out like whipcords; the
nails were as long as a tiger’s claws. No wonder that we had
been overmatched in our struggle with the brutes. No man could
have withstood them. The arms of this one were like packets of
cordage, all muscle, nerve, and sinew; and the hands were
clasped together with such force, that the efforts of eight or
ten Mexicans and Indians were insufficient to disunite
them.

Whatever remained to be cleared up in our night’s adventures
was now soon explained. Our guide, through ignorance or
thoughtlessness, had allowed us to take up our bivouac within a
very unsafe distance of one of the most pestiferous swamps in
the whole province. Shortly after we had fallen asleep, a party
of Mexican travellers had arrived, and established themselves
within a few hundred yards of us, but on a rising ground, where
they avoided the mephitic vapours and the musquittoes which had
so tortured Rowley and myself. In the night two of the women,
having ventured a short distance from the encampment, were
surprised by the zambos, or huge man-apes, common in some parts
of Southern [pg 454] Mexico; and finding
themselves cut off from their friends, had fled they knew
not whither, fortunately for them taking the direction of
our bivouac. Their screams, our shouts, and the yellings and
diabolical laughter of the zambos, had brought the Mexicans
to our assistance. The monkeys showed no fight after the
first volley; several of then must have been wounded, but
only the one now lying before us had remained upon the
field.

The Mexicans we had fallen amongst were on the Tzapoteca,
principally cochineal gatherers, and kinder-hearted people
there could not well be. They seemed to think they never could
do enough for us; the women especially, and more particularly
the two whom we had endeavoured to rescue from the power of the
apes. These latter certainly had cause to be grateful. It made
us shudder to think of their fate had they not met with us. It
was the delay caused by our attacking the brutes that had given
the Mexicans time to come up.

Every attention was shown to us. We were fanned with palm
leaves, refreshed with cooling drinks, our wounds carefully
dressed and bandaged, our heated, irritated, musquitto-bitten
limbs and faces washed with balsam and the juice of herbs: more
tender and careful nurses it would be impossible to find. We
soon began to feel better, and were able to sit up and look
about us; carefully avoiding, however, to look at each other,
for we could not get reconciled to the horrible appearance of
our swollen, bloody, and disgusting features. From our position
on the rising ground, we had a full view over the frightful
swamp at the entrance of which all our misfortunes had
happened. There it lay, steaming like a great kettle; endless
mists rising from it, out of which appeared here and there the
crown of some mighty tree towering above the banks of vapour.
To the left, cliffs and crags were to be seen which had the
appearance of being baseless, and of swimming on the top of the
mist. The vultures and carrion-birds circled screaming above
the huge caldron, or perched on the tops of the tall palms,
which looked like enormous umbrellas, or like the roofs of
Chinese summer-houses. Out of the swamp itself proceeded the
yellings, snarlings, and growlings of the alligators,
bull-frogs, and myriads of unclean beasts that it
harboured.

The air was unusually sultry and oppressive: from time to
time the rolling of distant thunder was audible. We could hear
the Mexicans consulting amongst themselves as to the propriety
of continuing their journey, to which our suffering state
seemed to be the chief obstacle. From what we could collect of
their discourse, they were unwilling to leave us in this
dangerous district, and in our helpless condition, with a guide
and attendants who were either untrustworthy or totally
incompetent to lead us aright. Yet there seemed to be some
pressing necessity for continuing the march; and presently some
of the older Mexicans, who appeared to have the direction of
the caravan, came up to us and enquired how we felt, and if we
thought we were able to travel; adding, that from the signs on
the earth and in the air, they feared a storm, and that the
nearest habitation or shelter was at many leagues’ distance.
Thanks to the remedies that had been applied, our sufferings
were much diminished. We felt weak and hungry, and telling the
Mexicans we should be ready to proceed in half an hour, we
desired our servants to get us something to eat. But our new
friends forestalled them, and brought us a large piece of
iguana, with roasted bananas, and cocoa-nutshell cups full of
coffee, to all of which Rowley and I applied ourselves with
much gusto. Meanwhile our muleteers and the Tzapotecans were
busy packing their beasts and making ready for the start.

We had not eaten a dozen mouthfuls when we say a man running
down the hill with a branch in each hand. As soon as he
appeared, a number of the Mexicans left their occupations and
hurried to meet him.

“Siete horas!” shouted the man. “Seven hours, and no
more!”

“No more than seven hours!” echoed the Tzapotecans, in tones
of the wildest terror and alarm. “La Santissima nos
guarde! It will take more than ten to reach the
village.”

“What’s all that about?” said I with my mouth full, to
Rowley.

“Don’t know—some of their Indian tricks, I
suppose.”

“Que es esto?” asked I carelessly. “What’s the
matter?”

“Que es esto!” repeated an old Tzapotecan, with long
grey hair curling from under his sombrero, and a
withered but finely marked countenance. “Las aguas! El
ouracan! In seven hours the deluge and the hurricane!”

“Vamos, por la Santissima! For the blessed Virgin’s
sake let us be gone!” cried a dozen of the Mexicans, pushing
two green boughs into our very faces.

“What are those branches?”

“From the tempest-tree—the prophet of the storm,” was
the reply.

And Tzapotecans and women, arrieros and servants, ran about
in the utmost terror and confusion, with cries of “Vamos,
paso redoblado! Off with us, or we are all lost, man and
beast,” and saddling, packing, and scrambling on their mules.
And before Rowley and I knew where we were, they tore us away
from our iguana and coffee, and hoisted and pushed us into our
saddles. Such a scene of bustle and desperate hurry I never
beheld. The place where the encampment had been was alive with
men and women, horses and mules, shouting, shrieking and
talking, neighing and kicking; but with all the confusion there
was little time lost, and in less than three minutes from the
first alarm being given, we were scampering away over stock and
stone, in a long, wild, irregular sort of train.

The rapidity and excitement of our ride seemed to have the
effect of calming our various sufferings, or of making us
forget them; and we soon thought no more of the fever, or of
stings or musquitto bites. It was a ride for life or death, and
our horses stepped out as if they knew how much depended on
their exertions.

In the hurry and confusion we had been mounted on horses
instead of our our own mules; and splendid animals they were. I
doubt if our Virginians could beat them, and that is saying a
great deal. There was no effort or straining in their
movements; it seemed mere play to them to surmount the numerous
difficulties we encountered on our road. Over mountain and
valley, swamp and barranca, always the same steady
surefootedness—crawling like cats over the soft places,
gliding like snakes up the steep rocky ascents, and stretching
out with prodigious energy when the ground was favourable; yet
with such easy action that we scarcely felt the motion. We
should have sat in the roomy Spanish saddles as comfortably as
in arm-chairs, had it not been for the numerous obstacles in
our path, which was strewed with fallen trees and masses of
rock. We were obliged to be perpetually stooping and bowing our
heads to avoid the creeping plants that swung and twined and
twisted across the track, intermingled often with huge thorns
as long as a man’s arm. These latter stuck out from the trees
on which they grew like so many brown bayonets; and a man who
had run up against one of them, would have been transfixed by
it as surely as though it had been of steel. We pushed on,
however, in Indian file, following the two guides, who kept at
the head of the party, and making our way through places where
a wild-cat would have difficulty in passing; through thickets
of mangroves, mimosas, and tall fern, and cactuses with their
thorny leaves full twenty feet long; the path turning and
winding all the while. Now and then a momentary improvement in
the nature of the ground enabled us to catch a glimpse of the
whole column of march. We were struck by its picturesque
appearance, the guides in front acting as pioneers, and looking
out on all sides as cautiously and anxiously as though they had
been soldiers expecting an ambuscade; the graceful forms of the
women bowing and bending over their horses’ manes, and often
leaving fragments of their mantillas and rebozas on the
branches and thorns of the labyrinth through which we were
struggling. But it was no time to indulge in contemplation of
the picturesque, and of this we were constantly made aware by
the anxious vociferations of the Mexicans. “Vamos! Por Dios,
vamos!” cried they, if the slightest symptom of flagging
became visible in the movements of any one of the party; and at
the [pg 456] words, our horses, as
though gifted with understanding, pushed forward with
renewed vigour and alacrity.

On we went—up hill and down, in the depths of the
valley and over the soft fetid swamp. That valley of Oaxaca has
just as much right to be called a valley as our Alleghanies
would have to be called bottoms. In the States we should call
it a chain of mountains. Out of it rise at every step hills a
good two thousand feet above the level of the valley, and four
or five thousand above that of the sea; but these are lost
sight of, and become flat ground by the force of comparison;
that is, when compared with the gigantic mountains that
surround the valley on all sides like a frame. And what a
splendid frame they do compose, those colossal mountains, in
their rich variety of form and colouring! here shining out like
molten gold, there changing to a dark bronze; covered lower
down with various shades of green, and with the crimson and
purple, and violet and bright yellow, and azure and dazzling
white, of the millions of paulinias and convolvoluses and other
flowering plants, from amongst which rise the stately
palm-trees, full a hundred feet high, their majestic green
turbans towering like sultans’ heads above the luxuriance of
the surrounding flower and vegetable world. Then the
mahogany-trees, the chicozapotes, and again in the barrancas
the candelabra-like cactuses, and higher up the knotted and
majestic live oak. An incessant change of plants, trees, and
climate. We had been five hours in the saddle, and had already
changed our climate three times; passed from the temperate
zone, the tierra templada, into the torrid heat of the
tierra muy caliente. It was in the latter temperature
that we found ourselves at the expiration of the above-named
time, dripping with perspiration, roasting and stewing in the
heat. We were surrounded by a new world of plants and animals.
The borax and mangroves and fern were here as lofty as
forest-trees, whilst the trees themselves shot up like church
steeples. In the thickets around us were numbers of black
tigers—we saw dozens of those cowardly sneaking
beasts—iguanas full three feet long, squirrels double the
size of any we had ever seen, and panthers, and wild pigs, and
jackals, and apes and monkeys of every tribe and description,
who threatened and grinned and chattered at us from the
branches of the trees. But what is that yonder to the right,
that stands out so white against the dark blue sky and the
bronze-coloured rocks? A town—Quidricovi, d’ye call
it?

We had now ridden a good five or six leagues, and begun to
think we had escaped the aguas or deluge, of which the
prospect had so terrified our friends the Tzapotecans. Rowley
calculated, as he went puffing and grumbling along, that it
wouldn’t do any harm to let our beasts draw breath for a minute
or two. The scrambling and constant change of pace rendered
necessary by the nature of the road, or rather track, that we
followed, was certainly dreadfully fatiguing both to man and
beast. As for conversation it was out of the question. We had
plenty to do to avoid getting our necks broken, or our teeth
knocked out, as we struggled along, up and down barrancas,
through marshes and thickets, over rocks and fallen trees, and
through mimosas and bushes laced and twined together with
thorns and creeping plants—all of which would have been
beautiful in a picture, but was most infernally unpoetical in
reality.

“Vamos! Por la Santissima Madre, vamos!” yelled our
guides, and the cry was taken up by the Mexicans, in a shrill
wild tone that jarred strangely upon our ears, and made the
horses start and strain forward. Hurra! on we go, through
thorns and bushes, which scratch and flog us, and tear our
clothes to rags. We shall be naked if this lasts long. It is a
regular race. In front the two guides, stooping, nodding,
bowing, crouching down, first to one side, then to the other,
like a couple of mandarins or Indian idols—behind them a
Tzapotecan in his picturesque capa, then the women, then more
Tzapotecans. There is little thought about precedence or
ceremony; and Rowley and I, having been in the least hurry to
start, find ourselves bringing up the rear of the whole
column.

“Vamos! Por la Santissima! Las aguas, las aguas!” is
again yelled by twenty voices. Hang the fools! Can’t they be
quiet with their eternal vamos? We can have barely two
leagues more to go to reach the rancho, or village, they
were talking of, and appearances are not as yet very alarming.
It is getting rather thick to be sure; but that’s nothing, only
the exhalations from the swamp, for we are again approaching
one of those cursed swamps, and can hear the music of the
alligators and bullfrogs. There they are, the beauties; a
couple of them are taking a peep at us, sticking their elegant
heads and long delicate snouts out of the slime and mud. The
neighbourhood is none of the best; but luckily the path is firm
and good, carefully made, evidently by Indian hands. None but
Indians could live and labour and travel habitually, in such a
pestilential atmosphere. Thank God! we are out of it at last.
Again on firm forest ground, amidst the magnificent monotony of
the eternal palms and mahogany-trees. But—see there!

A new and surpassingly beautiful landscape burst suddenly
upon our view, seeming to dance in the transparent atmosphere.
On either side mountains, those on the left in deep shadow,
those on the right standing forth like colossal figures of
light, in a beauty and splendour that seemed really
supernatural, every tree, every branch shining in its own vivid
and glorious colouring. There lay the valley in its tropical
luxuriance and beauty, one sheet of bloom and blossom up to the
topmost crown of the palm-trees, that shot up, some of them, a
hundred and fifty and a hundred and eighty feet high. Thousands
and millions of convolvoluses, paulinias, bignonias,
dendrobiums, climbing from the fern to the tree trunks, from
the trunks to the branches and summits of the trees, and thence
again falling gracefully down, and catching and clinging to the
mangroves and blocks of granite. It burst upon us like a scene
of enchantment, as we emerged from the darkness of the forest
into the dazzling light and colouring of that glorious
valley.

“Misericordia, misericordia! Audi nos peccadores!
Misericordia, las aquas!” suddenly screamed and exclaimed
the Mexicans in various intonations of terror and despair. We
looked around us. What can be the matter? We see nothing.
Nothing, except that from just behind those two mountains,
which project like mighty promontories into the valley, a cloud
is beginning to rise. “What is it? What is wrong?” A dozen
voices answered us—

“Por la Santa Virgen, for the holy Virgin’s sake, on,
on! No hay tiempo para hablar. We have still two leagues
to go, and in one hour comes the flood.”

And they recommenced their howling, yelling chorus of
“Misericordia! Audi nos peccadores!” and “Santissima
Virgen, and Todos santos y angeles!“

“Are the fellows mad?” shouted Rowley, “What if the water
does come? It won’t swallow you. A ducking more or less is no
such great matter. You are not made of sugar or salt. Many’s
the drenching I’ve had in the States, and none the worse for
it. Yet our rains are no child’s play neither.”

On looking round us, however, we were involuntarily struck
with the sudden change in the appearance of the heavens. The
usual golden black blue colour of the sky was gone, and had
been replaced by a dull gloomy grey. The quality of the air
appeared also to have changed; it was neither very warm nor
very cold, but it had lost its lightness and elasticity, and
seemed to oppress and weigh us down. Presently we saw the dark
cloud rise gradually from behind the hills, completely clearing
their summits, and then sweeping along until it hung over the
valley, in form and appearance like some monstrous night-moth,
resting the tips of its enormous wings on the mountains on
either side. To our right we still saw the roofs and walls of
Quidricovi, apparently at a very short distance.

“Why not go to Quidricovi?” shouted I to the guides, “we
cannot be far off.”

“More than five leagues,” answered the men, shaking their
heads and looking up anxiously at the huge moth, which was
still creeping and crawling on, each moment darker and
[pg 458] more threatening. It was
like some frightful monster, or the fabled Kraken, working
itself along by its claws, which were struck deep into the
mountain-wall on either side of its line of progress, and
casting its hideous shadow over hill and dale, forest and
valley, clothing them in gloom and darkness. To our right
hand and behind us, the mountains were still of a glowing
golden red, lighted up by the sun, but to the left and in
our front all was black and dark. With the same glance we
beheld the deepest gloom and the brightest day, meeting each
other but not mingling. It was a strange and ominous
sight.

Ominous enough; and the brute creation seem to feel it so as
well as ourselves. The chattering parrots, the hopping,
gibbering, quarrelsome apes, all the birds and beasts, scream
and cry and flutter and spring about, as though seeking a
refuge from some impending danger. Even our horses begin to
tremble and groan—refuse to go on, start and snort. The
whole animal world is in commotion, as if seized with an
overwhelming panic. The forest is teeming with inhabitants.
Whence come they, all these living things? On every side is
heard the howling and snarling of beasts, the frightened cries
and chirpings of birds. The vultures and turkey-buzzards, that
a few minutes before were circling high in the air, are now
screaming amidst the branches of the mahogany-trees; every
creature that has life is running, scampering,
flying—apes and tigers, birds and creeping things.

“Vamos, por la Santissima! On! or we are all
lost.”

And we ride, we rush along—neither masses of rock, nor
fallen trees, nor thorns and brambles, check our wild career.
Over every thing we go, leaping, scrambling, plunging, riding
like desperate men, flying from a danger of which the nature is
not clearly defined, but which we feel to be great and
imminent. It is a frightful terror-striking foe, that huge
night-moth, which comes ever nearer, growing each moment bigger
and blacker. Looking behind us, we catch one last glimpse of
the red and bloodshot sun, which the next instant disappears
behind the edge of the mighty cloud.

Still we push on. Hosts of tigers, and monkeys both large
and small, and squirrels and jackals, come close up to us as if
seeking shelter, and then finding none, retreat howling into
the forest. There is not a breath of air stirring, yet all
nature—plants and trees, men and beasts—seem to
quiver and tremble with apprehension. Our horses pant and groan
as they bound along with dilated nostrils and glaring eyes,
trembling in every limb, sweating at every pore, half wild with
terror; giving springs and leaps that more resemble those of a
hunted tiger than of a horse.

The prayer and exclamations of the terrified Mexicans,
continued without intermission, whispered and shrieked and
groaned in every variety of intonation. The earthy hue of
intense terror was upon every countenance. For some moments a
death-like stillness, an unnatural calm, reigned around us: it
was as though the elements were holding in their breath, and
collecting their energies for some mighty outbreak. Then came a
low indistinct moaning sound, that seemed to issue from the
bowels of the earth. The warning was significant.

“Halt! stop” shouted we to the guides. “Stop! and let us
seek shelter from the storm.”

“On! for God’s sake, on! or we are lost,” was the reply.

Thank Heaven! the path is getting wider—we come to a
descent—they are leading us out of the forest. If the
storm had come on while we were among the trees, we might be
crushed to death by the falling branches. We are close to a
barranca.

“Alerto! Alerto!” shrieked the Mexicans. “Madre de
Dios! Dios! Dios!”

And well might they call to God for help in that awful
moment. The gigantic night-moth gaped and shot forth tongues of
fire—a ghastly white flame, that contrasted strangely and
horribly with the dense black cloud from which it issued. There
was a peal of thunder that seemed to shake the earth, then a
pause during which nothing was heard but the panting of our
horses as they dashed across the barranca, and began straining
up the steep side of a knoll or hillock. The
[pg 459] cloud again opened: for a
second every thing was lighted up. Another thunder clap, and
then, as though the gates of its prison had been suddenly
burst open, the tempest came forth in its might and fury,
breaking, crushing, and sweeping away all that opposed it.
The trees of the forest staggered and tottered for a moment,
as if making an effort to bear up against the storm; but it
was in vain: the next instant, with a report like that of
ten thousand cannon, whole acres of mighty trees were
snapped off, their branches shivered, their roots torn up;
it was no longer a forest but a chaos; an ocean of boughs
and tree-trunks, that were tossed about like the waves of
the sea, or thrown into the air like straws. The atmosphere
was darkened with dust, and leaves, and branches.

“God be merciful to us! Rowley! where are ye?—No
answer. What is become of them all?”

A second blast more furious than the first. Can the
mountains resist it? will they stand? By the Almighty! they do
not. The earth trembles; the hillock, on the leeside of which
we are, rocks and shakes; and the air grows thick and
suffocating—full of dust and saltpetre and sulphur. We
are like to choke. All around is dark as night. We can see
nothing, hear nothing but the howling of the hurricane, and the
thunder and rattle of falling trees and shivered branches.

Suddenly the hurricane ceases, and all is hushed; but so
suddenly that the charge is startling and unnatural. No sound
is audible save the creaking and moaning of the trees with
which the ground is cumbered. It is like a sudden pause in a
battle, when the roar of the cannon and clang of charging
squadrons cease, and nought is heard but the groaning of the
wounded, the agonized sobs and gasps of the dying.

The report of a pistol is heard; then another, a third,
hundreds, thousands of them. It is the flood, las aguas;
the shots are drops of rain; but such drops! each as big as a
hen’s egg. They strike with the force of enormous
hailstones—stunning and blinding us. The next moment
there is no distinction of drops, the windows of heaven are
opened; it is no longer rain nor flood, but a sea, a cataract,
a Niagara. The hillock on which I am standing, undermined by
the waters, gives way and crumbles under me; in ten seconds’
time I find myself in the barranca, which is converted into a
river, off my horse, which is gone I know not whither. The only
person I see near me is Rowley, also dismounted and struggling
against the stream, which is already up to our waists, and
sweeps along with it huge branches and entire trees, that
threaten each moment to carry us away with them, or to crush us
against the rocks. We avoid these dangers, God knows how, make
violent efforts to stem the torrent and gain the side of the
barranca; although, even should we succeed, it is so steep that
we can scarcely hope to climb it without assistance. And whence
is that assistance to come? Of the Mexicans we see or hear
nothing. They are doubtless all drowned or dashed to pieces.
They were higher up on the hillock than we were, must
consequently have been swept down with more force, and were
probably carried away by the torrent. Nor can we hope for a
better fate. Wearied by our ride, weakened by the fever and
sufferings of the preceding night, we are in no condition to
strive much longer with the furious elements. For one step that
we gain, we lose two. The waters rise; already they are nearly
up to our armpits. It is in vain to resist any longer. Our fate
is sealed.

“Rowley, all is over—let us die like men. God have
mercy on our souls!”

Rowley was a few paces higher up the barranca. He made me no
answer, but looked at me with a calm, cold, and yet somewhat
regretful smile upon his countenance. Then all at once he
ceased the efforts he was making to resist the stream and gain
the bank, folded his arms on his breast and gave a look up and
around him as though to bid farewell to the world he was about
to leave. The current was sweeping him rapidly down towards me,
when suddenly a wild hurra burst from his lips, and he
recommenced his struggles against the waters, striving
violently to retain [pg 460] a footing on the slippery,
uneven bed of the stream.

“Tenga! Tenga!” screamed a dozen voices, that seemed
to proceed from spirits of the air; and at the same moment
something whistled about my ears and struck me a smart blow
across the face. With the instinct of a drowning man, I
clutched the lasso that had been thrown to me. Rowley
was at my elbow and seized it also. It was immediately drawn
tight, and by its aid we gained the bank, and began ascending
the side of the barranca, composed of rugged, declivitous
rocks, affording but scanty foot-hold. God grant the lasso may
prove tough! The strain on it is fearful. Rowley is a good
fifteen stone, and I am no feather; and in some parts of our
perilous ascent the rocks are almost as perpendicular and
smooth as a wall of masonry, and we are obliged to cling with
our whole weight to the lasso, which seems to stretch, and
crack, and grow visibly thinner. Nothing but a strip of twisted
cow-hide between us and a frightful agonizing death on the
sharp rocks and in the foaming waters below. But the lasso
holds good, and now the chief peril is past: we get some sort
of footing—a point of rock, or a tree-root to clutch at.
Another strain up this rugged slope of granite, another pull at
the lasso; a leap, a last violent effort,
and—Viva!—we are seized under the arms,
dragged up, held upon our feet for a moment, and then—we
sink exhausted to the ground in the midst of the Tzapotecans,
mules, arrieros, guides, and women, who are sheltered from the
storm in a sort of natural cavern. At the moment at which the
hillock had given way under Rowley and myself, who were a short
distance in rear of the party, the Mexicans had succeeded in
attaining firm footing on a broad rocky ledge, a shelf of the
precipice that flanked the barranca. Upon this ledge, which
gradually widened into a platform, they found themselves in
safety under some projecting crags that sheltered them
completely from the tempest. Thence they looked down upon the
barranca, where they descried Rowley and myself struggling for
our lives in the roaring torrent; and thence, by knotting
several lassos together, they were able to give us the
opportune aid which had rescued us from our desperate
situation. But whether this aid had come soon enough to save
our lives was still a question, or at least for some time
appeared to be so. The life seemed driven out of our bodies by
all we had gone through: we were unable to move a finger, and
lay helpless and motionless, with only a glimmering indistinct
perception, not amounting to consciousness, of what was going
on around us. Fatigue, the fever, the immersion in cold water
when reeking with perspiration, the sufferings of all kinds we
had endured in the course of the last twenty hours, had
completely exhausted and broken us down.

The storm did not last long in its violence, but swept
onwards, leaving a broad track of desolation behind it. The
Mexicans recommenced their journey, with the exception of four
or five who remained with us and our arrieros and servants. The
village to which we were proceeding was not above a league off;
but even that short distance Rowley and myself were in no
condition to accomplish. The kind-hearted Tzapotecans made us
swallow cordials, stripped off our drenched and tattered
garments, and wrapped us in an abundance of blankets. We fell
into a deep sleep, which lasted all that evening and the
greater part of the night, and so much refreshed us that about
an hour before daybreak we were able to resume our
march—at a slow pace, it is true, and suffering
grievously in every part of our bruised and wounded limbs and
bodies, at each jolt or rough motion of the mules on which we
were clinging, rather than sitting.

Our path lay over hill and dale, perpetually rising and
falling. We soon got out of the district or zone that had been
swept by the preceding day’s hurricane, and after nearly an
hour’s ride, we paused on the crest of a steep descent, at the
foot of which, as our guides informed us, lay the land of
promise, the long looked-for rancho. While the muleteers
were seeing to the girths of their beasts, and giving the due
equilibrium to the baggage, before commencing the downward
march, Rowley [pg 461] and I sat upon our mules,
wrapped in large Mexican capas, gazing at the
morning-star as it sank down and grew gradually paler and
fainter. Suddenly the eastern sky began to brighten, and a
brilliant beam appeared in the west, a point of light no
bigger than a star—but yet not a star; it was of a far
rosier hue. The next moment a second sparkling spot
appeared, near to the first, which now swelled out into a
sort of fiery tongue, that seemed to lick round the silvery
summit of the snow-clad mountain. As we gazed,
five—ten—twenty hill tops were tinged with the
same rose-coloured glow; in another moment they became like
fiery banners spread out against the heavens, while
sparkling tongues and rays of golden light flashed and
flamed round them, springing like meteors from one mountain
summit to another, lighting them up like a succession of
beacons. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed since the distant
pinnacles of the mountains had appeared to us as huge
phantom-like figures of a silvery white, dimly marked out
upon a dark star-spangled ground; now the whole immense
chain blazed like volcanoes covered with glowing lava,
rising out of the darkness that still lingered on their
flanks and bases, visible and wonderful witnesses to the
omnipotence of him who said, “Let there be light, and
there was light.”

Above, all was broad day, flaming sunlight; below, all black
night. Here and there streams of light burst through clefts and
openings in the mountains, and then ensued an extraordinary
kind of conflict. The shades of darkness seemed to live and
move, to struggle against the bright beams that fell amongst
them and broke their masses, forcing them down the wooded
heights, tearing them asunder and dispersing them like tissues
of cobwebs; so that successively, and as if by a stroke of
enchantment, there appeared, first the deep indigo blue of the
tamarinds and chicozapotes, then the bright green of the
sugar-canes, lower down the darker green of the nopal-trees,
lower still the white and green and gold and bright yellow of
the orange and citron groves, and lowest of all, the stately
fan-palms, and date-palms, and bananas; all glittering with
millions of dewdrops, that covered them like a ganze veil
embroidered with diamonds and rubies. And still in the very
next valley all was utter darkness.

We sat silent and motionless, gazing at this scene of
enchantment.

Presently the sun rose higher, and a flood of light
illumined the whole valley, which lay some few hundred feet
below us—a perfect garden, such as no northern
imagination could picture forth; a garden of sugar-canes,
cotton, and nopal-trees, intermixed with thickets of
pomegranate and strawberry-trees, and groves of orange, fig,
and lemon, giants of their kind, shooting up to a far greater
height than the oak attains in the States—every tree a
perfect hothouse, a pyramid of flowers, covered with bloom and
blossom to its topmost spray. All was light, and freshness, and
beauty; every object seemed to dance and rejoice in the clear
elastic golden atmosphere. It was an earthly paradise, fresh
from the hand of its Creator, and at first we could discover no
sign of man or his works. Presently, however, we discerned the
village lying almost at our feet, the small stone houses
overgrown with flowers and embedded in trees; so that scarcely
a square foot of roof or wall was to be seen. Even the church
was concealed in a garland of orange-trees, and had lianas and
star-flowered creepers climbing over and dangling on it, up as
high as the slender cross that surmounted its square white
tower. As we gazed, the first sign of life appeared in the
village. A puff of blue smoke rose curling and spiral from a
chimney, and the matin bell rang out its summons to prayer. Our
Mexicans fell on their knees and crossed themselves, repeating
their Ave-marias. We involuntarily took off our hats, and
whispered a thanksgiving to the God who had been with us in the
hour of peril, and was now so visible to us in his works.

The Mexicans rose from their knees.

“Vamos! Senores,” said one of them, laying his hand
on the bridle of my mule. “To the rancho, to
breakfast.”

We rode slowly down into the valley.

Footnote 1:
(return)

The nigua is a small but very dangerous insect which
fixes itself in the feet, bores holes in the skin, and lays
its eggs there. These, if not extracted, (which extraction
by the by is a most painful operation) cause first an
intolerable itching, and subsequently sores and ulcers of a
sufficiently serious nature to entail the loss of the
feet.

THE BRITISH FLEET.¹

Were the question proposed to us, What is the most
extraordinary, complete, and effective instance of skill,
contrivance, science, and power, ever combined by man? we
should unhesitatingly answer, an English line-of-battle ship.
Take the model of a 120 gun ship—large as it may be for a
floating body, its space is not great. For example, it is not
half the ordinary size of a nobleman’s mansion; yet that ship
carries a thousand men with convenience, and lodges them day
and night, with sufficient room for the necessary distinctions
of obedience and command—has separate apartments for the
admiral and the captain, for the different ranks of officers,
and even for the different ranks of seamen—separate
portions below decks for the sleeping of the crew, the dining
of the officers, and the receptacle for the sick and wounded.
Those thousand men are to be fed three times a-day, and
provisions for four months are to be stowed. One hundred and
twenty cannon, some of them of the heaviest metal, are to be
carried; and room is to be found for all the weight of shot and
quantities of powder, with other missiles, rockets, and signal
fires, necessary for service. Besides this, room is to be
provided for the stowage of fresh rigging, sails, ropes,
cables, and yards, to replace those lost by accident, battle,
or wear and tear. Besides this, too, there is to be a provision
for the hospital. So far for the mere necessaries of the ship.
Then we are to regard the science; for nothing can be more
essential than the skill and the instruments of the navigator,
as nothing can be more fatal than a scientific error, a false
calculation, or a remission of vigilance. We shall do no more
than allude to the habits of command essential to keep a
thousand of these rough and daring spirits in order, and that,
too, an order of the most implicit, steady, and active kind;
nor to their knowledge of tactics, and conduct in battle. The
true definition of the line-of-battle ship being, a floating
regiment of artillery in a barrack, which, at the beat of a
drum, may be turned into a field of battle, or, at the command
of government, may be sent flying on the wings of the wind
round the world. We think that we have thus established our
proposition. If not, let any thing else be shown which exhibits
the same quantity of power packed within the same space;
and that power, too, increasing daily by new contrivances of
stowage and building, by new models of guns, and new inventions
in machinery. England is at this moment building two hundred
steam-ships, with guns of a calibre to which all the past were
trifling, with room for a regiment of land troops besides their
crews, and with the known power of defying wind and wave, and
throwing an army in full equipment for the field, within a few
days, on any coast of Europe.

It is remarkable that the use of the navy, as a great branch
of the military power of England, had been scarcely
contemplated until the last century. Though the sea-coast of
England, the largest of any European state, and the national
habits of an insular country, might have pointed out this
direction for the national energies from the earliest period,
yet England was a kingdom for five hundred years before she
seems to have thought of the use of ships as an instrument of
public power. In the long war with France during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, the ships were almost wholly
mercantile; and, when employed in wars, were chiefly employed
as transports to throw our troops on the French soil. It was
the reign of Elizabeth, that true birth of the progress of
England, that first developed the powers of an armed navy. The
Spanish invasion forced the country to meet the Armada by means
like its own; and the triumph, though won by a higher agency,
and due to the winds and waves, or rather to the Supreme
Providence which watched over the
[pg 463] land of Protestantism,
awoke the nation to the true faculty of defence; and from
that period alone could the burden of the fine national song
be realized, and Britain was to “rule the main.” The
expeditions against the Spanish West Indies, and the new
ardour of discovery in regions where brilliant fable lent
its aid to rational curiosity, carried on the process of
naval power. The war against Holland, under Charles II.,
though disastrous and impolitic, showed at least that the
fleet of England was the true arm of its strength; and the
humiliation of the only rival of her commerce at once taught
her where the sinews of war lay, and by what means the
foundations of naval empire were to be laid. But it was not
until the close of the last century that the truth came
before the nation in its full form. The American war—a
war of skirmishes—had its direct effect, perhaps its
providential purpose, in compelling England to prepare for
the tremendous collision which was so soon to follow, and
which was to be the final security of the Continent itself.
It was then, for the first time, that the nation was driven
to the use of a navy on a great scale. The war, lying on the
western shore of an ocean, made the use of naval armaments
necessary to every operation. The treacherous hostility of
the French cabinet, and the unfortunate subserviency of
Spain to that treachery, made corresponding energy on the
part of England a matter of public demand; and when France
and Spain sent out fleets of a magnitude till then unknown,
England was urged to follow their example. The defeats of
the combined navies excited the nation to still more
vigorous efforts; and the war closed with so full a
demonstration of the matchless importance of a great navy to
England, that the public feeling was fixed on giving it the
largest contribution of the national confidence.

The time was at hand when the trial was to involve every
interest of England and mankind. The first grand struggle of
revolutionary France with England was to be on the seas; and
the generation of naval officers who had been reared in the
American war, then rising into vigour, trained by its
experience, and stimulated by its example, gallantly maintained
the honour of their country. A succession of sanguinary battles
followed, each on the largest scale, and each closing in
British victory; until the republic, in despair, abandoned the
fatal element, and tied her fortunes in the easier conflicts of
the land. The accession of Napoleon renewed the struggle for
naval supremacy, until one vast blow extinguished his hopes and
his navy at Trafalgar. Peace now exists, and long may it exist!
but France is rapidly renewing her navy, taking every
opportunity of exercising its strength, and especially
patronising the policy of founding those colonies which it idly
imagines to be the source of British opulence. But whether the
wisdom of Louis Philippe limits the protection of French trade
to the benefits which commerce may confer on his vast kingdom,
or looks forward to the support which a mercantile navy may
give to a warlike one, we must not sleep on our posts. The life
of any individual is brief on a national scale; and his
successor, whether regent or republican, may be as hot-headed,
rash, and ambitious, as this great monarch has shown himself
rational, prudent, and peaceful. We must prepare for all
chances; and our true preparation must be, a fleet that may
defy all.

It is a remarkable instance of the slowness with which
science advances, that almost the whole scientific portion of
seamanship has grown up since the middle of the seventeenth
century, though America had been reached in 1492, and India in
1496; and thus the world had been nearly rounded before what
would now be regarded as the ordinary knowledge of a navigator
had been acquired. England has the honour of making the first
advances. It was an Englishman, Norwood, who made the first
measurement of a degree between London and York, and fixed it
at 122,399 English yards. The attention of the world thus once
awakened, Huygens and Cassini applied themselves to ascertain
the figure of the earth. The first experiments of the French
savans were in contradiction to Newton’s theory of the
flattening of the poles; but the controversy was the means of
exciting new [pg 464] interest. The eyes of the
scientific world were turned more intently on the subject.
New experiments were made, which corrected the old; and
finally, on the measurement of the arc in Peru, and in the
north, truth and Newton triumphed, and the equatorial
diameter was found to exceed the polar by a two hundred and
fourth part of the whole. This was perhaps the finest
problem ever solved by science; the most perplexing in its
early state—exhibiting for a while the strongest
contradiction of experiment and theory, occupying in a
greater degree the attention of philosophers than any before
or since, and finally established with a certainty which
every subsequent observation has only tended to confirm. And
this triumph belonged to an Englishman.

The investigation by measurements has since been largely
adopted. In 1787, joint commissions were issued by England and
France to connect the Greenwich and Parisian observations. Arcs
of the meridian have since been measured across the whole
breadth of France and Spain, and also near the Arctic circle,
and in the Indian peninsula.

In navigation, the grand point for the sailor is to
ascertain his latitude and longitude; in other words, to know
where he is. The discovery of the latitude is easily effected
by the quadrant, but the longitude is the difficulty. Any means
which ascertained the hour at Greenwich, at the instant of
making a celestial observation in any other part, would answer
the difficulty; for the difference in quarters of an hour would
give the difference of the degrees. But clocks could not be
used on shipboard, and the best watches failed to keep the
time. In the reign of Anne, Parliament offered a reward of L.
5000, perhaps not far from the value of twice the sum in the
present day, for a watch within a certain degree of accuracy.
Harrison, a watchmaker, sent in a watch which came within the
limits, losing but two minutes in a voyage to the West Indies;
yet even this was an error of thirty miles.

But, though chronometers have since been considerably
improved, there are difficulties in their preservation in good
order which have made it expedient to apply to other means; and
the lunar tables of Mayer of Gottingen, formed in 1755, and
subsequently improved by Dr Maskelyne and others, have brought
the error within seven miles and a half.

Improvements of a very important order have also taken place
in the mariner’s compass; the variation of the needle has been
reduced to rules, and some anomalies arising from the metallic
attraction of the ship itself, have been corrected by Professor
Barlow’s experiments. The use of the marine barometer and
thermometer have also largely assisted to give notice of
tempests; and some ingenious theories have been lately formed,
which, promising to give a knowledge of the origin and nature
of tempests, are obviously not unlikely to assist the navigator
in stemming their violence, or escaping them altogether.

The construction of ships for both the merchant and the
public service has undergone striking improvements within this
century. Round sterns, for the defence of a vessel engaged with
several opponents at once; compartments in the hold, for
security against leaks; iron tanks for water, containing twice
the quantity, and keeping it free from the impurities of casks;
a better general stowage; provisions prepared so as to remain
almost fresh during an East Indian voyage; every means of
preserving health, suggested by science, and succeeding to the
most remarkable degree; a more intelligent system of
shipbuilding, and a constant series of experiments on the
shape, stowage, and sailing of ships, are among the beneficial
changes of later times. But the one great
change—steam—will probably swallow up all the rest,
and form a new era in shipbuilding, in navigation, in the power
and nature of a navy, and in the comfort, safety, and
protection of the crews in actual engagement. The use of steam
is still so palpably in its infancy, yet that infancy is so
gigantic, that it is equally difficult to say what it may yet
become, and to limit its progress. It will have the one obvious
advantage to mankind in general, of making the question of war
turn more than ever on the financial and mechanical resources
of a people; and thus increasing
[pg 465] the necessity for
commercial opulence and intellectual exertion. It may expose
nations more to each other’s attacks; but it will render
hostility more dreaded, because more dangerous. On the
whole, like the use of gunpowder, which made a Tartar war
impossible, and which rapidly tended to civilize Europe,
steam appears to be intended as a further step in the same
high process, in which force is to be put down by
intelligence, and success, even in war, is to depend on the
industry of peace; thus, in fact, providing a perpetual
restriction on the belligerent propensities of nations, and
urging the uncivilized, by necessity, to own the
superiority, and follow the example of the civilized, by
knowledge, habit, and principle.

It is not to be forgotten, even in this general and brief
view of the values of the British fleet, that it has, within
these few years, assumed a new character as an instrument of
war. The Syrian campaign, the shortest, and, beyond all
comparison, the most brilliant on record, if we are to estimate
military distinction, not only by the gallantry of the
conflict, but by the results of the victory—this
campaign, which at once finished the war in Syria, gave peace
to Turkey, reduced Egypt to obedience, rescued the sultan from
Russian influence, and Egypt from French; or rather rescued all
Europe from the collision of England, France, and Russia; and
even, by the evidence of our naval capabilities, taught
American faction the wisdom of avoiding hostilities—this
grand operation was effected by a small portion of the British
navy, well commanded, directed to the right point, and acting
with national energy. The three hours’ cannonade of Acre, the
most effective achievement in the annals of war, exhibited a
new use of a ship’s broadside; for, though ships’ guns had
often battered forts before, it was the first instance of a
fleet employed in attack, and fully overpowering all
opposition. The attack on Algiers was the only exploit of a
similar kind; but its success was limited, and the result was
so far disastrous, that it at once fixed the eye of France on
the invasion of Algiers, and disabled and disheartened the
native government from vigorous resistance. The victory of the
fleet at Acre will also have the effect of changing the whole
system of defence in fortresses and cities exposed to the
sea.

But a still further advance in the employment of fleets as
an instrument of hostilities, has since occurred in the Chinese
war—their simultaneous operation with troops. In former
assaults of fortresses, the troops and ships attacked the same
line of defence, and the consequence was the waste of force.
From the moment when the troops approached the land, the fire
of the ships necessarily ceased, and the fleet then remained
spectators of the assault. But in this war, while the troops
attacked on the land side, the fleet ran up to the sea
batteries, and both attacks went on together—of course
dividing the attention of the enemy, thus having a double
chance of success, and employing both arms of the service in
full energy. This masterly combination the Duke of Wellington,
the highest military authority in Europe, pronounced to be a
new principle in war; and even this is, perhaps, only the
beginning of a system of combination which will lead to new
victories, if war should ever unhappily return.

We now revert to the history of a naval hero.

John Jervis, the second son of Swynfen Jervis, Esq., was
born on the 20th of January 1735. He was descended, on both the
paternal and maternal side, from families which had figured in
the olden times of England. The family of Jervis possessed
estates in Staffordshire as far back as the reign of Edward
III. The family of Swynfen was also long established in
Worcestershire. John Swynfen was a public character during the
troubled times of Charles I. and Cromwell, and until a late
period in the reign of Charles II. He had been originally a
strong Parliamentarian; but, thinking that the party went too
far, he was turned out of parliament for tardiness by the
Protector. But his original politics adhered to him still; for,
even after the restoration, he was joined with Hampden, the
grandson of the celebrated patriot, in drawing up the Bill of
Exclusion. Among his ancestors by the mother’s side was Sir
John Turton, a judge in the Court of King’s
[pg 466] Bench, married to a
daughter of the brave Colonel Samuel Moore, who made the
memorable defence of Hopton Castle in the Civil War.

But no man less regarded ancestry than the subject of the
present pages, who, in writing with reference to his pedigree,
observed, in his usual frank and straightforward
language—”They were all highly respectable; but, et
genus et proavos, nearly all the Latin I now recollect,
always struck my ear as the sound maxim for officers and
statesmen.”

His first school was at Burton-upon-Trent, where a slight
incident seemed to designate his future politics and fortitude.
In 1745, when the Pretender marched into the heart of the
kingdom, without being joined by his friends or opposed by his
enemies, as Gibbon antithetically observed, all the boys at the
school, excepting young Jervis and Dick Meux, (afterwards the
eminent brewer,) wore plaid ribands sent to them from home, and
they pelted their two constitutional playmates, calling them
Whigs.

His father designed young Jervis for the law; but, in 1747,
removing to Greenwich on being appointed Counsel to the
Admiralty and Auditor to the Hospital, naval sights were too
near not to prove a strong temptation to the mind of an
animated and vigorous boy. His parents were still strongly for
the adoption of his father’s profession; but there was another
authority on the subject, the family coachman, one Pinkhorne,
who, saying that it was a shame to go into a profession where
all were rogues, determined the future hero; and, before the
year was over, he ran away, to commence life as a sailor. He
was reclaimed, however, by his family, and was regularly
entered in the navy, in January 1748, on board the Gloucester,
fifty guns, Commodore Townshend—twenty pounds being all
that was given to him by his father for his equipment. The
Gloucester sailed for the West Indies; and thus, at the age of
thirteen, young Jervis began the world. It appears that the
rigid economy of his father, combined with the singular good
sense of this mere child, urged him to every means of acquiring
the knowledge of his profession. The monotonous life of a
guard-ship already seemed to him a waste of time, while the
expenses on shore must have been ruinous to his slender
finances. He therefore volunteered into whatever ship was going
to sea. He thus writes to his sister from on board the Sphinx,
1753:—”There are many entertainments and public
assemblies here, but they are rather above my sphere, many
inconveniences and expenses attending them; so that my chief
employ, when from my duty, is reading, studying navigation, and
perusing my own letters, of which I have almost enough to make
an octavo volume.”

At length, however, his twenty pounds were exhausted; and,
at the end of three years, he drew for twenty pounds more. It
is vexatious to say that his bill was dishonoured; and he never
received another shilling from any one. It is scarcely possible
to conceive that so harsh a measure could have been the result
of intention; but it subjected this extraordinary boy to the
severest privations. To take up the dishonoured bill, he was
obliged to effect his discharge from one ship into another, so
as to obtain his pay tickets, which he sold at forty per cent
discount. His remaining six years on the station were spent in
the exercise of a severe economy, and the endurance even of
severe suffering. He was compelled to sell all his bedding, and
sleep on the bare deck. He had no other resource than,
generally, to make and mend, and always to wash, his own
clothes. He never afforded himself any fresh meat; and even the
fruit and vegetables, which are so necessary and so cheap, he
could obtain only by barter from the negroes, for the small
share of provisions which he could subduct from his own
allowance. True as all this doubtless is, it reflects more
severely on the captain and officers of his own ship, than even
upon his parents. The latter, on the other side of the
Atlantic, might have no knowledge of his difficulties; but that
those who saw his sufferings from day to day could have allowed
them to continue, argues a degree of negligence and inhumanity,
of which we hope that no present instance occurs in our navy,
and which at any period would appear incomprehensible.
[pg 467] In 1754, young Jervis
returned to England, and passed his examination for
lieutenant with great credit.

The commencement of the war with France was, like the
commencement of English wars in general, disastrous. We seldom
make due preparation. Fleets inferior to the enemy in equipment
and number, are sent out on the emergency; detachments of
troops are sent where armies should have gone; and thus victory
itself is without effect. Thus for a year or two we continue
blundering if not beaten, and angry with our generals and
admirals for failing to do impossibilities. At last the nation
becomes fairly roused; the success of the enemy makes exertion
necessary; their insolence inflames the popular indignation; a
great effort is made; a triumph is obtained, and a peace
follows, which might have been accomplished half a dozen years
before, at a tenth part of the expense in blood and treasure
which it cost to consummate the war. Our troops under Braddock,
a brave fool, were beaten by the French and Indians in America.
Our Mediterranean fleet was baffled under the unfortunate
command of Byng. Minorca was taken before our eyes, and the
naval and military stars of England seem to have gone down
together. Yet this era of national dishonour and public disgust
was followed by the three years of Chatham’s administration, a
period of triumph that equaled the campaigns of Marlborough at
the commencement of the century, and was scarcely eclipsed even
by the splendours that followed its close.

The skill and talent of young Jervis had already given him
distinction among the rising officers of the feet. He had
become a favourite with Admiral Saunders, was taken with him
from ship to ship; and when the admiral was recalled from the
Mediterranean to take the command of the naval force destined
to co-operate in the attack on Quebec, by the heroic and
lamented General Wolfe, young Jervis was selected to be first
lieutenant of the Prince, which bore the admiral’s flag. On the
passage out, the general and his aide-de-camp, Captain,
afterwards the well-known Colonel Barré, were guests on
board the Prince, and of course Jervis had the advantage of
their intelligent society. In February 1759, the fleet sailed
from England, and in June proceeded from Louisburg to the St
Lawrence. Lieutenant Jervis was now appointed to the command of
the Porcupine sloop; and on the general requesting a naval
force to escort his transports past Quebec, the Porcupine was
ordered by the admiral to lead. The service was one of extreme
difficulty; for the attempt to sound the channel the day before
had failed, though it was made by the master of the fleet,
Cook, afterwards the celebrated navigator. The winds suddenly
falling calm, prevented the Porcupine from reaching her
station. A heavy fire was instantly opened upon her from every
gun that could be brought to bear, and the army were in terror
of her being destroyed, for the general was on board. But
Jervis’s skill was equal to his gallantry; he hoisted out his
boats, cheered his men through the fire, and brought his ship
to her station.

A little incident occurred on the night before the memorable
engagement, which even at this distance of time is of painful
interest, but which shows the confidence reposed in the young
naval officer by the hero of Quebec. After the orders for the
assault next day were given, Wolfe requested a private
interview with him; and saying that he had the strongest
presentiment of falling on the field, yet that he should fall
in victory, he took from his bosom the miniature of a young
lady to whom he was attached, gave it to Jervis, desiring that,
if the foreboding came to pass, he should return it to her on
his arrival in England. Wolfe’s gallant fate and brilliant
victory are known: the picture was delivered to Miss
Lowther.

After the capture of Quebec, Jervis was dispatched to
England; and was appointed to the Scorpion, to carry out
important despatches to General Amherst. On this occasion, he
gave an instance of that remarkable promptitude which
characterised him throughout his whole career. The Scorpion was
in such a crazy state that she had nearly foundered between
Spithead and Plymouth. On reaching
[pg 468] the latter port, and
representing at once the condition of the vessel and the
importance of the despatches, the port-admiral instantly
ordered him to proceed to sea in the Albany, a sloop in the
Sound. But the Albany had been a long time in commission;
her people claimed arrears of pay; and by no means relishing
a voyage across the Atlantic in such weather, they
absolutely refused to heave the anchor. Their young
commander first tried remonstrance, but in vain; he then
took a more effectual means—he ordered his boat’s
crew, whom he had brought from the Scorpion, to take their
hatchets and cut the cables, and then go aloft to loosen the
foresail. Perceiving the kind of man with whom they had to
do, the crew submitted, and the Albany instantly proceeded
to sea: the ringleaders were punished; and the service was
performed. The Albany made New York in twenty-four days.

In October 1761, Commander Jervis was made Post, into the
Gosport of 60 guns. Among his midshipmen was the afterwards
Admiral Lord Keith. In 1762, peace was made. The Gosport was
paid off next year, and Captain Jervis did not serve again
until 1769, when he commanded the Alarm of 32 guns for the next
three years.

A striking incident occurred during the cruise of this
vessel in the Mediterranean, exhibiting not only the spirit of
her captain, but the historic recollections by which that
spirit was sustained. One Sunday afternoon, the day after her
arrival at Genoa, two Turkish slaves, in enjoyment of the
holiday’s rest from labour, sauntered from their galley near
the mole. Seeing the Alarm’s boat, they jumped into her,
wrapped themselves in the British colours, and exclaimed, “We
are free!” The Genoese officer on duty, however, ordered them
to be dragged out, which was done, though one of them tore away
in his struggle a piece of the boat’s pendant. On the
circumstance reaching the captain’s ears he was indignant, and
demanded instant reparation. To use his own language:—”I
required,” said he, “of the Doge and Senate, that both the
slaves should be brought on board, with the part of the torn
pendant which the slave carried off with him; the officer of
the guard punished; and an apology made on the quarterdeck of
the Alarm, under the king’s colours, for the outrage offered to
the British nation.”

On the following Tuesday this was complied with in all the
particulars; but, unhappily, the government at home did not
exhibit the spirit of their gallant officer abroad; and in a
letter which he addressed to his brother he says:—”I
had an opportunity of carrying the British flag, in relation to
two Turkish slaves, as high as Blake had ever done, for
which I am publicly censured; though I hope we have too much
virtue left, for me not to be justified in private.”

The result, however, of this transaction was, that for many
years afterwards, in the Barbary states, if a slave could but
touch the British colours, which all our men-of-war’s boats
carry in foreign ports, he could of right demand his release.
This, however, was counteracted as far as possible by the
renewed vigilance of the Moors, who kept all their slaves out
of sight while a British flag flew in the harbour. The allusion
to the famous Blake shows with what studies the young officer
fed his mind, and in how high a spirit he was prepared to adopt
them.

Another instance of his skill and intrepidity soon followed.
In March 1770, the frigate, after a tempestuous cruise, came to
anchor at Marseilles. An equinoctial gale came on, and after
two days of desperate exertion, and throwing many of the guns
overboard, the frigate was driven from her anchors, stranded on
a reef of rocks, and the crew in such peril that they were
saved only by the most extraordinary exertions, and the
assistance of the people on shore. The port officer, M. de
Peltier, exhibited great kindness and activity, and the ship
was rapidly repaired, but with such an exact economy, that its
complete refit, with the expense of the crew for three months,
amounted only to £1415.

The first act of this excellent son was to write to his
father:—”Do not be alarmed, my dear sir, at the newspaper
accounts which you will hear of the Alarm. The interposition
[pg 469] of Divine Providence has
miraculously preserved her. The same Providence will, I
hope, give long life to my dear father, mother, and
brother.”

In July he wrote to his sister from Mahon, after the repairs
of the vessel:—”The Alarm is the completest thing I ever
saw on the water, insomuch that I forgot she was the other day,
in the opinion of most beholders, her own officers and crew not
excepted, a miserable sunken wreck. Such is the reward of
perseverance. Happily for my reputation, my health at that
period happened to be equal to the task, or I had been lost for
ever, instead of receiving continual marks of public and
private approbation of my conduct; but this is entre
nous. I never speak or write on the subject except to those
I most love. You will easily believe Barrington to be one; his
goodness to me is romantic.”

It is gratifying to state, that the English Admiralty, on
the young captain’s warm representation of the French
superintendent, M. de Peltier’s hospitality and kindness, sent
a handsome piece of plate in public acknowledgment to that
officer; and, as if to make the compliment perfect in all its
parts, as it arrived before the frigate had left the station,
the captain had the indulgence of presenting it in person; thus
making, as his letter to his father mentioned, “the family of
Pleville de Peltier happy beyond description.”

The frigate was soon after paid off, and as there was no
probability of his being speedily employed, he applied himself
to gain every species of knowledge connected with his
profession. We strongly doubt whether the example of this
rising officer is not even more important when we regard him in
peace than in the activity and daring of war. There is no want
of courage and conduct in the British fleet; but life on shore
offers too many temptations to indolence, to be always turned
to the use of which it is capable. Captain Jervis, on the
contrary, appears always to have regarded life on shore
preparatory to life afloat, and to be constantly employed in
laying up knowledge for those emergencies which so often occur
in the bold and perilous life of the sailor. There is often
something like a predictive spirit in the early career of great
men, which urges them to make provision for greatness; and
remote as is the condition of a captain of a smart frigate from
the commander of fleets, yet the captain of the Alarm, though
the least ostentatious of men, seems always to have had a
glance towards the highest duties of the British admiral.
“Time,” says Franklin, “is the stuff that life is made of;” and
as France is the antagonist with which the power of England
naturally expects to struggle, his first object was to acquire
all possible knowledge of the naval means of France. The
primary step was to acquire a knowledge of the language.
Accordingly, he went to France, and placed himself in a
pension. There he applied himself so closely to the
study of the language, that his health became out of order, and
his family requested him to return. But this he declined, and
in his answer said that he had adopted this pursuit on the best
view a military man in his situation could form. “For it will
always,” said he, “be useful to have a general idea of this
prevalent language, and a knowledge of the country with which
we have so long contended, and which must ever be our rival in
arms and commerce.”

Having accomplished his object of acquiring sufficient
fluency in speaking French, his next excursion was to St
Petersburg. He and Captain Barrington went in a merchant
vessel, and reached Cronstadt. While at sea, Captain Jervis
kept a regular log. During the voyage, all the headlands are
described, all the soundings noted, and every opportunity to
test and correct the charts adopted. As an example, he remarks
on the castle of Cronenburg, which guards the entrance into the
Sound, that it may be overlooked by a line-of-battle ship,
which may anchor in good ground as near the beach as she
pleases. He remarks the two channels leading to Copenhagen,
puts all the lighthouses down on his own chart, and lays down
all the approaches to St Petersburg accurately; “because,” said
he, “I find all the charts are incorrect, and it may be
useful.” And he actually did find it useful; for when he was at
the head of the Admiralty, this knowledge enabled him, while
his colleagues [pg 470] hesitated, to give his
orders confidently to Sir Charles Pole, in command of the
Baltic fleet. His sojourn at St Petersburg was but brief;
but it was at a time of remarkable excitement. The Empress
Catharine was at the height of her splendour, a legislator
and a conqueror, and surrounded by a court exhibiting all
the daring and dashing characters of her vast empire. His
description of this celebrated woman’s character on one
public occasion, shows the exactness with which he observed
every thing:—”When she entered the cathedral,
Catharine mingled her salutations to the saints and the
people, showing at once her compliance with religious
ceremonials, and her attentions to her servants and the
foreign ambassadors. But she showed no devotion, in which
she was not singular, old people and Cossack officers
excepted. During the sermon she took occasion to smile and
nod to those whom she meant to gratify; and surely no
sovereign ever possessed the power of pleasing all within
her eye to the degree she did. She was dressed in the
Guards’ uniform, which was a scarlet pelisse, and a green
silk robe lapelled from top to bottom. Her hair was combed
neatly, and boxed en militaire, with a small cap, and
an ornament of diamonds in front; a blue riband, and the
order of St Andrew on her right shoulder.”

He speaks of the empress excelling in that inclination of
the body which the Russian ladies substitute for the curtsy,
and which he justly regards as very becoming, the empress
adding dignity and grace. He describes Orloff as an herculean
figure, finely proportioned, with a cheerful eye, and, for a
Russian, a good complexion: Potemkin as having stature and
shoulders, but being ill limbed and of a most forbidding
countenance. His examination of the Russian dockyards, naval
armament, and general style of shipbuilding, was most exact;
and he records in his notes his having seen, in the naval
arsenals of Norway, sheds to cover ships on the stocks—an
important arrangement, which was afterwards claimed as an
invention at home.

After inspecting the harbours of Sweden and Norway, the
travellers returned by Holland, where they made similar
investigations. In the following year they renewed their tour
of inspection, and traversed the western parts of France. And
this active pursuit of knowledge was carried on without any
pecuniary assistance beyond his half-pay. He had hitherto made
no prize-money. “To be sure,” he said in after days, “we
sometimes did fare rather roughly; but what signifies that now?
my object was attained.”

His character was now high, but it is to be presumed that he
had some powerful interest; for on his return he was appointed
to two line-of-battle ships in succession, the Kent, 74, and
the Foudroyant, 84, a French prize, and reckoned the finest
two-decker in the navy.

From this period a new scene opened before him, and his
career became a part of the naval history of England. In 1778
he joined the Channel fleet, and his ship was placed by the
celebrated Keppel as one of his seconds in the order of battle,
and immediately astern of the admiral’s ship, the Victory, on
the 27th of July, in the drawn battle off Ushant with the
French fleet commanded by D’Orvilliers. The people of England
are not content with drawn battles, and the result of this
action produced a general uproar. Keppel threw the blame on the
tardiness of Sir Hugh Palliser, the second in command. Palliser
retorted, and the result was a court-martial on the commander
of the fleet; which, however, ended in a triumphant acquittal.
It was not generally known that Keppel’s defence, which was
admired as a model of intelligence, and even of eloquence, was
drawn up by Captain Jervis. The transaction, though so long
passed away, is not yet beyond discussion; and there is still
some interest in knowing the opinion of so powerful a mind on
the general subject. It was thus given in a private letter to
his friend Jackson:—”I do not agree that we were
outwitted. The French, I am convinced, never would have fought
us if they had not been surprised into it by a sudden flow of
wind; and when they formed their inimitable line after our
brush, it was merely to cover their intention of flight.”

He then gives one of those comprehensive maxims which
already show [pg 471] the experienced
“admiral:”—”I have often told you that two fleets of
equal force can never produce decisive events, unless they
are equally determined to fight it out, or the
commander-in-chief of one of them misconducts his line.” We
have then an instance of that manly feeling which is one of
the truest characteristics of greatness, and yet which has
been deficient in some very remarkable men.

“I perceive,” says he, “it is the fashion of people to puff
themselves. For my part, I forbade my officers to write by the
frigate that carried the despatches. I did not write a syllable
myself, except touching my health; nor shall I, but to state
the intrepidity of the officers and people under my command,
(through the most infernal fire I ever saw or heard,) to Lord
Sandwich,” (first lord of the Admiralty.) But one cannot feel
the merit of this self-denial without a glance at his actual
hazards and services during the battle.

“In justice to the Foudroyant,” he thus ends his letter, “I
must observe to you, that though she received the fire of
seventeen sail, and had the Bretagne, Ville de Paris, and a
seventy-four on her at the same time, and appeared more
disabled in her masts and rigging than any other ship, she was
the first in the line of battle, and truly fitter for business,
in essentials, (because her people were cool,) than when she
began. Keep this to yourself, unless you hear too much
said in praise of others.

“J.J.”

The national wrath was poured on Sir Hugh Palliser, Keppel’s
second in command, whose tardiness in obeying signals was
charged as the cause of the French escape; so strong had
already become the national assurance that a British fleet
could go forth only to victory. But the succession of
courts-martial cleared up nothing except the characters of the
two admirals. Palliser was enabled to show that his ship had
suffered so much from the enemy’s fire as to be at least
(plausibly) unfit for close action, and the whole dispute on
land closed, like the naval conflict, in a drawn battle. Jervis
was the chief witness for Keppel, as serving next his ship; and
his testimony was of the highest order to the gallantry, skill,
and perseverance of the admiral. But Palliser was acknowledged
to be brave; and it is evident from Jervis’s personal opinion,
that when it was once the object of the enemy’s commander to
get away, it was next to impossible to have prevented his
escape.

But these were trying times for the British navy: it was
scarcely acquainted with its own strength; the nation,
disgusted with the nature of the American war, refused its
sympathy; without that sympathy ministers could do nothing
effectual, and never can do any thing effectual. The character
of the cabinet was feebleness, the spirit of the metropolis was
faction; the king, though one of the best of men, was
singularly unpopular; and the war became a system of feeble
defence against arrogant and increasing hostilities. France,
powerful as she was, became more powerful by the national
exultation—the frenzied rejoicing in the success of
American revolt—and the revived hope of European
supremacy in a nation which had been broken down since the days
of Marlborough; a crush which had been felt in every sinew of
France for a hundred angry years. Spain, always strong, but
unable to use her strength, had now given it in to the training
of discipline; and the combined fleets presented a display of
force, which, in the haughty language of the Tuileries, was
formed to sweep the seas.

The threat was put in rapid and unexpected execution. The
combined fleet moved up the Channel; and to the surprise, the
sorrow, and the indignation of England, the British fleet,
under Sir Charles Hardy, was seen making, what could only be
called “a dignified retreat.” The Foudroyant, on that
melancholy occasion, had been astern of the Victory, the
admiral’s ship. If Jervis had been admiral, he would have tried
the fate of battle—and he would have done right. No
result of a battle could have been so painful to the national
feelings, or so injurious in its effects on the feelings of
Europe, as that retreat. If the whole British fleet on that
occasion had perished, its gallantry would have only raised a
new spirit of worth and power in the nation; and England has
resources that, [pg 472] when once fully called into
exertion, are absolutely unconquerable. But that was a
dishonour; and even now we can echo the feelings of the
brave and high-minded young officer, who was condemned to
share in the disgrace. He writes to his sister, as if to
relieve the fulness of his heart at the moment—”I am
in the most humbled state of mind I ever experienced, from
the retreat we have made before the combined fleets all
yesterday and this morning.” The Admiralty
ultimately gave the retreating admiral an official
certificate of good behaviour, “their high approbation of
Sir Charles Hardy’s wise and prudent conduct;” but “gallant
and bold conduct” would have been a better testimonial. The
truth seems to be, that the Admiralty, blamable themselves
in sending him to sea with an inadequate force, and scarcely
expecting to escape if they had suffered him to lie under
the charge, were glad to avail themselves of his personal
character as a man of known bravery; and thus quash a
process which must finally have brought them before the
tribunal. But let naval officers remember, that the officer
who fights is the officer of the nation. Nelson’s maxim is
unanswerable—”The captain cannot be mistaken who lays
his ship alongside the enemy.”

This, too, was a period of cabinet revolutions. No
favouritism can sustain a ministry which has become disgustful
to the nation. Lord North, though ingenious, dexterous, and
long enough in possession of power to have filled all its
offices with his dependents, was driven from the premiership
with such a storm of national contempt, that he could scarcely
be sheltered by the curtains of the throne. Lord Rockingham, a
dull minister, was transformed into a brilliant one by his
contrast with the national weariness of Lord North; and it fell
to the lot of Captain Jervis to give the country the first omen
of returning victory. France had already combined Holland in
her alliance, and the French minister, already made insolent by
his triumph in the Channel, had determined on a blow in a
quarter where English interests were most vulnerable, and where
the assault was least expected. A squadron of French
line-of-battle ships, convoying a fleet of transports, were
prepared for an expedition to the East Indies.

The preparations for the combined movement were on an
immense scale. The fleets of France, Spain, and Holland were
again to sweep the Channel; and while the attention of the
British fleets was thus engrossed, the Eastern expedition was
to sail from Brest. The Admiralty, in order to counteract, or
at least delay, this formidable movement, immediately
dispatched Admiral Barrington, with twelve sail of the line, to
cruise in the bay of Biscay. On the 18th of April the French
expedition sailed, and on the 20th, when Admiral Barrington had
reached a few leagues beyond Ushant, the Artois frigate
signaled a hostile fleet, but could not discover their flag or
numbers. The signal being made for a general chase, the
Foudroyant, Jervis’s ship, soon left the rest of the fleet
behind; and before night she had so much gained upon the enemy
as to ascertain that they were six French ships of war, with
eighteen sail of convoy. The whole of the British fleet, being
several leagues astern, was now lost sight of, and did not come
up till the following day. In the mean time Jervis was left
alone. At ten at night, the French ships of war separating,
Jervis, selecting the largest for pursuit, prepared to attack:
at twelve, he had approached near enough to see that the chase
was a ship of the line. The Foudroyant’s superior
manœuvring enabled her to commence the engagement by a
raking fire. Its effect was so powerful, that the enemy was
thrown into extreme disorder, and was carried by boarding,
after an action of only three quarters of an hour. The prize
was the Pégase, seventy-four. The loss of life on board
the enemy was great; but by an extraordinary piece of good
fortune, on board the Foudroyant not a man was killed, Captain
Jervis and five seamen being the only wounded.

To the gallantry which produced this striking success, the
young officer added extreme delicacy with respect to his
prisoners. He would not allow the first boat to be sent on
board the prize, until he had given written orders for the
particular preservation [pg 473] of every thing in the shape
of property belonging to the French officers, adding at the
bottom of his memorandum,—”For though I have the
highest opinion of my officers, we must not be suspected of
designs to plunder.”

The result of the action was, that sixteen transports out of
twenty were taken, according to the letter of young Ricketts,
the captain’s nephew. It must be owned, that brave as the
French are, their admiral made but a bad figure in this
business: why the sight of one vessel should have been
sufficient to disperse a fleet of six men-of-war, and of course
ruin an expedition which must thus be left without convoy, is
not easily to be accounted for; or why, when the admiral saw
that his pursuer was but a single ship, he should not have
turned upon him and crushed him, it is equally difficult to
say. It only shows that his court wanted common sense as much
as he wanted discretion. The expedition was destroyed, and the
Foudroyant had the whole honour of the victory.

An action between single ships of this force is rare at any
period, and nothing could be nearer a match in point of
equipment then the two ships. The Foudroyant had the larger
tonnage, and carried three more guns on her broadside; but the
Pégase threw a greater weight of shot, had a more
numerous crew, and a large proportion of soldiers on board. The
English ship, however, had the incomparable advantage of a crew
which had sailed together for six years, and been disciplined
by such an officer as Jervis.

The ministry and the king were equally rejoiced at this
return of the naval distinctions of the country, and the
immediate consequence was, the conferring of a baronetcy and
the order of the Bath upon the gallant officer. Congratulations
of all kinds were poured upon him by the ministry, his admiral,
and his brother officers. The admiral writes, in speaking of
the squadron’s cruise, “but the Pégase is every thing,
and does the highest honour to Jervis.”

Another instance of his decision, and, as in all probability
will be thought, of the clearness of his judgment, was shortly
after given in the memorable relief of Gibraltar. As it was
likely that the combined fleets of France and Spain would
oppose the passage of the British, Lord Howe, at an early
period, called the flag-officers and captains on board the
Victory, and proposed to them the question—Whether,
considering the superiority of the enemy’s numbers, it might
not be advisable to fight the battle at night, when British
discipline might counterbalance the numerical superiority? All
the officers junior to Jervis gave their opinion for the night
attack, but he dissented. “Expressing his regret that he must
offer an opinion, not only contrary to that of his brother
officers, but also, as he feared, to that of his
commander-in-chief, he was convinced that battle in the day
would be greatly preferable. In the first place, because it
would give an opportunity for the display of his lordship’s
tactics, and afford the means of taking prompt advantage of any
mistake of the enemy, change of the wind, or any other
favourable circumstance; while in the mêlée of a
battle at night, there must always be greater risk of
separation, and of ships receiving the fire of their friends as
well as their foes.” It is obvious to every comprehension, that
a night action must preclude all manœuvring, and prevent
the greater skill of the tactician from having any advantage
over the blunderer who turns his ships into mere batteries. The
only officer who coincided with Jervis was Admiral Barrington,
who gave as an additional and a just argument for the attack by
day, that it would give an opportunity of ascertaining the
conduct of the respective captains in action. On those opinions
Lord Howe made no comment; but it is presumed that he
ultimately agreed with them, from his conduct in the celebrated
action of the 1st of June 1794, when he had the enemy’s fleet
directly to leeward of him from the night before.

In the relief of Gibraltar, the Foudroyant had the honour to
be the ship which was dispatched from the fleet to escort the
victuallers into the harbour, which was accomplished amid the
acclamations of the garrison. It had been expected that Lord
Howe would have attacked the combined fleets, and the nation of
course looked forward to a victory; but they were disappointed.
[pg 474] The fact is, that Lord
Howe, though a brave man, and what is generally regarded as
a good officer, was of a different class of mind from the
Jervises and Nelsons. He did his duty, but he did no more.
The men who were yet to give a character to the navy did
more than their duty, suffered no opportunity of distinction
to escape them, relied on the invincibility of British
prowess when it was boldly directed, and by that reliance
rendered it invincible.

There was a kindness and generosity of nature in this future
“thunderbolt of war,” which shows how compatible the gentler
feelings are with the gallant daring, and comprehensive talent
of the great commander. Having happened to receive the Duc de
Chabelais on board his ship when at Cadiz, the politeness of
his reception caused the Sardinian prince to exhibit his
gratitude in some handsome presents to the officers. One of
Jervis’s letters mentions, that the prince had given to each of
the lieutenants a handsome gold box; to the lieutenant of
marines and five of the midshipmen gold watches; and to the
other officers and ship’s company, a princely sum of money.

“I pride myself,” he adds, “exceedingly in the presents
being so diffused; on all former occasions they have centred in
the captain.” In another letter he says,—”I was
twenty-four hours in the bay of Marseilles about a fortnight
ago, just time to receive the warm embraces of a man to whose
bravery and friendship I had some months before been indebted
for my reputation, the preservation of the people under my
command, and of the Alarm. You would have felt infinite
pleasure at the scene of our interview.” In a letter to the
under-secretary of the Admiralty, he says,—”My dear
Jackson, you must allow me to interest your humanity in favour
of poor Spicer, who, overwhelmed with dropsy, asthma, and a
large family, and with nothing but his pay to support him under
those afflictions, is appointed to the —— under a
mean man, and very likely to go to the East Indies. The letter
which he writes to the Board, desiring to be excused from his
appointment, is dictated by me.”

He then mentions a contingency, “in which case I shall write
for Spicer to be first lieutenant of the Foudroyant, with
intention to nurse him, and keep him clear of all expense.”
Shortly after the Foudroyant was paid off, Sir John Jervis was
united to a lady to whom he had long been attached, the
daughter of Sir Thomas Parker, Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
Every man in England, as he rises into distinction, necessarily
becomes a politician. It was the misfortune of Sir John Jervis,
and it was his only misfortune, that he was a politician before
he had risen into distinction. Having had the ill luck to
profess himself a Whig, at a period when he could scarcely have
known the nature of the connexion, he unhappily adhered to it
long after Whiggism had ceased to possess either public utility
or national respect. But his Whiggism was unconscious Toryism
after all: it was what even his biographer is forced to call
it, Whig Royalism, or pretty nearly what Blake’s Republicanism
was—a determination to raise his country to the highest
eminence to which his talents and bravery could contribute,
without regarding by whom the government was administered. At
the general election of 1784, he sat for Yarmouth.

In 1787, Sir John Jervis was promoted to the rank of
rear-admiral. At the general election in 1790, he was returned
for Wycombe, and shared in parliament the successive defeats of
his party; until, in 1793, he was called to a nobler field, in
which, unembarrassed by party, and undegraded by Whiggism, his
talents took their natural direction in the cause of his
country. It is now scarcely necessary to remark upon the narrow
system of enterprise with which England began the great
revolutionary war; nor can it now be doubted that, if the
energies of the country had been directed to meet the enemy in
Europe, measureless misfortunes might have been averted. If the
succession of fleets and armies which were wasted upon the
conquest of the French West Indies, had been employed in the
protection of the feebler European states, there can be no
question that the progress of the French armies would have been
signally retarded, if invasion had
[pg 475] not been thrown back over
the French frontier. For instance, it would have been
utterly impossible for Napoleon, in 1796, to have marched
triumphantly throughout Italy with the British fleet
covering the coast, commanding all the harbours, and ready
to throw in troops in aid of the insurrections in his
rear.

But it was the policy of the time to pacify the merchants,
whose bugbear was a negro insurrection in the West Indies; and
whether the genius or the fears of Pitt gave way to the
impression, the consequence was equally lamentable—the
mighty power of England was wasted on the capture of sugar
islands, which we did not want, which we could not cultivate,
and which cost the lives, by disease and climate, of ten times
the number of gallant men who might have saved Europe. At the
close of 1793, a grand expedition against the French Caribbee
islands was resolved upon by the British cabinet; and it is a
remarkable instance of both the reputation of Sir John Jervis
and the impartiality of the great minister, that a Whig member
of parliament should have been chosen to command the naval part
of the expedition.

The expedition consisted of twenty-two ships of war and six
thousand troops, the troops divided into three brigades, of
which one was commanded by the late Duke of Kent. Sir John
Jervis hoisted his flag as vice-admiral of the blue on the 3d
of October.

A ludicrous circumstance occurred in the instance of a
favourite officer, Mr Bayntun, who had applied for permission
to join Sir John. Bayntun received in answer the following
decisive note: “Sir, your having thought fit to take to
yourself a wife, you are to look for no further attention from
your humble servant, J. JERVIS.” It happened that Bayntun was a
bachelor, and he instantly wrote an exculpatory letter, denying
that he had been guilty of so formidable a charge. The mistake
arose from a misdirection in two notes which the admiral had
written on the same subject. He had left them to Lady Jervis to
direct, and she had addressed them to the wrong persons. The
consequence, however, was, that Bayntun received the
appointment, and the married man the refusal. This inveteracy
against married officers seems strange in one who had committed
the same crime himself; yet he constantly persisted in calling
officers who married moon-struck, and appears at all times to
have regarded matrimony in the service as little short of
personal ruin.

On the passage out, a curious circumstance occurred to the
Zebra frigate, under command of the gallant Robert Faulknor.
The Zebra, which had been separated from the rest of the
squadron, saw one evening a ship on the horizon. All sail was
made in chase, and the ship was discovered to be a twenty-eight
gun frigate. All contrivances were adopted to induce her to
show her colours, but without success. At length Faulknor,
impatient of delay, and disregarding the disparity of force,
closed upon her, and jumped on board at the head of his men. To
his astonishment he found that she was a Dutch frigate, quietly
pursuing her way; and as Holland was at peace with England,
equally unexpecting and unprepared for an attack. This instance
of apathy night have procured her a broadside; but luckily the
affair finished with the shaking of hands.

On the 5th of February the expedition reached Martinique. On
the 18th of March Fort Lewis was stormed, General Rochambeau
capitulated, and Martinique was taken, St Lucie followed, the
Saintes next fell, and the final conquest was Guadaloupe. Thus
in three months the capture of the French islands was
complete.

But an enemy more formidable than the sword was now to be
encountered. The yellow fever began its ravages. The troops
perished in such numbers, that the regiments were reduced to
skeletons; and just at the moment when the disease was at its
height, Victor Hughes was dispatched from France with an
expedition. The islands fell one by one into his hands, and the
campaign was utterly thrown away.

The romantic portion of the European campaigns now began.
The French Directory, unpopular at home, wearied by the
sanguinary successes of the Vendéan insurrection, and
baffled in their invasion of Germany, were in a condition of
the greatest perplexity, when a new wonder of war taught France
again to conquer. [pg 476] Napoleon Bonaparte, since
so memorable, but then known only as commanding a company of
artillery at Toulon, and repelling the armed mob in Paris,
was appointed to command the army on the Italian frontier.
Even now, with all our knowledge of his genius, and the
splendid experience of his successes, his sudden elevation,
his daring offer of command, his plan of the Italian
campaign, and his almost instantaneous victories, are
legitimate matter of astonishment. In him we have the
instance of a young man of twenty-six, who had never seen a
campaign, who had never commanded a brigade, nor even a
regiment, undertaking the command of an army, proposing the
invasion of a country of eighteen millions, garrisoned by
the army of one of the greatest military powers of Europe,
which had nearly 300,000 soldiers in the field, and which
was in the most intimate alliance with all the sovereigns of
Italy. Yet, extravagant as all those conceptions seem, and
improbable as those results certainly were, two campaigns
saw every project realized—Italy conquered, the Tyrol,
the great southern barrier of Austria, overpassed, and peace
signed within a hundred miles of Vienna. The invasion of
Italy first awoke the British ministry to the true direction
of the vast naval powers of England. To save Italy if
possible, was the primary object; the next was to prevent
the superiority of the French fleet in the Mediterranean. A
powerful fleet had been prepared in Toulon, for the purpose
of aiding the French army in its invasion, and finally
taking possession of all the ports and islands, until it
should have realized the project of Louis XIV., of turning
the Mediterranean into a French lake. It was determined to
keep up a powerful British fleet to oppose this project, and
Sir John Jervis was appointed to the command. Nothing could
be a higher testimony to the opinion entertained of his
talents, as his connexion with the Whigs was undisguised.
But Pitt’s feeling for the public service overcame all
personal predilections, and this great officer was sent to
take the command of the most extensive and important station
to which a British admiral could be appointed. Lord Hood had
previously declined it, on the singular plea of inadequacy
of force; and Sir Charles Hotham having solicited his recall
in consequence of declining health, the gallant Jervis was
sent forth to establish the renown of his country and his
own.

The fleet was a noble command. It consisted on the whole of
about twenty-five sail of the line, two of them of a hundred
guns, and five of ninety-eight; thirty-six frigates, and
fifteen or sixteen sloops and other armed vessels.

Among the officers of the fleet were almost all the names
which subsequently obtained distinction in the great naval
victories—Troubridge, Hallowell, Hood, Collingwood,
&c., and first of the first, that star of the British
seaman, Nelson. It is remarkable, and only a just tribute to
the new admiral, that he, almost from his earliest intercourse
with those gallant men, marked their merits, although hitherto
they had found no opportunities of acquiring
distinction—all were to come. Nelson, in writing to his
wife, speaking of the admiral’s notice of him, says, “Sir John
Jervis was a perfect stranger to me, therefore I feel the more
flattered.” The admiral, in writing to the secretary of the
Admiralty, says—”I am afraid of being thought a puffer,
like many of my brethren, or I should before have dealt out to
the Board the merits of Captain Troubridge, which are very
uncommon.”

The French fleet, of fifteen sail of the line, lay in
Toulon, ready to convoy an army to plunge upon the Roman
states. Sir John Jervis instantly proceeded to block up Toulon,
keeping what is called the in-shore squadron looking into the
harbour’s mouth, while the main body cruised outside. The
admiral at once employed Nelson on the brilliant service for
which he was fitted, and sent him with a flying squadron of a
ship of the line, three frigates, and two sloops, to scour the
coast of Italy. The duties of the Mediterranean fleet, powerful
as the armament was, were immense. Independently of the
blockade of Toulon, and the necessity of continually watching
the enemy’s fleet, which might be brought out by the same wind
which blew off the British, the admiral had the responsibility
of protecting the Mediterranean convoys, of sustaining the
British interests [pg 477] in the neutral courts, of
assisting the allies on shore, of overawing the Barbary
powers, which were then peculiarly restless and insolent,
and of upholding the general supremacy of England, from
Smyrna to Gibraltar.

The French campaign opened on the 9th of April 1797, and the
Austrians were beaten on the following day at Montenotte, and
in a campaign of a month Bonaparte reached Milan. The success
of the enemy increased to an extraordinary degree the
difficulties of the British admiral. The repairs of the fleet,
the provisioning, and every other circumstance connected with
the land, lay under increased impediments; but they were all
gradually overcome by the vigilance and intelligence of the
admiral.

A curious and characteristic circumstance occurred, soon
after his taking the command. Nelson had captured a vessel
carrying 152 Austrian grenadiers, who had been made prisoners
by the French, and actually sold by their captors to the
Spaniards, for the purpose of enlisting them in the Spanish
army. His letter to Jackson, the secretary of legation at
Turin, on this subject, spiritedly expresses his
feelings:—

“SIR,—From a Swiss dealer in human flesh, the
demand made upon me to deliver up 152 Austrian grenadiers,
serving on board his Majesty’s fleet under my command, is
natural enough, but that a Spaniard, who is a noble
creature, should join in such a demand, I must confess
astonishes me; and I can only account for it by the
Chevalier Caamano being ignorant that the persons in
question were made prisoners of war in the last war with
General Beaulieu, and are not deserters, and that they were
most basely sold by the French commissaries to the vile
crimps who recruit for the foreign regiments in the service
of Spain. It is high time a stop should be put to this
abominable traffic, a million times more disgraceful than
the African slave-trade.”

But other dangers now menaced the British supremacy in the
Mediterranean. The victories of Bonaparte had terrified all the
Italian states into neutrality or absolute submission; and the
success of the Directory, and perhaps their bribes, influenced
the miserably corrupt and feeble Spanish ministry, to make
common cause with the conquering republic. Spain at last became
openly hostile. This was a tremendous increase of hazards,
because Spain had fifty-seven sail of the line, and a crowd of
frigates. The difficulty of blockading Toulon was now increased
by the failure of provisions. On the night of the 2d of
November, the admiral sent for the master of the Victory, and
told him that he now had not the least hope of being
reinforced, and had made up his mind to push down to Gibraltar
with all possible dispatch.

The passage became a stormy one, and it was with
considerable difficulty that the fleet reached Gibraltar. Some
of the transports were lost, a ship of the line went down, and
several of the fleet were disabled.

The result of the French successes and the Austrian
misfortunes, was an order for the fleet to leave the
Mediterranean, and take up its station at the Tagus. The vivid
spirit of Nelson was especially indignant at this change of
scene. In one of his letters he says—”We are preparing to
leave the Mediterranean, a measure which I cannot approve. They
at home do not know what this fleet is capable of
performing—any thing, and every thing. Of all the fleets
I ever saw, I never saw one, in point of officers and men,
equal to Sir John Jervis’s, who is a commander able to lead
them to glory.” The admiral’s merits were recognized by the
government in a still more permanent manner; for, by a despatch
from the Admiralty in February 1797, it was announced that the
king had raised him to the dignity of the peerage.

The prospect now darkened round every quarter of the
horizon. The power of Austria had given way; Spain and Holland
were combined against our naval supremacy; Italy was lost; a
French expedition threatened Ireland; there was a strong
probability of the invasion of Portugal; and the junction of
the French and Spanish fleets might endanger not merely the
Tagus fleet, but expose the Channel fleet to an encounter with
numbers so superior, as to leave the British shores open to
invasion. The domestic difficulties, too, had
[pg 478] their share. The necessity
of suspending cash payments at the Bank had, if not thrown a
damp upon the nation, at least given so formidable a ground
for the fallacies and bitterness of the Opposition, as
deeply to embarrass even the fortitude of the great
minister. We can now see how slightly all these hazards
eventually affected the real power of England; and we now
feel how fully adequate the strength of this extraordinary
and inexhaustible country was to resist all obstacles and
turn the trial into triumph. But faction was busy, party
predicted ruin, public men used every art to dispirit the
nation and inflame the populace; and the result was, a state
of public anxiety of which no former war had given the
example.

It is incontestable that the list of the British navy at
this period of the war exhibited some of the noblest specimens
of English character—brave, intelligent, and
indefatigable men, ready for any service, and equal for all;
with all the intrepidity of heroes, possessing the highest
science of their profession, and exhibiting at once that
lion-heartedness, and that knowledge, which gave the British
navy the command of the ocean. And yet, if we were to assign
the highest place where all were high, we should probably
assign it to Lord St Vincent as an admiral. Nelson certainly,
as an executive officer, defies all competition; his three
battles, Copenhagen, Aboukir, and Trafalgar, each of them a
title to eminent distinction, place him as a conqueror at the
head of all. But an admiral has other duties than those of the
line of battle; and for a great naval administrator, first
disciplining a fleet, then supplying it with all the means of
victory, and finally leading it to victory—Lord St
Vincent was perhaps the most complete example on record of all
the combined qualities that make the British admiral. His
profound tactics, his stern but salutary exactness of command,
his incomparable judgment, and his cool and unhesitating
intrepidity, form one of the very noblest models of high
command. All those qualities were now to be called into full
exertion.

The continental campaign had left Europe at the mercy of
France. England was now the only enemy, and she was to be
assailed, in the first instance, by a naval war. To prevent the
junction of the Spanish and French fleets, the Tagus was the
station fixed upon by Lord St Vincent. Ill luck seemed to frown
upon the fleet. The Bombay Castle, a seventy-four, was lost
going in; the St George, a ninety, grounded in coming out, and
was obliged to be docked; still the admiral determined to keep
the sea, though his fleet was reduced to eight sail of the
line. The day before he left the Tagus, information was
received that the enemy’s fleets had both left the
Mediterranean. The French had gone to Brest, the Spanish first
to Toulon, then to Carthagena, and was now proceeding to join
the French at Brest. A reinforcement of six sail of the line
now fortunately joined the fleet off the Tagus; but at the same
time information was received that the Spanish fleet of
twenty-seven sail of the line, with fourteen frigates, had
passed Cadiz, and could not be far distant. To prevent the
junction of this immense force with the powerful fleet already
prepared for a start in Brest, was of the utmost national
importance; for, combined, they must sweep the Channel. The
admiral instantly formed his plan, and sailed for Cape St
Vincent.

The details of the magnificent encounter which followed, are
among the best portions of the volumes. They are strikingly
given, and will attract the notice, as they might form the
model, of the future historian of this glorious period of our
annals. We can now give only an outline.

On the announcement of the Spanish advance, the first object
was to gain exact intelligence, and ships were stationed in all
quarters on the look-out. But on the 13th Captain Foote, in the
Niger frigate, joined, with the intelligence that he had kept
sight of the enemy for three days. The admiral was now to have
a new reinforcement, not in ships but in heroes; the Minerva
frigate, bearing Nelson’s broad pendant, from the
Mediterranean, arrived, and Nelson shifted his pendant into the
Captain. The Lively frigate, with Lord Garlies, also arrived
from Corsica. The signal was made, “To keep close order, and
prepare for battle.” On that day,
[pg 479] Lord Garlies, Sir Gilbert
Elliot, and Captain Hallowell, with some other officers,
dined on board the Victory. At breaking up, the toast was
drunk, “Victory over the Dons, in the battle from which they
cannot escape to-morrow!”

The “gentlemen of England who live at home at ease,” can
probably have but little conception of the price which men in
high command pay for glory. No language can describe the
anxieties which have often exercised the minds of those bold
and prominent characters, of whom we now know little but of
their laurels. The solemn responsibilities of their condition,
the consciousness that a false step might be ruin, the feeling
that the eye of their country was fixed upon them, the hope of
renown, the dread of tarnishing all their past distinctions,
must pass powerfully and painfully through the mind of men
fitted for the struggles by which greatness is to be alone
achieved.

“It is believed that Sir John Jervis did not go to bed that
night, but sat up writing. It is certain that he executed his
will.” In the course of the first and second watches, the
enemy’s signal-guns were distinctly heard; and, as he noticed
them sounding more and more audibly, Sir John made more earnest
enquiries as to the compact order and situation of his own
ships, as well as they could be made out in the darkness. Long
before break of day, he walked the deck in more than even his
usual silence. When the grey of the morning of the 14th enabled
him to discern his fleet, his first remarks were high
approbation of his captains, for “their admirably close order,
and that he wished they were now well up with the enemy; for,”
added he thoughtfully, “a victory is very essential to England
at this moment.”

Now came on the day of decision. The morning was foggy; but
as the mist cleared up, the Lively, and then the Niger,
signaled “a strange fleet.” The Bonne Citoyenne was next
ordered to reconnoitre. Soon after, the Culloden’s guns
announced the enemy. At twenty minutes past ten the signal was
made to six of the ships—”to chase.” Sir John still
walked the quarterdeck, and, as the enemy’s numbers were
counted, they were duly reported to him by the captain of the
fleet.

“There are eight sail of the line, Sir John.”

“Very well, sir.”

“There are twenty sail of the line, Sir John.”

“Very well, sir.”

“There are twenty-five sail of the line, Sir John.”

“Very well, sir.”

“There are twenty-seven sail of the line, Sir John.” This
was accompanied by some remark on the great disparity of the
two forces. Sir John’s gallant answer now was:—

“Enough, sir—no more of that: the die is cast, and if
there are fifty sail, I will go through them.”

At forty minutes past ten the signal was made to form line
of battle ahead and astern of the Victory, and to steer S.S.W.
The fog was now cleared off, and the British fleet were seen
admirably formed in the closest order; while the Spaniards were
stretching in two straggling bodies across the horizon, leaving
an open space between. The opportunity of dividing their fleet
struck the admiral at once, and at half-past eleven the signal
was made to pass through the enemy’s line, and engage them to
leeward. At twelve o’clock, as the Culloden was reaching close
up to the enemy, the British fleet hoisted their colours, and
the Culloden opened her fire. An extraordinary incident, even
in those colossal battles, occurred to this fine ship. The
course of the Culloden brought her directly on board one of the
enemy’s three-deckers. The first lieutenant, Griffiths,
reported to her captain, Troubridge, that a collision was
inevitable. “Can’t help it, Griffiths—let the weakest
fend off,” was the hero’s reply. The Culloden, still pushing
on, fired two of her double-shotted broadsides into the
Spaniard with such tremendous effect, that the three-decker
went about, and the guns of her other side not being even cast
loose, she did not fire a single shot, while the Culloden
passed triumphantly through. Scarcely had she broken the
enemy’s line, than the commander-in-chief signaled the order to
tack in succession. Troubridge’s manœuvre was so
dashingly performed, that the
[pg 480] admiral could not restrain
his delight and admiration.

“Look, Jackson,” he rapturously exclaimed, “look at
Troubridge there! He tacks his ship to battle as if the eyes of
all England were upon him; and would to God they were, for then
they would see him to be what I know him.”

The leeward division of the enemy, perceiving the fatal
consequences of their disunited order of sailing, now
endeavoured to retrieve the day, and to break through the
British line. A vice-admiral, in a three-decker, led them, and
was reaching up to the Victory just as she had come up to tack
in her station. The vice-admiral stood on with great apparent
determination till within pistol-shot, but there he stopped;
and when the Victory could bring her guns to bear upon him, she
thundered in two of her broadsides, sweeping the Spaniard’s
decks, and so terrified him, that when his sails filled, he ran
clear out of the battle altogether. The Victory then tacked
into her station, and the conflict raged with desperate fury.
At this period of the battle, the Spanish commander-in-chief
bore up with nine sail of the line to run round the British,
and rejoin his leeward division. This was a formidable
manœuvre; but no sooner was it commenced, than his eye
caught it “whose greatest wish it ever was to be the first to
find, and foremost to fight, his enemy.” Nelson, instead of
waiting till his turn to tack should bring him into action,
took it upon himself to depart from the prescribed mode of
attack, and ordered his ship to be immediately wore. This
masterly manœuvre was completely successful, at once
arresting the Spanish commander-in-chief, and carrying Nelson
and Collingwood into the van and brunt of the battle. He now
attacked the four-decker, the Santissima Trinidada, also
engaged by the Culloden. The Captain’s fore-topmast being now
shot away, Nelson put his helm down, and let her come to the
wind, that he might board the San Nicolas; Captain, afterwards
Sir Edward Berry, then a passenger with Nelson, jumping into
her mizen-chains, was the first in the enemy’s ship; Nelson
leading his boarders, and a party of the 69th regiment,
immediately followed, and the colours were hauled down. While
he was on the deck of the San Nicolas, the San Josef, disabled,
fell on board. Nelson instantly seized the opportunity of
boarding her from his prize; followed by Captain Berry, and
Lieutenant Pierson of the 69th, he led the boarders, and jumped
into the San Josef’s main-chains. He was then informed that the
ship had surrendered. Four line-of-battle ships had now been
taken, and the Santissima Trinidada had also struck; but she
subsequently made her escape, for now the Spanish leeward
division, fourteen sail, having re-formed their line, bore down
to support their commander-in-chief: to receive them, Sir John
Jervis was obliged to form a line of battle on the starboard
tack—the enemy immediately retired. Thus, at five in the
evening, concluded the most brilliant battle that had ever till
then been fought at sea.

Captain Calder was immediately sent off with the despatch,
and arrived in London on the 3d of March. A battle gained over
such a numerical superiority, for it was much more than two to
one, when we take into our estimate the immense size of the
enemy’s ships, and their weight of metal, there being one
four-decker of 130 guns, and six three-deckers of 112, of which
two were taken; and further, the more interesting circumstance,
that this great victory was gained on our part with only the
loss of 73 killed and 227 wounded, the public feeling of
exultation was unbounded; and when the minister on that very
evening proposed that the vote of thanks should be taken on the
following Monday, the House would hear of no delay, but
insisted on recording its gratitude at the moment. The House of
Peers gave a similar vote on the 8th; and the Commons and the
Crown immediately proposed to settle upon the admiral a pension
of three thousand a-year. A member of the House of Commons, on
moving for an address to the Crown to confer some signal mark
of favour on the admiral, was instantly replied to by the
sonorous eloquence of the minister—”Can it be supposed,”
said he, “that the Crown can require to be prompted to pay the
just tribute of approbation and honour to those who have
eminently [pg 481] distinguished themselves by
public services? On the part of his Majesty’s ministers, I
can safely affirm, that before the last splendid instance of
the conduct of the gallant admiral, we have not been remiss
in watching the uniform tenor of his professional career. We
have witnessed the whole of his proceedings—such
instances of perseverance, of diligence, and of exertion in
the public service, as, though less brilliant and dazzling
than the last exploit, are only less meritorious as they are
put in competition with a single day, which has produced
such incalculable benefit to the British empire.”

The result was an earldom. The first lord of the Admiralty,
Lord Spencer, having already written to Sir John the royal
pleasure to promote him to a peerage, and the letter not having
reached him previously to the battle, he thus had notice of the
two steps in the peerage nearly at once.

Popular honours now flowed in upon him: London voted its
freedom in a gold box, with swords to the admirals of the fleet
and Nelson; vice-admirals Parker and Thompson were created
baronets; Nelson received the red riband; the chief cities and
towns of England and Ireland sent their freedoms and presents;
and the king gave all the admirals and captains a gold
medal.

We must now be brief in our observations on the services of
this most distinguished person. We have next a narrative of the
suppression of the memorable mutiny of 1798, whose purpose it
was to have suffered the enemy’s fleet to leave their harbours,
to revolutionize the Mediterranean fleet, and, after putting
the admirals and captains to death, proceed to every folly and
frenzy that could be committed by men conscious of power, and
equally conscious that forgiveness was impossible. The fleet
under Lord St Vincent was on the point of corruption, when it
was restored to discipline by the singular firmness of the
admiral, who, by exhibiting his determination to punish all
insubordination, extinguished this most alarming disaffection,
and saved the naval name of the country.

On the resignation of Mr Pitt in 1801, and the appointment
of Mr Addington as first lord of the treasury, a letter was
written from the new minister to Lord St Vincent, offering him
the appointment of first lord of the Admiralty. Having obtained
an interview with the king, and explained the general tone of
his political feelings, the king told him he very much wished
to see him at the Admiralty, and to place the navy entirely in
his hands. This was perhaps the only appointment of that
singularly feeble administration which met with universal
approval. There could be no question of the intelligence, high
principle, or public services of the great admiral. Mr
Addington came into power under circumstances which would have
tried the talents of a man of first-rate ability. The war had
exhausted the patience, though not the power, of the nation.
All our allies had failed. The severity of the taxes was doubly
felt, when the war had necessarily turned into a blockade on
the Continent. We had thus all the exhaustion of hostilities
without the excitement of triumph; and, to increase public
anxieties, the failure of the harvest threatened a comparative
famine. Wheat, which on an average of the preceding ten years
had been 54s. a quarter, was now at 110s., then rose to 139s.,
and even reached as high as 180s. At one period the quartern
loaf had risen to 1s. 10-1/2d. The popular cry now arose for
peace. France, which with all her victories had been taught the
precariousness of war, by the loss of Egypt and the capture of
her army, was now also eager for peace. England had but two
allies, Portugal and Turkey. At length the peace was made, and
Lord St Vincent’s attention was then drawn to an object which
he had long in view, the reformation of the dockyards. This was
indeed the Augean stable, and unexampled clamour arose from the
multitude who had indolently fattened for years on the easy
plunder of the public stores. However, the reform went on:
perquisites were abolished, privileges taken away; and, rough
as the operation was, nothing could be more salutary than its
effect. The acuteness of the gallant old man at the head of the
Admiralty could not be evaded, his vigour could not be
[pg 482] defied, and his public
spirit gave him an influence with the country, which enabled
him to outlive faction and put down calumny. Yet this was
evidently the most painful, and, to a certain extent, the
most unsuccessful portion of his long career. Nominally a
Whig, but practically a Tory—for his loyalty was
unimpeachable and his honour without a stain—Lord St
Vincent found himself in the condition of a man who presses
reform on those with whom hitherto it has been only a
watchword, and expects faction to act up to its
professions.

The Addington treaty was soon discovered to be nothing more
than a truce. Napoleon lived only in war; hostilities were
essential to the government which he had formed for France; and
his theory of government, false as it was, and his passion for
excitement, whatever might be its price, made even the two
years of peace so irksome to him, that he actually adopted a
gross and foolish insult to the British ambassador as the means
of compelling us to renew the conflict. The first result was,
the return of Pitt to power; the next, the total ruin of the
French navy at Trafalgar; the next, the bloody and ruinous war
with Russia, expressly for the ruin of England through the ruin
of her commerce; and finally the crash of Waterloo, which
extinguished his diadem and his dominion together—a
series of events, occurring within little more than ten years,
of a more stupendous order than had hitherto affected the fate
of any individual, or influenced the destinies of an European
kingdom.

With the ministry of Mr Addington, Lord St Vincent retired
from public life. He was now old, and the hardships of long
service had partially exhausted his original vigour of frame.
He retired to his seat, Rochetts in Essex, and there led the
delightful life of a man who had gained opulence and
distinction by pre-eminent services, and whose old age was
surrounded by love, honour, and troops of friends. He appeared
from time to time in the House of Lords, where, however, he
spoke but seldom, but where he always spoke with dignity and
effect.

In the month of March 1823, Lord St Vincent was seized with
a general feeling of infirmity which portended his speedy
dissolution. He had a violent and convulsive cough; yet his
intellects were strongly turned upon public events, and he
expressed an anxiety to know all that could be known of events
in France, which was then disturbed; of the Spanish revolution,
which then threatened to involve Europe; and even of the
affairs of Greece. In the course of the evening of the 13th,
while his physician and family were round him, his strength
suddenly gave way, and at half past eight he died, at the age
of eighty-eight, and was buried at Stone in Staffordshire. He
was succeeded in the peerage by his nephew, who, however,
inherits only the viscounty.

In our general notice of Lord St Vincent’s career, we have
adverted as little as possible to the opinions which his
biographer had introduced from his own view of public affairs.
We have no wish to make a peevish return to the writer of a
work which has given us both information and pleasure. But it
is necessary to caution Mr Tucker against giving trite and
trifling opinions on subjects of which he evidently knows so
little as of the Romish question, or the state of Ireland.
Nothing is easier than to be at once solemn and superficial on
such topics; and when a writer of this order flings his
epithets of “bigoted, harsh, and impolitic,” and the other
stock phrases of party organs, he only enfeebles our respect
for his authority in the immediate matters of his work, and
rather lowers our respect for his faculties in all. The
question of Popery in Ireland, is not a question of religion
but of faction. Religious controversy on Romish doctrines has
long ceased to exist. Romanism has no grounds on which a
controversy can be sustained. It cannot appeal to the
Scriptures, which it shuts up; and it will no longer be
suffered to appeal to its mere childish pretence of
infallibility. Its only ground in Ireland is party; and the
present unhappy condition to which it has reduced Ireland,
exhibits the natural consequences of indulgence to Popery, and
the only means by which its spirit can be rendered consistent
with the order of society.

Footnote 1:
(return)

Memoirs of Admiral Earl St Vincent. By T.S. TUCKER. 2
vols.

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART X.

On reaching the prison, I gave up all for lost; sullenly
resigned myself to what now seemed the will of fate; and
without a word, except in answer to the interrogatory of my
name and country, followed the two horrid-looking ruffians who
performed the office of turnkeys. St Lazare had been a
monastery, and its massiveness, grimness, and confusion of
buildings, with its extreme silence at that late hour, gave me
the strongest impression of a huge catacomb above ground. The
door of a cell was opened for me after traversing a long
succession of cloisters; and on a little wooden trestle, and
wrapt in my cloak, I attempted to sleep. But if sleep has not
much to boast of in Paris at any time, what was it then? I had
scarcely closed my eyes when I was roused by a rapid succession
of musket-shots, fired at the opposite side of the cloister,
the light of torches flashing through the long avenues, and the
shouts of men and women in wrath, terror, and agony. I threw
myself off my uneasy bed, and climbing up by my prison bars,
endeavoured to ascertain the cause of the mêlée.
But the imperfect light served little more than to show a
general mustering of the national guard in the court, and a
huge and heavy building, into which they were discharging
random shots whenever a head appeared at its casements. A loud
huzza followed whenever one of those shots appeared to take
effect, and a laugh equally loud ran through the ranks when the
bullet wasted its effect on the massive mullions or stained
glass of the windows. A tall figure on horseback, whom I
afterwards learned to be Henriot, the commandant of the
national guard, galloped up and down the court with the air of
a general-in-chief manœuvring an army. I think that he
actually had provided himself with a truncheon to meet all the
emergencies of supreme command. While this sanguinary, and yet
mocking representation of warfare was going on, M. le
Commandant was in full eloquence and prodigious gesticulation.
“A la gloire, mes enfans!” was his constant cry. “Fight, mes
braves! the honour of France demands it: the eyes of
Europe—of the world—are turned upon you. Vive la
Republique!” And all this accompanied with waving his hat,
and spurring his horse into foam and fury. But fortune is a
jade after all; and the hero of the tricolored scarf was
destined to have his laurels a little shorn, even on this
narrow field. While his charger was caracoling over the
cloisters, and his veterans from the cellars and counters of
Paris were popping off their muskets at the unfortunates who
started up against the old casement, I heard a sudden rush and
run; a low postern of the cloister had been flung back, and the
prisoners within the building had made a sally on their
tormentors. A massacre at the Bicêtre, in which six
thousand had perished, had warned these unhappy people that
neither the prison wall, nor night, was to be security against
the rage of the bloodhounds with whom murder seemed to have
grown into a pastime; and after having seen several of their
number shot down within their dungeon, they determined to
attack them, and, if they must die, at least die in manly
defence. Their rush was perfectly successful; it had the effect
of a complete surprise; and though their only weapons were
fragments of their firewood—for all fire-arms and knives
had been taken from them immediately
[pg 484] on their entrance into the
prison—they routed the heroes of the guard at the
first charge. Even the gallant commander himself only shared
the chance of his “camarades:” a flourish or two of his
sabre, and an adjuration of “liberty,” had no other effect
than to insure a heavier shower of blows, and I had the
gratification of seeing the braggadocio go down from his
saddle in the midst of a group, who certainly had no
veneration for the majesty of the truncheon. The victory was
achieved; but, like many another victory, it produced no
results: the gates of the St Lazare were too strongly
guarded to be forced by an unarmed crowd, and I saw the
prisoners successively and gloomily return to the only roof,
melancholy as that was, which now could shelter them.

The morning brought my case before the authorities of this
den. Half a dozen coarse and filthy uniformed men, and some of
them evidently sufferers in the tumult of the night, for their
heads were bound up and their arms bandaged—a matter
which, if it did not improve their appearance, gave me every
reason to expect increased brutishness in their
tempers—formed the tribunal. The hall in which they had
established their court had once been the kitchen of the
convent; and, though all signs of hospitality had vanished, its
rude and wild construction, its stone floor and vaulted roof,
and even its yawning and dark recesses for the different
operations which, in other days, had made it a scene of busy
cheerfulness, now gave it a look of dreariness in the extreme.
I could have easily imagined it to be a chamber of the
Inquisition. But men in my circumstances have not much time for
the work of fancy; and I was instantly called on for my name,
and business in France. I had heard enough of popular justice
to believe, that I had now arrived within sight of the last
struggle, and I resolved to give these ruffians no triumph over
the Englishman.

“Citizen, who are you?” Was the first interrogatory.

“I am no citizen, no Frenchman, and no republican,” was my
answer. My judges stared at each other.

“You are a prisoner. How came you here?”

“You are judges; how came you there?”

“You are charged with crimes against the Republic.”

“In my country no man is expected to criminate himself.”

“But you are a traitor: can you deny that?”

“I am no traitor to my king; can you say as much for
yourselves?” They now began to cast furious glances at me.

“You are insolent: what brought you into the territory of
France?”

“The same thing which placed you on that
bench—force.”

“Are you mad?”

“No—are you?”

“Do you not know that we can send you to the”—

“If you do, I shall only go before you.”

This put an end to my interrogatory at once. I had
accidentally touched upon the nerve which quivered in every
bosom of these fellows. There was a singular presentiment among
even the boldest of the Revolutionists, that the new order of
things would not last, and that, when the change came, it would
be a bloody one. Life had become sufficiently precarious
already among the possessors of power; and the least intimation
of death was actually formidable to a race of villains whose
hands were hourly imbued in slaughter. I had been hitherto
placed in scarcely more than surveillance. An order for my
confinement as a “Brigand Anglais,” was made out by the
indignant “commission,” and I was transferred from my narrow
and lonely cell into the huge crowded building in the opposite
cloister, which had been the scene of the attack on the
previous night. I could, with Cato, “smile on the drawn dagger
and defy its point.” I walked out with the air of a Cato.

This change, intended for my infinite degradation until the
guillotine should have dispatched its business in arrear, I
found much to my advantage. The man who expects nothing, cannot
be hurt by disappointment; and when I was conducted from my
solitary cell into the midst of four or five hundred prisoners,
I felt the human feelings kindle in me, which had been chilled
between my four stone walls.

The prisoners with whom I was
[pg 485] now to take my chance, were
of all ranks, professions, and degrees of crime. The true
crime in the eyes of the republic being, to be rich. Yet
there the culprit had some hope of being suffered to live,
at least while daily examinations, with the hourly
perspective of the axe, could make him contribute to the
purses of the tribunal. Those who happened to be poor, were
found guilty of incivisme at once, and were daily
drafted off to the Place de Grève, from which they
never returned. But some of the prisoners were from La
Vendée, peasants mixed with nobles; who, though no
formal shape of resistance to the republic was yet declared,
had exhibited enough of that gallant contempt of the new
tyranny, which afterwards immortalized the name, to render
them obnoxious to the ruffians at its head. It was this
sturdy portion which had made the dash on the night of the
riot, and their daring had the effect, at least, of saving
their fellow-prisoners in future from being made marks, to
teach the national guard the art of shooting. Even their
sentries kept a respectful distance; and M. Henriot, wisely
mindful of his flagellation, flourished his staff of command
no more within our cloister. We were, in fact, left almost
wholly to ourselves. Yet, if a philosopher desired to take a
lesson in human nature, this was the spot of earth for the
study. We had it in every shape and shade. We had it in the
wits and blockheads, the courtiers and the clowns, the
opulent and the ruined, the brave and the
pusillanimous—and all under the strangest pressure of
those feelings which rouse the nature of man to its most
undisguised display. Death was before every eye. Where was
the use of wearing a mask, when the wearer was so soon to
part with his head? Pretence gradually vanished, and a
general spirit of boldness, frankness, and something, if not
exactly of dignity, at least of manliness, superseded the
customary cringing of society under a despotism. In all but
the name, we were better republicans than the tribe who
shouted in the streets, or robbed in the tribunals.

I made the remark one day to the Marquis de Cassini, a
philosopher and pupil of the great Buffon. “The reason is,”
said he, “that men differ chiefly by circumstances, as they
differ chiefly by their clothes. Throw off their dress, whether
embroidery or rags, and you will find the same number of ribs
in them all.”

“But my chief surprise is, to find in this prison more
mutual kindness, and, in every sense, more generosity of
sentiment, than one generally expects to meet in the
world.”

“Helvetius would tell you that all this was self-interest,”
was my pale-visaged and contemplative friend’s reply. “But I
always regarded M. Helvetius in the light of a well-trained
baboon, who thought, when men stared at his tricks, they were
admiring his talents. The truth is, that self-interest is the
mere creature of society, and is the most active in the basest
society. It is the combined cowardice and cruelty of men
struggling for existence; the savageness of the forest, where
men cannot gather acorns enough to share with their fellows;
the effort for life, where there is but one plank in a storm,
and where, if you are to cling at all, it must be by drowning
the weaker party. But here,” and he cast his eyes calmly round
the crowd, “as there is not the slightest possibility that any
one of us will escape, we have the better opportunity of
showing our original bienséance. All the
struggling on earth will not save us from the guillotine; and
therefore we resolve to accommodate each other for the rest of
our journey.”

I agreed with him on the philosophy of the case, and in
return he introduced me to some of the Vendéan nobles,
who had hitherto exhibited their general scorn of Parisian
contact by confining themselves to the circle of their
followers. I was received with the distinction due to my
introducer, and was invited to join their supper that night.
The prison had once been the chapel of the convent; and though
the desecration had taken place a hundred years before, and the
revolutionary spoil had spared but little of the remaining
ornaments, the original massiveness of the building, and the
nobleness of the architecture, had withstood the assaults of
both time and plunder. The roofs of the
[pg 486] aisles could not be reached
except by flame, and the monuments of the ancient priors and
prelates, when they had once been stripped of their crosses,
were too solid for the passing fury of the mob. And thus, in
the midst of emblems of mortality, and the recollections of
old solemnity, were set some hundreds of people, who knew as
little of each other as if they had met in a caravansery,
and who, perhaps, expected to part as soon. The scene was
curious, but by no means uncheerful. The national spirit is
inextinguishable; and, however my countrymen may bear up
against the extremes of ill-fortune, no man meets its
beginnings with so easy an air as the man of France. Our
supper was laid out in one of the side chapels; and, coarse
and scanty as it was, I seldom recollect an evening which I
passed with a lighter sense of the burden of a prisoner’s
time. I found the Vendéan nobles a manlier race than
their more courtly countrymen. Yet they had courtliness of
their own; but it was more the manner of our own country
gentlemen of the last century, than the polish of
Versailles. Their habits of living on their domains, of
country sports, of intercourse with their peasantry, and of
the general simplicity of country life, had drawn a strong
line of distinction between them and the dukes and marquises
of the royal saloons. Like all Frenchmen of the day, they
conversed largely upon the politics of France; but there was
a striking reserve in their style. The existing royal family
were but little mentioned, or mentioned only with a certain
kind of sacred respect. Their misfortunes prohibited the
slightest severity of language. Yet still it was not
difficult to see, that those straightforward and honest
lords of the soil, who were yet to prove themselves the true
chevaliers of France, could feel as acutely, and express as
strongly, the injuries inflicted by the absurdities and
vices of the successive administrations of their reign, as
if they had figured in the clubs of the capital. But the
profligacies of the preceding monarch, and the tribe of
fools and knaves whom those profligacies as naturally
gathered round him as the plague propagates its own
contagion, met with no mercy. And, though they were spoken
of with the gravity which became the character and rank of
the speakers, they were denounced with a sternness which
seemed beyond the morals or the mind of their country. Louis
XV., Du Barri, and the whole long succession of corrupting
and corrupted cabinets, which had at length rendered the
monarchy odious, were denounced in terms worthy of gallant
men; who, though resolved to sink or swim with the throne,
experienced all the bitterness of generous indignation at
the crimes which had raised the storm.

We had our songs too, and some of them were as contemptuous
as ever came from the pen of Parisian satire. Among my
recollections of the night was one of those songs, of which the
refrain was—

A burlesque on the title—Le Bien-Aimé, &c.,
which the court calendar, and the court calendar alone,
had annually given to the late king. I can offer only a
paraphrase.

When I returned to the place where my mattress was flung,
the crowd had already sunk to rest, and there was a general
silence throughout the building. The few lights which our
jailers supplied to us, had become fewer; and, except for the
heavy sound of the doubled sentries’ tread outside, I might
have imagined myself in a vast cemetery. The agitation of the
day, followed by the somewhat unsuitable gayety of the evening,
had thrown me into such a state of mental and bodily fatigue,
that I had scarcely laid my side on my bed, untempting as it
was, when I dropped into a heavy slumber. The ingenuity of our
tormentors, however, prohibited our knowing any thing in the
shape of indulgence; and in realisation of the dramatist’s
renowned mot, “traitors never sleep,” the prison door
was suddenly flung open—a drum rattled through the
aisle—the whole body of the prisoners were ordered to
stand forth and answer to their names; this ceremony concluding
with the march of the whole night-guard into the chapel, and
their being ordered to load with ball-cartridge, to give us the
sufficient knowledge of what any attempt to escape would bring
upon us in future. This refinement in cruelty we owed to the
escapade of the night before.

At length, after a variety of insulting queries, even this
scene was over. The guard marched out, the roll of their drum
passed away among the cloisters; we went shivering to our
beds—threw ourselves down dressed as we were, and tried
to forget France and our jailers.

But a French night in those times was like no other, and I
had yet to witness a scene such as I believe could not have
existed in any other country of the globe.

After some period of feverish sleep I was awakened by a
strange murmur, which, mixing with my dreams, had given me the
comfortless idea of hearing the roar of the multitude at some
of the horrid displays of the guillotine; and as I half opened
my unwilling eyes, still heavy with sleep, I saw a long
procession of figures, in flowing mantles and draperies, moving
down the huge hall. A semicircle of beds filled the extremity
of the chapel, which had been vacated by a draft of unfortunate
beings, carried off during the day to that dreadful tribunal,
whose sole employment seemed to be the supply of the axe, and
from which no one was ever expected to return. While my eyes,
with a strange and almost superstitious anxiety—such is
the influence of time and place—followed this
extraordinary train, I saw it take possession of the range of
beds; each new possessor sitting wrapt in his pale vesture, and
perfectly motionless. I can scarcely describe the singular
sensations with which I continued to gaze on the spectacle. My
eyes sometimes closed, and I almost conceived that the whole
was a dream; but the forms were too distinct for this
conjecture, and the question with me now became, “are they
flesh and blood?” I had not sunk so far into reverie as to
imagine that they were the actual spectres of the unhappy
tenants of those beds on the night before, all of whom were
now, doubtless, in the grave; but the silence, the distance,
the dimness perplexed me, and I left the question to be settled
by the event. At a gesture from the central figure they all
stood up—and a man loaded with fetters was brought
forward in front of their line. I now found that a trial was
going on: the group were the judges, the man was the presumed
criminal; there was an accuser, there was an advocate—in
short, all the general process of a trial was passing before my
view. Curiosity would naturally have made me spring from my bed
and approach this extraordinary spectacle; but I am not ashamed
now to acknowledge, that I felt a
[pg 488] nervelessness and inability
to speak or move, which for the time wholly awed me. All
that I could discover was, that the accused was charged with
incivisme, and that, defying the court and disdaining
the charge, he was pronounced guilty—the whole circle,
standing up as the sentence was pronounced, and with a
solemn waving of their arms and murmur of their voices,
assenting to the act of the judge. The victim was then
seized on, swept away into the darkness, and after a brief
pause I heard a shriek and a crash; the sentence had been
fulfilled—all was over. The court now covered their
heads with their mantles, as if in sorrow for this
formidable necessity.

But how shall I speak of the closing scene? However it
surprised and absorbed me in that moment of nervous excitement,
I can allude to it now only as characteristic of a time when
every mind in France was half lunatic. I saw a figure enveloped
in star-coloured light emerge from the darkness, slowly ascend,
in a vesture floating round it like the robes which Raphael or
Guido gives to the beings of another sphere, and, accompanied
by a burst of harmony as it rose, ascend to the roof, where it
suddenly disappeared. All was instantly the silence and the
darkness of the grave.

Daylight brought back my senses, and I was convinced that
the pantomimic spirit of the people, however unaccountably it
might disregard proprieties, had been busy with the scene. I
should now certainly have abandoned the supernatural portion of
the conjecture altogether; but on mentioning it to Cassini, he
let me into the solution at once.

“Have you never observed,” said he, “the passion of all
people for walking on the edge of a precipice, climbing a
church tower, looking down from a battlement, or doing any one
thing which gives them the nearest possible chance of breaking
their necks?—then you can comprehend the performance of
last night. There we are, like fowls in a coop: every day sees
some of us taken out; and the amusement of the remaining fowls
is to imagine how the heads of the others were taken from their
bodies.” The prisoners were practising a trial.

I gave an involuntary look of surprise at this species of
amusement, and remarked something on the violation of common
feeling—to say nothing of the almost profaneness which it
involved.

“As to the feeling,” said Cassini, with that shrug which no
shoulders but those of a Frenchman can ever give, “it is a
matter of taste; and perhaps we have no right to dictate in
such matters to persons who would think a week a long lease of
life, and who, instead of seven days, may not have so many
hours. As to the profanation, if your English scruples made you
sensitive on such points, I can assure you that you might have
seen some things much more calculated to excite your
sensibilities. The display last night was simply the trial of a
royalist; and as we are all more or less angry with
republicanism at this moment, and with some small reason too,
the royalist, though he was condemned, as every body now is,
was suffered to have his apotheosis. But I have seen
exhibitions in which the republican was the criminal, and the
scene that followed was really startling even to my rather
callous conceptions. Sometimes we even had one of the colossal
ruffians who are now lording it over France. I have seen St
Just, Couthon, Caier, Danton, nay Robespierre himself;
arraigned before our midnight tribunal; for this amusement is
the only one which we can enjoy without fear of interruption
from our jailers. Thus we enjoy it with the greater gusto, and
revenge ourselves for the tribulations of the day by trying our
tormentors at night.”

“I am satisfied with the reason, although I am not yet quite
reconciled to the performance. Who were the actors?”

“You are now nearer the truth than you suspected. We have
men of every trade here, and, among the rest, we have actors
enough to stock the Comédie Française. If
you remain long enough among us, you will see some of the best
farces of the best time played uncommonly well by our fellow
détenus. But in the interim—for our stage
is permitted by the municipality to open in the St Lazare only
four times a month—a piece of
[pg 489] cruelty which we all regard
as intolerable—our actors refresh their faculties with
all kinds of displays. You acknowledge that the scene last
night was well got up; and if you should see the trial of
some of our ‘Grands Democrats,’ be assured that your
admiration will not be attracted by showy vesture, blue
lights, or the harmonies of the old asthmatic organ in
yonder gallery; our pattern will be taken from the last
scene of ‘Il Don Giovanni.’ You will have no pasteboard
figure suspended from the roof, and wafted upward in
starlight or moonlight. But if you wish to see the
exhibition, I am concerned to tell you that you must wait,
for to-night all our artistes are busy. In what, do
you conceive?”

I professed my inability to fathom “the infinite resources
of the native mind, where amusement was the question.”

“Well then—not to keep you in suspense—we are to
have a masquerade.”

The fact was even so. France having grown tired of all
things that had been, grew tired of weeks, and Decades were the
law of the land. The year was divided into packs of ten days
each, and she began the great game of time by shuffling and
cutting her cards anew. The change was not marked by any
peculiar good fortune; for it was laughed at, as every thing in
France was except an order for deportation to the colonies, or
a march to the scaffold. The populace, fully admitting the
right of government to deal with kings and priests as it
pleased, regarded the interference with their pleasures as a
breach of compact; and the result was, that the populace had
their Dimanche as well as their Decadi, and that the grand
experiment for wiping out the Sunday, issued in giving them two
holidays instead of one.

It was still early in the day when some bustle in the porch
of the prison turned all eyes towards it, and a new detachment
of prisoners was brought in. I shall say nothing of the scenes
of wretchedness which followed; the wild terrors of women on
finding themselves in this melancholy place, which looked, and
was, scarcely more than a vestibule to the tomb; the deep
distress of parents, with their children clinging round them,
and the general despair—a despair which was but too well
founded. Yet the tumult of their settling and distribution
among the various quarters of the chapel had scarcely subsided
when another scene was at hand. The commissary of the district
came in, with a list of the prisoners who were summoned before
the tribunal. Our prison population was like the waters of a
bath, as one stream flowed in another flowed out; the level was
constantly sustained. With an instinctive pang I heard my name
pronounced among those unhappy objects of sanguinary rule.
Cassini approached me with a smile, which he evidently put on
to conceal his emotion.

“This is quick work, M. Marston,” said he, taking my hand.
“As the ruffian in the school fable says, ‘Hodie tibi, cras
nihi’—twelve hours will probably make all the difference
between us.”

I took off the little locket coutaining my last remembrance
of Clotilde, and put it into his hands, requesting him, if he
survived, to transmit it to his incomparable countrywoman, with
an assurance that I remembered her in an hour when all else was
forgotten.

“I shall perform the part of your legatee,” said he, “till
to-morrow; then I will find some other depositary. Here you
must know that heirship is rapid, and that the will is executed
before the ink is dry.” He turned away to hide a tear. “I have
not known you long, sir,” said he; “but in this place we must
be expeditious in every thing. You are too young to die. If you
are sacrificed, I am convinced that you will die like a
gentleman and a man of honour. And yet I have some feeling,
some presentiment, nay almost a consciousness, that you will
not be cut off, at least until you are as weary of the world as
I am.”

I endeavoured to put on a face of resignation, if not of
cheerfulness, and said, “That though my country might revenge
my death, my being engaged in its service would only make my
condemnation inevitable. But I was prepared.”

“At all events, my young friend,”
[pg 490] said he, “if you escape
from this pandemonium of France, take this paper, and
vindicate the memory of Cassini.”

He gave me a memoir, which I could not help receiving with a
smile, from the brevity of the period during which the trust
was likely to hold. The gendarme now came up to demand my
attendance. I shook hands with the marquis, who at that moment
was certainly no philosopher, and followed the train.

We were about fifty in number; and after being placed in
open artillery waggons, the procession moved rapidly through
the suburb, until we reached one of those dilapidated and
hideous-looking buildings which were then to be found startling
the stranger’s eye with the recollections of the St Bartholomew
and the Fronde.

A crowd, assembled round the door of one of these melancholy
shades, and the bayonets of a company of the national guard
glittering above their heads, at length indicated the place of
our destination. The crowd shouted, and called us “aristocrats,
thirsting for the blood of the good citizens.” The line of the
guard opened, and we were rapidly passed through several halls,
the very dwelling of decay, until we reached a large court,
where the prisoners remained while the judges were occupied in
deciding on the fate of the train which the morning had already
provided. I say nothing of the insults which were intended, if
not to add new bitterness to death, to indulge the wretched men
and women who could find an existence in attending on the
offices of the tribunal, with opportunities of triumphing over
those born to better things. While we remained in the court
exposed to the weather, which was now cold and gusty, shouts
were heard at intervals, which, as the turnkeys informed us,
arose from the spectators of the executions—death, in
these fearful days, immediately following sentence. Yet, to the
last the ludicrous often mingled with the melancholy. While I
was taking my place in the file according to the order of our
summons, and was next in rotation for trial, a smart and
overdressed young man stepped out of his place in the rank, and
drawing from his bosom a pamphlet in manuscript, presented it
to me, with the special entreaty that, “in case I survived, I
should take care of its propagation throughout Europe.” My
answer naturally was, “That my fate was fully as precarious as
that of the rest, and that thus I had no hope of being able to
give his pamphlet to mankind.”

“Mais, monsieur,” that phrase which means so many
inexpressible things—”But, sir, you must observe, that by
putting my pamphlet into your charge, it has a double chance.
You may read it as a part of your defence; it is a treatise on
the government of France, which settles all the disputed
questions, reconciles republicanism with monarchy, and shows
how a revolution may be made to purify all things without
overthrowing any. Thus my sentiments will become public at
once, the world will be enlightened, and, though you may
perish, France will be saved.”

Nothing could be more convincing; yet I continued stubborn.
He persisted. I suggested the “possibility of my not being
suffered to make any defence whatever, but of being swept away
at once; in this case endangering the total loss of his
conceptions to the world;” but I had to deal with a man of
resources.

“No,” said the author and philanthropist; “for that event I
have provided. I have a second copy folded on my breast, which
I shall read when I am called on for trial. Then those immortal
truths shall not be left to accident; I shall have two chances
for celebrity; the labour of my life shall be known; nor shall
the name of Jean Jacques Pelletier go to the tomb without the
renown due to a philosopher.”

But further deprecation on my part was cut short by the
appearance of two of the guard, by whom I was marched to the
presence of the tribunal. The day had now waned, and two or
three lamps showed my weary eye the judges, whose decision was
to make the difference to me between life and death, within the
next half hour. Their appearance was the reverse of one likely
to reconcile the unfortunate to the severity of the law. They
were seven or eight sitting on a raised platform, with a long
table in their front, covered with papers, with
[pg 491] what seemed to be the
property taken from the condemned at the
moment—watches, purses, and trinkets; and among those
piles, very visibly the fragments of a dinner—plates
and soups, with several bottles of cognac and wine. Justice
was so indefatigable in France, that its ministers were
forced to mingle all the functions of public and private
life together; and to be intoxicated in the act of passing
sentence of death was no uncommon event.

The judges of those sectional tribunals were generally
ruffians of the lowest description, who, having made themselves
notorious by violence and Jacobinism, had driven away the usual
magistracy, and, under the pretext of administering justice,
were actually driving a gainful trade in robbery of every kind.
The old costume of the courts of law was of course abjured; and
the new civic costume, which was obviously constructed on the
principle of leaving the lands free for butchery, and
preserving the garments free from any chance of being
disfigured by the blood of the victim—for they were the
perfection of savage squalidness—was displayed
à la rigueur on the bench. A short coat without
sleeves, the shirt sleeves tucked up as for instant execution,
the neck open, no collar, fierce mustaches, a head of clotted
hair, sometimes a red nightcap stuck on one side, and sometimes
a red handkerchief tied round it as a temporary “bonnet de
nuit”—for the judges frequently, in drunkenness or
fatigue, threw themselves on the bench or the floor, and
slept—exhibited the regenerated aspect of Themis in the
capital of the polished world.

My name was now called. I shall not say with what a throb of
heart I heard it. But at the moment when I was stepping
forward, I felt my skirt pulled by one of the guard behind me.
I looked, and recognized through all his beard, and the hair
that in profusion covered his physiognomy, my police friend,
who seemed to possess the faculty of being every where—a
matter, however, rendered easier to him by his being in the
employ of the government—and who simply whispered the
words—”Be firm, and acknowledge nothing.” Slight as the
hint was, it had come in good time; for I had grown desperate
from the sight of the perpetual casualties round me, and, like
Cassini’s idea of the man walking on the edge of the precipice,
had felt some inclination to jump off, and take my chance. But
now contempt and defiance took the place of despair; and
instead of openly declaring my purposes and performances, my
mind was made up to leave them to find out what they could.

On my being marched up to the foot of the platform between
two frightful-looking ruffians, whose coats and trousers seemed
to have been dyed in gore, to show that they were worthy of the
murders of September, and who, to make “assurance doubly sure,”
wore on their sword-belts the word “September,” painted in
broad characters, I remained for a while unquestioned, until
they turned over a pile of names which they had flung on the
table before them. At last their perplexity was relieved by one
of the clerks, who pronounced my name. I was then interrogated
in nearly the same style as before the committee of my first
captors. I gave them short answers.

“Who are you?” asked the principal distributor of rabble
justice. The others stooped forward, pens in hand, to record my
conviction.

My answer was—

“I am a man.” (Murmurs on the platform.)

“Whence come you?”

“From your prison.”

“You are not a Frenchman?”

“No, thank Heaven!” (Murmurs again.)

“Beware, sir, of insolence to the tribunal. We can send you
instantly to punishment.”

“I know it. Why then try me at all?”

“Because, prisoner, we desire to hear the truth first.”

“First or last, can you bear to hear it?” (Angry looks, but
more attention.)

“We have no time to waste—the business of the Republic
must be done. Are you a citizen?”

“I am; a citizen of the world.”

“You must not equivocate with justice. Where did you live
before you were
arrested?”

“On the globe.” (A half-suppressed laugh among the crowd in
the back ground.)

“What profession?”

“None.”

“On what then do you live, have lived, or expect to
live?”

“To-day on nothing, for your guards have given me nothing.
Yesterday, I lived on what I could get. To-morrow, it depends
on circumstances whether I shall want any thing.” (A low murmur
of applause among the bystanders, who now gathered closer to
the front.)

“Prisoner,” said the chief, swilling a glass of cognac to
strengthen the solemnity of his jurisprudence, “the Republic
must not be trifled with. You are arraigned of
incivisme. Of what country are you a subject?”

“Of France, while I remain on her territory.”

“Have you fought for France?”

“I have; for her laws, her liberty, her property, and her
honour.” (Bravo! from the crowd.)

“Yet you are not a Republican?”

“No; no more than you are.”

This produced confusion on the bench. The hit was
contemptuously accidental; but it was a home-thrust at the
chief, who had former been a domestic in the Tuileries, and was
still strongly suspected of being a spy of the Bourbons. The
crowd who knew his story, who are always delighted with a blow
at power, burst into a general roar. But a little spruce fellow
on the bench, who had already exhibited a desire to take his
share in the interrogatory, now thrust his head over the table,
and said in his most searching tone—

“To come to the point—Prisoner, how do you live? What
are your means? All honest men must have visible means. That is
my question.” (All eyes were now turned on me.)

I was now growing angry; and, pointing to the pile of purses
and watches on the table—

“No man,” said I, “needs ask what are your visible means,
when they see that pile before you. Yet I doubt if that proves
you to be an honest man. That is my answer.”

The little inquisitor looked furious, and glanced towards
the chief for protection; but his intrusion had provoked wrath
in that quarter, and his glance was returned with a rigid
smile.

“Prisoner,” said the head of the tribunal, “though the
question was put improperly, it was itself a proper one. How do
you live?”

“By my abilities.”

“That is a very doubtful support in those times.”

“I do not recommend you, or any of those around you, to make
the experiment,” was my indignant answer.

The bystanders gave a general laugh, in which even the guard
joined. To get the laugh against one, is the most unpardonable
of all injuries in France, and this answer roused up the whole
tribunal. They scarcely gave themselves the trouble of a
moment’s consultation. A few nods and whispers settled the
whole affair; and the chief, standing up and drawing his sabre
from its sheath—then the significant custom of those
places of butchery, pronounced the fatal words, “Guilty of
incivisme. Let the criminal be conducted à la
Force,” the well-known phrase for immediate execution.

The door was opened from which none ever came back. Two
torches were seen glaring down the passage, and I was seized by
the grim escort who were to lead me to the axe.

The affectation of cowardice is as childish as the
affectation of courage; but I felt a sensation at that moment
which took me by surprise. I had been perfectly assured of my
sentence from the first glance at the judges. If ever there was
a spot on earth which deserved Dante’s motto of
Erebus—

it was the revolutionary tribunal. Despair was written all
over it in characters impossible to be mistaken. I had fixed my
resolution to go through the whole scene, if not with heroism,
at least with that decent firmness which becomes a man; yet the
sound of the words which consigned me to the scaffold struck me
with a general chill. Momentary as the period was, the question
passed through my mind, are those paralysed limbs the same
which bore me so well through the
[pg 493] hazards of the campaign?
Why am I to feel the fluttering of heart now, more than when
I was facing sabres and cannon-shot? Why am I thus frigid
and feeble, when I so lately fought and marched, and defied
alike fatigue and wounds? But I felt in this chamber of
death an inconceivable exhaustion, which had never
approached me in the havoc of the field. My feet refused to
move, my lips to breathe; all objects swam round, and sick
to death and fainting, I thrust out my hand to save me from
falling, and thus gave the last triumph to my murderers.

At this decisive moment I found my hand caught by a powerful
grasp, and a strong voice exclaiming, “Messieurs, I demand the
delay of this sentence. The criminal before you is of higher
importance to the state than the wretches whom justice daily
compels you to sacrifice. His crime is of a deeper dye. I
exhibit the mandate of the Government to arrest the act of the
tribunal, and order him to be reserved until he reveals the
whole of the frightful plots which endanger the Republic.”

He then advanced to the platform; and, taking a paper from
his bosom, displayed to the court and the crowd the order for
my being remanded to prison, signed by the triumvirate, whose
word was law in France. Some confusion followed on the bench,
and some bustle among the spectators; but the document was
undeniable, and my sentence was suspended. I am not sure that
the people within much regretted the delay, however those who
had been lingering outside might feel themselves ill-used by a
pause in the executions, which had now become a popular
amusement; for the crowd instantly pushed forward to witness
another trial of sarcasm between me and my judges; but this the
new authority sternly forbade.

“The prisoner,” said he, in a dictatorial tone, “is now in
my charge. He is a prisoner of state—an
Englishman—an agent of the monster Pitt”—(he
paused, and was answered with a general shudder;) “and, above
all, has actually been in arms with the fiend Brunswick, (a
general groan,) and with those worse than fiends, those
parricides, those emigrant nobles, who have come to burn our
harvests, slay our wives and children, and destroy the proudest
monument of human wisdom, the grandest triumph of human
success, and the most illustrious monument of the age of
regeneration—the Republic of France.” Loud acclamations
followed this popular rhetoric; and the panegyrist, firmly
grasping me by the arm, walked with me rapidly out of court.
All made way for him, and, before another word could be uttered
by the astounded bench, we were in one of the covered carriages
reserved for prisoners of the higher rank, and on our way, at
full gallop, through the intricate streets of Paris.

All this was done with such hurried action, that I had
scarcely time to know what my own emotions were; but the relief
from immediate death, or rather from those depressing and
overwhelming sensations which perhaps make its worst
bitterness, was something, and hope dawned in me once more.
Still, it was wholly in vain that I attempted to make my man of
mystery utter a word. Nothing could extort a syllable from him,
and he was evidently unwilling that I should even see his face,
imperfect as the chance was among the few lamps which Paris
then exhibited to enlighten the dismal darkness of her
thoroughfares. Yet the idea that my rescue was not without a
purpose predominated; and I was beginning even to imagine that
I already felt the fresh air of the fields, and that our
journey would terminate outside the walls of Paris, when the
carriage came to a full stop, and, by the light of a torch
streaming on the wind in front, I saw the gate of the St
Lazare. All was now over—resistance or escape was equally
beyond me. The carriage was surrounded by the guard, who
ordered me to descend; their officer received the rescript for
my safe custody, and I had nothing before me but the dungeon.
But at the moment when my foot was on the step of the vehicle,
my companion stooped forward, and uttered in my ear, with a
pressure of my hand, the word “Mordecai.” I was hurried onward,
and the carriage drove away.

My surprise was excessive. This talismanic word changes the
current [pg 494] of my thoughts at once. It
had so often and so powerfully operated in my favour, that I
could scarcely doubt its effect once more; yet before me
were the stern realities of confinement. What spell was
equal to those stonewalls, what dexterity of man or
friendship, or even the stronger love of woman, could make
my dungeon free, or my chains vanish into “thin air?” Still
there had been a interposition, and to that interposition,
whether for future good or ill, it certainly was due that I
was not already mounting the scaffold, or flung, headless
trunk, into the miserable and nameless grave.

As I passed again through the cloisters, my ears were caught
with the sound of music and dancing. The contrast was
sufficiently strong to the scene from which I had just
returned; yet this was the land of contrasts. To my look of
surprise, the turnkey who attended me answered “Perhaps you
have forgotten that this is Decadi, and on this night we always
have our masquerade. If you have not got a dress, I shall
supply you; my wife is a fripier in the Antoine; she
supplies all the civic fêtes with costumes, and you may
have any dress you like, from a grand signor with his turban,
down to a colporteur with his pack, or a watchman with
his nightcap.”

My mind was still too unsettled to enjoy masquerading,
notwithstanding the temptation of the turnkey’s wardrobe; and I
felt all that absence of accommodation to circumstances, that
want of plasticity, that failure of grasping at every
hair’s-breadth of enjoyment, which is declared by foreigners to
form the prodigious deficiency of John Bull. If I could have
taken refuge, for that night at least, in the saddest cell of
the old convent, or in the deepest dungeon of the new prison, I
should have gone to either with indulgence. I longed to lay
down my aching brains upon my pillow, and forget the fever of
the time. But prisoners have no choice; and the turnkey, after
repeating his recommendations that I should not commit an act
of such profound offence as to appear in the assembly without a
domino, if I should take nothing else from the store of the
most popular marchande in Paris, the wife of his bosom,
at last, with a shake of his head and a bending of his heavy
brows at my want of taste, unlocked the gate, and thrust me
into the midst of my old quarters, the chapel.

There a new scene indeed awaited me. The place which I had
left filled with trembling clusters of people, whole families
clinging to each other in terror, loud or mute, but all in the
deepest dread of their next summons, I found in a state of the
most extravagant festivity—the chapel lighted up from
floor to root—bouquets planted wherever it was possible
to fix an artificial flower—gaudy wreaths depending from
the galleries—and all the genius of this country of
extremes lavished on attempts at decoration. Rude as the
materials were, they produced at first sight a remarkably
striking effect. More striking still was the spectacle of the
whole multitude in every grotesque dress of the world, dancing
away as if life was but one festival.

As I stood aloof for a while, wholly dazzled by the glare,
the movement, and the multitude, I was recognised by some of my
“old” acquaintance—the acquaintance of twenty-four
hours—but here time, like every thing else, had changed
its meaning, and a new influx had recruited the hall. Cassini
and some others came forward and welcomed me, like one who had
returned from the tomb—the news of the day was given and
exchanged—a bottle of champagne was prescribed as the
true medicine for my lowness of pulse—and I gradually
gave myself up to the spirit of the hour.

As I wandered through the crowd, a mask dressed as a sylph
bent its head over my shoulder, and I heard the words, “Why are
you not in a domino?” I made some careless answer. “Go and get
one immediately,” was the reply. “Take this card, fasten it on
your robe, and meet me here again.” The mask put a card marked
with a large rose into my hand, and was gone waltzing away
among the crowd. I still lingered, leaning against one of the
pillars of the aisle. The mask again approached me. “Monsieur
Anglais,” was the whisper, “you do not know your friends. Go
and furnish yourself with
[pg 495] a domino. It is essential
to your safety.” “Who are my friends, and why do you give me
this advice?” was my enquiry. The mask lightly tripped round
me, laid its ungloved hand on mine, as if in the mere sport
of the dance; and I saw that it was the hand of a female
from its whiteness and delicacy. I was now more perplexed
than ever. As the form floated round me with the lightness
of a zephyr, it whispered the word “Mordecai,” and flew off
into an eddy of the moving multitude. I now obeyed the
command; went to the little shrine where the turnkey’s wife
had opened her friperie, and equipped myself with the
dress appointed; and, with the card fixed upon my bosom,
returned to take my station beside the pillar. But no sylph
came again; no form rivaled the zephyr before me. I listened
for that soft, low voice; but listened in vain. Yet what was
all this but the common sport of a masquerade?

However, an object soon drew the general attention so
strongly, as to put an end to private curiosity for the time.
This was a mask in the uniform of a national guard, but so
outrageously fine that his entrée excited an
universal burst of laughter. But when, after a few displays of
what was apparently all but intoxication, he began a detail of
his own exploits, it was evident that the whole was a daring
caricature; and as nothing could be less popular among us than
the heroes of the shops, the Colonels Calicot, and Mustaches
au comptoir, all his burlesque told incomparably. The
old officers among us, the Vendéans, and all the
ladies—for the sex are aristocrats under every government
and in every region of the globe—were especially
delighted. “Alexandre Jules Cæsar,” colonel of the “brave
battalion of the Marais,” was evidently worth a dozen
field-marshals in his own opinion; and his contempt for
Vendôme, Marlborough, and Frederick le Grand, was only
less piquant than the perfect imitation and keen burlesque of
Santerre, Henriot, and our municipal warriors. At length when
his plaudits and popularity were at their height, he proposed a
general toast to the “young heroism,” of the capital, and
prefaced it by a song, in great repute in the old French
service.

The dashing style in which this hereditary song of the
French camp was given by “Colonel Alexandre Jules Cæsar”
of the “brave battalion of the Marais,” his capitally awkward
imitation of the soldier of the old régime, and
his superb affectation of military nonchalance, were so
admirable, that his song excited actual raptures of applause.
His performance was encored, and he was surrounded by a group
of nymphs and graces, among whom his towering figure looked
like a grenadier of Brobdignag in the circle of a Liliputian
light company. He carried on the farce for a while with great
adroitness and animation; but at length he put the
[pg 496] circle of tinsel and
tiffany aside, and rushing up to me, insisted on making me a
recruit for the “brave battalion of the Marais.” But I had
no desire to play a part in this pantomime, and tried to
disengage myself. One word again made me a captive: that
word was now “Lafontaine;” and at the same moment I saw the
sylph bounding to my side. What was I to think of this
extraordinary combination? All was as strange as a midsummer
night’s dream. The “colonel,” as if fatigued, leaned against
the pillar, and slightly removing his mask, I saw, with
sudden rejoicing, the features of that gallant young friend,
whom I had almost despaired of ever seeing again. “Wait in
this spot until I return,” was all that I heard, before he
and the sylph had waltzed away far down the hall.

I waited for some time in growing anxiety; but the
pleasantry of the night went on as vividly as ever, and some
clever tableaux vivants had varied the quadrilles. While
the dancers gave way to a well-performed picture of Hector and
Andromache from the Iliad, and the hero was in the act
of taking the plumed helmet from his brow, with a grace which
enchanted our whole female population, an old Savoyard and his
daughter came up, one playing the little hand-organ of their
country, and the other dancing to her tamborine. This was
pretty, but my impatience was ill disposed to look or listen;
when I was awakened by a laugh, and the old man’s mask being
again half turned aside, I again saw my friend: the man moved
slowly through the crowd, and I followed. We gradually twined
our way through the labyrinth of pillars, leaving the festivity
further and further behind, until he came to a low door, at
which the Savoyard tapped, and a watchword being given, the
cell was opened. There our robes and masks were laid aside; we
found peasant dresses, for which we exchanged them; and
following a muffled figure who carried a lantern, we began our
movements again through the recesses of the endless building.
At length we came to a stop, and our guide lifting up a
ponderous stone which covered the entrance to a deep and dark
staircase, we began to descend. I now for the first time heard
the cheerful voice of Lafontaine at my side. “I doubt,” said
he, “whether a hundred years ago any one of us would have
ventured on a night march of this kind; for, be it known to
you, that we are now in the vaults of the convent, and shall
have to go through a whole regiment of monks and abbots in full
parade.” I observed that, “if we were to meet them at all, they
would be less likely to impede our progress dead than alive;”
but I still advised Lafontaine to allude as little as he could
to the subject, lest it might have the effect of alarming our
fair companion. “There is no fear of that,” said he, “for
little Julie is in love with M. le Comte, our gallant guide;
and a girl of eighteen desperately in love, is afraid of
nothing. You Englishmen are not remarkable for superstition;
and as for me and my compatriots, we have lost our reverence
for monks in any shape since the taking of the Bastile.”

We now went on drearily and wearily through a range of
catacombs, stopping from time to time to ascertain whether we
were pursued; and occasionally not a little startled by the
sudden burst of sound that came from the revelry above, through
the ventilators of these enormous vaults. But the Count had
well prepared his measures, had evidently traced his way
before, and led us on without hinderance, until we approached a
species of sallyport, which, once opened, would have let us out
into the suburb. Here misfortune first met us; none of the keys
which the Count had brought with him would fit the lock. It was
now concluded by our alarmed party, either that the design of
escape had been discovered, or that the lock had been changed
since the day before. Here was an insurmountable difficulty. To
break down the gate, or break through it, was palpably
impossible, for it was strongly plated with iron, and would
have resisted every thing but a six-pounder. What was to be
done? To remain where we were was starvation and death; to
return, would be heart-breaking; yet escape was clearly out of
the question. The Count was furious, as he tried in vain
[pg 497] to shake the solid
obstacle; Lafontaine was in despair. I, rather more quietly,
took it for granted that the guillotine would settle all our
troubles in the course of the next day; and the pretty
Julie, in a deluge of tears, charging herself with having
undone us all, hung upon the neck of her cavalier, and
pledged herself, by all the hopes and fears of passion, to
die along with him. While the lovers were exchanging their
last vows, Lafontaine, in all the vexation of his soul, was
explaining to me the matchless excellence of the plot, which
had been thus defeated in the very moment of promised
success.

“You perhaps remember,” said he, “the letter which the
father of Mariamne, that dearest girl whom I shall now never
see again in this world, gave you for one of his nation in
Paris. On the night when I last saw you, I had found it lying
on your table; and in the confusion of the moment, when I
thought you killed, and rushed into the street to gain some
tidings of you, I took charge of the letter, to assist me in
the enquiry. Unlucky as usual, I fell into the hands of a
rabble returning from the plunder of the palace, was fired on,
was wounded, and carried to the St Lazare. The governor was a
man of honour and a royalist, and he took care of me during a
dangerous illness and a slow recovery. But to give me liberty
was out of his power. I had lost sight of the world so long,
that the world lost sight of me, and I remained, forgetting and
forgotten; until, within these two days—when I received a
note from the head of the family to whom your letter was
directed, informing me that you had been arrested and sent to
the very prison in which I was—my recollection of the
world suddenly revived, and I determined to save you if
possible. I had grown familiar with the proceedings of that
tribunal of demons, the Revolutionary committee; and as I had
no doubt of your condemnation, through the mere love of
bloodshed, I concerted with my Jewish friend the plan of having
you claimed as a British agent, who had the means of making
important disclosures to the government. If this succeeded,
your life was saved for the day, and your escape was prepared
for the night. This weeping girl is the daughter of the late
governor, who has engaged in our plot to save the life of her
affianced husband; and now, within an hour of daylight, when
escape will be impossible, all our plans are thrown
away—we are brought to a dead stand by the want of one
miserable key, and shall have nothing more to do than to make
up our minds to die with what composure we can.”

Having finished his story, the narrator wrapt up his head in
his cloak, and laid himself down like one determined never to
rise again. The Count and his Julie were so engaged in
recapitulating their sorrows, sitting side by side on a
tombstone, like a pair of monumental figures, that they had
neither ear nor eye for any thing else; but my English nature
was made of sterner stuff, and thinking that at the last I
could but die, I took the lantern and set sturdily to work to
examine the gate. It was soon evident that it could be neither
undermined nor broken down by any strength of ours; but it was
also evident that the lock was the old one which had closed it
perhaps for the last century, and that the right key was the
only thing wanting. Leaving Lafontaine in his despair lying at
the foot of the monument, on which the lovers sat murmuring
like a pair of turtle doves, I determined to make a thorough
search for the missing key, and made my way back through all
the windings of the catacomb, tracing the ground step by step.
Still no key was to be found. At last I reached the cell where
we had changed our dresses, and examined table, floor, and
chair. Still nothing was to be found; but, unluckily, the light
of the lantern glancing through the loop-hole of the cell,
caught the eye of the sentinel on the outside, and he
challenged. The sound made me start; and I took up one of the
robes to cover the light. Something hard struck my hand. It was
in the gown of the Savoyard’s daughter. I felt its pockets,
and, to my infinite astonishment and delight, produced the key.
The pretty Julie, who had procured it, had forgotten every
thing in the rapture of meeting her lover, and had left it
behind her when she threw off her masquerading
costume.

I now hastened back with the rapid step becoming the bearer
of good tidings, and revived the group of despair. The key was
applied to the lock, but it refused to move, and we had another
pang of disappointment. Lafontaine uttered a groan, and Julie
poured another gush of tears upon her companion’s shoulder. I
made the experiment again; the rust of the lock was now found
to have been our only hinderance; and with a strong turn the
bolt flew back, and the door was open.

We had all been so much exhausted by agitation, and the
dreary traverse of the catacomb, that the first gush of fresh
air conveyed a sensation almost of new life. The passage had
probably been formed in the period when every large building in
Paris was a species of fortress; and we had still a portcullis
to pass. When we first pushed against it, we felt another
momentary pang; but age had made it an unfaithful guardian, and
a few stout attacks on its decayed bars gave us free way. We
were now under the open sky; but, to our consternation, a new
and still more formidable difficulty presented itself. The moat
was still to be passed. To attempt the drawbridge was hopeless;
for we could hear the sentinel pacing up and down its creaking
planks. The moment was critical; for a streak of grey light in
the far east showed that the day was at hand. After resolving
all imaginable plans, and abandoning them all as fruitless;
determining, at all events, never to return, and yet without
the slightest prospect of escape, except in the bottom of that
sullen pool which lay at our feet—the thought occurred to
me, that in my return through the vault I had stumbled over the
planks which covered a vault lately dug for a prisoner.
Communicating my idea to Lafontaine, we returned to the spot,
loaded ourselves with the planks, and fortunately found them of
the length that would reach across the narrowest part of the
fosse. Our little bridge was made without delay, and Lafontaine
led the way, followed by the count and Julie, I waiting to see
them safe across, before I added my weight to the frail
structure. But I was not yet fated to escape. The sentinel,
whose vigilance I had startled by my lantern in the cell, had
given the alarm; and, as I was setting my foot on the plank, a
discharge of fire-arms came from the battlement above. I felt
that I was struck, and a stunning sensation seized me. I made
an attempt to spring forward, but suddenly found myself unable
to move. The patrol from the drawbridge now surrounded me, and
in this helpless state, bleeding, and as I thought dying, I was
hurried back into the St Lazare.

After a fortnight’s suffering in the hospital of the prison,
which alone probably saved me from the guillotine, then almost
the natural death of all the suspected, I was enabled to get on
my feet again. I found the prison as full as ever, but nearly
all its inmates had been changed except the Vendéans,
whom the crooked policy of the time kept alive, partly to avoid
raising the whole province in revolt, partly as hostages for
their countrymen.

On my recovery, I had expected to be put down once more in
the list for trial; but it reached even the prison, that the
government were in a state of alarm for themselves, which
prevented them from indulging their friends in the streets with
the national amusement. The chance of mounting the scaffold
themselves had put the guillotine out of fashion; and two or
three minor attempts at the seizure of the Jacobin sceptre by
the partisans of the Girondists and Cordeliers, had been put
down with such difficulty, that even the Jacobin Club had begun
to protest against bloodshed, through the prospect of a speedy
retaliation. Thus we were suffered to linger on. But, “disguise
thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter
draught,” and the suspense was heart-sickening. At length,
however, a bustle outside the walls, the firing of alarm guns,
and the hurrying of the national guard through the streets,
told us that some new measure of atrocity was at hand, and we
too soon learned the cause.

The army under Dumourier had been attacked by the Austrians
under Clairfait, and had been defeated with heavy loss;
despatches had been received from their favourite general, in
all the rage of failure, declaring that the sole cause of the
disaster was [pg 499] information conveyed from
the capital to the Austrian headquarters, and demanding a
strict enquiry into the intrigues which had thus tarnished
the colours of the Republic. No intelligence could have been
more formidable to a government, which lived from day to day
on the breath of popularity; and, to turn the wrath of the
rabble from themselves, an order was given to examine the
prisons, and send the delinquents to immediate execution. It
may be easily believed that the briefest enquiry was enough
for vengeance, and the prisoners of St Lazare were the first
to furnish the spectacle. A train of carts rattled over the
pavement of our cloisters, and we were ordered to mount them
without delay. The guard was so strong as to preclude all
hope of resistance; and with all the pomp of a military
pageant, drums beating, trumpets sounding, and bands playing
Ça Ira and the Marseillaise, we left
our dreary dwelling, which habit had now almost turned into
a home, and moved through the principal streets of the
capital, for the express purposes of popular display, in the
centre of a large body of horse and foot, and an
incalculable multitude of spectators, until in the distance
we saw the instrument of death.