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226

EXPENSE OF THE SETTLEMENT.

it according to the method most approved hereby cutting off the head of the slave employed to bury it. The outlay of this colony is immensenearly a million and a half annually--an army of 30,000 men, and an incalculable loss of life-without the return of a single franc. Even the coral fishery at Bona, one of the most valuable sources of profit, has been completely neglected.

By three ways could the conquest of Algiers have been made advantageous to France :

First-By opening a commerce with the interior. Secondly-By the improvement and colonization of this splendid country itself. And thirdly-By the improvement and better regulation of the coral fishery. In no one of these have they succeeded. I shall not dwell on the atrocities committed on the inoffensive Jews and natives by the soldiery during and since the siege. The horrors of war must always bring such, and the French have never been famed for their clemency; but nothing can justify their treatment of the people of Bona, whom they deserted, and left to the mercy of the Arabs and Kabyles, after persuading them to take up arms for France. There has not been a single manufactory established, and nothing done to better the condition, or conciliate the good will of the natives.

The French speak of the taking of Algiers as one of the proudest feats in the annals of their history. Let us now see how this was effected and that from the pen of their own

EXPEDITION OF 1830.

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The

historian, who tells us that they fitted out an armament of 34,184 men, and that the fleet consisted of 10 ships of the line, 24 frigates, 14 corvettes, 23 brigs, 9 gabanes, 8 bombs, 4 schooners, 7 steamers, and 357 transports. This fleet entered the bay in June, 1830, and landed the troops, unopposed, at a place called Side-Ferout, or Turretta-Chico, some ten miles to the west of the town. Algerines had no force in the field, as the greater number of Arabs and Bedawees, from want of pay and provisions, were totally disorganised, and had returned to the mountains after a few days' service, and the Turkish army in the town and its vicinity did not, at any time, amount to 7,000 men; with the Dey, an infatuated old man, who offered comparatively little resistance, either resting upon the impregnability of his town, from the many assaults it had already successfully resisted-or worked on by his faith in predestination, so that when asked by one of the consuls why he did not oppose the French landing, he returned for answer, "And if I did, how could I cut off all their heads?"

The French advanced cautiously through the broken country to the town, through places where the Bedawee cavalry, the chief stay of an eastern

* See the work published by Rozet, one of the officers engaged in the expedition, and now resident at Algiers. See also United Service Journal for 1830, which makes the estimate 11 ships of the line, 23 frigates, 23 brigs, 4 barges, 4 bombs, and 3 steamers, which seems quite under the mark.

228

HISTORY OF THE CAMPAIGN.

army, could not be of any service. The works and redoubts thrown up over every inch of ground where they advanced, certainly speaks well for the caution of their leader. In a short time they arrived near the city, and erected a battery opposite the Emperor's fort, one of the strongest works, and completely commanding the town, from which it is not half a mile distant. This was silenced after a few hours, and the thousand men it contained rushed tumultuously into the town, having first set fire to the magazine, which blew up with a tremendous explosion.

From that moment Algiers was in the power of the conquerors, as Fort L'Empereur and the neighbouring heights would have soon battered it to atoms. Indeed one only wonders that the landdefences of this stronghold were so weak, as there is hardly a height in the neighbourhood by which it could not be commanded. But a land attack was never expected, every such previous attempt having failed, principally owing to the obstacles presented by the coast itself, and the violence of the sea; of which the unfortunate attempt of the emperor Charles V. is a well-known instance.

The Dey being at last persuaded of his imminent danger, sent in great perturbation for the English consul, who honestly told him that further resistance was impossible, and that the town must surrender. At the Dey's earnest solicitation he became the mediator; a carte blanche was for

THE NAVAL ATTACK.

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warded through him to Bourmont, and was signed by him next morning, and the French entered Algiers on the 5th of July, the Dey being allowed to remove all his personal property, amounting, it is said, to about £2,000,000 in jewels and specie. How far the property of more private individuals was respected, I shall not now say. On the Dey's departure, he presented his gold-sheathed yategan to Mr. St. John, for his valuable services.

So far for the land attack. In the mean time, the immense armament I have described was cruising in the bay, but never once ventured within range of the batteries, and although it kept up a fire, few shots ever reached the shore. This so emboldened the Algerines, that they sent out a couple of brigs, and two or three rotten schooners and feluccas, to attack the whole French fleet. Their going out was an instance of extraordinary daring, perhaps we might say, of infatuation; but what was still more wonderful, they came back safe and sound; so that the whole damage done by the French fleet was, by their own official documents, estimated at seven francs and a half! And for this the admiral was made a peer of France! As Ries Omar, who commanded in the Mohammadan fleet, said to me, "An English frigate would have blown us out of the water." The contrast is so forcible, and the result so different, that I could not help looking back on Lord Exmouth's gallant attack on this place when the spanker-boom of the old Queen

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ANIMOSITY TOWARDS THE FRENCH.

Charlotte actually knocked the pipe from the mouth of one of the Turkish artillerymen, who was sitting at a gun, fuse in hand, at the tremendous mole battery; and with the Dutch fleet, sustaining one of the hottest fires ever known for upwards of six hours, and when he had destroyed all the stores, ships, batteries, and was knocking the town about the Dey's ears, and every thing was in his power, what was his answer to the terms of capitulation offered by the Dey: "England does not war for cities, and is unwilling to visit your personal cruelties upon the inoffensive inhabitants."

Animosity against France was long cherished here, and the want of faith in that people was instanced so long back as 1720, in the answer of Mahomet Basha to the French consul, and which also tells the condition and education of a former Dey-"My mother sold sheep's feet, and my father sold neats' tongues, but they would be ashamed to expose for sale so worthless a tongue as thine."

I think I have shown that the present condition of affairs here has injured English commerce. We are now at peace with France, and long may we continue to cherish the present feelings of amity towards so brave and enlightened a nation; there is, however, a possibility of our being again at war, and then Algiers would be a very dangerous post in the Mediterranean; and if it be true that the French have long coveted Port Mahon, stand

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