Still his Koran is a collection of ridiculous revelations and vague and incoherent predictions, combined with laws that were very good for the country in which he lived, and all which continue to be followed, without having been changed or weakened, either by Mahometan interpreters or by new decrees. The poets of Mecca were hostile to Mahomet, but above all the doctors. These raised the magistracy against him, and a warrant was issued for his apprehension as only duly accused and convicted of having said that God must be adored, and not the stars. This, it is known, was the source of his greatness. When it was seen that he could not be put down, and that his writings were becoming popular, it was given out in the city that he was not the author of them, or that at least he was assisted in their composition by a learned Jew, and sometimes by a learned Christian--supposing that there were at that time learned Jews and learned Christians.
So, in our days, more than one prelate has been reproached with having set monks to compose his sermons and funeral orations. There was one Father Hercules (_Père Hercule_) who made sermons for a certain bishop, and when people went to hear him preach, they used to say, "Let us go and hear the _labors of Hercules_."
To this charge Mahomet gives an answer in his 16th chapter, occasioned by a gross blunder he had made in the pulpit, about which a great deal had been said. He gets out of the scrape thus: "When thou readest the Koran, address thyself to God, that He may preserve thee from the machinations of Satan. He has power only over those who have chosen Him for their Master, and who give associates unto God.
"When I substitute one verse for another in the Koran (the reason for which changes is known to God) some unbelievers cry out, _'Thou hast forged those verses'_; but they know not how to distinguish truth from falsehood. Say rather that the Holy Spirit brought those verses of truth to me from God. Others say, still more malignantly, _There is a certain man who labors with him in composing the Koran_. But how can this man, to whom they attribute my works, have taught me, speaking as he does, a foreign language, while the Koran is written in the purest Arabic?"
He who, it was pretended, assisted Mahomet, was a Jew named _Bensalen_ or _Bensalon_. It is not very likely that a Jew should have lent his assistance to Mahomet in writing against the Jews; yet the thing is not impossible. The monk who was said to have contributed to the Koran was by some called _Bohaira_, by others _Sergius_. There is something pleasant in this monk's having had both a Latin and an Arabic name. As for the fine theological disputes which have arisen among the Mussulmans, I have no concern with them; I leave them to the decision of the mufti.
In "The Triumph of the Cross" (_"le Triomphe de la Croix"_) the Koran is said to be Arian, Sabellian, Carpocratian, Cardonician, Manichæan, Donatistic, Origenian, Macedonian, and Ebionitish. Mahomet, however, was nothing of all this; he was rather a _Jansenist_, for the foundation of his doctrine is the absolute degree of gratuitous predestination.
SECTION II.
This Mahomet, son of Abdallah, was a bold and sublime charlatan. He says in his tenth chapter, "Who but God can have composed the Koran? Mahomet, you say, has forged this book. Well; try then to write one chapter resembling it and call to your aid whomsoever you please." In the seventeenth he exclaims, "Praise be to Him who in one night transported His servant from the sacred temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem!"
This was a very fine journey, but nothing like that which he took the very same night from planet to planet. He pretended that it was five hundred years' journey from one to another, and that he cleft the moon in twain. His disciples who, after his death, collected, in a solemn manner, the verses of this Koran, suppressed this celestial journey, for they dreaded raillery and philosophy. After all, they had too much delicacy; they might have trusted to the commentators, who would have found no difficulty whatever in explaining the itinerary. Mahomet's friends should have known by experience that the marvellous is the reason of the multitude; the wise contradict in silence, which the multitude prevent them from breaking. But while the itinerary of the planets was suppressed, a few words were retained about the adventure of the moon. One cannot be always on one's guard.
The Koran is a rhapsody, without connection, without order, and without art. This tedious book is, nevertheless, said to be a very fine production, at least by the Arabs, who assert that it is written with an elegance and purity that no later work has equalled. It is a poem, or sort of rhymed prose, consisting of three thousand verses. No poem ever advanced the fortune of its author so much as the Koran. It was disputed among the Mussulmans whether it was eternal or God had created it in order to dictate it to Mahomet. The doctors decided that it was eternal, and they were right; this eternity is a much finer opinion than the other, for with the vulgar we must always adopt that which is the most incredible.
The monks who have attacked Mahomet, and said so many silly things about him, have asserted that he could not write. But how can we imagine that a man who had been a merchant, a poet, a legislator, and a sovereign, did not know how to sign his name? If his book is bad for our times and for us, it was very good for his contemporaries, and his religion was still better. It must be acknowledged that he reclaimed nearly the whole of Asia from idolatry. He taught the unity of God, and forcibly declaimed against all those who gave him associates. He forbade usury with foreigners, and commanded the giving of alms. With him prayer was a thing of absolute necessity, and resignation to the eternal decrees the _primum mobile_ of all. A religion so simple and so wise, taught by one who was constantly victorious, could hardly fail to subjugate a portion of the earth. Indeed the Mussulmans have made as many proselytes by their creed as by their swords; they have converted the Indians and the negroes to their religion; even the Turks, who conquered them, submitted to Islamism.
Mahomet allowed many things to remain in his law which he had found established among the Arabs--as circumcision, fasting, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which was instituted four thousand years before his time; ablutions, so necessary to health and cleanliness in a burning country, where linen was unknown; and the idea of a last judgment, which the magi had always inculcated, and which had reached the inhabitants of Arabia. It is said that on his announcing that we should rise again quite naked, his wife. _Aishca_, expressed her opinion that the thing would be immodest and dangerous. "Do not be alarmed, my dear," said he, "no one will then feel any inclination to _laugh_." According to the Koran, an angel will weigh both men and women in a great balance; this idea, too, is taken from the magi. He also stole from them their narrow bridge which must be passed over after death; and their elysium, where the Mussulmans elect will find baths, well-furnished apartments, good beds, and houris with great black eyes. He does, it is true, say that all these pleasures of the senses, so necessary to those that are to rise again with senses, will be nothing in comparison with the pleasure of contemplating the Supreme Being. He has the humility to confess that he himself will not enter paradise through his own merits, but purely by the _will_ of God. Through this same _pure Divine will_ he orders that a fifth part of the spoil shall always be reserved for the prophet.
It is not true that he excludes women from paradise. It is hardly likely that so able a man should have chosen to embroil himself with that half of the human race by which the other half is led. Abulfeda relates that an old lady one day importuned him to tell her what she must do to get into paradise. "My good lady," said he, "paradise is not for old women." The good woman began to weep, but the prophet consoled her by saying, "There will be no old women because they will become young again." This consolatory doctrine is confirmed in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Koran.
He forbade wine because some of his followers once went intoxicated to prayers. He permitted a plurality of wives, conforming in this point to the immemorial usage of the orientals.
In short, his civil laws are good; his doctrine is admirable in all which it has in common with ours; but his means are shocking--villainy and murder!
He is excused by some, on the first of these charges, because, say they, the Arabs had a hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets before him, and there could be no great harm in the appearance of one more; men, it is added, require to be deceived. But how are we to justify a man who says, _"Believe that I have conversed with the angel Gabriel, or pay me tribute!"_ How superior is _Confucius_--the first of mortals who have not been favored with revelations! He employs neither falsehood nor the sword, but only reason. The viceroy of a great province, he causes the laws to be observed and morality to flourish; disgraced and poor, he teaches them. He practises them alike in greatness and in humiliation; he renders virtue amiable; and has for his disciples the most ancient and wisest people on the earth.
In vain does Count de Boulainvilliers, who had some respect for Mahomet, extol the Arabs. Notwithstanding all his boastings, they were a nation of banditti. They robbed before Mahomet, when they adored the stars; they robbed under Mahomet in the name of God. They had, say you, the simplicity of the heroic ages; but what were these heroic ages?--times when men cut one another's throats for a well or a cistern, as they now do for a province?
The first Mussulmans were animated by Mahomet with the rage of enthusiasm. Nothing is more terrible than a people who, having nothing to lose, fight in the united spirit of rapine and of religion.
It is true there was not much art in their proceedings. The contract of marriage between Mahomet and his first wife expresses that, while _Cadisha_ loves him, and he in like manner loves _Cadisha_, it is thought meet to join them. But is there the same simplicity in having composed a genealogy which makes him descend in a right line from Adam, as several Spanish and Scotch families have been made to descend?
The great prophet experienced the disgrace common to so many husbands, after which no one should complain. The name of him who received the favors of his second wife was _Assam_. The behavior of Mahomet, on this occasion, was even more lofty than that of Cæsar, who put away his wife, saying, "The wife of Cæsar ought not to be suspected." The prophet _would not_ suspect his. He sent to heaven for a chapter of the Koran, affirming that his wife was faithful. This chapter, like all the others, had been written _from all eternity_.
He is admired for having raised himself from being a camel-driver to be a pontiff, a legislator, and a monarch; for having subdued Arabia, which had never before been subjugated; for having given the first shock to the Roman Empire in the East, and to that of the Persians; and _I_ admire him still more for having kept peace in his house among his wives. He changed the face of part of Europe, one half of Asia, and nearly all Africa; nor was his religion unlikely, at one time, to subjugate the whole earth. On how trivial a circumstance will revolutions sometimes depend! A blow from a stone, a little harder than that which he received in his first battle, might have changed the destiny of the world!
His son-in-law Ali asserted that when the prophet was about to be inhumed, he was found in a situation not very common to the dead. The words of the Roman sovereign might be well applied in this case: _"Decet imperatorem stantem mori."_ Never was the life of a man written more in detail than his; the most minute particulars were regarded as sacred. We have the name and the numbers of all that belonged to him--nine swords, three lances, three bows, seven cuirasses, three bucklers, twelve wives, one white cock, seven horses, two mules, and four camels, besides the mare _Borac_, on which he went to heaven. But this last he had only borrowed; it was the property of the angel Gabriel.
All his sayings have been preserved. One was that _the enjoyment of women made him more fervent in prayer_. Besides all his other knowledge he is said to have been a great _physician_; so that he wanted none of the qualifications for deceiving mankind.
ALEXANDER.
It is no longer allowable to speak of Alexander, except in order to say something new of him, or to destroy the fables, historical, physical, and moral, which have disfigured the history of the only great man to be found among the conquerors of Asia.
After reflecting a little on the life of Alexander, who, amid the intoxications of pleasure and conquest, built more towns than all the other conquerors of Asia destroyed--after calling to mind that, young as he was, he turned the commerce of the world into a new channel, it appears very strange that Boileau should have spoken of him as a robber and a madman. Alexander, having been elected at Corinth captain-general of Greece, and commissioned as such to avenge the invasions of the Persians, did no more than his duty in destroying their empire; and, having always united the greatest magnanimity with the greatest courage--having respected the wife and daughters of Darius when in his power, he did not in any way deserve either to be confined as a madman or hanged as a robber.
Rollin asserts that Alexander took the famous city of Tyre only to oblige the Jews, who hated the Tyrians; it is, however, quite as likely that Alexander had other reasons; for a naval commander would not leave Tyre mistress of the sea, when he was going to attack Egypt. Alexander's friendship and respect for Jerusalem were undoubtedly great; but it should hardly be said that _the Jews set a rare example of fidelity--an example worthy of the only people who, at that time, had the knowledge of the true God, in refusing to furnish Alexander with provisions because they had sworn fidelity to Darius_. It is well known that the Jews took every opportunity of revolting against their sovereigns; for a Jew was not to serve a profane king. If they imprudently refused contributions to the conqueror, it was not with a view to prove themselves the faithful slaves of Darius, since their law expressly ordered them to hold all idolatrous nations in abhorrence; their books are full of execrations pronounced against them, and of reiterated attempts to throw off their yoke. If, therefore, they at first refused the contributions, it was because their rivals, the Samaritans, had paid them without hesitation, and they believed that Darius, though vanquished, was still powerful enough to support Jerusalem against Samaria.
It is wholly false that the Jews were then the only people who had the knowledge of the true God, as Rollin tells us. The Samaritans worshipped the same God, though in another temple; they had the same Pentateuch as the Jews, and they had it in Tyrian characters, which the Jews had lost. The schism between Samaria and Jerusalem was, on a small scale, what the schism between the Greek and Latin churches is on a large one. The hatred was equal on both sides, having the same foundation--religion.
Alexander, having possessed himself of Tyre by means of that famous causeway which is still the admiration of all generals, went to punish Jerusalem, which lay not far out of his way. The Jews, headed by their high priest, came and humbled themselves before him, offering him money--for angry conquerors are not to be appeased without money. Alexander was appeased, and they remained subject to Alexander and to his successors. Such is the true, as well as the only probable, history of the affair.
Rollin repeats a story told about four hundred years after Alexander's expedition, by that romancing, exaggerating historian, Flavius Josephus, who may be pardoned for having taken every opportunity of setting off his wretched country to the best advantage. Rollin repeats, after Josephus, that Jaddus, the high-priest, having prostrated himself before Alexander, the prince, seeing the name of Jehovah engraved on a plate of gold attached to Jaddus' cap, and understanding Hebrew perfectly, fell prostrate in his turn, and paid homage to Jaddus. This excess of civility having astonished Parmenio, Alexander told him that he had known Jaddus a long time; that he had appeared to him, in the same habit and the same cap, ten years before, when he was meditating the conquest of Asia (a conquest which he had not then even thought of); that this same Jaddus had exhorted him to cross the Hellespont, assuring him that God would march at the head of the Greeks, and that the God of the Jews would give him the victory over the Persians. This old woman's tale makes but a sorry figure in the history of such a man as Alexander.
An _ancient history_ well digested was an undertaking calculated to be of great service to youth; it is to be wished that it had not been in some degree marred by the adoption of some absurdities. The story of Jaddus would be entitled to our respect--it would be beyond the reach of animadversion--were even any shadow of it to be found in the sacred writings; but as they do not make the slightest mention of it, we are quite at liberty to see that it is ridiculous.
There can be no doubt that Alexander subdued that part of India which lies on this side the Ganges and was tributary to the Persians. Mr. Holwell, who lived for thirty years among the Brahmins of Benares and the neighboring countries, and who learned not only their modern language but also their ancient sacred tongue, assures us that their annals attest the invasion by Alexander, whom they call _Mahadukoit Kounha_--great robber, great murderer. These peaceful people could not call him otherwise; indeed, it is hardly to be supposed that they gave any other name to the kings of Persia. The same annals say that Alexander entered by the province now called Candahar, and it is probable that there were always some fortresses on that frontier.
Alexander afterwards descended the river Zombodipo, which the Greeks called _Sind_. In the history of Alexander there is not a single Indian name to be found. The Greeks never called an Asiatic town or province by their own name. They dealt in the same manner with the Egyptians. They would have thought it a dishonor to the Greek tongue had they introduced into it a pronunciation which they thought barbarous; if, for instance, they had not called the city of _Moph_ Memphis.
Mr. Holwell says that the Indians never knew either Porus or Taxiles; indeed these are not Indian words. Nevertheless, if we may believe our missionaries, there are still some Indian lords who pretend to have descended from Porus. Perhaps the missionaries have flattered them with this origin until they have adopted it. There is, at least, no country in Europe in which servility has not invented and vanity received genealogies yet more chimerical.
If Flavius Josephus has related a ridiculous fable about Alexander and a Jewish pontiff, Plutarch, who wrote long after Josephus, in his turn seems not to have been sparing in fables concerning this hero. He has even outdone Quintus Curtius. Both assert that Alexander, when marching towards India, wished to have himself adored, not only by the Persians but also by the Greeks. The question is, what did Alexander, the Persians, the Greeks, Quintus Curtius, and Plutarch understand by _adoring_? We must never lose sight of the great rule--_Define your terms._ If by _adoring_ he meant invoking a man as a divinity--offering to him incense and sacrifices--raising to him altars and temples, it is clear that Alexander required nothing of all this. If, being the conqueror and master of the Persians, he chose that they should salute him after the Persian manner, prostrating themselves on certain occasions, treating him, in short, like what he was, a sovereign of Persia, there is nothing in this but what is very reasonable and very common. The members of the French parliament, in their _beds of justice_, address the king kneeling; the third estate addresses the states-general kneeling, a cup of wine is presented kneeling, to the king of England; several European sovereigns are served kneeling at their consecration. The great mogul, the emperor of China, and the emperor of Japan are always addressed kneeling. The Chinese colaos of an inferior order bend the knee before the colaos of a superior order. We _adore_ the pope, and kiss the toe of his right foot. None of these ceremonies have ever been regarded as adoration in the strict sense of the word, or as a worship like that due to the Divinity.
Thus, all that has been said of the pretended adoration exacted by Alexander is founded on ambiguity.
Octavius, surnamed _Augustus_, really caused himself to be _adored_ in the strictest sense of the word. Temples and altars were raised to him. There were _priests of Augustus_. Horace positively tells him: _"Jurandisque tuum par nomen ponimus aras."_ Here was truly a sacrilegious adoration; yet we are not told that it excited discontent.
The contradictions in the character of Alexander would be more difficult to reconcile did we not know that men, especially men called _heroes_, are often very inconsistent with themselves, and that the life or death of the best citizens, or the fate of a province, has more than once depended on the good or bad digestion of a well or ill advised sovereign.
But how are we to reconcile improbable facts related in a contradictory manner? Some say that Callisthenes was crucified by order of Alexander for not having acknowledged him to be the son of Jupiter. But the cross was not a mode of execution among the Greeks. Others say that he died long afterwards, of too great corpulency. Athenæus assures us that he was carried, like a bird, in an iron cage until he was devoured by vermin. Among all these different stories distinguish the true one if you can. Some adventures are supposed by Quintus Curtius to have happened in one town, and by Plutarch in another, the two places being five hundred leagues apart. Alexander, armed and alone, leaped from the top of a wall into a town he was besieging; according to Plutarch near the mouth of the Indus. When he arrived on the Malabar coast, or near the Ganges--no matter which, it is only nine hundred miles from the one to the other--he gave orders to seize ten of the Indian philosophers, called by the Greeks _gymnosophists_, who went about as naked as apes; to those he proposed ridiculous questions, promising them very seriously that he who gave the worst answers should be hanged the first, and the rest in due order. This reminds us of Nebuchadonosor, who would absolutely put his magi to death if they did not divine one of his dreams which he had forgotten; and of the _Caliph_ of the "Thousand and One Nights," who was to strangle his wife as soon as she had finished her story. But it is Plutarch who relates this nonsense; therefore it must be respected, for he was _a Greek_.
This latter story is entitled to the same credit as that of the poisoning of Alexander by Aristotle; for Plutarch tells us that somebody had heard one _Agnotemis_ say, that he had heard Antigonus say, that Aristotle sent a bottle of water from Nonacris, a town in Arcadia, which water was so extremely cold that they who drank it instantly died; that Antipater sent this water in a horn; that it arrived at Babylon quite fresh; that Alexander drank of it; and that, at the end of six days, he died of a continued fever.
Plutarch has, it is true, some doubts respecting this anecdote. All that we can be quite certain of is that Alexander, at the age of twenty-four, had conquered Persia by three battles; that his genius was as great as his valor; that he changed the face of Asia, Greece, and Egypt, and gave a new direction to the commerce of the world; and that Boileau should have been more sparing of his ridicule, since it is not very likely that Boileau would have done more in as short a time.
ALEXANDRIA.
ALEXANDRIA.
More than twenty towns have borne the name of Alexandria, all built by Alexander and his captains, who became so many kings. These towns are so many monuments of glory, far superior to the statues which servility afterwards erected to power; but the only one of them which attracted the attention of the world by its greatness and its wealth was that which became the capital of Egypt. This is now but a heap of ruins; for it is well known that one half of the city has been rebuilt on another site, near the sea. The lighthouse, formerly one of the wonders of the world, has also ceased to exist.
The city was always flourishing under the Ptolemies and the Romans. It did not decline under the Arabs, nor did the Mamelukes or the Turks, who successively conquered it, together with the rest of Egypt, suffer it to go to decay. It preserved some portion of its greatness until the passage of the Cape of Good Hope opened a new route to the Indies, and once more gave a new direction to the commerce of the world, which Alexander had previously changed, and which had been changed several times before Alexander.
The Alexandrians were remarkable, under all their successive dominations, for industry united with levity; for love of novelty, accompanied by a close application to commerce, and to all the arts that make commerce flourish; and for a contentious and quarrelsome spirit, joined to cowardice, superstition, and debauchery--all which never changed. The city was peopled with Egyptians, Jews, and Turks, all of whom, though poor at first, enriched themselves by traffic. Opulence introduced the cultivation of the fine arts, with a taste for literature, and consequently for disputation.
The Jews built a magnificent temple, and translated their books into Greek, which had become the language of the country. So great were the animosities among the native Egyptians, the Greeks, the Jews, and the Christians, that they were continually accusing one another to the governor, to the no small advantage of his revenue. There were even frequent and bloody seditions, in one of which, in the reign of Caligula, the Jews, who exaggerate everything, assert that religious and commercial jealousy, united, cost them fifty thousand men, whom the Alexandrians murdered.
Christianity, which the Origens, Clements, and others had established and rendered admirable by their lives, degenerated into a mere spirit of party. The Christians adopted the manners of the Egyptians; religion yielded to the desire of gain; and all the inhabitants, divided in everything else, were unanimous only in the love of money. This it was which produced that famous letter from the Emperor Adrian to the Consul Servianus, which Vopiscus gives us as follows: ADRIANI EPISTOLA, EX LIBRIS PHLEGONTIS EJUS PRODITA.
_Adrianus Augustus Serviano Cos. Vo._ _Ægyptum, quam mihi laudabas, Serviane carissime, totam didici, levem, pendulam, et ad omnia famæ monumenta volitantem. Illi qui Serapin colunt Christiani sunt, et devoti sunt Serapi qui se_ CHRISTI _episcopus dicunt. Nemo illic Archisynagogus Judæorum, nemo Semarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter, non mathematicus, non aruspex, non aliptes. Ipse ille Patriarcha, quum Ægyptum venerit, ab aliis Serapidem adorare, ab aliis cogitur_ CHRISTUM. _Genus hominis seditiosissimum, injuriosissimum. Civitas opulenta, dives, fecunda, in qua nemo vivat otiosus. Alli vitrum constant, ab aliis charta conficitur; omnes certe lymphiones cujuscunque artis et videntur et habentur, Podagrosi quod agant habent, cœci quod faciant; ne chiragri quidem apud cos otiosi vivunt. Unus illis deus est; hunc Christiani, hunc Judæi, hunc homnes venerantur et gentes._ Which may be rendered thus: "My dear Servian: I have seen that Egypt of which you have spoken so highly; I know it thoroughly. It is a light, uncertain, fickle nation. The worshippers of Serapis turn Christians, and they who are at the head of the religion of Christ devote themselves to Serapis. There is no chief of the rabbis, no Samaritan, no Christian priest who is not an astrologer, a diviner, a pander. When the Greek patriarch comes into Egypt, some press him to worship Serapis, others to adore Christ. They are very seditious, very vain, and very quarrelsome. The city is commercial, opulent, and populous. No one is idle. Some make glass; others manufacture paper; they seem to be, and indeed are, of all trades; not even the gout in their feet and hands can reduce them to entire inactivity; even the blind work. Money is a god which the Christians, Jews, and all men adore alike."
This letter of an emperor, whose discernment was as great as his valor, sufficiently proves that the Christians, as well as others, had become corrupted in this abode of luxury and controversy; but the manners of the primitive Christians had not degenerated everywhere; and although they had the misfortune to be for a long time divided into different sects, which detested and accused one another, the most violent enemies of Christianity were obliged to acknowledge that the purest and the greatest souls were to be found among its proselytes. Such is the case even at the present day in cities wherein the degree of folly and frenzy exceeds that of ancient Alexandria.
ALGIERS.
The principal object of this dictionary is philosophy. It is not, therefore, as geographers that we speak of Algiers, but for the purpose of remarking that the first design of Louis XIV., when he took the reigns of government, was to deliver Christian Europe from the continual depredations of the Barbary corsairs. This project was an indication of a great mind. He wished to pursue every road to glory. It is somewhat astonishing that, with the spirit of order which he showed in his court, in his finances, and in the conduct of state affairs, he had a sort of relish for ancient chivalry, which led him to the performance of generous and brilliant actions, even approaching the romantic. It is certain that Louis inherited from his mother a deal of that Spanish gallantry, at once noble and delicate, with much of that greatness of soul--that passion for glory--that lofty pride, so conspicuous in old romances. He talked of fighting the emperor Leopold, like a knight seeking adventures. The erection of the pyramid at Rome, the assertion of his right of precedence, and the idea of having a port near Algiers to curb the pirates, were likewise of this class. To this latter attempt he was moreover excited by Pope Alexander VII., and by Cardinal Mazarin before his death. He had for some time debated with himself whether he should go on this expedition in person, like Charles the Fifth; but he had not vessels to execute so great an enterprise, whether in person or by his generals. The attempt was therefore fruitless, and it could not be otherwise.
It was, however, of service in exercising the French marine, and prepared the world to expect some of those noble and heroic actions which are out of the ordinary line of policy, such as the disinterested aid lent to the Venetians besieged in Candia, and to the Germans pressed by the Ottoman arms at St. Gothard.
The details of the African expedition are lost in the number of successful or unsuccessful wars, waged justly or unjustly, with good or bad policy. We shall merely give the following letter, which was written some years ago on the subject of the Algerine piracies: "It is to be lamented, sire, that the proposals of the order of Malta were not acceded to, when they offered, on consideration of a moderate subsidy from each Christian power, to free the seas from the pirates of Algiers, Morocco, and Tunis. The knights of Malta would then have been truly the defenders of Christianity. The actual force of the Algerines is but two fifty-gun ships, five of about forty, and four of thirty guns; the rest are not worth mentioning.
"It is shameful to see their little barks seizing our merchant vessels every day throughout the Mediterranean. They even cruise as far as the Canaries and the Azores.