Produced by David Widger
THE KNIGHT OF MALTA
By Eugene Sue
Illustrated
New York and Boston
H. M. Caldwell Company Publishers
Copyright, 1900
[Illustration: Frontispiece]
THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.
The travellers who now sail along the picturesque coasts within the
district of the Bouches-du-Rhone--the peaceable inhabitants of shores
perfumed by the orange-trees of Hyères, or the curious tourists, whom
steamboats are continually transporting from Marseilles to Nice or to
Gênes--are perhaps ignorant of the fact that two hundred years ago,
under the flourishing administration of Cardinal Richelieu, the seashore
of Provence was, almost every day, plundered by Algerian pirates, or
other robbers from Barbary, whose audacity knew no bounds. Not only
did they capture all the merchant vessels leaving port,--although these
ships were armed for war,--but they landed under the cannon even of the
forts, and carried away with impunity the inhabitant whose dwellings
were not adequately armed and fortified.
These depredations increased to such a degree that in 1633 Cardinal
Richelieu instructed M. de Séguiran, one of the most eminent men
of that time, to visit the coast of Provence, for the purpose of
ascertaining the best means of protecting them from the invasion of
pirates.
We will quote a passage from the memoir of M. de Séguiran in order to
give to the reader an exact idea of the scenes which are to follow.
“There is,” says he, “in the town of La Ciotat, a sentry-box which
the consuls have had built on one of the points of the rock of Cape
l’Aigle, in which they keep a man, very expert in navigation, on guard
night and day, to watch for pirate vessels.
“Every evening, toward nightfall, the guard in the sentry-box of La
Ciotat kindles his fire, which is continued by all the other similar
sentry-boxes to the lighthouse of Bouc.
“This is a certain signal that there is not a corsair in the sea.
“If the said guard in the sentry-box has, on the contrary, recognised
one, he makes two fires, as do all the others from Antibes to the
lighthouse of Bouc, and this is accomplished in less than a half-hour of
time.
“The inhabitants of La Ciotat confess that commerce has been better
during the last few years. But as far as can be learned, it is ruined.
“The corsairs from Barbary in one year seized eighty vessels and put
about fifty of their best sailors in chains.”
As we have said, so great was the terror that these Barbary pirates
inspired dong the coast that every house was transformed into a
fortress.
“Continuing our way,” says M. de Séguiran, “we arrived at the
house of the lord of Boyer, gentleman of the king’s chamber, which
house we found in a state of defence, in case of a descent of the
corsairs,--having a terrace in front, facing the port, and on it
twelve pieces of cast iron, several pieces of less calibre, and two
swivel-guns, and in the said house four hundred pounds of powder, two
hundred balls, two pairs of armour, and twelve muskets and short pikes.
“At Bormez and at St. Tropez,” says M. de Séguiran, further
on, “commerce is so seriously injured that it cannot amount to ten
thousand pounds, which is a consequence not only of the poverty of the
inhabitants, but also of the invasions made by pirates, who enter their
ports almost every day, so that very often vessels are compelled to
touch port, in order that the men who man them may escape, or the
inhabitants of the place arm themselves.
“At Martignes, a community which has suffered great losses in the
persons of its inhabitants,--esteemed the best and most courageous
seamen on the Mediterranean,--many of them have been made slaves by the
corsairs of Algiers and Tunis, who practise their piracies more than
ever, in the sight of the forts and fortresses of that province.”
The reader can imagine the contempt of these Barbary pirates for the
forts on the coast, when he knows that the seashore was in such a
deplorable state of defence that M. de Séguiran says, in another
passage of his report to Cardinal Richelieu:
“The next day, January 24th, at seven o’clock in the morning, we
went to the fortified castle named Cassis, belonging to the Lord Bishop
of Marseilles, where we found that the entire garrison consisted of a
porter only, a servant of the said bishop, who showed us the place, and
where there were only two small pieces of ordnance, one of which had
been emptied.”
Later, the Archbishop of Bordeaux made the same remark in reference to
one of the strongest positions of Toulon.
“The first and most important of these forts,” says the warrior
prelate in his report, “is an old tower where there are two batteries,
in which fifty cannon and two hundred soldiers could be placed; there
are good cannon within, but all are dismounted, and no ammunition,
except what was sent by order of your Eminence [Cardinal Richelieu]
fifteen days ago. The commandant is a simple, good man, who has for
garrison only his wife and her servant, and, according to what he says,
he has not received a farthing in twenty years.”
Such was the state of things a few years before Cardinal Richelieu was
invested by Louis XIII. with the office of grand master in chief and
general superintendent of the navigation and commerce of France.
In studying attentively the aim, the progress, the methods, and results
of the government of Richelieu,--in comparing, in a word, the point
of departure of his administration with the imperious conclusion of
absolute centralisation toward which it always tended, and which he
attained so victoriously,--one is especially impressed by the character
of the navy, by the incredible confusion and multiplicity of powers
or rival rights which covered the seashore of the kingdom with their
inextricable network.
When the cardinal was entrusted with the maritime interests of France,
he could count but little upon the support of a weak, timid, restless,
and capricious king; besides, he felt that France was secretly agitated
by profound political and religious discords. Alone, opposing the
exorbitant pretensions represented by the most powerful houses of
France,--haughty and jealous guardians of the last traditions of feudal
independence,--it was essential that the will of Richelieu should be
indomitable, even obstinate, in order to crush beneath the level
of administrative unity interests so numerous, so tenacious, and so
rebellious! Such was, however, the work of this great minister.
There is no doubt that the ardent and sacred love of the general
good, the noble, instinctive perception of the needs and progress
of humanity,--those pure and serene aspirations of a DeWitt or a
Franklin,--would not have sufficed the cardinal in undertaking and
sustaining so fierce a struggle; perhaps, too, it was essential that he
should feel himself animated by an unbridled, insatiable ambition, in
order to cope with so many formidable antagonisms, to despise so many
outcries, to prevent or punish so many dangerous revolts by prison,
exile, or the scaffold, and at last achieve the end of gathering in his
dying and sovereign hand all the resources of the state.
It was by this means--we think so, at least--that the genius of
Richelieu, exalted by an unconquerable personality, succeeded in
consummating this admirable centralisation of conflicting powers,--the
constant aim and glorious end of his administration.
Unfortunately, he died at the time he was beginning to organise this
authority so valiantly conquered.
If France, at the time of the cardinal’s death, presented still upon
her surface the distinct evidences of a complete social overthrow, the
soil was at least beginning to be freed from the thousand parasitical
and devouring forces which had so long exhausted her strength.
So, one might say that almost always eminent men, although of diverse
genius, are born in time to achieve the great labours of governments.
To Richelieu, that resolute and indefatigable clearer of untilled
ground, succeeds Mazarin, who levelled the earth so profoundly
ploughed,--then Colbert, who sowed it, and made it fruitful.
The imperial will of Richelieu appeared under one of its most brilliant
aspects in the long struggle he was obliged to sustain, when he was
entrusted with the organisation of the navy.
Up to that time, the governor-generals of Provence had always challenged
the orders of the admiralty of France, styling themselves the “born
admirals” of the Levant.
As such, they pretended to the maritime authority of the province; a few
of these governors, such as the Counts of Tende and of Sommerives, and,
at the period of which we speak, the Duke of Guise, had received from
the king special letters which conferred upon them the title of admiral.
These concessions, drawn from the weakness of the monarch, far from
supporting the pretentions of the governor-generals, protested, on the
contrary, against their usurpation, since these titles proved clearly
that the command of sea and land ought to be separate.
Thus we see how divided and antagonistic were these rival powers, that
the cardinal, in performing the functions of his office as grand master
of navigation, wished imperiously to unite and centralise.
It can be seen by this rapid and cursory view, and by the extracts which
we have borrowed from the report of M. de Séguiran, that a frightful
disorder reigned in every department of power.
This disorder was the more increased by the perpetually recurring
conflicts of jurisdiction, either through the governors of the province,
or through the admiralties, or through the feudal claims of many
gentlemen whose estates commanded a forest or a river.
In a word, abandonment or disorganisation of fortified places, ruin of
commerce, robbery of the treasury, invasion of the seashore, terror of
populations retiring into the interior of the country, in the hope of
flying from the attacks of these Barbary pirates,--such was the
grievous picture presented by Provence at the period in which this story
opens,--a story of incredible facts which seem rather to belong to the
barbarity of the middle ages than to the seventeenth century.